Keeping A Hunting Journal with Warren Womack

Today on our show we have Mr. Warren Womack. Warren Womack has been a whitetail hunting enthusiast for 56 years and has documented every detail of his whitetail hunts in various hunting journals. Recently, Warren was the second induction of the Louisiana Chapter of the National Legends of the Outdoors Hall of Fame.

But before we dive into our whitetail discussion...

Western Elk Hunting Experiences

Elk live in the nastiest, steepest, most rugged country and they are very hearty animals. They say that if you're going to come to the west and elk hunt, you need to be in the best shape of your life. It is physically grueling. Some even joke that you go elk hunting the first time for fun, and the second time for revenge.

Western Elk Hunt in 1975

Warren: "One time... It was 1975, 3 of us. I had an old '74 Bronco. Had a rack on it and on the back we had a sheet metal box... And one of the guys, Floyd Smith, had a death in his family. His stepdad raised him from a baby and he died right before we left. So we [Charles Lee Bueller] got together and got my Bronco loaded all up to stay two weeks. We were going elk hunting for one week and mule deer hunting for one week. We loaded it all up and took off. And Floyd stayed. He made the funeral and got on a plane. We picked him up in Denver."

"And then we went and we hunted two areas. We hunted the Delta National Forest and Uncompaghre National Forest. I forget which one we hunted elk and which one we hunted deer... 1975's a long time ago. But we made a trip up there in that Bronco with co-op mud grips. You know how them co-op mud grips sang and holler when you're riding down the road. And people had never seen anything up there in Colorado that looked like that. That drew some attention."

"It was our first trip and what the deal was, their [Colorado] license was gonna take a hundred dollar jump. Their license for non-resident mule deer was $25 and the elk tag was $30 and it was gonna go to $125 and $135 the next year. That was a lot of money back then. And so we decided we're gonna make the trip."

"We got up there, but we knew some guys from Louisiana that had been up there for about 15 years in a row. And we kind of followed their lead and met up with them up there and then they pointed out an area to go in and look for some elk."

"We got on the side of a mountain and we were looking across this draw and deep ravine to this other side of the mountain. And we spotted the elk. I saw about 35 that evening and we kind of spread out and we found the elk."

"So we went back and our packages left a lot to be desired. We didn't have all that fancy stuff. And I had an 8x10 Coleman tent with stakes. And we had some kind of makeshift backpacks. And our food was... we had a quart jar of peanut butter. It was really strange for a couple of flat-landers up there."

"Yeah. But anyway, we went down there and we thought we were just gonna go down the mountain and go up to the other side. But we got down there and they had a ravine straight down. We had to cross that thing. We got down in there and spent the night down in that ravine - set up our tent. Spent the night down in that ravine, not thinking if it could have rained up above it would be a flash flood and drown us all. We were pretty ignorant out of our environment - natural environment."

"We'd found a log on the other side of the slope where we could climb up that log and then get a start out of that ravine to get on up the mountain. I was a young man then and I just wanted to shoot something. So I shot a cow elk that evening. Missed a spike and shot a cow. It ran off and it was late in the evening, so we went back to camp."

"Next day we got up, started looking for it, found some blood, and we were tracking the blood of the elk. And we run into another out-of-state hunter. And he told us we were trespassing. And we didn't know. We were just going by what the guy that's been there for 18 years had told us - that it was government land. We talked to this guy and he said he paid $300 to hunt with a guided outfitter on private land. And it wasn't private. It was National Forest land. That guide was using easy access to get into this hard National Forest property and making money as a guide saying it was his property or he had a lease on it or whatever."

"But anyway, the guy, he was just a hunter. He was just kind of giving us a warning that the guy trespassed anybody he caught on there. So, my two buddies got a little nervous. But I was wanting to find my elk. So they backed out and went back down, packed up to leave. And I looked for the elk."

"When I shot that cow elk, Charles Lee said, 'You shot a cow?' And I said, 'Yeah man, I'm really happy about it.' He said, 'You fixing to work harder than you ever worked in your life.' Cause we were on that one side of that mountain and we had to come down, drop off in a ravine, climb out of the ravine, and go up the other side. I didn't think anything about that. I was young and green and just wanted to shoot anything I could. I had good blood till I got up in the real rocky part of the upper part and just blood started getting hard to find. I backed out."

