The Blacktail Coach Podcast
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The Blacktail Coach Podcast
How AI Helps Hunters Decode Deer Rubs And Habitat Choices
Ever wondered if AI can actually help you tag a smarter hunt, or if it’s just another loud voice with half-truths? We put it on the stand and tested its advice against muddy boots, real rub lines, and the stubborn logic of blacktail country. Starting with a simple question—why bucks shred willows—we dug into nutrition, chemistry, and behavior to see what holds up: soft bark that peels clean, high moisture that flexes, and rich scent from torn cambium that supercharges a buck’s calling card. The more we checked those claims against local sign, the more a pattern emerged around riparian edges, shade, and security cover.
We also mapped what AI misses and how to fix it. Good prompts matter. So does verifying species ranges, reading the original studies, and using plant ID apps to tell willow from alder when fresh rubs turn red or orange. If your woods run heavy on hard-bark trees—mature oak, walnut, beech—expect fewer rubs even with deer present; shift your scouting toward flexible young cedar or pines where odor and fiber reward a rub. We share practical tactics like creating starter rubs and adding a scent rope to wake up travel lines, plus a size guide for trunks that mature bucks prefer.
From there we zoom out into habitat work that turns a micro-range into home base: planting multi-purpose trees, shaping water, and letting edges grow thick so bucks can feed, rub, and vanish in two steps. AI can help draft schedules, organize scent charts, and surface follow-up questions you didn’t know to ask—but it won’t replace the craft or the law. We talk ethics, new rules on cams and drones, and why the spirit of the hunt still lives in woodsmoke, thermals, and patience. If you’re ready to use technology without losing your edge, hit play, subscribe, and leave a review to tell us how you’re building smarter sign this season.
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Welcome back to the Blacktail Coach Podcast. I'm Aaron. And I'm Dave. This week the topic is can I trust AI with my hunt? And this came about. So a lot of times I'm one of those computer people. Like I don't know tons about computers. I think Osha kind of dwarfs what I'm in between Dave and Osha.
SPEAKER_00:I know a ton about computers. Computers are my life.
SPEAKER_01:Dave re reads magazines still. And so that's where he gets his information. Enjoys every minute of it. And enjoys every minute of it. But you know, with a lot of younger guys who listen to us, you're more likely to use, I would think, AI, chat GPT, something like that, if you're trying to find information. And the basic of it is we would just say Google it. And Dave and I being Gen X kids, you know, Google it and you just type it into Google and it'll bring you up. And I was explaining this to Dave is how AI, the chat GPT works. It brings you up articles and then you read through the articles. AI, chat GPT, or whichever particular one that you want to use, summarizes all the information and spits it out at you.
SPEAKER_04:Right.
SPEAKER_01:But that's one of the things, as with me being a new hunter. Is this accurate? I don't know because I don't have that information to question that. I don't have that basis. So I've I'd say the first thing is always verify what it says if you go to look something up.
SPEAKER_00:Right, right. So what was news to me is you're telling me when we before we went on air here that AI isn't necessarily truthful. So it'll tell you what it thinks you want to hear.
SPEAKER_01:That's what Asha says. It'll tell you what it thinks you want to hear.
SPEAKER_00:So I feel like I'm married to AI. Because it's like there's so many areas in my life that I'm told what I want to hear, I guess, or what I'm supposed to think.
SPEAKER_01:So has she ever said you're a great hunter?
SPEAKER_00:She has not. Okay.
SPEAKER_01:So not always she's telling you what you want to hear.
SPEAKER_00:I get a lot of her rolling over, going, Oh, it's you.
SPEAKER_01:That's that's Dave. So Asha is listening to us as we record, which is why we're partially throwing her under the bus. So it might give incomplete information. And a lot of that I think has to do with the prompts. So you have to know how to prompt it with the information that it's asking. And one of the things, and we're gonna keep referencing back to this, is we had talked about one of the things when you were out scouting, was it last year? And it was what the your breaking bad set. Okay, yeah. And you'd probably seen those trees before, but there was a whole line of what we thought were hooker willows that rubs just shredded and a lot of them, and tried to figure out different ways of okay, what kind of tree is this? And then finally, I thought it was a hooker willow. And just recently I started looking into willows with AI.
