Ep. 1053: The Jared Mills Trail Cam Masterclass

00:00:01
Speaker 1: Welcome to the Wired to Hunt podcast, your guide to the white Tail Woods, presented by first Light, creating proven versatile hunting apparel for the stand, saddle or blind. First Light Go Farther, stay Longer, and now your host, Mark Kenyon.

00:00:19
Speaker 2: Welcome to the Wired to Hunt podcast. This week on the show, I’m joined by Jared Mills, and we are talking through his trail camera strategy and routines from A to Z summer to fall, everything from where he places them to the settings he uses, the goals he has, and the strategies he considers when using those photos to become a better deer hunt. All right, welcome back to the Wired to Hunt podcast, brought to you by Moultrie. Today we are continuing our trailcam series and my guest is Jared Mills. He’s a longtime friend of the show. He’s been on the podcast several times before. You’ve seen him on Midwest Whitetail and on his own YouTube channels. He is an entrepreneur. He is a deer hunting fanatic and an Iowa resident who has just got his program dialed. He takes whitetail hunting as serious as anybody, and trail cameras especially, So he has been diving deep into this stuff for I don’t know, probably close to two decades, and today what I want to talk to him about is the nitty gritty details of how he thinks about trail cameras, how he uses them, and what.

00:01:33
Speaker 3: That looks like through the entirety of the season.

00:01:35
Speaker 2: So what’s he thinking about and doing right now in the summer, what are his goals, how all those changed? You know, where is he put in summer cameras, what kind of information can he actually get from summer cameras, and how does he use that stuff? And then we move into the hunting season itself, where he’s putting in season cameras, how he thinks about moving them, when he thinks about moving them, how he’s changed his perspective on patterning deer with cameras, and much more when it comes to the specific details, settings, tactics, decision making around it, all that kind of stuff. This is truly a deep dive master class on using trail cameras in twenty twenty six to become a better deer hunter. So I’m going to leave it at that. I thoroughly enjoyed this conversation and I hope you did too. And one quick plug before we get to the chat with Jared here, want to let you know that Meat Eater’s auction House of Oddities is open right now and it’s running till July twenty second, twenty twenty six. The auction house is our in house fundraising campaign for our Public Land Initiative, which is the program that we use to help fund public access you know, acquisitions across the nation. So this is what allowed us to do that big campaign around Tuckertown that led to two hundred acres of public land, you know, being put under contract to be made public forever.

00:02:59
Speaker 3: That’s what the pl I does. That’s what this.

00:03:01
Speaker 2: Auction house is helping make possible. So if you’re interested, you can go to the auction house where you will see all sorts of different outdoor gear mementos, uh you know, everything from bows and rifles from meat Ator crew to the truck that Steve Ranella’s dad used as a hunting and fishing rig and that Steve used after his dad passed.

00:03:22
Speaker 3: We had that old truck, Steve.

00:03:24
Speaker 2: We call it Steve’s Dad’s shitty old truck full of badass hunting gear because This thing is gonna come with a bunch.

00:03:30
Speaker 3: Of outdoor gear, gift cards, a.

00:03:33
Speaker 2: Bunch of swags, some optics from sigsur, really good stuff, and I will be delivering it to the winner of that auction. So you can find all that much more at the meat eater dot com slash auction that’s running through July twenty second, twenty twenty six.

00:03:50
Speaker 3: And now back to the show. All Right with me on the line is several time returning guests. Jared Mills. Welcome back to the show.

00:04:05
Speaker 4: Thanks man, I appreciate you having me back. It’s uh, it’s exciting good to catch up.

00:04:10
Speaker 2: It’s always good to catch up. It’s always good to uh to touch base on what you’ve been up to.

00:04:14
Speaker 4: Uh.

00:04:15
Speaker 2: And the one thing that I don’t like about every time we chat on the podcast is it reminds me to go back and scroll through like all of your social media, and I do have to get very jealous every time I’m reminded of just how many good dear you’re seeing and putting your tags on.

00:04:31
Speaker 3: It’s uh, it’s funny.

00:04:33
Speaker 2: As the years go on, we’re inundated, right with so many of those things, you kind of lose track of how everybody’s seasons have went. Uh so when you’ve got an excuse to go check it back out again, it’s it’s a good reminder that you are you are living the dream, my friend, You’re doing well.

00:04:50
Speaker 4: Yeah, there’s no doubt I’ve been super fortune and that’s ultimately, like you know, I have a lot of these conversations about that, and like you know, there may be an aspect that I take granted a little bit just because it’s a natural like where this is all this is what I know. I’m born and raised in Iowa. I know Iowa hunting mature year. I was fortunate to like start to target mature year at a young age, and so like you know, there’s this aspect where I’m living in my own world. You don’t really realize, you know, that outside perspective like you’re talking about, but it’s there’s just every time it happens, it you know, it comes together on a big deer, Like you know, I may take the entire big picture, the fact that I have deer like this to hunt for granted, but every time it happens, I am still as blown away as anybody else that it all came together. There’s just you know when when people are watching the videos and stuff like, it comes across easy, it comes across as nothing to it, just another another day in the office type of thing. But like living in it, for me, it’s unreal how many factors have to come together to make this work? And uh, you know, every time it happens, I’m blown away, like how ask how did that happen? Every single time, even though it’s happened you know a number of times now. So so yeah, it’s fun, but that’s it’s a lot.

00:06:10
Speaker 3: It’s so funny you say that. I still feel the same way.

00:06:13
Speaker 2: It seems like every time I kill a buck, I think to myself, I can’t believe that just happened, No way that just happened. It always seems so impossible. The next buck, You’re always like, oh, I’m never gonna get one again. It’s never gonna it’s never gonna come, never, never gonna get this deer. And then it does, and Nick, you said, you’re shocked. So I guess that’s why we love it so much, because sometimes it seems so impossible, so challenging, and then every once in a while, magic happens and the stars aligne and it comes together that’s right.

00:06:42
Speaker 4: And you hope it never gets old.

00:06:44
Speaker 3: Yeah, exactly.

00:06:46
Speaker 2: So I think this sets the stage well for the main thing I did want to talk to you about, which was what seems to be a pretty significant part of how you have this success year in and year out. I mean, I’ve been seeing you do it. Folks have been seeing you do it for years and years and years now, and as I’ve watched your deer hunting trajectory since I don’t know, I probably what was the first year you were on Midwest Whitetail.

00:07:11
Speaker 3: Do you remember?

00:07:12
Speaker 4: Twenty ten?

00:07:14
Speaker 2: Okay, yeah, so I was watching back then, so that’s when I probably would have started following your story. You know, I’ve seen how you use trail cameras change and evolve over time. I’ve seen how you take that information and apply it to your hunts change and evolve over time. And that has been true for all of us, right, for some of us, we started deer hunting before trail cameras were a thing, And then even for those people though, who came into hunting in the trailcam era, it has changed so much over the last five, ten, fifteen years. What I wanted to do with you is kind of cover your trail camera regimen today kind of from A to Z everything you’re doing from the off season into the season, everything from you know, your goals and your setups and then how you use that information kind of everything from here to there, and a little bit of how that maybe has evolved over time, because I think, you know, to my point, for some of us, it has not just been one static thing that we’ve done the same way for twenty years. So right with that money, I want to start here. I want to get your thoughts on this statement, kind of a truer false statement, summer trail camera intel is overrated? True or false?

