Speaker 1: Welcome to the Wired to Hunt Foundations podcast, your guide
Speaker 1: to the fundamentals of better dear hunting, and now your
Speaker 1: host Tony Peterson. Hey everyone, welcome to the Wire to
Speaker 1: Hunt Foundations podcast, which is brought to you by First Light.
Speaker 1: I'm your host, Tony Peterson, and today's episode is all
Speaker 1: about finding the right dear when there are many many
Speaker 1: distractions in the woods, especially during the rut. So I
Speaker 1: guess the idea for this episode came to me while
Speaker 1: going back and forth with a good buddy of mine.
Speaker 1: He was at a farm that we both hunt, and
Speaker 1: he wanted to move one of my cameras from one
Speaker 1: trail to another. The pictures at the crossing where I
Speaker 1: had set up they just weren't that impressive. And last year,
Speaker 1: during a late season hunt, we stumbled on a different
Speaker 1: crossing down the ravine from that where a doll that
Speaker 1: I had shot crossed and we didn't really know it
Speaker 1: was there. So we're a blood trailing and we went
Speaker 1: through there. We're like, yeah, this is pretty cool. Now
Speaker 1: that newly discovered crossing. It looked pretty promising. So in
Speaker 1: this conversation he decided to grab my camera and head
Speaker 1: on over there. But then he told me when he
Speaker 1: got there, He's like, yeah, the trail really isn't that
Speaker 1: beaten down, but there are quite a few rubs around it.
Speaker 1: So that's when I said to him, it's not about
Speaker 1: how many, Adam, But so there you go. That's what
Speaker 1: this episode is all about. If you could go back
Speaker 1: in time, say, I don't know, like years to about
Speaker 1: four BC, you could witness an event that left an
Speaker 1: indelible mark on history, an event that is popularized to
Speaker 1: this day in modern culture, to the point where it's
Speaker 1: even being used to try to help people kill deer
Speaker 1: on a podcast written and produced by some random dude
Speaker 1: from Minnesota. This event, which took place on soil now
Speaker 1: covered by nearly seventy feet a sediment that has been
Speaker 1: continually deposited by a river with a name that I
Speaker 1: absolutely cannot pronounce, involved an invading Persian force and those
Speaker 1: famous Spartans that have been featured in all kinds of
Speaker 1: films and literature. The Battle of Thermopoli, which derives its
Speaker 1: name from the local hot springs, involved the only land
Speaker 1: route large enough to allow real foot traffic through a
Speaker 1: specific region of Greece. While it's often touted as a
Speaker 1: battle of like three hundred verses as many as a million.
Speaker 1: It wasn't quite that one sided. It was a battle, however,
Speaker 1: where the Spartans, along with some Thespians and Thebans, numbered
Speaker 1: somewhere near seven thousand at the start. The invading Persians,
Speaker 1: led by Xerxes, who was a bit too cocky for
Speaker 1: his own good, numbered somewhere between a hundred and twenty
Speaker 1: thousand to upwards of three hundred thousand soldiers. Of the
Speaker 1: odds were pretty bad, but they were the invaders. And
Speaker 1: one thing we keep learning to this day is that
Speaker 1: if you're going to head into someone else's homeland and
Speaker 1: try to take them over, you better be ready to
Speaker 1: fight people who have real heart and real conviction and
Speaker 1: a general ferocity that isn't quite as ensconced in the invaders.
Speaker 1: For a week, the much smaller army defended its homeland
Speaker 1: and held off the invading army. They eventually fought to
Speaker 1: their death because they were so vastly outnumbered. And the
Speaker 1: moral to the story, my friends, is that the small
Speaker 1: defending army had the heart, the training, and they used
Speaker 1: their home turf advantage as a force multiplier. Now, they
Speaker 1: still lost, but they put up a history altering fight.
Speaker 1: Those Spartans and their allies. They were the right ones.
