Speaker 1: Welcome to the Wired to Hunt Foundation's podcast, your guide
Speaker 1: to the fundamentals of better dear hunting. Present it by
Speaker 1: First Light, creating proven versatile hunting apparel for the stand,
Speaker 1: saddle or blind. First Light Go Farther, Stay Longer, and
Speaker 1: now your host Tony Peterson.
Speaker 2: Hey everyone, welcome to the Wire to Hunt Foundations podcast,
Speaker 2: which is brought to you by First Light. I'm your host,
Speaker 2: Tony Peterson, and today I'm going to make the case
Speaker 2: for a while you can't really be a well rounded
Speaker 2: hunter until you learn how to spot and stock. This
Speaker 2: is the first episode of this kind of new direction
Speaker 2: for this podcast. Now I'm going to talk about white
Speaker 2: tails sum but this is going to be a broader podcast.
Speaker 2: It's about something I've been thinking about a lot, and
Speaker 2: it's something that I love as a hunter, spotting and stalking.
Speaker 2: I know this is mostly a Western hunting style, but
Speaker 2: it also does have its place with white tails. If
Speaker 2: I'm being real honest with you guys, it's not much
Speaker 2: of a deer hunting strategy except for a few locations
Speaker 2: and specific kind of encounters.
Speaker 3: It's also a skill though, that.
Speaker 2: Will help you level up in your overall hunting game
Speaker 2: and something I think every hunter should at least try once.
Speaker 2: It doesn't seem like much in nature happens by accident.
Speaker 2: What we forget because we are sentient and as a
Speaker 2: species pretty convinced we're super special, is that we are
Speaker 2: also natural. Humans are a part of nature. Although we
Speaker 2: don't participate in nature quite like most other animal species do,
Speaker 2: that doesn't change the fact that while we might not
Speaker 2: acknowledge it or often act like it, we are part
Speaker 2: of the natural world, some of us more than others.
Speaker 3: Of course.
Speaker 2: I recently had a conversation with a woman I know
Speaker 2: who lifts the same gym as me, and we somehow
Speaker 2: got on the topic of lemurs. She thought they lived
Speaker 2: in Colorado, and I said, I think you're thinking of
Speaker 2: prairie dogs, to which she responded, well, it's kind of
Speaker 2: the same thing, right. I didn't have the heart to
Speaker 2: tell her that there's a fair amount of distance between
Speaker 2: the two animals, in my opinion. She then brought up raccoons,
Speaker 2: which just about everyone I know is at least remotely
Speaker 2: familiar with, and when I mentioned that our buddies, you know,
Speaker 2: the trash pandas, live in trees, she was astounded. You
Speaker 2: remind me of the time my wife first saw turkeys
Speaker 2: flying to trees to roost. Until that point, she didn't
Speaker 2: know they could fly, which is kind of embarrassing for
Speaker 2: someone who holds a doctorate. So anyway, we are a
Speaker 2: part of nature, but also separated individually, sometimes by quite
Speaker 2: a bit. And where am I going with us? Well,
Speaker 2: right to the heart of this topic. And I'm so
Speaker 2: glad you asked. If you go out west and hunt,
Speaker 2: you'll meet hunters who, let's say, aren't generally known for
Speaker 2: their patients. I have really good buddies who live in
Speaker 2: Colorado and Montana who routinely fill tags on all kinds
Speaker 2: of Western critters, and by most measures they are good hunters.
Speaker 2: But if you ask them to be patient, then you're
Speaker 2: going to see a big hole in their game. Their
Speaker 2: environment and the animals they pursue are highly conducive to
Speaker 2: walking down their quarry. They are highly conducive to using
Speaker 2: optics to find an animal and plant a route to
Speaker 2: sneak into bow or gun range. If that makes sense.
Speaker 2: I mean we are products of our environment. And if
Speaker 2: your environment is big and open and allows you to
Speaker 2: cover a lot of ground until you lock in on
Speaker 2: something and that's what you're going to lean into. Now,
Speaker 2: let's say you live in Pennsylvania or maybe Missouri. Sure,
Speaker 2: you might find a chunk of public land at several
Speaker 2: thousand acres, and you might be able to sneak around
Speaker 2: until you land on top of a deer, But mostly
Speaker 2: you'll figure out it's better to scout until you find
Speaker 2: a high usage area and then go in to weight
Speaker 2: them out mode. This is because the environment isn't all
Speaker 2: that conducive to picking up a deer half a mile
Speaker 2: away and then slipping in close to get a shot.
