Blacktail Hunting Mentorship And Modern Know How With Tom Ryle & Kelly Riordan

A blacktail buck can live a whole season a few yards from you and never show itself, and that’s exactly why we love hunting them. We’re joined by Tom Ryle and Kelly Riordan for a wide-ranging talk that starts with how they each got pulled into the blacktail woods and quickly turns into what it really takes to improve at blacktail deer hunting in Washington and the broader Pacific Northwest. If you’ve ever felt like blacktails are “too thick, too dark, too hard,” you’re not alone.

We dig into the bigger picture of mentorship and the real-world need to pass down institutional knowledge. Hunting culture has shifted from “keep your mouth shut” to sharing methods, especially as R3 efforts and simple stewardship become more urgent. We also talk honestly about paying for coaching or a hunting class, why some hunters want to cut through information overload, and how to shorten the learning curve without stealing the joy of figuring it out yourself.

Then we get practical with scouting and sign. Tom breaks down why willow trees get absolutely shredded, what those bright orange rubs can tell you, and how soft bark trees can become repeatable rut magnets year after year. He also shares how he’s made mock rubs to create a signpost that pulls deer into a shooting lane, plus how he thinks about “rut zones” and why postseason scouting in winter can reveal rub lines and key terrain features you’ll miss in the summer salad bowl.

We wrap by zooming out to habitat edges, fresh logging disturbance, late-season food clues, and planning for closures, fire restrictions, and weather patterns that can lock up access. Subscribe, share this with a hunting partner, and leave a review so more blacktail hunters can find the show, then tell us: what’s the clearest scouting sign you trust most?

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Welcome back to the Blacktail Coach Podcast. I'm Aaron. And I'm Dave. All right. This week we're talking again with Tom Rile and Kelly Reardon. You guys are both big fans of Blacktail.

Welcome And Guest Introductions

SPEAKER_00 0:09

Yeah. Oh yeah. Yeah. So we hear a lot of Dave's tactics, but we like to bring on other perspectives because that just it's more tools in the toolbox, as actually, Tom, you had mentioned off air. Always having more tools in the toolbox. And so that's why we have different perspectives that come on. And so you were, it was really interesting. So of how we met type of story. I was given some information that you had written a while back about calling and rattling. And and we're going to get into calling and rattling on a separate episode because I really want to deep dive. And it has probably been the most requested episode that we do. And Dave has used calling and rattling, but will admit that it's not his primary, not the primary tool in his toolbox.

SPEAKER_03 0:58

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:00

And that's one of the things we want to have someone who has had success using it more than once, type of thing, or doesn't feel like I think I just kind of got lucky this time. Something along that. And so it was one of those, well, until I could find somebody and came across some information that you had written about it. And one of those, it was at the shows, and then we get busy with classes. And I was going to reach out to you that week.

SPEAKER_03 1:27

And I think you actually asked me too, Aaron, do you know Tom Ryle? Have you ever heard of this guy? I said, Tom Ryle. I said, Oh, yeah, everybody blacktail hunts who's been doing it anytime at all has no knows Tom Rile.

SPEAKER_00 1:38

So I was going and you emailed us literally the day before I was going to reach out to you. And uh partnership related to just the mentoring aspect of hunting that we're kind of all on that page of wanting to I'm la I'm laughing over here because you notice that Tom never jumped in and said, people ask, Do you know Dave Riley?

SPEAKER_03 1:59

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 2:01

I know him.

SPEAKER_03 2:01

So this is a one-sided relationship, is what this is.

SPEAKER_00 2:04

But we're kind of all on that same page of wanting to educate Kelly, you as well, wanting to educate and improve the skills of hunters. Yeah. And even anglers, as we talked about before. So just kind of want to start getting your background and how black tail became a thing for you. So we'll start with actually, I'll start with you, Kelly. How did you get your start hunting?

SPEAKER_04 2:28

No, well, we were just talking about my dad worked for the U.S. Forest Service out of the Hood Canal

How Tom And Kelly Started

SPEAKER_04 2:33

Ranger District. And on the summertime, I would go to work with him and we would do stream surveys, and he worked at a seed orchard up there as well. And even before I took hunter education at 10 or 11 years old, I was I'd been in the blacktail woods for a couple years on my own, just rolling around and observing them and chasing them around and pretending with my stick and string boy I was gonna get one. So it's been a lifelong thing for me, the blacktail. And even Dave you and I were talking about it out there, oh yeah, we go whitetailing, yeah, that's kind of cool. But exactly we're gonna come back to our black tail every time.

SPEAKER_03 3:04

Yeah, it's a hard hunt to give up.

SPEAKER_04 3:06

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 3:07

What about you, Tom? Yeah, so for me is a little different. I grew up hunting in a hunting and fishing family, and for us, it was always rifle hunting in eastern Washington. And I don't even know that I ever thought about hunting deer on western in western Washington, even though I lived here. But then I went to college and I realized that driving all the way over to eastern Washington to meet my dad for a weekend deer hunt was gonna be a lot. When the papers do. When the paper's due on Monday or you have a final or something. And uh shout out to my buddy Mark Coley. I hope he's listening. He was one of my buddies in college that was an avid archer and said, Yeah, you got to try bow hunting, and that's the end of that. I didn't look back. But being in Bellingham, Washington, going to Western, I started looking around where I could hunt locally. And when you're a college student and I was also in the military and the naval reserve, so I was going to Bremerton one weekend a month, and my time was really limited. Plus, I worked at a machine shop for my day job or whatever to help pay for school and whatnot. So I had to have a way to hunt longer. My season needed to be longer, or I just wasn't gonna get to hunt much. And so I picked up a bow, and again, I can never look back. And black tails were accessible and they were completely foreign to me. The book was opened, I was ready to learn kind of a thing.

SPEAKER_00 4:31

So, what species have you guys hunted of just across the board? I know turkeys both on on your what you've gone after.

