00:00:01
Speaker 1: All right, folks, welcome back to Roughfresh. This is Jake Koefer and we have a great episode here from a handful of folks across the Midwest. We have Phil Lincoln, Kevin Visson, Ben Mosley, and Jared Larson giving their most recent RUT report for one of the most exciting weeks of the year. And now we’re approaching potentially a little bit harder, but still a great amount of opportunity here coming up, and we’re going to talk about some things to consider. You still have that tag in your pocket, you feel like you’re struggling. Here’s some words of encouragement and some strategy that can help you over the next seven days. I hope you guys enjoy it. As you know. Rofresh is brought to you by land dot com, the leading online real estate marketplace to find your perfect rural, recreational, agricultural, or hunting properties here in the US. Let’s go in and get things started here with Phil Lincoln in Indiana. All right, first up on the line, we have Phil Lincoln, who recently tagged a buck in Indiana. Phil, how does it feel? You know, it’s always bittersweet, right, you know, It’s like it takes the pressure off. You know, the hard work pays off. But at the same time, you know, done in Indiana. Fortunately have a piece of property right across the border in Illinois and have landowner tags, so I just kind of get to focus on Illinois, which yeah, yeah, it’s it’s a good thing. I saw your post on I saw your post on Facebook, and I feel everyone has weird superstitions this time of year, because it feels like, quite frankly, a little bit of luck is needed, whether we all want to admit it or not, and you bust it out your lucky half. How much do you think that had to play into your success here? Well, I mean, yeah, who knows. I think, you know, with everything, we make our own luck. You know, I was in a based on the time of the year, I was in a rut funnel, and you know I shot a buck that I may or I mean, I have on camera.
00:02:01
Speaker 2: So you know, the one thing about a rut funnel.
00:02:03
Speaker 1: Is and especially if you’re connected to a big chunk of woods, you know, you got deer moving you you know, you may see the bucks that you have on camera and you may see totally different ones, so you know, and so uh, this breakdown that funnel is for someone to understand it. Did you have where was your sat blowing? Do you think there was bedding nearby? Kind of just paint that picture if you can, so people can get understanding what worked for you. So so I think there’s so I’m in a in a in a river bottom and it’s a it’s a section of the river that that chokes down pretty tight, right, So you got water that’s got some real steep banks that they’re clearly not you know, they’re not crossing the creek in that point. And then I’m on a Depending on which direction the wind’s blown, whether it’s got north and south in it, dictates which side of it I’m sitting on the anything with south in it, I’m sitting on the north side on a flat that’s covered with oaks. And the only downside to that is if they’re eating a lot of acorns, they can they can get behind you. The downside to that is is I almost can’t shoot all the way across the pinch point. If the wind is in the opposite direction and I’m on the other side close to you know, basically sitting close to the creek, I can shoot the whole thing, because I’m not all the way over. The downside is I’ve got across the path of the deer going back and forth to get there. So that’s where sink control is really critical. I was on the north side of the rut funnel and at one point I saw the buck that I thought was him come out of the come between the CRP and a finger of trees that I shot a good buck out of a few years ago. And I saw him come and I got excited and I thought, Oh, that looks like a would be a shooter. And then he kind of like turned like he saw some deer, and I saw his tail.
00:04:06
Speaker 2: I saw him run off, and I thought, oh crap.
00:04:08
Speaker 1: And then a little while later, probably like an hour later, I’m watching up the funnel and I don’t see much. I see a couple of doos come through, and then I’m sitting there and I’m just kind of like thinking do I stay or do I go? And I hear I hear something and I look down like right there, like already in range like twelve twelve yards from the base of my tree, and I see antlers and I see a tail twitch and I’m like, holy cow, where did he come from.
00:04:40
Speaker 2: I mean I didn’t even hear him, and he just walked right underneath me.
00:04:44
Speaker 1: I mean when I shot him, I was shooting, you know, not quite straight down, but like seven yards from the base of the tree in high you know, out low, and I literally watched him go like that and flop over. So love it. Well, congratulations, So you were you were a guide in Alaska, and I feel like an unspoken rule of a guide is to keep morale high and maybe not so like when when your hunter’s in there and he’s you know, spell this time or money, and you know it’s gone from work, one from his family and you’re struggling. What do you say to the guys listening right now that feel you know, they’ve been hunting really hard and just things haven’t been going the way they need to. We’re are entering arguably the lockdown period here between the twelfth and nineteenth. What do you say to a guy that’s like Phil, I don’t know, I’m struggling. So in Alaska, like moose hunting or brown bear hunting or caribou hunting, it can be like two or three days of slow and nothing before bam, something happens where white tail hunting. You know, sometimes half a day or a few hours can seem like a lifetime of nothing happening, right. But what I have found, some of the biggest trophies I’ve killed in my life have been shifting my attitude towards hunting with friends and allowing them to take the first trophies because they’ve either never done it before or never killed one. And what I’ve found is a lot of times being patient works out, works out to your benefit. And it usually it seems like whether you’re sitting in the white Tail woods or just spending day after day glassing, you know, call and moose, waiting for a big bull to walk in. About the time you really think why am I doing this, all of a sudden bam, something happens and you know, there’s that flurry of excitement for you know, however long, and you either take advantage of it or you don’t. But yeah, usually about the time you’re really thinking about giving up is usually when your luck changes it. You know, if you’re really serious and you’re actually putting the time in, it’s it’s bound to happen eventually.
00:06:55
Speaker 2: It’s just it’s gonna happen.
00:06:57
Speaker 1: That’s great advice.
00:06:58
Speaker 3: Is there any.
00:07:02
Speaker 1: Is there anything that sticks out to you to be you know, maybe one of the most important things that hunting this this next week of November, between the twelfth and nineteenth, it looks like temperatures are going to be kind of elevated for this upcoming weekend. You know, with all that considered, uh, where is kind of your hat at? I think I would give you know, probably the you know, the generic answers you’d get from most any you know, whitetail guy that time a period. So in Indiana this year that is Saturdays, actually the opening weekend of gun in Indiana. And even if I even if I haven’t shot my one buck in Indiana, sometimes I’ll gun hunt. Sometimes I just kind of wait for the madness to be over and then go back into bow hunting mode. Or I’ll put on a red cap, which you usually you know, you have to wear red to bow hunt. But I would say, you know, I would switch off to the you know, the thickets between you know, bedding and food and you know, catch the catch those bucks that are looking for that next dough you know where where you know, I mean back back in the thick, you know where you’re not like bumping deer out of bedding. But you’re not necessarily in the destination food plots either.