SPEAKER_00:What it was is we had a listener reach out and somehow they we put posted a picture or something, and they came back and said that's a hooker willow tree. And so we knew it was a willow. We just didn't realize what kind of.
SPEAKER_01:I didn't even know if it was a I didn't know it was a willow. I knew it was a willow.
SPEAKER_00:I just didn't know what kind it was. And they said it was a hooker willow. But we found out that we're not in the range, yeah, it is a willow tree, but it is not the hooker willow that has been pointed out to us. It is a different kind of willow. But we in our effort to put this episode together, we actually really have come across with Chat GPT and all this, a great way for guys to really enhance their knowledge of deer behavior and deer movement and habitat, all of that stuff. And it really, because I get asked a lot of times, especially at seminars and classes and stuff, how do you know all this stuff? You know, so this is a great way for somebody to start. Guys, all the information is out there, it is all out there. There have been study after study after study on deer, what they do and stuff. It's just a matter of taking the time to search it out, and it doesn't take a lot of time, especially with all the inventions and and uh the accessibility to information.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, pre like 2000, it was a different world, different world because you had to subscribe to those magazines, you had to go find those books to find out all this information.
SPEAKER_00:The difference is back when we were in high school, they had this book when you had to do a report, it was called Britannica. Yeah, it took it was an encyclopedia, and we actually had to break the book open and read right out of the that was Google.
SPEAKER_01:That was our Google, yes. A big set of Encyclopedia Britannicas. And I remember uh maybe it was about 2005, and I went to Goodwill. I was getting rid of some stuff anyway. I had a whole set, and they're like, Yeah, we don't take those, we can't sell those anymore. So they are a useless item now.
SPEAKER_00:They're in a time capsule somewhere.
SPEAKER_01:If you're under 30, you probably have no idea what we're even talking about.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, but I mean, that's the difference, though. That's how far we've come and how how readily available, again, all this information is. If a person, and I'm, you know, I don't know if anybody picked up on my sarcasm earlier. I'm not computer savvy, but even I have the ability, with as little knowledge as I do have about computers, to look up stuff and learn stuff about, you know, my hunts, whether it's deer, elk, bear, cougar, whatever you're hunting. It's that that information is right at your fingertips.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. And it was just interesting with looking up willows. And why do deer like willow trees? That was the only question I asked. Now, one of the things is that was an assumption that I'm making that deer like willow trees. And purely off of observation, right? That when we see a really just gnarled rub, it is a willow tree, you know. And you'll see rubs on other types of trees, and we'll actually get into that because that information popped up while I'm going down this rabbit hole, but it's it just shred the trees.
SPEAKER_00:Yes, consistently we find willow trees that are absolutely ripped up, not just a small rub. I mean, they're just ripped up.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. And it was funny, one of the things that kind of started me down the path is of also looking up some other information. I was probably a lot of people are familiar with The Outdoor Boys. It was it's a YouTube channel, it's his father, and occasionally he he has a couple of boys he brings out, but he's up in Alaska, and he does kind of survival videos, how to go and build a shelter and stay out in zero temperatures. Kind of a fun video to watch. But he as fun to watch.
SPEAKER_00:Fun to watch, not to do, not to live out, not to live out.
SPEAKER_01:But he was walking along and it was a smaller kind of a it was a start of a willow. He's like, oh, the moose really like eating these. So then I thought, oh, well, they like eating them. Why do they like eating them as well? Is that right connected to why they like doing rubs? And it just kind of goes down the rabbit hole. Now, if you want something specific, some specific information, you have to give more prompts with AI. Like when you're going into Chat GPT. So, and sometimes you can ask the question and it doesn't give you quite what you were the response you wanted. So I just started real general. Why do deer like willow trees? And what it popped up is high nutritional value. So willow leaves, shoots, and twigs are rich in crude protein, calcium, and up minerals, and easily digestible fiber. But 12 to 18% protein, that's a pretty good protein source for them.
