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.