Ep. 7: A Magical Mule Deer Spot and the Shoes Off Situation (SOS)
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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. ♪

So here's the scenario. It's archery season. You're in a hot, dry, arid environment. You're hunting mule deer. You're about 100 yards out from a bedded buck. What's your next move? Now for me, the next move is always going to be take my shoes off.

Because 100 yards to bow range, that's some considerable ground to cover, especially on an animal that's so well adapted to just hearing a small twig break and taking off. You need to be completely silent. And for these situations, I call them an SOS or a shoes off situation. If I think about pretty much most of the animals I've taken with a bow, they've been shoes off situations. I've been either barefoot or in some form of stocking sock.

So what I really want to talk about is why shoes are loud, identifying these shoes off situations, and then what it really means to toughen your feet, as well as some good options for stocking socks. I want to take you to a magical place I call the bowl. Now the bowl is one of my favorite early season mule deer hunting locations in Nevada.

It's not necessarily top secret because I've taken a lot of my friends there and they've enjoyed some considerable success in the bull over the years. But the bull is located at a high elevation. I'd say it's about between 8 and 10,000 feet. You know, the bottom of it's about 8 and the top of it can be as high as 10. And what it is, is this is the high desert. It's dry. It's August. It's crispy, dry.

These bucks get hunted constantly by one of the stealthiest predators on the planet. Not myself, but the mountain lion. So they use their ears and noses and eyes for survival daily. In order to get close to one of these deer, you have to move in completely silent.

That's really hard here because the ground is dry. It's rocky. It's loose. Everything you touch snaps, pops, cracks, moves. So to get within bow range, it takes a considerable amount of doing. But I like hunting this area because it really perfected what I think of my art of being sneaky, of stalking, of being silent. There was one buck in particular that

I was hunting. This was probably the third year I hunted the same area. And I'd seen a lot of deer. I've spent hundreds of days in this area, just watching deer, stalking deer, hunting deer. Actually, the first podcast of the biggest buck of my life was in the same general area. This was after I'd pretty much given up on that buck a couple of years later. I thought, okay, I'm going to try to get a deer now. It's time. Saw this buck, nice four by four, 28 inches wide, just a solid deer.

I'm sitting at the top of the bull. He walks out like, okay, cool. I watch him and he goes in beds with some other bucks. Now he was only a hundred yard. Maybe I think it was 120 yards away from where I was sitting and watching. I'm like, perfect. This is great. I'm just going to stock down there and get him. Yeah. Good luck, man.

I left my pack up where I was glassing, but just thought, nah, I don't know if I was being lazy, what I was thinking. I didn't take my shoes off. I'm creeping down, crab crawling. I got my bow on my lap, scooting down on these bedded bucks. Then I get to this point where they're out of sight. So I'm just going to slowly creep in. Trouble is...

I learned real quick that I should have taken my shoes off earlier. I'm about 45, 50 yards from the deer, but it's not like 45, 50 yards where you could get a shot. I can't even see him at this point. I'm creeping through the tall sage on the rocks. I can just, every step I take, I'm like, God, this is so loud. They're going to hear me.

Then I look up. I like to keep my eyes where the deer are as I'm stocking down. I don't like to be looking at the ground. I want to make sure that I'm not going to pop out where they can see me. And I don't want them to see me before I see them. So I'm creeping along and then I hear one dried up stick from a piece of sage sitting on the ground.

I'd stepped on. That snap got the entire group of bucks to stand up, whip their head toward me. Jig was up. Gig was up. It's the jiggy gig. It was all those deer bounded out away across the valley. I learned a pretty good lesson. That was a shoes off situation. Yet for some reason, I did not feel like taking my shoes off. And that was the last time that I ignored the shoes off sitch.