00:08:29
Speaker 3: What do you think about that?

00:08:30
Speaker 4: All? Right? True? So a couple of reasons come to mind. One, you know, I think there I should preface this, preface it with this, like I do think there are stuff that you can take and apply from the summer to the fall, but so often things change so much from the summer to fall. I would venture to guess that ninety percent of the deer that I ultimately end up hunting I don’t get picked a single picture of in the summer, not a single picture, And the ones that I do, it’s maybe half a dozen pictures are less in the summer compared to fall, and I think it’s you know, it’s a combination of a couple of things. The areas I hunt are just better fall habitat, Like you know, that thicker cover. It just seems to me the bigger, more mature bucks especially don’t like that type of cover in the summer. And they’re simply not in the areas where I’m running cameras or can run cameras, right and two, Like, I think they just don’t move and travel as great a distances in the summer, which if you’re not on the X, you’re not going to get pictures of them if your camera’s not on the X. So I think those two things play a big part of it. What I love to watch a deer grow as Antler’s the entire thing, and you know, get the big double picks, of course, but I would rather have it this way where I don’t get them in the summer, but get them in the fall when that can actually help them. So yeah, I don’t take a whole lot of stock other than the fact I will say this, if I do start getting a buck in the summer or get him early, I do feel like my chances slightly increase of a higher number of encounters in the fall, Like he’s going to be on me more often in the fall if I can keep him, if he’s close during the summertime. It just seems still last few bucks that’s happened on has kind of played out that way. And sometimes it’s a year by year like it’s it’s the same book. But you know, one summer I get nothing of him, just fall pictures encounters, and then you know, maybe he turns five or five years old or something and he maybe strengths his core range I’m not real sure, or relocates the summer range for whatever reason, but it’s has tended to lead towards more sightings and encounters in the fall when I do see them in the summer.

00:10:57
Speaker 2: Have you ever you know, knowing that the deer that you typically get in the summer disappear. Have you ever gotten a buck on camera in the summer and tried to change that? So gotten a buck and you’re like, oh, man, this buck is so special that I need to either find him when he find where he’s moving to in the fall so I can keep hunting him. So you go into some kind of trying to find new permission try to find him in the fault or number two, have you ever saw a deer and thought, Okay, I need to change my habitat plan or something to try to keep this deer here, even though I know he’ll probably leave. I got to pull some kind of monkey out of my back pocket here. Have either of those two things happened?

00:11:37
Speaker 4: Not really On the first one, I’ve never never went and found a deer and then got permission to kill him. Like I’ve always only hunted deer on properties I already have permission to hunt, or the property I own, or whatever may be the case. I’ve never went backwards where you find the deer and knock on doors. So not necessarily the first part, but the second part, for sure. It’s the reason I continue to run cameras the entire year. You know, I don’t just because I don’t get pictures of very many of them, typically in the summer, doesn’t mean I’m not trying, right, So, because the reason is this, I’ve had this happen a couple of times. One. You know, sometimes you get a picture of a deer, just even just one picture in late June or early July, just enough to know which deer it is, and maybe you thought he was dead, or maybe you hadn’t seen him an over you know, a full season that changes the game, or maybe it’s a deer that you didn’t expect to make a big jump, but he did make a big jump. The earlier you get that intel, the further ahead you put yourself in the game of that. So, whether that’s planning a specific food plot for him, whether that’s some extra scouting time, whether that’s getting permission like you mentioned on nearby properties just to maximize your your huntable area. Just the earlier in the year that that happens, you’re you’re you’re giving yourself a pretty significant advantage compared to wait and getting that picture in September, and at that time, it’s kind of like you’re you’re you’re going to have to just go with what you know at that time. So that’s that’s the reason I continue to run them, But I do try to do things on the properties that I have the ability to just add more options for them to want to spend more time on the property, whether that’s better summer time food sources, you know, like your your high forge, high protein type stuff or clover chickory plots, you know, if I can give them a couple more reasons to even just pop in on occasion just to kind of let me know they’re alive, or you know, I’ve seen it where I have changed or it just seemed like I had no food, the deer weren’t there in the summer, and I added good summer food and I’ve had a couple of bucks kind of core up. So yeah, I definitely try to do that because I do think you create an advantage for yourself.

00:13:59
Speaker 2: So it seems like major goal is just establishing presence, like who’s here, who’s hopefully going to stay, who maybe isn’t gonna stay, but but basically confirming dead or alive, and who’s gonna be around hopefully.

00:14:13
Speaker 3: Do you ever.

00:14:16
Speaker 2: Learn something more than that from summer cameras? Have you ever found a behavioral pattern or a trend or anything else you know that has helped you during hunts, Because I feel like a lot of people, especially when I was younger, when I was just getting into this, I would have these summer pictures and I’d see all this bucks coming in and out of this swamp, and he’s feeding in this bean field, and when I was twenty one, I thought, oh man, that’s gonna be where I’m gonna kill him, And then I realized that doesn’t hold up for all the reasons you already stated. But is there anything that does that? Is there anything you can learn from a summer photo or series of photos that can in some other way help with hunting other than what you mentioned already.

00:14:56
Speaker 4: Yeah, one thing comes to mind. I think it’s I think it’s very small in general what you can learn from summertime, but a couple of things. I guess one would be I enjoy seeing how they interact with other bucks, especially I think you can learn a lot about the behavior and maturity and kind of social hierarchy of a buck, especially in the summer when they are hanging out with other bucks. So I think that that would be one. And then two, I can think of a couple of examples of bucks that you know, we think about summertime being this time of bachelor groups, and it’s very common to see that. But I’ve had a couple of bucks where, even during the summer they were loaners, I never saw them with other bucks, and that usually held true into the fall too, where you know, you would think you have a pretty good betting area and like this would be a good spot for a buck to core up. And this loaner type of personality. Buck just doesn’t just you know, he’s by himself in the summer, buy himself off all and basically until late season when the deer become a little more concentrated. But it just seemed like he had the loner personality. So I’d say those are the two things that at least in my experience, I’ve seen that I could learn from summertime encounters.

00:16:16
Speaker 2: Okay, so summertime cameras, when do you like to put them out? And what’s you know, after doing this for so many years, what is your go to absolute best type of location to set them up? And how do you dial in that setup for a summer setup.

