Ep. 49: Advanced Spot and Stalk Hunting: The Art of Cutting Off
32:52 Share

Need parts fast? O'Reilly Auto Parts has fast. Need them now? We've got now. No matter what you need, we have thousands of professional parts people doing their part to make sure you have it. We're O'Reilly Fast. Just one part that makes O'Reilly stand apart. The professional parts people. O, O, O, O'Reilly Auto Parts.

You ever get that feeling, the walls closing in, the concrete jungle suffocating you? You crave some wide open spaces, the chance to connect with nature, maybe in a spot all your own. Well, head over to land.com. They've got ranches, forests, mountains, streams, you name it. Search by acreage. You can search by location. You can search by the kind of hunting and fishing you're dreaming of. Land.com. It is where the adventure begins.

Market House has the cleanest, leanest, juiciest meat and seafood shipped to your home overnight. Expect the service of a local butcher and the convenience of a large supplier. Unlike many online butchers, you can grab just one meal's worth or lock in for a subscription box. Choose from grass-fed and grass-finished beef, American Wagyu, free-range poultry, grass-fed lamb, wild-caught king crab, seafood, and more.

and more. For 15% off your first order, use code COUNTRY at checkout. Just visit markethouse.com. That's M-A-R-K-E-T-H-O-U-S-E dot com. And use the code COUNTRY.

As a guide and hunter, I've spent thousands of days in the field. This show is about translating my hard-won experiences into tips and tactics that'll get you closer to your ultimate goal, success in the field. I'm Remy Warren. This is Cutting the Distance. This week, I want to start diving into some advanced hunting tactics for out in the field.

The word spot and stalk hunting gets thrown around a lot by myself and just like the style and type of hunting that I do. I would refer to as spot and stalk hunting. But what that actually means is not just one specific tactic, but so many tactics involved in the art of being good at getting close to animals that you go out and find that day, as opposed to maybe like a lion weight tactic, which would be setting up an ambush in a blind or tree stand.

Spot and stalk hunting is very fluid and it uses a combination of so many different tactics, many of them all at once and some just singular tactics that you might use once a week or once a season. But if you're waiting for that perfect opportunity that you have in your mind, if I'm going to go spot and stalk hunting and this is how it's going to play out, that opportunity probably won't happen.

There's so many hunts. In order to be successful, you have to make the opportunity. So this week, I want to cover a segment of spot and stock hunting and a tactic that I refer to as the cutoff. There's so many stocks, I believe, that include, in order to make it work out, you have to have an advanced prediction of what the animal is going to do and then plan accordingly.

I think that this cutoff tactic can be one of the most widely deployed stalking tactics for a variety of big game species. What it involves is understanding where the target animal wants to be, how to use the wind, a little bit of hustle, and then the decisions to wait or move in the final moments. But before we get into that, I want to share a story of an early season archery mule deer hunt for this goofy looking lopsided buck in one of my favorite hunting spots.

This hunt takes place in a remote section of central Nevada during the early August archery season for mule deer in one of my favorite spots, the place I like to call the bull. Now I've talked about the bull before and probably will many times. It's because it's a

It's a place that over the years I've hunted a lot. I really got familiar with the area by spending a lot of time there, the deer habits, and became really successful hunting this particular area. And outside of that, it's just a really remote spot where very few people we would run into and just really enjoyed the experience hunting there. So I would go back year after year. On this particular year,

I happened to have an early season elk tag and my brother and I always applied as party for deer tags. So he had a tag, but I was away on an elk hunt and tagged out on my elk and then drove out there to help him on his deer hunt and figured I would hunt as well after I helped him because he'd been out there longer. So I got into the area and I think my brother had two days before he had to get back to work. So

I figured I'd help him out. And we started off the way the terrain is in this particular spot, one of those particular spots here. The bulls like this big sage flat about a thousand vertical feet below the rim of the top of this high ridge. And the ridge is maybe like 9,500 feet in elevation or something like that. And then the bulls around 7,500, 8,000, somewhere in there, depending on where you're at in there.

