Speaker 1: Welcome to the Wired to Hunt Foundations podcast, your guide
Speaker 1: to the fundamentals of better deer hunting, and now your host,
Speaker 1: Tony Peterson. Hey everyone, welcome to the Wire to Hunt
Speaker 1: Foundations podcast, which is brought to you by First Light.
Speaker 1: I'm your host, Tony Peterson, and today I'm going to
Speaker 1: talk about why deer hunting is always worth it. Are
Speaker 1: any of you find listeners out there going a little
Speaker 1: cuckoo for coco puffs right now? Because I know I am.
Speaker 1: This winter started early, and it has been a real
Speaker 1: bummer for months now and we're only like a halfway
Speaker 1: through it, which is pretty depressing. I don't know about you,
Speaker 1: but I can only organize my hunting gear and tie
Speaker 1: up some swimming jigs for some spring bass, and clean
Speaker 1: the shotguns and stare it on x so long before
Speaker 1: I try to kill the boredom other ways, and one
Speaker 1: of those ways recently sparked an idea why we hunt
Speaker 1: and what we actually think about hunting, and that's what
Speaker 1: this episode is all about. If you go to Netflix
Speaker 1: and you have search around looking for something to kill
Speaker 1: some time, you might see a docuseries called Human Playground.
Speaker 1: It's one that I recently started watching. The first episode
Speaker 1: is all about pain. Well, actually, a lot of the
Speaker 1: episode seemed to be about pain and how we as
Speaker 1: a species seek it out in unusual ways to show
Speaker 1: that we can handle it and that we deserve the
Speaker 1: bliss of not being in pain afterwards. Does that make
Speaker 1: any sense? Probably not. Anyway, there are arcs to the
Speaker 1: first episode that involved a woman running a marathon in
Speaker 1: the desert, which, if it doesn't sound too terrible, means
Speaker 1: it's probably been since grade school since you laced up
Speaker 1: some running shoes. There's I don't know, like bullfighting. In
Speaker 1: the first episode, there's a bike race on super slippery
Speaker 1: cobble stones that results in a very high number of
Speaker 1: broken ribs for a bike race. And then there's a
Speaker 1: woman and I recommend everyone watch her segment because it
Speaker 1: is wild. This woman uses a chainsaw to cut a
Speaker 1: hole in the ice of some lake and I think Finland. Then,
Speaker 1: on a super cold day in the winter, she walks
Speaker 1: out there in a swimsuit and dives under the ice
Speaker 1: to swim around for a spell. I'm not going to
Speaker 1: spoil anything for you, but watch it and watch how
Speaker 1: it's shot. It is wild. So now now that my
Speaker 1: Netflix referral checks are probably in the mail, I hope.
Speaker 1: I'll say that none of what I talked about so
Speaker 1: far has anything to do with this podcast, really, except
Speaker 1: that if you keep watching those episodes in that docuseries,
Speaker 1: you'll see shows dedicated to all kinds of things that
Speaker 1: us crazy woman's do. But the one that caught my
Speaker 1: attention and sparked the idea for this episode involved some
Speaker 1: dudes who are from Mongolia, I think, and these dudes
Speaker 1: get together in the winter with their trained raptors and
Speaker 1: a bunch of good buddies and proceed to put on
Speaker 1: small game drives where once a bunny takes off and
Speaker 1: exposes itself, they release their death eagles or whatever kind
Speaker 1: of bird they're using, and then it's lights out for
Speaker 1: Commander bun Bunt. As I watched this play out, I
Speaker 1: actually set out loud to myself because I talked to
Speaker 1: myself all the time, even though I very recently found
Speaker 1: out that it is not that common or normal apparently. Anyway,
Speaker 1: I said to old ant tone, that is a lot
Speaker 1: of work for a rabbit. I even felt like a
Speaker 1: little bit superior to those Mongolian rabbit smashers with their
Speaker 1: really cool birds. But then I realized something. Last February
Speaker 1: I drove nearly four hours to stay in a hotel
Speaker 1: room with a couple of buddies so we to hunt rabbits,
Speaker 1: and you know what, it was a freaking blast. We
Speaker 1: put on a few miles logging around various chunks of
Speaker 1: public land that looked like it might hold a rabbit
Speaker 1: or two, and we managed to shoot eight cotton tales.