00:08:16
Speaker 4: You know.
00:08:16
Speaker 1: The the problem with hunting food plots is is you know, you blow dose out of food plots and you can you can change that spot for a week or several days or maybe the whole season where you know, if you can get between the food and the bedding, usually you’re catching deer going through and you know, when it gets dark, you can say, Okay, now’s my chance.
00:08:36
Speaker 2: Gather up your stuff, get down the tree.
00:08:38
Speaker 1: And you know, if you’ve got if you’ve got good access and you know in and out, that’s going to be your safest bet to you know, low impact, but still catch you know, those bucks, you know, frantically looking for the you know, for that next dough. And I mean, if you’ve got a high dough population, you know, you may not see much cruising looking for those doughs at all.
00:08:59
Speaker 2: They may not have to go far to get them.
00:09:01
Speaker 1: And I think that’s I think that’s what I’m that’s that’s what I’m dealing with here in Indiana. I think we just have too many dos and I think it’s you know, it’s just really cut down on the amount of buck movement in general. Yeah. Now, I think that’s important too, because I feel that, you know, the deeper the season gets, the more desperate people get where they’re like, oh, yeah, you know, I don’t really care if I scare some deer. I have to get back here. I have to get you know, like make you know, forget the fundamentals and dis inherently make it harder on themselves. So I think that’s a great piece of advice for folks to remember the fundamentals and keep keep You got to be there to win, right, You got to be out there to have an opportunity. But I still want to not make it harder for yourself. So I’m going to tell you something that I’d never talked about before, but I think it’s the biggest mistake that people make going into the woods. And I’ve done I’ve done a bunch of research on this, and I’ve done a little bit of writing. I haven’t come up with a a sale of the story.
00:09:51
Speaker 2: But you know, how we sneak into our tree stands.
00:09:55
Speaker 1: You know, we’re meticulous about keeping our boots clean and our pant legs clean, and we’re not touching the weeds as we’re walking through the woods and we’re like, uh, you know, got to get to my stand without leaving any scent.
00:10:05
Speaker 2: You go there, and then you know.
00:10:08
Speaker 1: Later in the morning you got a three year old dough walks exactly. Your path comes to the base of your tree, sifts around, and it maybe goes on about her business or whatever, and you think, how in the world can she smell me? Right, I mean, we’ve all been there, We’ve all been there, and I can tell you the most overlooked thing I think that everybody is dealing with.
00:10:26
Speaker 2: It’s your breath. Interesting, it’s your breath.
00:10:31
Speaker 1: Nobody talks about it, nobody covers it. Yet that’s how bloodhounds find people is breath, breath and skin cells. So the more you can cover up, long sleeves, gloves, cover your face. I’ve started. I started wearing a mask to my tree stamp. Right. So it’s hard to sit in a tree stamp a guy with glasses, it’s hard to sit for long periods of time because your glasses fog up. It just sucks. I mean, it takes all it takes all the remaining fun right out of it. Right, But for me now, I don’t want to leave any scent between the truck and the base of my tree. When I get up there, my, you know, my, my, my, uh.
00:11:18
Speaker 2: My breathing has relaxed.
00:11:20
Speaker 1: I’m not expelling as much moisture whatever, so I don’t pay as the closest attention to it. Although I’ve seen I’ve seen Jim Browker sit in a tree stand with a charcoal mask on and and literally cover his face. So when when when I go into my tree and I have deer completely around me in my downwind and I don’t have dose stomp and I don’t have any blown, I don’t have any carrying on, and then my trail cameras show pictures of bucks and doze in the same area around where I’ve been. I feel pretty confident that the day before, when I was in there, I didn’t have much impat Everybody knows every time you hunt a tree stand, the quality of that stand just goes down a little bit more, a little bit more, a little bit more. But when you don’t see deer reacting to you being there, I mean, it’s not a guarantee that you haven’t degraded that stand. Because I think anything can make a difference. The other thing that I learned too, is not only is it your breath, but then it’s also things that don’t belong there. I hunted Kansas with some bear clients a number of years ago. I hunted two years in a row, and every day when i’d walk into this stand, there was this huge puddle that when I turned off the main road and turned to go back into the woods to my tree stand, there was this big there was this big puddle, and so I thought, this is years ago. I thought, being a smart guy that I was, I’d get in there and scrub my boots real good and wash off anything that they might have picked up in the bed of the truck or whatever, you know, get them all wet, and then I screwed off into the woods, pimb up my tree stand and think, okay, here I go. And in some cases I think I was doing more harm by stepping in that puddle than I was if I would have just walked down the gravel road, turned down my path with dry boots and just went in. Because now what was happening is I’m introducing water and whatever scent was in that puddle from cars driving through whatever. I actually added more scent, more things that didn’t belong to my boots boom and scattered it right to my right, to my stand. Yeah, but I’m telling you the breath, the breath, The breath is big. That’s interesting. Well, nobody talks about it, but it’s your breath test. Yeah, Google, how does the bloodhound find a last person? And they’ll tell you it’s their breath and skin cells. And we all know that white tailed deer have better nose than a bloodhound. So as long as you’re leaving. I had an experiment. I put a white masth like we all wore during COVID. I took off from the truck, I went to my tree stand, I climbed up. When I got all settled, and I took it off. And when I took that white mask off, I had a puddle, a puddle like moisture ran dripped out. So all that moisture that was contained in that mask would have been scattered between the base of my tree and the truck. That’s interesting, well, people, Yeah, people can people can test this theory and see if they have less dear follow them. So knowing the phase of November right now, knowing weather isn’t you know a plus here for the next seven days scale one to ten. Where do you put this next weekend? Oof? Well, and I mean Indiana they’re going to slaughter him because his gun season.
00:14:44
Speaker 2: It’s the middle of the rud. I mean, it’s just a tragedy.
00:14:47
Speaker 1: But I’m not seeing I’m not seeing I’m not seeing the numbers of older age class deer this year that I have pretty consistently in the past. So I don’t know if EHD has taken more of a hit this year than it has in the past. If it’s just the you know, the full moon and then working at night and and you know, the warmer weather being less movement, If I’m just was really sucky about my trail cam location since this year, I don’t know.