SPEAKER_00:That's a lot of protein packed into protein. Into a plant. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. And so tender new growth. And then this was the one that kind of it sent me down another rabbit hole. Medicinal properties. So willows contain salicin, which is a natural anti-inflammatory, similar to aspirin. And biologists, some of them think that they may instinctively browse willows if they have aches or inflammation or digestive irritation. And I thought, well, if they're rubbing, especially if they're rubbing off the velvet from the summer, uh-huh. I got to thinking, well, are they rubbing those trees because that salicin anti-inflammatory helps soothe their antlers and stuff? No. The quick answer, because I so it you kind of get this, oh well, you start speculating on what it might be. And you have to they have to actually eat it, but they will eat the bark, and it's higher concentration, and that's one of the things that also said that it's a higher concentration in the bark. You just start going down the rabbit hole, and it's just me trying to figure out willow trees. Why do they like willow trees? Because I want to understand deer behavior, and they're doing something that they don't do with other trees that we've typically seen, right?
SPEAKER_00:Like it seems to be the one that they most aggressively go after. You know what I mean? It's not to say that they don't rub on other trees, but just going through this article that it pulled up, and so you're reading off some of it. You got to medicinal purposes, and we'll read off some of the other ones. But what I got on there, you know, talking about the salacin and it's in the bark, yeah. You know, it started going off. Well, why do deer was one of the questions. Why do deer like willow trees to rub on? And it took us down this trail where it was like, okay, well, it's a soft bark, and deer prefer for rubs a soft bark tree versus a hard bark tree. And it started listing a bunch of trees that are like willows that deer prefer to rub that are soft bark, and a huge portion of them are in the Pacific Northwest.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:But the willow tends to be the softest and most sought out by the deer to rub.
SPEAKER_01:And this was another thing that we were talking about off-air. So it was we just got into the question why do they want this particular tree? One of them was there's a lot of smell associated to when you shred that bark. Right. So it enhances the odor effects of the rub. So not only are they doing that forehead gland on the tree, but then you have the tree that's giving off the odor. And so it amplifies a smell.
SPEAKER_00:Right.
SPEAKER_01:But then I'm I started thinking, well, if they associate, and this is true, like with bear, that there are certain smells that it that they associate with the time of year when fawns are dropping. So even if they can't smell the fawn, if they start smelling these other plants, fawns are gonna be dropping soon. Now I need to start looking. Right. And that was one of the things that Heather shared with us.
SPEAKER_00:Because fawns are born without any scent.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:And that's really good because if another box starts smelling that willow bark, you know, the the salicin and everything, it realizes, oh, there's a fresh rub made over there.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:You know, maybe it'll trigger them to start cruising and making their own rubs and start displaying more dominance and stuff in certain areas and whatnot. It's time to start, you know, picking up the lunch pail and going to work.
SPEAKER_01:Also, if you know, there might not be a rub, but you can create your own rubs. And I never really even thought about like I thought, well, you could, I mean, you could always just create a rub, but not knowing that if you create a rub, it's not the that they walk by and see it, is they're going to smell it. Right. And even if they don't smell the forehead gland secretion, which you can get the hodag scent rope? You can, yep. Something similar to that. Yeah. So you could do a scent rope or use some of that and create your own rub.
SPEAKER_00:And see, I never did, I never did that, but I got a buddy of mine, RJ, that has done that. I've taken him out to some of my sets and he's he brought himself a little hammer, you know, and comes out there and he starts making his own rub right next to where one of the target bucks has made a rub.
SPEAKER_03:Uh-huh.
