Speaker 1: Welcome to the Wired to Hunt Foundations podcast, your guide
Speaker 1: to the fundamentals of better deer hunting, presented by first Light,
Speaker 1: creating proven versatile hunting apparel for the stand, saddle or blind.
Speaker 1: First Light, Go Farther, Stay Longer, and now your host
Speaker 1: Tony Peterson.
Speaker 2: Hey everyone, welcome to the Wired to Hunt Foundation's podcast,
Speaker 2: which is brought to you by first Light. I'm your host,
Speaker 2: Tony Peterson, and this episode is all about the dominance
Speaker 2: hierarchy that exists in all white tail herds and how
Speaker 2: understanding it can help you kill more deer. Okay, before
Speaker 2: I get into this, I have to throw a little
Speaker 2: plug toward our new first Light whitetail systems. If you
Speaker 2: haven't heard, we dropped the early season Phase, the mid
Speaker 2: season Core, and the late season Thermic last week and
Speaker 2: they're all pretty badass. No, you can mix and match pieces,
Speaker 2: do as you please, but this is, in my opinion,
Speaker 2: the best white tail gear we've ever put out. And
Speaker 2: I don't say that lightly. I say it because I
Speaker 2: hunted in all of this stuff last season from early
Speaker 2: September to January through multiple states on a lot of
Speaker 2: nasty public land hunts, and that really, really worked well
Speaker 2: for me. If you want to check it out, go
Speaker 2: on over to first light dot com. All right, As
Speaker 2: it so often happens with this podcast, it was a
Speaker 2: kind of like a not so random encounter with some
Speaker 2: deer that spawned an idea. I'd taken a little scouting
Speaker 2: trip recently a couple of weeks back, and I took
Speaker 2: some photography when I was out there, and I ended
Speaker 2: up editing those photos and looking at it, and I
Speaker 2: noticed something in one of the photos. It was that
Speaker 2: there was a beanfield with a nice, cool kind of
Speaker 2: buck standing in the shade and a couple of dough
Speaker 2: standing in the sunlight, and it was hot, hot, hot
Speaker 2: that day. There's a lesson there, and it reminded me
Speaker 2: of deer pecking order and dominance, and it made me
Speaker 2: realize that that is like a driving force behind a
Speaker 2: lot of deer behavior, and it's what I'm really going
Speaker 2: to get into right now. Seven years ago, in August,
Speaker 2: I found myself sitting in a boat in Argentina while
Speaker 2: looking at a pile of dead ducks stacked up near
Speaker 2: my waiters. We had had the kind of morning, you
Speaker 2: know of duck hunting that only happens in a place
Speaker 2: where the limit is literally fifty birds a day, and
Speaker 2: the water you're hunting in and over was just in
Speaker 2: the Amazon rainforest a few days earlier. It was a
Speaker 2: surreal experience, you know, winding our way through these reed
Speaker 2: lined channels at speeds that showed our boats. Captain was
Speaker 2: far more comfortable in that environment than those of us
Speaker 2: who were born thousands of miles farther north, in a
Speaker 2: country that doesn't look or feel much like that particular
Speaker 2: area of South America. And when we were back at
Speaker 2: the lodge watching several stereotypical Texas oil men, Tai went
Speaker 2: on at lunchtime, I got to talking to one of
Speaker 2: the co owners of the lodge. This guy's a little
Speaker 2: fella by all accounts, but talking to him, you know,
Speaker 2: and gave me the impression that he didn't suffer a
Speaker 2: whole lot of teasing about his height or anything. And
Speaker 2: he went by Junior, Although to be honest, I don't
Speaker 2: know if that was his nickname, his real name, or
Speaker 2: you know, his dad had the name first. I don't know,
Speaker 2: but it doesn't matter, because talking to Junior was almost
Speaker 2: like talking to some of those old professional hunters, you know,
Speaker 2: back from Hemingway. In rue ARC's time, Junior had spent
Speaker 2: a lot of time in Africa, and one of the
Speaker 2: ways that he made money was by catching animals that
Speaker 2: would eventually end up in zoos throughout Europe and North America.
