Dr. Ken Nordberg is an expert hunter who still uses railroad tracking to hunt whitetails. He’s had years of research on deer tracks which he shares in his book, Whitetail Tracks. In this episode, Dr. Norberg discusses the use of dew claws and drag marks in locating deer. He also gives insight into how bucks go after the does when they’re in heat. Dr. Norberg is an advocate of hunting blinds made from natural materials and reminds hunters that it’s a great idea to move sites as often as they can.
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Dr. Ken Nordberg Hunts Railroads Tracks
Welcome back to the show, Dr. Ken Nordberg. Ken hails out of Minnesota and he has a deer camp three miles south of the Canadian border in the wilderness. There are a lot of wolves and there’s a lot of competition for the bucks. They’re shooting deer that are over 3.5, 4.5 years old. That’s their target. They will take a two-and-a-half-year-old deer but they like to take the big bucks. Their crew has been doing it for a long time. He’s going to be talking about three things, whitetail tracks, blinds for whitetail and hunting mature bucks the old-fashioned way. He does it really simple. They put in hours and hours, but his formula is basically simple. They find a track, they get ahead of that track during the November season and then they intercept that buck when he’s coming looking for a doe. They call it railroad tracking. It’s a fun show. I’m sure, like me, you’re going to pick up a lot of information from Dr. Ken Nordberg.
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On this episode we got Dr. Ken Nordberg. He released on Amazon and Apple iBooks 2016 Pocket Guidebook to Whitetail Tracks Fall and Winter. Dr. Nordberg, welcome to the show.
Thanks for asking me. I always enjoy talking to you.
Let’s start the show right up. By the way, this is going to be a two-part show. On the first part, we’re going to talk about whitetail tracks and begin talking about blinds for whitetails. Part two, we’re going to finish up on blinds for whitetail and then hunting mature whitetails. That’s what’s in store for the next couple of episodes. Dr. Ken, let’s jump right into why you wrote Whitetail Tracks. If somebody reads it, how is it going to help them?
I’ve been at this for almost 46 years when I first started introducing the idea that you can identify various classes of whitetails by the lengths of their tracks. The longer I do it, the more I realize that this is probably the only thing in whitetail hunting that can actually make hunting easy. Think of all the things we do, all the preparation we go and all the things we buy to try to improve our luck. Nothing can do it better than whitetail deer signs, especially tracks for one simple reason. Let’s say you and I are walking in the woods right now. We come to this deer trail. We look at it and there are a lot of fresh tracks here. They’re sharply defined. They’re nice, clean, fresh tracks in the trail. What does that tell you? This is a trail whitetails are using right now. They used it today, probably this morning. Maybe it was a few hours ago.
Chances are as long as they don’t become alarmed by a hunter or something else in the meanwhile, they’re going to use it again this evening or later today and tomorrow morning probably until they suddenly realize that there’s a hunter hanging around. If you hunt anywhere, you’re using luck. Luck is poor. It doesn’t add much success as a whitetail hunter. When you get one you say you’re lucky, but how often does that happen for the average hunter to take a nice buck? It takes about 30 years or more before you get one or even two. By using fresh tracks, you get that down to one every year or maybe two years, maybe eight out of ten years, which is pretty fantastic buck hunting.
If you hunt anywhere, you’re using luck. Share on XWe’re on a deer trail, we see a track. Talk to me specifically about the large buck, the mature buck, the buck we’re looking for over four and a half years old. Differentiate that from the does, fawns and the yearling bucks and the smaller guys. How do we do that?
First of all, I want to mention that the farther north you go in the continental United States, the bigger the deer. Up where I hunt, up close to the Canadian border, our average dominant breeding buck will weigh about 305 pounds. I spent eighteen years hunting whitetails down in Texas, New Mexico and Arizona. Down there a big buck is maybe 125 pounds. A deer that size is not going to have a large track as one in Northern Minnesota. I’ve done a lot of research with that, too. I have some simple formulas that I use and I’ve put in my book that tells you how to figure out what the sizes of tracks should be where you hunt. Texas bucks, they only weigh 125 pounds. A lot of Texas bucks grow antlers that rival the largest found anywhere in the United States. In Minnesota for an example, does that are anywhere from two to fourteen years of age will have tracks no larger than three and an eighth inch in length. That’s the track. That doesn’t include the impressions you see in the snow. Three and an eighth is about as long as they can be.