SPEAKER_00:Typically, he'll spray like a doen estra or some kind of pheromone on there. It's never been something that I've said, well, that won't work. There's a lot of stuff that goes on and that people guys do that is very successful that I know nothing about.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:You know, and so he pulled this out of his bag of tricks, and uh yeah, you ended up killing a big buck, I think, two days later off of that set.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. But it's understanding, it's getting to this was just very interesting because it got to the science behind why, and it helped as we're talking always that that chess match between you and the buck. Yep. But putting the puzzle pieces together, and this was it's another puzzle piece of like, oh, okay, well, that that just kind of makes sense. And with these trees also being in the habitat that big bucks like. So that was one of the things when it popped up. Willows thrive in riparian zones, and I'm not sure what that is. Should probably look that up, but wet edges. So you talk a lot about edges, swampy areas. I've been I'm real close to swamps on all my sets. Like, real close on all of them. And they're all, I mean, up here it's everything's just wet anyway. Yeah, right now, especially, but but like literally two of my sets were right next to swamps that that I had run. But close to security, they offer, you know, these trees security and cover, cooler temperatures because of how they grow. And if you haven't seen a willow, so I think the the tree itself, it looks like a clump, I would say, of alders. Like if an alder grew up in a clump, yeah. A cluster of them. Yep. So it looks almost identical until they rub the bark off. It looks identical to me, or really close to an alder. To an alder, yep. But just in a cluster. Now, when they rub the bar bark off, it almost looks it's very red.
SPEAKER_00:Right. And alder can be very orange.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:That's the key there, guys, is that alder will give, especially a day or two after it's been rubbed, gives that bright orange.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:Whereas these willows tend to stay red and uh and very fibrous, almost like a cedar tree type of bark look to them, where it's that almost like hair when they shred them.
SPEAKER_00:And so and a lot of that's got to do something that I learned is that it because it's a soft, smooth bark.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:And it and uh the what ChatGBT said about it is that the willow has thin bark, it's smooth, soft, comparable to hardwoods. This lets the bucks remove the velvet more easily, deposit scent more effectively, and create a large invisible rub with less effort. And I think that's the key right there is a softer tree, is more a more of a satisfying rub stroke for faster bark removal. So they can create with less effort a bigger rub displaying more dominance because of that, with with less effort to conserve their energy and put it toward, you know, chasing.
SPEAKER_01:Chasing, which they're gonna do. And it went into, and I don't know if you have that pulled up, but a lot of trees that gosh, where's that list? This is the well, there's the most preferred trees. Oh, bucks usually avoid the species. This is what I was looking for. Beach, very smooth bark, but harder. Mature oak, bark too rough, walnut, the bark is really hard, and strong, bitter odor, ironwood or hop horn beam, which I no idea what that is, but extremely tough. And then mature cherries, rough, flaky bark. So they're not gonna get a good rub. It's harder, that just harder bark bark. So if you're not seeing rubs and you know that there's deer in the area, you just look at the type of trees, and it just be might be that they don't want, and they also want a certain diameter, yeah. Like about a four-inch tree.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, well I had that right here.
SPEAKER_01:I think a lot of them I've seen are two inch diameter.
SPEAKER_00:So for younger bucks, they say one to four inches, and then for mature bucks, it's three to six.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. It's rare to see over a six-inch tree.
SPEAKER_00:Right.