SPEAKER_04 4:42

Well, it's fortunate here in Washington State. If you talk about deer, elk, turkey, we have multiple species of each. We have white tail, we have mule deer, we have black tail. I've hunted them all. I was fortunate enough to draw a pretty nice tag around Moses Lake and took a very nice mule deer. I've taken just a couple of whitetails in Washington, but I've also hunted Alabama. I have family

Building A Career Around Calling

SPEAKER_04 5:00

down there. Basically, if I can get a tag for it and the opportunity presents itself, like I'm not a I'm not an active bear hunter. But during archery elk, if a black bear walks out and it's in range, guess what? I'm having bear sausage. Yeah. Same thing with cougar, same thing with bobcat, avid waterfowl. I used to be a waterfowl guide, and I still really enjoy getting out, freezing, getting wet, shooting at birds, not necessarily hitting them, but yeah, warming the barrel up.

SPEAKER_02 5:25

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 5:25

And so now you're actively kind of hunting everything.

SPEAKER_04 5:28

I do. And so with R3, we talk about the ORAM model earlier, and there's stages of hunting. There's the beginning hunter who wants to get their limit, and then there's the second person who just wants to get the trophy, and then later on they want to pass it forward. I'm in the pass it forward stage. Sure, I love hunting. I get out there, I do the seasons, but I have family and I have mentees, and I like to take them out and show them these different experiences. I'm not going to take somebody out the first time for archery on the west side of the state. It's not going to happen. But I'm happy to take somebody out. You mean hiking and hiking and getting wet. Yes. So yeah, I guess I'm at the point where maybe I'm looking for some new experiences. Like I did an Alaska moose hunt a couple years ago, which was fantastic. Best meat on the planet besides Blacktail. And but I still go hunt grouse. Not shooting them off the road, but walking clear cuts and stuff like that. I still enjoy that. And even shooting the air rifle in my yard. That's a simple way to get outdoors. I still do that.

SPEAKER_00 6:23

We won't talk about not hunting robins or anything, because that would be wrong.

SPEAKER_04 6:27

No, no, no.

SPEAKER_00 6:28

Eurasian collar doves only.

SPEAKER_02 6:32

Yeah, I guess I kind of got a slow, well, not a slow start. I shot my first elk when I was like 15, Eastern Washington, and I'd never was fortunate enough to get a deer with a gun, but I did get my first deer with a bow when I was in college. I was an early 20s person getting their first deer. I was kind of late to deer hunting, I guess, in the success realm that most people use. A lot of young kids are getting their first deer at 10, 12, 13 years old. Took me a while to get there. But getting a deer with my bow, just man, it lit a fire. So I was at the end of my college days, and I was really wanting to work in the hunting industry. That was my passion, reading Bow Hunter magazine and bow hunting world and all these magazines, seeing all these adventures people were going on. And so when I got done with school, I and I was also really into elk calling. So I went to the Rocky Mountain Elk Found's annual elk camp down in Reno and I entered the World Elk Calling Championship as a non-sponsored, just random dude off the street. Because I just went down there to just unwind and be immersed in hunting and did pretty well in that early stages of that competition. And then, long story short, I met Larry D. Jones, somebody I'd crossed paths with before when I was doing work for the department here as a volunteer in the Forest Service and the Elk Foundation. And I just said, Hey, here's my resume. I just graduated from college and I want to design game calls for you. And he thanked me and I went on my way.

SPEAKER_00 8:09

So designing game calls.

SPEAKER_03 8:11

Yeah, that's nice, kid.

SPEAKER_00 8:13

That's nice, pretty much was behind designing game calls.

SPEAKER_02 8:17

I mean, I had a degree in industrial design. Okay. I wanted to design hunting products. I was fanatical about very picky about products and product design. And I hated spending money on products that failed. And why not try to go after something I was really passionate about? So being buying Larry's calls and listening to his cassette tapes, driving up and down I-5, practicing my calling, I just wanted to work for him. He was my kind of my hero. You know, I didn't have Michael Jordan in my wheelhouse. I had my Larry Jones and Wayne Carlton and some of those names. And I just love the idea of interacting with wildlife. So Larry's daughter, actually, Angela, I think, is responsible for telling him, look, give this guy a shot. So we got in touch and he said, look, I'm small business, you're a college graduate. I'm not going to be able to. I said, I don't care. I want to learn from you and I want to give you the skills I have to try to make, you know, do something cool together. So that that started our me working for Larry. And I moved to Oregon and he taught me how to film, did made hunting videos, worked on designing calls and a bunch of other cool projects. And I met a bunch of people in the industry, traveled around a lot, filmed a lot, just had some of the best times ever with a guy that I looked up to. So it was cool.

SPEAKER_00 9:40

Now you wrote for or you were somehow involved with which magazine was it? I'm completely drawn a blank now.

SPEAKER_02 9:48

I worked with Dave Holt, the technical editor of Bow Hunter magazine for a couple years. I met Dave. I filmed his hunt up in Alberta on a bear hunt, and then we kind of hit it off on the technical archery side of things.

SPEAKER_01 10:00

Uh-huh.

SPEAKER_02 10:00

And Andy Simo, president of New Archery Products, was with us. And Phil Phillips from Easton and Dave Watson from the Oak Ridge Boys. It was a it was an all-star lineup in that bear camp. And I was feeling pretty darn lucky to share campfires with these guys. And but it's a small industry, and I had a knack for filming because I worked for Larry, and Wayne Carlton called me and wanted me to film his calling bears VHS tape, which is now almost it's a film, you know, collection of bear calling video call-ins. And I didn't do that project because, oh, I don't know, I'm gonna go film with Dave Watson from the Oak Ridge Boys. Like I tough choices when you're 20, 23 years old or whatever. So yeah, I met Dave up there and he said, Hey, I'm doing some stuff in Colorado, and I had missed out on an interesting job opportunity with Boeing on the East Coast with the 777 flight deck design. And I left Wilderness Sound Productions to go pursue that opportunity because Larry was like, Look, you need to go do that. You're young, you need to go do that. So I left Oregon, and by the time I moved back to Washington, the whole project fell through. And then I get a phone call from Dave Watson about doing this bear hunt video, and then at the same time, Dave Holt calls me, and so I move into Colorado. And as soon as I get to Colorado, we get on a plane and we spend three weeks up in northern Alberta filming bear hunting. It was like a surreal change of events for me. So I yeah, I worked with Dave for about two years. We did lots of hunting, lots of product testing. We started a little Colorado School of Bow hunting. We got we did a lot of mentoring on the weekends.