Speaker 1: They were different from the invaders on multiple fronts, and
Speaker 1: the results showed that in that case, it wasn't necessarily
Speaker 1: how many but who or I guess whom? If you're
Speaker 1: talking about people, Do you see what I did there?
Speaker 1: This is a stretch, But really the thing with white
Speaker 1: tails is that sometimes you have to look for concentrations
Speaker 1: of them, the big numbers, if you will, and sometimes
Speaker 1: you're just looking for the right one. If there's a
Speaker 1: more appropriate time to look for the right one, then
Speaker 1: right in the heat of the rut, I don't think so.
Speaker 1: But before we get into this, I want to say
Speaker 1: that I actually am a big proponent of looking for
Speaker 1: deer concentrations in many, many different situations. Take bigwoods hunting,
Speaker 1: for example, it's almost a necessity to just have to
Speaker 1: find dear first before you can even start to think
Speaker 1: about a specific caliber dear. I also find this to
Speaker 1: be true on nearly all of my public land white
Speaker 1: tail hunts. Last month, in the beginning of October, I
Speaker 1: drove out to South Dakota to hunt public land with
Speaker 1: Tyler Jones and Casey Smith. From the Element podcast. The
Speaker 1: goal first, even in that kind of relatively glass able
Speaker 1: and open country, was to just find concentrations the deer first.
Speaker 1: After that we try to drill down to some good bucks.
Speaker 1: That's the name of the game for public land, especially
Speaker 1: big chunks of public land that have experienced weeks of
Speaker 1: pretty intense hunting pressure. But now, no matter where you hunt,
Speaker 1: do you really need to locate concentrations or should you
Speaker 1: start looking for the clues that will lead you to
Speaker 1: the buck that you really want. I think the ladder
Speaker 1: is important, and it's somewhat unconventional advice for the rut.
Speaker 1: Conventional advice would tell you to focus on the deer
Speaker 1: concentrations because in those you'll find your local dos. And
Speaker 1: if you find the local doughs, like I talked about
Speaker 1: last week, the advice always says you'll find the bucks.
Speaker 1: I find this advice to be possibly true on any
Speaker 1: given random November day, but also not true on most
Speaker 1: any given random November day. I've been around a lot
Speaker 1: of doughs in November that didn't have a hundred and
Speaker 1: forty interest trying to sniff their butts NonStop. I've also
Speaker 1: found spots where the big bucks just seemed to live
Speaker 1: during the rut, and where they are are more likely
Speaker 1: to give a hunter a chance to shoot them. This
Speaker 1: strategy is partially due to the fact that while we
Speaker 1: often view rut movement is random and totally unpredictable, it's not.
Speaker 1: It's probably some of the most predictable dear movement of
Speaker 1: the season. Honestly, you just need to understand that it
Speaker 1: happens at certain spots in daylight in your neck of
Speaker 1: the woods, and not in a lot of the spots
Speaker 1: where you might think it should be happening. The rut
Speaker 1: insanity doesn't blank at the entire countryside and chasing bucks,
Speaker 1: even in states like Iowa. The bucks, especially bucks on
Speaker 1: pressure ground. Of course, they do get dumber, they make
Speaker 1: more mistakes, but they don't often get dumb. They have
Speaker 1: areas they like, and often those areas are home to
Speaker 1: more than one buck in his rut activities. Now, this
Speaker 1: is another thing. While I'm gonna go, I don't know
Speaker 1: full a d H D on you for a second,
Speaker 1: it's this is something that drives me a little crazy.
Speaker 1: I hear hunters say that bucks won't tolerate other bucks,
Speaker 1: especially when they are all hopped up on testosterone and
Speaker 1: all that jazz. But they will, and they often do. Now,
Speaker 1: if that weren't true, you wouldn't be able to turn
Speaker 1: on the Sportsman's channel and watch some show based off
Speaker 1: of high fence hunting without the fences were seventeen different
Speaker 1: mature bucks and enter the same food plot looking for love.