00:15:19
Speaker 2: But to me it’s an off year. It to me, it’s it’s been hard to get excited.
00:15:27
Speaker 1: You know, people start getting excited about trail camp pictures over beans in July and then August, and then you know they get hard horned and you get the you get the dispersal and they’re like, oh, oh, my big deer are gone, or holy cow, one just showed up. I never worry about that stuff until like the first of October, and then I don’t get excited until you know, the twenty fifth of October. If I don’t have pictures of bucks by the twenty fifth of October, now I’m starting to kind of Now I’m kind of starting to panic a little bit. And that’s kind of the way it’s been like since the twenty fifth of November. So, I mean, I don’t want to be a Debbie downer, but for me, I you know, I’m gonna keep hunting Illinois and keep my fingers crossed. But it’s you know, with with even more warm weather, I think it’s just going to be more of the same. I mean, I think I think there’s gonna be a lot of deer killed just because it’s the one time of the year the bucks will make a mistake and and you know, not be as vigilant going through the woods, and people are gonna, you know, people are going to hammer them.
00:16:27
Speaker 2: But I don’t know.
00:16:30
Speaker 1: So one of ten, where do you put it?
00:16:32
Speaker 3: Ah?
00:16:35
Speaker 1: Six, Okay, I think we had another. I think we had another six in this patch. But well, Phil, congratulations once again, and good luck in Illinois and appreciate it. People can pay attention to their skin cells and their breath and maybe you’re onto something.
00:16:52
Speaker 2: I think I’m onto something.
00:16:54
Speaker 4: All right.
00:16:54
Speaker 1: Next up we have Kevin Visison with Deer Hunter Podcasts, who just tagged a perfon that’s no best buck in Michigan. Is that right?
00:17:02
Speaker 4: Yeah, that’s right.
00:17:03
Speaker 1: How’s it feel?
00:17:04
Speaker 4: It feels phenomenal.
00:17:07
Speaker 5: It was a real It was a real emotional rollercoaster.
00:17:11
Speaker 6: I hit a buck bad on Tuesday, hit him high, backstrapped him, and come to find out, when I got down out of the tree and started looking around, by site was loose. It was like fifteen yards. It was a chip shot. It was an absolute slam dunk chip shot. I had, I’ve got everything on film, but I got down and there was no blood, and so.
00:17:39
Speaker 5: I watched the footage back.
00:17:40
Speaker 6: I’m like, well, I definitely hit that deer high and my site had come loose. So I already had PTSD going from Tuesday and then Wednesday evening it was super high winds, so I tucked into some thermal cover on a down wind side of a small mountain. Basically that I assumed some does were betting on and that there might be some bucks kind of cruising through this area, and I just, you know, you gamble, and I picked the wrong trail. I was hoping that he was going to take the primary trail that was going to be between me and the dough betting, but he picked the one just behind me, which was on the down wind side of me. He came in on the down wind side of me, so I was kind of worked up. Plus I’m in a saddle and he was on my weak side, so I had I was matured deer at twenty yards unannounced to me. I look back, he’s right there, so I’m like, oh my gosh, get my bow.
00:18:40
Speaker 5: Come over my bridge.
00:18:42
Speaker 6: Lutily, luckily there was some pines, so he as he’s walking past me, he’s going through some pines and I was able to get away with a lot of movement.
00:18:51
Speaker 5: So I came over my bridge. But still is very acrobatic.
00:18:55
Speaker 6: And you know you when you practice shooting, you’re in yard, you got good form.
00:19:01
Speaker 5: Like everything’s this was the complete opposite.
00:19:04
Speaker 1: It was totally.
00:19:06
Speaker 5: It was.
00:19:07
Speaker 6: It was, and I realized that before I let the arrow go that I was right.
00:19:12
Speaker 5: It was in a terrible position. I did what I could to straighten myself out.
00:19:17
Speaker 6: I took an extra second and I really settled the pin and I was conscious about that because I just had a bad scenario and I didn’t want to have another one. But I let the arrow go. It sounded really good, it looked really good. But it happened well. I have it all on a film.
00:19:33
Speaker 5: It was twenty nine seconds from the time I saw the deer to the time I let the arrow go.
00:19:47
Speaker 6: When I got down to the impact site, there was no blood.
00:19:52
Speaker 5: The arrow had blood on it, but there was no blood.
00:19:54
Speaker 6: And I could see where the deer had turned up the pine leaves running and I went like twenty five yards and there wasn’t a single drop of blood.
00:20:02
Speaker 5: And I I just instantly just went to the deep, deep.
00:20:07
Speaker 6: Down bottoms of Oh my gosh, how could I have How could this have happened? And so what ended up happening is I think when I hit him, so he was quartering to a little bit, and he was very close, my entry was high and my exit was very low, like in.
00:20:26
Speaker 5: His armpit on the off side armpit.
00:20:28
Speaker 6: His leg was forward, and when that arrow came out, I think when he ran, his leg came back and covered the exit and it was like really tight to where it held all the blood in until the blood came up the cavity all the way to the high entry, because we went almost one hundred yards on little pinpricks of.
00:20:52
Speaker 5: Blood and then like someone opened a faucet.
00:20:57
Speaker 6: And the next fifty yards was just a basically a drug out puddle of blood and he was laying right there. And so I went from the lowest of lows to the highest of highs and had like, if anybody wants to get me a Christmas gift, I could use a subscription to a mental health clinic.
00:21:20
Speaker 4: Come out coming out of it.
00:21:22
Speaker 1: That’s November, November, white tales and a nuts.
00:21:25
Speaker 6: I’m telling you, I’m telling you, man, it’s a lot, it’s a lot. I had a good friend with me, and we celebrated accordingly, and it was a big emotional dump.
00:21:37
Speaker 4: But yeah, I’m going to weigh.
00:21:39
Speaker 5: The deer tomorrow.
00:21:40
Speaker 6: I suspect he’s maybe going to weigh around two hundred and twenty five pounds.
00:21:43
Speaker 5: You know, he’s a wilderness deer.
00:21:45
Speaker 6: He’s never had a bite of corn or any kind of egg or anything like that. So yeah, it’s it’s it’s still I guess it’s less common for you know, deer that live in that type of situation to put on a ton.
00:21:59
Speaker 4: Of win eight mass.
00:22:00
Speaker 6: You know they’re they’re really they put a lot of their time and energy into just surviving.