Speaker 2: Take that and add it to the reality that most
Speaker 2: whitetail hunters aren't on hundreds of thousands of acres, and
Speaker 2: the whole thing starts to turn into an ambush fest,
Speaker 2: a test of patients every day, if you will. Now,
Speaker 2: these two types of hunting styles couldn't be much different
Speaker 2: if they tried, And it's great to be a master
Speaker 2: of either, it really is. But if you want to
Speaker 2: be a truly skilled hunter, you should engage in both
Speaker 2: for the sake of this podcast and the reality that
Speaker 2: most of the listeners are white tail hunters. Through and through,
Speaker 2: I'll just assume most of you are pretty familiar with
Speaker 2: the ambush game. Even mobile hunters are practically standing still
Speaker 2: compared to their average Western brethren. But here's the rub,
Speaker 2: my friends. If you don't ever spot in stock anything,
Speaker 2: you're missing out on two things. The first is it's
Speaker 2: far more fun in general than sitting and waiting. It's active,
Speaker 2: it's exciting, and it's usually a total ass kicker. That's
Speaker 2: the first part. The second is that if you can
Speaker 2: go spot and stalk something, you'll have that in your
Speaker 2: back pocket as a hunting strategy and you'll be a better,
Speaker 2: more patient hunter overall. Here's why spotting and stalking is
Speaker 2: not as active as it sounds, at least if you're
Speaker 2: going to do it well. The spotting part can take
Speaker 2: hours or days, and it might not turn up a
Speaker 2: single opportunity in the time your part of the year
Speaker 2: starts receiving a little of the good stuff from the
Speaker 2: sun to the point where the whole thing spins back
Speaker 2: to darkness again. It's worth it, though, because when the
Speaker 2: stalk is on, it's a freaking rush. It's fun, it's
Speaker 2: a lot of things, but it's also super duper hard
Speaker 2: to do well. The reasons for this are many, and
Speaker 2: I'm going to get into them, but I want to
Speaker 2: say something else first. One of the ways say I
Speaker 2: don't know a spot in stock antelope hunt would help
Speaker 2: you be a better white tail hunter is that it
Speaker 2: involves constant problem solving. It gets you into the groove
Speaker 2: of reading conditions, reading the terrain, reading animal body language,
Speaker 2: and reading yourself physically and mentally. And then you have
Speaker 2: to filter all that shit through your decision making process
Speaker 2: over and over and over. This is difficult, real difficult
Speaker 2: at first, but the more you do it, the better
Speaker 2: you become at making decisions on the fly. Think about
Speaker 2: it this way, why do you think someone who has
Speaker 2: a killer white tail property with food plots and ponds
Speaker 2: and a reliable year to year setups probably couldn't easily
Speaker 2: transition to being a successful public land hunter. Yet, a
Speaker 2: successful public land hunter probably wouldn't need more than a
Speaker 2: couple days to fill a tag on a good buck
Speaker 2: on a property like that. You know, sure, part of
Speaker 2: it is learning to deal with difficult scenarios, but part
Speaker 2: of it is the necessity to constantly evaluate new information
Speaker 2: and then act on it accordingly. When you show up
Speaker 2: to your parking spot and there's four trucks there already
Speaker 2: you have to readjust when you know you can go
Speaker 2: sit over a clover plot, you know, in a box,
Speaker 2: blind and the deer going to be there.
Speaker 3: There's not much problem solving going on. Now.
Speaker 2: I'm not saying that kind of hunting is a bad thing.
Speaker 2: I don't think it is, but I also don't think
Speaker 2: it'll help you sharpen your sword to become better as
Speaker 2: a hunter overall. Now I'm generalizing quite a bit, but
Speaker 2: my point still stands, learning to make multiple good decisions
Speaker 2: on any hunt is the key to getting one of them,
Speaker 2: or better yet, a series of them.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 2: Spotting and stocking will give you a crash course on this,
Speaker 2: and it'll force you to think about factors that might
Speaker 2: be secondary on a white tail hunt but would absolutely
Speaker 2: blow up any stock. Let's take antelope again, which I'm
Speaker 2: going to talk about next week some because I think
Speaker 2: they are the most underrated opportunity out there for people
Speaker 2: who want adventure but don't have impressive bank accounts. I'm
Speaker 2: also going to talk about glassing and some other stuff too. Anyway,
Speaker 2: if you want to go spot in stock, analope, anywhere
Speaker 2: the antelope or own, you'll realize they offer you one great,
Speaker 2: big advantage.
