00:00:00 Speaker 1: Welcome back to another episode of Back 40. This is Jake Hofer, and we are here again with our panel of guests, Jeff Sturgis, Bill Wienke, Aaron Warburton, and Adam Keith. And if you still are trying to circle a week on the calendar, you're trying to make the best educated bet that you can of regardless of weather and opportunity, what is the best week to either pack up your bags and travel or go visit the farm in another state or travel move your calendar to where you have the least amount of obligations of life to capitalize on the excitement of fall. And to kick things off, we're going to start with Bill Winkie. Bill has famously talked about a few dates and you're going to have to see if his opinion has wavered or if it's still maybe what you think it is. 00:00:43 Speaker 2: So here we go. Back 40 is brought to you by Moultrie. All right, Bill. 00:00:50 Speaker 1: It is September 17th and people still have, there've been They've been debating on when do I take my vacation time? My employer knows I'm going to be gone, and I have a little bit of grace to pick my week. And they're calling you right now. They said, Bill, I can get one week of vacation. Everything rides on this, and I'm going to listen to what you have to say. 00:01:09 Speaker 2: So what is it? 00:01:11 Speaker 3: Well, tell me the weather forecast, and I'll tell you which week to take. But let's say that the weather forecast is out of the picture. So you're really focused on say seasonal weather patterns, like the normal, whatever that is, average temperatures. So it's, if you're just hunting bucks, let's say any nice buck, then I'd say the 3rd through the 10th of November, because you're going to see a lot of bucks moving during that time. But if you're hunting a specific buck, you know, like let's say you've got maybe a couple of deer that you hunted last year that got away and you have a pretty good idea where they live because that's where you saw them all the time and you really want to get those deer, you're probably better off the last week of October from the 25th on, roughly. There's a lot of really nice deer that get killed during that week because the bucks are still closer to their normal ranges. They're not distracted by does. They're just moving more in daylight. So I think they're easier to kill. A specific buck is easier to kill the last week of October than maybe at any other time until maybe towards the tail end of November. Then maybe that changes again. If you've got a state where you don't have too much pressure, that takes them out of their patterns or out of their normal behavior. 00:02:40 Speaker 1: So with what you have set up right now and working on your farm all year and everything else, are you picking late October or are you picking the 3rd through the 10th? 00:02:48 Speaker 2: Knowing what you know about your own place? 00:02:51 Speaker 3: Late October. 00:02:52 Speaker 2: Late October. Yeah. 00:02:54 Speaker 1: What does that setup look like? The morning, evening, both, food source? 00:02:58 Speaker 3: Yeah, both. You're hunting... See, they're really not, I wouldn't say, like full-scale searching for does. So you're not necessarily hunting those funnels between two doe bedding areas, for example. Like, you don't have to know... what the buck's patterns are during the rut because you can just sit on a funnel between two concentration areas where the does live and let the bucks, you know, mill through there. So the last week of October, you need to know more about where that deer lives. You know, you need to know, you know, where was he after he left his summer range? Where did he settle into? You don't need to know a whole bunch more about him than that because you're going to hunt. You don't want to hunt where he beds. You want to hunt in some kind of transition areas between where you think he's probably bedding and where he's probably feeding. You could even hunt around the food sources a little bit more because they do show up at those in daylight more often that last week of October than they do really at almost any other time of the year because they know that the does are going to be out. They're just sort of like checking on things. They're not really thinking, okay, I'm going to find that hot doe. They're just keeping tabs on things because they want to be on hand when that first doe comes into estrus. They want to know. So they've got to be out, you know, checking on stuff, milling around, you know, finding out what's going on. So I think you just need to be in logical spots as close to where you think that buck lives as you dare to hunt. And by logical spots, I mean places where you've got maybe a little bit of an advantage from a