"But then we went to San Juan National Forest and I killed a mule deer. The funny part about the mule deer I shot, I climbed 35 feet up in the tree to hang my stand on the side of the mountain. And if I looked six feet behind me, I was about eight feet off the ground. If I looked the other way, I was probably 70 -80 feet off the ground. And just my luck, a couple of does come in. I shot a doe and she run down the mountainside and fell dead about a hundred yards from the road where my Bronco was parked."

"But it was a great trip. I had a lot of fun out there. I trained so hard to get ready for that trip. I was working on a job that had a tower and I was running that tower three times a day, taking two steps at a time up to the top just to get conditioned. I was working out with weights, I was running at the house, thought I was in tip-top shape. I got up there in that high elevation in Colorado and I got my tent out, throw it on the ground, rolled it out, run to the other side, and I couldn't catch my breath."

First Backcountry Elk Hunt

Locke: "I guess just to kind of recap that from my perspective is, those guys [Western hunters] work hard and that is some beautiful country. And there is no doubt in my mind that if you're there on the right day, there are a lot of elk in that country. I've hunted a lot of different animals and I consider myself at least capable as a woodsman and an outdoorsman. And I can say without even experiencing elk hunting personally, that just my woodsmanship tells me there's no way there's that much sign of any kind of animal in one area and it not have a lot of 'em."

"There was elk sign everywhere and we did hear plenty of elk bugling. It was just very sporadic. They weren't really responsive. And the weather, it rained three of the five days that we were in there. So the weather kept changing and the wind kept changing. And it seemed like every time we would get in the right spot, the wind would shift and then the elk would go silent. And we were archery hunting. And so that was difficult."

"But I've been hearing these stories and like the one Mr. Warren just shared and the ones I've heard from Mike for all these years, and I got to experience it. Those guys [Rusty Farnsworth - outfitter] worked incredibly hard. I think they're a little bit crazy to be quite honest with you. To do what they do week after week, it's a little bit nuts. But I'm glad I did it."

Western Hunting Versus Whitetail Hunting

With most whitetail country, we don't have the visibility that western hunters have to watch animals from afar. Western hunters typically utilize tools like spotting scopes and binoculars to keep tabs on mule deer or elk as they are moving, but in the Midwest and Eastern states, there's not any way to keep tabs on whitetail outside of trail cameras or encounters that we have with them while out in the woods.

And while elk are very nomadic in their behaviors, whitetail and mule deer do have some similarities.

Mule Deer and Whitetail Territory

When looking at mule deer behavior, you can expect them to hang out in the same area for the most part. There are certain conditions, like the availability of water, that may drive a mule deer's territory out farther, but for the most part, they are fairly predictable outside of the rut.

Do whitetail deer have a core area similar to mule deer?

Locke: "In my experience, I do think that they have that core area... They don't roam outside of it much outside of the rut. Now I will say this, I think that deer herd size and geography changes that a little bit. I think there are some places where the amount of deer per square acre in an area and the amount of open terrain versus hilly terrain versus thick terrain changes that size. And maybe that's the same with mule deer, but I've hunted some areas where a mature buck or a primary group of does and yearlings or whatever, their core area can be very small. And I've hunted other places where it seems like it's a lot larger."

"Because whitetail live in so much more diverse terrain and diverse geography across the United States, I think that the core principle of what you're saying is true. But I think that somebody listening to us in one part of the country may be experiencing that in a one to two-mile kind of radius, where someone in another part of the country may be like, 'Well, that's not right. I don't have deer move even nearly that far.'"

Warren: "It's really hard to say, but I think they have a home range. They have different core areas established in different parts of that home range. But at different times of the season and the year they might be more comfortable in the areas say a mile one time of the year than they would be another place another time of the year. It's like a home range with different core areas and it depends on the time of the year and what's available that they need or want."

Importance of Hunting Journals

Mr. Warren has done about as in-depth of a level of documenting his experience hunting whitetail as any hunter we've met.

How did you get started keeping a hunting journal?

Warren: "It wasn't that detailed when I first started... I'm 78 years old right now. I was a small game hunter since I was seven, but we didn't have any deer anywhere near our area back then. So I was 24 years old before I could put myself where they had any deer at all. And it was all self-learning. They didn't have any education for bow hunters back then at all. I mean, maybe in the three Outdoor magazines: they had Outdoor Life, Sports of Field, and Field and Stream. Once a year they'd have an article on bow hunting or something like that. But I looked at it as an apprenticeship program, taking four years to learn how to put deer underneath me on a consistent basis."