Speaker 3: They are highly visible.
Speaker 2: That's a plus because a lot of the critters we
Speaker 2: hunt don't have bright white diaper butts and live out
Speaker 2: on a putting green with fourteen of their girlfriends just
Speaker 2: staring off into the distance. Finding antelope usually isn't the problem,
Speaker 2: which you'll soon realize is something they are very comfortable
Speaker 2: with if they don't believe you'll get close to them,
Speaker 2: probably because you won't. They're real confident standing out there
Speaker 2: in the wide open. But maybe you find a good
Speaker 2: one bedded on the lip of a hill. Now you
Speaker 2: have to read the surrounding terrain, you have to mark
Speaker 2: his location, and you have to get after it because
Speaker 2: eventually he's going to get up and move around. Then
Speaker 2: all of a sudden you're like, ah, I can't remember
Speaker 2: if they can smell as well as a deer, they
Speaker 2: don't seem to be able to. But they can see
Speaker 2: better than any white tail I've ever met, So maybe
Speaker 2: I should give them a wide berth. So you head out,
Speaker 2: you know, with a route in mind, but soon realize
Speaker 2: that the fold and terrain that you wanted to take
Speaker 2: is just a bit too shallow, so you back out,
Speaker 2: go farther away, and you use whatever cover you can find.
Speaker 2: But this takes you away from that spinly fence post
Speaker 2: that was your landmark. And now forty minutes have passed
Speaker 2: in your sweating, and who knows if he's still there.
Speaker 2: But you carry on in that blazing sun when suddenly
Speaker 2: you pop over your eyes and there's a different group antelope.
Speaker 2: They don't see you because they aren't close. But now
Speaker 2: you have to decide how can I hide from them
Speaker 2: while sneaking up on the beded buck. Will it matter
Speaker 2: if they spook away? Maybe it's pretty flat after all,
Speaker 2: and an antelope running at moc ten is going to
Speaker 2: get the attention of all antelope that see them.
Speaker 3: What to do? What to do?
Speaker 2: This is where it gets fun. It's on you to
Speaker 2: make the right call. So you flip a mental coin
Speaker 2: and decide to keep on your original trajectory, knowing that
Speaker 2: you're going to blow out this new herd. And as
Speaker 2: you near that spinlely fence post, you start to look
Speaker 2: for the black tips of his horns. He's on the
Speaker 2: far side of the ridge. That is a hell of
Speaker 2: a lot flatter and more subtle than you expected. Should
Speaker 2: you range some sage just to get your bearings in
Speaker 2: case you find him. Is he gone? He probably is?
Speaker 2: Should you stand up to see better or keep crawling?
Speaker 2: Keep the faith that he hasn't gone anywhere? How long
Speaker 2: has it been?
Speaker 3: Now? What to do? What to do?
Speaker 2: Eventually you stand up slowly and look downhill, knowing right
Speaker 2: where he was, except he's not there, and you're not
Speaker 2: where you thought you were. And then he stands up
Speaker 2: seventy five yards still left and runs off like he
Speaker 2: shot out of a cannon. And you become a very
Speaker 2: typical antelope punter. But man, was it fun? And man,
Speaker 2: you made some good decisions, not all of them, but
Speaker 2: you got closer.
Speaker 3: Now.