00:16:32
Speaker 4: Yeah, so the timing at least by the beginning of June. You know, obviously there’s a few months there where you’re likely not going to recognize a deer anyways, you know, if you’re trying to get intel unless there’s some type of markings are very distinct characteristics. But at least by the beginning of June, when they’re starting to pack on some some of that growth. I like to have them out by then a couple of different locations. But and this, this one’s tough because you know, you want to think about summertime food soores where the deer is spending time. And we always as hunters think high activity areas, right, like what we know as high activity areas, whether that’s food source, trail pitch whatever. I’ve gotten the most summertime pictures of at least bigger deer in the most random locations, Like it could be a little island of trees out in the middle of nowhere, protected by big tall canary grass all around, and and like you’re not gonna get very many pictures because there’s a lot of times in those areas there’s nothing to like dictate the movement or or or funnel down the movement, you know, so some I would say, more often than not, those those areas tend to be a bust. But with that being said, that’s where I get the pictures of the of the best bucks in the summer, just a spot where they can be out away from everything, high level cover. That’s the other thing too, Like it just seems like I don’t get anything in the thickest spots. You know, they want the high canopy, you know, shade or tall grass kind of protecting them. I think they try to. It almost seems like obviously it’s hard to say this, but it seems like they find areas to kind of tuck away from bugs, to like kind of bury themselves in grass almost. But yeah, very very random places. Where is where I’ve picked up the most mature bucks, but for a number of like a higher number of images and occasionally getting that that goodyear. I like to be near soybean fields this time of year. I really like if you can find a spot where corn and soybeans intersect or along that edge is another good spot. You got to think, like this time of yere the forage and the vegetation is so tall and deer as we know from from fall trail camp placement. Like they they like to take the path of leash resistance. So if you can find little things like that, like like I said, the edge of a corn and beanfield there’s a little bit of gap there, or like even like sprayer tracks that you know where an agricultural sprayer left a soybean field and it leaves that kind of big bigger gap between soybeans. If that enters into the woods, like that’s a really good spot where the deer going to come in and kind of take that easier path rather than just walking through you know, waste chest high beans. So yeah, little stuff like that. It kind of varies by property, but those are some of my favorite spots as we as we sit right now in mid.

00:19:49
Speaker 2: July, the kind of off the beaten path random spots. Have you just found a handful of those kinds of locations by chance over the years or do you seek that out? And like, no, on any in any given year, you’re gonna throw some flyers out there, You’re gonna put some cameras in really weird places that you have no idea what’s out there.

00:20:19
Speaker 3: But you do that on purpose just to try to find that kind of thing.

00:20:22
Speaker 4: I do it now on purpose, but I initially learned it from jumping deer. Like if I’m out on a property doing work or traveling through a property to to do something, like I think about the areas that I’ve jumped the bucks out of their bed in the middle of the day, and it’s just like, man, what is he doing way out there? You know? Like you know, one that comes to mind. I have the one property that I least I won lease and there’s just there’s probably seven trees in this island surrounded by marsh and canary grass. I mean nothing for probably a radius of two hundred and fifty yards, not another tree, but this little high it sat up just a little bit. That’s why there are trees growing there, and the buck just bedded right in the middle of that. Actually, I think there was probably a couple of them. But that’s that’s the kind of example of a location where just over the years I jumped up enough bucks in those scene kind of random, but if you start to think about it makes a little bit of a little bit of sense. But that’s why I started targeting those locations. And like I said, like it’s I still have more unsuccessful cameras than I do successful in that one just because they’re there’s a there’s it’s hard to cover all those there. There’s so many spots like that that could potentially have a buck. And then not to mention you potentially could mess it up by going into that island one time. He’s like, oh that’s it, you know. Yeah, So yeah, I mean I still more unsuccessful than successful. But again that’s where I get them as those really random off the beaten path spots away. You know, what you think about where to find a deer in the fall, it’s almost opposite of that. It’s like where you would not expect to see him in the.

00:22:11
Speaker 2: Fall in a location like that, Do you use any attractant or scent or mock scrape or anything to try to, you know, capture that photo in this slightly random place that might be different than your usual.

00:22:26
Speaker 4: Not in those spots, I’ll you know, sometimes try to put out some mineral or something in the vicinity, you know, maybe a couple hundred yards away. But and I’m never really big on hiding cameras from deer, like hanging them high in the tree. But those are some of the exceptions where I will, like, if it looks like I mean, like, you know, a spot the size of my office, basically, if I’m like, gosh it, there’s something betting right here, like it very consistently be like, I will be a lot more careful in that situation when hanging a camera, and you know, I won’t try to mess it up because it seems like part of the reason that they’re in spots like that, is that there’s not a whole bunch of other activity, like deer activity. So if I put bait or mineral or something like that, that completely changes that spot, and I think that’s that buck’s not going to bed there anymore. So, Yeah, I don’t do much to sweeten those spots up. You know, maybe put something close but not right there where I’m trying to get a picture of him.

00:23:26
Speaker 2: And then is that different though for your typical summer locations with the higher dear density type spots.

00:23:32
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, I’ll try to you know, occasional I’ll use mineral, but I also start my mock straps pretty early in the year as well. So those two things I’ll try to sweeten the spot up with. And more let’s just try to get the deer to stop for a better picture, is kind of my end goal with that. It’s not necessarily drawing from a long ways away into that spot. It’s more just to you know, if they have three trails coming out, you know, within twenty five yards, try to get them to come out that one trail.

00:24:04
Speaker 2: Yeah, So what’s the Jared Mills secret to success mock scrape plan?

00:24:13
Speaker 4: Start them early? Like I said, I just with starting them early. I think it gives you the advantage of picking where the main hub activity scrapes are going to be. So like if you do that before the deer start naturally getting a lot more aggressive, you know they’ll work them all year, but before they start getting more aggressive, like in late August early September, if you can get those those locations established first, those tend to be and they have to still be in the right spot, but those tend to be higher activity than if you’re waiting and competing with the deer opening them up. So that’s a big reason I try to create those hub locations that are advantageous to me, either in either from a hunting perspective or just a camera perspective. Like we’re talking, and then I always try to with camera locations, especially in the fall, but get as many factors playing into that location as possible. So not just a scrape, I want a scrape, an intersection of trails, maybe a food source you know, close by in the background. Like how many things can you fit into one camera frame? Is kind of the way I look at it. It’s it’s you’re just always up in your chances. I mean, you’re giving you more more reasons for a year to cross it for that trail camera. So that’s your thing. And then mock scrapes, I truly believe these are the best inventory tool. You know, a lot of people will use a corn pile for quick inventory or or something else, but to me, you with the mock scrape. Yeah, I mean, technically a mock scrape isn’t quote unquote natural, but it’s you know, close enough to something completely natural, so you’re not changing the movement pattern necessary like you would with a corn pile, especially in like non baiting states like here in Iowa. If you’re in a baiting state and you’re going to be hunting that pattern anyway, then that’s a different story. But for me, I’d rather put something out that tells me more and teaches me more with natural movement than something that I did to dictate that movement, like a like a bait pile. Yeah, so that’s the biggest thing is just you know, using mox scrapes for inventory.

