Ep. 64: How to Have Whitetail Success in the West
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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. ♪

Welcome back, friends. I'm glad you joined us. It's that mid-October timeframe and hunting seasons are just kicking off. Maybe you're going to be listening to this on your way to a hunt this weekend for opening day, or maybe you're right now sitting in your tree stand waiting on a whitetail buck to step out jamming on this podcast. Now, when it comes to whitetail hunting, there's really just a pile of information out there about food plots, management, stand locations, the list goes on and on.

And the reason is because they are the most widely hunted big game animal in North America. But this week I wanted to break down a tactic a little bit different when it comes to hunting whitetails. I want to talk about hunting whitetails the Western way. Often overlooked are really a lot of the abundant public lands and whitetail opportunities from Colorado all the way to Washington state and most states in between.

But with these seemingly endless mountains and honestly thousands of places and acres for them to hide, keying in might seem pretty difficult. So I'm just going to give you some of my favorite tactics for locating and hunting whitetails from the big timber mountains to the open broken country plains. But first, let's go on a last day hunt for a big timber whitetail buck.

Now, I definitely get to hunt pretty much all the time, but a lot of that hunting is spent guiding other people or taking other people out. So when it comes to my own personal hunt, sometimes it's just a weekend warrior deal where I've got a couple days to go out and be successful. This just so happens that it was the end of the season. I just finished up my last week of guiding and

And I had the end of the weekend to hunt for myself. So I figured I'd already filled my elk tag. I wanted to just chase white tail deer. I'd seen some pretty good white tails throughout the season this particular year is just a couple of years ago and figured, all right, I'm going to, I'm going to just go all out, try to find a good buck for myself.

The first day I went out and saw some smaller deer, some younger bucks, which I normally would shoot because when it comes down to the tail end, I'm just looking for pretty much any meat and I normally end up shooting pretty young white tail bucks. But there are good deer around. I'd seen so many good ones. I thought, okay, I'm just going to try to find one of these good ones. I saw a couple bucks that Saturday and now it's closing time Sunday. And I'm like, all right.

you can do this remy so i went to one of my favorite spots to hunt and what i what i decided to do was i was just going to check certain areas where i'd seen deer in the past there is where i know they like to travel i brought my rattling antlers i had my grunt tube and just kind of like doing a method of kind of cruising and hunting so i would go hike into these spots watch for a while still hunt there was some fresh snow

Unfortunately, I really couldn't glass because this particular day, the weather was just what I would just consider like shit weather. It was those big snowflakes combined with fog combined with some somehow it started to rain at one point and then snow again. So just really bad visibility. Everything was really wet, really wet snow. Good for tracking. Good for finding tracks.

but not necessarily good for glassing. So the first part of the morning, I actually didn't see anything. The weather was so bad. It was just blizzarding conditions, really heavy, wet snow. And then I decided to go to the, essentially the last evening, my last time I was going to go to the spot where I'd seen some pretty good bucks in the past. There was just one particular opening where it was kind

kind of like a meadow. And then the hill came down, big timber around it. And there's like this one opening and this one trail that I've seen probably some of the best bucks on this particular trail. Normally I would sit there and set up, but I figured with the last day, I didn't want to just sit there all day and then not see anything and say, man, I should have checked these other spots where I've seen good deer too. So I'm like, all right, for the second half of the day, I'm going to set here for the evening. Hopefully a buck will come out, you know,

I'll do some rattling, do some calling, and then just plan on sitting. I had some really warm clothes on. I'm all bundled up for the good sit, walking slow, trying not to sweat myself into this spot. It's about a mile and a half walk. So I'm walking in there and I see a doe. I'm like, oh, sweet. Okay. And it was like not very good visibility. And it turns out to be a mule deer doe. And I'm like, huh, I normally don't see mule deer here, but that's cool. You know? So I'm like, all right.

So, I'm walking into my spot and this one particular opening, I don't know what it is, it's just like one of the few places you can actually see in the timber. And also, there's like a good trail where the deer come out of this big, almost like pondo forest. It's like the forest kind of starts to open up. So, it's really dark timber all around it, lots of deadfall, a canyon with a creek coming by. And then there's like this one strip that maybe was logged a real long time ago.

thinned out enough where they just happened. They maybe didn't want to take the Ponderosa trees or something, or some of the bigger trees. There's like just a few sporadic big trees, one clear opening. That's got like not a lot of stuff on the ground or anything like you can actually see pretty good. And then it just goes back to forest. And for some reason, that one particular spot I've caught some big white tail bucks there in the past.