"And my uncle, he recognized real early that I was getting into this stuff and how much I put into deer hunting, trying to put deer under me. And he encouraged me to keep records - to keep a diary or a journal and write numbers down and facts and take pictures. And that was before video back then too."

"So I took his word for it and I started off real slow. First, I'd write down my kills. I'd write the number and then what number it was for a bow kill or gun kill [for example- the first kill was a gun kill, the 10th kill was my fifth bow kill]. I'll write down the date, the time, what I killed - whether it was an eight-point or a doe or a spike. I'd write all that down. And then I would have the time of the shot, how far the shot was, how far the travel was, and where I was hunting at. That was my basic deal. And I have all that for 387 deer."

Mike: "What year did you start that diary?"

Warren: "1968, which would be about 56 years.

How many hunts do you have documented in your hunting journals?

Warren: "I can't quote all the numbers on 'em because I didn't bring my book. I got a master copy of my records and then my journal consists of writing, stats, pictures, and video footage. I got a lot of stats on different things, but that first thing was just the guide that I made to rescue the kills. And then for every deer and turkey I ever killed, I have a complete story written about it; Just like you would read in a magazine."

"I've killed... 387 deer and 93 gobblers. I got a story on every kill I ever made, plus I got a story on every shot I ever made. Plus, since 2002, I got a detailed account of every day I hunted - how many hours I hunted, how many bow hunts I've made. And just, it's just unbelievable.

Are you going to have your hunting journal made into a book?

Warren: "I've had a lot of people who encourage me to do it. Number one was my wife, but I did [release] some videos. In '95 I come out with my first video. To my knowledge, it's the first video ever made that the cameraman and shooter were the same person. It was way before self-film was ever even thought about. And I released that video in 1995 and it was called 'The Ultimate Challenge'. I had 10 kills on it. Half of 'em was with a recurve and half of 'em was with a compound bow. It did good. I sold a bunch of those things and I produced I think six more after that, too. But starting in '91 I got a video camera, started self-video, and I got a video of every season since 1991."

"My first three or four seasons, I was really into it. And there were like three or four 60-minute DVDs for each season, documenting all the kills, all the shots, all the misses, all the places, and everything I could think about to put on them. I know exactly how many bow hunts I made in my life, which is over 2000."

"But back to my journal, I have just so much detail in it. I wish I'd have brought it over here because, without it, I can't quote the numbers. It's just too vast."

As much as you have enjoyed keeping a hunting journal, does it get taxing at times?

Warren: "Oh it does. I mystify myself with the stuff. And I tell everybody, you're only limited by your imagination on what you can record."

"But I was really selfish about my hunting. I would quit my job... I worked construction out of a Union Hall, so it wasn't like I worked for one employer all the time. I had different employers and different jobs. But the last Friday in September, I was done. I was ready to start hunting and I forfeited probably a third of my annual salary by doing that."

"But I would like to make four-day hunts. I had my truck set up like a camper and I'd go off and sleep in my truck. I had everything I needed in there. And I'd spend four days hunting and you needed that to scout. Things changed so much, you gotta be able to stay with the deer, and daily in-season scouting was probably my best thing. Getting out there and walking two to four hours to find the best primary place to hunt and the major place to hunt. I was scouting with open-mind four days out of the four days I hunted."

How many times have you used your hunting journal to help your hunting?

Warren: "Almost daily. My hunting style started changing in the early 2000s. Age-wise, my wife needs me at home. I quit hunting out of state and quit hunting public land. I just hunt private, close-by land. I've dealt with some health issues, which at my age has slowed me down a lot. And then I've been doing this so long, so much, it's kind of gotten to where I'm not into it as much as I was before."

"But... back in the old days, no matter what time of the year, I go back and look at all the kills I made on that certain day. I got all my documents. I might have six different kills on say October the 10th. I'll go back and check all those kills, where I was at, and the data on it and what I was killing them on - oak trees or whatever."

"I'm a feed tree hunter mostly. My favorite way to hunt is to hunt feed trees. So if I find where I kill a tree on a certain tree, I remember where that tree's at, and I'll go in and check it. And if it's got acorns, it's a good chance it's gonna be dropping at the same time every year in the same place. Then I can find a tree that's dropping on a certain elevation and I can go on a topo map and check that same elevation in different areas and go in there and check those trees and find the same species of tree dropping at the same time in an area with the same elevations."