00:26:34
Speaker 2: But also Intel, I remember seeing you mention somewhere maybe one of your past videos, talking about the fact that you in the past sometimes and many other people still today when they’re setting up through mox scrapes or picking a mock scrape location, they’re getting their licking branches started too.

00:26:53
Speaker 3: High, I think, is what you said. Can you explain why that is?

00:26:58
Speaker 4: Yeah, for sure. So it kind of goes back to establishing it early. But also like even if you’re establishing it in September, let’s say that’s still before all the leaves fall off the trees, and so you know by the time you hang it, even in mid September, if you hang it there and you and the leaves start to fall off late October, that’s a ton of weight on the branches that’s lifting up. And so if you start that the bottom of the mock scrape, whether you’re using a vine or rope of a limb, whatever it is, if that’s hanging down at you know, a deer’s nose height, which is ultimately you want what you want that’s going to be over your head. Depending on the type of tree, of course, So like if you’re if you’re hanging on evergreen, you don’t have to necessarily worry about this, but the tree that has a lot of leaves that’s going to lose those branches just it’s amazing how much they can rise up as as that leaf cover starts to fall off. So I try to go kind of a rule thumb of hanging it like below waist level when I’m doing it early, and that way, when it does rise up, it’s still going to be about chess level.

00:28:11
Speaker 2: Okay, so you’re you’re setting that lower than typical licking branch. Anything unique that you do when you’re kicking out the dirt underneath? Do you apply any scent in that scrape in the summer when you’re first starting it, and any other little tiny things you’re doing that that fail out your plan?

00:28:30
Speaker 4: Yeah, for sure. I think a couple of things to me make a really effective box scrape. In addition to the height thing, I think you need to have something vertical. Sometimes guys will you know, there will be a branch going out horizontally at the right hype and they’ll just they’ll just use that. There’s something about that straight up and down vertical aspect that attracts your way more. I don’t know what it is, but it just seems like, and you see your break off that kind of vertical aspect. Yeah, they create it. So yeah, I always make sure I have something hanging straight down awful horizonal branch, then hanging straight down scent wise when it’s early in the season like this time of year. All the way through basically mid October, I’m using pretty non intrusive, non estris non rut type sense, so your preorbital gland type sense or just like a general dear heard curiosity type of scent I’m using usually using those two in combination. And then as we get to mid October, I’ll start introducing some of the more Early October, I’ll start introducing some dominant buck stuff, and then mid October as well, I’ll start introducing some extras type stuff. And I’ve had really good luck because the dominant buck stuff, to me is you’re timing it perfect when with the siveness on the rise of these of these bucks. And so I’ve even seen it where it just seems like you increase the frequencies going to the scrape because he’s trying to like kind of overpower that dominance that you’re putting down or that scent that you’re putting down. And then uh, you know a little bit later, you’re trying to take advantage of that same mature book trying to find that first Pettra Stoll.

00:30:23
Speaker 2: Okay, the cameras themselves that you’re placing over these mock scrapes, how are you actually you mentioned you’re not trying to hide the cameras usually. What about your settings? What about you know any of those like little nitty gritty specifics when it comes to you know, the specific goals you have in the summer, how do you like to set them up so you’re not running out of a battery but you’re getting the intel you want.

00:30:48
Speaker 4: Yeah, as much as possible, I’m running on video mode. It’s just it’s obvious you hit so many more frames to work with and to learn from. I can’t tell you like I love going postseason pulling the cards from those because I don’t like within a cell camp or something, you don’t always see the full video, you know, if you request it or whatever. I love going postseason pulling the card and going through every single video, and it’s amazing how much you miss, you know, maybe as a dough that triggered the camera but it’s behind her, or maybe something in the background you can really see very well on a small thumbnail. So I love video mode for education purposes basically, and it kind of goes back to what we were talking about earlier, is I feel like you can learn so much more about a Buck’s personality on a video compared to a single image, So as much as I can, and with you know, solar panels and stuff getting better, I usually don’t have to worry about the battery life even when it’s taken ten to fifteen second videos every time. So that’s the primary video or primary camera setting that that matters to me the most. Now, if it’s a crazy high activity area and you know it’s a camera I don’t ever want to go to and I can’t get an SD card big enough in there for video, I will over on images. But I do when I do that, I do feel like I’m missing a lot.

00:32:22
Speaker 2: Yeah, And at what point do you feel like your trail camera strategy shifts from that summer kind of learning mode to hunt mode and getting some you know, some different questions answered? What’s that timeframe when you switch in your own head? And then is there a specific date in the calendar when you start moving things to a different location.

00:32:45
Speaker 4: Yeah, I would say mine is less of a hard shift as opposed it’s more of like an evolution. I would say at the end of July, you know, as we’re approaching this timeframe is when I’m I’m going to start doing a lot more mock scrapes, start to get them using that. But I’m I’m not going to necessarily have cameras deep into the timber like on you know, trails or pinches or funnels or anything like that. I’m still kind of staying in the easy, easier accessible places for me to get cameras into. I would say mid September ish, give or take, is probably when I start to deploy more cameras deeper into the areas I hunt. And that’s kind of like, you know, there’s a couple of reasons. It seems like the deer don’t spend time in those areas as much until then. But to those are the cameras I don’t want to go back to the rest of the season, and so if I get them out too early, you kind of risk whatever SD car pulling out, battery, he’s dying, whatever it is. Those are the ones I just want to set and not have to go back to them, So I usually wait too closer to mid September on those.

00:34:03
Speaker 2: And do you have you know, a set I don’t know however many places it is. But do you have set camera locations that man every year around mid September or whatever, They all right, we’re gonna move our cameras to my hunt, you know, season locations, and you make that move and then you’re done and they’re just there for the whole season. Or are you more of the constantly changing, rethinking cameras are being moved and that strategy is evolving throughout the entire season.

00:34:32
Speaker 4: Yeah, I would say there’s a few that are just kind of no brainer spots, but I would lean more towards me just trying new things all the time. You know, It’s not like sometimes because I’m trying to dial it in, like maybe after my postseason review, go through all the images that start to kind of make connections and you know, be like, okay, I should probably adjust this. It just seemed like he wasn’t quite getting there early enough. You know, if I of that deeper, maybe I’ll get him closer to daylight or you know, there’s stuff like that that all sometimes apply. But to me, like it’s just this constant learning game, you know, running cameras in general, it’s a constant learning game, and it’s fun and so like you know, you learn a lot about your property, you learn a lot about your deer, and like for me to continue that, I like try and do spots, new locations. It doesn’t have to be a lot. Sometimes it’s a move of twenty five yards, you know, but it’s it’s something different, and it’s amazing how different those locations can be. Like, like think about this as an example, like how many times have you gone on a hunt, had incredible hunt, saw a ton of deer and hardly got any pictures that night of so you know of that time. That happens all the time, and so sometimes it’s just it’s not because the deer just avoiding every camera. It’s just sometimes like hey, you just you’re just off twenty five yard off where they all came, you know, stuff like that. So that’s part of the reason I like to always just try new things. It’s just kind of a fun process.