Yearling bucks will have the same size. They’re about the same weight. Our yearling does will go 140, 150 pounds and so will our yearling bucks. Anything smaller than that is a yearling doe or a fawn. Anytime you find tracks that are larger say it’s 3.5 inches to 4 inches, that’s a big buck in our country. You’re looking at the tracks of a big buck. When we found those tracks and we put a ruler down there and measure it, “This thing is four, three, seven inches. That’s a big guy.” If you get that one, you’re probably going to put him on the wall. You’re going to be pretty proud even if he doesn’t make the record book.
How do I measure that?
Use a ruler.
I don’t have a ruler. I don’t carry a ruler. I’ve got a bullet. I’m shooting a .30-6.
If you want to do that, I don’t know what the length of that bullet is but it’s easy to carry a little ruler or small steel tape, one to ten-footer. A little steel tape, that’s standard hunting equipment in my deer camp. We always have one in our pocket if we need it. My boys and I have been doing this so many years that we’re pretty accurate just looking at it. We recognize that it’s a big buck for sure. We don’t put a ruler on there very often anymore, which is important in the new method that I introduced in my 10th Edition Whitetail Hunters Almanac.
I’ve never carried a ruler in my pack. I use a bullet .30-6 or 280.
Get yourself a little steel tape.
Why do I need to do that? Help me out here.
Let’s say there’s a track there on that track which is three and an eight-inch long. If it’s a three and five-inch, that’s a two-and-a-half-year-old buck here in Minnesota. That’s not much of a difference. For a guy that has not a lot of experience recognizing lengths of deer tracks, that little difference between tracks like a 0.25 inch will make the difference between whether you’re hunting a mature doe or a two-and-a-half-year-old buck. These track sizes might differ by 0.25 inch or more. If you don’t know for sure, the only way to be sure is to have a ruler handy.
You said that a 0.5-inch difference between a doe and a two-and-a-half-year-old buck.
No, 0.25 inch.
That’s pretty finite.
That’s why you need a ruler.
What about dew claws and how they drag?
I first started measuring tracks back in 1970. Here in Minnesota, we got a lot of snow during the deer season and dewclaws are almost always visible. I always thought a longer track measurement would be more accurate. For years I was teaching hunters to use a tip through dewclaw measurement. I’ve been getting letters over the year. People will say, “We don’t dewclaws very often in the tracks.” I’ve done some work down in Georgia, South Carolina, Virginia and other southern states like in Texas where you don’t see dewclaws. That’s a disadvantage if somebody has to figure out that on average the dewclaw tip measurement is a third longer than just a flat measurement. That’s more figuring to do. To make it easier nowadays I go with the hoof only and that’s plenty accurate. You will rarely go wrong when you use that measurement.
What about that drag mark that bucks make and does don’t make?
The farther north you go in the continental United States, the bigger the deer. Share on XI’ve got several formulas of that and of bucks doing the dragging in my new little book. It’s a 95-page book on Amazon. It’s only $4.99 but it’s a valuable book. You’re going to see all kinds of drag marks in the snow. A buck that does that is smelling a pheromone being released by a doe in heat. There are some tracks that are airborne, he smells that. That creates an automatic response in antlered bucks. They start walking stiff-legged. The stiff-legged walks create this track to track drag marks in snow. That’s what that’s about. Usually if the doe is in sight or is close to it or he’s accompanying the doe, his head will be down. When he smells down, his mouth will be open. When that odor gets into his mouth, there’s a little orifice in the roof of his mouth behind that ridge where the teeth would be. That somehow stimulates an area in the brain. They can’t help it. They start sometimes acting like they’re swallowing air to get more of that odor. They respond. Their head usually goes down low with their tail on the top of their body. Their mouth is doing this silly swallowing and they’re walking stiff-legged. They’re almost like they’re a zombie. They’re so affected by that. That’s what they’ll be doing when they smell a doe.
