Going out to hunt is always about the experiences you gain. Hunting experiences and traditions are best kept when you capture it so you can look back at it someday, and that’s what an outdoor media company is all about. Wilbur “Spanish Mac” Ramos, the owner of Mass Pursuit TV, shares what it takes to run an outdoor media company. He reveals some gold nuggets for everyone who wants to dive into this business and earn hard dollars from hunting. Moreover, discover the three things that a pro staffer must have to be considered for Mass Pursuit TV. On the side, Wilbur shares what makes bowhunting a worthy challenge.
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Listen to the podcast here:
[smart_track_player url=”https://feeds.podetize.com/ep/AEj4ixgxu/media” title=”Deer Hunting – Mass Pursuit TV – Wilbur “Spanish Mac” Ramos” artist=”Whitetail Rendezvous”]Deer Hunting – Mass Pursuit TV – Wilbur “Spanish Mac” Ramos
Wilbur “Spanish Mac” Ramos is the owner of Mass Pursuit TV. He’s got a running partner, Jason Norris, who is the Chief Operating Officer. We’re going to talk about whitetail deer and what it takes to make a TV program go. Wilbur, welcome to the show. Let’s talk about how you started with Mass Pursuit TV.
Thank you for inviting us. Having the Mass Pursuit TV show has been something a long-life dream of mine that I’ve had. It came to reality several years ago when I started filming my hunts and so forth. I ventured out and got some good friends here that most people know as T-Bone Travis Turner and Michael Waddell. These guys are from the same area I live here in Harris County, Georgia. They’ve taught me a lot, the ropes on how to get the stuff going here for the show. My love for the hunt and for the fishing, it will always be there. What better way of doing what you love to do, putting it on video and sharing it with the people out there and having something to look back in the years down the road to share with your grandkids and your kids. That’s pretty much what led me to it. It’s the love of the sport and enjoying the outdoors.
How did you connect with Jason?
I met Jason a few years ago at one of the shows, I can’t remember if it was the ATA show or the Buckmasters at Montgomery. He was retired military and Jason brought a lot to the table. He was in the service for 27 years. He loves the outdoors and he has a passion for it. We do a lot of stuff. With him now being retired military, we’ve got a lot of connections with a lot of wounded vet organizations. Whitetail Warriors is one of them. That’s how I met Jason. He’s very level-headed. He has got a military background. He is an instrumental part of our show now. We’re glad to have him on board.
When you look to from the start to where it is now, a lot of blood, sweat and tears, certainly a lot of money, and that’s one of the challenges that people ask me. There are tremendous challenges to get a TV show up and running and get it placed on a Pursuit or Sportsman show. What advice would you give somebody that wants to say, “I want to do this?”
My first advice is you’ve got to have enough footage to even create a season. People don’t think, “I could go get a camera. I could film my hunt, put it on tape, get me some pro staffers and I’ll make some good videos. We’ll send it up to one of the networks to see if they like it.” The network is going to like it okay. They’re going to want you to pay them, $25,000, $30,000, $40,000 to buy some of the airtime. It takes time. My advice is don’t jump in head first and think that you’re going to start your show after one season of hunting or two seasons or three seasons. It took me about seven whitetail seasons to get enough footage to even do a half of a season’s episodes.
One season, it depends on the quarters. You want to try to have at least thirteen 30-minute episodes. You’ve got to have a lot of time and a lot of good footage that you could use to create a great episode because you’re trying to make a story out of each show that you do. If you don’t have a storyline, you don’t have a show. You could have some of these reality-type hunting shows where they’re like the reality TV shows that are out there now where there’s not a storyline. Go out there and kill an animal and that’s about it. You’ve got to have a story behind the show.