So as I'm moving in to the spot, I'm kind of like looking, looking, looking. I look up and now you got to remember like the visibility is not super great because it's kind of dark out just with all the real thick, heavy clouds, low ceiling on the clouds. It's like not even that much higher above where this opening is. And I see two deer.

standing in the opening, maybe about 200 yards away. I'm like, that is perfect. Like my rifle sighted in for 200 yards. Sweet. I dropped down. I'm like, I'm kind of caught out in the open. Cause I was going to go to this little patch where I like to rattle from where I can rattle and kind of get stuff from the Creek bottoms to come in. But I can also watch this spot and I'm within range and you normally get set up

And then just like moving into the spot and there's two deer standing in there, a buck and a doe. And then the doe had walked off out of sight and that buck is just standing there like staring at me. And I dropped down, I get the rifle on him and I'm like, oh my gosh, all I see is just like this giant frame.

And this dark deer, like this deer is just like black color. It just came like this thing. It just says, it's just screams timber buck, you know, the kind of buck you dream about. And I knew I'm like, that is a giant whitetail.

I literally just saw a mule deer doe, like right in this vicinity. I know I'm looking at a whitetail. I can't see its rear end. I can't really see. I just, I'm looking through my rifle scope at three power. So it looks even smaller than with the naked eye. And this weird thought creeps in my head.

That's way too big to be a white tail. Even though I'm like, that's a white tail. You know, I can tell based on like, I've seen so many deer, the outline and the body shape of a white tail. I can tell it 1200 yards most of the time with my naked eye, just by the way they walk or whatever, a white tail. But the lighting's weird. This deer is so dark and it's just so like boxy, blocky, big. I'm like, that is a giant white tail. But I'm like, you know what?

Never make a stupid decision. I'm just going to zoom my scope in.

I've got this thing dead to rights in the crosshair. I reach up to zoom my scope in and as I'm zooming my scope magnification up, I'm like, I just, I'm just like, I just thought to myself, I just want to zoom it in and verify, which I would do a hundred times over again. I zoom it up as I'm zooming it up. The buck tucks tail and runs that little movement of me reaching up to give my rifle extra magnification. That buck whips around one eighties and follows that doe through the brush a

away forever. I'm like, no, no, no. Oh, it was clearly, I knew it was a whitetail, but the size of this deer, like its body, just the way it was standing. If I didn't just see that mule deer, I would have never even second guessed it because I knew it was a whitetail. But for some reason I just thought, okay, I'm just going to zoom in and just, just a hundred percent double check because that's, that buck is just too big to be a whitetail in this area that I'm hunting. And

And it was a whitetail. Ran into the timber, never to be seen again.

I of course followed and tried to follow. It was so thick. I followed the tracks and never caught back up to that buck. Never saw that buck again. Unfortunately, I wish I could tell you the story of the big country, big timber buck that I shot the best deer of my life. But it's fun to sometimes tell those stories of when you do something and it doesn't work out. And now in hindsight, I

I would have done the exact same thing again. So there was no doubts in my mind before pulling that trigger. But, you know, it was just one of those scenarios where I got there, the buck was already there. It wasn't right. It didn't work out. And that's hunting. And unfortunately, it's one of those stories where the big buck got away. And who knows, maybe next year, maybe this year, I'll find that buck again. And I can update you with a more successful version of the same type of story.

Kind of looking back over my hunting career and in the places I've worked as a guide and things that I've hunted, you know, I've actually guided a lot of different states and hunted a lot of Western states specifically for whitetails. Some of my first guiding jobs were actually big country whitetail hunts, archery season. And then again, like later in November when the rut kicked off, big public land pieces. Over the years, you know, we got some pretty good bucks out of those spots.

