Scent-Free Deer Hunting & Mature Buck Tactics | Eddie McRae (Riverman)

Note: This transcript has been lightly cleaned for readability and speaker clarity. The raw audio labeled every speaker as “Unknown,” so host lines are attributed to Andrew or Jacob based on context and may occasionally be mixed. Sponsor reads are condensed and marked as sponsor breaks.

[0:00] Cold Open

Eddie (Riverman): I honestly don’t think a deer in today’s day and age even knows what a human smells like anymore, because all of us in our day-to-day lives come in contact with so many different scents and fragrances, and they all attach themselves. When your average human walks through the woods, what’s the deer actually smelling? Is he smelling human scent, or the restaurant he just walked out of? Or the cologne he might not have put on today, but wore yesterday that absorbs into his skin? I quit using scented products altogether. I did not expect the results I got — and I can say this with 100% honesty: since I started, I have not been detected by a deer through smell.

[1:29] Introductions

Andrew: Eddie McRae — yes, Mr. Riverman. It’s been a long time coming.

Eddie: Yeah, I’m glad to finally have you guys here.

Andrew: How long ago did we meet? A couple of years now — I’d followed you a while, but I think we met in Birmingham, or maybe at a show. You’ve got your business, Riverman Customs — you make turkey calls — and we’ve been talking turkey at shows over the years. Then I saw you at the NWTF convention in Nashville this year, and somehow deer hunting came up. You started going through deer you’d killed and I said, “Whoa, hold on a minute.” So we said we needed to come do a doubleheader — a deer episode and a turkey episode. Today we’re covering deer. To get started: how did you get introduced to deer hunting, and where are you from?

Eddie: Woodbury, Georgia. Born and raised, lived right here basically my whole life. The farm we’re on was my grandfather’s. It’s very rural, so growing up there wasn’t much to do — you learned to spend your time outdoors, hunting and fishing. We had a couple of lakes; I’d fish or hunt every day after school. By the time I was eight I was running around with a Mossberg bolt-action .22, wreaking havoc on squirrels. Later I had an uncle who did a little recreational deer hunting and started taking me. I’m an OCD type of guy — I won’t undertake anything I can’t put all my focus into and excel at. So I wanted to find the most and best success I possibly could with deer hunting. I didn’t really have anybody to teach me; I had to stomp around and learn on my own.

Andrew: So your uncle introduced you but didn’t really teach you much?

Eddie: Right, he was more a recreational hunter and didn’t take me a whole lot. My father had passed away and my stepfather wasn’t a hunter at all, so it was on me to figure it out. My first deer, I think I was ten — a rifle kill, spine shot, horrible. Learned real quick: don’t do that. But it got my feet wet, and from there it was an uncontrollable urge to keep after it.

[5:47] From Gun Hunter to Thick-Cover Bowhunter

Andrew: How would you describe your overall style of deer hunting?

Eddie: Early on I was a gun hunter, but by the late ’80s / early ’90s I’d completely quit gun hunting and was strictly a bowhunter. For a long time I was still stuck in that gun-hunter mode, though — hunting these open fields instead of tighter timber. It wasn’t until six or eight years ago that I completely changed my approach. Now I look for the nastiest, thickest stuff I can get into.

Andrew: This is a cattle farm — a lot of pasture. Is this the main place you’ve hunted your whole life?

Eddie: We lease the cattle rights to the neighbor. Most of the farm is hayfield or grazing; the perimeter is wooded, maybe a third of it. Never had a food plot, never owned a feeder, never had a trough — I’m hunting straight wild deer, no managed stuff other than being selective. My grandfather actually had two farms; there’s another about five miles down the road on the river. Those two are really the only places I’ve ever hunted — never even hunted out of the county.

[8:30] The Bow, and Never Missing

Andrew: What was your introduction to bowhunting?

