The Blacktail Coach Podcast

Send us Fan Mail One bad decision can change an entire bear season, and sometimes it takes a full year to see the consequences. We’re back with Heather Aldrich to wrap up spring bear season and turn those hard-earned lessons into a smarter plan for fall. Along the way we dig into what “success” really means in bear hunting, why learning the woods can matter more than punching a tag, and how experi...

Send us Fan Mail Rattling for blacktail isn’t magic and it isn’t random. It’s a story you’re telling in the woods, and the buck decides whether he believes it. We’re joined again by Tom Ryle and Kelly Riordan for a deep, practical breakdown of blacktail deer calling and rattling, from first principles to field-ready sequences. We start with the why: bucks fight over breeding rights, but a lot of t...

Send us Fan Mail A blacktail buck can live a whole season a few yards from you and never show itself, and that’s exactly why we love hunting them. We’re joined by Tom Ryle and Kelly Riordan for a wide-ranging talk that starts with how they each got pulled into the blacktail woods and quickly turns into what it really takes to improve at blacktail deer hunting in Washington and the broader Pacific...

Send us Fan Mail Conservation doesn’t run on vibes, it runs on people showing up year after year. That’s why we brought on Tom Ryle (WDFW marketing and creative media manager and Washington’s R3 lead) and Kelly Riordan (R3 hunting coordinator) to break down the R3 program: recruit, retain, reactivate, and the “why” behind it. Hunting participation has declined nationally since the 1980s, and Washi...

Send us Fan Mail You know that sinking feeling when you realize you forgot something critical, rushed a shot, or made a choice you can’t rewind? We’re leaning into that reality with our guest Asha, because the woods have a way of teaching lessons the hard way and then turning them into the funniest stories a season later. We trade honest, embarrassing hunting mistakes, not to glorify failure, but...

Send us Fan Mail You can hunt blacktail for years and still feel like you’re doing everything right, until you realize you’re solving the wrong problem. We bring on Ryan Heuberger and Cully Scroggins, our newest Blacktail Coach pro staff members, to talk about what changed for them once they started matching their effort to the realities of Pacific Northwest blacktail deer behavior, habitat, and p...

Send us Fan Mail We leave the spreadsheets and blacktail strategies at home and hit record from Boars All Day in Groveton, Texas after a full weekend of hog hunting with our Blacktail Coach crew plus Dan, and Mike from Nockaholics and the Everyday Archer podcast. The promise up front is simple: more stories than lessons. The reality is even fun hunts come with real decisions about ethics, shot cho...

Send us Fan Mail You can find great blacktail habitat and still never see the buck you actually want. That gap is what we call advanced locating: going beyond “thick stuff over there” and learning to identify the bedroom door, the specific access point and travel route that tells you where a mature buck spends most of his time and how he moves without getting exposed. We talk through why the class...

Send us Fan Mail Ten Washington Slams doesn’t happen by accident, and Alex Cheney isn’t interested in lucky stories that can’t be repeated. We sit down to unpack how he finishes his 10th Washington turkey slam in only eight days, and what that says about scouting, roosting birds, and running a simple, consistent turkey hunting playbook under real spring pressure. If you’ve ever wondered what “gett...

Send us Fan Mail Four days can change the way you hunt when the learning is real, the egos are gone, and the “secret sauce” is actually shared. We’re wrapping up the Hunters Gathering with quick testimonials from the people who lived it, from our instructors to the hunters who showed up hungry to learn and left with a plan. Trent Fisher talks about the difference between seminar knowledge and fiel...

Send us Fan Mail Trail cameras can be addictive for the photos, but the real payoff is what those clips reveal about animal behavior and repeatable movement patterns. We’re joined again by John Nicholson from Trail Camera Adventures to get practical about turning trail cams into a true scouting system, especially for hunters who feel like they’re “doing everything right” but still can’t make the d...

Send us Fan Mail Trail cameras feel simple until you realize how many animals can walk right past them without ever showing up on your card. We sit down again with John Nicholson from Trail Camera Adventures and get into the details that separate “random luck” from consistent trail camera success, whether you’re chasing blacktail and elk or just trying to capture better wildlife video. We talk hon...