funneling standpoint. Like maybe there's a ditch. and you know that the buck bed's probably on this ridge not too far away from that ditch, and there's a feeding area on the other side of the ditch, and there's a pretty good chance that he's going to go past there. Maybe you've had a camera there, or maybe not. You don't necessarily have to, but that just makes sense. You can hunt that spot without him knowing. There's some logical reason why he might go through there. Those are the kind of spots that I'd be sitting on. The closer you get to Halloween, the more of that more full-scale experience activity that you're going to get, because then, excuse me, then you are going to get that first hot doe. And that buck in his range, when the first doe comes into estrus, he wants to be there. He's going to be there. He'll do everything in his power to be the buck that breeds that doe. And because there's no other, there's no other game in town. There's only, you know, one opportunity. So he's going to know about it. He's that timeframe, you're going to see a lot of movement. If there's any kind of a hot doe in that area, you're going to see him. He, he might cover the whole, let's say you've got a 40 acre, 60 acre property that you can hunt or even a hundred acre property. He might cover the whole hundred acres in daylight every day for two days, you know, because he's that, uh, focused on finding that first doe. 00:06:04 Speaker 1: That's a magical time, time of year for sure. 00:06:06 Speaker 2: It is. 00:06:07 Speaker 1: And it's, and it's here and gone too. And then it's like, if you miss that window, you're like, All right, buckle up, it's November. 00:06:13 Speaker 3: Yeah, that's right. The first hot doe is like the magic. If you can be in the right place when that happens, you're going to think that deer hunting is easy. But if you're not in the right place, it can be, like you said, a long ride. 00:06:31 Speaker 1: Has that perspective shifted over the years at all? 00:06:37 Speaker 3: The time frame? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I don't think as a group we understood the behavior of bucks 15 years ago like we do now. Everybody's got trail cameras now. Everybody sees what's going on. We used to rely on maybe common sense, maybe just hearsay, maybe what a few biologists said. They may have just been relying on partial information. They might have been extrapolating, you know, like some kind of conclusions based on a few studies that they read, you know, so it wasn't complete knowledge. Um, but now we have a lot better understanding of what's going on. And we really see that that late October is the ticket. And I used to preach, you know, in my early days of writing for the magazines that, you know, don't mess up November by over hunting October. Well, you know, there's a lot of truth to that, but I'm going to say the last week of October is the exception to that rule. If you've got a cold front the last week of October, that's the best week of the season. 00:07:43 Speaker 2: Probably. 00:07:44 Speaker 3: Probably the best week of the season. 00:07:46 Speaker 1: Which I feel the traditional wisdom of don't ruin November by hunting October. But that is like, so people need to treat that as a Super Bowl of the season. If the weather is right for that time period, like, okay. Are you taking your hardest swing in late October if the weather's right? You're not holding your punch back at all? 00:08:04 Speaker 3: No, I'm hunting my best stands the last week of October. If the weather and the conditions are right, yes, for sure. 00:08:14 Speaker 1: Late October, if your boss has some grace and you can schedule your vacation on late notice, otherwise it sounds like the 3rd through the 10th is your second best bet or highest odds bet. 00:08:24 Speaker 3: I think the 3rd through the 10th is the best if you just want to see bucks. But if you're hunting specific bucks, then you need to be able to figure out where that deer is at. And the best chance of figuring out where that deer is at is the end of October. 00:08:38 Speaker 4: Perfect. 00:08:39 Speaker 1: All right, Bill, once again, where can people follow along with what you have going on? 00:08:43 Speaker 3: Check it out on the Bill Wienke YouTube channel. 