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 wire to Hunt Foundation's podcast,
Speaker 2: which is brought to you by first Light. I'm your host,
Speaker 2: Tony Peterson, and today's episode is all about why learning
Speaker 2: what does do helps you kill bucks. They get no
Speaker 2: love and it drives me nuts. I honestly think that
Speaker 2: if those were as rare as mature bucks, they'd be
Speaker 2: harder to kill the mature bucks. I know people will
Speaker 2: laugh at that because it's situational like olive hunting. In
Speaker 2: some places, killing does is as easy as picking an
Speaker 2: evening to go sit on the food and then shooting one.
Speaker 2: But in some places, killing a good buck is like
Speaker 2: that too. In others lots of others, killing a dough
Speaker 2: is as tough as any deer hunting challenge out there
Speaker 2: are pretty damn clothes, But it's more than that. The
Speaker 2: ladies of the deer herd can teach us a lot.
Speaker 2: If we were willing to pay attention to them. And
Speaker 2: that's what I'm really going to dive into this week.
Speaker 2: I know you guys and gals think I'm super clever
Speaker 2: at coming up with all this stuff on my own,
Speaker 2: but sometimes someone around me will say something and that's
Speaker 2: all I need to come up with an article or
Speaker 2: a podcast. My kids do this to me fairly often.
Speaker 2: I'll give you a couple examples. When my girls were
Speaker 2: maybe six, I was cleaning out a wood duck house
Speaker 2: in our backyard that hangs over our little pond. This
Speaker 2: task involves getting up on a ladder, sweeping out the
Speaker 2: old wood shavings, and refilling the box sometime in the
Speaker 2: early spring. Often there's evidence of other critters using the
Speaker 2: nesting box. At some point, a pair of gray squirrels
Speaker 2: had had some babies in the duck apartment, but it
Speaker 2: was clear that they had moved out. They had also
Speaker 2: abandoned one of their youngsters, who was really dead and
Speaker 2: really fascinating to my daughter. So we talked about squirrels,
Speaker 2: all kinds of them, including pine squirrels and gray squirrels
Speaker 2: and fox squirrels and even flying squirrels, which really caught
Speaker 2: her attention. Later long after I had forgotten about the conversation,
Speaker 2: I heard my daughter excitedly telling my wife about her conversation,
Speaker 2: and at some point she said, there were flying dead
Speaker 2: squirrels in there. Now, flying dead squirrels will be the
Speaker 2: name of the parenting book I'll eventually write. My other daughter,
Speaker 2: the one who casually blurted out that she could actually
Speaker 2: smell the blood inside of me when we were driving
Speaker 2: one time, said something else that I'll make into some
Speaker 2: kind of content. At some point, she, along with her
Speaker 2: sister and cousins, had been working hard on a ford
Speaker 2: up at the lake. They scrounged up a couple of tarps,
Speaker 2: some old chair cushions, and other sorted crap that just
Speaker 2: seems to slowly accumulate in life. They're pretty into this
Speaker 2: whole fort building thing, so into it that they talked
Speaker 2: to my sister in law to taking them shopping for
Speaker 2: supplies recently. And when I asked my daughter what they bought,
Speaker 2: she quickly replied, hmmm, just fort snacks and fly traps.
Speaker 2: Fort snacks and fly traps will be the inspiration for
Speaker 2: something eventually, probably a podcast or an article, or maybe
Speaker 2: I don't know, I'll start a punk band who knows
Speaker 2: the thing is when you do what I do. Inspiration
Speaker 2: is everywhere if you learn to look for it. Mark
Speaker 2: hasn't really figured that out yet, but he's young and
Speaker 2: we'll probably get there eventually as his slightly older and
Speaker 2: much much wiser mentor I've learned to keep my ears
Speaker 2: open for any such utterance that might light a spark
Speaker 2: of an idea. This is what happened earlier this month
Speaker 2: when I was packing up my spotting scope and my
Speaker 2: camera gear on the edge of a beanfield in southeastern Minnesota.