SPEAKER_01:I've only seen one over, I would say six uh six-inch diameter, not circumference, but a diameter with the willow growing in the cluster.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, what it's so fun to find these because it's never just one rub. Yeah, it's where okay, his forehead was on this, his eye guards were doing this particular, you know, trunk, and the others were reaching around and hitting these trees back here because it grows in a cluster, so it's always like three or four of them that are rubbed just massively. And it just gets you going, it gets you excited. It's like, no, there's a big buck in here.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. One of the things is at the end, so my initial why do deer like willow trees, and it gave me different reasons. And at the end of that, it's a what Chat GPT it'll give you. If you want, I can also explain which willow trees deer prefer most, how to use willow plantings to attract deer, how browsing affects willow regrowth, useful for habitat management. So it'll give you these other prompts of like, hey, I can tell you this and I can tell you this. Uh-huh. And sometimes it causes me to go in one direction, but I always go back and look at those prompts because then I go can go back in those directions. Like, which willow species do deer prefer most? Asking about those. They pretty much like all of them, though, from what I could see. There, there was a lot of them that that were on there. So soft, smooth bark makes rubbing easier. So thin, smooth, and soft compared to hardwoods. Ideal trunk diameter, high moisture content. With that, it says the bark peels cleaner, the tree flexes instead of breaking, and bucks get a tactile resistance without snapping the trunk. So as they're rubbing it, it's moving, but they're not breaking trees off.
SPEAKER_00:Right. So they can continue to rub on the same tree. And what I like about all this, Aaron, is not the availability of information, it goes back to what I was talking, and what I tell guys when they start realizing the range of a valley blacktail being fifty one acres, and you realize that you can actually start to become your own deer farmer where you're growing your own target bucks every year, whether they make tro they're all trophies, whatever you want, you want to. Take whether they make record books or not, you can grow your own trophies. When you start piecing it together like this, well, what would I want to do as far as for cover? What would I want to plant as far as something that's multi-purpose for food, for rubs, for bedding, you know, yeah, that kind of stuff. When you start opening yourself up to this information and realizing how readily available it is and how easy it is to access, you really take your deer hunting to another level in the sense that now you're able to create an area where the deer want to be. You can improve the habitat where the deer are, and you can cause it so that you have a buck to go after every single year. You're just lining up these bucks because they want to stay there because you created this. It doesn't take anything to plant a willow tree. It doesn't take anything to go out and do clover or some kind of cover or, you know, let's figure out a way to get water in here and that kind of stuff. It's really not that difficult. What stops most guys is their lack of knowledge and the fear of failure.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:You know what I mean? And it's like, no, you don't have to fail because everybody has a phone, and these phones have so much information in them if you just ask the right questions.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. And you said about bringing in for creating water sources, and that reminds, and I don't know if Mark shared this, Mark Boone shared this on air or if it was just afterwards when we were chatting, but talking about how years ago he'd created a wallow out in the forest and where he was hunting elk and kind of abandoned that spot after you know he'd hunted it, but he'd created a wallow. And a few years later on Facebook, someone, some random person posted a picture of an elk that they'd gotten, and he recognized it as this wallow that he'd created 10 years ago or seven years ago or something like that. Yeah. And it was just gonna it was interesting to oh, okay, yeah, you're changing that habitat so that later on it's gonna produce for you.
SPEAKER_00:And that's I mean, like when we would go hunt Eastern Oregon for elk, we would take and there's a lot of seeps over there, you know. So we would get boulders and and rocks and stuff and create little pools where they could do wallows and get something to drink and stuff in September. I don't know, I want to say it's the fear of failure as much as I just I don't know what it is that keeps guys from not learning this stuff that is really so easily obtained.
SPEAKER_01:Well, I would say from my standpoint, again, newer hunter, just finished up my third year, of not knowing the questions I should be asking. So as I've learned from you, and we see those because I remember going out to that set and you finding, I think it was at the same time, or you had the previous time you'd gone out to that set, had seen all of those rubs on them, the willow trees by there. 30 rubs or something, it was some crazy amount, and all of them just unbelievable. And okay, so that's that was something. I I I mean, I would have seen a rub and I wouldn't have been looking for it. And you said, Yeah, it's whatever this type of tree is, you didn't know at the time, they love this tree. I don't know what kind of tree it is, and I don't know why that they like it, but there's this tree. Well, that's always kind of stuck in my mind. I immediately like pulled off a small twig of that tree, and I downloaded apps to identify.