So fast forward, it's three, four days later. It's about time to go home. I hadn't seen that buck again. So I'm go down to my camp. I'm like, I'm in camp debating. I was like, I gotta be back home, but maybe I give it another day. Kind of procrastinating packing up. It's like, I'm here. It's middle of the day. I throw up my binoculars, glass, and in one of the draws behind camp, here's that same buck bedded by himself,

tucked up against a mahogany tree. Now he's on this ridge that has some shale above him, but the wind is blowing uphill. So he's bedded facing downhill and the wind's in his face. Like this is perfect. But I look at where he's bedded. So I get out my scope and I'm planning my stocking route. He's right below this patch of dried balsam root. Now what balsam root is,

It's like a, it's a plant that looks like a people might call it mules ear. It looks like big ears. And when that stuff dries out, it just cracks and pops. It's the loudest stuff you can walk through. I'm like, that's what this, that's this deer's game. He's bedded with the wind in his face, but it's a place where it's shaded and he's just using his ears to protect him from anything coming from behind. This is not going to be an easy stalk.

I get over there about 200 yards away. I decide choose off time. I drop my pack. I put on my extra pair of socks and I start my stock. Now the nice thing is he's out of sight. So what I really have to worry about is the noise I'm making. First obstacle, shale slide.

Now, if you aren't familiar with shale, it's like a bunch of maybe hand-sized flat rocks stacked up into a pile. It's like a rock slide that you step on it and it sounds like bells going off almost. It's very hard to move through quietly.

But I've got my shoes off and what I'm doing is I'm feeling each piece of shale with my feet for movement before I put all my weight on my foot, just wiggling my foot. So it gets steady stationary. Then I'm also using my hand almost like crawling or crab crawling down. So I have more points of balance one step at a time, feeling the ground, feeling

pushing it slightly so it makes a soft noise, then putting weight on it, distributing my weight between my two feet, my hand, and I made it through the shale slide. So far, so good. Now, the next part is that dried balsam root. But also, it felt like there was a lot of other loud stuff in this area. Rocks, sticks, balsam root. Now, I knew that I was approaching, but he was bedded in a way where if he had just turned his head slightly...

he would be able to see me. I needed to keep this one mahogany tree with his eyes behind that tree. So in order to stalk properly, I can't be looking at the ground. I got to be looking up constantly, see where his head's at, see which direction he's looking before I make my moves. The plus side was I could feel the ground with my feet. Every step I took, I would test it, then put my weight crawling ever so slowly.

Moving in, moving in. Now this deer is bedded. I kept moving into positions where I think I'd have a shot. At this point, I'm 30 yards. I can see his antler tips sticking up, but I just don't have a shot. So I think, well, I'll get a little closer. I keep stalking, keep moving, keep feeling the ground. I get to a point where I think, ah, this is good enough. I pull up my range finder. The buck is six yards away.

I think I might have gotten too close at this point. Unfortunately, I didn't think it out well enough. I should have just sat back and waited for him to stand up, but I got impatient. However, I got close. Now there was a log across the deer's back, so I couldn't take a shot. So I had to wait. The mistake I made was I was waiting too close. So I decided to move to a position where I could get a shot on him bedded.

This was going to mean I had to move very slow, feel the ground to get a shot. So I start one step at a time, step to the left, hold, feel the ground, step to the left, hold until I got a small window. I drew my bow back as slowly as possible, anchored, aimed, put the pin where I wanted and shot. That buck was probably only...

I would say seven feet away, maybe between seven and 10 feet when I let that arrow go. And that was all because I was able to feel the ground and sneak up and trick his number one defense in that situation, his ears.

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Go to fishingbooker.com today. That's fishingbooker.com. So why when you're stalking in on any animal, is it better to take your shoes off? Well, I think we first need to look at why shoes are allowed.

Now, when I was doing a show a few years back called Apex Predator, I really wanted to investigate this entire idea of stealth and quiet stalking. So we actually took a force plate and walked across it in both shoes, stalking socks, and barefoot. Now, at the time, we were trying to compare that to the force and sounds that a mountain lion would make. A predator that I really consider one of the most silent, stealthy predators that hunts the same animals that I do.