00:36:08
Speaker 2: Yeah, how would you describe your goals for in season cameras these days? Because I don’t know about you, but my goals have changed. I used to think they would do one set of things for me back fifteen years ago, and now I’ve kind of realized they actually sometimes hurt me in certain ways more than they help. And so my the way I use them has changed.

00:36:31
Speaker 3: Is that true? It all for you?

00:36:32
Speaker 2: And if so, like, what is that goal now that they realistically achieved for you?

00:36:37
Speaker 4: Yeah, one, I would say more and more as I go. My trail cameras are utilized less for the strategy of actually killing the deer. Yeah, you know, it’s for me, it’s inventory, like knowing he’s at least alive and around. And two, to be honest, like entertainment, like you know, you know, like just getting pictures of deer in general, maybe not just your target, but but like just the behavior you can learn and just reading deer’s body, body language and how they interact and you know, whether they’re on alert or not, like all these types of things. You just it’s just fun to sit back and watch and see what’s what’s going on in these properties. So I would say like those two things, you know there there is a little bit of strategy from the standpoint of like, you know, figure out the area that a certain buck is using based on the cameracy showing up on but it is is that’s kind of been My biggest change is where I used to try to just dial in that pattern to be able to know exactly where I can go kill that deer. To now it’s like, you know, these it’s just the cameras are a tool, Like I’m using my experience and my knowledge and all that type of stuff to actually kill.

00:37:58
Speaker 3: This So why why is that? Why? Why are they not.

00:38:05
Speaker 2: The end all be all of your strategy like they used to be, or like you tried to make them be.

00:38:11
Speaker 4: I think I’ve just learned how often, you know, you can get burned by a trail camra image and over emphasizing what it’s telling you rather than almost taking a step back and thinking about the why behind that picture, not just the fact that you got the picture there, but why why did you get that picture at that location at that time? You know what’s he doing? You know what’s he going to do when he left your camera? I think that’s a part of it. I think another part is what we just talked about that like, you know, they’re so so much more that’s going on than what was captured in that single frame, and so like it’s hard to do, but like I just feel like the advancement of trail cameras like there’s always kind of been there’s like this kind of ebb and flow or positive negative to it, right, Like they’ve they’ve you know, certainly limited intrusion, right, so that’s a positive, like we don’t go in and check them as much. But two like it’s it’s the negative is it’s given us too much almost false information. Yeah, Like I just feel like that’s kind of the the balancing factor there is, like you know, we we think because we got that picture two hours ago, like that’s like the information to go go on and I’ve just seen way too many times where that’s not the case. But like there’s like the examples of that with with tril Can technology because like even you know, I think you could probably agree, like back in the day, we would use cameras. You may sometimes the data was two weeks old or whatever it may be, but we’re using cameras to find good spots to hunt almost any buck. Like gosh, this is this is a money spot. This is there and need to be in, Like there’s just a lot of bucks going through here, and now it’s like we’re doing it for one buck, you know. Just it’s like that, Yes, cell cameras kill more deer but cell cameras also save more dear because you’re not just shooting the perst thing, you’re waiting for that one that you’ve been getting on camera. So there’s there’s a lot of kind of give and takes there with with how that trail cam technology is as evolved. But yeah, strategy wise, I think it boils down to inventory and just overall education entertainment from like a just a deer learning standpoint.

00:40:45
Speaker 2: Yeah, I feel like it’s almost like an epidemic of chasing trail cam photos for a lot of folks. And I have been guilty of myself, right just like you said, I get I got the photo of him here yesterday, so I should I should be there, And then I got the picture of this morning or whatever, I gotta go there.

00:41:02
Speaker 3: And then you’re.

00:41:02
Speaker 2: Constantly kind of chasing your tail cause you’re chasing where they were twenty four hours ago or twelve hours ago or whatever your update rate is. So you gave me some you gave some high level kind of alternatives there, But like, what’s the specific antidote to that if there’s an if there’s an epidemic of chasing you know, instant camera photos, can you kind of paint the picture for me of what the opposite of that actually looks like in real life.

00:41:29
Speaker 4: Yeah, just try to try to figure out how to be specific. But like it starts with taking a back and taking a step back and asking why, like I mentioned, like it’s because it’s you’re right, Like it’s so easy. Like I have these conversations with buddies all the time during the season, like do not chase that? SKay, do not do it? And like so at the same time, it’s like, yeah, what else, what else am I going to do? It’s my best life, you know what I mean? And I don’t know what the other answer is, because it’s very dependent on what you know about the property in that book and how he moves. But the more so here’s another example of like how it’s how the game has changed. Like you hear people all the time say cell cameras are a substitute for woodsmanship, right, like people complain about that. Yep, you don’t. It doesn’t have to be that way. You can be intentional about making it a making you a better woodsman by not chasing that cell cam. Hey you got some intel, Yeah you got a little advantage, a little head start, but use your woodsmanship to figure out the rest. Don’t chase the cell cam pick, use your woodsmanship, what you know about you know everything about the time of the year, how bucks like to move, what they’re doing right now. Use that information to decide where you’re gonna hunt. Make that trail cam picture or video a small a smaller part of it than the way you’re currently doing.

00:42:56
Speaker 2: Yeah, okay, so what about how you are you know, specifically setting things up in season to get the type of information that allows you to do that. You mentioned video being such a huge part of your summer game. I think that is true for in season two, right, still doing video anything else unique with with your mock scrape setups or locations or anything else once we’re in season to get that actually useful information.

00:43:26
Speaker 4: Not necessarily anything different there. The mock scrapes are still a huge part. I would say ninety five percent or more of my cameras are on on mock scrapes throughout the entire fall. Even if I’m on the edge of a food plot, I’m still put a mock scrape in front of that camera or in the background of the camera, whatever it may be. So nothing changing there. Still love running video mode because you know even more so you get to continue to learn that dear’s personality, just how how his body language is, how he interacts with another bucket that scrape, you can a lot of times tell how aggressive they are things like that, which then can play into your hunting strategy. Like you know, more aggressive deer is going to be more likely to respond to calling in the right situation. So so things like that. Yeah, I mean, like I said, like, it’s I just need to know that he’s there and killable, and that’s like that’s the biggest piece of information. I don’t need to know his every move. I don’t need to know exactly where it is. I will say this, I will change it a little bit. I’m not I’m not someone that’s afraid to be aggressive with trail camera moves if I need to so. And what I mean by that, like it maybe you start getting a few pictures of a buck, but it’s you know, not in daylight, you need to move the camera to try to get closer to where he’s betting. Or you know the other thing too, Deer very individual and so like sometimes you’ll have cameras that are were good spots for a buckie or chasing last year. But those camera locations maybe they start out there, but they’re not doing you that much good for how this particular buck us is the property the following year. So if the cameras aren’t producing like I think they should, I’m not afraid to go in and move them. And sometimes I’ll wait for a rainy day or make sure I have the right wind to go into that spot or whatever. Like I’m not completely careless during the middle of the fall, but I also don’t stay out forever because a lot of times, you know this, like your windows of opportunity are so small that you know if you don’t, if you just sit back and kind of let it play out, you might be too late by the time you get to the information you want. So I’m not afraid to be aggressive and actually move camera locations, even if it’s the middle of November.