Now, it seems like a lot of that, though, is just kind of overshadowed because self-admittedly and talking on behalf of a lot of the other hunters that live in these areas, most Western hunters are just crazy about mule deer and rightfully so. But

That's not to say that the whitetail hunting can't be incredible and honestly on some public land to boot. That's the best thing about it. You know, where a lot of people live or hunt, most of the places they're hunting might be small tracks or have to get permission. It's awesome to be able to just go hunt something and not have to ask for permission for it.

Now there are some really good hunting places out West on private lands. A lot of the guiding that I did for white tails was in some private type pieces and there's some incredible hunts around that ag and some other stuff. But what I want to do this week is just kind of touch a

a little bit on kind of finding places to hunt in those more public land type spots or places to look. And this doesn't necessarily just apply to the West, but some of this could probably be used other places as well, maybe somewhere closer to where you live. The Midwest, I mean, I actually...

worked in South Dakota guiding whitetails as well. And a lot of this, these tactics kind of come from that, but also, you know, from Wyoming or even maybe some of that Kansas area, just whatever, like these, these tactics hopefully can be used other places, but I'm just going to kind of talk about my experiences and the ways that if I'm just going cold Turkey into a new place that I haven't hunted whitetails, some of the tactics here.

honestly, you know, for me, when I think about it, or a lot of guys that hunt out West, the mule deer tags, a lot of them, you know, you can get some general tags, but a lot of the places we hunt or draw tags. And then the white tails kind of like the redheaded stepchild, unfortunately, sorry, if you're redheaded, I get

I guess that's not PC, but it's like the deer that gets ignored out here because everybody's so mewly focused, mewly centric, but everybody ends up hunting whitetails because that's the tag that your general tag you can use, or it's an easier tag to get, or there's more availability on season dates and other things like that.

Let's just break it down. So we're going to just kind of make a big blanket. We're going to throw a big blanket on kind of like the Western. When I talk West, I kind of think of like Colorado West, but you know, that could include like Texas for some people in Oklahoma and whatever, just, I'm kind of focusing on these areas that have white tails and also large tracks of public land. And when you break that down for the most part, places that I've been hunting like this, they're

There's two habitat category types. So there's the big timber, which would be like your mountain hunts, your more alpine areas, your big forested areas, probably steeper mountains, that mountain country. And then there's that broken country. So that broken country would be more like your coolies, your breaks, your –

stuff that's like rolling hills, river bottom type stuff, more stuff that's like around ag and other things. So that's two different types. You got kind of like open country whitetails, which is really fun and awesome place to hunt. And then you've got like your big mountain timber whitetails, which can also hold some really good bucks that get some age class on them. There's a lot more opportunity around public land and can be a great hunt as well.

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So let's start with the big timber. Now these would be what I like to call mountain bucks. You might hear me talk about like the last couple years I've taken my deer at nearly the top of the mountain beginning of October. My wife actually shot her first whitetail at, was it even like 9,300 feet deep?

at the end of November, which is just like, I wouldn't think a whitetail would live up here then, yet constantly we're kind of finding deer in these random places. But you have to understand that these whitetails live in large forested areas and are different than the whitetails that you might be used to, that you might have grown up hunting other places because these are mountain deer that aren't necessarily, I wouldn't particularly put them in that category of patternable because a lot of these deer actually migrate.

So in those big forested areas, you're probably going to have larger mountains...

And the deer do like a lot of the other animals in the area. They go up in the summer and down in the winter. They might move a long distance traveling from a summer range to a winter range. And you're kind of trying to catch them in this hunting season in between. So when you're thinking about those type of whitetails, you got to be thinking of, hey, these might not be deer that hold a very small area, small home range. These are rangy deer that hold a very broad area.

Now they can be fairly difficult to pinpoint a specific deer, or you would think, oh, they don't really have a pattern. Yet year after year, I found like some of the similar bucks, same bucks moving in kind of like the same area through the same time. Or you might get into an area that's like, oh, there's no deer here early in the season. And then later in the season, it's just full of whitetails. So you might run into that more migratory pattern type deer.

Now, when we're talking about that broken country, the deer in that broken country are more in that river bottom. They don't have that big mountain, that big difference. So these deer are more apt to kind of follow, I would say patterns that are very similar to deer other places, maybe your hardwood forests of the Midwest or Eastern United States, even like, you know, where most of the country hunts their white tail deer, these more broken country bucks kind of follow those same type of patterns, same type of things. But

We're going to be talking about that broken country and that timbered country in combination because there's going to be one key factor that we're pulling out of here. So the broken country deer, you know, you've got your river bottoms, you've got a lot of open surrounded by maybe some like draws that are thicker. That'll provide the cover and other things. It might also be an area where there's a little bit more agriculture, grasslands, prairie type stuff.