And so we started out, you know, he had seen a few good bucks. He'd been chasing a few deer, but just unsuccessful so far and only had a couple of days left to hunt. So he decided we're going to just like hunt together glass. And then that way, if we see something, you know, I can help direct him in or whatever. While we're glassing the first morning, I spot this group of deer and there's this buck in there. And it's just like this

three point kind of goofy lopsided deer. It wasn't a big deer. It wasn't necessarily a young deer either. It just was like a mid-aged deer, three points on one side, kind of like three on the other, but it kind of drooped down and made this like the antler actually like kind of dropped it down past his face. And I just thought, I told my brother, I was like, Jason, you should go chase that buck. That thing's cool. And while there's other deer in this particular bachelor group that are really nice, typical four points, um,

And my brother just started getting into archery hunting, but he's like, man, I want to get one of those better deer. So I'm like, all right, whatever. I was like, man, I would chase that goofy looking buck. That thing's sweet.

So he ends up making a play on these deer and it just doesn't work out. And the next day hunts hard and ends up not getting on any deer, um, or getting within range, not getting any shots on a deer that he wanted. So he had to pull out and go to work. And I figured, Oh, I'm going to stay a couple of days and just hunt around, try to get a buck. Um, I had an actually

actually had a California archery tag that I drew. I just, it was one of those years where I drew a bunch of good tags and I wanted to try to hunt them all. So the California season started in a few days. So I figured, well, I'll just hunt this for a couple of days before that California season starts and then I'll head over there. And so he left like midday and that evening I'm up on the glassing spot and

And the way that it works in this particular, like, sage flat is it's timber kind of all around and then drops off the mountain below the flat. And it's just, like, thick mahogany juniper type country. You can't really see into it. The deer go in there in bed during the day, and then they filter out into this giant, like, opening.

in the evening. Now you'd think that they'd be super easy to see in there, but it's quite a ways away. The sage can be tall in certain places and it's like two or three miles across.

And so they pop out of the timber, but you just never know really where they're going to pop out. Sometimes you try to watch where they go in and then plan accordingly, but sometimes they come out on the other side or whatever. It's just one of those games. Plus the wind generally blows into the direction that they're bedded in from where they're feeding. So they feed out into the wind most evenings.

So I'm sitting there glassing and I'm looking into a few of the pockets of timber on the backside and I see that lopsided buck. I'm like, oh, sweet, man. I'd love to get a chance to chase that. But the wind wasn't good and I started thinking, I'm like, all right, I'm going to try to cut this deer off. I know where he wants to go. I know he wants to be in the sage flat. I just got to get in that sage flat.

But I have to time it because every evening, once the sun goes behind the ridge that I'm on, the thermals start to drop and this flat sort of tapers off downhill. And then that wind shifts and starts going downhill. So as soon as he gets in there, I'm hoping that he'll be feeding slow. I don't want to be out there too soon, but I don't want to be out there too late. So I just start watching him, watching him as he gets closer to the edge of where he's going to pop out in this sage flat.

It's about the right time when the shadows should start hitting and I can make my move. He pops out and starts feeding. I think this is perfect. I've got my route planned out. I literally just start running down. I'm out of sight, but I'm trying to run to a place where I can cut off while he's distracted and out of sight because there's a few undulations in this flat. So as long as I keep him behind the couple of trees that are in there, I'll be good.

So I go, I use the cover that I have available and I'm get down in there as fast as possible because I don't want him to get out into the middle because once he's out in the middle, there's just no way to get close. There's this one little knob in the middle of this flat and I'm behind that and I don't see the deer and I start creeping out and then I peek up over, I think where he's going to be and I can see him feeding.

He's maybe like 150 yards out. I'm like, oh, sweet. His head's down. So while his head's down, I've got like my bow on my back, just army crawling out through this flat, trying to get to any kind of sage cover. And as he's feeding, he's picking his head up looking. Luckily, he happened to be the first deer in the group and I could see some other deer further back, but

I was more, he was quite a bit ahead of the other deer. So I was still paying attention to the other deer, making sure they wouldn't see me or spook, but also like trying to anticipate where this buck was going in this three mile long sage flat and try to cut him off. So as he's working toward me, I'm like moving and crawling. And then as it's heads down, I'm making my moves. And I finally get into the spot where the sage gets a little bit taller. And I think, okay, there's this section of

where he's feeding, and then this section of kind of no real good feed, and then feed behind me. I think this is the spot. And so I set up and get ready and wait. And sure enough, he kind of like picks his head up once he gets to the edge of the no feeding zone, like the smaller, lower stuff.

and kind of starts walking fairly briskly in my direction. I see that he's going to be a little bit too far out, so I kind of crawl to continue to try to cut him off. Because what I'm trying to do is not really stalk him, but intersect his potential path. He gets within range and starts feeding again. I'm like, perfect. I draw back and raise up. Unfortunately, I raised up at kind of the wrong time because...