SPEAKER_00 11:41

Okay, so you've you just jumped into the mentoring, wanting to teach people right from the start.

SPEAKER_02 11:47

Yeah, and I was learning a lot. I spent a lot of time hunting more than I ever dreamed at that age, and I was getting to spend time seeing my magazine heroes, how they did it. And I was like, okay, there's this isn't rocket science. There's some great photographers taking pictures on these hunts, but at the end of the day, these guys get up at 4 a.m. just like we do. I do. Yeah. And they struggle with the wind, they struggle with the rain, their boots suck. This is the 90s. We didn't have maybe all the gear and stuff that we have today. I say that like it's that long ago, but it kind of is quite a while back. And there's been a lot of improvements with a lot of the products that we all use. All that to be said, it to me it was like an evolution of just connections, and then one project leads to another, to another, to another, and before you know it, you're like, How did I get here?

SPEAKER_00 12:42

And you got a better resume to hand to the next guy.

SPEAKER_03 12:45

Yeah, you just kind of fell into it. And I mean, you've you've rubbed shoulders with a lot of famous hunters.

SPEAKER_02 12:53

Yeah, it's wild. I was sitting on Jim Jordan Jim Doherty's tailgate in on a Kansas deer hunt, and we're making coffee and looking at the stars, and I'm like, I can't believe I'm sitting next to Jim Doherty. This guy's a legend, you know.

SPEAKER_00 13:08

You know what's funny? Is right now I'm having a who's Bo Brooks moment. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 13:13

Well, I'm starting to feel old.

SPEAKER_00 13:15

Jim Doherty. Yeah. Yeah. I don't know. Did I tell that story? I don't think you did. I heard it, but it was okay. So for our listeners, if I haven't told this story, so we have with the Blacktail Coach Pro Staff, we have a text thread and we're sending each other pictures and communicating all the time. And Alex was able to take out Bo Brooks to get his Washington Eastern. And even though his first Washington Eastern. So I guess Bo, even though he's got family in the area or he's from here, he'd never gotten a Washington Eastern. And he and Alex had been talking. Alex took him out, he got his first one. And Alex, hey, I was able to take out Bo Brooks. We got, and I was like, that's fantastic. Who's Bo Brooks? So again, I with being fairly new, people mention these names. Okay. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 14:08

Who? What's crazy is you mentioned some of these names to well-known hunters now, and they don't even know who these people are, right? Which is again makes me feel old. But I think that when I look back to, and Dave, you might be able to relate to this and Kelly too. Back then, that was those guys were pioneering things. Wayne Carlton and Larry Jones brought modern day elk calling to the world stage, really. Okay. They were pioneers in this. Jim Doherty was the guy that introduced

Mentoring Culture And R3 Shift

SPEAKER_02 14:40

Chuck Adams to Easton Archery. Imagine that, right? And I'm sitting on his tailgate drinking coffee, telling jokes with a legend. And I knew it then, I know it now, and he's passed. But those early days for me, it wasn't about getting a job, making money. It was about trying to follow a passion that I couldn't extinguish.

SPEAKER_00 15:00

It was just and hearing those, it it reminds me a lot of Dave when he talks about spending time with Smokey. Yeah. Smokey cruise. And Dave just it didn't matter. He just wanted to hang out. Same thing.

SPEAKER_03 15:13

Doing when they talk and you're just all ears. You don't matter what we're talking about peanut. I don't care. Okay. Pinakle's gonna somehow turn into hunting some way, somehow, you know what I mean? And you're just like, yep, let's go.

SPEAKER_00 15:26

Offering up the free electrical work for just for the chance.

SPEAKER_03 15:29

Just for the yeah, for the opportunity to sit down and glean something off of these guys.

SPEAKER_02 15:33

Yeah, I can't thank any of them enough. I people who've invested in me, I didn't deserve it. When it's like I I just want to give it back.

SPEAKER_04 15:41

Nice. And that that institutional knowledge, it's it's not always passed down. And and you know, we need that, we need that, right? Exactly. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 15:50

And yeah, we get a lot of that. People who are guarding their secrets and their the way that they're hunting. And so that's I think we gravitate to anybody who's just willing to spill the beans on everything about their hunting. And this is why we'll talk about hunters gathering and but Heather, she will tell you everything she knows about hunting black bear.

SPEAKER_02 16:13

Oh, yeah, clear. Yep.

SPEAKER_00 16:15

Absolutely everything. And the only reason she won't tell you more is because we tell her to stop because we've got to go to dinner. Yeah. It's that's Trent, same way. Trent wants to teach people how to go out and get those elk.

SPEAKER_03 16:30

And I think there's been a shift in in the hunting society. I think that was like generational thinking or learning. Because when I was a kid, it w that was the golden rule. You didn't share anything, you didn't give up any spots or anything. But I'm seeing a shift in this generation. And I think it's going back to the R3 thing. We're seeing this decline, and we're realizing now some of our mistakes that have been done in the past are coming back to bite us in the sense that if we don't pass this down, then who how are they gonna have fun? You know what I mean? How are they gonna know about this? How is this gonna continue if somebody can't enjoy and appreciate the blacktail hunting like I do?

SPEAKER_01 17:10

Yeah, right.

SPEAKER_03 17:10

Well, you or elk hunting like I do, or black bear.

SPEAKER_04 17:13

It's almost not a panic situation, but there's hunters out there, the older gen hunters, that are realizing that. Oh, I didn't teach this to my grandchild and they're worried about it. Now they're like you said, they're starting to realize we better do something because hunting will go away if we don't.

SPEAKER_03 17:28

Yeah, we were always told not to. Yep, keep your mouth shut, keep it hush-hush, no tell them ridge. Yeah, you know, that kind of stuff.

SPEAKER_02 17:35

Well, and I think it going back to even our other conversation, I think we need the stewardship. We need people to get joy from the outdoors. Absolutely. The joy that we get from hunting and the experiences that we have, people you're telling the story, but they weren't there. And so I want people to go there and have their own so they can tell those stories. And it's a story as old as time, in a sense, where these things get passed down. And I think that's why you see so many passionate hunters coming to the table now with a lot of the challenges that we're faced with in Washington. And they're starting to realize they have to speak up, but it's not to be adversarial. I think it's to show why this is so important, right? Because it's not just about me, it's about stewardship, it's about the future. That 25-year strategic plan that the department has, that is not going to be possible by a couple thousand people at a state agency. That's gonna take eight million people who live here, yeah, and they need to invest in that. And to me, hunting is one way, not the only way. Fishing is one way, foraging, berry picking, bird watching, the list goes on. These are all ways to interact with nature and become a steward.