So why we're talking about these two seemingly opposite ends of the spectrum is one, because that's the two types of whitetail habitat that we're going to be focusing on. But what we're going to be trying to do is identifying adequate features that the deer like and use that is not readily available everywhere.

So let me break that down. This is all going to start making sense here in a second. So you've got the timber country that holds whitetails and you've got more open country. And these are generally in two completely different regions. So you might be like in one area of a state and then four hours away is this other type of country or whatever. It's two completely different subsets of terrain.

but we're looking for the same type of thing in both, but different things. So in that more open country, you've got a lot of open expanses. You've got a lot of things. Now, what we're going to focus on when we're looking for whitetails is the thing that's more rare, but they need, and that would be that cover. So in the big open, more breaks type country, what the whitetails really like is that thicker cover. When you think about breaking down a whitetail's habits and habitat,

They're more of a forest dwelling animal. Their home ranges are often smaller. A lot of places they live and they use security undercover. They like to be near that cover. Now, when you're talking about open country, there isn't a lot of cover available. So in those few areas where it provides the adequate cover that they like, thickets, creek bottoms, river bottoms that have a combination of a lot of trees on the edge of feed, stuff like that is where we're going to be focusing in on.

Now, the same kind of thing is true for the big mountain whitetails, but in the opposite fashion, covers everywhere. So what's the most rare thing that these deer need? Well, they're going to need that feed, and that feed might be a lot less available in some of that stuff that's really covered. So in that particular scenario where everything's covered, I look for the areas that are more open.

It also is because of my hunting style and tactic and being able to kind of pinpoint deer in this such a big area into one narrow spot. Where am I going to find the deer? So I'm looking for something that they like that's more rare and then pinpointing those areas.

If I'm just, let's say, e-scouting on my Onyx maps or whatever, and I'm looking for places where I might potentially find whitetails, I'm going to pick an area first where, okay, I know there's a population of whitetails. We have done some research. There's whitetail tags in the area. They've got deer. And then I'm going to narrow it down to,

Okay, I'm going to do an overview look and say, okay, what kind of country is this? Is this a really open country? If it's real open, where are those creek bottoms? Where are those areas that they can hide? Where are those areas that are a little bit brushier, places that might be close to agriculture on the edge of ag, where they might be going in and out of those agricultural areas? And then where are they going to bed from there? They like that safety and security to bed. So I'm just going to pull out my map and

focus on that when i get in the area i'm also going to kind of look around and try to key in on places that i think there's a higher likelihood of holding deer same goes for the timbered areas the mountain bucks i'm going to be doing that same thing but i'm going to be looking for clear cuts open timber pockets it's

that'll provide maybe different food sources. Another thing that I look for in those big mountain whitetails is what I call tree changes. So it's like maybe there's a pine forest and you've got this creek running down the bottom and you notice, hey, there's different kinds of trees in there. There's more, maybe some hardwoods. Maybe there's like some oak trees in there. Maybe there's some aspen trees in there. Maybe there's another kind of tree other than the pine that might provide not only a food source, but maybe like a different type of cover change.

where there's some thickets and some rose hips in there that's like, hey, around that water source, everything's open, everything's timbered. It's all bare grass and really bad forage. And then you've got this one wet spot that's got other grasses that might have, who knows, like some different types of trees and then like rose hips and other things that these deer can browse on. And so I look for those types of changes.

Now, once I find those kind of things, my hunting tactic is a lot different than most whitetail, I would say, like where you sit and wait tactic, your ambush tactic. I use a combination of a few things. The first thing would be a combination in open country, major glassing. And that's what's so fun about it is you can glass, cover a lot of country with your eyes.

Either way, though, what I'm doing is I'm moving a lot and trying to cover a lot of country because it's such a big area. I'm trying to narrow down where are the deer at. So I first go, okay, what kind of habitat in this particular environment are they probably most likely to going to be around depending on whether it's the open country or the mountain country.