Eddie: A good friend owned an archery shop in Manchester. Through him I got more and more interested, we started shooting a lot of 3D, and it was more of a challenge — more up close and personal. And this is hard to even believe: I’ve killed hundreds of deer with a bow, and I’ve never missed a deer with a bow. Never lost one. Never not had a pass-through. Meanwhile I can’t count on both hands twice over how many screw-ups I had with a gun. My success rate got better once I went to the bow — just the up-close-and-personal versus the longer distances.

Andrew: Those stats are mind-blowing. Have you always been good at keeping your emotions under control with a deer in bow range?

Eddie: When I was younger, no — I’d get the fever. Now I don’t. This deer here was in front of me nine minutes at 12 yards, me on the ground, and I never got shaky. I consciously taught myself through it, because if you ever let yourself reach panic mode, it’s hard to get out. The minute I laid eyes on him I told myself: there he is, stay calm and cool, he’s going to come in and do his thing, you’ll get your opportunity — be easy, be peaceful. As you get older, a good portion of that excitement falls off anyway. I don’t get excited like I would’ve at 18.

Andrew: When did that come about for you? You noticeably changed the last six to eight years.

Eddie: That same year I told you about — when he finally stepped into a lane and I drew back, I didn’t feel comfortable. I literally told myself, “This is not right.” If I’d been 18 I’d have turned it loose and not remembered a thing. Instead I pulled away without letting down, went back through my entire shot process — anchor, secondary anchor, the whole nine yards — before I’d let myself release. It comes from being older and not having that level of excitement, but more from mentally talking yourself through it and not getting into that panic mode.

[14:37] Reps, Confidence, and Paper Tuning

Eddie: Confidence comes from reps. In 2020 I reopened an outdoor store in Woodbury — kayak fishing and an archery shop. I’d already spent years in the 3D community, and I love to shoot. I learned the mechanics to run the bow shop, and on slow days I was shooting rows and rows of bullet holes through paper at eight feet, six feet. Paper is instant feedback — any error in your form shows up in the tear. If you’re torquing, if you’re twisting the string with your release, it shows up. Shoot enough of those and you build that confidence, and you know that if you draw back, there’s not a chance you’re going to miss.

Andrew: Can you walk us through your shot process?

Eddie: First, my grip — make sure the grip is correct. Then draw, primary anchor: I shoot a thumb release, so that little finger plants in the pocket behind my ear. My secondary anchor is my nose barely touching the string. I always draw above the target and slowly drop down onto it; once I’m on, I tell myself “settle the pin,” then start to execute. Do that thousands of times and it becomes habitual — it just happens naturally, and if it doesn’t feel natural, you know something’s wrong. That’s what happened with that deer — my grip micro-didn’t feel right, and I felt like I was having to cock my head too far to get a good sight picture through the peep. So I stepped back and went through the whole process again.

Andrew: Do you think blind-bale shooting up close is more important than shooting at distance?

Eddie: I do both equally. When I practice outside I’m shooting at 50 minimum, generally 60 and 80. It’s like a golf analogy — if you can consistently shoot 60 or 80 yards (distances you’d never actually take), it makes 20 and 30 feel like a chip shot. And every flaw in your form shows up at those distances, just like it shows up in a paper tear up close. I’ve told tons of guys: even if you can’t practice past 20 or 30 yards, set up a paper rack in your garage and shoot through it over and over. Like a golf swing, there’s no such thing as a perfect one — only perfectly repeatable. You don’t need perfect form, just form you can repeat perfectly every single time.

Andrew: What should someone look for in those paper tears?

Eddie: Left-and-right tears are either your bow’s out of tune or you’re torquing. A high or low tear is usually a setup issue — rest height, nocking point, something like that. Primarily you’re looking at left-and-right tears, then diagnosing: is that a tuning issue or a me issue? Once you’ve got it shooting bullet holes, you just repeat it every time.

[22:08] Arrow Setup and High FOC

Andrew: You always get pass-throughs. What’s your arrow setup?