What better way of doing what you love to do than putting it on video and sharing it with the people out there. Share on XMy advice is don’t think that you’re going to jump into it and do three or four weekends of hunting, kill two or three deer, and think you got quality footage. Once the editor gets it, he’s going to say, “I can’t use this. I can’t use that.” “What do you mean you can’t use them?” “The camera is blurry. Your audio is not working properly.” There’s a lot that goes into it. Do your homework. Get with somebody that’s in the business of editing. They could tell you how to make a great episode so that you know when you go out there into the woods and you’re filming your hunt, you know exactly where the camera has got to be. The camera has always got to be in front of the deer, so as he’s walking from left to right or right to left, you’ve got him in the center of the screen. That’s very critical and people don’t realize that. It takes a lot to start a show. Don’t think that it doesn’t cost you money because it does cost money.
We were talking about sponsors and real money. Whitetail Rendezvous is at the point now where we’re starting to get sponsors for real money. My gun safe is full. My closet is full. How many pairs of LaCrosse boots can I wear? You wonder where it stops. I came to the realization there might be times when you can do some trading, but for the most part, it comes down to real hard dollars. What’s happened in the industry about hard dollars?
I’ve had to fork out money out of my own pocket to keep the season going. You’re allowed eight commercials on most networks. You try to fill those eight commercials with your sponsors. You’ve got eight quality sponsors out there that you hope that they’re good for money. You figure out what their cost is going to be for your airtime. Normally what we try to do is we divide that by the number of sponsors we got. Let’s say if it’s $24,000 is our airtime to air twice a week and we’ve got eight sponsors. We’ll try to get $3,000 to $4,000 from them so we can cover our airtime and put some money in the bank to pay our editor. The editor has to do your episodes for you and they don’t do it for free. You’ve got your closed-captioning costs and all that good stuff.
What happens is if for some reason some of these sponsors bail out on you at the last minute, you’ve still got to go on air because you already committed to five other sponsors that already paid to get their airtime. Try to fulfill those last three and sometimes you fall short of your responsibility that you owe the network. That happens quite a bit in the industry. There are some offsets or some sponsors will try to say, “We’ll give you some product equivalent to one of the air times.” That’s all fine and dandy, but you need to have the money upfront. That’s what pays the bills is the money. You can get some product, utilize it and do some swaps here and there, but the monetary money that comes in is what you’re looking for to pay for your show.
The last thing we want is to be out of pocket. We still have hunts. We’ve got trips, fuel money, hotel money and meals when we go travel to the Midwest or wherever we’re going to chase that elk. That comes out of our pocket. That’s pretty much what it comes down to. You’ve got to depend on these sponsors to come up with the money. Another thing is you’ve got these big-time shows out there, your Lee and Tiffany’s and Bone Collectors. They pretty much are king of the roost when it comes to getting their money because they’re on a primetime network, three or four times a week. We’re trying to get to that level now where we’re airing twice a week to make it lucrative for our sponsors and show them, “This is the route that we want to go to show you that we’re taking baby steps, but all our baby steps are all going forward.”
The thing that some people don’t understand and they say, “They got it made,” they don’t realize when you drive a couple of thousand miles which I do in the fall, whitetail hunting’s easy. I get my out-of-state licenses. You’ve got food and all the other stuff. It’s like it adds up quick.
I was successful in my Iowa hunt. I realized I got my points. I was successful in my draw, so I’ll be going to Iowa. That one is $600 for your license. Hopefully, we’re lining up a hunt with an outfitter there in exchange for an episode, which would be great. Big Buck Down Outfitters out of Southeastern Iowa, they’re great guys with big deer. We’re covered there, hopefully. It’s money after money that you have to come out of pocket to make these long successful hunting trips to make a great quality show. I wish it were all plenty of money from the sponsors to pay for all that. You’ve got to watch what you do because you don’t want to overdo it and use your money for the wrong reason.
I know that you hunt down there in Georgia. You also go to Oklahoma. What other states do you hunt?