Speaker 1: We learned quite a bit about the deer that lived
Speaker 1: down there, flushed a pile of pheasants, and fought off
Speaker 1: some of the serious cabin fever that settles into your
Speaker 1: brain like a parasite. By the time February is nearly
Speaker 1: wrapped up and the old dreaded March is about to
Speaker 1: come roaring in. When my buddies and I left the
Speaker 1: sloes in our last hunt, cleaned our bunnies on the
Speaker 1: tailgate of my truck. It was honestly the culmination of
Speaker 1: a really good day. In fact, we're going to spend
Speaker 1: another weekend bunny hunting and shed hunting and just not
Speaker 1: being in the house with our wives and kids and
Speaker 1: dogs while we try to stave off the boredom by
Speaker 1: walloping our daughters and Dr Mario because we just found
Speaker 1: a Nintendo that works. But that's a lot for a rabbit,
Speaker 1: right to drive that far. Hotel rooms aren't all that
Speaker 1: cheap these days, and they aren't given a a fuel.
Speaker 1: It's a full weekend that we could be doing other,
Speaker 1: more responsible, more adult types of things than jumping on
Speaker 1: brush piles and taking our twenty gauges for a long
Speaker 1: walk through a lot of brush. But it's so fun
Speaker 1: and it's something to look forward to. And of course
Speaker 1: it begs the question from people who might not get it,
Speaker 1: who might say, all of that for a rabbit. But
Speaker 1: it's not about the rabbit, is it. I mean it
Speaker 1: is in some ways, because where they live, how they
Speaker 1: hide from us, whether we like eating them, all of
Speaker 1: that factors into the equation. But a lot of people
Speaker 1: see it simply as a transactional affair. You're going to
Speaker 1: do all of that for a rabbit, or even a
Speaker 1: limited rabbits, which to most people might actually be worse
Speaker 1: than a single dead rabbit. When someone like one of
Speaker 1: my in laws, for example, asked something like that, listen,
Speaker 1: I get it. They'd rather go to a home and
Speaker 1: garden show or maybe a dinner theater player or some
Speaker 1: other event that would absolutely suck the soul right out
Speaker 1: of me and then stomp it around on the floor
Speaker 1: with muddy boots before taking a big, steaming dump all
Speaker 1: over it. I get it when the home and garden
Speaker 1: crowd looks at the scale and sees all the money
Speaker 1: and effort and time and then a dead rabbit, and
Speaker 1: they don't understand the balance. But when it comes to hunters,
Speaker 1: I don't get it quite as much. But we do
Speaker 1: it all the time as white tail hunters, don't. We
Speaker 1: take the very casual rifle hunter who I'm gonna totally
Speaker 1: stereotype for a second here, this guy, he grew up
Speaker 1: with hunting check in the big woods up north to
Speaker 1: drive his five hours up there. The deer hunting strategy
Speaker 1: consists of checking their stands, you know, which are all
Speaker 1: wooden ladder stands we affectionately refer to as widowmakers in
Speaker 1: the industry, and then opening morning, they get up, practice
Speaker 1: no scent control, ride four wheelers into the woods, sit
Speaker 1: on their stand regardless of wind or weather, crops or whatever,
Speaker 1: and they wait and cross their fingers. You know what,
Speaker 1: There's nothing wrong with that guy or that hunting style,
Speaker 1: if that's what makes him happy. But that guy would
Speaker 1: also probably roll his eyes worse than my eleven year
Speaker 1: old daughters if you told him there are hunters who
Speaker 1: buy tractors to plant food just for deer, who plant
Speaker 1: fruit trees just four deer, who pay excavators to come
Speaker 1: in and build them water holes just four deer. People
Speaker 1: who buy, for like five thousand dollars little houses built
Speaker 1: to put right in the middle of the deer food
Speaker 1: to shoot deer from houses that are somewhat soundproof, somewhat
Speaker 1: scent proof, and will keep him from getting spotted moving
Speaker 1: around until he opens a window and blasts and unsuspecting
Speaker 1: buck in his lungs. That first hunter, the rifle hunter,
Speaker 1: would not surprise anyone to say something to the effect
Speaker 1: of all of that for a deer, and that guy
Speaker 1: with the food plots in the land or whatever else.