Flow Areas

As far as deer movement, how much pattern have you found from year to year or even throughout a period?

Warren: "Air has changed, storms cause disruption, and the environment and habitat, but it's pretty consistent. I like to hunt what I coined as a 'flow area'. It's not a trail. It's not a funnel. It's just an area that the deer are traveling through and they're using elevation changes, the thickness of the woods to hide as they travel from point A to point B. And it's a real distinct thing for them. You look through these woods and they look open, but you're gonna have little dips and draws. You're gonna have trees a little bit thicker and deer use that to travel to stay hidden. And you find it by observation stands... Just go out there, climb a tree, watch for movement, and then hone in on that movement."

"If you could find a flow area, those deer are gonna use that floor area year after year after year, unless something unnatural causes it to change. As long as it stays advantageous to 'em, they going to use it. And man, I have killed some deer... These does are traveling that flow area, their fawns are following, the fawns grow up, they have fawns, and they're still using that area too. It's a lot of late morning and early afternoon hunting in there where they're traveling around a little bit."

"Flow areas are really good, but that's not the only thing. I like to scout with an open mind - take advantage of anything outstanding for sign that I find. I think oak trees are my favorite way, but I'm not just focused on that. I'm focused on anything that shows I have a chance to see a deer."

Locke: "When did you coin the term 'flow area'?"

Warren: "Probably in the '80s."

Locke: "Yesterday I saw a podcast pop up and the title was, 'Using Flow Areas to Fool Deer. So people have started to use it because it makes a lot of sense... I love the flow area thing. I think it's great for people listening to this.

Is there anything that can compare to 'flow areas' out West?

Mike: "Well mule deer and whitetail are related. They're evolutionary cousins. I agree with Warren wholeheartedly. Here in the West, we have actual migrations. Mule deer have a summer range - it's usually high on the mountain. And then in some cases, like in southern Utah where I'm at, our deer will migrate up to 20 miles into Wyoming. They have deer migrating over 60, 70, and 80 miles. And those fawns follow their mothers from the winter range to the summer range and then back from the summer range to the winter range. And it's like ingrained in their genetic code. They just know. And I think that's very similar to what Mr. Warren just explained. They recognize that that mom kind of uses these flow corridors to keep 'em safe from predation."

"When we're talking about whitetails evading predation, I'd imagine we're talking about coyotes, but probably primarily hunters, right? Hunters are the apex predator and for a buck to survive four or five hunting seasons, whether it's a whitetail or mule deer, and get to that age class where they can grow a big set of antlers, they gotta learn to evade hunters and evade predation."

"In fact, I think it's a very common cadence for all ungulates to use areas where there's just not the pressure in there."

Flow Areas versus Food Source

Is it easier to be successful, specifically as a bow hunter, hunting those flow areas or hunting over a food source?

Warren: "Over the food source."

Locke: "What experiences lead you to have that opinion?"

Warren: "They could come from different directions on a flow area... I know you can set it up... but, I'm telling you until you've hunted feed trees the way myself and several other guys have done it, you can't imagine how productive it is. It's the absolute best way to put deer inside bow range."

Locke: "I would've said the other, but I think you and I were looking at it differently. I was looking at it more from the shot execution standpoint. I think it's easier to shoot a traveling deer than shoot a feeding deer."

"In my experience, most of the deer I've hunted my whole life have been in pressured areas. I've hunted these hills, hollows, hardwoods, and pine thickets of Louisiana and Mississippi my whole life. And whether it's the primary feed tree or a food pot, a mature dough specifically, she'll kind of ease her way along. And she's always cautious, but when she gets to the food, it's every other second. She's checking the wind, she's looking, and getting drawn back and executing a shot has always seemed harder for me on deer feeding than the deer that is comfortable in its flow area. I'm curious what your thoughts about that are."

Warren: "I disagree... if you got set up with corn, they are real spooky coming in. It takes 'em a long time to settle down and they even check trees. But on acorns, in my experience, they come in like a string. They going right to it. They might do a little jay-hook and come in on it... downwind. But they come in just like on a string to an oak tree. It's just unbelievable."

Natural Food Sources for Whitetail

Do you think natural foods make more difference when hunting over a food source?

Warren: "I think so. There's just a lot of scent coming in there, putting corn out, checking your cameras, and this, that, and the other. It's not a natural food source, whereas acorns are a natural food. Persimmons, honey locus beans, or crab apples... just any kind of primary food source. I always say primary food source equals high percentage hunt."

