Episode 117 Brad Jones My Passion Is Whitetails

When you have some land and want to set it up for hunting, you struggle when you first get into deer hunting, not realizing how you can attract and hold deer in the property. Brad Jones says, “My passion is whitetails.” Brad set up a website and it follows what they did to make improvements, like putting in food plots, habitat improvements, where to place your tree stand or ground line, how to use trail cameras effectively, and scent control. People can find everything they’ve done on the property to be able to shoot mature bucks. Brad is a member of Scrape Line Hunters Pro Staff. He has spent many hours making management and habitat improvement to properties by making changes to these properties where deer want to live. He finds sharing his knowledge very rewarding he likes sharing what he’s learned with other hunters so they, too, can have the same passion as he does.

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Listen to the podcast here:

Brad Jones: My Passion Is Whitetails

In this episode, we have Brad Jones. His passion is whitetails. He’s a member of Scrape Line Hunters Pro Staff. He has spent many hours making management and habitats proven to his properties. He says, “By making changes to these properties, the deer would want to live there, where before theyjust pass through. Along the way, I’ve learned where to place food plots and what food plots draw deer in to make them happy. I’ve also learned that proper treestand placement along with good scent control will help me when pursuing mature bucks. I find this rewarding because it puts all my skills together by locating a mature buck, follow his movements from spring to fall and putting everything together to harvest them. I’d like to share what I’ve learned with other huntersso they can too have the same passion as I do.”

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We’re heading to Wisconsin. We’re going to chat with Brad Jones from the Madison area and the owner of Scrape Line Hunters. Brad, welcome to the show.

Bruce, thanks for having me.

Let’s talk about the mission, the vision, and why you started Scrape Line Hunters?

I started Scrape Line Hunters along with my brother, Mike, because we had both obtained some land and we wanted to set it up for deer hunting. We had struggled like everybody else, when you first get into deer hunting not realizing how we can attract deer and hold deer in our property. We set up a website and it follows what we did to make improvements, like putting in food plots, habitat improvements, where to place your treestandard or ground line, how to use trail cameras effective and scent control. That was another big thing that we did.

When a person goes to your website, what do they see?

They’re going to find everything that we’ve done on the property to be able to shoot mature bucks. We have a section that’s all on food plots. We have another section, our blogs, which talk about daily and weekly improvements that we’ve made on the property.

Do you have video? Is it video and narratives?

Yes. We’ve got a YouTube page that we show things like plot seeding, how to put in food plots, how to use trail cams effectively, how to put up your treestand and pinch points and how to screen in your hunting lands so people can’t see into it. You can use screening to get your tree stand without the deer seeing you.

Talk to me about pinch points. What does that mean to you?

WTR 117 | My Passion Is Whitetails — My Passion Is Whitetails: Pinch points are a narrowing of a property where the deer are going to travel across a large field.

Pinch points are narrowing of a property where the deer are going to travel across, like a large field. When a deer comes into a large field, he can go anywhere he wants to. We want to find an area within that field that lose the deer, funnels them down to a certain area and that’s where we’ll place our stand. If we have a large field where we don’t have a natural pinch point, we can make one. We can put in different types of screening to force those deer down to that little pinch point.

If you were a trapper, trappers alter the pathway of what they’re trying to trap. They do that by putting brush, sticks and there are all sorts of secrets. Is that what you’re doing with your changing their behavior? Would that be a fair statement?

That’s exactly what we’re doing. We’re bringing the deer to us, to our treestand, to where we’re going to hunt. We can funnel them down. We can put in screening, Egyptian wheat, sorghum, corn, hinge-cutting trees down and it naturally funnels them right to our stand or where we want them to go.

You can modify the deer’s travel route. You can help them move closer to your stand, scent line or however you’re setup there. That’s a very important fact that some people overlook. They say, “This looks like a great place up close to my treestand,” and then the deer’s 50, 60 yards away. If they’re coming that close, I’m sitting in my stand and they’re traveling about 50 yards away, how would you change that deer’s behavior?