We have taken lots of bucks over the years when we found some tracks. My boys when they were young, they learned to follow the railroad tracks. When they come in the camp, they’re smiling and they say, “Dad, I found some railroad tracks.” What that means is a buck is smelling a doe in estrous. Does in estrous are in heat. They keep up their daily routine. They feed when whitetails normally feed in the morning and the evening. When we find railroad tracks, we figure the nearest whitetail feeding area where we know one or more does is feeding is the place to hunt. You’ve got to do it quick. If you’re in a treestand, you’re stuck. You’re aren’t going to be able to take advantage of that. We have that ground level with stools. One of the main reasons we do that is so we can respond right now. We’ll head from downwind, crosswind to that nearest feeding area and sit down our stools, hidden in natural cover and wait.
We’re going to talk about using blinds later. Jerry’s on a roll here. How many years of deer hunting do you have under your belt?
Seventy-one years.
There’s a lot of information out there. There are a lot of great people sharing. I love getting with Dr. Nordberg because they set a camp up Northern Minnesota. He understands what bucks are doing. That’s in Northern Minnesota and he’s got snow on the ground. If you watch a buck’s track and you got leaves on the ground or you got some bugs, some sand, depending on the terrain you can see exactly what he’s talking about without the snow on the ground. I just want to throw something in there. Talk to me about railroad tracks. Why do they call them railroad tracks?
My sons decided that when they were young. They started deer hunting at age eleven. One of the kids, my son Ken, he decided they looked like railroad tracks. That’s what we’ve called them ever since. What I was about to say is that when you find those, you have to remember that does are only in heat for 24 to 26 hours and they’re done. If they don’t get bred, then they will be in heat again 28 days later. Actually, there are three different breeding traditions in the whitetail rut. Most hunters don’t realize that.
Let’s talk about that. That’s a big buck nugget.
That means you’ve got to react quickly when you find railroad tracks because if you decide to do it tomorrow or the next day, that’s too late. You’ve got to get there now. There’s no messing around. If it’s early morning and you find them, you get to that feeding area right now. Get there right now, or otherwise you’re missing the boat. Of course, if you’re in a treestand over there somewhere, that’s where you’re going to go. If you don’t even think about such thing, you’re missing the boat. You’re missing one of the best chances there is to take a big buck, a dominant, breeding buck.
Here you are and you see it, you’re going to move. You said the does come into estrous for only 24 hours. Actually, there are three periods that they’ll come back in. Explain that, because the bucks have been hanging on the does and then they’re looking for them. They’re doing their lip curl and they’re getting the pheromones in their nose. They’re testing them. They’re scientists. Once they get the right pheromone, then they’re on that doe and they lock her down until she lets her breed them. Is that correct?
She’ll probably breed with that buck four times, maybe a couple of more times in that 24 hours. That’s it, she’s done. These poor bucks go through life, that’s their whole purpose in life. They look forward to it so much. These goofy does are only in heat for that short period of time and then she’s done. They don’t all go into estrous at the same time, or in heat at the same time. There’s about a two-week period during which does in any one area would be in estrous at one time. Where I hunt on a square mile, there are probably one to three does that will be in estrous on any one day. The one that’s in estrous right now is here. The next day the next one might be miles away. In that case, it will be a different fine dominant breeding buck over there three miles away that will be taking care of that doe. This goes on for two weeks.
When does that start?
The further south you go, the later it starts. Except in mid-Texas, their does are in estrous already in October. Here in Minnesota, the beginning of heat in does is triggered by a certain ration of darkness to sunlight. Every year it’s the same time. Here in Minnesota, it begins on November 3rd. Some people say, “It can’t be. I’ve never seen one.” That’s because not all the does are in estrous. Where you’re hunting, maybe there’s none in heat. Maybe 300 yards away, there’s one in estrous but you’re not there. You don’t realize it. It starts on November 3rd and it’s all done by November 17th. During that first period, about 85% of does will be bred from yearlings on up.
That’s in Minnesota correct?