Speaker 2: The decision making during whitetail hunting doesn't happen in the
Speaker 2: moment like that anelope hunt. Well, I mean some of
Speaker 2: it does, but a lot of it happens before we
Speaker 2: go out. We choose our spots based on the conditions
Speaker 2: in the time of year, then we go. The heavy
Speaker 2: mental lifting is done before we even get out of
Speaker 2: the truck. Spotting and stalking is different. The decisions need
Speaker 2: to be made in the moment, and they need to
Speaker 2: be good ones. In fact, you need quite a few
Speaker 2: good ones in a row to even earn a shot,
Speaker 2: and then you're in for a special treat. Because if
Speaker 2: you think you don't get buck fever because you can
Speaker 2: lazer white tails at twenty yards from a tree stand,
Speaker 2: just wait till you have one hundred and fifty inch
Speaker 2: meal deer bedded with a few of his buddies at
Speaker 2: fifty three yards. Welcome to whift City, my friends. It's
Speaker 2: so worth it, though. I think if I had one
Speaker 2: week to live and I was forced to hunt anything
Speaker 2: for that week, and I could wave a magic wand
Speaker 2: and have my dream scenario play out, and the caveat
Speaker 2: was that I have to have the most fun possible,
Speaker 2: I'd spot in stock meal deer and broken train. Not
Speaker 2: high country basin bucks, but bad lands type of bucks.
Speaker 2: I don't need two hundred inch velvet here at eleven
Speaker 2: thousand feet to keep me smiling. I need a bunch
Speaker 2: of eighty seven inch two year olds in abundance, in
Speaker 2: broken terrain, where I can want under around glass and
Speaker 2: peek into drainages and stalk around until I'm just.
Speaker 3: Sick of it.
Speaker 2: It's so damn fun, even when it feels like a
Speaker 2: lost cause. Now I know that I made an amazing
Speaker 2: case for trying a spot in stock hunt to become
Speaker 2: a better hunter overall. But that's just a satellite benefit.
Speaker 2: The true benefit is what I just said. It's really
Speaker 2: fun when you're used to staring at your phone all
Speaker 2: day while sitting on a tiny platform waiting for a
Speaker 2: deer to come by. The freedom to roam big country
Speaker 2: looking for animals so liberating. It's just so fun. It's
Speaker 2: also a good reminder of how many opportunities are out
Speaker 2: there just waiting for you.
Speaker 3: To try them. Now.
Speaker 2: I realize that most of us aren't going to travel
Speaker 2: all over hunting whatever until we find something that really
Speaker 2: scratches the itch. But there are good spot in stock
Speaker 2: hunts available, especially on archery tags, and they will change
Speaker 2: your worldview on hunting. They won't be top tier units
Speaker 2: with monster bucks or bulls, but they will offer an
Speaker 2: opportunity to try this exciting style of hunting. And I'll
Speaker 2: say this, whatever your motivations are, whether you want to
Speaker 2: get better as a hunter overall, or have just always
Speaker 2: dreamed about hunting the West but can't stomach an elk
Speaker 2: hunt for whatever reason, if you do decide to go
Speaker 2: spot and stalk something, keep your standards low. I say
Speaker 2: this for a few reasons. One is that western critters
Speaker 2: are just as delicious as corn fed white tails, and
Speaker 2: in fact, I'd take antelope over any of them, including elk.
Speaker 2: But more importantly, the fun part of spotting and stalking
Speaker 2: isn't the spotting, it's the stalking. If you go hunt
Speaker 2: I don't know, let's say western Nebraska for meal deer,
Speaker 2: You're not likely to see a ton of booners or one,
Speaker 2: but you will see deer and you will get a
Speaker 2: chance to stalk them if you're open to stoking whatever
Speaker 2: offers you up a chance. Now, I know a lot
Speaker 2: of hunters won't do this, they won't experience spotting and
Speaker 2: stocking the way they want to. Again, this is up
Speaker 2: to you as an individual. But me, when I go
Speaker 2: somewhere and I can stalk something, I want as many
Speaker 2: stalks as possible. It's an absolute rush crawling in on
Speaker 2: an animal that doesn't know you're there. And when you
Speaker 2: get close to taking a shot, oh man, that's why
Speaker 2: we do this stuff, that whole adrenaline dump.
Speaker 3: It's it.
Speaker 2: And if your standards don't jive with your skill or
Speaker 2: the availability, a certain classic game, when you're hunting, you'll
Speaker 2: spend a lot of your time with your eye glue
Speaker 2: to your spotter while not getting overly excited about anything.