Speaker 1: He might look at the case of the die hard
Speaker 1: public land hunter who scouts seventy five days a year
Speaker 1: and spends hundreds of hours every season in a saddle
Speaker 1: just to kill a buck that is three years too
Speaker 1: young in his opinion, and he might say all of
Speaker 1: that for a deer, and the person who doesn't hunt
Speaker 1: might look at all of those hypothetical hunters and say, well,
Speaker 1: you know, but it's not just for a deer, now,
Speaker 1: is it. That's the thing about this stuff. If we
Speaker 1: boil it down to the end result of deflated lungs
Speaker 1: or not, it's pretty cut and dry, and it would
Speaker 1: probably never be worth it. I mean, most of us
Speaker 1: aren't starving, and if we took our hunt budget for
Speaker 1: the year and spend it on groceries, we probably put
Speaker 1: on a few pounds. It's not about just the food totally,
Speaker 1: although that's a great reason to hunt. It sad about
Speaker 1: the antlers either, although they're pretty damn cool too. It's
Speaker 1: about something else that we have a hard time understanding sometimes.
Speaker 1: I think those horseback Mongolians with their hooded raptors on
Speaker 1: their arm, they aren't rabbit hunting just to rabbit hunt.
Speaker 1: They're doing it because it's a tradition and it means
Speaker 1: something to them to engage in the whole process, not
Speaker 1: just the moment when bugs bunny flashes across the land
Speaker 1: and the big feathery murder machine takes flight, but the
Speaker 1: whole build up before it, the training, all the talking
Speaker 1: with their buddies, and the planning. It's a part of it,
Speaker 1: and there's probably so much more than I'm leaving out.
Speaker 1: When my buddies and I go rabbit hunting, we'll text
Speaker 1: about it for weeks beforehand, we'll call each other, we
Speaker 1: actually eat, scout and pick spots, We build the whole
Speaker 1: thing up. Then we go and we give each other
Speaker 1: tons of ship and we work hard to push a
Speaker 1: few rabbits around, and then we relax afterwards and plan
Speaker 1: for the next hunt, or the next scouting trip, or
Speaker 1: maybe where we should apply for turkeys this spring. The
Speaker 1: thing about hunting is that if you really want to
Speaker 1: enjoy it, you figure out these things eventually. If you
Speaker 1: really don't want to enjoy it, focus too much on
Speaker 1: the end goal. If you really don't want to enjoy it,
Speaker 1: focus too much on an end goal that you can't
Speaker 1: achieve for whatever reason. Like if you bow hunt for
Speaker 1: three years on public land in Louisiana and decide it's
Speaker 1: finally time that you move up to the mature buck
Speaker 1: League and make the declaration that it's a one fifty
Speaker 1: year bus this year. Boys, when it comes to white
Speaker 1: tails and what you'll do to be around them come fall,
Speaker 1: it pays to think about why all of the parts
Speaker 1: are worth it, and how to make sure that you
Speaker 1: enjoy all of the parts enough to keep doing them
Speaker 1: so that you get better overall and the whole thing
Speaker 1: becomes more a part of your life. No, no, scratch that,
Speaker 1: more like a better part of your life. This is
Speaker 1: tough to do during the off season. I recently had
Speaker 1: a conversation with a good buddy of mine named Aaron Hepler,
Speaker 1: who is a die hard public land hunter from Pennsylvania.