00:08:45 Speaker 1: All right, next up we have Jeff Sturgis. Jeff has a book called All Weather Whitetails. And when you can't pick the weather out, you know, obviously a month and a half in advance, what is the next best approach? So we're going to get Jeff's opinion today. on picking the time for the working man that has obligations just like we all do to capitalize on stacking the most amount of luck, if you will say, in a specific week. All right, Jeff, I feel like you'll have some relation to this. I know you haven't had your own schedule your whole entire career, working career. And so I think when you worked in appraising and at the bank and everything else, so A lot of people, they've been kicking the can down the road of like, I don't know when I want to schedule my vacation. I'm going to go to the Midwest. I have a farm or I have a friend that's going to come let me hunt. And I want to pick my week for my Midwest whitetail trip. 00:09:38 Speaker 2: What week are you picking? As of now, you don't know what the weather is going to be. 00:09:45 Speaker 5: So what I tell people online is to take that week off and divide it into five days that you can use for three different weekends, end of October, early November, and the next weekend in November. So that you have three long weekends and you can hedge your bets a little bit better instead of putting all your eggs in one basket. So is that what you mean by week or does it have to be in a row? 00:10:04 Speaker 2: It's got to be in a row. That's a great take. 00:10:10 Speaker 5: So identifying the kind of property I'm hunting, public land, I'm definitely going for middle of the rut. I don't want to be in the pre-rut because usually they're locked into a food source movement kind of rut bedding and they're not moving as much, although they're pretty easy to target if they're on a property you're on. So say, for example, public land, I really want to hit Southern Ohio and November 7th, 10th, 12th, not the end of October. That's almost before the pre-rut. Southwest Wisconsin, public land, central Wisconsin, I'd probably want to hit around November 1st in that time frame. Maybe western Illinois, I'd want to hit that first week of November. If I'm down in Kansas on public land, I might want to hit the second to third week of November on public land because I want to hit those center areas right there. If I had to choose a private land rut hunt, I would probably go with, given the fact that you've probably put food plots in, you're managing the property well, you're managing the hunting pressure on there. I think one of the easiest way to target and be successful on a mature buck is to hit them in the pre-rut, which is around here, Southeast Minnesota, Southwest Wisconsin, even over into Southern Michigan. Southern New York, maybe Northern Pennsylvania. You're really focusing on, and you can add a week if you go down to Southern Illinois, Southern Indiana, that kind of thing. But you're focusing on bucks that are there. I call them core bucks. You're focusing on when they first start being active in the morning. And that would be the end of October through early November, those first cold fronts. And so I would pick like around here, probably October 27th to November 5th or 4th, whatever that would give me. Because I'm assuming, Jake, nine days off means I get two weekend days. So that means four plus five. So I'm getting actually nine days off, even though it's a seven-day vacation. But anyways, I'm picking those two weekends in a row, like end of 25th of October that goes through the 4th of November. And then if I was down in those Southern Ohio, Indiana, Illinois range, then it would be early November through November 10th. And I'd add a week to that if I was on public land, probably in most of those areas. So I hope that kind of makes sense. But, you know, about a week later on public land and a week earlier, if I have a really well-designed property, and if it's a rut property only where I'm not seeing anything early, I'm waiting for those bucks to come through. Then I'm going to pick center of the rut because I want bucks when they're moving the greatest distance. I can't count on them in the early rut because wherever they're at, they're going to find a door to pretty quick. And it's going to take a week for them to get off those does in their own area and start looking around and traveling a little bit more. 00:13:10 Speaker 2: But I'm joking as I say this, the rut changes every year though, Jeff. 00:13:15 Speaker 5: Yeah, it does. It depends on the moon and the weather. And sometimes the way the papa leaves, depending if they're yellowish one year, orange the next year, and like the swamp maples, if they're turning three weeks early, then that's the great thing about the rut to me is that it's so defined that if you allow yourself to believe that and you go live it and you go live it for a few years, then what allows you to do is have a lot of freedom in your planning. You can know that, yeah, if I hunt this property at this time, it's during the pre-rut, that means I better have some core bucks that are already there. I'm probably not going to see any. So when you actually do that, it gives you a very high level of strategy that you can employ every single year and be more dependable and just ignore all the other noise. 