He happened to put his head up just as I was at full draw. And so I knew that he didn't see me because I was just watching his body position and seeing his tail flick and feeding and looking around. He wasn't focused on me, but I was just holding back, waiting for him to move, waiting for him to put his head back down again. He put his head back down feeding and I released the arrow.

I don't know if it was like the sound of the bow. It must have been the sound of the bow that the buck actually jumped to the string. Fortunately, at the time, my bow wasn't very fast.

The buck actually jumped to the string. I could, I watched him like duck down. I thought, oh man, that's not going to be good. But he ducked to the string early enough that by the time he got back up, he was at his original position. He didn't run and the arrow hit exactly where I was aiming. Buck ran off and it's just this big wide open. He ran maybe 20, 30 yards and fell over.

I was like, that was awesome. And then of course I'm thinking, oh, that was funny. My brother was out here for a week. And then that buck that I thought was really cool. The one that I saw that was ended up being the one that I got. So I go to the buck, I'd set up my camera, took like a couple of photos and

And then quartered him up, cut him up, and then packed him out. By this point, it's a pretty good climb to the top to where I need to get out from. I just loaded the whole deer in my pack and actually went down in the bottom pretty light. Like not a whole lot of stuff in my pack. Left most of it up on the ridge.

And the one thing I will always remember about this hunt wasn't necessarily the stock or how all that played out, but the packout. It happened to be on a night where there was no moon and it was like during a huge meteor shower.

And as I was walking up to the top of the ridge, I remember looking around and just in that high desert is really high altitude. And you can see there's like stars below you as you're packing out. It was one of the most incredible meteor showers I've ever seen. So I've got the buck on my back, packing him out, looking down on this meteor shower is like, I've never seen anything like it. And it was just like a really cool experience that I'll never forget.

If I think back to like just successful hunts over the years, many of them, especially with a bow, mule, deer, elk, antelope, it's hard to think of any kind of hunt, even hunts with rifle or muzzle or whatever. It doesn't really matter.

A lot of them involve some form of what happened in that story of the lopsided buck, where you see the animal, you don't have an approach where they're moving, and you need to figure out where they're going to be in order to get close to cut them off or to make a good stalk.

And while it might seem like, yeah, we'll just cut them off. There is a tactic that can make those movements and the moves that you make and the decisions that you make a lot more successful. And it starts with understanding where your target animal wants to be. So like, well, okay, they've got this whole, you know, they can go any direction, especially a mule deer. They like to, you know, you might think as soon as you think you've got a mule deer pattern, he's going to do something different. But

the best way to predict what an animal is going to be is not necessarily seeing where they are right now, but where are they right now? What is going to change and what do they need when things change? So what are they going to want next? If you can identify what they want next, you can put yourself into a very good position to close the distance and get that shot where the animal does a lot of the moving for you.

Spot and stalk, you think of it like, oh, I spot the animal, maybe like classic spot and stalk, spotting an animal, it beds down, you creep in on it. But that happens only a certain amount of the time. If you're only waiting for a certain type of scenario, you're probably going to be waiting a long time and you're going to be blowing a lot of potential opportunity.

those potential opportunities are going to come by just understanding what that animal wants. So let's just break it down and kind of identify the way that I look at it. If I see a mule deer in the morning and it's out feeding in a big sage flat, well, what's going to happen next? Well, the sun's going to come up, the animal's going to get hot,

and then the animal's gonna wanna bed down. So what I'm gonna look for is, okay, how much time do I have to get into position? Like where is the sun in relation to, or the shadow in relation to where this animal is and how long is it gonna take for it to hit this animal? And then what kind of temperature is it gonna be that day before it needs to get into some cover? Then I'm gonna say from where he is right now, which way is the wind going?

And where is a good potential bedding spot? So where is it going to go to bed where it's going to have the wind in its favor? It's going to be bedded comfortably. It's going to have good shade, you know, based on the orientation of the hill where that shade is now going to be cast from that sun into a spot where it can sit, but also have like an advantage wind. So it's protected and safe while it's bedding. Where's that spot going to be?