"I'll tell you something else, [bucks] will walk through acorns and persimmons to get to a honey locus bean tree."

Locke: "If any of y'all listening to this kind of watch and follow the different hunting shows and film series, back in 99, 2000, 2001, [Primos] did one of their truth about whitetail deer hunting and they spent a considerable amount of time talking about hunting over honey locus trees... In some areas, they love honey locus bean trees, and then in some areas, it seems like they'll eat it kinda like pecan."

Are whitetail hunters planting persimmon or honey locus bean trees back in flow areas to hunt over?

Locke: "I planted yesterday and we did a little piece that you'll see on the Skre Whitetail Strategies vlog series. But I think a lot of people plant food plots because everybody's always planted food plots and they do it because their daddy did it. And the hunting club they grew up hunting in did it."

"For me, I plant food plots for carrying capacity, and I hardly ever hunt them until the late season. Because when all of these acorns and persimmons and honey locus and all this stuff gets thinner, you want to have a really good food source. Not necessarily as an attractive bait site to hunt over, even though we do hunt over them. You want to provide that nutrition for your deer. You keep 'em around your property; Keep 'em moving through your property."

"And to me, that's what food plots are about more so than anything. I don't care what you plant, how good you plant it, and how good it's growing from a food plot perspective. A good acorn tree's gonna be better than that food plot. And they're gonna eat that and they're not gonna come out in your food plot on a consistent pattern and feed over [feeding on] a natural, local food source that gets hot during that time of the year."

"Now, if you've got a small piece of property and you don't have a food source of note on it, maybe you do that. But for me... I think that's what the food plot stuff's about."

What is 'reading the drip line'?

Warren: "On a feed trees model, if there's soft mass or a hard mass - either one of 'em - I'm looking for the one the deer have selected as the primary feed tree for the whole area. And the sign doesn't show up as much as it does later on, but early in the season you gotta just hunt what sign you can find basically. But about the second or 3rd weekend of October, they start showing up good. The acorns start dropping good and these deer [get] real picky on what they're going to eat and they gonna pick out the very best that they can find and eat it."

"When they find this oak tree that the acorns are perfect - just like they want it, they're dropping at a good rate, they got the nutrition that they want, the taste they want and everything - they'll designate that tree as the primary tree in their area and they gonna spend most of their time there. That particular tree is their destination that they come into."

"And what gives it away is the activity in a tree. You get a real prime tree that the acorns are perfect, you're gonna have everything in the world that eats acorns coming to it. You're gonna have blue jays up in there, squawking, knocking, acorns out, feeding on them. You're gonna have 'coons climbing the tree, going up there getting acorns. Squirrels are hitting it hard and the acorns are just literally raining and hitting the ground."

"And I found trees by listening to blue jays 150 yards off - hearing them acorns dropping and just squawking. Everything goes to that sign. And once you get there, you're gonna see the ground disturbed underneath the crown of the tree. This tree goes out different ways in different directions and that's the drop zone under there. And I call it the drip line around that crown, however, it's shaped and as far as it extends from the trunk. All that activity's gonna show up in that area, where there are deer going around picking these acres up. The leaves are gonna be disturbed, they're gonna be chopped up. You're going to see droppings on the ground. You could see a few rubs around in there where the bucks have been there and started rubbing a little bit. It's just a really hot tree, screaming for you to hunt it. And it's a tree when you walk up, you can't walk away without coming back to it or either climbing while you're there."

How common are these feed trees?

Warren: "They could be really hard to find. That's why I like to walk two to four hours every day looking for the most primary feed tree I can find."

"But you gotta recognize it for what it is and set up on it right too. We don't have wood lots like they got in the Midwest. We got huge spans of cut-over, creek bottoms, small ridges, breaks, and stuff like that. So the deer can bed anywhere. I mean they can lay down and actually bed anywhere. So it is not like the Midwest where they got these predominant areas that all they do is bed in it and then they got predominant feeding areas."

"I like to do it the best by hitting one side of a drainage. You might be able to walk it up a mile or so checking all the oak trees, just going from oak tree to oak tree. Some oak trees you can get a distance from it, you can see there's no activity there at all. Some of 'em you can hear activity and you can go to it, check it and, and judge it after you get there."