00:46:00
Speaker 2: Any other tricks other than the rain or good wind direction to you know, be able to make those moves while keeping the impact low. I mean I used to be I’m slightly less so now, and maybe it’s just because I’m old and I have kids, but I used to be my scent control when moving trail cameras, when touching trail cameras and anything.

00:46:21
Speaker 3: It was so dial.

00:46:23
Speaker 2: I was always wearing gloves, I was always spraying it down, I was always ocd. I’m still like that to a degree, but not quite as much. Do you do you worry about that kind of stuff? Do you worry about anything else when it comes to you know, are you rolling in there on a knee.

00:46:36
Speaker 3: Bike or on a quad or a truck or how do you do all those things?

00:46:41
Speaker 4: Yeah, I think you’ve got a couple of different options, And to be honest, like it kind of depends on the situation of which buck I’m hunting and how close I think he is to that spot, you know, if it’s if it’s a location that’s a little bit on the outskirts, I don’t get was worried about it, But if I feel like I’m walking into his bedroom, he could be in fifty yards. Like, of course, I’m going to do every little thing. I’m gonna treat like a hunt, So I’m gonna, you know, wear rubber boots, spray down, try not to rub any vegetation, all that type of stuff. But yeah, I think your options are doing it, like try to leave no intrusion or a lot of intrusion at the other end of the spectrum with a tractor or ud via truck, et cetera. Like, I don’t think there’s anything between. I think you try to leave no presence or make your presence very known, one of those two.

00:47:35
Speaker 2: Yeah, have you ever gone so far on that front? So there have been times where I thought about that exact same thing, but I didn’t have a truck or anything, and so I thought, should I, even though I have to I have to go on my foot, should I lean really hard into that and like talk on my phone or have a chainsaw with me and like rev the chainsaw or something like that. I’ve considered doing that to try to, you know, be the obnoxious, loud person that’s in the woods that deer do get used to in a lot of places. Have you ever thought about going so far as doing that.

00:48:08
Speaker 4: I think I think that’s the second best option, if you don’t think you can get in completely undetected. I still think completely undetected is the best option. But if you’re like, gosh, there’s just such a slim chance that he’s at least gonna win me if not hear me and see me too. If that’s the case and you have to get in there, then I could see being creative. The other thing you could do is, you know, if you’re trying to not let your presence be known in that very tight spot, you could potentially do something like a wind bump where you circle around the other side and you know, make him think the danger was that way, get him out of there, and then you know, kind of move in and then that’s that’s pretty situation and spot dependent obviously, but that’s another thing you can potentially think about if you if you didn’t want to go in completely intrusive.

00:49:13
Speaker 2: You mentioned that sometimes you’ll move those cameras around if you’re not getting him in daylight left or daylight yet, which brought to mind another one of the things you know that I’ve thought about throughout the season that I know a lot of people do, is lots of times they will use their cell cams to give them like the green light to say, oh, yeah, now it’s time to go. So even if we’re not saying, well, I need to go here, there’s also like the when question, and some people will say, okay, if he’s not moving in daylight yet, I need to be waiting and waiting and waiting, and then.

00:49:42
Speaker 3: Once he daylights, you’ll hear this a lot.

00:49:44
Speaker 2: Right, Oh, he daylighted, now it’s time to get after him.

00:49:47
Speaker 3: How do you feel about that?

00:49:48
Speaker 2: Do you think it’s a good idea to use cameras to tell you when he’s starting to move in daylight and then you start getting aggressive or do you think that maybe we’re being you know, too passive and missing a lot of the picture mentioned earlier.

00:50:02
Speaker 4: So there are some situations where I do that, for sure, But the what it’s been for me in my experience, just because I don’t have giant properties like where you can’t necessarily get closer where he’s been because he’s not betting on you, like you run out of room, like if you if you’re trying to keep moving cameras deeper, deeper, deeper, or further further, further to try to get closer to the direction he’s coming from and get him in daylight like almost always going to run out of room, like he just not on me. He’s coming on me, you know, later in the evening. And so when I’ve used a camera to your point of like saying okay, now now he is it seems like it’s been like a shift in him just betting closer or betting on me, not the fact that he’s getting up earlier from his bed, like it just seems like dear it’s almost like not one hundred of course, but usually they’re moving in daylight somewhere, you know, maybe it’s within one hundred yards of their bed, but they’re moving in daylight. And so that’s what I mean by trying to find and get closer to that location. Otherwise it’s just waiting until he relocates closer to you. That’s been my experience, not necessarily like oh, you know, now he’s getting up from his bed earlier, which that happens, but typically that’s not the pattern doesn’t just change like that, At least in my experience. It’s it’s he’s finding reasons maybe you have the better food source, maybe you have the better like kind of dough congregation area, and it’s getting closer to that time of year where he wants to be in there earlier, and he kind of relocates closer. That’s that’s probably the more common scenario for me.

00:51:50
Speaker 2: Yeah, okay, you know, we’ve talked a lot about how our dependence on cameras today, you know, for strategy has maybe declined in some ways at least like real time strategy. What about year over year, right, like looking at what these deer have done last year and the year before, when you’ve had, you know, a buck that’s stuck.

00:52:08
Speaker 3: Around, how is that changing for you?

00:52:10
Speaker 2: And how are you keeping track of those these days and making sense like analyzing that stuff?

00:52:16
Speaker 3: Do you have a system for that still?

00:52:19
Speaker 4: Yeah? I mean it’s I do spend a lot of time postseason, and sometimes I’ll do it twice. Like sometimes I’ll do it, you know, post pretty quick postseason, we’re still fresh on my mind. I want to get everything kind of cleaned up, organized, you know, the pictures tagged or whatever, and then I’ll visit again, kind of this time of year when we start to get excited and like think about okay, how you know, making game plans for certain bucks or whatever, you know, kind of revisit I kind of refresh, rejog my memory as to oh, yeah, man, I forgot that first week of October. You spent a lot of time in this area. I wonder if I should do something different this year. So I’ll kind of revisit that and then just go through historical images, because certainly a combination of sightings, encounters, and trail cam data has shown to me that, like there’s a lot of historical patterns or annual patterns that you can establish. It’s not every buck. It kind of points back to the individuality of these deer, but certain bucks, you know you can count on. I don’t know how many examples I can tell you of bucks that show up for the first time within a couple of days of each other every year. So that that type of stuff I’d definitely like to pay attention to when I get the chance. It’s not very often I get the chance to hunt the deer multiple years. Like you know, if I’m targeting the biggest, most mature buck that I can find, that deer’s being targeted by a lot of people, and they just don’t make it through that very often, and so like, it’s it is pretty rare that I get a chance to target a deer for multiple years. You know of two, especially three, and you can take some from them being a younger age class deer. But to me, the most applicable data that you can use is when you’re actually targeting a deer to kill him. So if if you’re waiting till five to kill him, and you don’t kill him at five, and so you get a chance to hunt him at six, that’s the most applicable data. To me, that’s way way more applicable than a four and a half year old that you don’t hunt because he’s not old enough, and then you go to hunt at five. That four year old intel to me doesn’t translate as well compared to it’s I think it’s behavioral for the deer. You know, five five year old, that’s more like a six year old than a four does a five. But it’s also like you specifically, right, Like, if you’re targeting a deer, you’re thinking about every single condition, every single factor you’re going in, you’re hunting, You’re learning from your hunts, not just show came to you, learning from your sightings, your mistakes, whatever it may be. There’s just a lot more to pull from and apply it the next year compared to a deer you don’t even go in and hunt. So that’s the data that I that I think about and pay more attention to is if I get the chance to hunt a deer and actually intentionally target a deer for multiple years. I feel like there’s a lot of data that can take the following year.