Speaker 1: The biggest buck I ever arrowed was vying for the
Speaker 1: attention of a single dough who also had two other
Speaker 1: potential boyfriends right around her. Those three bucks probably total
Speaker 1: about four of public land aislers, and they all seem
Speaker 1: to set aside their differences for the common goal of
Speaker 1: getting one sexy Nebraska dough super pregnant. So what does
Speaker 1: all this rambling mean. It means it's time to stop
Speaker 1: thinking about the randomness of the rut and try to
Speaker 1: get specific find the right dear. You might hunt in
Speaker 1: a place where the bucks to door ratio is so
Speaker 1: perfectly balanced or hell skewed towards the fellas that you
Speaker 1: can just sit down window your best dough betting area
Speaker 1: and wait. But most folks can't, even if they think
Speaker 1: they can. Most of us need to find not necessarily
Speaker 1: where the best deer numbers are, but where the best
Speaker 1: odds of a buck or multiple books should be. I
Speaker 1: found this a few years ago on public land in
Speaker 1: North Dakota, and in four days of hunting, I only
Speaker 1: saw one dough. She did draw a really nice buck
Speaker 1: into shooting range, which I greatly appreciated. But the reality
Speaker 1: of the spot was that it was where the bucks
Speaker 1: felt safe cruising from chunk of public land at chunk
Speaker 1: of public land. But now you're probably thinking enough humble
Speaker 1: bragging about all the giant public land bucks you've killed. Dude,
Speaker 1: get to the point, And the point is, my friends,
Speaker 1: that there are a few ways to find these spots
Speaker 1: that could have the right deer in them. The first
Speaker 1: that many people will default to is trail cameras. Now,
Speaker 1: I love trail cameras for some stuff, but not for
Speaker 1: pinning down the right deer during the rut. A trail
Speaker 1: camera on a funnel or a pinch point can certainly
Speaker 1: clue you into something good, so I don't discount that.
Speaker 1: I just think you're in a moment now where you
Speaker 1: don't have a lot of lag time when it comes
Speaker 1: to recon that way, a picture from a couple of
Speaker 1: days ago is great, but it's just not the same
Speaker 1: thing as being there and seeing them. It's also not
Speaker 1: as exciting to me as fine ending a spot that
Speaker 1: is covered and I mean covered in buck sign. Even
Speaker 1: then that's not as cool as just like I said,
Speaker 1: laying eyes on a buck or seven of them doing
Speaker 1: something during the rut. You know, here's the thing about observation.
Speaker 1: You have to understand what you're observing. And I'll give
Speaker 1: you an example. A few years ago in my home
Speaker 1: state of Minnesota, I sat on a variety of terrain
Speaker 1: traps trying to pin down a decent buck. What happened
Speaker 1: is that I didn't pin down a decent buck. I
Speaker 1: saw some scrappers and I saw some dos, and I
Speaker 1: based my strategy around that by just looking at the terrain.
Speaker 1: But it didn't work. Even when the chasing should have
Speaker 1: been intense, I found myself watching dough groups lazily work
Speaker 1: their way through the woods without a buck into and
Speaker 1: if I did see a buck, he was in like
Speaker 1: I don't know the four key to basket rack six
Speaker 1: pointer type range. I was hunting some deer concentrations, but
Speaker 1: I wasn't drilling down to the spots where the good
Speaker 1: bucks were. When I finally moved into an area that
Speaker 1: I suspect it might be the ticket. I started seeing
Speaker 1: good bucks. Do you know what that are? It had
Speaker 1: that others didn't. A couple of things. I had water,
Speaker 1: and I guess I should say it had better water anyway.
Speaker 1: They had a trout stream to dip down to and
Speaker 1: drink after playing grab bass all night. They also had
Speaker 1: better cover, which is real important. It's often subtle in November,
Speaker 1: but the difference between open woods and less open woods
Speaker 1: is I don't know. Sometimes the difference between that only
Speaker 1: gets more pronounced the more you hunt places with real pressure.