"When I was younger, I would jog these creek bottoms running from one tree to another, just fast as I could to cover as much ground as I could to see what was good. I might find four different trees that I think I could kill a deer on. Well, I'm there for a four-day hunt. Say this is the first morning I got there and I found four trees. I pick out what's the best for the wind and where I think the deer would be coming from, the drop rate activity in it, and what it looks like on the ground under the crown. And I'll pick that tree out and I'll hunt it that evening. And then if I kill on it, that's it. I'm done with it and I'm gonna find another one. But if I don't kill on it, I might come back the next morning and hunt it for two hours and then get down and walk another two to four hours looking at new areas."

"And then I might find three more there. So then I got, say six trees to choose from. And then I do the same thing day after day. So I'm trying to improve my chances by continually scouting."

"Now you can't do this on small properties. You gotta have huge acres to do this. Like National Forest, Wildlife Management areas, and stuff like that. I might hunt one area in the morning and then that midday I might be five miles from there checking stuff. And then that evening I might be another five miles from there. So, you gotta have huge areas to do this, but just cover as much ground as you can, looking as many trees as you can, and hopefully, you'll find what you're looking for."

Can you set up cameras on some of those trees you find?

Warren: "Yeah, but I never used them. The only thing I use my cameras for is on a food supply like corn or something in a particular private area, just to catalog the deer. To see what I got there, what I'm looking for, and see if it's something I might be interested in. As far as feed trees, I'm covering too much land and finding too much stuff to hunt... They would slow me down."

Where can we get more information and connect with you?

Warren: "I share a lot of it on Instagram with pictures. 'On a Memory From This Day' is what my theme is. And I'll write down what I killed, have a picture of it and the shot, how far the shot was, the specifics of each picture, you know, and I've got about a thousand of 'em on Instagram right now."

"Warren Womack is my name on my YouTube channel. I got about 250 video clips on YouTube. The quality leaves a lot to be desired when I put 'em on there. I had low-speed internet and it'd take two hours to upload a 20-second or 30-second video."

"My Facebook is Warren Womack. My Instagram is Warren Womack." 

Final Hunting Advice from 56 Years of Experience

Warren: "Well, if [you] get a good mentor, it'd help out a lot. It'd be a shortcut, but it takes a while. So don't be impatient and expect about a four-year apprenticeship to get it all together. There's a whole lot to it. It's not just like going out there and sitting down and hoping a deer comes by and you get a shot at him. It's much more than that. It's a lot to learn and it takes time to do it. So don't expect too much too soon."

"The wait will be worthwhile if you hang in there and learn how to do it right. I think the kids these days are being given the wrong message. Their daddies want 'em to experience deer hunting cause they love it so much. They put him on a four-wheeler, drive to the shooting house, climb up in the shooting house, and wait for a deer to come out. What does he do? Shoot him, load him up, and drive back to the camp. But the kid's not learning anything about deer. He's not learning anything about the outdoors, how to navigate, or everything it takes to be a woodsman. It's a lot to it and it takes a while. So be patient and don't expect too much soon, but it's worth the wait."

Mike: "We've evolved as a society where everything is instant gratification. As hunters, we have a responsibility to kinda resurrect the old way of hunting and remind ourselves why we do it. And it isn't about the kill."

"I think the message in this podcast is to take time to enjoy and observe nature."

Power of Observation

If we were to take one thing that Mr. Warren has talked about and hope that our readers and listeners take away from this conversation is to learn how to read nature. It isn't enough to be out in the woods just looking for tracks and droppings but to realize that all of the activity in the woods around you is a sign of something.

Locke utilizes listening to crows while turkey hunting. Oftentimes, a crow making a lot of noise at the edge of a field is an indication of a turkey in that field.

And Mike saw this principle applied to his Grizzly bear hunt in Alaska. Their pilot noticed a ton of birds in a slew area and knew that would be a high area of activity for bears. The birds were attracted to the dog salmon that were trapped in the slew area and that would also attract the grizzly bears.

Observation is the most powerful tool we have as hunters and woodsmen. Sure, we love being out in nature, but if we are being truly honest, we all want to fill our tags. If you can hone your observation skills it is going to make you a better hunter.

If you have any questions, anything you'd like to hear us talk about, or any specific guests that you'd like us to try to get to come on the podcast, I encourage you to send an email to locke@skregear.com. We want to answer your questions and talk about the things that you want to hear. Thank you again for listening to the Skre Country Podcast.