FIELD GUIDES
The field-craft, written down.
The research desk applied to the decisions you make in the woods — how to read a bench or a draw, when to trust your wind forecast, whether the corn is what killed your cameras, and how to ask for permission and get a yes. Same standard as the papers: state the method, cite the evidence, and refuse to fake what isn't knowable.
When to Trust Your Wind Forecast — and When It's Lying
Forecast wind arrows get measurably less reliable in calm, clear, cold conditions — the classic perfect morning. Why point forecasts break in timber, and how to screen scent risk before the walk-in.
Reading a Bench, Saddle, and Draw on a Topo Map
The three terrain features that decide where deer travel and bed — what each looks like in contour lines, what deer do with it, and why a coarse contour interval hides half of them.
How to Check a Landowner Name Before You Knock
Where parcel data comes from, why the name on a hunting app can be two years stale, and a five-minute county-roll workflow to verify the owner of record before a permission ask.
Reading Public-Land Pressure: Effort, Not Distance
The collar studies don't say hunters walk a mile — they say hunters avoid effort. A desk method for finding the blind-spot pockets before the drive, using access points, slope, and hydrology.
Finding Buck Bedding in Flat Farmland
Why hill-country bedding doctrine breaks where there's no relief, where deer actually bed on flat ground, and what 1-meter LIDAR shows on terrain that reads as featureless.
Standing Corn and the Rut: How Harvest Timing Rewires Movement
Why deer live inside standing corn, what a fresh cut changes within 48 hours, the September-to-January harvest swing, and how a county-level read beats driving roads.
The Permission Playbook: Asking Like the Hunters Who Get a Yes
Reverse-engineered from what high performers report — the packet, the letter, resolving LLC and trust owners, timing the ask to the crop calendar, and a lease-scam defense.
Deer Movement Scores vs. What the Collar Studies Support
An evidence-first look at the percent-score category and moon-phase claims — and a sorted ledger of what is knowable about a hunting day versus what no honest tool can score.
Leaf-Off Aerial Imagery: What Winter Photos Reveal
Why the default summer basemap hides edges, timber types, and trails, how to audit your imagery age before trusting it, and what leaf-off winter orthos put back on the map.
Designing Food Plots and Property Layouts on a Map
A map-first walkthrough of a real parcel: plot placement against neighbor context and LIDAR funnels, entry routes as scent-risk zones, sizing to browse pressure, and a placement checklist.