Speaker 2: My hunting partner Eric and I had posted up on
Speaker 2: the edge to see if we could turn up a
Speaker 2: bachelor group of big bucks. What we saw instead was
Speaker 2: a few scrappers and a lot of does and fawns, which,
Speaker 2: to our sadness, is what our cameras on that property
Speaker 2: had been consistently showing us. As we walked out, we
Speaker 2: pondered where the big boys might be, and Eric casually
Speaker 2: said they definitely aren't hanging with a bachelorette group. There
Speaker 2: you have it, a podcast is born. While he was
Speaker 2: making a joke, he was also making a true observation, which,
Speaker 2: if you really think about it, is the cornerstone of
Speaker 2: so many good jokes, kind of like one of my
Speaker 2: favorite lines in The Crossing, which is a book by
Speaker 2: Cormack McCarthy that you should read because it's well pretty incredible. Anyway,
Speaker 2: one of the characters in the book says something like
Speaker 2: it would take one hell of a wife to beat
Speaker 2: no wife at all, which, while it's one of my
Speaker 2: favorite jokes, my wife actually doesn't think is very funny.
Speaker 2: But you guys can probably also tell that my wife
Speaker 2: never listens to any of my podcasts. The thing about
Speaker 2: the Bachelorette group comment is this, the doze and bucks
Speaker 2: often don't hang together much. This is true in the
Speaker 2: world of white tails, it's true in the world of
Speaker 2: elk antalope, meal deer, and you see it all the
Speaker 2: time with turkeys. I wonder if it happens with fish. Now.
Speaker 2: I know that all the critters will mix at some point,
Speaker 2: otherwise we wouldn't have new little critters running around. But
Speaker 2: nature often segregates itself in such a way, and there's
Speaker 2: a lot to learn from that.
Speaker 1: Hell.
Speaker 2: Take dose, for example. I've already mentioned this, but I
Speaker 2: believe it. If you can go kill pressure doze, mature
Speaker 2: pressure dose, I should say, with I don't know, some
Speaker 2: level of consistency, you can kill mature pressure bucks. I
Speaker 2: know that doesn't seem true, but it is. If you're
Speaker 2: good enough to learn the ladies and their habits and
Speaker 2: of their detection at most times of the season, you
Speaker 2: can do the same with their elderly boyfriends. The only
Speaker 2: difference is that the elderly boyfriends aren't very common. It's
Speaker 2: kind of like this. A lot of hunters with some
Speaker 2: Western experience and a lot of hunters with no Western
Speaker 2: experience would rank elk as the toughest critter to get
Speaker 2: an arrow in on public land now in Colorado or
Speaker 2: Idaho and an over the countertype unit. You can make
Speaker 2: a pretty strong case for that. But what about on
Speaker 2: a twelve thousand dollars landowner tag in New Mexico that
Speaker 2: you're using on public land? Different story there. The variables
Speaker 2: are endless, so generalizing is often a good way to
Speaker 2: be wrong. But I'll say this in my somewhat not
Speaker 2: so limited experience, if you're good enough to crawl across
Speaker 2: the prairie and arrow an analope of any size somewhat consistently,
Speaker 2: you can kill just about anything that might make its
Speaker 2: way into the Super Slam list. It's just to test
Speaker 2: of good hunting skills. Arrowing elk is too, or spotting
Speaker 2: and stocking meal deer, and so is being able to
Speaker 2: figure out white till doze on a regular basis, at
Speaker 2: least if you're in a place where they get hunted
Speaker 2: fairly hard. But those ladies and these early season groups
Speaker 2: of them also do something else for us as hunters.