If I’m hunting in a transition area in the woods, I can hinge cut trees. What that is, is you’re taking a chainsaw about chest high, cutting three-quarters of the way through the tree and letting the tree naturally tip over. That’ll build a screening area because that tree is still going to grow and it’s going to produce leaves, and then you can stop the deer from going to that area. You can use Egyptian wheat. If you’re out in the field, there are corn or sorghum and put it really thick. Deer are lazy like us. They don’t want to walk through some thick stuff if they don’t have to. If you make a hard edge, and then buffer it for them a little bit, they’re going to walk along that edge. This is a good idea for the guy that goes out and can’t find a good tree to put a treestand. How many times Bruce have you been out and you can’t find a straight tree to put your tree stand in? This works perfect for that.

You look at your land and say, “He’s traveling that way,” so you alter and you were saying hinge cut of trees. Explain that to people. How do you do that?

If I have a trail that a deer’s traveling on, and I can’t set up on him, I’ll hinge cut trees cutting them with a chainsaw three-quarters of the way through and following them over that trail and it’ll block the trail. The deer can’t go through. I’ll move the trail closer to where I want them to go. I’ll direct the deer to my tree stand or to come out the food plot where I want them to. I’ll cut down several trees in a row, hinge cutting them. It creates a very thick area that that deer is not going to walk through.

What are the tricks do you do religiously to help make the land more favorable for deer and make it more huntable for you and your brother?

Food plots play a big role in the success that we have, and placing them in the right areas off of a bedding area. Let’s say you have an acre food plot, break that thing down. Put screening all the way around the edge, maybe make a checkerboard effect with that screening, so when those bucks come in, they don’t look at the edge of the food plot and say, “There’s no does today. I’m back in the woods.” By making that checkerboard effect inside them, that buck is going to go from section to section to section. You’re slowing them down and making them spend more time in your property.

You’ve got 100 acres. What type of relationships do you have with your surrounding neighbors?

I try to have a real good relationship with them. I talk to them frequently to see what deer they’re seeing. What their plans are? What type of deer they plan on shooting? I tried to talk them into doing some quality deer management, where everybody will shoot that four-year-old buck instead of shooting the little bucks.

How many neighbors do you have?

We have four neighbors on the one property and two neighbors on the other property that we hunt.

You mentioned quality deer management. Are you ascribing to that? Do you have the local or the regional rep come and take a look at your property? How are you involved with quality deer management?

We have not had anybody from QDMA out to our property, but we take some of their practices along with other hunting organizations, put them all together and come up with a good strategy to grow big deer. That’s everybody’s objective. If you want to shoot some deer, shoot some does and let the big guys grow.

If you want to shoot some deer, shoot some does and let the big guys grow. Share on X

Everybody likes to do that. Talk to me about your hit list.

I’m a trail cam fanatic. I have my trail cams up 365 days a year. I like to have them out in the spring right away so I can see how the deer came off from winter. See how many survived. As the does start dropping, we’ll put together our hit list. Bucks will start to velvet out. We’ll follow them around. On my computer I’ll make up a folder for each buck and follow him year per year and see how he grows.

What age class are you targeting?

I want a four plus year old deer. A couple of the deer that I’m following right now are six to seven years old. As they get older, they get a lot smarter.

Wisconsin, in some areas has a liberal doe season or you can get extra tags. I know up where we hunt along the Baraboo River, they had some disease up there and they gave CWD and they gave away a lot of extra tags. Do you harbor does on your property?

Yes, we do. Depending on what our trail cameras are showing us, we’ll definitely try to knock down some does to get that buck in check. In Wisconsin, they’ve changed some of the laws here. It used to be for every doe you shot, you could shoot a buck in the CWD area. They went away from that because they were starting to overharvest the bucks. In the coming years, once again we’re going to see some really nice bucks come out of the state of Wisconsin.

I know I have had the opportunity of hunting Buffalo County, and Buffalo County ranks right up with Pike County as top Pope and Young and Boone and Crockett. Why do they produce big bucks?