00:14:05 Speaker 2: I like it. I like it. 00:14:07 Speaker 1: Um, over the, over all the years of hunting, uh, whether it's, you know, Wisconsin or Minnesota, what is one date that sticks out to you as the best historically? I understand like the weather does play an impact during this time period, but if you just had to pick like November 10th or like the most rut crazed rut behavior is what a lot of people really look forward to every fall. 00:14:27 Speaker 2: Like what is that day for you? 00:14:29 Speaker 5: And again, I think my area, you could like go, like where I've hunted Southern Ohio, that could be a week later, you know, approximately even 10 days, like in Tennessee or West Virginia, Kentucky. But I would look at even Kansas. Typically, there's been a lot of times I've shot both bucks in Minnesota and Wisconsin with a bow before November 1st or 2nd. And so. 00:14:58 Speaker 5: You get into that October 29th, 31st, 30th, I'm hunting core bucks typically. And they're bucks that I think I can go in and I know where they're bedding. Get to the outside of that bedding area in a waterhole or in an afternoon food source movement, meaning I'm not hunting on that food source. I'm just looking for increased daylight activity and pretty reliable. So, you know, there's usually a cold front happening somewhere in those last five days or one you could take advantage of. And that's when I'm hunting. If I had to pick a date, I'd say October 29th, 30th, right around there. Um, uh, only because I'm hunting core box. If someone wasn't hunting core box, they're waiting for a rut movement. And that would, that would shift or if I was hunting a little bit further South, but some little disclaimers in there, but. 00:15:46 Speaker 2: Yeah, no, that's good. 00:15:47 Speaker 1: Well, Jeff, where can, uh, where can people follow along with what you have before we kick off October 1st episode? 00:15:52 Speaker 6: Yeah. 00:15:53 Speaker 5: Anything Whitetail Habitat Solutions, Instagram, YouTube, Google, if you look up my site, Whitetail Habitat Solutions, lots of articles and videos, over 2,000 pieces of content that you can use for whitetail strategy and find and even just type and search. We have our food plot seed company, Pure Wildlife Blends, and so it kind of all comes together and those are pretty easy to find, so. 00:16:25 Speaker 2: All right, next up we have Adam Keith. 00:16:27 Speaker 1: We're going to get right into Adam's perspective on this and picking the best time based off of if things are squared away and dialed or if you are. 00:16:35 Speaker 2: Waiting to see what shakes out. 00:16:37 Speaker 1: His answer may change a little bit based on how you have the farm set up. 00:16:41 Speaker 2: And so here we go. Here's Adam's perspective. All right, Adam. This is. 00:16:46 Speaker 1: A debate that comes up every single year. And so I wanted to play into this trend and keep that tradition alive. I feel that everyone wants to have the magic week. And you have a lot of experience. You have a lot of data. You can tap into all of your clients that have had success over the years. You can only pick one week for a Midwest trip. And Midwest being, we can expand that. I know some states fight over who's in the Midwest and who's not. But the expansion version of that. Best week, what are we picking? Or to travel? 00:17:17 Speaker 6: Yeah, I would have two scenarios because if it's a guy who's managed the farm or he's, you know, he's been on here, he's got some food plots. I would much rather go October 24th through the 30th or through Halloween. I would, I would October far and away is more is my favorite month. Sweet November is what you do if you're reliant on the rut to get deer on their feet. And so for me, the approach is let's lay out the habitat. Let's fix the habitat to where I don't have to rely on a hot dough to put them on the feet. 00:17:54 Speaker 2: Like I've made bedding. 00:17:56 Speaker 6: I've got good food or I've identified natural food. 00:18:00 Speaker 2: I've made the bedding. So now I can get in there and capitalize. 00:18:03 Speaker 6: If that scenario is at play, take October 24th through the end of the month and put all your cards in that. You don't even have to hunt every day. Just look for those weather patterns that the temperature dropped 10 degrees from the day previous and get in there and kill them. I feel like of the clients and of myself hunting, if I can identify a target and I find that weather, I have a really good shot of capitalizing, filling a tag. What does the location look like in your brain when you're thinking of a late October cold front and imagine you're traveling there? 