I’ve got a farm here in Georgia, a 600-acre farm that we hunt. It’s great deer hunting. We go to Oklahoma every year. We’ve got a private rancher there that lets us hunt on his place. We pay him. It’s incredible hunting. You’re hunting right on the Kansas line. You’re hunting big mature whitetail in that part of the country that are 250, 300-pound deer with big racks. I’m going to Iowa. I’ve been waiting for years to go there. It’s a point system that they have there. We’re trying to set up an elk hunt in New Mexico, hopefully, with one of our pro staffers up there, Chuck, for an antelope hunt.
Chuck has come on board. We’re trying to expand out to the Western part of the country. All our pro staffers now are in the Midwest or here in the Southeast and in the East Coast. We’re making a little expansion over to the West Coast area: Montana, Utah, Idaho, New Mexico and that area there to promote the show better out there as well. My pro-staff consists of guys. I’ve got a couple in Oklahoma. I’ve got Joseph over in Maryland. I’ve got Bill in Alabama and myself here in Georgia, along with Drew. Jason is up in Tennessee. We’ve got a good crew of guys and girls that help make the show what it is. Without them, we probably wouldn’t be here.
It takes a lot to start a show. Don’t think that it doesn’t cost you money because it does. Share on XWe wouldn’t do them one after another, but I’d love to have whoever you want on the show. You’ve got an open invitation to have them follow-up this show and share their insights and techniques. The content I want to share is what’s the industry like, tips and techniques, lessons learned of how to get after mature whitetails. We sure know that we all spend a lot of time trying to do that.
When you hunt these whitetails in different parts of the country like we do, we strategically pick certain areas that we want to have pro staffers. Iowa was for one of them as well. Oklahoma, Kansas and Maryland here in Alabama and Georgia because these stats are notorious for big bucks and the quality of hunting there differ from each state. Here in Georgia, you probably won’t get the response of rattling like you would if you’re in Iowa, Illinois or Kansas.
That’s what makes us so versatile because we could be in Oklahoma doing an episode there. At the same time, I’ll be here in Georgia chasing Southeastern whitetail which is a little bit quicker and harder to get. I do know that for a fact, being that I’ve hunted the country. These deer in the Southeast are difficult to get, more woods. That’s how we strategize our show is getting the key people in the right states to pro staff for you. For the most part, I couldn’t ask for a better staff than what I have now. It’s a great group of folks. Jason has been instrumental and helpful to the show as well.
When you look at pro staff, what are the three things that a pro staffer must have to be considered for Mass Pursuit TV?
First and foremost, you’ve got to be an ethical hunter, a person that abides by the rules and the laws. That’s number one. Number two is you’ve got to have some experience. It’s not necessarily 100% experience, but some experience in filming or self-filming your hunts. You’ve got to have a lot of background in social media because we require that from all our staffers. Social media is what a lot of the sponsors look for nowadays. Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, you’ve got to be very active on that for the show as well.
You can’t be gun-shy to talk to sponsors about approaching different areas. Like my Oklahoma crew, they’ve got several big companies there that they could approach to try to sell them a spot for the show. We ask them to do a few sales, not a lot of it. Even if it’s a billboard for $500. The local hardware store there in town may be something interested. Joseph Hardware and Ace Hardware in Alva, Oklahoma, they might want to buy a billboard. You can always approach them. They sell sporting goods there, bows, guns and stuff like that.
We require some sales. Most importantly, we require that they’re an ethical hunter and they respect the animal. They abide by the laws and rules of the game commission there in their state. They’re honest and have integrity in the show. They always are respectful on social media and not go crazy with it. I’ve had people before in the past that we had to get rid of because they said certain things on Facebook that a lot of the sponsors watch. I’ve had sponsors call me in the past, “One of your staffers posted this.” They didn’t like it so we put an end to that. Social media is big. They’ve got to be active in social media.
Audience, you’re getting some good insights into what it takes to run an outdoor media company as Mass Pursuit TV does. Wilbur, let’s talk about whitetail hunting. Let’s talk about your tradition, how it started and where you are with it.