The thing that we found is shoes were at the top of the list for noise Then even just like a moccasin or stocking sock was way more quiet as well as less force exerted on the ground

There's a few reasons for that is because when you can feel the ground, you tend to place your foot differently than you do in a shoe. A stiff-soled shoe, you can't feel the ground. You're putting all that force into one spot, which might be onto a stick, which breaks the stick, which causes the noise. So the key with stalking quiet is being able to feel the ground. Now, there's a lot of options for that.

You can go as far as barefoot or you can go with something like a moccasin or a makeshift stocking sock. One of the things that I've always done and one of the things that I've always heard was just bring an extra pair of socks. Cover your feet. That way it just keeps some of the brush things that might hurt your feet away, but also you can continue to feel the ground. Now everybody's different.

But I think one of the things about walking barefoot or natural, like in your stocking sock, it might be over a considerable amount of distance sometimes. Things don't always work out and you need to have your feet prepared. A lot of people ask like, okay, well, I don't have tough feet. I have soft feet.

Now, I understand that, but I also don't think there is such thing as having tender feet. It's really more just a weak mindset and something that you don't do a lot. Think about it. Like there's so many people that just walk around everywhere in their shoes, their backyard, their driveway, in their house even. Right now, I'm doing this podcast with no shoes on. Not because I'm trying to prove a point, but I walk around a lot without my shoes on.

And the reason is you get comfortable feeling the uncomfortable. When I shoot my bow, the best time to toughen your feet is when you're out there practicing, walking between the target and where you're shooting or just walking outside. Yeah, there's a point where you can build calluses by walking barefoot. I walk barefoot a lot because I want to be able to go further distances and then not be painful.

But those calluses don't change the way the ground feels. And that's something that I never realized. I always used to think, oh, you build the toughness, then you don't feel the ground. That's 100% incorrect. You're always going to feel the ground. It's just getting used to the way the ground feels. I did a long period of time when I was doing that Apex Predator show, trying to toughen my feet because I was going to do an entire week of hunting with no shoes.

And during that time, I would go do runs barefoot. I would do a lot of things barefoot. And after three months of that, I thought, my feet, I still feel everything. I don't think they're any tougher. They aren't any tougher. They just can endure the ground longer without getting blisters or other things. But everything still feels the same. So it's just a matter of getting used to feeling the ground. Now, I've seen a lot of people ask about these oversoul, like these stocking socks that go over your boots.

Those are garbage. I'm sorry if you make those, but they're garbage because a lot of the noise is from the stiff sole of the boot. It's the pressure that you're exerting into that solid sole that causes whatever's underneath your feet to make noise.

Now, first, before we decide to take our shoes off, we have to identify the situations that are a shoes off situation. That's when things are getting real. That's when you need the utmost stealth. And that's not every situation because there's plenty of times where it's more convenient to leave your shoes on. You're more mobile. You can cover rougher country faster. And sometimes you don't even need to take your shoes off. So how do you identify the times where, yep, now's the time I take my shoes off?

I think of it like this. It's based on the terrain, the animal, and what else is going on. What kind of noises are out there? When there's very little wind, it's quiet in the middle of the day, or the deer are bedded, that's when they're most likely to be listening. Bedded animals are actually a lot more alert than animals that are moving around feeding or distracted by other things.

Also, when animals are moving around feeding and distracted, those are times where the plan's constantly changing. You might have to go to a new area. You might have to follow them for a mile before things work out. You just don't know. You're going to be mobile. So to leave your stuff in one spot, you might actually impede your success in that certain scenario where you

You removed your shoes and now you're, I've, I've gone as far as four miles and been like, dang it, where did I put my boots? It wouldn't be the first time I lost them. I actually, because of that carry, like that pink flagging a lot and just tie it to my boots when I drop them boots and pack, because there are those times where it gets away from you.

But the best times for these shoes off situations are dry country, bedded animals, or stationary animals. You need to trick the ears and that's the quietest way to do it.