00:18:45 Speaker 1: You're looking at the extended forecast. Okay, yeah, we have a really good temperature drop. It's coming in October 26th. I have food sources. Maybe I have greens and grains. I have an idea of where they're likely bedded or at least a general region of it. What does that specific stand location look like to really illustrate it? 00:19:02 Speaker 6: For southern Missouri or any timber country, it's mid to late October. We know that the acorns are on the ground. This is like peak white oak acorn soil. on the ground so we know that's probably a primary food source so i would be looking for a travel corridor from what i've identified as bedding or somewhat of bedding vicinity and i'm on that travel corridor with the appropriate wind trying to catch him leaving his bedding area in the afternoon and going towards that food source or that block of timber if To give one little like cherry on top would be a water source in the timber close to bedding because it probably is still a little warm. 00:19:49 Speaker 2: Or warmer. And so if I. 00:19:51 Speaker 6: Have that, oh, I'm like dreaming right now of a perfect scenario. And you mentioned what's the second scenario of this? So the second scenario would be if you don't have that all laid out, you need to take that November 6th through the 12th. 00:20:13 Speaker 1: Yeah, right. 00:20:15 Speaker 6: You want to be right before peak breeding. So whatever peak breeding or the lockdown phase is. So like in Missouri, on my farm, peak breeding is like November 11th through the 13th or. 00:20:27 Speaker 2: 14th, right in there. 00:20:29 Speaker 6: And so by lockdown, I'm like... Every, I mean, I'm just sitting there chewing my fingernails in the tree stand going, every deer that I'm trying to save is getting slaughtered right now. 00:20:39 Speaker 2: I know he is, or I know they are. 00:20:41 Speaker 6: So if you don't really have much in place, you just gained access. November 8th is my favorite for November, but November 6th through the 12th is probably right in that wheelhouse for a lot of guys. This is kind of off topic, but do you feel that breeding windows are changing at all? 00:20:59 Speaker 2: Like there's some. 00:21:01 Speaker 1: theories of where that's getting pushed back later or sooner based off of overarching weather patterns? 00:21:07 Speaker 6: I haven't even really given it a ton of thought. My head's been in so many other little nuanced ideas. Specifically, like for me is. 00:21:18 Speaker 2: Antler drop. 00:21:19 Speaker 6: Like we've always historically thought that antlers held longer means a healthier deer. But I feel like in talking to people that if they're dropping them earlier, January, February, then they're going to have a chance of bigger antlers because they're off to the races and growing earlier in the spring. So I haven't really, on the breeding windows, possibly changing. I've had some clients ask me about that, but I work so much in the south that that's just a mess down there anyway. So it's just kind of like, hey, welcome to Mississippi. We got eight different breeding windows here or whatever it ends up being. So, you know, I haven't given it much thought. Is that kind of a pretty common? 00:22:01 Speaker 1: Conversation no no it's not common okay common at all but it's uh i don't know i feel like there's maybe some merit to that um yeah possibly i mean obviously mother nature has a way of sorting and adjusting this as things change yeah i. 00:22:16 Speaker 6: I don't know um it would be interesting i think that there's so many things that are probably happening in our deer herd that we're not fully understanding genetics being one of them and in regards to we're shooting Most times, you know, a lot of times guys are shooting the very best up-and-comers at three and thinking they're four, or they're shooting them at four and saying they're five. You know, I'm just basing this off of years of working with clients and seeing it. And it's like, but then the inferior ones are the ones who make it to eight or seven. You're like, they're probably doing a ton of breeding year after year after year. And I don't think we're calculating that very well. 00:23:05 Speaker 1: I don't disagree with that at all. I mean, I think that's, that's a podcast for a different day. Maybe that's another back 40 episode. What are the, what are the undercurrents of the whitetail deer that we don't realize? But so late October, if you have a tuned in farm and then otherwise you go pull a lottery ticket and park out, you know, the six. 00:23:25 Speaker 6: Of the 12, God would much rather, you know, Not everybody. I mean, archery is definitely a big thing. But in southern Missouri, there's far and away more gun hunters. So if I can kill that guy in October, you know. 00:23:39 Speaker 2: Mission accomplished. Mission accomplished. 