SPEAKER_00:That's just what I was gonna say next, is now and that goes into what I was it's so easily it now they have apps that you can identify trees and plants and all of that stuff. So I I guess what I'm saying is is that technology has made it easier to be a deer farmer. Now I'm not saying that we are I'm not trying to take away from what you know Conquest Sense or or Tinks or some of these other companies, you know, because they're actually have deer farms and yeah, but what I am saying is that the average guy can be his own quote deer farmer in the sense that you can raise up again your trophies, a shooter buck every single year with minimal effort, if you just take the time to seek out the information. It's right there, it's not hard.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. So I'm looking over the top 15 most preferred rub trees ranked and thinking about the similar red cedar. Well, I just mentioned how those willows look like cedar when they do a rub. And that has to do with the strong scent that cedars give off when you rub them. Soft bark, very fibrous. If it's a smaller, now cedars can of course get a diameter of a few feet. Oh yeah. Oh yeah. But you know, if it's younger, if you see a patch of younger cedars, there could very well be some rubs in there. But it and this is the thing, is it if you see a tree off in a distance, oh, that is a potential tree that they would like to rub. Do I need to walk that hundred yards to go look at that spot, or can I just stay over here and ignore that?
SPEAKER_00:It reminds me of Bud, because Bud's he's just master locator, but whenever he holly trees, yeah, and mushrooms. He says, and this is his thing. He says, when I get in an area, if I find a holly tree in the habitat that I'm looking for, if I find a holly tree and I see mushrooms, I know I'm in the right spot. He says, Yeah. And he usually locates a big, and I'm talking a big shooter in that area.
SPEAKER_01:And the funniest thing about that is we did our locating field day last year, and we're standing in a spot that you and I were scouting ahead of time to find a new place to do that. And we saw a hooker willow, or sorry, a Pacific Willow, a willow tree, and just caught the sight of the rub because they were rubbing coming out, so it was on the backside. Well, we went in to investigate a massive rub right there, and then there's this game trail heading down that's it's a highway, it's three feet wide, and just and you wouldn't know if you didn't walk behind that, you would just wouldn't have known it was there. Just driving by, you wouldn't have really told couldn't have told been able to tell that. So as we're walking in during the class, and I'm looking around, and of course there's mushrooms everywhere, uh-huh. But as you were talking, the sun decided to shine through the clouds, and there was this beam of light that came down, and I look over because it's in this, yeah, exactly. It was in this open area, and it I swear it was a holly tree with like the the little white berries on it. Uh-huh.
SPEAKER_04:Uh-huh.
SPEAKER_01:But I look over and there's a holly tree, and I I immediately I'm trying to get buds at look, it's a holly tree at your spot, man. But think about that. It had a holly tree, it had mushrooms, and it had the willows and a and that massive rub all together. So you start piecing these things together, realizing that they like the hat certain plants are going to grow in the same habitat that they like. Right. It's just that real thick, not a lot of light, you know, grows in grows well in shade, type of hardwoods and conifers, man. Yep. So yeah, just looking at through, so our our Southern Oregon, Northern California people, they like pine. So Ponderosa, Lodgepole, White Red Pine, because of the sap content, again, producing a stronger smell than just their their forehead glands on there. So and again when they're young, because they'll they'll flex a little bit. So it looks like flexible trees with soft, wet, or or softer bark with high moisture content that have a really strong smell.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, all these trees, one of the main things that keeps recurring here is flexible wood, soft bark, and strong odor. That seems to be the narrative on on, and I mean, what is there? The top see 15. Yeah, yeah, it's over and over again.
SPEAKER_01:And willows being in that top 15 as well. The third one. It says sapling willows, but yeah, and there are a lot of different types of willows all over the country. So our three, it looks like the most. So if you're on the coast, it would be hooker willows, but Pacific Willows, sit willows, and scowlers, I think that's how you pronounce it, scowlers willows are the three main ones that we have around in inland in the Pacific Northwest. And actually, Pacific willows go into Montana, it looked like so up into Canada, all of that. So yeah, just those are the type of trees you're looking at. And it again, it all started with me. Why do they like willows? And then thinking, oh, well, if it's got that the effect of like aspirin or anti-inflammatory, are they rubbing it for that reason? Said no, because you, you know, as I'm researching this, you have to actually ingest the bark to because your liver needs to, or the deer's liver needs to go through a chemical process to change it from salicin to salicylic acid. Right. And that seems inflammatory.