To start, they have great genetics up there. They must have good minerals in the soil. The crops that they grow, the deer get the full potential out of those crops. It all starts with good genetics too. If you don’t have the genetics, you can’t grow big bucks.

When you’re looking at your deer and the property that you’re managing and building, what do you think the top end is going to be? You’ve got some six and seven year old deer you’re watching. Where do you think score-wise those bucks are going to be?

The seven-year-old buck that I’m following is only an eight-pointer and he’s always been an eight-pointer. If he scores 150 inches, that’ll be tops for him. He’s got some mass, he’s a huge-bodied deer and he’s smart. I’m hunting a four-year-old buck that is a ten-pointer and he’ll probably push 160. I would say our maximum potential on the land that I’m hunting is probably high 160s to low 170s, which is a darn nice deer.

There’s nothing wrong with those deer anyplace. You get over 150 and that’s the benchmark where I look at, 150 and above. I’ve shot a lot of deer and I like spending time in the woods. Mr. Wonderful comes by, 150 class, eight-pointer or ten-pointer or better, or a deer with character. Let’s talk about deer with characters, because I’m sure you’ve seen some. What’s special about those deer that has an awesome character to them?

I have a lot of that genetic on the property that I’m hunting. The best buck I’ve shot I called The G2 Buck and he’s split on both G2’s, and then he’s split on the left-hand side of his G3. A super unique buck and everybody’s drawn to those types of deer for some reason. I guess because they’re different than your typical deer.

I would certainly echo because there’s something about split G1’s or G2’s, they get your attention. We all look at magazines, we all look at the TV and the shows and the symmetry of some of bucks you go, “Oh wow.” Then you throw one with drop tines and one side is just mangled mess of bone and the other side is perfect and you go, “What a deer,” or release or whatever weapon you’re using. I think that’s interesting myself. Our readers, you can go to my website at WhitetailRendezvous.com and post a comment about deer with character. I’m going to write a blog on that. I’m making a note right now because that’s interesting when we have an opportunity to harvest a deer that’s unique.

That brings up an a-ha moment for me. I hunted this G2 buck for three years and I had a few encounters with him. I had the encounters during the peak of the rut and he was always locked down with a doe. Three years ago, during the gun hunting season, I didn’t see him the first few days. I had to come back to town and I got back up to the hunting land on the fourth day and I checked two trail cameras. The first one I checked, the G2 buck was feeding in a Brassica plot two nights in a row and I’m like, “I missed this thing.” We had a big front come in and I thought to myself, “Front’s coming in. I bet you he’s coming back tonight.” Sure enough, I sat a transition between where I thought his bedding area was and that food plot, and I harvested that deer.

Very rewarding because I had so much history with that deer. I spent so much time following him around from spring to fall. The a-ha moment of it was, don’t give up if you’re going to choose one deer. A lot of guys will do that. They’ll put their hit list together and say, “I’m going to target this buck,” and it’s hard and that’s how they got old. Stick with it and if you do harvest it, you’re going to be rewarded with all the effort you put into it.

Readers, you’ve got to be committed, you got to be dedicated, you got to put in the time and you’ve got to hunt smart. Anything over four and a half years old one, knows you’re there, knows it’s being hunted and you have to beat his eyes, his ears and his nose. A tough way to do it, and good luck to you on that big eight-pointer, Brad.

I’m hoping to harvest him. I have so much history with him. He’s my target buck.

Let’s go back to your neighbors. Does he stay on your land? Do you have a sanctuary where he feels comfortable? Let’s talk about how you and your brother hunt it, so you’re going to have an opportunity to harvest that deer.