00:22:05
Speaker 1: Yeah. So yeah, no, that’s awesome, man, congratulations and super exciting. So still have a tag and so looking at here, you know, I think, you know, the first we’re getting into the first the first quarter of November is over. So like more than likely people that listeners dud. They’ve been hunting hard, they’ve been hunting every chance they get, and maybe things haven’t gone quite the way they were hoping. And so now from the twelfth of the nineteenth, what do you say to that guy that’s like, Man, I’m struggling. I’m struggling. I’m starting to get in my own head. I’m forgetting the fundamentals of what I need to be doing this time of year. For that guy, what do you tell them?
00:22:48
Speaker 5: I I you know, I grew up. I’m like fast and furious.
00:22:53
Speaker 6: And there’s a quote when the young guy’s drag Race and the old guy and he hits the nitrous too soon and he doesn’t make it to the finish line, and then Dominic Turetto says, too soon, Junior, and then he hits it at the end and he wins. Social media really accelerates people’s thinking. I think now that they gotta get it done. Everybody’s getting it done. I haven’t got it done. And you’re you are right. We are coming to the peak of the mountain. So you you climb up the peak of the mountain and we’ll call the peak of the mountain. We’re probably there right now as we’re recording this. It’s what the seventh, It’s Bill Winkie.
00:23:38
Speaker 1: Day, It’s National Tree Stand Bill Winki Day.
00:23:42
Speaker 5: Yeah, I had a buck hanging from my back tree.
00:23:44
Speaker 6: Bill Winky left me broadheads under it. But we got a whole downside of the mountain to come down and it doesn’t get bad for a long time.
00:23:56
Speaker 4: I took.
00:23:57
Speaker 6: My whole point is I wouldn’t be an any state of panic in any capacity.
00:24:03
Speaker 5: I if you give me.
00:24:05
Speaker 6: An option to hunt from November fifteenth to the end of the year or November fifteenth to October first, I would take November fifteenth to the end of the year. Easy decision for me. I know a lot of the deer have been killed, but I feel like a lot of the bigger and smarter deer that have made it through a deer season they have made it through a deer season and I’ve just had a lot of success late season. I feel like the woods empties out. And I also think it’s worth mentioning. I’ve heard a lot, and it’s for years people say lockdown, lockdown, lockdown, like it’s a bad thing. Lockdown that I love. Lockdown, Like you’re telling me the deer is in a place like and he’s staying there.
00:24:56
Speaker 5: That’s a gift. So and when the deer.
00:25:01
Speaker 6: Lockdown, it’s like a dog with a bone and another dog goes to it and it’s guards it. Those deer almost get like in zombie mode where you can almost like go in and throw stuff at them and they won’t leave.
00:25:19
Speaker 4: Yeah, they won’t leave.
00:25:20
Speaker 5: So when the.
00:25:22
Speaker 6: Lockdown lockdown phase happens, the deer do stop ranging quite so much. But if you know where the dough betting is and where the heavy cover is and where a buck wants to push a dough to breed them, you just got to get into those spots and you can literally walk in on those deer and push them out of there.
00:25:45
Speaker 5: And they don’t.
00:25:48
Speaker 6: Like to leave. They don’t like to leave. So if you’re a mobile hunter and you have flexibility. I understand that if you are sitting over you know, maybe a food source, and you’re not mobile, and the deer aren’t moving as much, and they’re not willing to run across the open field in the middle of the day because they’re tucked up in heavy cover with a dough. But I like to hunt that heavy cover, so I guess, you know, to put a bow on that. I love what’s coming, like, I’m excited for what’s coming. Plus, our gun season opens November fifteenth, m hm, So it’s almost.
00:26:30
Speaker 1: Basically another basically another Michigan national holiday. You guys have a lot of holidays in November that a lot of people don’t recognize. You got Bill Winkie Day, and you have opening Day a gun season in Michigan.
00:26:44
Speaker 6: Yeah, November fifteenth is a special day and it marks the kickoff of our gun season. And then where I live, I get it’s a rate around the same time where I start to get snow.
00:26:57
Speaker 4: So it’s a big reset for me.
00:26:58
Speaker 6: It opens up a whole new deer season because I can start tracking and doing some things that I can’t do without snow. I know that that’s you know, not for every everybody doesn’t have that situation. But I really love when we get to that time of the year. But the best is the best is yet to come in in my opinion, and I love If I had to pick one week, I would pick the week of Thanksgiving. Every time, I’ve had more big deer walk during daylight hours and the last week of November historically than anything else that I see through the year. And we get you know, we get hundreds or thousands of video and photo submissions from people that use our synthetic scent products. The sample size that I have seen is with our community is very It lines up with what I have seen personally, and a lot of deer, big deer late November because like I said, they’ve been through a deer season before, they’ve been chased before. You know, they’ve been through it for three or four years, and they know how to they know how to slide through that period and they understand a lot of people I think are out of the woods by that time of year, and they get one, they get there’s less people in the woods, and two we come down the backside of the mountain, there’s not as many doughs like uh.
00:28:36
Speaker 5: I’ve experienced multiple times where I’m mature.
00:28:38
Speaker 6: Dose dose will go to Bucks like they don’t even have to go out and run crazy to breed, right, But that might not be the case come like November twenty if through twenty fifth, something like that. And I’ve just consistently seen it for years where that is such a golden opportunity. But a lot of people like I said, too soon, Junior’s.
00:29:07
Speaker 1: That’s perfect, perfect way to describe it. So either go get another boost of nitrous the remainder of this month, or realize that it is truly a marathon and not a sprint. As cliche as that sounds, it’s it is.
00:29:23
Speaker 6: You can’t just start a marathon off sprinting, or you’re not gonna make it. And you got to be conscious that social media will lead you to believe that everybody’s got their buck and the thing is over.
00:29:37
Speaker 5: But it’s it’s you know, it’s not the case.
00:29:41
Speaker 1: I love it. Well, congratulations once again, Kevin. Uh. When’s when’s the footage gonna go live? Is it next year? This year? Soon?
00:29:49
Speaker 6: I imagine we’ll put something short format together here in the uh in the coming weeks just so people can have a look at it. But we we have a Hunt series on our YouTube at Deer Hunter Podcast, and I’ll save the long format story for next year and then hopefully you have even bigger one.
00:30:13
Speaker 7: Uh.
00:30:14
Speaker 6: Wrap my next tag around to love it bigger one here in the coming weeks.