Speaker 2: They tell us where the bucks often aren't. You see,
Speaker 2: nature does a wonderful job of creating hierarchies. The biggest
Speaker 2: and toughest in any group tends to own the spots
Speaker 2: with the best advantages security, cover, water, food sources, you
Speaker 2: name it. The entire deer herd on your property is
Speaker 2: organized this way, kind of like that org chart at
Speaker 2: work that shows who works under who and what department.
Speaker 2: It's also not a perfect pyramid shape either, because some
Speaker 2: does are dominant over other doughs, while some bucks are
Speaker 2: dominant over other bucks. In general, what you see as
Speaker 2: you scout the last days of velvet living in the
Speaker 2: first couple weeks of hard antlered life is that the
Speaker 2: deer tend to split up into groups divided by gender.
Speaker 2: The dose will be in the beanfield of multiple spots,
Speaker 2: but the bucks, at least the bigger deer will usually
Speaker 2: be in very specific locations. They'll be in the back
Speaker 2: corner that is invisible from the road and is close
Speaker 2: to the trout stream where they can drink some delicious
Speaker 2: cold water any damn well time they please. When they
Speaker 2: are feeding together, you often won't see groups of dozen
Speaker 2: fawns get too close to the bucks or mix it
Speaker 2: up with them. When you watch groups of dozen fawns
Speaker 2: feeding in a spot, they often won't mix it up
Speaker 2: with other dozen fawns either, and if they do, you
Speaker 2: often see ears, pin back and hoof's flying. They do
Speaker 2: this even when they have two hundred acres of the
Speaker 2: same food source right at their disposal. It's the proximity
Speaker 2: to one another that matters most, and they often aren't
Speaker 2: that tolerant. So what does this mean? Well for starters,
Speaker 2: what if you're getting a whole bunch of pictures of
Speaker 2: dozen fawns but not a whole bunch of pictures of
Speaker 2: one hundred and fifty inch bucks. Well, either the bucks
Speaker 2: aren't around, or your camera is on a spot that
Speaker 2: is great for the ladies but not so great for
Speaker 2: the dominant bucks. You might think, well, I do get
Speaker 2: some buck pictures, so they are around, and aren't I
Speaker 2: supposed to be around does for my rut hunts. Sure, buddy,
Speaker 2: that's all true, but the run is a long ways
Speaker 2: off and a lot is going to change between then
Speaker 2: and now. Don't you want to fill your deer tag
Speaker 2: earlier in the season so you can go to another
Speaker 2: state and have some more deer fun. Here's the thing.
Speaker 2: The does are often not exactly where the bucks are.
Speaker 2: That matters for your scouting, for your camera placement, for
Speaker 2: your stand sites, for all of it. It's not a
Speaker 2: hard and fast rule, of course, but it is something
Speaker 2: to consider when you're trying to make a hunting plan
Speaker 2: that results in you getting a big buck, which is
Speaker 2: what we're talking about here. So the ladies teach us
Speaker 2: a lot of things. They teach us where the secondary
Speaker 2: feeding areas probably are, which is what that bachelorette group
Speaker 2: that Eric so aptly named showed us. But we didn't
Speaker 2: learn their full message until we pulled a camera in
Speaker 2: one spot on that giant beanfield that has just tucked
Speaker 2: away sort of no man's land and close to a
Speaker 2: water source. That camera had more big buck pictures on
Speaker 2: it than the other four or five on the field combined.
Speaker 2: It also has a really interesting stand set up on
Speaker 2: it now that you'll probably get to see next year
Speaker 2: on the media or YouTube channel. At some point, I'm
Speaker 2: guessing the other cameras we have on that field, the
Speaker 2: spotting scope work we've done on that field, it all
Speaker 2: came together to show us where a lot of dough
Speaker 2: family groups were, and you know, where a couple of
Speaker 2: year and a half old bucks were. Two it also
Speaker 2: showed us where the bachelor group of older bucks wasn't
Speaker 2: And they weren't nocturnal, they weren't on somebody else's property.