Speaker 1: In fact, that South Dakota hunt I mentioned that I
Speaker 1: did in October. The last night, I moved into a
Speaker 1: wood lot that is pretty good sized for South Dakota,
Speaker 1: but would you know almost be considered like an open
Speaker 1: prairie in northern Michigan that wood lot. Would you know
Speaker 1: I would even draw the attention of a big woods hunter. Probably,
Speaker 1: But it was immediately clear to me that it was
Speaker 1: the thickest stuff around. I just found it a little
Speaker 1: too late, and when I got saddled up with my
Speaker 1: cameraman over my shoulder, the third deer we saw that
Speaker 1: night was a deer that came right out of that
Speaker 1: wood lot. He was like a hundred and thirty, but
Speaker 1: a really good deer for public land. Now it's all relative,
Speaker 1: my friends, But the truth is that deer like thick stuff.
Speaker 1: And this holds true even during the rut. In fact,
Speaker 1: in my experience, it often holds true most during the rut.
Speaker 1: So I go about it this way. When I'm in
Speaker 1: the thick of it and I'm not seeing good deer,
Speaker 1: just like with over the counter ELK, I pull up
Speaker 1: my on X and I try to dissect the property
Speaker 1: I'm hunting. Where is the thickest cover, if not on
Speaker 1: the spot where I can hunt, how close is the
Speaker 1: thickest stuff on adjoining properties? And will that feed deer
Speaker 1: into and out of my ground? When I find something interesting,
Speaker 1: it's either a mid day sneaky ninja scouting vest to
Speaker 1: check sign and tracks, or more likely time to grab
Speaker 1: the mobile, set up and get down wind on the edge.
Speaker 1: I want to be where I believe I can kill
Speaker 1: a deer, but also where I believe I'll see a deer,
Speaker 1: or more specifically, the right dear, the spartan warrior, Dear,
Speaker 1: if you will see what he did there Now I'm
Speaker 1: going to get into a really important component of this
Speaker 1: next week when I talk about how dear stick to
Speaker 1: cover in a true deep dive fashion. But the thing is,
Speaker 1: even during the rut, the right spot is as important
Speaker 1: to find as the right deer, and usually you find
Speaker 1: one and you find the other. This is where I'm
Speaker 1: going to diverge once again from traditional rut advice. Sure
Speaker 1: you should be aware of funnels and pinch points and
Speaker 1: train traps, but honestly, they are everywhere in a lot
Speaker 1: of places we deer hunt. If you're in bluff country,
Speaker 1: you could probably find a good funnel and every ten acres.
Speaker 1: If you're an open country, you could probably just play
Speaker 1: connect the dots between patches of cover and pin down
Speaker 1: some likely travel routes in swamps, the dry spines and land.
Speaker 1: Connecting timber is the ticket. It's not rocket science, at
Speaker 1: least on the surface, but just finding a decent pinch point.
Speaker 1: It's kind of like finding one scraper a rub. What
Speaker 1: good does it do you? Maybe something, maybe nothing. There
Speaker 1: has to be more to the story otherwise it's kind
Speaker 1: of a hollow victory. Now, there are some rut based
Speaker 1: studies out there on radio collared box that show they
Speaker 1: have pretty specific cruising roads. These studies and the results
Speaker 1: are pretty fascinating and often show Bucks making almost a
Speaker 1: clover leaf type of route over and over and over
Speaker 1: and over again. They don't cover every inch of their territory,
Speaker 1: but they cover some of the inches of their territory
Speaker 1: multiple times a week. This means that you could be
Speaker 1: in the neighborhood a whole bunch of Bucks, but for
Speaker 1: whatever reason, they don't spend hardly any time crossing through
Speaker 1: certain pinch points when they're on the hunt for the ladies.
Speaker 1: In this case, you might have the right deer on camera,
Speaker 1: but could easily be in the wrong spot. So how
Speaker 1: do you find the right spot? Again? Observation and a
Speaker 1: willingness to shake up the plan. If you have a
Speaker 1: train trap with a bunch of sign around it and
Speaker 1: a pounded trail going through, by all means hundred. If
Speaker 1: the wind and the approach work in your favor, give
Speaker 1: it an all day sit or at least a morning
Speaker 1: and an evening. What if it's all scrappers and does?