00:30:19
Speaker 1: So love it well. Congratulations was again uh and man, good luck on the next one.
00:30:25
Speaker 4: Thanks Jake.
00:30:28
Speaker 1: All right, we got Ben Moseley with White Tail Lane Designs who just smoked his target buck in Wisconsin. How does it feel?
00:30:36
Speaker 7: It feels pretty good. Feels good like a big weight off your shoulders. A lot of people knew about.
00:30:42
Speaker 1: That, dear, so a lot of people were hunting that same dear.
00:30:46
Speaker 4: Yeah.
00:30:46
Speaker 7: He I mean prior to that, he’d been shot at twice. So neighbor neighbor just over the hill shot at him. They’ve got a stand right on our fence line, m so. And then and then I shot at him too.
00:31:02
Speaker 1: If you had a swing and a miss, I had a swing.
00:31:04
Speaker 4: And a miss.
00:31:05
Speaker 7: It was like it was the like when was it the eighth, no seventh or the eighth of October? I just found him, like on the first and I had to leave to drive back down to Louisiana and then we were going to Hawaii. For my wife’s birthday. So he comes out fifty five yards. I’m like, oh, I can, I can do this, set my sight and then I intentionally hang hold low and I watched the air like as it goes, I’m like, that’s low shit it the fletching must have touched is his hair, and he just jumps and pretty thick cover. He went like ten yards and then disappeared and walked about twenty yards for me, but in a bunch of really thick stuff and just walked off. But uh, he was back on camera the next day in the same area. He had no idea, but I’d set my site pin in the rush of it everything because he was in such thick like CRP. I’d set it at fifty one and I said it right at fifty five, pretty sure you would.
00:32:09
Speaker 4: Have been dead. But whatever, right I shot him, it.
00:32:13
Speaker 1: Still worked out. Yeah, So let’s talk about it. So it’s November seventh, right now. You connected with them on November sixth. What’s the activity been like as far as you know, Like, let’s say, what was November fourth and fifth, and then obviously sixth it came together here, But what’s been the activity here?
00:32:33
Speaker 7: Okay, So November fourth. I mean, we’ve had really high winds up here, so it was pretty slow. Evenings have been really slow up here in general camera activity. Everybody talking about it, just because of the really high winds that we have, warmer temps than normal.
00:32:47
Speaker 4: Mornings have been pretty good.
00:32:49
Speaker 7: November fifth, I saw the buck and he’d actually gone into my parents’ yard.
00:32:55
Speaker 4: I’ll send you the video. It might actually be on my Instagram.
00:32:58
Speaker 7: I forgot, but my dad said, up a decoy down there is like, hey, let’s just see what happens. And he’s drinking his morning coffee looking out the front window.
00:33:06
Speaker 4: A little buck.
00:33:06
Speaker 7: Comes down, and then he comes down, He squares up with the decoy, sends the decoy flying, and then walked twenty yards from the house.
00:33:17
Speaker 4: So and then he walked back up the hill.
00:33:19
Speaker 7: Walks towards me, and he skirts me about fifty some yards just in thick cover and goes and beds down. And then I didn’t I saw him again later that night on the other side of the farm at like eight pm on camera.
00:33:34
Speaker 1: SO and so governing some distance obviously a RT mentality that he’s fighting decoys in the yard. And then on the six kind of walk us through that game plan on how you set up and made it happen.
00:33:49
Speaker 7: Okay, So I have a stand. It’s about one hundred yards from this house. And the way this property is is it’s you You’re basically hunting from the inside out. It’s it’s not like you’re accessing from your normal roads or your egg fields. So I have this stand that is east of the house, about maybe one hundred yards.
00:34:09
Speaker 4: It’s down in the bottom. There’s a pretty deep ditch.
00:34:13
Speaker 7: A lot of stuff has been pushed into it because I did a lot of doser work up here to open up the egg fields, and so deer just they won’t cross right there. And when you’ve got i mean your sun rises from the east, and I’ve got a great big rock formation up there that blocks the sun this time of year until about ten ten thirty in the morning, So thermals don’t do what thermals will normally do and start rising.
00:34:36
Speaker 4: They’re they’re rushing, so rushing down the hill.
00:34:39
Speaker 7: So as long as I’ve got a steady, calm east wind, nothing’s gonna nothing’s gonna win me. So that’s where I said, and I actually almost slept in for the first time yesterday morning. But I have this this drive where if I don’t do it, it’s gonna eat at me. So I got to the stand probably like five minutes before light, and uh, shortly after setting up, I hear it Doe blowing and this the doze in this area.
00:35:12
Speaker 4: They’re getting really spooky.
00:35:14
Speaker 7: I’ve watched Doe and Fawns blow at Bucks already this year, so I’m assuming she’s being her assed. And uh, shortly later, about ten minutes after I hear it blowing, she walks twenty yards in front of me on a logging road and she stops and she stares, and I’m like, okay, she looks like she’s looking at me, but I can tell she’s looking through me. I’m like, there’s something behind me, but I can’t hear anything or just off to my right. And finally I hear a really deep, deep grunt and she sits there and stares some more and starts blowing again. So I’m like, okay, like that, it’s got to be him. My assumption is is him. They seem to kind of push everything out of the area except for a few year and a half.
00:35:59
Speaker 4: Year old Bucks.
00:36:01
Speaker 7: And she walks off and I see I finally see him out of the corner of my eye. And I see him. I’m like, he’s coming right for the tree. I’m like, please do not walk behind me. I’m like, if you walk behind me, you’re gonna win me. Because my thermals were right there. But there’s one little narrow path like three feet he would have been right on the tree. He ended up bearing and he went in front of the tree. I watched him through the platform. I’m sitting watching them through the platform walk underneath me.
00:36:31
Speaker 4: He’s locked on the dough.
00:36:33
Speaker 7: His eyes are locked on the dough, and I finally just slowly stand up, grab my bow and shoot him hardquartering away at fifteen yards and he piles up on the logging road of it after fifty yards and.
00:36:47
Speaker 4: Pretty Yeah.
00:36:49
Speaker 1: Yeah, that’s fun. Yeah, that’s that’s what November is all about, those moments right there, that’s what everyone’s working towards. And so for folks that still have their tag in their pockets, so I want you to shift gears to November twelfth. Yeah, so it’s November twelfth, we still have a tag in your pocket. Maybe something didn’t quite go right, maybe you feel like you’re hunting a ghost. What would you tell that person for this upcoming week, so November twelfth to the seventeenth.