Send us Fan Mail A trail camera can feel like a simple tool until you’ve watched an elk beat it up, a bear pry it open, or winter condensation turn every clip into a blurry mess. We’re joined by John Nicholson from Trail Camera Adventures, who’s spent years running a huge network of cams around Mount St. Helens and worked inside the outdoor industry during the early wave of modern trail camera dev...

Send us Fan Mail We’re recording live from the Cascade Mountain Man Muzzle Loading Arms and Pioneer Craft Show, and the background noise is the point, because this world is alive. I sit down with Mike Moran and Steve Cole from the Washington State Muzzle Loaders Association to talk about the people behind traditional muzzleloading in Washington and why the “mountain man” scene is bigger than just...

Send us Fan Mail A 13-year-old sits in a stand for six hours, her phone dead, nerves climbing, and then a black bear finally steps out. A senior in high school buys a deer tag just days before late buck season, practices with a 12 gauge slug, and ends up doing the whole hunt and the entire breakdown himself. Those are the kinds of first-year big game hunting stories you do not forget, and they are...

Send us Fan Mail Coyotes don’t read gear reviews, and they don’t slow down when they hit your call. We’re closing out our coyote hunting series with Cody Sanchez by getting brutally practical about what consistently puts fur on the ground in real Pacific Northwest terrain. If you’ve ever wondered why a rifle setup feels “right” but still loses fast-moving coyotes in brush and timber, we break down...

Send us Fan Mail Coyotes feel random until you zoom in on what they repeat. Aaron sits down with Cody Sanchez for week two of coyote hunting and gets specific about what “range” looks like in real timber country: tight home cores for established breeding pairs, big moves for transients, and why a single square mile can hold an entirely different group. If you have ever seen one coyote once and the...

Send us Fan Mail Coyotes don’t play by daytime rules, and that’s exactly why so many hunters are turning to night stands and thermal optics. We sit down with Cody Sanchez of Thermal Dispatch to unpack what really changes after dark—why coyotes move more, respond harder to calls, and force you to rethink setups in Western Washington’s tight timber and mixed-use ground. If you’ve only seen wide-open...

Send us Fan Mail The shows are finally in the rearview, the colds are fading, and the conversations we had at the booth lit a fire under us. We met listeners who’ve packed freezers and missed shots, shook hands with makers who obsess over the little details, and left with a sharper vision for where we’re headed: more field-ready skills, smarter gear choices, and a community that knows how to defen...

Send us Fan Mail What if your mount could tell the whole story every time someone walked past it? We sit down with Clay Bond from Bonded Outdoors to talk about turning memories into heirlooms with personalized leather tags and shoulder-mount patches that hold dates, places, spent brass, and even the state-issued tag. It’s a simple idea with real weight: a clean, handsome way to “hang on to the hun...

Send us Fan Mail Think blacktail won’t daylight over bait? They’re not stubborn; they’re spoiled for choice. We bring on Gary Sims—cofounder of Limbsaver and the mind behind Blacktail Solution—to explain how flavor, precision nutrients, and smart timing flip the script on nocturnal patterns while building a stronger herd. Gary grew up on the Oregon coast with elk and blacktail everywhere, and that...

Send us Fan Mail Not every buck is meant to be chased. We dig into Bud’s hard-won blacktail system—how a season of empty sits became a framework for finding “killable bucks” on pressured public land. The shift sounds simple but it changes everything: hunt the animal that proves he’ll move in daylight, in places he already feels safe, on a route you can protect with wind and access. We walk through...

Send us Fan Mail What if the biggest lever for stronger deer herds isn’t predator control, but the ground under their hooves? We dig into fresh data, field studies, and on-the-ground observations across California, Oregon, and Washington to challenge a common assumption: that coyotes, bears, and cougars are the primary drivers of deer declines. Yes, predators take a heavy toll on fawns, but when l...

Send us Fan Mail The trailhead looks crowded and it’s tempting to say hunting has exploded—but the numbers tell a different story. We dig into decades of data from California, Oregon, and Washington and find steep declines in license sales even as state populations soar. That drop doesn’t just change who we see in the woods; it guts the funding that keeps wardens in the field, hatcheries open, and...

Send us Fan Mail Burn country can feel empty until you read it the right way. We sat down with Joe to break down how a brutal two-fire landscape in Southern Oregon still held mature blacktails in daylight—and how a simple, disciplined system made them visible and killable. Instead of chasing country, we focused on the “bedroom door”: that precise edge of thicker cover where thermals roll, wind cre...