On both of our properties, we have sanctuaries, buck bedding areas and most of those areas we’ve created ourselves. Believe it or not, the one buck that we put on Mike’s property, what we did was we put logs behind, facing North so that deer can butt up to it. We hinge cut some trees over top of it. The second night after we built that, we had one of his hit list bucks laying in that bed and we have it on trail cam video. We were true believers in building those buck beds after that. Those areas that we put them in, the only times we go in there is spring of the year to look for sheds. Maybe early summer we’ll put a trail camera in there if we can sneak into the area without busting the deer out. They’re a little easier when they have velvet on, you can shake them up a little bit but you don’t want to pressure him too hard.

You’re committed to 365 hunting and trail cameras. Let’s talk about and share with the audience what advantage that gives you once the hunting season begins?

It tells me what deer are using our property. When I put my trail cameras out, I have limits to myself what I can and can’t do. I’ll start the trail cameras out in the spring. I’ll put them on food plots. I’ll leave them on food plots until we move into that free rut when they’re starting to make ground scrapes and we’ll move into ground scrapes. That’s how I put my hit list together. I’ll follow that buck around the food plots, moving the cameras around the food plots to get a better angle to see where he’s coming from and pinpoint him down into a bedding area.

I only use the food plots and the wood edge. I don’t like to go into the woods. I will into that bedding area early in the year, but after that I’m out of the woods and I just stay in the edges because I don’t want my scent going into the woods. Early in the season those bucks will bed closer to food and they’ll be on those wood edges, and I don’t want to bump them out. That’s how I put my hit list together, by taking most of the pictures from the food plots themselves.

If I understand you correctly, what you said is you’ve got all these cameras and they’re taking pictures of deer coming in north, south, east, west, wherever they come in the food plot. Then you’re strategizing where the buck is going to come in during hunting season. We both understand once October hits and the first frost emerging, their patterns change because the food sources change. Is that correct?

Absolutely. I can tell you that the season opens here on the third week in September. You can have a buck what you think you have them patterned after that 13th, and for some reason something snaps and their pattern changes. I don’t know if it’s the soybeans are starting to dry out at that point, they’re switching green foods or what, but there’s a huge change, at least in the area I hunt.

How does your tactics change because of the deer behavior changing?

I’ll move to a different food source then. I’ll always stay with green. The guy that has the green food source is going to win the battle. Those deer have to eat. They can eat all the native browns they want, but if there are some nutritious greens that you have in your food plots, they’re going to be there eventually. I’m following them out of their buck beds, out of their bedding area. That’s what I use the trail cameras to do that and follow them to the green.

What about transition zones? I’ve heard, seen and read about how bucks will set up ten, fifteen, depends on what the edge is like and how thick it is. The thicker to the field the edge is, the closer they’ll come in. Some will set up over 100 yards away. I know one stand I have, it’s approximately 100 yards away from the field, but it’s a natural funnel where deer come through and then they spread out going into field depending on the wind and everything else. Do you set up on transitions zones yourself?

I will. Just inside the woods. What I try to do to most of my food plots or the wood edge, we try to soften them gradually up. We use a lot of high bush cranberry and we’ll sporadically plant those around the field edges, trying to make it a real secure area for those bucks to come out. If you don’t have that, chances are those bucks are going to hang up until close to dark, just outside of their bedding area before they go into that food. They may spend fifteen, twenty minutes in there. They might only spend five minutes in there. It all depends on how secure they feel. Another good tip in that transition area when you’re hunting those deer is to put in a waterhole. That buck’s been laid up on his bed all day and one of the first things they do is seek water before they head out into the fields. I’ve seen a lot of those bucks over waterholes.

Are you set up on a waterhole on your property?

Yes, between the buck beds and the food, I’ll put it in water holes.

We’re talking ground blinds or tree stands?

Both. If I can get up in the air, I like to. If I don’t have anything that I feel that’s going to work, I’ll brush in a ground blind and we’ve taken some nice bucks out of ground blinds.

It all starts with good genetics. If you don't have the genetics, you can't grow big bucks. Share on X

Everyone hear this, because everybody knows you get up high, you’re scent dissipates a little bit different. You can move around a little bit more, but ground blinds are productive. I’m not talking about a pop up. I’m talking about sticks and brush. You make a big mound. You get inside, you cut out shooting lanes and that’s how I’ve done it. Brad, how have you set up these ground blinds?