I grew up in South Florida around Lake Okeechobee. Years back in my elementary, middle school and high school career was down there on Lake Okeechobee. My dad grew up as one of the shop foremen at one of the sugar mills out there. I was bass fishing one day in one of these canals. I noticed these huge bucks standing on the other side of the canal looking at me. I was sitting there with an ugly stick and a Mann’s Jelly Worm throwing it across the canal. I recall they were nine and ten-pointers, sitting there looking at me. I wondered, “How can you kill one of those?” I started inquiring about it. You’ve got to get a license and a rifle. You’ve got to find some property to hunt on. That’s what intrigued me the most because they were such a majestic animal.
I was sitting there watching them on the other side of that canal as I was fishing. I became intrigued with it and that’s how my love for the whitetail started. I went off to college and played some college football. The place where I was at in West Alabama, a university called Livingston University, was notorious for a lot of whitetails there in that area. I started doing a little bit of hunting there. That’s where I killed my first deer. My love grew for it from there on. It was something that was in my blood at the time. They kept growing and growing. Ever since then I’ve been hunting since the early ‘80s, ‘81, ‘82. It stuck with me. It’s grown. It’s in my blood. Bowhunting is what I strive to do the most of is try to get them down with a bow.
Give hunting a chance one time. Go with somebody that loves the outdoors and let them show you the ropes. Share on XThere are a lot of ways to hunt whitetails and for the most part, I would say 80%, 90% of the people on the show were all bow hunters. I hunt now with a crossbow because of injuries and age. No matter I’m still out there with a bow. I can no longer call it an arrow because it’s so short, sixteen inches or so. Having said that, what makes archery such a challenge? We’re talking millions and millions of people.
There was a saying I heard one gentleman years ago which said, “When you kill a deer with a bow, it’s so much gratification because you got to get that deer in close.” Back then, a 30-yard shot was a long shot, a 40-yard shot was a long shot back in the days in the early ‘80s and mid-‘80s. This gentleman said, “If you’re hunting with a rifle, when you see the deer, your deer hunt is pretty over. When you see a deer with a bow, the hunt is beginning because somehow that deer has to get close enough. You’ve got to coerce that deer to get close enough to you where you can get a good shot with your bow. With a rifle, it could be 200 yards away and all you’ve got to do is pick up your rifle, put your crosshairs on him and squeeze the trigger. The hunt is over with.”
That’s what’s intriguing. What I love more about bowhunting is that you’ve got to get them up close and personal. When you do that and you can hear that deer grunting up close or seeing his hair on his back bristle up when another buck is coming up close, that is something that you can’t put words to it. You could put a video camera on it and that’s what I love because you can relive it again but it’s something that happens instantly as soon as you see that buck at fifteen, twenty yards. You’re drawing back on him instead of a deer that’s out there at 70 yards with a rifle. Your hunt is over with then.
That’s what I like about the challenge of hunting with a bow. You’ve got to get the deer in close to you. Granted there are some bows now that you can shoot up to 60 or 70 yards with. I wouldn’t shoot a whitetail at 70 yards. I’ll shoot an elk at 60 or 70 yards because it’s a bigger target. I feel comfortable with 50 yards or less with a whitetail. You’ve got to make sure he’s relaxed and calm before you shoot a long shot like that because he could always jump your string. The next thing you know he’ll duck your arrow and your arrow goes flying right over his back regardless of how fast your bow is. I’ve seen them do it. It’s happened to me several times. Bowhunting to me is my number one choice of weapon. There’s more of a thrill and a challenge to that than it is with a gun. Everybody has their own opinion on that.
When you go to different states like Oklahoma and you get some private land there, how long has it taken you to find a pattern to deer and figure out the right stand sets for the right wind? When you can grunt and when you should rattle? You start hunting new ground, it’s a whole new book. How do you do that?