SPEAKER_00 18:52

Yeah, I think the as generations have gone on, and it might be more well, people understood it, it wasn't the research behind it. And then this is me going into my mental health background, work background and degree and everything. The aspect of people now realize connecting with nature is one of the best ways to maintain good mental health. Well documented. Yeah, and now it's okay, I need to get out in the woods or I need to get out, get in onto the water. I need to do something that gets me connecting with nature. And now how people do that is is where we're at. Everybody knows that they need to be out in nature, they need to take care of themselves. Some people it's going to be hunting, some people it's going to be foraging, some people it's just going to be hiking, camping. There's going to be something that's pulling us into nature and stuff. And that's where that community aspect of whichever it is, that's where it's, I think it's where it's drawing people is they see that community of something that they want to do.

SPEAKER_02 20:02

Right. And yeah, bringing it back to black tails, for me, it's accessible, it's mysterious. Like there's a lot to try to unravel and it's

Why Blacktail Hunting Feels Personal

SPEAKER_02 20:12

personal. It's my time, it's my investment learning about a species that I grew up around and didn't know much about. So that is the root of blacktail hunting. And for me, you asked about experiences hunting and different animals and stuff. I I've hunted a lot of stuff. I've had some cool experiences as a result of being in that industry for a few years. I think 14 states all over Canada, South Africa, had a lot of crazy hunts, a lot of really cool experiences. But at the end of the day, you know where I want to be? I want to be in a tree stand hunting blacktails. That's that's where the passion's at. Yeah, it's where that it is. I get so much joy from it.

SPEAKER_00 20:51

Yeah. And that's, I think everybody finds their species, from what I've seen as an outsider looking in and getting drawn into it. It's everybody's finding their species. And Kelly, it is it blacktail or do you have another that's your no?

SPEAKER_04 21:08

It's definitely in in my personal life and in my guiding life, growing up on the coast, hunting the topography and the terrain that we have for the Roosevelt elk and the blacktail deer has just made it so much not easier, but better hunting anywhere else pretty much in the world.

SPEAKER_03 21:25

Like it's so much easier. Everywhere east of the Cascades is a park compared to here.

SPEAKER_04 21:32

Right, right. I have friends on the east side, and we're sitting on a ridge and two or three ridges away. I'm like, oh, there's milk. Oh, there's milk. And they're like, What are you seeing? I go, no rainforest. That's what I'm seeing. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 21:43

Yeah. Absolutely. Yeah. I've talked to a lot of industry folks who wanted to pursue black tails, and they'll go to Oregon and do two or three guided hunts before they kill a deer or California. None of them are coming to Washington. It's they say it's too thick. It's so it it's a challenge. Challenging species to hunt. And to your point, Kelly, a lot of the people I know that have done all the things you would ever want to do in a hunting, I wouldn't call it a career, but people often refer to it as that their journey through hunting. The black-tailed deer is the pinnacle of the tough nut to crack. Yeah. Yeah. I'm a sucker for punishment.

SPEAKER_03 22:22

And that and I think that that that is the appealing part for it is guys that are really serious. That seems to be the common thread that runs among us, you know, is that challenge because it is the most considered the most difficult. And if it was, I think for myself, if it was easy, I don't think I would be as Jazzed about it.

SPEAKER_04 22:42

Yeah, uh as is I think it's a passion thing, I think, really. Absolutely. I'm not willing anymore to sit in a tree stand for a white tail, but I'll do it for a black tail because to me it's just a more pleasurable hunt, I guess.

SPEAKER_00 22:55

Uh-huh.

SPEAKER_02 22:56

Yeah, I was telling Aaron, I think I've hunted white tails in five or six states now and filled my tags as a non-resident on public land before Onyx, right? This is like going to the county assessor's office looking at plat maps and whatnot or public easements. I've spent whole seasons here and not filled a tag. And it's not that yeah, there's different styles of hunting and things like that. And it's not to put down whitetail hunting. I'd love to go back to Kansas or Illinois or anywhere. I love to hunt. That's first and foremost. But the effort I put in for black tailed deer, and I know you guys are really great about defining success in your own mind, right? It's your tag, your hunt. And I think that you look at age class, not let's not talk about antlers, but look at age class, taking a four and a half-year-old doe, blacktailed doe, is a tough nut to crack too. It's not about record books and all of that necessarily. They just live in a thick vegetation, at least here in Washington and Western Oregon and BC. But they're just a they have different survival tactics than an open country deer or a deer in a checkerboard of crop fields and ditches. Yeah. So it's jarring for people to come here and try to figure out how to hunt these deer.

SPEAKER_00 24:13

Yeah. When you have to go into stuff you can't see 20 yards, and that's where they're at. And you got to figure out, okay, how do I hunt this thing? Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 24:22

What's the rhyme or reason for how they're moving and traversing this terrain and whatnot? And it's funny you say that because it's like you go whitetail hunting, and Kelly and I, you have talked you and I have talked about this a little bit, but you're gonna go and you're gonna see a lot of deer. And the average black tail hunter sees a handful if he's on a good season, sees a handful in a season.

SPEAKER_04 24:44

I'm happy to. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 24:46

And we talk about this all the time in the seminars. So why do the spikes and the fork horns get killed? Why are they the most killed of the bucks here? It's because they are the most visual, they're the easiest ones to find. And it and there's again, there's nothing wrong with that. I I don't put it a buck is a buck. And it's what you want to do with your hunt. For guys that are looking for a mature black tail, you're gonna put in hours, you you're gonna get frustrated, you're gonna you're gonna start believing that they're like Bigfoot, that they don't. I want to see visual, I want to see video proof, I want to see a carcass, I want to you know what I mean? Yeah, you start thinking that way.