Eddie: I shoot 200 grains up front but I don’t shoot a heavy arrow. I believe in high FOC, not this ridiculous heavy-arrow stuff. My draw is just shy of 30 inches, my arrow’s about 30 inches long, and my total arrow weight is 450 grains — with a 75-grain insert and a 125-grain Magnus Stinger four-blade up front. That 200 grains up front is what punches through and gives you much better arrow flight. Think of a throwing dart: all the weight’s up front. If it were in the back, it’d tumble. All that weight up front pulls the arrow to straight flight and gives you your bust-through power. That lower deer behind me — I shot him quartering-to at 35 yards with that same setup and busted clean through the shoulder blade, first time in my life I’d ever hit that solid of bone. It was a ridiculously loud whack. Went through the shoulder blade, through the heart, and exited the other side. He sheared part of the arrow off when he turned to run, but all that weight up front is what shattered that shoulder blade.

Andrew: I like that, because there’s been so much heavy-arrow talk lately. I shot really heavy arrows for a while and the drop was so extreme — the pin gap between 20 and 30 was huge, not much margin for error.

Eddie: Right, it defeats the purpose of new bow technology. Bows are built now to be fast and flat-shooting. There’s no reason to shoot 650- or 700-grain arrows. Anything over 500 is too heavy in my opinion — and if you’re shooting 500 you should be a longer-draw guy shooting a longer arrow. That 425–475 range, with the correct weight up front, is plenty and shoots far flatter. At today’s speeds, misjudging 20 to 30 yards is insignificant if you’re holding center mass. A 600–700-grain arrow at 30 is liable to drop right under him.

Andrew: A lot of that heavy stuff traces back to Dr. Ashby.

Eddie: Dr. Ashby, yeah — the heavy arrow, high FOC, heavy-bone stuff. But that was always directed at African game to begin with, and it’s just been applied to North American game over the last 10 or 15 years. I’ve shot basically the same setup and the same broadhead since the late ’80s — back then it was a Bear Razorhead; the Magnus is basically a copy of it. [Editor’s note: the Bear Razorhead was introduced by Fred Bear in 1956 and became one of the most iconic broadheads ever — among the first widely adopted commercial heads, though not literally the first.] There’s a reason trad shooters still shoot them — they’re deadly, they punch through anything, and there’s no potential for failure like there is with a mechanical. Back then I was shooting Easton 2213 aluminum arrows — big difference from today’s carbon, but the same principle.

[25:07] Sponsor Break

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[36:19] Building a Sanctuary

Andrew: Cameras made a difference for you?

Eddie: Cell cameras — I couldn’t have had the success I’ve had without them. Back then I never knew what existed. Knowing what you have to hunt helps a lot, because it helps you act accordingly. If you know you’ve got a 150-inch deer, you adjust everything so you don’t screw it up.

Andrew: How big is this farm?

Eddie: Right at 400 acres, and every property around it is hammered — heavy hunting pressure, food plots, feeders, troughs, guys riding ATVs daily. The other farm I hunt is the same. So six or eight years ago I changed every aspect of my hunting. It just occurred to me: if everybody around me is putting a ton of pressure on deer, I’m going to do the exact opposite. If I put out any food at all, it’s broadcast lightly, like a natural presentation, and I stay out and treat the place like a sanctuary — hoping all that surrounding pressure makes deer find safe haven on my spots.

Andrew: In baiting states you always hear the neighbor’s bait will pull all your deer off. That hasn’t been your experience.

Eddie: No. I’ll broadcast a little feed, very minimally, but bait isn’t the magical attractant people think. A big deer and a big mature deer are two entirely different animals — you’ll never get me off that. A mature deer shies away from stuff he knows doesn’t belong. Pour out a 150-pound pile of corn and he knows something’s up. It all comes down to deer behavior and what kind of deer you’re hunting — straight wild, suburban, managed, or public all act differently. Corn’s only about 10% protein at best anyway; there’s tons of stuff out there deer love more. If nothing else, a little feed slows them down in front of a camera so you can inventory what you’ve got. But deer won’t prefer food over safety, so if you’re not careful with how you hunt it, all the food in the world won’t change the outcome.

Andrew: This 400 acres really hunts smaller, right?