SPEAKER_00:The article does say that it does have some topical effect.
SPEAKER_01:Some, but not as much, yes, correct. And it's mostly in the bark. There's a higher concentration in the bark. But that could be, you know, if deer go and eat if you saw deer eating the bark and not doing anything else, if you were just happened to be driving by and see that, you could oh, that deer might be doing that out of it's got some sort of pain. Yeah, it's naturally which makes me curious. So thinking about it was last year, Zach, who he was on the podcast, but one of his deer he thought got hit by a car and he put out minerals and he said it immediately came in and started eating the minerals, right? Kind of because they instinctually will do stuff like that. I need this because I'm injured. But I'd just be it would have been interesting to track that and see if he, or you know, have some cameras up to see if it started eating bark just for that oh for the for the pain relief or something, you know, getting hit by a car. But yeah, it tends to make a person a little sore, a little bit sore in the morning. But those are those are kind of the where you can go with AI if you're just it's really interesting for the curiosity aspect. And I mean, I've gone and we we kind of deep dove with this episode, and at first I was gonna expand it. We were gonna go into like other ask it other questions live and have you kind of respond. But I thought, you know, this went deep enough with just talking about willow trees and the type of trees that they like doing rubs that I thought this was great information, right? Just to pass along. But I mean, I've done this with I think I looked like CWD and it'll give you where like Chat GPT gives you where it finds that information. So you can, or it'll give you actual articles that you can look up and read if you don't want to necessarily trust it. And I do that as well because it's like thinking about and it's going to get better, but thinking about early AI videos and pictures. So you always saw the they would they put out I don't know if I want to bring this one up, but they put out a certain political figure who didn't have any pictures of being pregnant. So they put out pictures of this person being pregnant, and she had six fingers and like eight toes or something. It's like, yes, that's AI. And so AI, you can always tell an AI video.
SPEAKER_04:Right, right.
SPEAKER_01:And so that's how it can get things just a little bit wrong until it it figures things out. And I know that's one of my side hustles is training large language models, which is training AI how to pull up this information, ask different information. And so that's kind of where it's going. I think, but I think if you're just curious, this is a good way to go down rabbit holes of information. I know I did this when I was looking up information by the way, and I re ended up reading a lot of articles with that one because I wanted to figure out how topography was affecting it and thermals and how all that that interacted with each other's. But some of the things that AI can also do for you. So it'll find articles, it creates schedules. So if you're trying to figure out a schedule for when you should be doing all the different things if you're doing sense, or if you've got and you've got to go refresh or you're doing baiting, it trying to create that, it'll create the schedule for you and print it out for you, or you can print out schedules, it'll create charts. So one of the things, and I can't remember what it was, but it I I looked it up and it would create said, Would you like a chart of all of this? And so it'll create I it might have been sense, and here's the scent, and here's how when you would use it, and here's why you're using it. Oh wow, and here's the other one, and here's when you would use that, and why you would use that, but it will create all of that that would be extremely, it does a lot of that work for you, that busy work. And some people just really like right putting all that together, but it'll do all of that for you. So, you know, I would say don't be afraid of it, double check it, you know, the big things. And if you look into some information you're not quite sure, you can always send us an email. We do have veterinarians on our team that uh they it will answer our questions.
SPEAKER_00:I think like anything, there's pros and cons to using technology. We're seeing states starting to was it Idaho just made it so that you can't use cellular trail cams. Oh. And uh, I know Utah, you're not allowed to use trail cams after a certain point. I think it's like two weeks before season or something like that. And I get it, you know, technology is great, but at some point it just crosses a line. And when you cross that line, sometimes there's no coming back from that, you know.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. Well, banning drones for exactly, exactly.