Yeah. If you’re down in Georgia, Colorado or wherever it’s going to be. I can’t tell you exactly when that’s going to be. I can tell you the kind of signs that tell you that it got started. Most hunters get all excited. They get out in the woods and they find all kinds of ground scrapes. All around, they’re all over the place, like antler rubs. They come in and they’re like, “Boy are they rutting.” They’re dead wrong. All that ground scrape business, making antler rubs before the November breeding season, they’re not made to attract does. Everybody thinks that. It makes sense that you would think that but those are made by bucks establishing their breeding ranges. Mature bucks, I don’t know if a ratio of darkness to sunlight makes them start doing it then. Usually, it coincides with the first days that we start getting frost here, certain temperatures. Down in Georgia when I was down there doing some video work, it seemed that the triggering temperature was 60 degrees at night. Here in Minnesota it’s 32 degrees at night.
They’re in a frenzy of marking their ranges like a dog, urinating on tree trunks to tell all the other dogs, “This is my yard. This is my place.” The wolves are the same deal. Whitetails do it more. They don’t just pee on things. They also deposit musk odors from their tarsal glands and their hind legs, musk odors from glands on their foreheads which they rub on overhanging branches on their ground scrapes and that kind of thing. This goes on. All of a sudden, you don’t find them freshly renewed. They renew them every 24 to 48 hours all during this time.
All antler bucks do that first, but the big, dominant bucks might chase those lesser bucks, the one they beat in battle during the months before to establish their pecking order. They’ll chase them out of there. They’ve got to go live somewhere else for a little while until breeding is over. They’ll be marching around every 24 to 48 hours unless the weather is bad or he knows you’re there. He’ll come back every 24 to 48 hours and put some more urine laced tarsal musk on the ground scrapes by peeing on his legs. He’ll rub some more of the musk from his forehead on branches overhanging. He’s got all these extra odors that go along with what you see. It’s visible things. It’s the same with antler rubs. They make these antler rubs by rubbing the outer bark and exposing the inner wood. You could see those quite a ways away. They rub scout musk on those as well. They’re doing that.
Once breeding begins, the big dominant bucks don’t have much time for renewing ground strikes anymore. That’s how the hunter knows they’re not renewing ground scrapes anymore. That means they’re breeding. They’re going to be breeding for two weeks. You won’t see many ground scrapes being renewed except perhaps on these little areas off-range where these lesser bucks go. They’ll make ground scrapes and antler rubs all during the period of this breeding is going on, but not within doe ranges. You won’t find that going on in doe ranges. Doe ranges are places where there are a lot of doe tracks.
Let’s stop right there because that’s something very important for new hunters and older hunters that haven’t got into the science of the whitetail. To reiterate what Dr. Ken shared, once the scrapes are not being freshened, that means the bucks are right on the does. They’re going to be harder to find. Talk about where I find those bucks now that they’re, as I call it, locked down. A lot of people would call it the lockdown phase. They’re sitting on that doe waiting to breed numerous times in that 24 hours. Talk to me about that.
The cat and mouse game hunter play with big bucks starts with day three until the rest of the season. Share on XOnce they’re with a doe that’s in heat and is releasing that pheromone into the air, they’ll stay with that doe. A lot of people, I remember back in the days when we first did research with doe urines and heating pheromones, it was not always easy to attract bucks. If a buck goes with a doe, he won’t leave that doe for any other doe. Those other does he smells or thought he smelled would have to go to him rather than him going to them because he’s busy with this one doe. This only goes on for that two-week period of time. During that time, the very best place to hunt the bucks is where does are feeding except when we see railroad tracks.
We can’t tell if a certain doe is in heat at any one place. While we’re scouting, in our experience with all the years of hunting, every year when we go scouting our first job is to go find out where all the does are feeding. We’ve known for years where the initial feeding areas are depending on whether the does are eating on grasses and other greens or they switch to browse which usually happens in Northern Minnesota the beginning of the second week in November. We know where it is feeding, whether it’s on browse or greens. That’s where we’re going to hunt because our best odds unless we see the railroad tracks, of finding a doe in estrous is it will be accompanied by the biggest bucks in our hunting area, the big, dominant bucks. That’s the place where we’re going to find them even when they’re not breeding.