SPEAKER_00 25:19

That's interesting, and as I'm sitting here thinking about it, three years hunting, and I've had bucks within all three years within 20 yards standing in front of me, blacktails, not necessarily well, I would all except for one I I would have taken given the opportunity, actually multiple bucks with one set. And I stop and I listen to these stories where they people go out and they don't see anything all season, and I'm like, okay, that's pretty cool, but it's that system of that learning of that. I took the cheat code Dave's class and had this system to put in. And that to me has been, I appreciate that. And I think a lot of people do, as we've gotten feedback, they don't want to spend 20 years figuring this out, right? If they can because there's gonna be nuance, even when you take the class, there's still more to learn.

SPEAKER_02 26:13

Yeah, it's but it's that just shortens that right, and I think that's key is I think in mentoring and especially on a challenging species like black tails, I mean, helping cut someone's learning curve down without compromising their joy of learning, right? I don't want to give someone the answer, I want to give them the tools so they can go get their own answer. And I that's what I love about what you guys are doing and why I reached out is I felt like, hey, we're all kind of trying to do the same thing here in a sense, where the faster I can help someone find success, however they define it, whether it's seeing that first deer, seeing their first buck during daylight. I remember that moment for me. It was like, oh my gosh, that's a buck. It's deer season and it's daylight. I gotta get myself together and make something happen. Yeah, you know what I mean. It's a buck. If I can get someone, it's almost pumping the ball on a on an outboard motor gas tank or on your weed eater. You gotta prime the pump. And sometimes that's what you just gotta get people to that first step. Right. You gotta light that fire, and then you sit back and let them watch them put a couple wet logs on the fire, and then you help them out again.

SPEAKER_01 27:21

Yeah. Yep.

SPEAKER_02 27:22

And then you just keep coming in and trying to help. And I get text messages all the time from people I've never met in other states and elsewhere with pictures. I'm like, who is this person? And and I hate that. In fact, I hate it because I can't keep track because it's five to around five people a year that I try to help out. But these guys are now mentoring their friends, yeah. And this is what Kelly talked about earlier in the other podcast, I guess, was just that this stuff scales, but it's gonna scale slowly. But the quality of the scaling is very high. Yeah, you're getting traction, you're not getting once and done people that are in and out. And so with blacktail hunting, I know you guys have a ton of questions to dive into.

SPEAKER_00 28:06

So it's interesting along that thread of what you're saying, and we'll jump into this, but yeah, one of the things, and it's something that they learned in tech, and it's about early adopters and I lived in that space for a long time, and then it becomes a bell curve where it's mass mass adoption, yeah, and then the late arrivers and stuff. And I when we started doing everything with David Osha, I said, look, taking a class to learn how to hunt, nobody's doing this. This is new. And I think somebody had mentioned John Cruise, Outdoor America Radio. Yep. So he was telling me, I've heard of somebody doing this with Whitetail back in Pennsylvania. Back in Pennsylvania.

SPEAKER_02 28:51

Yeah, I know a couple guys doing that, they're doing property consultations and stuff like that.

SPEAKER_00 28:56

Yeah, but nobody really teaching a method to to go out hunting. And he's this is new. And you go to the sportsman show, there's nobody else doing it, it's just us, so it's that been that, huh? And even now, I still see those really negative comments online about not that necessarily directed towards us, but about that paying for a class to go learn how to hunt. But we're starting to get into that. Oh, this is a viable way to figure out how to hunt. Absolutely. And I think that's where we're hitting now is, and it's going to be, it works in everybody's favor. It works R3 and any mentor that you guys have and WDFW with their efforts for getting people to learn, it's that, and it's that partnership that isn't really a partnership, but it's a partnership in the sense that we're all doing the same thing and are we all have the same goal. But really, we're seeing it now where it's really starting to take off. Where and then it just becomes exponential as far as the people realizing, oh, this thing I've always wanted to learn to hunt is it's an option that that's out there, available to me.

SPEAKER_02 30:04

Well, yeah, I guess I if I step away from my own experience and I look at that, it's like you pay an accountant to do your taxes, you pay an electrician to to wire your house, you pay a septic pumper to come and pump your tank. It's a fee for a service. Yeah. I look at this like it's anything like people's discretionary time and money are are constantly being tugged at. People are busier than ever, they're stressed out. And for a lot of people, paying to go on a charter boat at Westport and come back with bottom fish or salmon or halibut is worth it.

SPEAKER_01 30:38

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 30:38

For some people, they're gonna say, There's no way I would pay that. People that would prefer to buy their salmon at Safeway. It's all fine. People can do what they want.

SPEAKER_01 30:47

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 30:47

But I think in terms of hunting, hunting, it's information overload out there. And sometimes people just want to cut through the noise. Yeah. Right. So I can't say one way or another whether something's a good idea or not, or whether somebody should pay for something or not, because it's none of my business. So I guess as a hunter, I just I think that people are becoming more discerning of where they spend their money and what they spend it on, and joy and happiness are starting to become higher priorities for people. Yeah, to each their own.

SPEAKER_00 31:21

Yeah. So people, I would be remiss not to give our listeners what they're listening for. They want they want to pick your brain. So I'm gonna pick it for them. Pick away. So first we're gonna we're gonna talk about the willow trees because Dave looked, I think he glanced down at your phone and saw a willow

Willow Rubs And Mock Rub Tactics

SPEAKER_00 31:40

tree as your screensaver.

SPEAKER_03 31:41

The screensaver on his computer.

SPEAKER_00 31:43

Oh, on your computer. Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 31:45

That's yeah.

SPEAKER_00 31:45

Because Dave had that, he's I don't know what this tree is, but they just tear it up. And I was trying, I had one of those apps that tells you what the plant is, and it was it wasn't telling me, it wasn't figuring it out. How I figured it out, I was watching an outdoor boys video, and he's talking about the willow shrubs and how the moose love to eat them. And oh, wait a minute, the tree version of that is what black tails are going after. How did you figure that out as far as the willow tree thing?

SPEAKER_02 32:14

So it's an interesting. So I'll say this when you're hunting, I don't care what you're hunting, where you're hunting, you gotta understand and be observant, pay attention to what you're seeing out there and don't really take things for granted. So I just started noticing that or correlating that when I would see those willow trees, if they were not rubbed, I would also notice that my trail cams would sit there vacant for months at a time or whatever. Or in before trail cameras, I just wasn't seeing deer activity in the area.