SPEAKER_00:And I've said this for years, but we had a big, big as far as the archery world goes, we had a big movement when in the 90s and early 2000s, where a lot of rifle hunters were coming over to archery and they wanted speed, speed, speed out of these bows.
SPEAKER_03:Uh-huh.
SPEAKER_00:Well, one of the reasons that we have such long seasons as archeries is because it's considered a primitive weapon. But if you keep up in the ante on the speed of these bows, it at some point it won't be considered a primitive weapon anymore.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:So it, you know, technology is great to a point. You know, I'm kind of a purist in this sense where I want to stay archery. I want it to be primitive. I want that in your lap feeling. I want that one-on-one, you know, and I get that from archery.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:You know, and some guys get that from rifle, and some guys get that from muzzle odor. So technology is good and bad. We got to keep it so that the spirit of the hunt is still there. It's still the same, you know.
SPEAKER_01:Well, we have on X or Hunt Stand that doesn't replace boots on the ground. AI will never replace boots on the ground and looking at that with your own eyes. Right. It can tell you this is what you want to look for, and you might be able to find that on a map, but you have to go out in the woods and walk around and spend a few hours looking at all of that to find out specifically.
SPEAKER_00:And there have been game changers in technology in the hunting realm that you know has just it has made it so that it is easier, but it hasn't made it a slam dunk.
SPEAKER_04:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:For instance, rangefinders, trail cams. I remember when what we had for a trail camera was a little compact, looked like a sardine can with a string that you stretched across the trail, and it kept time. And when the animal came by, it tripped that string and it stopped that clock in that little sardine can type thing, and you had no picture, you just knew that something came by and tripped that.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:And guys would use that for yeah, they were using it for bear and all this other stuff, and it was like, well, now we got the trail cameras. Well, it's a game changer because now you know what's out there. You know what's been visiting and walking through your area. What time? Right. And it's a game changer, but it enhances the hunt in the sense that man, it keeps me excited. You know what I mean? It just tells me what's coming through. It doesn't tell me that you know how to get that animal.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. And but it also has that reverse effect because and you've experienced this, and we know some of the guys in coaching have. I haven't seen that bucket in six days. I'm hearing that a lot this last week. We're like, okay, come in off the ledge, come back in that, come back in the building. And and yeah, that's been a lot of it.
SPEAKER_00:It guys, you gotta remember hunting is hunting.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:It's not killing, it's hunting. And we do it because we like the challenge. You know, whether it's the alpha male in us or whatever, it's still hunting. And if it was easy, we would lose the excitement. It just wouldn't be appealing to us anymore, and we'd move on to something else.
SPEAKER_01:Yep. Doesn't cost, it doesn't count.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. That's what draws people is that it's the hunt.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:And whatever you're hunting, you know, if you're a collector of certain things, I collect old scout book handbooks, scouting manuals. I I could go to eBay and find all of them that I'd want, but it's just so much more satisfying the hunt of going into antique stores and finding a Boy Scout handbook from the 1930s just randomly. Right. There's there is that appeal. So anyway, thank you for joining us this week. If you could go leave us a review, stars, like us, follow us, subscribe, all those things that you do on the different platforms. We'd really appreciate it. If you have an idea for a podcast that you'd like to hear, send us an email at the blacktailcoach.com or blacktailcoach at gmail.com, either or, and sign up for a class. We're getting full. I think our online course only has three spots left.
SPEAKER_00:Hunters Gathering.
SPEAKER_01:Hunters Gathering. That's going to be great. It's going to be phenomenal. Elk, blacktail, bear, turkey. You're going to learn from people who have gotten it done for years on all of those species. You will be able to guide yourself on your own trophy hunts. You'll be able to learn a different species you maybe not have learned before. And it's just a great time hanging out with people. So, anyway, thanks for listening, and we'll talk to you all next week.
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