Eddie: Right — probably half to two-thirds is open hayfield or grazing. We’ve got one timber block at the back, and the rest is just wooded perimeter edges. A lot of it is negative terrain, and the worst part is the negative terrain is the interior. So I’m mostly hunting that perimeter cover.

[42:34] The Human-Intrusion Mindset

Eddie: Human intrusion — that’s my number one mentality, for deer, turkeys, even when I fish. I don’t want a fish to know I’m on the river any more than I want a deer to know I’m in the woods. Every step I take revolves around limiting, if not eliminating, my presence on the place. Six, seven, eight years ago some things changed around here where I knew I could hunt it the way I wanted without outside interference. And that’s when I quit using scented products altogether — 365 days a year, not just deer season. Unscented soap, shampoo, deodorant, detergent. My hunting clothes — including undergarments — never enter my house; they hang outside under my front porch.

[44:26] The Scent-Free Discovery

Eddie: Here’s why, and it’s the part I never realized. It happened by accident. I washed my hands one day with scented hand soap, went home, took a shower, and the next morning I could still smell it on my hands. Our skin is like a sponge — it absorbs all those fragrances. If I’d showered and could still smell it, how long can a deer smell it after I can’t? They’ve got exponentially more scent receptors than we do. So I said, if I’m going to take this seriously, I won’t use any scented products — and since I like to hunt year-round, I’ll just do it 365 days a year. I did not expect the results. Since I started, I have not been detected by a deer through smell. In six, seven, eight years I’ve only spooked deer twice, both from movement. This biggest one here circled straight downwind — I just knew that was the time it’d blow up in my face, and he never twitched an ear.

Eddie: I have a theory. I honestly don’t think a deer today even knows what a human smells like anymore, because we come in contact with so many scents and fragrances that all attach to us. When you walk through the woods, is the deer smelling human scent, or the restaurant you left, or yesterday’s cologne, or the perfumes in your detergent and dryer sheets? Since doing this, my own sense of smell got super sensitive. So maybe I’ve diluted my human scent down so much — without any foreign fragrance attached — that they don’t recognize it, or they’ve learned to associate so many other scents with humans that plain human scent doesn’t register. Would it work for everybody? No. A restaurant worker or diesel mechanic can’t wash that away in a day or two. But I don’t go anywhere — I walk from house to shop, and my shop work is all natural wood products. I’m even e-bike addicted now: scent-free, quiet, and I never break a sweat getting to a spot.

Andrew: It makes sense — those detergents and shampoos are chemically engineered to smell strong and stick for a long time.

Eddie: Everything is learned through association. From the time a fawn hits the ground, it learns to associate what it sees, hears, and smells with what those things are. A deer sees a human walk through the woods and learns the smell, sound, and sight that go with him. Same with a turkey — he can hear you at 200 yards and know something’s there that doesn’t belong. So how many generations of deer would you have to go back to find one that smelled truly uncontaminated human scent? A long time — because everything we touch is fragranced. And I’m not buying specialty products; I use Dial unscented soap, an unscented shampoo, unscented deodorant. There are tons of biologists who’ll say it’s not possible — you can’t beat a deer’s nose — and I believe them, but I keep proving it wrong. I still play the wind, but if it shifts, I don’t worry near as much as I used to.

[53:21] Cover Scent and Dog Fennel

Andrew: We’ve heard of guys using strong cover scents like vanilla, and also of deer learning to associate a strong cover scent with danger after years of use.

Eddie: Same theory. My process was three steps. One: quit scented products. Two: make sure nothing I carry or wear has foreign odor — I wash it all in baking soda, it never enters the house, it stays on the porch, and I get dressed out on the front porch swing. Three: cover scent. You know dog fennel — we’re eat up with it here, and it has a strong, totally natural odor. I originally used mulch and pine limbs to make a liquid extract in a spray bottle, then a friend turned me on to dog fennel. Now I make a dog-fennel spray and also pack my next hunt’s clothes in a scent bag full of dog fennel. The point — and this ties to what you said — is that a cover scent like vanilla at least draws a deer’s curiosity; they know it doesn’t belong. I wanted something that draws no attention — rotting mulch, pine, dog fennel — stuff they smell 24/7 that doesn’t make them think twice. Smell a skunk or smoke in the woods and you start looking; I didn’t want to be the skunk. I can’t give a scientific reason it works — I just know it’s worked, over and over, every time I expected to be wrong.