In Oklahoma when I first started hunting there several years ago, there’s not much cover in Oklahoma. It’s pretty much little ravines, draws, fence rows that you hunt and there’s a lot of wheat that grows out there. There’s a lot of CRP fields out there. What you want to do is try to find your trails off of these fence rows or off these heads of a little small block of woods that are ten, fifteen acres. You try to play the wind right. You always use a northwest wind as the predominant wind. I set up according to that. I always take multiple lock-ons with me in case I do have to change.
You find your trails that are going through the food source and to the bedding areas. You set camp up near it. It also helps that when you’re hunting in Oklahoma or in Kansas, you can bait there with corn. We put a little corn out, maybe have a little detour in their trail if we can’t find a tree that’s close enough to the trail. You’re not going to be able to use a climber in Oklahoma for the most part. Too many cottonwood trees and too many stickers on these trees up there. Lock-on is the best way to go there. We look for the trails first, the food source and the water source. We set up accordingly to the wind direction, a predominant wind, northwest wind in the November time frame.
We also use the moon chart as well to determine the time. These moon charts now that are out there could tell you everything from their best feeding time. Sometimes it’s in the middle of the day. Going during the rut also helps out a lot during the pre-rut and the rut. I love the time of October 25th through November the 15th to 16th. If I had three weeks to pick, that would be it. If I narrow that down, it will probably be November the 7th through the 12th would be my best time to go out for a good mature buck.
That’s interesting because some people, I’m not saying swear by the moon, they might swear at the moon. I’ve done that elk hunting when the full moon is out. The bulls are bugling all night. Come sunrise, those suckers are gone. The biggest thing that I find, the most constant is when the barometer drops and a cold front comes through, things happen.
Barometric pressure is something you’ve got to keep a close eye on, cold fronts coming in or bad weather. Usually, the day before bad weather comes in or even that afternoon if it’s coming in that evening, it’s a good opportunity to get out there. They think that the storm is going to last for a while so they’ll try to fill their bellies up or whatever. They’ll get their last sip of water for the next few days before they lay down and shelter from these storms because the deer knows. They know when that barometric pressure drops. They know they need to go look for their food or do what they’ve got to do before they lay down for several hours or it could be days. I’ve seen that work in my favor quite a bit. I see a front coming through. It’s getting ready to pour down rain here in the Southeast and I want to be in that stand right before that rain comes. If it’s coming in that evening, I’ll be there that afternoon and hopefully, I can get a good shot at a good deer.
You mentioned something about Southeastern deer and Southern deer, the topography you hunt them in and the thickness of the woods. Do you hunt them expressly off like bean fields or food plots and out of box blinds? How do you make it work down there?
When you see the deer with a rifle, your deer hunt is pretty much over. When you see it with a bow, the hunt is just beginning. Share on XHere in the Southeast where I hunt in Georgia is we’ve got a lot of planted pines. We’ve got some hardwood bottoms that intersect with some of these planted pines. What I try to do is make sure that I’m hunting in transition areas between the food source and their bedding area. Sometimes the food source could be a food plot, which I have box stands that I could bow hunt out of them or rifle hunt. Sometimes in those same food plots where I have that box stand, I may have a lock-on or a ladder stand strategically placed on a certain part of that food plot in case I want to get up close and personal with them if the wind is blowing in the proper direction.
Sometimes our hardwoods here in my particular farm, we got a lot of white oak acorn. When the white oaks are dropping, you might as well forget about the food plots. They’re going to go to those white oak acorns. You’ve got to find that one magical tree that you look for. You may have 100 trees dropping, but there’s always one or two that they pick out that they like to go to. Those are the ones that you’ve got to focus on. You go and you walk through your bottom. You look for your white oak trees and you can pretty much see them. You walk around the base of them and see which one has the most deer droppings in them and the most disturbed ground where you can see where they scrape the leaves with their paws trying to find those acorns.
If you find there’s a white oak tree that has a lot of deer droppings around it, you better put a lock-on close to it or a ladder stand. You can have another white oak tree 50 yards away that’s dropping as much but they haven’t touched it. That’s happened to me. I’ve sat up on the wrong tree one time. I overlooked one that looked like turkey scratching underneath it. I sat there and watched about eight deer sit and feed underneath it. I’m 65 yards away, couldn’t do anything but watch them.