Speaker 1: We got on the topic of bow hunting, you know,
Speaker 1: the promised land that is Iowa, and he mentioned that
Speaker 1: he might have enough points to draw down dinner this year.
Speaker 1: I then mentioned that a great way to learn about
Speaker 1: public land in Iowa is to buy one of their
Speaker 1: last season tags and go running gun for some gobblers.
Speaker 1: I've written about this many times and put it into
Speaker 1: practice many times. But he didn't seem to need an
Speaker 1: excuse to get down there. He said he had a
Speaker 1: stretch in April where he could make the thirteen or
Speaker 1: fourteen hour drive to Iowa to walk as much ground
Speaker 1: as possible and decide if burning his points and writing
Speaker 1: the big check it's going to be worth it. Now,
Speaker 1: a lot of people in Aaron's life would probably say
Speaker 1: all of that for a deer. But he loves scouting
Speaker 1: and he loves new ground. It's not a chore to
Speaker 1: do the offseason parts for him because he loves it.
Speaker 1: He would do a lot more for a deer because
Speaker 1: it's not just about killing a deer. To him, scouting
Speaker 1: trips can be fun. They should be fun, finding shed ailers,
Speaker 1: shaking off the confines of your house to walk through
Speaker 1: the winter woods. That ship is fun. East scouting that
Speaker 1: can be fun, but not as fun as ground truth
Speaker 1: in your East outing suspicions. Of course, it's all not
Speaker 1: as fun as that moment when a buck starts walking
Speaker 1: down the trail towards your stand. But the more build
Speaker 1: up there is, the more fun that can be too.
Speaker 1: It's fun when that happens, and it's not an accident
Speaker 1: or just an example of good fortune. That's important. So
Speaker 1: what do you need to do to be questioned by
Speaker 1: someone else in this all that? For a dear way?
Speaker 1: Are you already there? Probably to some extent if you
Speaker 1: listen to this podcast, because I can think of a
Speaker 1: lot better ways to use your time. I mean, hell,
Speaker 1: listening to me Drone on every week. It's probably enough
Speaker 1: torture for most people to think maybe all of this
Speaker 1: for a deer really isn't worth it? Or are you
Speaker 1: not there yet but you wish you were? Then what's
Speaker 1: holding your back? What parts don't you enjoy? That's the
Speaker 1: real question, and that answer will help you figure out
Speaker 1: how to enjoy the whole thing more. And since we're
Speaker 1: in the off season now, let's talk about this because
Speaker 1: winner scouting is not that common, even though guys like
Speaker 1: me talk about it all the time. Do you not
Speaker 1: really like winter scouting? Do you think instead you can
Speaker 1: buy a couple of cell cameras and put them out
Speaker 1: in the summer to get enough intel? Do you feel
Speaker 1: that the work now is so divorced from the potential
Speaker 1: fall results that it's not worth it? Listen, I get it,
Speaker 1: I really do. The work can suck, but if it does,
Speaker 1: you might be doing some of it or most of
Speaker 1: it wrong. So let's say I don't know, you want
Speaker 1: to hunt some new public land, but the idea of
Speaker 1: going out and walking five miles through the snow to
Speaker 1: look for rubs just not doing it for you. Well,
Speaker 1: have I mentioned rabbit hunting is pretty fun? So is
Speaker 1: squirrel hunting, and an awful lot of states have open
Speaker 1: small game season. Still, when it was the last time
Speaker 1: you carried around a scope twenty two or seventeen and
Speaker 1: tried to snipe a few bushy tails? All right, What
Speaker 1: if you don't want to hunt small game? Do what
Speaker 1: I do. Sometimes. Sometimes when i'm east scouting, I'll find
Speaker 1: an edge on a property, or some thicket or swamp
Speaker 1: or something that just interests me, just catches my eye.
