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Dr. Ken Nordberg Blind Works

Dr. Ken Nordberg Blind Works. Welcome to part two of Dr. Ken Nordberg and we talked about whitetail tracks his new book coming out 2016 Pocket Guide to Whitetail Tracks Fall and Winter in the first segment. Now this is the second segment where we’re gonna continue talking about blinds for whitetails and then were gonna finish up this segment with hunting for mature whitetails. So Dr. Nordberg welcome to the show again.

Dr. Nordberg: Okay, thank you, I’m glad to be here.

Bruce: Let’s just recap folks we ended the last segment with the openers there you’re sitting in your blind or your tree stand but once day three begins something else changes over and you change sites if you’re not seeing a deer in the morning then at noontime or so you make a decision and you move to a new spot. Now how do you decide where that new spot’s gonna be?

Dr. Ken Nordberg Blind Works

Dr. Nordberg: Well the way we do it is look for their fresh tracks, freshly made tracks and we do that midday usually between 11:00 and 12:00 when we end up in camp and have lunch and then we go out to places where we found those fresh tracks of big bucks.

And so we have about 13 guys in our camp nowadays I got lots of grandkids in camp nowadays it probably won’t be long I’ll have great grandkids out there as well. But we hunt an area now a wilderness area that’s up to six square miles in size and out of the square miles we have certain trails they’re actually connecting deer trails that move widely through each of these areas and my sons and I, we cruise those between 11:00 and noon every day unless we’re bringing in a big buck but we cruise those every day. Dr. Ken Nordberg Blind Works

And we learned to do that from wolves. Wolves use this same technique of cruising on certain trails to find fresh scents of likely prey and we have a lot of wolves.

Wolves use this same technique of cruising on certain trails to find fresh scents of likely prey and we have a lot of wolves

I’ve been studying wolves now since 1990 and we have way too many wolves in our country but they’ve taught us a lot about deer hunting. And I call their trails that they use, and their hunting areas are up 100 square miles in size so it’s pretty large but they follow these specific trails and we thought, “Well gee wouldn’t it be nice if we could do that and smell where the bucks were?” Well, we don’t need to do that, we can tell where they are by their tracks. And by the sizes of their tracks. And how fresh they are. And so every day usually between 11:00 and 12:00 we leave our stand sites and head back to camp but on the way we’ll hike as much as we need to. Dr. Ken Nordberg Blind Works

Usually, we don’t have to go through a whole mile to find fresh tracks of a buck, one that’s been there this morning and therefore likely to be there toward sundown today and probably tomorrow morning as well as long as they don’t alarm that buck. So that’s where we go. Dr. Ken Nordberg Blind Works

We can do this because we use tree stands, I even used one last year, and we use tree stands during those first three days of the season but after that and we use at least one tree stand for only one day and then we’ll go to the second tree stand, and the third tree stand and those locations were determined by scouting. Dr. Ken Nordberg Blind Works

But after that, that scouting information isn’t worth much because these older bucks, especially and a lot of older does as well, once they realize you’re in the woods and they smell you or see you or hear you they know, “Hey, he’s here he’s back in the woods we gotta watch out.” And so they know, at least they act like they know, that before you mess around out in the woods there you young deer you better find out where that hunter is first so you don’t get too close to him and that’s kind of their way of living during that period. Dr. Ken Nordberg Blind Works

If the average hunter could magically make all the trees and all the brush and all the real tall grasses and stuff disappear for a little bit they’d be just flabbergasted by how many deer you’d see out there in that square mile. At least there’s 30 of them in that square mile where we hunted a lot less because the world’s seen so many reforms every summer. But anyway you’d be flabbergasted because before that you been hearing a lot around that woods in that square mile or something for days and not seeing a damn deer out there how could all those dear be disappearing like that? Well if you’re an aggressive hunter that’s on foot or makes drives, well you can drive them out of there quickly at the end of the day or the end of three days there probably won’t be many deer in your hunting area. Dr. Ken Nordberg Blind Works

