Aaron Warbritton's Fastest Way to Find Deer ANYWHERE

I mean, how much time do you have? You got a four day hunt. How many hours are in the day? How much time do you have to sleep? How much time do you have to be in the woods? Get that down to a number and think about, okay, if I go, I picked this spot on the map, it looks like it's three miles back there as a crow flies, but it's actually four and a half by the time I walk around this Ridge and do this and cross this river, how long is it going to take you to get in there? Two and a half hours, two hours. What about if it's in the dark and you're going there in a hunt and you're not trying to spook deer on the way? Three hours before you know it, you've spent all day going in to this remote area that you've had your heart set on. And then you find a camera in there where you just burn one day out of four. That ain't efficient. I'm trying to be efficient. But one of the reasons I wanted to have you on about this is because you've had the unique opportunity where you travel and hunt so much and you're constantly putting yourself in new situations and new areas that you haven't been to, and you'll have to figure it out in like a week. I mean, you've probably done that more than most people do in their life, probably. And so I'm wondering about your perspective on that. Like the setup is one thing and we can go back to that, but I just wanted to put this in here real quick. What about just finding the deer? I mean, cause you might be hunting in Iowa or Missouri and then you've got a hammer on the wall back here from Georgia. So how do you reconcile that? Like just go into such different habitat types, different states, hours away from the house, and y'all can find them quick. I mean, it's going to sound pretty simple, but it's just boot, leather, and deer sign a lot of times or deer or spotting deer. Where we were at in Georgia, I always, I can't give blanket statements. That's just not how my brain works. I always go to a situation and then I can explain it. You know, reverse engineer that. We're in Georgia where that buck come from very thick area, very difficult to glass, so we have to rely on finding deer sign that requires boot leather. You have to get out and move around the woods. I'd never hunted there before. I don't know what half the plants are. I don't, I mean, it's all thick deer to look like they can bed virtually everywhere. Where are we going to kill these things at? So what we had to do is we had to start looking for sign and eventually we had to start spooking deer on purpose to see where they were at. It's like, see how that deer was bedded, where it was or what, what that thicket look like, what these acorns are that just fell. And there's obviously deer sign in those. Can we repeat that pattern elsewhere on this property? You know, and over the course of a week, you're just putting all those little nuggets in your brain and then you're just trying to repeat that. You know, as many times as you can, coupled with the fact you want to find areas where people aren't going, but I mean, it, it honestly all kind of meshes together. Usually when you find the deer, you're finding areas where people aren't going unless it's all night sign that you're seeing, which you have to sort of reconcile that out at some point as well. But it is, it is very basic. It is just effort more than anything. And looking at what that situation offers you. If you go to South Dakota, for example, you're going to be on glass because you can be more efficient with that. In a lot of areas, I'm honestly in the truck and I'm just driving around and I'm looking at, you know, is the road ditch soft dirt that's leaving tracks where I can read them and okay, here's deer tracks. Here's a bunch of deer tracks. There must be some deer in here in this spot. Let's go in here and identify what the spot looks like, how they're bedding in it, how they're moving around in it. And then see if we can repeat that pattern in three or four other places. In Georgia, we noticed they were hammering red oak acorns at a certain elevation. And that moved up and down the mountains a little bit, but it was pretty obvious. Once you come down below this midway bench and you got on the one right below it, there was more red oaks there and a lot of these drainages and they were dropping and all of a sudden we get in a fresh deer sign, fresh poop, you know, leaves stirred up, fresh tracks, occasional fresh rub here and there. But that's what we were targeting. And we don't just find one spot like that. We're looking for multiple spots. And that gets, that comes before the setup. Cause like you said, you could have a great setup. If no deer is going to walk by you, what good does it do you? So you have to find them first. Um, and that's what I'm all about is efficiency. How can we find them as quickly as possible? I mean, in Michigan, me and Ted, we, we were hunting most of the time within a half mile of the road based on efficiency. Like most people are like, Oh, you got to get two miles back. You got to get the canoe out and you gotta, you know, get up at one in the morning and sail it back in there behind everybody else. It's like, that's one option for me. I want six so that I can go to plan B, C, D, E, and so on. So what me and Ted did is we, we leapfrog speed scouted, went down a road, dropped Ted off, take a line in there, half mile, spend 30 minutes, come out. If you see something noteworthy come out and get me, we'll go back in and we want to figure it out right then and there so that we don't have to go in and get more intel later, he'd go do that. I'd go half mile up the road. I'd go in 30 minutes back to the car, regroup, compare notes, down the road again. And we do that 10, 15 times over the course of the day, missing hunts, just to find deer. And it worked, worked great in that scenario because it was, it was thick country that was not glassable. It was flat, very consistent wind across the board. So pretty much anything we found, we could hunt it. Um, cause the wind flow was pretty consistent through that country. You get up in those mountains and the wind flow is another, that's another beast entirely. Yeah, that's fun too, man. Doing that with a buddy, like you're talking about and me and Jacob traveled a little bit, not nearly the extent that you guys do. But one thing that we found out, I just wanted to bring this up because you kind of mentioned it, but I'm curious on your thoughts is you always get the advice that you were just saying, like, take the canoe and walk two miles, do this, do that, wait across the creek. I mean, a lot of times you'll get back there and you'll find a trail camera and a tree stand way back. So it's kind of, you don't always have to go deep. I mean, it's situational, like what you're talking about. I mean, how much time do you have? You got a four day hunt. How many hours are in the day? How much time do you have to sleep? How much time do you have to be in the woods? Get that down to a number. And think about, okay, if I go, I picked this spot on the map. It looks like it's three miles back. There's a crow flies, but it's actually four and a half. By the time I walk around this Ridge and do this and cross this river. How long is it going to take you to get in there? Two and a half hours, two hours. What about if it's in the dark and you're going there to hunt and you're not trying to spook deer on the way. Three hours before you know it, you've spent all day going in to this remote area that you've had your heart set on. And then you find a camera in there. Well, you just burned one day out of four. That ain't efficient. I'm trying to be efficient. I got, I mean, I'm enjoying my time out there. I love to hunt, but anymore, I got a wife and kids at home that I must spend time with. That's priority number one, hunting is number two. So I want to go have fun, be successful and come home. I don't have, you know, 10 years ago, I could have just left for a month and a half. You know, and I just, it'd take as long as it takes, but that's not how I operate anymore. Yeah. The guy that you're just describing of like, uh, taking four hours to get to a spot, you got your heart set, you just described me, that's me, I do that every time, it drives him crazy. I've certainly done it too, but, and it's worked, but it's like, it's a big swing to do that, you know, it's a, it's a big risk on a short timeframe.