So a lot of country is not conducive to walking around without shoes. There's stickers, there's rush. The only reason I'm talking about this whole shoes off situation is because I've noticed when I'm doing my Instagram stories or videos that I've done, you know, I always, at that final moment, I'm taking my shoes off and I get a ton of comments like, why are you taking your shoes off? I never take my shoes off. And it just blows my mind because I think that

It's a trick that I learned from old school bow hunters, traditional bow hunters, guys that need to get close. And that's the first thing they teach you, take your shoes off. Yet I think somewhere along the line, we've replaced stealth and getting close with just trying to shoot further. I still like to get close and I like the animals to be completely unaware when I stalk in. I like to give myself that advantage. So most of the animals I've taken, my shoes have been off.

Now, if the country isn't as conducive to it, you've got things that are sharp, you are weak in the mind and you've got soft feet, whatever, or you just want that extra cushion. Here's a few tips that I do or have used in the past that I think are the best form of what I would consider a stocking sock, because I do use what I call stocking socks a lot. That's just something, an extra added element of protection for your feet that

And so the first one, the old school way, is the double sock or an extra sock. That's just a thick pair of wool socks. You can either swap out the socks that you've got or put it over your other socks. One thing I like about this is you can tuck your pant leg into the sock. So it keeps your pants tight from grabbing things that are around you for extra stealth.

Now, the downside to the sock is it picks up burrs and other things, lots of seeds from different plants that end up poking your feet anyways. I just keep the same pair of socks in my backpack because they just get ratty and tore up pretty easy and it's hard to pick all the stuff out of them.

So that extra pair of socks is key. Now, one thing that I do a lot in rocky country or southwest is I get one of those crappy like beach sandals, those thin foam ones. You can either take the thong part off or whatever or leave it on. There's some that the part that goes between your toes is actually not plastic but like a webbing material, like a fabric.

So those are the best. And you can even shave the sandal down to half the width if you want. So you can feel the ground a little better. Then you keep your sock from your boot on, you put your foot into the sandal and then you pull your stocking sock over that foam sandal. That's the best homemade stocking sock that I've ever found. Now, an upgrade from that would be a moccasin type shoe.

So these can be either synthetic or leather. I've used natural leather moccasins. I've actually hunted an entire week in them. They're great. You sneak up on stuff you didn't even know you were going to sneak up on because you're walking so quiet. However, the more you're walking without shoes, you know, shoes have their place because your feet start to feel everything in the ground. You get what I consider stone bruising, which really, you know, you can't just go every day like that unless you really, really prepare for it.

So the moccasins great, but it's another added thing you have to carry. I also use a more of a waterproof type sock as well. It's a more durable sock. Some of them are just more of a, like a booty, like a neoprene type booty. Those work great as well. You just got to remember what you want is something where you can still feel the ground and not have that hard soul breaking and cracking underneath your feet.

just by getting rid of removing that hard soul and getting something where you can slightly feel the ground, you're just going to be a lot more stealthy. And that stealth is what's going to allow you to get closer more often and give you the opportunity you're looking for. Your homework for this week, embrace the shoes off situation. Now, I'm not saying you got to be some dirty hippie walking. Sorry, if there's dirty hippies out there, you could be a clean hip. Is that an oxymoron? Not sure. I don't know.

Look, man, it's the middle of September. You have got some archery mule deer probably coming up in a lot of states. There's a lot of stalking situations that you might encounter. Be proud of your shoes off situations. Fly that shoes off flag. You know, if you're in your backyard, kick your shoes off. If you're in a fancy restaurant, kick your shoes off. When they look at you funny, just be like, man, shoes off situation.

There are a lot of shoes off situations around there. What I want you to do is I want you, when you go to your garage to get something for your next hunt, don't wear your shoes.

Practice at home. Be proud of that shoes off situation. Always be on the ready for a good stock, for a good sneak, because it's cool to be stealthy. It's cool to encounter those shoes off situations. Share those shoes off situations with me. If you're a fellow shoes off stocker, if you aren't a fellow shoes off stocker and are now going to try it, you will be surprised how close you get. And that's what I want to hear about.

So thanks for listening. You can reach out, share your scenarios with me via social media or remyatthemeateater.com. That's where I'm at. Be stealthy, my friends.

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