Dr. Ken Nordberg Blind Works

If you’re a stand hunter and if you don’t play around doing other things that you shouldn’t be doing but if you’re a stand hunter those deer are gonna stay there. But you’re still not seeing him because they find you so quickly, those older ones. Now that’s not true of fawns that are without their mothers or yearlings. Yearling bucks make mistakes all the time and that’s why the yearling buck is probably the most vulnerable deer in America and is probably the average whitetail hunter’s favorite target. “Oh boy I got a buck and he’s big. Dr. Ken Nordberg Blind Works

He looks big anyway.” Not near as big as a three and a half to six and a half-year-old buck, but he’s decent and they feel good about getting him. But they make mistakes. But not those great big guys, they don’t often make mistakes. And so if you’re gonna be serious about hunting them the only way to stay close to them is, first of all, stand hunt and your deer’ll stay in your hunting area throughout the hunting season if you’re a dedicated stand hunter and everybody else you hunt with there is a stand hunter, they’ll stay there. But if you’re not seeing them it’s because they find you so quickly by scent, sight and smell and recognize you even and how you hunted the last couple of years. You go out on that trail you go over to that tree stand over there they don’t even have to look very hard at first because they recognize you and recognize what you’ve been doing and they have excellent memories. Dr. Ken Nordberg Blind Works

very hard at first because they recognize you and recognize what you’ve been doing and they have excellent memories.

And my wife and I proved that so many times with deer all over the country including down in Texas my God those deer remember us every year after we’ve been gone for a whole year and they had such a ways of recognizing us including my wife’s voice and would show up so quickly wild deer, wild places that’s why we move every half day. That’s a long answer to the question. Dr. Ken Nordberg Blind Works

Bruce: So let’s now swing it to the blinds and you’re talking about tree stands and you rotate those. Now, it seems to me mostly the majority of hunting is done from ground blinds is that true?

Dr. Nordberg: Well yeah, natural blinds in the past but I’m gonna be doing most of this season if not all of it in one of these new ground blinds that I bought from Cabela’s and I’m really anxious to see how that works out I think it’s gonna be excellent.

Bruce: I was gonna say, now what I’ve heard guys that are using ground blinds they place ’em well before season more or less like the tree stand and then they brush ’em up and they mold ’em into the local area. If they’re in a swampy area then it’s marsh grass, close to corn it’s corn, in the thickets they’ll use the willow or poplar or whatever in the hardwoods it’s really difficult because in the oak if they’re in a mature forest then it’s hard to put a new rock in place, I’ll just call it that, a new object because as I’ve heard whitetails know everything about their house. Their bedroom, and their kitchen and their family room and the porch and something new comes in there they react to it. Your thoughts on that?

Their bedroom, and their kitchen and their family room and the porch and something new comes in there they react to it. Your thoughts on that?

Dr. Nordberg: I agree 100%. One thing I don’t agree with though is sitting in one place long not if you want to take big bucks. A ground blind isn’t gonna change anything in that regard. They’re still gonna find you. They’re gonna smell you they’re gonna hear you, you just can’t magically get to that spot without the deer along the way recognizing you moving on into cover and staying out of your way and you pass them up and that kind of thing you’re heading over that way. I think one of the dangers of the way people are using the darn things is they do put ’em in one spot.

And it’s like cover scents, like fox urine you remember many years ago gee, that works so good and some deer even follow trails of fox urine scent, they’re really curious about ’em and I’ve taken bucks close to tree stands taking deer that have stood that far in that fox urine and it did seem to do a good job of making it difficult for whitetails to recognize you. But it was used so much that within a few years anytime they smelled fox urine they thought, “Deer hunters, stay away from that guy.” And it’s gonna happen with the ground blinds as well but people don’t use them properly within 10 years whitetails everywhere will quickly find them and start avoiding ’em. I think right now they’re pretty vulnerable to this.