Once I narrow down that spot, then I can have a high likelihood of knowing where that animal is going to go from where he is now to where I predict he wants to be. Now, obviously, they can do other random things that you might not think about. But for the most part, those predictions play a huge role in deciding where you're going to go to make that cutoff to make that stock. Also understanding possible travel routes and habits of the animals, especially like for elk,

You know, you might see the elk feeding in one place and they might have a trail where they like to go into the bedding area from there or come out to feed in the evenings. Knowing their routes, knowing their habits is key to the ambush and the cutoff as well. But if you're just like glassing, you spot a deer or an elk for the first time and having not necessarily an idea of its routes or habits, you can kind of analyze where that animal is going to go by understanding what they want next.

The same as the reverse, you know, if you see an animal bedded in one spot and it's got shade, but you know that the sun's going to move and it's going to get hot at some point. And once that sun moves, it's not really going to have shade where it's at. Well, where can that animal go to where then it can re-bed and get shade?

They often like mule deer, especially often will bed in the morning one spot and then they'll move once that sun kind of hits them again and makes them hot. They'll go to a second more long-term bedding zone. So maybe not necessarily waiting for them to bed that second time, but if you've got an advantageous wind and other things in your favor, you can kind of catch them and cut them off where they want to be.

O'Reilly Auto Parts are in the business of keeping your car on the road. I love O'Reilly. In fact, the other day, I'm not kidding you. The other day I went into an O'Reilly Auto Parts looking for a part. I needed a different thing that wasn't really in there, you know, only like tangentially related to what they carry.

They did not have it, and the dude told me specifically where I would go down the road to find it is how nice they are. They offer friendly, helpful service and the parts knowledge you need for all your maintenance and repairs. Thousands of parts and accessories in stock, in-store, or online, so you never have to worry if you're in a jam.

They'll test your battery for free. If you need your windshield wipers replaced, a brake light fixed, or quick service, they'll help you find the right part or point you to a local repair shop for help. Whether you're a car aficionado or an auto novice, you'll find the employees at O'Reilly Auto Parts are knowledgeable, helpful, best of all, friendly. These guys are your one-stop shop for all things auto, do-it-yourself,

You can find what you need in-store or online. Stop by O'Reilly Auto Parts today or visit them at OReillyAuto.com slash MeatEater. That's OReillyAuto.com slash MeatEater. We've all seen plenty of gadgets and fads come and go, but here's one product that stood the test of time. Seafoam Motor Treatment. Lots of hunters and anglers know that seafoam helps engines run better and last longer.

It's really simple. When you pour it in your gas tank, seafoam cleans harmful fuel deposits that cause engine problems. I'm talking common stuff like hard starts, rough engine performance, or lost fuel economy. Seafoam is an easy way to prevent or overcome these problems. Just pour a can in your gas tank and let it clean your fuel system. You probably know someone who has used a can of seafoam to get their truck or boat going again. People everywhere rely on seafoam to keep their trucks, boats, and small engines running the way that they should the entire season.

Help your engine run better and last longer. Pick up a can of Seafoam today at your local auto parts store or visit seafoamworks.com to learn more.

This is Brent Reeves from This Country Life. What makes South Dakota the greatest for pheasant hunting? With over 1.2 million pheasants harvested last year, South Dakota boasts the highest population of pheasants in the nation. In fact, you'd have to add up the total harvest from neighboring states just to get that many birds.

There's also millions of wide open acres chock full of different landscapes, meaning the hunt in one county is often completely different from just a few counties over. But what really makes South Dakota the greatest goes way beyond just hunting a colorful bird. It's the pursuit of something more like the camaraderie that awaits all kinds of hunters from all walks of life and partaking in South Dakota tradition over 100 years in the making.

It's about taking the greatest shots and watching your dog work the greatest fields in the greatest lands, carrying on the greatest heritage and making the greatest memories. So what are you waiting for? From the rush of the flush to the stories at the end of the day, experience a thrill like no other. Learn how at HuntTheGreatest.com.