Speaker 2: They just weren't in the spots we monitored. This happens
Speaker 2: a lot. It happens when you're scouting and running cameras.
Speaker 2: That happens when you're hunting. Now, I know I'm contradicting
Speaker 2: myself here on some level, because I do believe trying
Speaker 2: to get in close proximity to all kinds of deer
Speaker 2: is good for your hunting overall. But for early season
Speaker 2: hunts where your target is a decent buck, sometimes you
Speaker 2: want to get away from most of the rest of
Speaker 2: the deer. You also don't want to write does off
Speaker 2: as interesting things to watch while you're waiting for another
Speaker 2: chance to rack up a taxidermy bill. This is because
Speaker 2: the dough groups, when they do overlap with good buck movement,
Speaker 2: often show up first. I see this in the evenings
Speaker 2: a lot, and almost always in the mornings. I don't
Speaker 2: know why this is, but when I hunt early season mornings,
Speaker 2: you know, when every white tail expert out there says
Speaker 2: that you shouldn't, I often see does and youngsters come
Speaker 2: through first. Then, like eight thirty or nine in the morning,
Speaker 2: when I start thinking about pancakes and a midday nap
Speaker 2: or maybe going to troutfish for a few hours, the
Speaker 2: bigger deer will cruise through. If I get busted by
Speaker 2: the does first, the big guy is going to show up.
Speaker 2: If you're on a field edge in the evening and
Speaker 2: that dough with two fawns decides she doesn't like the
Speaker 2: first light specter covered blob in the tree filming her
Speaker 2: with an iPhone ten or worse taking selfies for the
Speaker 2: gram good luck, She's going to send out the bat
Speaker 2: signal and the bucks aren't going to show, or if
Speaker 2: they do, it's going to be real late. The point
Speaker 2: I'm trying to make here is this, There is no
Speaker 2: just hunting big bucks. You might focus solely on that
Speaker 2: as your goal, but you're never gonna do that without
Speaker 2: dealing with other deer in the herd. They're always a consideration.
Speaker 2: It's kind of like throwing frogs for large mouth in
Speaker 2: the lily pads. When you're in the north country, your
Speaker 2: goal might be an amphibian's chomping five pounder that is
Speaker 2: living in two feet of water and just waiting to
Speaker 2: smash something slimy on the surface. But along the way
Speaker 2: you'll also do with northern pike biting you off and
Speaker 2: ripping holes in your twelve dollars spro frogs so often
Speaker 2: that you might need to take out a heelock just
Speaker 2: to pay for your next shields order. They are just
Speaker 2: a part of the whole thing, just like the groups
Speaker 2: of doze out there. I know this one has been
Speaker 2: kind of all over the place, so let me try
Speaker 2: to stick this landing here without breaking in an ankle.
Speaker 2: Pay attention to the doze on your cameras, the doze
Speaker 2: you see while glassing, and the doze you see while hunting.
Speaker 2: What they do bucks will do the trails they walk.
Speaker 2: Bucks will eventually walk the way they drop down to
Speaker 2: the pond for a little drink, so too will some
Speaker 2: bucks at some point. But they'll also show you, particularly
Speaker 2: in the early season, where the bucks often aren't that
Speaker 2: beautiful open woods you like to sit in because there
Speaker 2: are a bunch of white oaks in there, that's great.