[59:41] The Glowing-Gloves Mystery and Deer Vision

Eddie: Here’s one that got me. I had several deer in front of me — hot, buggy — but I’m in a set with ridiculous back and front cover, dropped into the shadows, 20 feet up, covered head to toe including a face net and gloves. Nothing should be able to see me. I go to swat a mosquito on my nose and a doe with her head down at 30 yards slings her head straight up — she saw me. I went home trying to figure out how that was even possible, and went down the UV rabbit hole. I ordered one of those pet-stain black lights off Amazon, laid out everything I’d worn that day, cut the lights out, and hit it — and only my gloves glowed. They stood out like a black-light poster. Everything else that UV-glowed went into a separate box that never goes in the woods.

Andrew: Our most popular episode of all time was with Dr. Karl Miller at the University of Georgia — a whole podcast on deer vision. They tested clothing and hunting apparel: some come with UV inhibitors from the factory, some don’t. You could walk a pro shop with a black light and see which camo glows. Dr. Miller also talked about detergents with UV brighteners — the liquid is blue for a reason, and once those brighteners are in the fabric you can’t get them back out.

Eddie: That’s exactly why I wash hunting clothes in baking soda only — no commercial detergents, and I wash them very seldom, mostly just airing them out on the porch. For my everyday clothes I use unscented detergent so I don’t carry normal fragrance on me. But my hunting clothes are baking soda or nothing.

[1:05:57] Four Behavioral Types of Deer

Andrew: How do you find your setups where you’re killing mature bucks the neighbors also know about?

Eddie: Let me back up so you understand how I choose to hunt. I classify deer into four behavioral categories. Straight wild: no tolerance for human contact, spooks off the slightest hint of it. Suburban: highly tolerant — used to vehicles, kids, pets, and all kinds of foreign fragrances. Managed: private tracts where people actively manage the herd; these deer are raised almost like cattle with food plots, feeders, and troughs, so they’re not very scared of humans. Public: splits into two — restricted areas with one or two access roads produce deer that act straight wild, while heavily used public land (fishing, camping, ranges, bike and horse trails) produces deer that behave more like suburban or managed deer. Behavior type alone dictates big differences in how far they travel and how they use ground.

Eddie: First example: I know of a county record on a managed property. He had one food plot with an automatic feeder and a trough, and every two or three days a farmhand would drive in, fill everything, and drive out — and within a half hour that deer would come in. He’d literally been conditioned. The guy would get dropped at the blind, the farmhand would fill the feeders and drive out, and less than 45 minutes later that deer would show. That’s not human contact — that’s human conditioning. I’m not knocking it; I love that guys can manage properties and get deer to that age. I’m just illustrating how much behavior changes what they do.

[1:12:01] The G2 Buck

Eddie: Let me tell you the story of that deer right there — that was 2023. Originally he wasn’t even my target. My target was a buck I nicknamed G2 — the biggest eight I’ve ever hunted, easily 148, which for Georgia is big. He had a crazy G2 tine about 14 inches long. I’d had him on camera since early July at my “center site” on the other farm. He was clockwork — every night, 30 to 45 minutes after dark, and at least once a week he’d daylight, but always random. Opening weekend I didn’t hunt because I didn’t think he’d daylight — and of course he did. So I decided to sit on him every afternoon for a week, figuring he’d daylight in that window. I just didn’t think through getting in and out without spooking other deer. The glove incident happened that week. Then on the third day I climbed down early because it was hot and I didn’t have deer around — and halfway down the tree, a small buck and a doe stepped out at 40 yards, saw me, and blew up, setting off every deer in the cutover. When I got home and checked cameras, there he was: one of my secondary cameras caught him watching me come down out of that tree. He never came back. One time, and he was gone.