I think most of the way that the cutoff tactic works is really catching animals, moving to and from bedding and feeding. And that seems to be general, but it's not always the case. You know, if you think about maybe depending on the time of year you're hunting, maybe it's a rifle hunt, archery hunt, whatever. Let's say it's a

elk hunt during the rut. You see a bull out in one area and the bull's by himself. Where's that elk want to be? He wants to be with cows probably, but you've got some cows over on this side of the hill that, you know, maybe he's making his way toward that. Well, you want to cut yourself off in between that elk and those cows or a mule deer during the rut. Where are the does at? Where's that buck at? What's his travel route? You really have to try to get into the mind of the

from where they are right now. By successfully doing that, that's going to guide your path on, okay, here's where I'm going to go and here's how I'm going to make my move. Once you've decided that, then it's time to make the plan. When I make the plan, one thing that I think about is wind and cover.

This kind of cutoff ambush tactic works really well, especially if you have an area where the thermals will change and the animals aren't necessarily in an advantageous spot for right now. So there's so many times where you see something, you go, oh man, he's going this direction. But, you know, if you go to try to cut him off right now, it's not going to work.

It would be better to be set up and have your time. And you might just say like, well, why don't I just go out and set up where they're going to feed and wait for them to come? That might work, but it also might not because of the way the winds are going. There might not be a good spot and it might be too large of an area to accurately predict exactly where they're going to go. And once you're down there, you might not have your vantage.

So what you need to do is you got to wait till you can see them, see what they're going to do, anticipate, make that plan based on where they're going, the direction they're heading, and what might be over where they want to go to pinpoint where you think they're going to be headed. Then you now have to think about the contours of the land and the direction of the wind. Are you going to have a route that works to get into position? And are you going to have a favorable wind when you get there?

A lot of animals do like to walk with the wind in their face because then they can smell danger. Certain animals like antelope may not necessarily be as keyed into that because they use their eyes a lot better. So every species is a little bit different. Keying in on what the winds might do later though is also like a huge factor in the ambush. Many times I use this cutoff technique to

early in the morning or late in the evening when I know the thermals are going to switch. So I try to time it where I can get into position to have that advantageous wind. And a few podcasts back, maybe a month ago, we talked about understanding winds and thermals and all that stuff. This is where I'm talking about, if you think about spot and stock hunting, how many different tactics are used in combination. So in order to cut off an animal, you're going to have to also think about

everything talked about in that podcast with the wind, but it may play into your favor where instead of knowing, okay, I'm going to stock in now, you can wait and time it to where you can stock in with that favorable thermal or wind shift. And that's probably when I use this tactic the most or think about it in that term of, okay, now the animal's on the move. I didn't have good winds before, but I know in a little bit based on what the weather does here normally,

I'll probably get that downdraft in the evening and I can go make at ambush where I'm in position, the thermal shift, and then the animals start continue to move toward me.

The good thing about this cutoff tactic is instead of having to stock in 100% to the animal, you're allowing the animal to do 80% of the work and you might be doing 20 or as far as like closing that distance to say bow range, that 200 yards to 20 yards to 30 yards distance.

You're allowing them to move into position to where you are because they're a lot less keyed into a few of the little noises and other things. They're moving around. They're a little bit more distracted probably with feeding or just travel and looking out for danger, but they might not just be like a bedded animal solely focused on danger and listening and smelling and watching.

So you've got a little bit of advantage and that's probably why this tactic does work so well. But one thing you will realize is say you're sitting on a mountain, you're looking across the canyon, you see some bucks below some big rocks, the wind's good. And you think, man, if I was there right now, I would kill that deer.

But how do you get there right now? That's the hard part of it, where you're always two steps behind. That animal's always moving and trying to stay ahead of danger, and you're that danger.

There is a certain amount of hustle that makes this tactic much more successful. And what I mean by that is there are times where I see an elk or a deer or whatever. I've got my bow and I know, okay, it's feeding down low. I'm looking at the mountain. The sun's going to come up. And I know as soon as the sun hits that deer or elk, it's going to want to go to bed. And it's probably going to go up the mountain for that.

So I look at where there's potential places. Okay, here's a saddle above where they're at. It's probably going to go through that saddle because it's easier or, you know, they go kind of near a saddle and side hill around it. That happens a lot. But I think, okay, if I'm up there, I could cut this deer off. The trouble is, will I beat the deer up there? So knowing that, okay, if I just go at a regular speed, I'm probably not going to make it. I have to put a little pep in my step.