SPEAKER_00 32:46

Uh-huh.

SPEAKER_02 32:46

And then I noticed that, wow, sometimes I'd come into these areas and find these willows, and they were some of the first trees rubbed during the post-velvet rubbing stage into more of the rut, early rut stage. They were the first trees targeted. Yes, they're gonna hit hemlocks and young firs and other trees, but those trees, those willows, in the places I hunt, it's usually pretty dark, even on bright sunny day. It's swampy, it's dark, it's whatever. There, the bark is dark gray or grayish, it's a drab color, but then that bark is bright orange on the inside. So for me, I noticed it because I started noticing these orange rubs when I would be out scouting or hunting. And we're talking over years, right? Like this isn't something I just fell into, but I started paying attention to it, logging those spots, going back, putting effort in those areas, and then I was finding that where I was finding clumps of those that tend to grow in wet areas around swamps and things, that they would just get pummeled every year. And I have willows that are 14, 18 inches in diameter that are shredded, and I've never seen the buck doing that. Yeah, because they're normally it's a smaller tree, it's normally small, but I'm and I'm seeing when those trees fall down and they're horizontal, they're rubbed from 12 to 14 feet across. Yeah, rub the entire tree, and it looks like someone went in there with like a handsaw and just scraped all the bark off this tree. And I've seen this over and over and over again, Oregon, Washington, and I'm like, okay, these attract these deer. And I think there's a few reasons for it. They're my own ideas. I think the soft bark is first of all, it's easy for them to rub and leave a visual. I think it's more surface area, all the shredded bark is more surface area for pre-orbital gland scent, saliva, and forehead gland scent. Yeah, and I've watched bucks put rub their necks on those rubs too. The fact I've even made mock rubs with my saw and put a camera on it, and I've taken a tree that was not rubbed. I started doing that on whitetails, but that's another story. I started doing it on these willow trees, and I started creating a signpost detour for deer into my shooting lane. Oh, but I can see it and I can smell it, and within 24 hours, there's a deer rubbing on that tree.

SPEAKER_00 35:19

Oh, that's an interesting yeah. I hadn't even thought about you could steer them in a certain direction.

SPEAKER_02 35:25

I've done it. I'm not saying it will work every time, but I've done it.

SPEAKER_00 35:28

And another tool in the toolbox.

SPEAKER_03 35:30

Yeah, and those willows, like you said, they're pummeled, and you hear me say it in the seminar, they beat them up like that tree owes them money.

SPEAKER_02 35:37

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 35:37

They just flat out tear it up, and it's not one year, it's not one season. They come year after year right back to that.

SPEAKER_02 35:46

Yeah, it's not lunch money. This is a lobster dinner. That's exactly right.

SPEAKER_03 35:49

Yeah, it's a car payment that that somehow turned up missing.

SPEAKER_00 35:53

So we went into I did a deep dive into all of that and stuff. And part of what as I was doing research is some trees can be, and I wondered about this with the willows, they can be more fragrant so that a deer doesn't necessarily, and it's the same way with predators. They can't smell the fawns, but they can smell the things that are blooming when fawns are being dropped.

SPEAKER_02 36:17

There's an association.

SPEAKER_00 36:19

And so it creates that association of, oh, I can really smell the willows. There must be a buck in the area because I can it's stronger than normal. And that's part of, or what whichever tree it is, is that it enhances their gland secretions that they're putting on there.

SPEAKER_02 36:39

And it's interesting too because I paid attention to other trees, and I have a photo in my archives. I don't know why, but I just when I see a good at rub, I take pictures of it. Oh, yeah, me too. I do too. That's thousands. I'm paying Google a lot of money.

SPEAKER_03 36:54

This is therapy for me because here I thought I was the only one doing this stuff. I paid it's good to know that we could start a club.

SPEAKER_04 37:00

Our text threads are pretty crazy.

SPEAKER_00 37:02

Yeah, yeah. We have to because we have to give them to Asha so that she can post them online and have her social media content.

SPEAKER_03 37:08

I was doing it long before the whole company thing, yeah, guys showing up. You won't believe this. I mean, when you show them like, oh my gosh.

SPEAKER_02 37:17

Exactly. The very next question. Way too many pictures of animal poop, also, which is but it's okay.

SPEAKER_04 37:23

I have to figure out if it's from an owl or a coyote. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 37:26

As long as it's not yours, it's it's fine.

SPEAKER_02 37:28

But you know, on our cherry, our native cherry trees, they the bark runs, it's horizontally like the circular, be circular, and so it only goes around the circumference of the tree. So when I've cut cherry trees on my property and I strip that bark and I use it for bow backing on making bows, a 12-inch cherry tree will give you whatever that lays out flat section of bark. But that bark is very fibrous, and so deer generally don't rub on those trees because I they can't be very productive doing it because they're they're going against the grain, so to speak. And I found a cherry tree that was about eight inches in diameter that was about it was shredded for about 15-16 inches. This is nowhere near elk or anything, it's low to the ground. And I'm just wondering what buck decided to take it out on that tree in that spot. And I've always wondered that because I never found another cherry tree rubbed like that. And it was a deer rub, rather rubs in the area, but no, I think with the willows and hemlocks and fur, soft bark trees, they're always gonna go there. And you can't always tell the size of a deer. I watched a 20-inch class blacktail gingerly rubbing inch and a half hemlock fur and barely scrap scratching the bark, and you look at that and you think, oh, a little spike must have come over here and done this. It's like, no, you'd be surprised who did that.

SPEAKER_00 38:53

Oh, okay.

SPEAKER_03 38:54

So that's kind of interesting because a lot of it's well I've seen it on rub lines, like when on a true rub line, a lot of times, and I've watched big mature bucks, after a while, they stop doing the work, they let the smaller bucks come in and do the rubs, and then they just follow behind and leave their scent on that rub.

SPEAKER_02 39:11

And that's much like a herdbull.

SPEAKER_03 39:13

Yeah, yeah. You just get to well, it it's the older we get, the smarter we get, in theory, just through experience and whatnot. It's like, well, if that guy's gonna do all the work for me, why am I gonna sweat?

SPEAKER_01 39:24

Right.