Speaker 2: Now I'm not talking like mice or maybe some little
Speaker 2: birds or something. Junior was the big animal guy, he
Speaker 2: told us, and to keep in mind, without a hint
Speaker 2: of sarcasm, that if you want to stop a giraffe
Speaker 2: in its tracks, you drive right up next to him
Speaker 2: and jump out while trying to get a hold of
Speaker 2: his tail. If you succeed, that three thousand pound animal
Speaker 2: will stop and essentially let you man handle him and
Speaker 2: lead him around. But according to Junior, you better make
Speaker 2: sure that your grip on the tail is sound. Junior
Speaker 2: also caught a fair share of lions, which, as you
Speaker 2: can imagine, you know, that's the kind of thing that
Speaker 2: not a lot of older fellows attempt, no matter how
Speaker 2: lofty the paychecks might be. He said that the strategy
Speaker 2: was to feed the lions and eventually get them used
Speaker 2: to your presence. You know, It's a long game approach,
Speaker 2: kind of like tree training a dog, except that a
Speaker 2: wild African lion is a pretty far cry from a
Speaker 2: black lab puppy. Well, Junior said that he was on
Speaker 2: his way to earning the trust of a particular mail lion,
Speaker 2: but one morning, when he and his partner drove in
Speaker 2: to deliver some fresh breakfast, Junior said he could see
Speaker 2: in the lion's eyes that something had changed. He knew
Speaker 2: it was going to attack him, and he told his
Speaker 2: partner to get ready. He said, when it happened, he
Speaker 2: went from trying to back away to being knocked down
Speaker 2: and picked up by the lion, who bit directly into
Speaker 2: his back and carried him like he was nothing more
Speaker 2: than a piece of meat, which I guess to the
Speaker 2: lion is kind of true. For whatever reason, maybe just
Speaker 2: because he felt like he had taught Junior a lesson.
Speaker 2: That lion carried him a couple one hundred yards off
Speaker 2: into the bush and then just dropped him and walked away.
Speaker 2: Imagine the relief of feeling those teeth suddenly back out
Speaker 2: of your skin and muscles and realize that you have
Speaker 2: a chance to live when you really didn't think you
Speaker 2: did just a moment earlier. Now that lion is long
Speaker 2: since dead, and we wouldn't have been able to ask
Speaker 2: him anyway, but that move was probably tied a little
Speaker 2: bit to dominance. There are a lot of ways to
Speaker 2: describe nature, but the constant struggle for dominance is one
Speaker 2: way to look at it. Predators find themselves participating in
Speaker 2: social hierarchies all the time, just as prey animals do.
Speaker 2: It's a driving force, and we don't give it enough
Speaker 2: credit for animal behavior. We should, though, even as deer hunters.
Speaker 2: While we all know the term dominant buck, that's not
Speaker 2: what I'm talking about here. Every deer in the herd
Speaker 2: is jockeying for position, and that goes for big bucks.
Speaker 2: Little bucks doze and you know, not too many months
Speaker 2: after they're born fawns. To understand this better, consider the
Speaker 2: definition of dominance, which is an individual's preferential access to
Speaker 2: resources over another based on coercive capacity, which is, you know,
Speaker 2: based on strengths, threat, and intimidation. A dominant animal is
Speaker 2: one that is largely free to feed, to be aggressive,
Speaker 2: pursue the opposite sex in order to pass on its genes,
Speaker 2: and generally do what it pleases, at least in how
Speaker 2: it concerns the other members of its species. Subordinate animals
Speaker 2: live a different life with submissive behaviors that allow them
Speaker 2: to be easily influenced by others. Now, we used to
Speaker 2: call this the pecking order, and it's a situation that
Speaker 2: is constantly in flux. One buck getting run over by
Speaker 2: a semi haul and some corn down to the river,
Speaker 2: or a dough getting shot on opening weekend by a
Speaker 2: hunter changes the dynamics of the system. An injury to
Speaker 2: any deer can do that too. Where hierarchies persist, which
Speaker 2: is pretty much everywhere in nature, including with us hairless apes,
Speaker 2: weakness is an invitation for someone else to move up,
Speaker 2: and that's often not pretty. This hit me when I
Speaker 2: was editing those photos I told you about, because that
Speaker 2: buck that I was taking pictures of he had the
Speaker 2: prime spot in that beanfield. The does and fawns they
Speaker 2: were on the sunny side. They didn't have the prime spot. No,
Speaker 2: we talk about this a lot, but the reason the
Speaker 2: bucks get the shady side and the does don't is
Speaker 2: because when it comes to brute force, the bucks win.