00:37:17
Speaker 7: Keep on with the grind. I tell a lot of people like the rut. The rout really sucks. Really when you think about it, it’s not super fun to hunt because you’re in you’re sitting there, and it can be extremely boring. I mean, hours on stand the dos have been harassed to the point where they just don’t want to get her assed anymore. So they’re kind of hanging tight. You’re waiting for one buck to get up and move through. Maybe you’ll see like a yearling every once in a while, but then all of a sudden, you’ve got like thirty seconds of just crazy action. Your heart gets beating, and then it’s dead again. That’s what everybody’s waiting for. You just got to keep a positive mindset, keep with grind, keep your butt planet in a tree stand. Do not sit there and like hunt based off of camera intel, because if you have a buck on camera, you already missed him.
00:38:11
Speaker 4: He’s gone, he went through that area.
00:38:14
Speaker 7: And honestly, running cameras and funnels is kind of hard because usually, I mean a funnel doesn’t always bottleneck down to like ten yards to where camera is really effective.
00:38:24
Speaker 4: It’s probably a fifty sixty.
00:38:26
Speaker 7: Yard wide funnel and the bucks just kind of run through there.
00:38:39
Speaker 1: Yeah, that’s I think Tho’s really good advice as far as maybe someone’s struggling on man, you know it the activity is slowing down, and you know the dose are definitely harassed. I’ve definitely pressured the farm. Like these are things that all going through their mind right now. Is there any odd ball, throw a dart idea that you have for someone that’s just like, dude, I’ve tried everything, I’ve hunted my spots, and I’m seeing less and less, dear, and I just I feel out of the game. Do you stick with the plan or do you call an audible or tear through and scout a little bit?
00:39:13
Speaker 7: I mean, scouting at this time of year, to me is kind of a crap shoot because if you go and you find a bunch of rubs, more than likely those rubs were done either when he was with the dough and frustrated and he’s already moved on from that area, or they were done most likely late October when they are.
00:39:34
Speaker 4: Rubbing a lot, or really early in November when they’re rubbing.
00:39:36
Speaker 7: A lot scrapes. They kind of fall off the scrapes. I’ll actually notice a lot of bucks on camera this time of year. They’ll actually skirt on the down wind side of scrapes and I’ll just scent check it real quick, unless it’s a scrape they’ve never visited before. I’ve got videos of this buck actually even walking by a scrape that I know they’ve never been to before, and they’ll put the brakes on and then they’ll go visit it. But then after that they’ll treat it like every other scrape and they’ll just walk past it and.
00:40:08
Speaker 4: Check it.
00:40:09
Speaker 7: So I would just say the best thing for you is to plant your butt in a funnel. If there’s a water hole on it, that’s even better, because that’s like the one thing that Bucks will go out of their way for this time of the year is water. Stay off the food sources, because if there’s any does on food sources, it’s really late at night in my area for cameras. I’m starting to just see on my farms just fonns wandering by themselves, a year and a half year old bucks moving quite a bit, so that kind of tells me that they’re with DOES, right now or a lot of doughs. So I’m guessing here, in about twenty four to forty eight hours, I’m gonna see a big flurry of activity on those cameras of newer Bucks running through, going all over the place, and it’s going to be another another forty eight to seventy two hours of nothing.
00:41:03
Speaker 1: Yeah, looking here the extended forecast Saturday, November fifteenth, high of sixty nine here in north central Illinois. What do you say for that guy that has the Saturday off. He’s like, it’s November fifteenth, it’s almost seventy degrees. Do I even go? What do you say to that guy?
00:41:22
Speaker 4: Don’t use that as an excuse not to go.
00:41:24
Speaker 7: The biggest book I’ve ever killed was on Halloween in nineteen mile an hour winds and it was seventy degrees that day and he was bumping doze all over the place.
00:41:33
Speaker 1: Okay, so stick with them, Yeah, just stick with it.
00:41:37
Speaker 7: This time of year, anything can happen. It’s just a grind. I mean, you just have to be in the stand.
00:41:47
Speaker 4: To do it.
00:41:48
Speaker 7: That’s everybody loves the rut because it’s when the most action happens. And I just yeah, temperature definitely helps movement, but I think it’s helping the doze moving than the bucks have to kind of keep up with them. But when that dough gets up after she’s locked down with him, that buck’s gonna get up and he’s gonna he’s gonna move and maybe just a short distance, but maybe that’s all it takes.
00:42:14
Speaker 1: Yeah, So looking, you know, knowing that we’re gonna have some elevated temperatures between the twelfth and call it, I guess the nineteenth. On a scale one to ten, what what would you put this? This is that becoming week as far as potential big buck activity.
00:42:33
Speaker 7: So we here we actually have a huge cold front coming I think.
00:42:39
Speaker 1: This weekend. But yeah, so we gotta this will go live on the twelfth.
00:42:43
Speaker 7: Okay, okay, okay, yeah, I mean elevated temperatures Again, anything can happen.
00:42:51
Speaker 4: Does it suck? Yeah? Are they gonna move a little bit more at night? Can it happen? Yeah?
00:42:56
Speaker 7: The chips aren’t exactly stacked completely in your favor, but it’s all right. The rut stop. Just I really dislike like hunting forecast apps. I want to if you if you take like a bunch of them, you compare themselves. They contradict each other all the time, and then you’ll do that. Yeah, You’ll sit there and you’ll look at it and be like, oh, this says it’s a good day, and then all of a sudden, thirty minutes later, it says it’s slow.
00:43:23
Speaker 4: And so.
00:43:25
Speaker 1: Scale one to ten. Yeah, scale one to ten with elevated temps from the twelfth to nineteenth. Where do you put it? You gotta we gotta put a hard number on.
00:43:31
Speaker 4: It, probably like six.
00:43:34
Speaker 1: Okay, all right, probably it’s sick.
00:43:36
Speaker 7: I’m not gonna I’m not gonna give it like uh ten, because again, you don’t have the perfect temperatures.
00:43:42
Speaker 4: But it’s the rut you.
00:43:44
Speaker 1: Think it happened. Yeah, anything comes down to mindset. That’s right. Well, congratulations on tagging your target buck here man. That that is awesome. That’s what everyone’s that’s what everyone’s chasing here. So congratulations, you made it happen, and I appreciate you hopping on here.