Speaker 2: But if it's just dough after dough during daylight, it's
Speaker 2: not because the bucks are nocturnal. It's because they either
Speaker 2: have a better spot to feed where you aren't, or
Speaker 2: they're just taking their sweet ass time moving in better
Speaker 2: cover until you leave and the lights go out. If
Speaker 2: your camera on your kill plot shows tons of daylight
Speaker 2: activity from does but not much daylight activity from good bucks,
Speaker 2: pay attention. Are they in there after dark? Then you
Speaker 2: might have to hunt them a little ways off of
Speaker 2: the groceries, all while avoiding detection from the ladies as
Speaker 2: they pass through. First, I think you have to learn
Speaker 2: how to hunt the does before you can learn how
Speaker 2: to hunt the big dudes. But you also have to
Speaker 2: work with them throughout the season because they are going
Speaker 2: to be a part of the whole thing, whether you
Speaker 2: like it or not. They sometimes show you exactly where
Speaker 2: you should hunt, like if they are using a river
Speaker 2: crossing or traveling along a soft edge while browsing in
Speaker 2: the big woods. But they also sometimes show you where
Speaker 2: you shouldn't hunt if you want a big buck. That is,
Speaker 2: if the part of the field you love to watch
Speaker 2: is dominated by does. Take note if your favorite stand
Speaker 2: that is easy to get to and sits over a
Speaker 2: power line with nice views in two directions is always
Speaker 2: full of ladies and youngsters, take note. The bucks are
Speaker 2: likely around, but they are using some part of the
Speaker 2: terrain that offers them something better. This lesson is often
Speaker 2: most easily understood by betting. You see this with Western
Speaker 2: critters a lot, too, because they often show themselves in
Speaker 2: their beds, so you can see exactly where they are
Speaker 2: and make a good guess as to why white tails
Speaker 2: aren't as generous that way. But you can fill in
Speaker 2: the blanks pretty well with when and where you jump
Speaker 2: deer and when and where you see them on your hunts.
Speaker 2: At least if you're hunting in the cover, the does
Speaker 2: will often be betted in the most obvious spots, and
Speaker 2: the bucks won't. They will show you this by either
Speaker 2: actually showing themselves or not. How is that confusing. Look
Speaker 2: at it this way. If you walk into the woods
Speaker 2: and you see some does running away at say noon,
Speaker 2: you know they were probably betted there. You might find
Speaker 2: proof of that by well finding their beds. But if
Speaker 2: you hike up a bluff onto a nice little bench
Speaker 2: where the view is solid and the wind is just right,
Speaker 2: you probably won't see any deer. You might find a
Speaker 2: great big loan bed and think, dang, at some point,
Speaker 2: he's here. But the truth is he's always going to
Speaker 2: be gone when you get there, because he knows you're coming.
Speaker 2: Because his bed is positioned in such a way you're
Speaker 2: just not going to sneak up on him. His spot
Speaker 2: is better than where those does bed up on the
Speaker 2: ridge or in the open valley below. The deer all
Speaker 2: have something to teach us, just like every elk encounter
Speaker 2: is a lesson in elk behavior, just like every turkey
Speaker 2: that feeds through the meadow is giving you a first
Speaker 2: hand lesson on turkey behavior. These things matter, and they
Speaker 2: are the secret sauce that takes average hunters to the
Speaker 2: next level. So my friends, don't write off the ladies.
Speaker 2: Use their presence, use your pictures of them, your sightings
Speaker 2: to inform your decisions on how to hunt whatever deer
Speaker 2: trips your trigger, and come back next week because I'm
Speaker 2: going to break down one of our biggest allies in
Speaker 2: one of our biggest enemies as hunters, an unseen force
Speaker 2: that influences our hunting decisions more than just about anything else.
Speaker 2: It's an invisible element of each and every second we
Speaker 2: spend in the outdoors that can make or break your
Speaker 2: experience in a matter of seconds, and there ain't a
Speaker 2: damn thing we can do about it. You guessed it.
Speaker 2: I'm going to talk about squirrels. Just kidding. It's wind.
Speaker 2: That's it for this week. I'm Tony Peterson. This has
Speaker 2: been the Wire to Hunt Foundation's podcast, which is brought
Speaker 2: to you by First Light. As always, thank you so
Speaker 2: much for listening and for all your support. Every one
Speaker 2: of us here at meat Eater truly appreciates it. We
Speaker 2: can't thank you enough. If you want some more hunting content,
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