Eddie: Two weeks later he still hadn’t shown, so I made a move. I didn’t think he’d left the property — just that spot. I went to the very back corner, found the nastiest, thickest stuff I could, a convergence of trails with a creek running through, super green. I cut out a patch about the size of this room, hung a camera, made a mock scrape, put in a mineral block, and broadcast a little food — all in one day — then got out, expecting to wait a week or two. That very night I had him back on camera. And the distance between that new spot and where I’d blown him out — where I’d run three cameras for months — was 430 yards. I didn’t even know that spot held a deer. From that day on he never missed a day on camera. I’ve got something like 3,000 pictures of him — twice a day, always a little after dark, then back the next morning right before daybreak, going right back into the thick interior.

Eddie: I finally figured out he was living in about an 11-acre block and basically never left it. I was on the property line, at the corner, with four other properties around — and not one of them had a single picture of that deer. I’ve noticed this for years: if I get a big mature deer on one camera, I’ll never get crossover on another. My two-year-olds — I call them pinballs — bounce around and show up everywhere, because I think the older deer push them around. But my target bucks? I’ll kill six in the last four years, and every one never set foot in another location. They lock down, hold tight, and find a spot that gives them everything they need.

Eddie: The only conclusion is he didn’t have to move — he had everything right there. All the food he could want: ragweed, greenbrier, privet, every high-protein natural weed. A creek running through, so everything’s green and plush. It was so thick I couldn’t walk through it; I still wonder how he navigated it. When I cut that little site, all I did was give him a staging point — he’d get up out of his bed, come to that opening shortly after dark, and hang there until he felt comfortable stepping into the open cutover to feed, then come right back.

Andrew: That matches what biologists tell us — as a buck matures, his home range keeps shrinking. You’re basically building the perfect environment for a mature buck and keeping the pressure totally off.

[1:26:22] Weather Events and Hunting from the Sofa

Eddie: The only time I hunt now is one of two situations — otherwise I hunt from the sofa, watching them on my phone. One: a deer daylights so regularly it’s a no-brainer. Two: a major weather event. That buck never daylighted for me, ever, so I decided that if he ever did, I had to be there — he might only do it once all season. From there it was hunting major weather-event days. By that I mean a significant temperature swing day to day: if the high today is 60 and tomorrow’s is 45–49, I’m hunting tomorrow. That’s more significant here than out west or up north, where they’re used to wild swings. Let a 12- to 15-degree swing hit here overnight and it shocks us — and it shocks them. It gets a buck on his feet a half hour earlier, and when you’re right on top of him like I was, that’s all it takes to catch him in daylight. The third weather event is when I killed that dude.

Eddie: I’ve almost figured out you can do this blind. Find a 10–20% portion of a property that’s truly unnavigable — nasty, thick, high stem count you can barely crawl through, but full of grasses, weeds, briers, blackberry, privet. A deer finds everything he needs there and doesn’t need to move much. You set up right on the edge of that core area. For that buck I actually got about 40 yards inside all that nasty stuff and cut myself a hole — there wasn’t a tree in there that would’ve held me, so I built a ground blind and cut two shooting lanes, 12 to 15 yards. That first week I broadcast a little feed like it fell from the sky, and put in a mineral block to inventory him. When he came in that afternoon, he stuck himself right where I couldn’t shoot — nine minutes on the trail-camera timer — before he finally stepped into a lane. He felt comfortable in there because it was a staging spot: fully walled and secluded, everything he needs, but not locked down in a bed.

[1:33:06] One-Day Access

Andrew: How’d you set up access 40 yards into that cover, and get in quietly?

Eddie: The thought process came from Bobby Worthington — I heard Parker McDonald interview him years ago, around 2017 or 2018. He talked about getting it done in a day and getting the hell out; if you keep going back, that’s when you do real damage. So once I knew I had to relocate that deer, I loaded up everything I could think I’d need and went the next day. I waited until about 10 a.m. so I wasn’t in there during prime movement, walked it for an hour, and figured out the convergence of trails and the little creek bottom. On the north end there was an old grown-up roadbed, so I carried everything in and set up on that road. I did it all by hand — chainsaw, weed eater with a bushwhacker blade, a limb saw, and shears — and cleared a hole about the size of this room. I’d brought netting because there was no way to hang a stand in there.