Did you move your stand?
I did later. What happened is they ate all those acorns then moving to the other one that I was sitting on. That happens. There’s always that one magical tree. If you find it, it could be very rewarding. The transition between the bedding area and the food source area in the Southeast, the same thing applies out in the Midwest. The difference here is that you’ve got so much cover that sometimes you don’t see the deer until they’re right up on you. In the Midwest, you can see a deer coming from 100 yards away, 200 yards away. Here in the Southeast where I hunt, it’s so thick that deer could pop up and be right up underneath you at 25 yards before you know it. It’s like, “Where did he come from?” It helps to have good hearing.
I’m going to ask you to share with the audience what your one big thing is. My one big thing is that as an archery hunter, this is your go-to. It might be a technique or equipment, but this is something that is the core of you. Wilbur, what is your one big thing?
My big ordeal with hunting would be definitely bowhunting. Safety would be my biggest ordeal. I can’t stress enough safety. I encourage everybody out there to always wear a safety vest. Hunter Safety System, those great folks there, they’ve been our sponsor with products for the longest time and they make lifelines, safety vests. If you’ve got family at home that loves you and they want you to come home after a good successful hunt, don’t jeopardize it by climbing up a lock-on and thinking that nothing is going to happen because the moment you do, that’s when something happens. Wear a lifeline and a hunter safety vest. They’re inexpensive. That would be my number one ordeal as far as in the hunting aspect.
My number two thing would probably make sure that you share the love of the sport with the younger generation, the youth of this country. We try to do a youth hunt episode every year, get children exposed to it, kids of all ages. My son shot his first deer at the age of seven and he loves it. The guys at Big Buck Down Outfitters in Iowa, he was sharing with me yesterday that his son’s first deer was at the age of four. He shot a 150-inch buck at the age of four with a muzzleloader. It’s great to see the youth in this country and this day and time to get out of the house, put the Xbox down or the PS4 or whatever it is, and get out there and experience what God has given us, this great Mother Nature of woods and animals to look at and hear and harvest. Those are the two attributes that are big ordeals for me, is safety and getting the youth involved.
When we look at the future of hunting, there are many different people, you can go on social media and find any opinion you want. I’ve been talking to people about common ground because the people that are so far to the left it doesn’t matter what you say, that’s their belief and they’re not going to change. We’ve got a lot of people in the middle. How do we reach those people in the middle that they don’t know hunting because they don’t know hunting?
They could tune in to Mass Pursuit TV, for one thing.
Tell people how to get on your show.
We’ll start airing Thursday and Friday. 7:00 on Thursday, then 6:30 on Fridays. Go to Mass Pursuit TV website, you can see all our schedule there. You can go to the Pursuit TV Network website also. You can go to Roku or Apple, Chromecast, any of those video-on-demand affiliations, and you could see what networks you can watch our show. Go to our website, MassPursuitTV.com. Go to our Facebook page as well. We’re going to be doing some draws coming up that we’re going to be advertising on Facebook, so be sure to go out there and watch that.
Those people that are in the middle, I’ve met some of those people. If you can get them to come out there once, whether it’s fishing or whether it’s hunting, you can show them a good time and I promise you that those people will definitely stick with it. I’ve had NFL players and collegiate players that have never been hunting before that have gone out with us and said, “This is great.” The next thing you know, they’re all in. They love to hunt. Once you give them a good taste of it and they enjoy, they’ll be back for more. It’s like taking a kid fishing. You don’t want to put them out there and have them throw a plastic worm all day, not get a bite and not know the difference between a bite. You want to put a little cork and cricket on there and let them start catching fish left and right. They’ll enjoy it, I promise you. They’ll want to come back for more, “Dad, can you take me fishing again?” or whoever it may be.