Now, before I do this, I like to look and make sure I've identified other animals in the area, possible things that are going to spook, whatever. And I like to take a route that is out of sight and out of the way. So if I do spook something, okay, well, I'll just chalk that up to, I blew that one out, but I've got a mission and I'm going there for that.

There are so many times where the success of my cutoff has been the speed that I got there. I really recognize this guiding people when I'm like, okay, we got to get to this point at this amount of time. If we don't get there, we're going to be just a little bit late and then you're going to have to redo it.

This is where a lot of that training, conditioning and fitness comes in because there are times where you think like, oh, it's stupid. You're like running after an animal. I'm not running after an animal in this instance, but I am running to kind of beat the clock. The buzzer's going. I've got to get into position before that animal gets there and I need time to set up and make a play and make a plan. So a lot of the cutoff is actually based on timing. If you're going to be a little bit behind,

then you're almost better to not attempt it and wait for those opportunities where you have the right amount of time and you can put in the right amount of hustle to get there. Honestly, the faster is better for me. I see something I'm generally like, okay, I'm buzzing over there. I'm going to get there as fast as I can. And because of that, I've been very successful on many of these cutoff strategies, just beating the animal to where I think it's going to go.

Now, the final challenge in the cutoff is going to be that final approach. If we're talking bow hunting, it's getting within range. And the real conundrum comes around when you go, okay, you see an animal, you think you know where they're going to go. When do you sit and wait? And when do you move? That really is the crux of the whole success that comes with this. Because the

they're moving generally in your direction. They're looking out for danger in your direction. So you have to figure out a spot where you can get in close unseen and it's always easier to be unseen when you're stationary sitting waiting in that lion weight ambush. So it's almost like just like you would set up a tree stand on the trail that they're going on. This tactic is obviously no tree stand, but it's the same approach of the animals coming to you and you're waiting hiding.

That is the best for not getting busted, but it's also not the best for getting into position and getting close. Sometimes if you're too timid, the animal will walk just out of range. Sometimes if you're too aggressive, you spook them. So how do you know when to move, when to sit still?

Here's a few of the things that I think of every time I go in. So when I'm closing in, I make two assumptions. I always assume that the animal has moved and I always assume that the animal is on its current path. And this is the same with every stock that I make, whether it's an animal that's bedded or an animal that I'm trying to cut off. So I assume that it's doing exactly what I thought while simultaneously assuming that it is not.

You're like, that makes no sense. But what that allows me to do is constantly pay attention on the lookout for other potential scenarios of where they might be going, what they might be doing while, you know, going forth with my intended plan of action.

So what that allows me to do is it gives me equal 100% attention to both options. And that really is the best way to do it because there's times where you're going to blow a stock by going in and thinking, okay, it's... Especially if you have to lose sight of the animal, you think, okay, it's not going to be there. I don't see it. And then you kind of go into where you think you were going to go. You're not as stealthy as you should be. And you blow the animal out. And it was right where you expected it. You go, oh man, I knew it. Or...

You go right where you think he is, you aren't looking around and you blow it because they did something different. So it's being 100% on focus to both potential scenarios. Now the idea to wait or to continue to stalk really comes down to whether you have eyes on the animal and how well you know their habits and their movements. Also where the types of advantageous places are and if you're going to have another re-approach later.

So if I know that I can get into a position, sit and wait, but if it gets messed up, I can probably see what's going on and then have a re-approach potentially later, like another cutoff option. I'll do the sit and wait. If I know I'm not going to have another re-approach, I'm not very familiar with the patterns or the predictions, then I'm going to be more on the aggressive side and plan on trying to get eyes on it.

move in and do more stalking. And I would say if I was to count up the times I've done both, I would say I'd probably do the more aggressive approach more often than not. For me, it works out, but I'm also very observant when I'm moving in. I try to stay quiet and I try to find places and move in ways that

it's less likely for the animal to see me, but I am generally taking that more aggressive approach. So if you're sitting there thinking, okay, should I sit here and wait? Or should I continue to move and try to figure out if the deer is here or whatever? I kind of err on the side of being a little more aggressive, but that's always personal preference and situational, but it's just something to think about as you're moving and you're thinking whether you should move or wait.