Speaker 2: He can feed where it's more comfortable until someone comes
Speaker 2: along who can kick his ass, and then all bets
Speaker 2: are off. I've talked about this before, but I went
Speaker 2: a whole season periodically trying to kill a big dough
Speaker 2: that was obviously dominant. She'd come into a kill plot
Speaker 2: I had in a spot here in Minnesota, and she
Speaker 2: would not let another deer get into the groceries. It
Speaker 2: was obvious on the trail camera photos, but even more
Speaker 2: obvious the few times I actually saw her in that plot.
Speaker 2: Even little Bucks respected her authority, and let me tell
Speaker 2: you something, she was not afraid to throw down. She
Speaker 2: was also a master at avoiding me to the point
Speaker 2: where she just flat out one She beat me on
Speaker 2: my own game, although I guess that was her game too.
Speaker 2: Either way, I got worked by a dough on private
Speaker 2: property where I should have had every advantage. Sometimes the
Speaker 2: lessons we get as deer hunters come from unlikely sources,
Speaker 2: and that dough has given me a lot to think
Speaker 2: about over the years. She honestly changed how I look
Speaker 2: at deer. Now at this point, you're probably wondering how
Speaker 2: any of this actually helps you kill a deer, So
Speaker 2: let me get to that. Once you start to see
Speaker 2: the why behind deer behavior, you start to be able
Speaker 2: to predict it with more reliability. You don't need a
Speaker 2: bottle of dopey, you know, or the peak of the
Speaker 2: rut to save you're hunting. You can figure this stuff
Speaker 2: out for yourself. And when it comes to deer, I
Speaker 2: like to think of this from a bottom up perspective,
Speaker 2: as opposed starting with the one you know, one hundred
Speaker 2: and sixty inch deer in your section who can push
Speaker 2: every other deer around. I like to think about the
Speaker 2: young bucks, mostly because I think that they give you
Speaker 2: the best lesson in the bottom of the deer pecking order.
Speaker 2: Think about it like this. Young bucks seem dumb, right,
Speaker 2: and they certainly are compared to old bucks in most dos.
Speaker 2: They just don't have enough experience avoiding predators to be
Speaker 2: very good at it, and they haven't learned to temper
Speaker 2: their curiosity so they can stay alive. They also are
Speaker 2: forced to live out there on the fringes in the
Speaker 2: most dangerous spots. They are the ones that have to
Speaker 2: bed in the leftover spots, the areas that offer the
Speaker 2: least amount of safety. They often have to get to
Speaker 2: food early to get a bite to eat before everyone
Speaker 2: else shows up and pushes them around. They have no power.
Speaker 2: They exist with the constant threat of violence over their
Speaker 2: dumb heads. And because of that, they are forced to
Speaker 2: engage in behavior that looks to us like it's stupid
Speaker 2: or overly risky. And the truth is they don't really
Speaker 2: have much of a choice. Now. These rules, just like
Speaker 2: any rules in nature, are subject to a hell of
Speaker 2: a lot of variables. But one way I like to
Speaker 2: look at this stuff is this, If you can find
Speaker 2: the little bucks, they'll tell you something about the big bucks.