00:55:26
Speaker 2: Yeah, let’s wrap it up here by kind of leaning into this idea of history a little bit and looking backwards kind of three final rapid fire type thoughts here. If you were to look back over the last you know, twenty years, fifteen twenty years, what is the biggest trail camera mistake you’ve made? What’s been like the most harmful thing you’ve done with cameras or the habit or the idea you had that you know, messed up your hunts the most, or mitigated the benefits that you could have been enjoying the most. What’s that biggest mistake when it comes to cameras And maybe we’ve talked about it, but I’d love to kind of tie a bow on that thing.

00:56:13
Speaker 4: Yeah, I would say, you know, fifteen years ago, that mistake was probably different than five years ago. Like it’s all touch on both of them quick but yeah, but with you know, more recently, it’s it was the chasing pictures aspect that that has to be the big mistake that probably ninety percent of guys have made recently. Right back in the day, I would say the biggest thing is not treating cameras as a powerful inventory tool. And what I mean by that more specifically is, you know, I have the set properties that I can hunt, and they’re pretty spread out. You know a lot of mission properties. I own it one property and I lease a property, but they’re all spread out and which you know to me for me, like I think, if you want to find and target a big deer every year, you have to cast a wide net. And that’s where these trail cameras play the biggest part. Like I’m not I’m not going out and finding deer that are on other properties and get permission to hunt. So I am just casting as wide of a net with trail cameras on the properties I can hunt to find the deer that I want to target that fall. And a lot of times that comes up comes with you know, finding backup option number two, backup option number three, because I mean, these deer get killed all the time and you have to kind of pivot and go to something else. So I think fifteen to twenty years ago, I was using drail cameras, like you know, this is how I kill a deer. As I’m as you know, I get this field information from the field like I’m there, Like I can go hunt those spots when I get a picture of them, or you know, it at least tells me the deer likes to use this trail or this is great, whereas now it’s just I just need to know they’re there, and that’s that’s that’s how I can build my strategy. It’s just give me the inventory and let me build my strategy from there.

00:58:15
Speaker 2: Quick, fillo up on that these days? What’s your camera density that you think you need to get that accurate inventory. I know it’s different on based on every property, but but if you had to give me an average per one hundred acres or something like that, what do you think you’d be at these days?

00:58:31
Speaker 4: Yeah, I’ll tell you, like what I’m at, I don’t think it’s enough. If you’re again, if you’re just wanning, you know, if you’re trying to build an actual strategy, it’s not enough. Like I don’t I don’t think I could afford enough cameras to actually give me that detail of information. But on one hundred acres, I would say I’m running somewhere in the ballpark of Yeah, it definitely depends, But I would say in the ballpark at ten cameras on a hundred acre phon. Yeah, I feel like that gives me good enough that I’m at least going to get a picture of a buck that’s there within, you know, three to five days somewhere on there enough to tell me that he’s on and around the property.

00:59:22
Speaker 2: Okay, all right, So back to the kind of looking backwards set of questions last fifteen to twenty years. What’s the single most beneficial change you’ve made of all the things we’ve talked about, or maybe things we haven’t talked about yet. What’s been that like flip that you switched that all of a sudden changed the game for you in a positive way. Is there anything that stands out?

00:59:46
Speaker 4: I’d say on a micro level, it’s just getting really good at dialing in a camera location, Like I talked about getting as many factors into one frame as possible. Yeah, I think that has made my trail camera is so much more effective. Like I honestly think gets tripled or quadrupled the amount of quality photos that I’ve gotten is dialing that in. And then maybe on a broader level, I would say being intentional kind of like we talked about, but just being intentional about how I use how I use the cameras and thinking deeper about the reason behind a trail cam encounter or trail cam picture video, thinking deeper as to why that might be.

01:00:34
Speaker 3: Yeah, I love that why question.

01:00:37
Speaker 2: That’s I think that’s one of the most powerful words in all the deer hunting if you just ask this question all the time, like when you get a camera photo, when you have an encounter, when you muff a shot, you know, anything, like always ask why. And that seems to be like a cheat code to getting better at all this stuff, right.

01:00:55
Speaker 4: For sure, And like I think we have to be more conscious of that going forward, because look, like you know where the whole reason we’re having this conversation is because technology is changing. But I think we’re right, we’re at the beginning. We’re at like the toddler stages. Like think about what’s in the very near future with AI and animal recognition and predictive behavior models, and you know, it’s going to be crazy what troe cam data and apps are going to tell you. And so I think just in general, as outdoorsmen and lovers of this entire process, you’re gonna have to get to a point where you almost have to kind of you have to draw your online of course, but you you have to be more intentional about that wide question to keep the fun in it, because there’s gonna be some super impressive technology that’s going to give you all the answers if you want them, which is good and scary at the same time. And you know, I can potentially see it robbing some of the fun of you know, having conversations like this, because this is like part of the addiction for us is trying to figure it out and not having it all figured out. So as troil cameras and the software associated with them changes in the very near future, you know, I think we continue if we keep asking ourselves why rather than just accepting all the data that’s given to us. You know, I think we’re going to be able to keep this thing fun and keep the woodsmanship and the hunting side of it the way that we love it.

01:02:34
Speaker 3: Man, that’s such a great point.

01:02:36
Speaker 2: I even see that happening just in daily life, right with the fact that we can we have any question, we might have, any challenge we might have. Now you just punch it into Google or chat, GPT or whatever, and you don’t even have to search and read other people’s articles. It just gives you an answer, and it kind of takes away the need for any critical thinking or any problem solving or if you want to write somebody in an email or whatever, people could just it could write it for you. You don’t have to sit down and think about it yourself and clarify your own thinking for yourself anymore. Right, And so you’re right, that’s that’s happening now with these predictive algorithms with as you mentioned, all the things coming down the line with trail cameras, And you make a good point. I think there’s two things. One, it’s how do you integrate that into your way of doing things in a way that feels right and that you know is effective. But then also what’s the experience you want? And we don’t have to accept all this stuff just because it’s available, right, We can choose what experience we want, what that line is for us as individuals, And I think you’re right we got to be intentional about that.