SPEAKER_03 39:24

And when it becomes territorial and you start talking about the one time of year that they get to breed, you understand, okay, that's what drives them. That's gonna be the main focus, and they're gonna do whatever they can to be that display of dominance or whatnot. And it doesn't necessarily mean that they have to be rubbing big trees, it doesn't mean that they have to be doing the work, it just means that they're in that area and they're gonna come year after year to that. Yeah. And so that that's the key to walk away with.

SPEAKER_02 39:53

Yeah, and and and that's a great, I guess, reminder for me is the one thing I've written about, and I've I don't know, I just call it a rut zone because it's these spots that I find that every year, this is where deer come to rut. It's usually a small pocketed, secluded spot. And I've never actually sat up in the 300 seats and sat back and watched it all play out, but the sign that's left behind annually in those spots, it's it stops you in your tracks. And people say, Why do you find these spots? And I go, Well, you cover a lot of ground for sure. But when you find it, you won't have to text me and ask me.

SPEAKER_04 40:27

You'll know. Yeah, you don't just have to find those spots during the rut either. I think it's more important to find them, of course, out of that time, yeah, and just keep those in your pocket. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 40:37

February and March is when we hit it, yeah, and everything's laid down, there's no hunting pressure, and there's no foliage, you can see everything. Yeah, yeah, that's really easy to spot those rub lines then. And like you said, there's a difference between rubs and a rub line.

SPEAKER_01 40:51

Yes.

SPEAKER_03 40:51

There's rubs done out of a display of dominance, and then there's rubs done on a rub line for breeding purposes. Right. And yeah, but it's funny that you say that you don't have to ask. It's so true. Yeah, we talk about the bedroom door. When you find the bedroom door, you don't have to ask.

SPEAKER_02 41:06

Yeah, you just yeah, yeah. It's such an interesting thing. And I think it the the underlying theme is to let your mind stay broad enough in your thinking to think in generalities, but pay attention to every little detail. You know what I mean? So it's like I'm in a constant dialogue when I'm in the woods scouting postseason or whatever. I wrote a series and it's not online anymore because I took that website down and I never re-uploaded this series, but it's a six-part series on post-season scouting, and it's captured in here, but it's how I approach finding deer and find getting set up for the following year. And it's much like you've talked about, Dave, and in that winter, those winter months are critical because all the reasons you've talked about in your other podcasts, right? Like things you just mentioned now, because you go out now, between now and September, and try to figure out it's it's like you can't see anything. It's a salad bowl. Yeah, it's literally climbing over salmon berries over your head. You got ferns up to your chin, and nettles and all the nettles, nettles, yeah, good times. And then who wants to be out there in that heat? The summers that we have are so hot. I'm all about just shed hunting, taking my time, and figuring it all out in the winter.

SPEAKER_03 42:19

And I always feel like I get a false reading, I guess a false positive is a way I could put it where this looks thick in the summertime.

SPEAKER_04 42:28

Right.

SPEAKER_03 42:28

But then when I get there during hunting season and everything, yeah, everything's disappeared, the leaves are all down and whatnot. Wait a minute, this is not near as thick as I there's a lot more light getting in here. Yeah and yeah.

SPEAKER_02 42:39

I've had a couple tree stand lessons there where I put my stand up too early and I get in there in October and I'm like, I'm exposed. And then I have to re-readjust.

SPEAKER_00 42:51

So what else? We end into the willow trees. We got the rubs covered. What else are you looking for? And you've you were talking about those ruts, rutting spots.

SPEAKER_02 43:00

What else are you looking for when you I've heard Dave talk about this too, and I think you look for those transition zones between two different or three different types of habitat.

Edges Food Sources And Fresh Dirt

SPEAKER_02 43:10

Three, I'm talking a clear-cut, mature stand of timber or and riparian or alder, mixed timber, maple, alder. When I can find intersections of three or four types of habitat, I feel like I'm just up in my odds of seeing black tails. So that's the number one thing. They're a creature of edges. Yeah. Those edges are created, as you guys have discussed a lot on the show. That road, a road, an old skitter road could define an edge, cut could define an edge. And one thing that I've noticed in more recent years is when there is new logging activity or new exposed dirt, literally dirt, like a cat cuts a new road in, or a logging company is going to cut a new road in. Deer go to that dirt so fast. I don't know what it is about the smell of fresh dirt, but. I've noticed that a lot of in recent years that when there's a disturbance and people think, oh no, I got to get out of the area because now they're cutting a road in or whatever, I don't know that I'd be so quick to leave the area.

SPEAKER_04 44:13

I would not either. And especially fresh clear cuts, uh, those deer love those down trees. They're they're super curious about it.

SPEAKER_03 44:19

Yeah, I know with the viny maple. If they go in and they drop a lot of viny maples and whatnot, that the sugar in those leaves, that tree disperses that sugar, that last bit of sugar in those leaves before they start drying out. And they dry out really fast. So relatively, like when they go in there and like where Anakin was, and when they go in there and they start thinning that out, so usually within the first couple days, there'll be a lot of deer activity in those areas before those leaves go dry out too much.

SPEAKER_02 44:47

We can spend a lot of time talking about what they eat. Yeah, and that's definitely one. I watched a doe this morning that's nursing. I mentioned this before. She's got a couple fawns tucked away, but we had some wind, and I've got a bunch of fresh maple leaves, big leaf maple leaves in the yard, and she's going around one by one, sucking those things down. And I've noticed too in late fall, the alder leaves that fall before they turn. Okay. They're green, greenish yellow.

SPEAKER_00 45:13

Well, still green, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 45:14

Man, do they love those? And which is why, again, abandoned logging roads and skitter roads can be very productive as a late, a late season food source. And a lot of people might not even think of that, but it's a collection of targeted food that they eat.

SPEAKER_04 45:29

What was that picture that you showed me? You had a limb come down or a limb pile on your yard, and that deer was over. And I was like, What?

SPEAKER_02 45:36

Yeah. Well, they eat a lot of cedar in the winter or in late winter, but I had had a burn pile in my yard and nice three-point buck. I literally was putting these limbs, these cedar limbs, on a burn pile. And I turned around and there's this buck, and he's literally eaten the tips of the cedar off the limbs. So I went and got the camera and took some pictures of that.