Speaker 2: The little guys might use the same trails, they might
Speaker 2: try to feed in the same areas, but they'll mostly
Speaker 2: do it in a way that doesn't seem like how
Speaker 2: a bigger, more mature deer would conduct himself. If you
Speaker 2: see a young buck or a couple young bucks doing something,
Speaker 2: you say, approaching a pond from a certain direction or
Speaker 2: on a certain trail, that's a pretty good clue you
Speaker 2: can tuck away for later. How they cross a ridge
Speaker 2: is probably how a big one will cross a ridge
Speaker 2: in the pre run stage. You just aren't likely to
Speaker 2: get a whole bunch of in person observation to work
Speaker 2: with on that older deer. How the little guys focus
Speaker 2: on the woods when they are out eating beans two
Speaker 2: hours before dark can tell you they are nervous. About
Speaker 2: who might show up next, how they approach scrapes where
Speaker 2: you see them make a rub all. That is a
Speaker 2: reflection a big buck behavior to some extent, and there's
Speaker 2: value in that. There's also the reality that what little
Speaker 2: bucks do might not reflect mature buck behavior. I think
Speaker 2: this is most easily understood by thinking about daylight travel
Speaker 2: and the locations of beds. A bigger deer is just
Speaker 2: not going to move as much in daylight because he
Speaker 2: doesn't have to. When he gets to the food source
Speaker 2: in the dark, he can muscle his way into the
Speaker 2: best spots. Everyone else will pretty much defer to him,
Speaker 2: and the resources he needs are there for his taking.
Speaker 2: He's not concerned about getting enough to eat. He also
Speaker 2: knows that no one is likely to try to bed
Speaker 2: right where he wants to bed. The spots that offer
Speaker 2: the best site lines while offering the best cover, while
Speaker 2: offering the best wind advantage. You know they're there for
Speaker 2: his choosing. He isn't going to be booted out of
Speaker 2: the edge of the woods to bed in someplace that
Speaker 2: just doesn't offer the same advantages. He takes what he
Speaker 2: wants and that's it. As mentioned does do this too.
Speaker 2: I know no one wants to hear this because we
Speaker 2: are laser focused on how to kill big bucks. But
Speaker 2: I firmly believe you can't be a good deer hunter
Speaker 2: until you figure out how to somewhat consistently kill highly
Speaker 2: pressured doze. They are survival machines, and while they can't
Speaker 2: push even most two year old bucks around, usually they
Speaker 2: do get the best of the skis that the bucks
Speaker 2: leave for them. This is why it's so much easier
Speaker 2: to clue into a doe bedding area. They have to
Speaker 2: bet in the best places they can, but that place
Speaker 2: won't be as hard for you to find as where
Speaker 2: the bucks are. They'll hit the food sources early, too,
Speaker 2: because when it gets dark, they won't have as many
Speaker 2: choice options. The key to how this makes you a
Speaker 2: better hunter, just like trying to understand young buck behavior,
Speaker 2: is that you have far more opportunity to learn from
Speaker 2: them than you will big bucks. Mature bucks just aren't
Speaker 2: that common in most places, so your in person interactions
Speaker 2: with them are going to be highly limited. But they
Speaker 2: are deer, and other deer can teach you about deer
Speaker 2: in general, and they can teach you about deer dominance specifically.
Speaker 2: Where I feel this gives hunters a huge advantage. It's
Speaker 2: just figuring out deer first. When you hunt a new spot,
Speaker 2: you know, maybe travel somewhere to hunt public land, or
Speaker 2: you get permission on a fresh property or whatever. Figuring
Speaker 2: out the general deer behavior of all deer is a
Speaker 2: real big step towards narrowing your focus down to one
Speaker 2: deer or a certain caliber of deer. And so many
Speaker 2: of these lessons are just directly tied to dominance. They
Speaker 2: will also inform you at least somewhat you know how
Speaker 2: to decoy, how to call. When it comes to decoy,
Speaker 2: Nearly every hunter I know will go with a buck
Speaker 2: decoy over a dough decoy. This is because if you
Speaker 2: want to kill a big deer, you want him to
Speaker 2: think someone is going after his resources, which in this
Speaker 2: case means his potential girlfriends. That's great for a lot
Speaker 2: of hunters, but what if you're not super concerned with
Speaker 2: only killing the top dog on your ground. What if
Speaker 2: you want a decent buck and you don't want to
Speaker 2: limit your chances to a super super small segment of
Speaker 2: the deer herd well a doe decoy changes everything you know.