Speaker 1: I'll try to figure out where I think deer might
Speaker 1: bed specifically exactly in those areas, or where they might
Speaker 1: rub or stage or hell, where they might just have
Speaker 1: a really nice trail. Then I'll go in and check
Speaker 1: just for a couple of hours, and a lot of
Speaker 1: times I'm wrong, But sometimes I get it right. Sometimes
Speaker 1: I find an oiler, or sometimes I just find a
Speaker 1: spot I might hunt this fall or three falls from now.
Speaker 1: Sometimes I don't find anything but a pastured woods that
Speaker 1: wouldn't hold a mature bucket a thousand years. Maybe it's
Speaker 1: just a testament to neural hardwiring. But I like dopamine
Speaker 1: hits a lot. I've been chasing them my entire life
Speaker 1: in a variety of productive and damaging ways. One that
Speaker 1: is pretty productive is finding a great big rub or
Speaker 1: a lone bed somewhere on a new property where I've
Speaker 1: called my shot via east scouting pre rewarding. Some times
Speaker 1: a trip to the woods right now is worth nothing
Speaker 1: more than to give you a better look at every
Speaker 1: little fold in the train, every dip on a ridge,
Speaker 1: every little up and down feature that might play into
Speaker 1: a deer's life or their decision making. For some reason,
Speaker 1: I like seeing spots I hunt in all of the seasons,
Speaker 1: even though I don't really know why, But I do
Speaker 1: like seeing the land as it is now, because it's
Speaker 1: sort of like playing with a cheap code on If
Speaker 1: you want to know why bucks travel one way and
Speaker 1: not another, the world might show you right now, but
Speaker 1: that window will close about the time when the turkeys
Speaker 1: start nesting. Do you enjoy that stuff? Or I don't know,
Speaker 1: do you enjoy finding antlers? Okay? How do you work
Speaker 1: that into some winter scouting. The thing about all this
Speaker 1: stuff is that if you're going to be a successful hunter,
Speaker 1: you're going to have to learn how to do the
Speaker 1: things that tell the non hunters and some of your
Speaker 1: fellow hunters that you'll do all of that for a deer.
Speaker 1: You want to be the person who puts in the
Speaker 1: effort and who loves it, because then the effort is
Speaker 1: part of the process, a process that you'll love. You
Speaker 1: want to be the one who knows the secret about
Speaker 1: getting the most out of a season and how even
Speaker 1: if you can bow hunt for three months, the other
Speaker 1: nine offer you a hell of a way to get
Speaker 1: your fixed too. Listen, this applies to shooting, tinkering with gear,
Speaker 1: and a pile of other aspects of the white tail
Speaker 1: process as well. It's all encompassing. If you want it
Speaker 1: to be, or if you just want it to be
Speaker 1: a little bit more dear crazy than the next guy. Whatever,
Speaker 1: that's all right too. The point is figure out a
Speaker 1: way to get people talking about you like you're just
Speaker 1: a little bit crazy, show them what you'll do for
Speaker 1: a deer, and then you know what, do it and
Speaker 1: then tune in next week because I'm gonna talk about
Speaker 1: shed Antler's how to find them, why we love them,
Speaker 1: and what good they really do us as hunters. That's
Speaker 1: it for this week, my friends. I'm Tony Peterson and
Speaker 1: to spend the wire to Hunt Foundations podcast, which is
Speaker 1: brought to you by first Light. As always, thank you
Speaker 1: so much for listening, and if you want more white
Speaker 1: tail content, feel free to head over to the metator
Speaker 1: dot com slash wired for plenty of deer hunting articles
Speaker 1: written by Mark myself and a whole bunch of other
Speaker 1: absolute slayers, And if you want go visit our wire
Speaker 1: to Hunt YouTube channel as well because we've dropped all
Speaker 1: kinds of how to content on there. And as always, again,
Speaker 1: thank you so much for listening and supporting us.