My grandson, we haven’t been doing good lately trout fishing in the mountain ponds. He goes, “Gramps, I don’t know about this fishing thing.” It’s tough because they’re young and they want some activity, not watching a bobber, not go up and down.
You’ve got to have that bobber, as soon as it hits that water, watch it take off, “Reel, reel.” You’ll see a smile from ear to ear. The people on the left, they have their way of thinking. It’s not to say that they won’t, I’m sure there’s a few of them that probably realize that the right is not so bad after all. They may decide to go do fishing or hunting one day. Those that are in the middle, all I can say is give it a chance one time and go with somebody that loves the outdoors and let them show you the ropes. You’ll enjoy it, I promise you.
We’re traveling and you’re looking at going elk hunting. How is elk hunting different than whitetail hunting?
I have yet to go on an elk hunt. That’s one of the things on my bucket list. I do know that September is a magical moment. You being in Colorado, late September, early October when the elks are bugling. It’s incredible. I’ve got my pro staffers up in Oklahoma. They go elk hunting every year in Colorado. I’ve heard and seen some of their videos and stories. It’s phenomenal. I’ve heard Michael Waddell and T-Bone’s stories about hunting those big elks down there in the West. It’s like turkey hunting, but the animal is about 2,000 pounds more than a turkey.
Not that much, but they are big. I remember when Wayne Carlton was first starting out, he and Greg Pink did a little cassette recording of Wayne calling in. They were turkey calling, the kee-kee runs. You know all the runs and everything that turkeys make. They went from there into bugles and the rest is history with Wayne Carlton. He’s been such a great ambassador. If you think about that and the vocalization, I want to sit here and camp out here because, people, if you’re not vocalizing with whitetails and elk, you’re missing out on part of the hunt as far as I’m concerned. I love to rattle in bucks. They can be small bucks, big bucks. Having them respond, coming in, checking you out and set up decoys and have them come in and bust the crap out of your decoy because they’re pissed off.
Iowa several years ago when I was there, it was the most incredible morning hunt I’ve ever had. We rattled in nineteen different bucks that morning. When I say nineteen, I’m not talking about the same one coming in twice or three times. These were nineteen different bucks. We rattled in about ten from the tree stand. We climb down and we hit these little heads of woods. They would come run and sit in your lap. We’ve had them as far as five yards away while we were sitting there on the ground kneeling and rattling. It’s incredible. You’ve witnessed it yourself. Turkey hunting is the same way. We love to turkey hunt and get that bird gobbling first thing in the morning. He gets stuck between you and the creek. He’s gobbling 100 times and you can hear him droning but you can’t get a shot because he’s on the other side of the creek. Even though you’re not successful, you enjoy every second of it.
Talk about rattling and there are all sorts of CDs out there, videos, YouTube, sequences and everything. To me, you have to find what works.
Some like it aggressively hard and banging those horns. Some of them you have to tickle the tips of your horns enough to make them sound like a little light sparring. I’ve had it both ways. I’ve sparred them a little bit where I tickled the horns a little bit and nothing. The next sequence I hit them as hard as I can and scrape the tree with them. They’ll be on your lap before you know it. You’ve got to find that right mix for them, however they feel like they’re wanting it.
You said the 25th through the 15th, prime times. I wouldn’t discredit anything about that. Rattling, you’ve got to hit the right time in my experience. I’ve been in the woods and rattled. I’ve had nothing happen.
You’ve got to find that right. To me, the best time is during the pre-rut. I’m using the Midwest for an example. From October 25th through the first, second week in November, right before the full rut gets going. When the rut gets going, when you’re rattling in late October, the 25th or 26th, Halloween night is the best night to kill your biggest buck in Iowa or in any state, for that matter. Get in your stand Halloween night. Let mama take the kids trick-or-treating and you come back with a big buck. You can take the kids and let mama go hunt. That to me is the best time to pre-rut because the bucks are defining their territories. They’re making their scrapes and rubbing their trees. The last thing they want is two bucks in their bedroom fighting trying to get the domain of that area. Usually, that’s when you see the dominant buck in that area will come in and check out what’s happening. They’re in the pre-rut. Once the rut starts, that big buck that you were hunting in his bedroom or in living room area, he’s going to be out looking for does. A buck that’s in rut could travel as much as five miles in one evening with a doe trying to breed her.