Now, I'm going to just add one more little point to the mover weight. If you see an animal coming towards you,

wait, because there's so many times that it's easy to get impatient and second guess your decisions. There's just a few things that I like to tell myself in my head while these things are going down that helps keep me calm and make the right decisions. And I like to think it's a lot easier for him to come to me than me to go to him. And if I can make that happen, I let it. And that gives me that patience and that confidence to know it's going to work out. I think some of these tactics are

really get blown by indecision and just kind of second guessing and then making moves at the wrong time. And I'm guilty of it as much as anyone, but the cutoff works the best when the animal can come to you and you can get ahead of them or you can intercept their path and let them come to you more than you have to go to them.

That doesn't often always work out. So there are those times you have to stock in and be more aggressive. And in those times, that's when you don't necessarily have that option. So if you get into that kind of scenario and you think, okay, everything's working out, I think the deer is going to go to this particular bedding area. You've moved around, you've got the wind right. You hustled, you got in there. Once you get on his own hillside, everything looks different.

You probably don't have as good of a view, especially if you don't have somebody to help guide you in or whatever. So that's when this kind of decision-making comes into play. And the decision that you make is generally the most critical out of this whole tactic. I hope this week's episode really gets you in the mindset of just trying to understand and anticipate the movements that the animals that you're hunting are going to be making and then how to exploit that.

and cut them off. You know, if I think about spot and stock hunting is a very fluid form of hunting involving many different tactics at once. So next week, I really want to kind of touch on an aspect of spot and stock hunting as far as stocking a bedded animal. And I think that that's one that with a bow, I particularly like. It's a great setup. It can be very successful. And it kind of is the epitome of sneaking in, being stealthy, quiet. It's a very adrenaline-charged game.

kind of approach where the deer might be in one place and you have to very quietly get within range. That's one of the things that just really gets me most excited about early mule deer hunting with a bow or some of the early elk and archery antelope seasons is just that fact of like moving in close and, and

and kind of kicking in those predator instincts. So I want to help you with that, like get better at that. Hopefully maybe get you thinking about it in a different way. And maybe these are tactics that you do, but you just don't necessarily think about all the time. So if you can really be strategic with it, and especially with like cutting things off and anticipating where they're going, different animals, you can really be successful in a short amount of time by just understanding what the animal that you're looking at is going to want next.

I like to use kind of this closing section to just thank everybody for the support. I truly do mean that. I really appreciate everybody who listens and, you know, definitely get a ton of great messages on Instagram. And I really appreciate that. You know, a lot of, a lot of great support. We had the Q and a last week and just a lot of great questions came in. So thank you guys all for getting so involved. That means a lot to me.

Hopefully, everybody's staying safe. I was thinking back, it's like March started talking about COVID and just in that period of not knowing and what was going on, we're thinking, oh, yeah. At that time, you're like, yeah, it'll clearly be over by March.

by hunting season, but you know, now it's not looking like that. I actually have had a sheep tag in Canada this year and it probably is not going to happen, but that's just, you know, adapt and overcome. And that's like one thing that you're like, Oh man, that's something that was really cool looking forward to, but you know, there's going to be a lot of cool other things that I'm looking forward to as well. So it's going to be nice to get out and get into the field bow in hand and

this August, September, whatever, or, you know, hopefully everybody out there has some hunts planned or something to look forward to. And hopefully everybody's staying safe. So thank you guys so much. I appreciate you all and looking forward to next week. So until next week, let's cut off some animals and cut off some jeans. Might as well. Summertime. Catch you later.

Hey, we're going to take a little break here and talk about interstate batteries. Now, if you're like me, enjoying the great outdoors, you need gear that is as reliable as it gets. That's why I power my adventures with interstate batteries. I use interstate batteries in my boats. I use interstate batteries in my camper. Great for your truck, too. From Alaska to Montana, they're outrageously dependable.

Battery is essential. With over 150,000 dealer locations, finding one is easy. For all your vehicles, land or sea, choose Interstate. Head to InterstateBatteries.com and find your power today. You ever get that feeling, the walls closing in, the concrete jungle suffocating you? You crave some wide open spaces, the chance to connect with nature, maybe in a spot all your own. Well, head over to Land.com.

They've got ranches, forests, mountains, streams, you name it. Search by acreage. You can search by location. You can search by the kind of hunting and fishing you're dreaming of. Land.com. It is where the adventure begins.