00:43:58
Speaker 4: Yeah, no problem, all right.
00:44:01
Speaker 1: Next up on the line, we have Jared Larson with on ex Jared, how was your November seventh?
00:44:07
Speaker 8: Uh? My November seventh was mostly in my car, but I did get did get to the destination for an evening sit. It was not overbly memorable, but we were. It was exploratory, so it was it was solid, saw some new ground, put the boots on some dirt.
00:44:22
Speaker 3: And uh, I’m feeling real good about the next week.
00:44:25
Speaker 1: I love it. I love it. And so you just wrapped up a hunt in Wisconsin. What was the rud activity, deer activity? What was going on up there?
00:44:32
Speaker 3: Yeah?
00:44:32
Speaker 8: I was in Wisconsin the last week and we had some really good sits and some really tough sits. You know, personally, I definitely am a little bit of a subscriber to the full moon.
00:44:43
Speaker 3: Which obviously just kind of peaked full.
00:44:47
Speaker 8: And I really seem in my anecdotal personal experience that waxing to the full I do a lot better on the evening sits.
00:44:55
Speaker 3: Uh, And that that held true this past week. I shot a really good buck.
00:45:01
Speaker 8: And uh, I mean, he couldn’t have cared less about the dos in the field. He was just on a marching mission, laying down scrapes. I mean he literally walked five yards from you know, four dos and never even looked at him.
00:45:16
Speaker 3: So, you know, I’ll take him how I can get him. But he wasn’t too interested in the ladies.
00:45:20
Speaker 8: We had lots of young deer chasing, you know, a year and a half, two and a half year old deer, three and a half year old deer.
00:45:26
Speaker 3: But the mature bucks that we did.
00:45:27
Speaker 8: See, you know, really really weren’t paying that close of attention to the ladies.
00:45:33
Speaker 1: Interesting. Interesting, So what date did you shoot that buck? Do you remember the shot?
00:45:39
Speaker 3: That book?
00:45:39
Speaker 8: On?
00:45:39
Speaker 1: November third?
00:45:40
Speaker 3: The evening of November.
00:45:41
Speaker 1: Third, beautiful day. That’s a great day to be a deer hunter.
00:45:45
Speaker 3: That yep, it historically has been one of my best.
00:45:50
Speaker 1: Yeah. So going into Iowa. Now, so you you packed up as November seventh, and how long do you are you pointing to be hunting in Iowa?
00:45:58
Speaker 8: Yep, So I’ll be in Iowa, i believe if Sunday is the seventeenth, and I’ll have to head back to Montana on the seventeenth. So we got we got a good full eight nine days of lundon here.
00:46:09
Speaker 1: Perfect, Okay. So obviously, unfortunately we’re recording this, we have like the cold front of the year where this is likely going to be one of the best activity spurts of the year. So when this goes live, hopefully everyone has had so much success. They don’t even have to tune into rough Fresh because they don’t need to know what’s going on, because I already tagged a giant. So but for folks that didn’t, so like November twelfth to the nineteenth, looking at some potential elevated temperatures, where’s your head at?
00:46:37
Speaker 3: Yeah?
00:46:38
Speaker 8: You know, you know here and I will obviously as you mentioned, that cold front is going to be passed by that point, and I think we’re looking at lows in the like high twenties, low thirties, heating up to the low sixties during the day, which I really don’t mind that for Iowa here, you know, the late mornings is really what I’m going to be keyed up on again, that waning moon after the full I really am a firm believer in that eight thirty nine am to twelve thirty one pm timeframe. I’m going to be really keyed up on, you know, the down wind side of dough betting.
00:47:11
Speaker 6: Uh.
00:47:12
Speaker 8: And you know, being a guy just like you that hunts a fair amount of public and a fair amount of private, I one thing that lulls me to sleep when I’m hunting private ground is I look at the wind to not get busted by deer, rather than looking at the wind to understand how a deer is going to use that wind. And so that’s really something I always have the option to go mobile if the wind is going to be you know, let’s say we have a west wind, I’m really going to be keyed up on those east faces where those deer can put the wind at their back that security blanket. So I really try to take my public land hunting mindset into private.
00:47:52
Speaker 3: Land when I when I’m hunting the.
00:47:53
Speaker 8: Rut and just really focusing on what are those deer going to be doing, how are they going to be using that wind to their advantage, rather than just so solely focused on playing the wind to not get busted. I mean to be super candid with you, sometimes I throw caution to.
00:48:09
Speaker 3: The wind this time of year.
00:48:12
Speaker 8: You know, if I have a spot that I am hot to trot on and I just have a good feeling about it, I’ll hunt a bad wind this time of year.
00:48:20
Speaker 3: And it’s really the only time of year that I’ll do that.
00:48:22
Speaker 8: So that’s what I’m gonna be keyed in on, especially in the mornings, is you know that downwind side of dough betting. I’m in some hillier country, so I’m gonna use the topography to my advantage, using the light hour feature on on X to really find those small nuanced draws, benches, drainages where those deer can put the put the wind at their back, and you know, find that good betting and be down wind to that.
00:48:43
Speaker 3: And then in the evenings.
00:48:44
Speaker 8: You know, a lot of times I’ll be pulling all day sits for the most part, but that does not mean I’m gonna be sitting in the same tree all day. You know, I’ll hunt a morning set on the down wind side of dough betting, but then I’ll move to food h in the evening, trying to find those dos because those bucks obviously are going to be keyed up on those those major food sources. So where I’m at, we don’t have a whole lot of food plots, but we got egg up the wazoo, as most people do in Iowa. So I really prefer corn this time of year over beans, so I’ll be I’ll be looking to find some corn fields, find those edges, and you know, early on finding those observation sets. It’s hard to do an observation sit sometimes when you’re trying to kill them during the rut, But it can really pay dividends to just understand where those dos are coming from, because that also gives you just that tip of the hat as far as knowledge goes on where they’re betting. That way, you can just continually reposition yourself to be being the best plot possible because even on private land, you know, you think.
00:49:41
Speaker 3: You know it like the back of your hand, but sometimes you can find just.
00:49:44
Speaker 8: A tricky little spot that that’s kind of an aha, light bulb moment.
00:49:49
Speaker 1: Yeah. Absolutely. How closely have you been paying attention to the deer movement forecast and onyx have you been? Have you been testing this each day? Like, well, this is above average below average based off of because that’s a new that’s a new feature that I think a lot of people don’t know about. You just clicked the weather icon. I had to ask you how to do it. So what have you been seeing with this? Has it been matching up?