00:23:41 Speaker 3: Yes. 00:23:42 Speaker 2: So late October. 00:23:44 Speaker 1: Perfect. 00:23:44 Speaker 5: All right. 00:23:45 Speaker 2: Where can people find you? 00:23:46 Speaker 6: You can find us on social media platforms and all the major podcast platforms. 00:23:52 Speaker 2: Just search Atlanta Legacy. 00:23:54 Speaker 1: And to close things out, we have Aaron Warburton. I feel like Aaron hunts the whole entire year, kind of regardless, but there's still always the best week where there is the most action, the most opportunity. 00:24:03 Speaker 2: Let's hear what he has to say. 00:24:04 Speaker 1: Here we go. This is a topic that comes up every single year, and so I'm going to continue the tradition. You can pick one week here. You can pick one week. You guys travel a bunch, but I'll leave it open to you to where, what is the best week? Aaron, wag your magic wand and tell me the week I need to take off work and just go hunt like a crazy person. 00:24:25 Speaker 2: Wait a minute. When? Are you hunting on private land or are you hunting on public land? 00:24:29 Speaker 1: You're hunting on private land in this scenario. You're hunting on private land. You have a permission property. You have a property. It's semi-set up. You've done a lot of the work already beforehand. But it's not the best property. So, like, it's not one where you're like, oh, yeah, I got this figured out. I already filled my tag before season opened. It's somewhere in the middle ground of that. 00:24:50 Speaker 2: Oh, man. I'd probably... That is... It's a question that I hear all the time as well. That's why I brought it up. I like the last week of October personally. 00:25:07 Speaker 4: A lot of people would say the first seven days of November, November 5th through the 12th or whatever, but it kind of all depends on how that property is set up and what. 00:25:19 Speaker 2: The other factors involve there. If you have... Say, I mean, stick on the 40-acre topic. 00:25:26 Speaker 4: If you've got 40 acres and farmland environment that's mostly ag land with a couple little draws and drainages that run through there that afford you two or three setups, maybe. Well, that particular place might have a deer in it, a buck that you want to hunt at the end of October, but it also might have two or three doe groups that don't have any bucks in it. And those bucks may not show up until one of those does pop. And that might be November 6th. It might be November 12th. So I would probably, I'd probably hunt a spot like that during the peak cruising times, which I think is in the Midwest. 00:26:08 Speaker 2: Is a little bit earlier than what a lot of people would say. 00:26:11 Speaker 4: I would say that's the last two or three days of October and the first couple of days in November. Because in a lot of these areas of the Midwest, you've got plenty of does and mature bucks tend to get with the first available does very quickly. So if you're going to catch a big, big one on his feet making mistakes moving long distances, it may not be during the time when you see the most bucks moving, if that makes sense. 00:26:37 Speaker 2: Perfect sense. I would go right before that. 00:26:40 Speaker 4: I'd go October 27th through, like, November the 3rd or whatever for that scenario. 00:26:47 Speaker 2: But you may have a different one. 00:26:48 Speaker 1: Yeah, no, let's run through a different scenario where a guy just– He's listening to this right now in September, and he's like, man, you know what? 00:26:54 Speaker 2: I've been banking my vacation. 00:26:55 Speaker 1: I need to get it in before the end of October or beginning of October just to go and hunt and have the most eventful week of the year. 00:27:04 Speaker 2: If you had to pick, what is it? Oh, man. If you wanted to have success, I'd just go during gun season. 