We use the popups but we really brush them in. I like to have them out there a few weeks beforehand, but if we’re patterning a late season buck, we’ll pop one up and really brush it in and hunt it right away if we have some good deer coming through. We have a video posted on our website of my brother last year, second to the last day, he took a nice, mature eight-pointer that he had on trail cameras. He had it feeding in that field a week and then he killed it on the sixth day.

All out of a ground blind. There’s more than one way to hunt and what I found, depending on terrain and depending on surrounding cover, you can very well get a ground blind set up. As Brad said, he uses a pop up, but then he brushes it in very heavily a few weeks, if not, would you say a month before the season begins?

Yes. If you patterned a buck and you feel that you have a shot at him. If you can get him in a thicket or even a cornfield and brush it in good, you’ll have a good shot at him.

You’ve given us some good information. What I’d like to do is give you the mic where you canshare with our audience all across North America, some of the people that have supported you, some of the people that made Scrape Line Hunters the site it is today, some of the people that made you a better hunter.

Bruce, thanks a lot. I appreciate you having me on the podcast. You’re doing a great thing with these podcasts. Getting bits of information from all different people, getting their aspects and how they hunt. I’d like to thank Lightning Camera Arms. If you want to self-hunt, these guys make some nice cameras arms. Wildlife Research, they make Scent Killer Gold, I swear by their products. Burt Coyote, he’s been a great sponsor too.

Remember if it doesn’t say Burt Coyote, it’s not a Lumenok. If you’re looking for some permanent screening, look up Big Rock Trees. He’s got a huge supply of willows and different kinds of trees that you can plant to make permanent screening. If you’re crossing area of trees, the most rugged, affordable, small diameter area available. Last but not least, Grandpa Ray Outdoors. John from Grandpa Ray knows his stuff. He’s a deer nutritionist. He knows everything about seeds. He’s got some great mineral mix. Look him up.

I’dlike to thank my family for all their support, letting me do what I like to do. My girlfriend Cathy, she lets me go out every weekend. She lets me use all my vacation to chase these white-tails down. If you guys want to look us up on the web, look us up at www.ScrapeLineHunters.com. Look us up on Facebook, Scrape Line Hunters. We post daily throughout the rut and let you know what’s happening in South Central Wisconsin.

Do you have a Twitter site?

I do, @ScrapeLineHunters. We also have an Instagram account as well, ScrapeLineHunters.

On behalf of Whitetail Rendezvous nation, Brad Jones. Great information, great tips and it’s been a joy to have you on the on the show. I look forward to working with you this fall on the Whitetail Rut Report.

Thank you very much Bruce. I hope everybody has a safe and successful hunt.

I want to thank each and every one of you for spending your time with us. I look forward to sharing with you in the next episode more whitetail hunting tips, techniques and stories. Until then, keep the sun to your back, the wind in your face and always be patient. If you have any tips, comments, suggestions or what we can do to improve because we’re here to serve you, let us know.

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About Brad Jones

My passion is whitetail deer. I have spent many hours making management and habitat improvements to the properties I hunt. By making changes to these properties, deer want to live there were before they just passed through. Along the way I have learned where to place food plot and what food plots draw deer in to make them happy. I have also learned that proper stand placement along with good scent control will help when pursuing mature bucks.

I find this rewarding because I can put all of my skills together by locating a mature buck follow his movements from spring to fall and then putting everything together to harvest him. Now I would like to teach what I have learned with other hunters so they too can have the same passion as I do.

I’ve started a new chapter of my life in outdoor video production. My new venture is called Scrape Line Hunters LLC. My brother and I have harvested 7 buck over 140 inches with the changes we have made in our hunting strategies. We have online videos on YouTube and our website that talk about Food Plots, Trail Cameras, Habitat improvements, Scent Control and more.

We are also offering video and editing services. You can find out more by visiting our website at www.scrapelinehunters.com