00:50:09
Speaker 3: Yeah?
00:50:09
Speaker 8: So I’ve been trying to take daily screenshots like a couple of days out for the deer movement forecast day of.
00:50:16
Speaker 3: And honestly, dude, I’ve been I’ve been pretty impressed.
00:50:19
Speaker 8: I would say that our deer movement forecast is maybe a little bit pessimistic in our percent chance of movement, but I’m okay with that.
00:50:28
Speaker 3: I’d rather tell people they have a fifty percent chance been one hundred percent chance.
00:50:33
Speaker 8: Because, as every single one of you listening knows, there is no one hundred percent chance day. Uh and if nothing else, you know, use that deer movement forecast as that little subtle nudge to uh not watch football on Sunday and get your butt out to a tree stand if it’s gonna be you know, above a forty percent movement.
00:50:50
Speaker 3: Chance, you know.
00:50:52
Speaker 8: And it’s all based on you know, data from machine learning, trail camera photo intake, as well as all the typical weather parameters barometric pressure, temperature, moon phase, all that stuff goes into account.
00:51:06
Speaker 3: So I’ve definitely been paying attention to it.
00:51:08
Speaker 8: But as with any piece of technology, the only way to not kill a deer is to not be hunting.
00:51:17
Speaker 1: Perfectly well said, that is the essence and epitome of November deer hunting. But for the guy that’s like, man, I’ve just been getting my teeth kicked in. I’m do I even know how to deer hunt, Like I’m doing everything wrong is what it feels like. What do you say to that guy, Because there’s a lot of people that are going to feel like this if they don’t capitalize on this cold front that happens before this goes live.
00:51:39
Speaker 9: You know, I think the word it’s a grind gets used a lot in the whitetail world especially, And at the end of the day, if you’re feeling like it’s a grind, take a day off, you know, sweep.
00:51:51
Speaker 3: In until eight thirty in the morning, go out there at.
00:51:53
Speaker 8: Nine am and hunt that like cruisan scent check in time of the day, you know, if you’re not having fun, but like, take take a break. Hunting is supposed to be fun. It’s supposed to be enjoyable, you know. I think everybody wants to chase that five and a half six and a half, you know, seven and a half year old deer. But at the end of the day, man, if you’re ready to loosen arrow and a three year old walks by that you’re excited about and you’re gonna be happy with and you’re gonna be proud of, give it to them.
00:52:21
Speaker 1: I love it. I love it so with knowing that temperature as gonna be a little bit elevated. So hones scale one to ten, where do you put the next seven days? The twelfth of the nineteenth and ten being the this is the best week ever, one being I’m not even gonna go.
00:52:37
Speaker 8: Where I am in Iowa historically. You know, we’ve hunted this farm for twenty five years.
00:52:44
Speaker 3: There is no better time.
00:52:46
Speaker 8: This is the time, you know, I would really kind of bracket it from November ninth to November fifteenth as like the best days where we’re at in Iowa. But I would say the later that November progresses, call it like the fifteenth through the twenty second. What we’ve noticed is more mature bucks are on their feet.
00:53:07
Speaker 3: You’re not gonna be in that rut.
00:53:08
Speaker 8: Crazed phase of you know, one two three year old deer just running everywhere and chasing. But when you do see a buck, there’s an elevated chance that it’s gonna be a mature dear.
00:53:17
Speaker 3: So you know, those sits can get tough.
00:53:20
Speaker 8: You know, you’re you’re definitely entering the more likely of lockdown phase. I think you know from today November seventh all the way through that fifteenth is when you know a lot of the dos are gonna come into Estris, so you’re gonna have.
00:53:31
Speaker 3: Some empty sits.
00:53:32
Speaker 8: You know, if you haven’t ever been skunked deer hunting, you’re either really blessed or you ain’t.
00:53:38
Speaker 3: Been hunting enough. So you know, I would say stay out there. And one thing that I’ve.
00:53:43
Speaker 8: Really started to key in on in the last couple of years is water. You know, like I think water can be better than a dang bait pile. There’s one thing that deer need to do every single day, and that is drink water.
00:53:56
Speaker 3: They can go a day.
00:53:57
Speaker 8: Without eating, they can go, you know, a day without doing whatever that a deer does, except water. So we have a couple strategic, you know, pieces of water on our property, and we also have a creep that runs through it. But I saw a really interesting post recently that resonated with me that deer don’t prefer to drink from moving water for a couple of reasons. A there’s there’s noise to it, right, and when a deer is drinking, their head is down, their nose is in the water.
00:54:26
Speaker 3: They’re completely reliant on their ears.
00:54:29
Speaker 8: And so I’ve noticed at the properties that I hunt that have running water, deer seem to prefer little still ponds, you know, twenty gallon buckets that are buried in the ground, and that’s exactly what we have at this Iowa farm. We got three or four, you know, ten to twenty gallon buckets that we’re definitely going to be filling up the first couple of days here, and I’m gonna be keying in on that water, especially in those warmer late mornings. You know, a buck before he goes back to bed, and the first thing he does when he gets up, he’s probably gonna be looking for a drink. So with the warmer temperatures, I would key it on water. If you have moving water and that’s all you got, go on it. If you got still water, go on it.
00:55:12
Speaker 1: I love it. Well. Jared, good luck here with an Iowa tag already shot out Wisconsin buck. It’s a pleasure. And keep keep checking in on the benchmarking the forecasting app because that’s an unfor like everyone’s like, well they have said this, so you guys are giving yeah, well, Jared, thank you so much.
00:55:35
Speaker 3: Appreciate it. Jake, good luck everybody.
00:55:37
Speaker 1: There, you guys have I hope you guys enjoyed this week’s episode of Retfresh. Good Luck over the next week. I know conditions aren’t perfect. You’re probably tired, you’re probably questioning everything, you’re questioning your preparation. But if there was one theme here for today, it’s a stick to it, stick to it, hunt smart, and you’re going to get the lucky balance, lucky break, or strategic break or a strategic bounce that is going to help you finish out this season or finish out this part of November before things start to wind out. You know, we’re on the on the decline of the peak of the mountainous, Kevin said, so be sure to capitalize it, enjoy this time period, don’t wish it away, and get out there and good luck.
00:56:21
Speaker 6: M
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