My two cents on that is you have to keep a journal of where you hunt, how you hunt, one state, one 40, it doesn’t matter. Keep a journal and start, if you’re not already, categorizing all these things and then you’d know what techniques, when you should use them and how you should use them. A tending grunt doesn’t work in September. It might get some interest, but it’s a little bit early. Not saying that it couldn’t work. At the right time, it’s going to perk up somebody’s ear saying, “There’s something going on over there, I’m going to check it out.”
There are so many variables and so many different tones when it comes to grunting. I like the short, fast grunt. A tending grunt, that lets other bucks know, “This buck grunted at a doe and he’s following her. I’m going to go check this out.” It’s the same thing with the rattle that we mentioned, you have to have the right sequence, the right tone to get a good response. You mentioned journals. I use my cameras as a good journal. I log all my photos of, “This deer was in this plot at this time. He’s coming in 30 minutes before dark. As the moon changes, he keeps coming in later and later.” You can watch all that, keep up with your moon phase and the time that you’ve got pictures of them and the time they’re coming through the food source. You can pattern that deer probably within a month and a half and you can put a good kill on that deer if you jot everything down that you capture on your camera or you visualize yourself. A journal or logbook or anything like that that you can keep notes with is instrumental in being successful in the whitetail world.
Spanish Mac, tell the folks how to get in touch with you and where to see your show.
We’re going to be airing on the Pursuit Channel. It’s channel 393 on Dish Network or channel 604 on DirecTV. You can also go to the PursuitUpTV.com and you can also watch the show there any time you want to a week after it airs. You can go in there and watch it. You can go to our website, MassPursuitTV.com, you can see the listings there. Also, you can see all the video-on-demand affiliations that we’re going to be on as well. We’ve got Facebook. We put a lot of news on Facebook. We do a lot of giveaways on Facebook. Be sure to visit us there as well. With you, Bruce and this blog, we’re going to try and put a clip of this on our social media and probably do something on one of the shows.
On behalf of over 250,000 audiences across North America, thank you, Wilbur “Spanish Mac” Ramos for being a guest.
It was a pleasure being on here with you. Bruce, I enjoyed it.
Thanks. Until next time.
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About Wilbur Ramos
Growing up in the Glades (Pahokee, Fl), I have always loved the outdoors. I would fish for bass every day just across the dike on Lake Okeechobee and shot at my first buck in the sugar cane fields that bordered what use to be called Whitebelt Farms near Port Mayaca.
I left South Florida (in 1984) to play football in Alabama and decided to stay in the area once I graduated, and am now residing in Fortson, Georgia. As an avid deer hunter with land in Georgia (Harris County) as well as in Oklahoma (Woods County), my passion for whitetail grew more as the years passed. I now hunt throughout the Midwest (Iowa, Oklahoma, and Kansas) and have harvested some great bucks.
My favorite choice of weapon has always been a bow as there is not a more thrilling excitement than to have a 150″ deer within 30 yards. The saying “The hunt is over once you see a deer and you have a rifle, but with a bow when you see a deer the hunt is just beginning” is TRUE! My pursuit for this majestic animal (whitetail) had me traveling throughout the Midwest “Land of the Giants”, having a good time at the hunting camps with friends and family. Sharing these moments has inspired me to create “Mass Pursuit TV”, thus inspiring future hunters to the best in the outdoors, products, and hunting experience that stands out!
I love being in the outdoors with my family. When I am not working I am either coaching my son’s baseball or football team, or in my man cave tweaking arrows, bows, or rods/reels preparing for the next trip to the wild, or thinking of ideas for our SHOW!