00:27:13 Speaker 4: If you want to have the most eventful week where you see the most deer and stuff, that That could be the first week of November. I would err more towards the 10th than the first. Because in the Midwest, you're playing with fire a little bit the last week of October and the first week of November, especially with the weather. If you're in this gentleman's situation or this person's situation and you're wanting to pick a fixed week, fixed period of time that you have to ask off for, you're going to have to deal with weather no matter what. 00:27:49 Speaker 2: So if you pick the last week of October and it's. 00:27:52 Speaker 4: Hot and that subdues a little bit of movement, that's going to be tough. But once you get into the rut, when they start doing their thing closer towards November 10th, 12th, 13th, they're. 00:28:04 Speaker 2: Rutting no matter what. 00:28:05 Speaker 4: They're rutting whether it's 20 degrees or whether it's 85 out there. Now, their activity level is going to change somewhat, but You can predict that you're going to go and you're going to be hunting the rut, regardless of the temperature and the weather. So that's one factor that you can have a little bit more in your control. The other caveat to that, though, is that it is the peak of the rut, and a lot of things are very unpredictable when it comes to movement. 00:28:35 Speaker 1: Everything is at that time. The deer are unpredictable. The hunting pressure is unpredictable. I mean, there's just a lot of randomness. 00:28:42 Speaker 4: We did this a few years ago where we analyzed three different scenarios where we had the weekend warrior who could go every weekend but couldn't hunt at all during the week. We had the vacationer, which is the one you're talking about, where they're taking a week off. It's November 1st through the 7th, whatever dates they pick, you know, but it's fixed. 00:29:01 Speaker 2: And then they have the flexible worker. 00:29:03 Speaker 4: They can take off the same, all three of these can take off seven days, you know, or they have seven days to hunt. The weekend warriors just got you know, seven days made up of weekends, vacationers got seven days made up of vacation. The flexible workers got seven days whenever they want, you know, the flexible worker is the one that wins in my mind every time in that, because they can decide based on the conditions in the timeframe of the year when they can hunt so that if you can get in that position where you can have some flexibility with your vacation and you can move it a day or two here, a day or two there, I would highly encourage you to do that instead of just picking a fixed point in time out into the future. Cause man, if you're hunting October 27, in a lot of these situations of the Midwest and you hit it with a cold front, and they're smoking scrapes at that time, you may catch an insane flurry of movement and have a couple of amazing hunts, and that's really all it takes to get, in my mind, your goal is to get one good high-odds opportunity to target an animal with a bow. That's 30 yards and in. You might get that chance if you nail the setup and the conditions during that time frame. 00:30:26 Speaker 1: So in essence, bank your vacation day, but save some sick days. I get the best of both worlds with that. 00:30:35 Speaker 2: That's right, or split it up. 00:30:36 Speaker 4: I'm not necessarily a big fan of the week-long vacation because then you push all your chips in on that week, and if something doesn't go your way the first three or four days, then you're mentally and physically worn out towards the back half, and you're putting more pressure on yourself to get it done because your vacation's running out, you know? The grass is getting longer at home. The to-do list is getting longer. And it's just, I think it's easier if you go in two, three day spurts or two day spurts, even like just cruise over there and hunt for a couple of days and then go home and go back to what you're doing and then go vice versa and, you know, use your days that way. 00:31:19 Speaker 2: That'll help you. That'll help you. 00:31:22 Speaker 4: Keep more pressure off the spot a little bit easier. 00:31:26 Speaker 2: Yeah, spread it out. 00:31:27 Speaker 4: Yeah, and give you more flexibility on when you can go. And also it's going to make you mentally sharper because you've been well-rested leading up to the time that you're going hunting. Yeah. 00:31:36 Speaker 1: Yeah, day one of a mini trip, you're excited, you're positive versus day seven of a week-long vacation. You just feel like you're doing your time at that point. 00:31:45 Speaker 2: I'm here, I got to go. 00:31:47 Speaker 4: Yep, and that's when mistakes start to happen because you're just not mentally in the right space. 00:31:52 Speaker 1: All right there you guys have it i hope you guys enjoyed this week's episode of back 40 presented by mulchery there's always this debate every single year and it's always fun and it's fun to look back you know after let's say the end of november this year and and keep this this conversation in mind of how things really transpired and and did the weather really hit during some of those specific time periods or did the weather not cooperate and how did that impact or not impact your hunting so i hope you guys have a great rest of your week we'll see you next time