01:03:42
Speaker 4: Yeah, Yeah, I think key word you said experience like hunt for yourself, hunt for the experience you want, and if you always let that drive you, no matter what it is, if it’s a technology of recovering deer. If it’s a technology tri camp, technology of whatever it may be, you know, draw your own line, because you know, we’re we’re already past the point of where you know, regulations and stuff like that are going to keep up with the tech. It’s already surpassed. Like you were already at the point where regulations aren’t going to cover that for you, and you kind of have to make those decisions for yourself based on that experience you want.

01:04:20
Speaker 2: Yeah, all right, last thing here. If I were to, you know, sit down and have a beer with a couple of your best dear hunting buddies and ask them, Hey, what is the weirdest thing that Jared does when it comes to trail camps. What’s the strangest, most bizarre thing that he’s always done or has occasionally done.

01:04:44
Speaker 3: What would they tell me?

01:04:46
Speaker 4: Gosh, I have some weird quirk. I can tell you probably what I get the hardest time about from a hunting perspective, But trail cam stuff is tough.

01:05:00
Speaker 3: I do want to hear the hunting perspective side now, Not to tease it.

01:05:06
Speaker 4: I would say, you know, maybe this isn’t weird, but on the TROPHYMP side, like I I keep way more data than the average person. Yeah, I have hard drives and hard drives of so many photos, and a lot of times I don’t even go delete all the dough photos and small bum I just I don’t know. Sometimes I like fast airwin like flipping through like a like a collage of photos, and you know you can kind of see like, man, it’s just a high activity in general, or man, this is like a dough hotspot or whatever it is, like this, this is there’s some cool deer behavior here, So you know that. I guess that could be one that’s a little bit different than what most guys. I’m always surprised at how many pictures other guys delete, just because that’s that’s just not me, you know. And maybe it’s to an organization fall of mine. I’m not sure. But I do keep a lot of historical images, even from ten to fifteen years ago. So that’s one. On the hunting side, like it’s just the spots that I choose to hunt. It’s similar to the trail camp stuff in regards to you, like I’m not afraid to move around, try new locations just for the fun of it. Same thing on the hunting side, Like I’ll go sit two feet off the ground in a tiny little cedar tree just for the experience. Sometimes it’s off the wall thing that works. Sometimes it’s you know, not by choice, but by default that’s all. That’s my only option to get close, you know, within recurve range or bow range or whatever it is to a buck. But it’s funny, like I’ve got so many guys that I’ll be out on a property and they’ll be like, oh, there’s a Jared millstree or there’s a dead millstery there, you know, like it’s just kind of this thing that always a running joke of the types of setups kind of wild, off wall crazy type of setups that I that I try. So yeah, I would say that’s that’s become something that I’ve known for a monst my friend group man.

01:07:09
Speaker 2: But what that’s such an unlock I think to be able to realize that you don’t need to do the stereotypical, like picture perfect setup to have success, right And I used to feel the same way, you know, fifteen years ago I thought, oh I need to be twenty four feet up in this perfect tree, in this perfect location that the rule book says has to be like A B and C. And then you know, as we both found out, sometimes those spots just aren’t in the right place, or sometimes you have to be in some crazy thing and that stuff actually can work if you are willing to give it a shot and if you have the confidence to try it.

01:07:43
Speaker 4: Yeah, lights go ahead.

01:07:47
Speaker 2: I’m just going to say, like, I remember that some big brush pile you hit in one year and killed the giant buck out because of a situation like that, Right, I’ve had a bunch of these deals where I realized there was no way to get to where I need to be unless I just laid on the ground or hidden this they stood in a standing cornfield, or do some crazy off the wall thing. And what’s the worst that happens? It doesn’t work out, and then you just try something else, right.

01:08:08
Speaker 4: And you’re sorry it can work, and like sometimes it’s what it takes, but it does. I will say this that highlights the importance of the other stuff we talk about, like your access, your stealthiness of being in the tree, knowing when you can move and not move. Because those those off the wall spots, especially when they’re on the ground or closer to the ground burn out quicker in my experience, like you don’t get away with as much one your more eye level, you’re closer with the deer, you’re in a spot where the wind maybe doesn’t flow freely, like if you’re twenty five feet up in the air and your winds blowing carrying a long ways away really quickly, as opposed to tucked underneath a little cedar tree and your sense just kind of in there swirling. Like I’ve found that I can’t hunt those spots very often, Like can sec of times I should say. Yeah, So it’s like you’ve got to get in, you’ve got to get out, and you’ve got to know what you’re doing when you’re in the tree because it’s a lot harder spot to get away with, but it can work.

01:09:13
Speaker 2: Yeah, sometimes you got to take a flyer, both in your hunts and with those camera locations like you mentioned. So right, it’s a good thing to remember. Well, before let’s go Jared real quick, what’s the latest on your projects, on your videos or anything else new that folks should know about and where can they find that stuff?

01:09:32
Speaker 4: Yeah, for sure, I’m just finally starting to ramp up content now. Been very busy spring with the land projects, I do a lot of work for other land managers, obviously my own projects. I recently launched a food plot seat company called Pisis, so that took up a lot of a lot of the spring, getting that off the ground, building the website, all that type of stuff. So if guys have food plot questions or want recommendations like that’s kind of my biggest goal with VISIS is to really help guys understand what they’re doing. Like, food plotting in general is overwhelming, even for guys that do it all the time, super overwhelming for guys that haven’t gotten into it or just have a very little experience. There’s so many different ways to do it that you don’t know where to start. So my biggest goal of VISIS is to just help guys in general be more successful because it’s a super rewarding process once you get into it. So been busy with that. Also have the day Walk brand, which is my brand for mock scrape since things like that, so guys can reach out to me on either of those platforms or obviously my personal platforms. YouTube is the best place to follow kind of a long form storytelling hunting.

01:10:47
Speaker 3: Side awesome and what are the u r ls for pisis and day Walk.

01:10:53
Speaker 4: Yeah, growthsis dot com is the food plot website, Daywalkdeer dot Com is the scent website. And then it’s just my name Jared Mills on the on the other platforms.

01:11:04
Speaker 2: Awesome well as always, appreciate you taking time for the chat. It’s got me, uh, it’s got me fired up to get out there and readjust a couple of camera locations and love it. Can’t wait for the season to get here, So thank you Jerry for that.

01:11:16
Speaker 4: Awesome man. Appreciate you having me.

01:11:21
Speaker 2: And that is going to do it for us here today. Appreciate you joining me on this episode. I hope you have enjoyed this summer tral camera mini series. We will now be moving into a new phase of the year as we are right on the doorstep of hunting season, which is pretty darn exciting. So thanks for being here and until next time, stay wired to Hunt.