Eddie: I set the blind up fast, hung three cameras, and got out — the whole intent was to get it all done right then and not come back except to watch on camera. When I hunt it, I don’t use that old roadbed — I clipped and cleared a separate path so I can slip in absolutely 100% quiet and unseen, right in the back door of the blind. I strung camo netting on paracord into a triangle and piled all the brush I’d cut against it — you can’t even see the blind; it looks completely natural. The day I killed him, he never looked in my direction one time. That was my first time ever hunting a ground blind — I’m a saddle hunter and love my saddle, but there’s so much less risk of getting busted slipping in and out of a ground blind, and the shot angle’s better too.

[1:38:04] Small Home Ranges and the Rut Theory

Andrew: A lot of people can relate to getting a big deer on one camera but never seeing him elsewhere, and assuming he’s traveling from who-knows-where — when he could be within a couple hundred yards in a small core area. During the rut, does anything change, or do they stay in that small area?

Eddie: Here’s where I’ll ruffle some feathers: I don’t believe we have a definitive rut here. Up north and out west, with extreme climate, no argument — those deer have definitive rut stages. But here, going back to the late ’80s and early ’90s, I see more rutting activity — chasing, fighting, actual breeding, snort-wheezes and grunts — in September and October. Then November, the “textbook” peak around the 8th or 9th per DNR and GON, is business as usual. I couldn’t figure it out, and people said it was just pre-rut. But the more I thought about it, the more I think our deer breed nearly year-round.

Eddie: Pay attention to fawns — when they drop, they tell you exactly when they were bred. Prime example: turkey season on the other farm, about 20 miles from here, I saw a doe with something tiny running behind her. I thought it was a neighbor’s little dog, then realized it was a fawn. I drove around, found their tracks in the road, and that fawn’s track was about the size of a penny — couldn’t have been more than a week old. That was April 9th. Back the math up and that deer was conceived around September. Flip side: this past year I had twin newborn fawns the last week of August — back that up and it’s February or March, even late January. So at least what I see here, and 20 miles away at the other farm, deer are breeding from September all the way through late February or March, with no real ramp or climactic peak — it just continuously happens.

Eddie: My theory is that everything evolves and adapts to survive its conditions. A deer out west or up north has to breed within a narrow window — breed too early and the doe drops a fawn in the worst conditions; too late and the fawn can’t put on enough age to survive winter. Here we have no harsh climate changes and stay green almost year-round, so they don’t have to breed within that window. A wildlife biologist over in Harris County argued me down and said it was a fluke — but why do I keep seeing it every year? One time might be a fluke; year after year on both ends isn’t. I don’t know if it means anything — it’s just my opinion — but I know what my eyes and my cameras tell me.

[1:49:21] The Houdini Act

Eddie: Here’s the part that contradicts all that, and I have no explanation. These three bucks hanging behind me — the only thing they have in common is they all pulled Houdinis the last week of October. All three, different years, deer that never missed a day on camera, just totally vanished for a week and then showed back up. During those disappearances, each showed up once — the lower one trailing a doe on a camera he’d never been on, another mounted breeding a doe one night on a totally different camera — then nothing until he returned to his normal spot, business as usual, like there’d been no rut activity at all. The day after each one reappeared home was the day I killed him. I just thought it was interesting that all three did that same disappearing act, the same last week of October.

[1:52:29] Wrap-Up

Andrew: That’s a great place to wrap. We appreciate you letting us come down here. We didn’t talk turkeys today — I know you’re out of stock and building inventory back up — but if someone wants to check out your calls, how do they find you?

Eddie: The website is rivermancustoms.com, email rivermancustoms@gmail.com. The easiest way to see all my work is on social media or directly through the website.

Andrew: Perfect. Audience, thank you all for watching and listening — we’ll catch you in the next episode of The Southern Outdoorsmen. And remember: y’all stay southern.