Speaker 2: Of course, running bucks like dose for obvious reasons, but
Speaker 2: there's also zero threat to a dough decoy. Every buck
Speaker 2: in the woods might approach her, but not every buck
Speaker 2: in the woods will approach a buck decoy. This is
Speaker 2: kind of like using a full strutter tom decoy in
Speaker 2: the spring. Look, they can work real well, but they
Speaker 2: are also the best opportunity to watch other toms skirt
Speaker 2: your spread in the hopes of finding some ladies who
Speaker 2: don't have someone who can kick their asses showing off
Speaker 2: for them. If you're like me and you like shooting
Speaker 2: jake's and two year old birds, using a full strutter
Speaker 2: might not be the best choice. And that's all tied
Speaker 2: to dominance. Now, look at deer calling like I don't
Speaker 2: know snort wheezing, for example. While almost anyone who claims
Speaker 2: to know anything about bucks will tell you only dominant,
Speaker 2: mega huge bucks will snort wheeze, I wonder how many
Speaker 2: actual bucks they've heard make us snort wheeze, or how
Speaker 2: many younger bucks they've snored wheezed at to gauge their response.
Speaker 2: My bet is that they've probably only heard a handful
Speaker 2: of deer make that sound. If they've heard any I'm
Speaker 2: pretty sure in my entire deer hunting career. I've only
Speaker 2: heard one buck do it, and that was a Texas
Speaker 2: buck in the middle of a Texas deer tornado during
Speaker 2: the rut, and he was out of his mind. But
Speaker 2: I have snort wheeze to a fair amount of bucks,
Speaker 2: you know, after a chance encounter taught me something. I
Speaker 2: was sitting on standing in late October in Minnesota when
Speaker 2: I saw a deer that had all the makings of
Speaker 2: a decent buck walking through the woods right before last light.
Speaker 2: I snored wheezed for a lack of a better option,
Speaker 2: and he started running in. But so did another buck.
Speaker 2: And what I realized was that not only had the
Speaker 2: one hundred and forty inch deer responded aggressively, but a
Speaker 2: legit four key had beat him to my stand. They
Speaker 2: both ran in looking for a fight. Now I missed
Speaker 2: that big deer, which really sucked, but I learned something
Speaker 2: in that lesson. I started snort wheezing just more at
Speaker 2: bucks in every month of the season, and while it
Speaker 2: definitely didn't work on getting every deer to come in,
Speaker 2: when they did respond, they all put themselves in a
Speaker 2: position to get shot, and I did shoot some of them.
Speaker 2: The snort wheeze isn't just a dominant buck call. It's
Speaker 2: a buck. And while one hundred and twenty inch deer
Speaker 2: might not seem like he's dominant, he certainly is to
Speaker 2: the fifty inches out there, and those fifty inches might
Speaker 2: be dominant when it comes to the spikes in the group.
Speaker 2: The key to all this, I guess, is that we
Speaker 2: should be looking for reasons why we see deer do
Speaker 2: what they do. Not every reason for deer behavior can
Speaker 2: be tied to dominance, but a lot of what we
Speaker 2: see that we might not really even understand certainly can be.
Speaker 2: And the more that you figure that stuff out, the
Speaker 2: more you can start to dial into how it'll influence
Speaker 2: the deer you really want to kill this fall. That
Speaker 2: might be a giant buck, of course, or it might
Speaker 2: just be your first out of state buck, or it
Speaker 2: might be a dough in October, you know, because you
Speaker 2: want some fresh venison in the freezer. Whatever the motivation,
Speaker 2: it's a good idea to try to understand how nature
Speaker 2: works and what that means to us when we step
Speaker 2: into their world from Mars. So think about that and
Speaker 2: think about coming back next week, because I'm going to
Speaker 2: talk about how to really start building an early season pattern.
Speaker 2: That's it for this week. I'm Tony Peterson. This has
Speaker 2: been the Wired to Hunt Foundation's podcast, which is brought
Speaker 2: to you by a First Light, which has all that
Speaker 2: awesome new whitetail gear out there that you're gonna want
Speaker 2: to go check out. As I always, thank you so
Speaker 2: much for listening and for all your support, I really
Speaker 2: appreciate it. Everybody here at mediatter does, so thank you
Speaker 2: for that. If you need some more white tail content,
Speaker 2: you know, maybe the new edu series Mark and I
Speaker 2: drop over on the met eater clips YouTube channel. You
Speaker 2: can go check that out. Tons of articles, a bunch
Speaker 2: more podcasts out there. All of it is at themediator
Speaker 2: dot com. Go over there check it out.