I think right now they’re pretty vulnerable to this.

But there’s two things you see all these videos on TV and these guys using these blinds and they’re sitting out in the open and when they use them like that they get turkeys all the time from these things sitting right out in the middle of a field and you just can’t do that with older bucks or even older whitetails, does. Because they’re too smart for that and these blinds have a definite shape to ’em they’re square.

Mine is tiki-shaped it’s a one-man blind they call it the outhouse blind. But they are different in shape than anything in the woods I mean it looks like a little building there and in order for it to work like I want it to I recognized right from the outset that that blind’s gotta be hidden and you have to have it in color where it kind of blends in with everything I think one that’s in color like that then they are to notice it so much. And if you don’t make a noise in there, and there again too you gotta be downwind or crosswind from where you expect to see the deer if you’re gonna be successful.

But that doesn’t mean all the deer in the woods are just to be upwind of you. A lot of them will end up downwind of you as well and they’re gonna identify you as a stand hunter because the source of your scent isn’t moving. It’s coming from one spot. If they walk over this way and they don’t smell it, and that way they don’t smell it, come back and there it is they know you’re a stand hunter and so they’re gonna start avoiding that spot. So I think to really get the best out of one of these it’s gotta be hidden by natural cover, you know, kind of masked a little bit, it can’t be out in the open and you gotta move it often.

And they’re so light and easy to set up and take down there’s no reason why you shouldn’t be able to do that. And the way I’m gonna do it like I explained earlier every time I move I’m gonna be setting up within easy shooting range of very fresh tracks of a mature buck and that’s the way I’m planning to do it.

But the nice thing about it is that instead of depending on blinds that I’ve built before or spots that I’ve used before which can wear out, pretty soon every adult deer in the area knows about that spot. I can use it immediately anywhere I find fresh tracks. I might be heading out in the morning and I was going to go somewhere and holy cow here’s a buck he’s been walking through here, look at that he’s dragging his tracks I’m to go to this feeding area that’s just over to the right over this way a little ways that’s where I’m gonna go now. Doesn’t matter I’m not stuck with a tree stand or with a blind that’s sitting in one place.

My blind is on my back, it’s attached to my hunting stool and I’m gonna go over there and then I’ll come in from downwind and I can set that up with hardly making a noise and they have to be right on top of me to hear me doing it, and get in there and sit down on my stool and open two of the windows. I don’t want to open all of them because I don’t want the silhouette of my head seen moving in there I just want it to be all nice and black behind me. And put on my head net even though I’m in there I still feel I need a head net because the human skin is so bright and easy to spot by whitetails and so you need a head net and you should have gloves on your hands as well to prevent that from happening. But another thing you do it from memory and that gives you the best concealment possible I think in the woods it’s better than natural cover you’re completely 100% safe from being seen moving in there.

You can stand up and stretch, stretch your legs, lean back, look around without being seen. You can’t do that in a tree stand, you can’t do it on the ground in natural cover, you gotta be very still there. And the thing is lightweight, easy to carry around the woods, and you can have a virtually silent set up with it and it’ll provide some protection from cool breezes and precipitation. They say like precipitation I don’t know if that means if it’s it’s not so good but we’ll see. And like I say, you can stand and stretch and boy you know if you’re standing there you know you get to the point where God you gotta do something, you gotta straighten out your legs and lean back and stretch the muscles in your back and that kind of thing. But it can’t see you doing that when you’re in one of these things.

It’s going to be a wonderful thing for deer hunting if it’s used properly if everybody uses it wrong it won’t be long before the godarn whitetails will have them figured out and they won’t be near as good as they were at one time just like tree stands they were so amazingly effective back in the 70s and 80s but they’re not near as effective now as they were back then. But anyway…

Bruce: Let me throw this in one thing I know on the farm we’ve been hunting on and off for 50 years and of late I go back there every fall

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