Before breeding begins and after breeding begins, the big dominant bucks peruse through their breeding areas quite frequently. They don’t walk around just to look at the country. They walk around to check on does. A lot of times we’ll take a buck in a doe feeding area. It’s simply because a big buck showed up to check on that doe or those does. Maybe two, three, four or even twelve will share one, good feeding area like some farmer’s alfalfa field. That buck is going to show up pretty regularly when those does are there if he’s not with a doe in heat, looking for another one in heat. The very best place is feeding areas that are frequented by does. When you don’t know, if you don’t have railroad tracks, you don’t find those every day when deer hunting. That’s what we key on. That’s one of our most important things aside from finding tracks of big bucks to find out if they’re there, where they are and where they live. It doesn’t pin them down exactly because they have the largest home ranges, the whitetails, one to two square miles a size. Those doe feeding areas are important to watch. It’s almost like we’re hunting does rather than big bucks. We’re hunting does to hunt big bucks.
The audience is getting a lot of information. I hope you’re taking copious notes. Once the breeding begins, you’ve got to check your areas. Once you know that time period, ten days, two weeks’ time period is on, you need to be in the woods from daylight until the sun goes down. You need to be observant. The other thing, and Ken say it so well, is that you’ve got to react. If you see those railroad tracks as Ken has defined them, then you’ve got to make sure that you’re moving and you’re going to where the does are, not where the bucks are. If you get to where the does are, Mr. Wonderful will show up. That brings us back to blinds and whitetail. Ken, introduce blinds for whitetails.
I’ve been making blinds with natural materials for years. We need to start treestands. Whitetails eventually discover them and start avoiding them. If done well, you might get some good buck hunting for up to three years from a blind made with natural materials. That’s a lot of work. My first ground blind from Cabela’s, I’m anxious to use it. The more I think about it, the more advantages you’ll get from one of those. For one thing, for us we don’t need to search for natural blinds or create blinds using natural, uncut materials like fallen branches. We’re not doing that anymore. We got this one blind we can sit on. Mine only weighs nine pounds. You can set it up without a sound.
I’ll keep using this tool I made years ago for ground-level hunting. Ground-level hunting is going to be the new rage in deer hunting. The hunters are doing this. It’s going to spread everywhere. Everybody’s going to want one of these little ground blinds that you can buy made with camouflage material. There are lots of reasons for that. You don’t have other things. You don’t have to do a lot of preseason work. The way we have it, we have it where there are fresh tracks of big bucks. We never quite know where that’s going to be. Rather than prepare blinds somewhere and hope we’re going to see big bucks there, we go where the bucks are right now. Using this blind we can carry around gives us the advantage of being close to them every half-day of a deer hunt. We have to change sites every half day by the way.
You said you’d change sites every half-day. Explain that.
The reason we do that is that as we’ve learned with 45 years of research that older bucks, three and a half to six and a half-year-olds, almost always find most hunters within two to three hours in the morning, however they’re hunting. They can be hunting on foot or sitting in a tree. There are so many ways they’re planning on and they’re so sensitive to things that tell them this is happening. Usually it happens without most hunters realizing it. If you want to hunt big bucks, the worst thing you do is sit in one treestand the whole season and hope the big buck comes along. That doesn’t work anymore. It worked back in 1970 but not now.
We move every half day because we’ve learned that if we didn’t see a buck within a half-day of hunting after we hunted in the vicinity of where we found his very fresh tracks, he knows you’re there or at least it’s a good idea to assume he knows you’re there. You’re not going to see him anymore at that spot. We look for more fresh tracks. It doesn’t have to be one mile away. It can be 200 yards away. The buck keeps out of sight of where he thinks you are. He’s going to find you all over again. We play this game with these big bucks twice a day during the hunting season. Every now and then they make a mistake. They haven’t found you yet and there he is. He’s looking for you and we get him. It isn’t like that on opening weekend, but starting with day three, that’s the cat and mouse game we play with big bucks for the rest of the season.
Dr. Ken, we’re at the first stop. Ladies and gentlemen, we’re getting some great information, eye-opening information even for this guy who has been chasing whitetails with Dick Rogers and the Bunk House Crew for over 50 years along the Baraboo River. We’ll leave it at that.