SPEAKER_04 45:58

Yeah, when he told me that, I was like, no. And then next bing. This is in the fall or in the spring or in the yeah, fall, winter.

SPEAKER_02 46:06

It was late fall last year. Okay.

SPEAKER_00 46:08

And it's interesting because we've always talked about like the spring, the eating the fresh shoots off of everything. You walk, like if you walk around now or even last couple months, you you see the tips of everything bitten off. But it's interesting. I don't think I've ever thought of what are they eating or thinking about that. What are they eating in the fall during season and being around, you know, those leaves that are falling while they're still a little bit green or yeah, those aspects of it.

SPEAKER_02 46:40

Yeah, I think that's for me. I'm starting, I guess, at this point in my learning, I'm trying to learn more about what they eat when throughout the year.

SPEAKER_01 46:48

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 46:48

Because they can eat a lot. We have a ton of native food sources. I have Russian olive right next to my driveway, and they're chowing down every new shoot that's coming up. They're eating it down to the point where it's they're getting all the good soft stuff. And I just pay attention to a lot more than I used to.

SPEAKER_03 47:06

It's something you just said there though, Tom, that I think for me that I've noticed that a lot of their food or their diet is tender shoots. It's always the tender part of it, it's never the rough. And I guess that's why the cedar would surprise me. You said that, I'm thinking it must be just the tender ends or something.

SPEAKER_02 47:24

It's the ends.

SPEAKER_03 47:25

But they're not going out there and they're not gnawing on wood and stuff. I don't think that plays a factor in it till we get till the late part of winter, the hardest part of winter, when they're relegated to to trail vines and things of that are not high in nutrition simply because everything else has died off. But that's when the diet seems to change to more of a survival, I gotta do what I gotta do thing versus the rest of the year. It just seems like everything is tender. Yep. And there's always a high sugar content as opposed to everything else that's out there.

SPEAKER_02 47:56

Yeah, the high calories, and I think, yeah, you're exactly right on that. I think that it's you look at elk pellets are the best maybe comparison, but if you look at elk droppings on the ground, you can tell what time of year it was because the woody, fibery little elk pellets hold their form and they're they look the way they did, except they're faded. Whereas a spring and summer pellet will be softer and it'll disappear. Same with deer. So I I spent a lot of time pellet counting and doing things like that too, which is more about trying to understand how many deer are in an area. But I do look at what those pellets are they are they more fibrous, meaning they're eating a lot more of the late winter woody stuff, and then is that just simply correlated to those harsh winters? And I say harsh, meaning we might get a few snow episodes and some teen type weather. Yeah. But by and large, these deer have it pretty easy throughout the year.

SPEAKER_00 48:52

Yeah. And then sometimes it just gets hard because it's 65 degrees and you have four inches of rain in two days.

SPEAKER_02 48:58

That's another story.

SPEAKER_00 48:59

And I'm an outdoor animal and this sucks. Yeah. Yeah. And so I actually had a conversation with someone who had some questions about the class, but he was and he was talking about he had goes out every year and he finds elk or deer sheds at 3,200 feet, and that's where he hunts it at 3,200 foot level. He said this year

Fire Closures Forecasts And Wrap Up

SPEAKER_00 49:20

all of their sheds were at 5,200 feet. And it was just warmer. They see the pile.

SPEAKER_02 49:26

Yeah. I always measure snowpack in my mind. I sort of clock what I see on Snoqualmie Pass when I'm heading over to hunt turkeys in the spring. And this year it was dirt. Yeah. It's kind of worrisome there. It is. Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 49:40

Yeah. Yeah. We'll see how it turns out this year.

SPEAKER_02 49:44

There's a El Nino article that one of our colleagues sent out yesterday that was pretty pretty disappointing. As a forecast or as just going over last year? I think it was a prediction of this summer.

SPEAKER_04 49:55

Yeah, it was a prediction. And I know that some counties like Thurston County where we're at, they already have water restrictions in place. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 50:02

I saw something about for this coming year that they were talking about it. Is it going to be a super El Nino year? Which is El Nino just amped up a little bit, two degrees warmer or whatever. But they said the snowpack more than half of those years is well above normal.

SPEAKER_04 50:20

So well, my question is how's that going to affect this fall for us hunting?

SPEAKER_03 50:24

Yeah. Yeah. I can tell you what it is right now. Yeah. I mean it's going to be locked up. Locked up. That's right. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 50:30

It's well, but and that kind of brings up a good point. We're going to have fire restrictions in a lot of places this year. People are going to be out looking around for places that aren't locked up like that. Yeah. And that's when R3 can come in and we can give them some other options. There you go.

SPEAKER_00 50:44

Call your biologist to check in with them. Because if you're going to be doing any type of scouting, I would say if you aren't done in the next month, you're not getting back in there late July and August, is it will be my guess. As far as I know Sierra Pacific, which is what I hunt. Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 51:03

I yeah, I think anymore it's important for people to know, use whatever mapping tool you want, but find out who owns a lot of the timberland in the areas you want to hunt, get their phone numbers on speed dial because it used to be every now and then we'd have to call Warehouser or somebody, Willamette Industries, and say, hey, are your gates open or are there any closures? And they'd say, No, we're good, or no, we're gonna wait until the first rain.

SPEAKER_00 51:28

And Sierra Pacific posts that all online.

SPEAKER_03 51:30

Yeah, and that's which is but I and I yeah, you're right, Tom. It was like a day-by-day thing. Remember the last couple weeks of August, just before elk season, and you're just like, come on, you're calling every day or you're looking on the newspaper or whatever, and and yeah.

SPEAKER_02 51:45

Yeah, it's tough. I used to sometimes we'd even one year I went to Oregon hunt state land, a non-resident tag, just because I knew I could go on to state land because it wouldn't get closed. Now you're buying a non-resident license, you got five days to fill an elk tag. It you're not getting being too picky on those notes. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 52:03

Yeah. Can't wait you can get so I think we're out of time. I'm gonna wrap this up. Join us next week because we are gonna get into calling and rattling in depth. And if you could go on, like, subscribe, follow, do all of those things heart, whatever your platform needs. Check the description down below. We'll have some links for more information related to these topics, and we will talk to you next week.