Speaker 2: That's a hard pass for me. Now you might be thinking, well,
Speaker 2: hell man, I don't have those giant meat eater checks
Speaker 2: that you have since your damn here as popular as
Speaker 2: Steve Arnello these days, so I can't afford to go
Speaker 2: out west. Listen, I hear you clucking. And the truth is,
Speaker 2: the lowly whitetail is pretty damn stockable in certain situations
Speaker 2: as well. Again, it certainly helps to drop your standards
Speaker 2: and accept whatever white tail will give you the chance
Speaker 2: to stalk it, versus saying it's one forties or bust
Speaker 2: and then waiting for a deer of that caliber to
Speaker 2: bet on an open hillside and let you try to
Speaker 2: sneak into his guard. I've successfully stalked a handful of
Speaker 2: bucks and does in my life with both bows and guns,
Speaker 2: and I've unsuccessfully stalked quite a few more. The white
Speaker 2: tail will give you a shot if you're open to it.
Speaker 2: The thing is, it might just be the deer that
Speaker 2: comes out into the corner of the beans during thirty
Speaker 2: mile per hour winds where you could quietly slip down
Speaker 2: from your stand and work in the woods until you're
Speaker 2: in range. It might be the deer that's in the
Speaker 2: alfalf on the edge of the standing cornfield, the one
Speaker 2: that lets you crawl into thirty yards and narrow him.
Speaker 2: One of my favorite mounts on my walls is an
Speaker 2: old nine pointer with a gray face who gave me
Speaker 2: just such an opportunity where I went from ambush hunter
Speaker 2: sitting over a pond to spot and stock hunter crawling
Speaker 2: through a cornfield pretty damn quick. One of my favorite
Speaker 2: things to do with a muzzleloader is to sneak around
Speaker 2: in the snow until I spot a deer. I can stalk.
Speaker 2: The chances are out there, but you got to be
Speaker 2: opened to them, and if you are, you'll realize something else.
Speaker 2: The whitetail is highly stokable. They aren't that used to
Speaker 2: us trying to creep up on them, and they are
Speaker 2: pretty good at putting their head down to feed. They're
Speaker 2: kind of like wild pigs in that way. In fact,
Speaker 2: i'd rank antelope is I don't know, maybe like ten
Speaker 2: times is difficult to stalk and meal deer probably at
Speaker 2: like three times is difficult.
Speaker 3: To stalk.
Speaker 2: Now, I'm pulling those numbers out of my ass, but
Speaker 2: I'm confident in saying this. If you can consistently stock
Speaker 2: antelope with a bow and kill them, you'll find the
Speaker 2: deer species to be a hell of a lot easier.
Speaker 3: ELK two.
Speaker 2: Now, whatever the reasons, whatever your motivations, whatever your bank
Speaker 2: account looks like, or the amount of PTO you have,
Speaker 2: there are chances to spot and stock something every fall.
Speaker 2: You might have to explore some new ground down the
Speaker 2: road from your favorite deer spot, you might have to
Speaker 2: drive halfway across the country with a couple of buddies,
Speaker 2: or you might just have to rethink how you do
Speaker 2: some things. But that's good because thinking about how to
Speaker 2: get close to a critter instead of ambushing them a
Speaker 2: good skill to have, and it's a hell of a
Speaker 2: lot more fun than sitting on your butt hitting the
Speaker 2: the like button. When Kenyan posts another picture of himself
Speaker 2: with some Western trout somewhere, I think, because there's a
Speaker 2: lot of stuff I haven't said on this topic, I'm
Speaker 2: going to keep it going next week, but I'm going
Speaker 2: to talk about glassing as a skill, because you won't
Speaker 2: want to head out Wes without understanding how to pick
Speaker 2: up a long distance lead any more than you'd want
Speaker 2: to scout white tails all summer along without a good
Speaker 2: spotting scope, or hell saddle up this fall without binos
Speaker 2: snug tight to your chest. So next week's going to
Speaker 2: be about glassing and about optics and how to make
Speaker 2: the most of them. That's it for this week, my friends.
Speaker 2: I'm Tony Peterson. This has been the Wired to Hunt
Speaker 2: Foundations podcast. As always, thank you so much for your support.
Speaker 2: I truly appreciate it. If you want more hunting content,
Speaker 2: I'm talking articles, podcasts, videos, whatever, head on over to
Speaker 2: them meat eater dot com. You'll find all kinds of
Speaker 2: that stuff. Whether you're the die hard whitetail guy or
Speaker 2: you're some girl out there who got her first boat
Speaker 2: and you're like, I'm killing a bull out before I die.
Speaker 3: I don't care. We have you cover.
Speaker 2: Go check it out themeadeater dot com m