Speaker 1: What if the deer movement is just not happening? This
Speaker 1: happens a lot, and we often make excuses for it.
Speaker 1: There must be a hot dose somewhere else to pull
Speaker 1: all the bucks away, or the rut must not be
Speaker 1: really going yet because the moon is full, or mercury
Speaker 1: is in retrograde, or my sister's crystals that bring forth
Speaker 1: good energy of Mother Earth or dirty or whatever. The
Speaker 1: truth is, the rut is happening if it's November, it's
Speaker 1: happening for most folks outside of some truly southern locales.
Speaker 1: So we make excuses to keep hunting a dead spot,
Speaker 1: or we don't put the effort in to hunt after
Speaker 1: a few sits because it's just not going. A better
Speaker 1: bet when you're riding a dead horse is just a
Speaker 1: dismount and climb up on a live one. Keep looking again.
Speaker 1: I know you're sick of hearing this, but this is
Speaker 1: why I always say you should have as many spots
Speaker 1: to hunt as possible. If you limit yourself to only
Speaker 1: acres of private land because you believe the huge chunks
Speaker 1: of public land half an hour away aren't worth it,
Speaker 1: you're setting yourself up to keep riding that dead pony
Speaker 1: in a non existent gallop to nowhere. My little buck
Speaker 1: a ruse, understand this. No, no, no, believe this in
Speaker 1: your heart of deer hunting hearts. The right deer and
Speaker 1: the right spot to kill that deer are out there
Speaker 1: waiting for you. The deer will show you not only
Speaker 1: when you've found that winding combo, but also when you haven't.
Speaker 1: That lesson is one we don't listen to nearly enough,
Speaker 1: and it leads to a lot of unfilled tags during
Speaker 1: the rut. Channel your inner Spartan warrior and think about
Speaker 1: how the odds are stacked up against you as a hunter.
Speaker 1: Most of us on any given year won't kill a deer,
Speaker 1: and even smaller amount of hunters will kill a good
Speaker 1: buck on any given year. That's some rarefied air to breathe.
Speaker 1: Even if by Instagram standards it seems like everyone's killing giants,
Speaker 1: they aren't, and it doesn't matter. What matters is that
Speaker 1: you take the time during the rut to keep hunting
Speaker 1: smart while looking for the terrain trap that the right
Speaker 1: caliber of bucks will use. To find those, you might
Speaker 1: have to file through us spot or three or seven
Speaker 1: or ten. You might have to go mobile when you'd
Speaker 1: rather just sit in an old stand by spot. But
Speaker 1: if you want to separate yourself from the average hunter,
Speaker 1: and believe me, you do, then there isn't much choice here.
Speaker 1: So keep looking, keep letting the deer tell you where
Speaker 1: they want to be and show you what they want
Speaker 1: to do. Eventually they'll give you everything you need to
Speaker 1: know to be in the right spot at the right time. Now,
Speaker 1: like I said, next week, I'm going to talk about
Speaker 1: how important cover is to deer travel. I think this
Speaker 1: seems obvious, but I don't think a lot of hunters
Speaker 1: understand how much this dictates buck movement. That's it for
Speaker 1: this week. I'm Tony Peterson. This has been the Wire
Speaker 1: to Hunt Foundations podcast, which has brought to you by
Speaker 1: First Light. As always, thank you so much for listening,
Speaker 1: and if you want more white tail content, feel free
Speaker 1: to visit them eat eater dot com, slash Wired, or
Speaker 1: visit our Wire to Hunt YouTube channel. And if you're
Speaker 1: feeling a little crazy and you want to see some
Speaker 1: deer hunting, go to the Mediator YouTube channel and check
Speaker 1: out Mark's new show, Dear Country All. I think all
Speaker 1: six episodes are out now check it out, binge it,
Speaker 1: get yourself pumped up, but watch it. M m hm