And then I'm kind of do this, what I call like cruising for white tails. It's essentially a lot of moving until I find the pockets that hold the deer.

I've hunted a lot of places where it's really low density for white tails. And so I've developed this tactic for that, but it also works really well on that more big broken country that you can't really see everything and glass everything. I do a lot of walking and I do a lot of spotting as well, and a combination of still hunting and walking. So I'll be walking in areas that look really good, where they've got that something different that the deer like. I go really slow. I start to glass. I start to really pick it apart. Uh,

I look in a lot of areas. And then if I don't see anything that I'm looking for, I move. Now, sometimes I will bump deer. You think, oh man, you messed up your opportunity or whatever. That's not always the case because I know this sounds like a very aggressive tactic. I'm not just trying to like run through there, blowing deer out.

But if I do kick a deer up, then I analyze that spot. Okay. What was it doing? Was it bedding here? Now I know, okay, well, this is an area that's holding white tails. If I, if I jump a dope, okay, this is an area that's holding deer, especially if I'm hunting during the rut or something when I can expect now is time where I start to slow down. So you got to realize like, you've got all this land, you've got all these places to check. It's like,

The density of white-tailed deer might not be what you're used to if you come from somewhere like Wisconsin or Minnesota or Texas or Iowa. Well, like there's just hundreds of white-tails per square mile, whatever, at least what it appears on TV and some places that I've checked out. There's just like a lot more deer density than you go out west and you go, yeah, there's going to be five white-tails in five square miles, right?

good luck go find them so you have to kind of cover country and understand hey this is where the deer are at once i've found that and that's just like a combination of scouting maybe with your onyx or your maps finding those those preferred habitat types for the type of country you're hunting and then honestly just doing that cruising once i find the spots that they're going to prefer

That's when I switch my tactics over to more of a sit and wait tactic, but just on a different scale. Now I have done it where I've, I've gone in there, set up a blind or maybe like a tree stand in some places where I know, like, I know their patterns, I know their trails and other things.

But at that point, like what I'm doing now is sitting and waiting. So I'll get in, I might still hunt those areas really well, like really slow, still hunting, glassing, looking, especially if it's like maybe a potential bedding area and then glassing, maybe more feeding areas, mornings and evenings, and just identifying here's where the deer are.

Here's maybe where they're feeding. Here's maybe where they're bedding. And then I adjust my tactics to that. So normally what I'm doing is once I found the deer, now I slow down. I focus in on that smaller area because it's like, okay, this is preferred habitat. There's deer here. Take it slow and kind of switch over to that still hunting or sitting tactic if I don't get too impatient.

Many times me personally, I get semi-impatient. So what I do is I go to like, let's just pick one. Let's say we're hunting mountain bucks. I've checked all the clear cuts. I found a clear cut where there's sign. I've seen deer.

Cool. This is going to be my clear cut that I'm probably going to hunt most of the days for the rest of the trip or whatever, because I don't know exactly what's going to be there. So what I would do is in the morning, I would be glassing the edges of the open for deer to come out into that open. They do like some of the smaller shrubs, their browsers. They like that, that stuff that grows in the open if everything else is timbered.

So mornings, I'm going to be glassing that first thing sun comes up, I'll be glassing till mid morning. Then what I'm probably going to do is me, I'm going to start moving now.

And I'm going to start looking like hunting or still hunting through areas where I think they'll bed. So some of the thicker stuff going to just kind of like work my way through there. Stop, look, stop, look real slow glassing. Then I'm going to, in the evening, go back to an area that I would think would be a feeding area, glass and hunt that, try to spot something, move in spot and stock style.

Same goes for the open territory. I'll do that same thing, but in the open stuff, I tend to glass a little bit more, find those good advantages. Middle of the day, I'm often moving slow through areas where I think the deer might be moving, constantly glassing, constantly looking, and then set up trying to ambush or intercept when they're either going out to feed or maybe getting on hunting those fringes or those edges around agriculture or other habitat where they might be prone to use.

I also combine when we're just kind of touching on tactics. I do a lot of calling in the thicker stuff, a lot of rattling, a lot of grunt tube, all that stuff. Like I'll set up in an area where I know there's good trails and other things where I've seen sign of deer and I'll use those calling and, and other tactics as well. Your standard white tail tactics that work everywhere also work out West too. So if you're a guy that's really good at that,

honestly, bring your tactics with you because there's a lot of people out here that live out West that don't hunt that way. And it can be very, very effective at some of the like targeting specific deer, if you can find them, but it does take a little bit to go from this broad, Hey, where are the deer at to pinpointing those, those specific spots that they like.

One thing you will find is once you find that spot where those deer are, like you get these like micro pockets of white tail deer. It's like, Hey, all the white tails like this area, you'll continually find white tails there. I know personally, a lot of the places that I've hunted and guided and hunted different places out West, there might be just an example, one place in Wyoming where it's like, all right, you look around and there's mule deer here. And this is mule deer country, mule deer country. And in this one pocket,

there's white tails and you can go back to that pocket year after year. And there is always white tails in there. And yet everywhere else around, there's not very many white tails and there's some good bucks. You know, it's just because that's the one pocket. Once I've kind of used that and understood, then I can start focusing in and hunting white tails. However you enjoy hunting them. A lot of times I would get into that particular spot. I mean, I've set up tree stand and

many places weighted. Like if I'm bow hunting, I've definitely, you know, set up a tree stand, try to catch them moving from feed to bedding area, what have you. But then you can kind of focus in your tactics, narrowing it from big to small, just by trying to identify what is something that they need that they don't have a lot of in this particular area. I've actually got, you know, quite a bit of white tail hunting coming up in my future, it looks like, because I've

Most of the mule deer seasons for me or my mule deer tags are closed or over. And I don't know. I just, it's, there's just something really fun about chasing, especially that those open country whitetails, you can get some really good bucks and it's just like this really fun spot and stock game because they're so on edge. But like when you can see them, especially, oh, it's like in the rut.

when they're running around and then they go bed out in the tall grass, you know, like, okay, cool time to crawl in. That can be really exciting. It can also be frustrating because it's kind of like, it reminds me of spot and stock antelope hunting where they just get up and run away for no reason, chasing does or whatever. And there's seven miles and two counties away. By the time you get to them,

But man, it can be a really exciting, exciting hunt. You know, I'm kind of hoping maybe if I still have my deer tag around Thanksgiving, maybe my wife and myself will head out and just go on a full scale whitetail mission. I haven't decided though, whether we're going to go open country or big timber mountain bucks, there's just something cool about like getting a

a big mountain buck, I like to call them. It's not like hunting whitetails other places. When you hunt in the mountains, those deer just act so much different than the deer everywhere else in the US. And there's just something fun about that. I kind of think of them like, I don't know why I didn't mention it. It's more similar to like hunting coos deer, but just more cover. So it can be very, very exciting.

On a side note, though, I checked my email and I drew a public land Texas whitetail tag. So I am pretty stoked about that. I'm going to be doing that in January on muzzleloader hunt. And for me, that's going to be the opposite of what I'm talking about. It's going to be go in, you know, pick your stand location. I've got some ideas of how I'm going to hunt it.

really looking forward to doing that where that's most people like listen to this podcast because they either you know like the western hunting tactics or thinking about you know coming out this way and doing that more spot and stock style hunt and then here I am like all fired up to do the opposite style where I'm going to test my patience because I am a wanderer and I know that in those in certain scenarios these

these tactics aren't for everywhere. If you've got a small area to hunt, you're going to really make some people mad if you're just in there cruising around all day. So that won't be me. Don't worry if you, if you also have the tag with me, but I'm, I'm really looking forward to that. So that'll be kind of cool. I hope that this kind of like kind of shifts your mindset too. If you're, if you're big into whitetail hunting, or maybe where you whitetail hunt, you're like,

You know, it's just another thing to think about. And there's actually a lot more opportunity in most states to hunt whitetails. And I think people just don't even think about it. There's some incredible hunting that I think it's overlooked. I'm probably going to piss a lot of people off because I'm exposing like the probably the last best kept secret.

I'm not giving away any States or any specific spots. I'll let everybody else figure that out on their own because I'll say one thing and then I just don't want to make too many ripples in the pond and mess something up for myself. But there are some really good whitetail hunting and it's just, it's definitely a really fun opportunity. So until next week, catch you later.

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