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 today's episode is all about winter scouting
Speaker 2: and shed hunting and the power of asking yourself why
Speaker 2: I guess I don't know. This episode comes from two
Speaker 2: different places, really. The first is one of total self
Speaker 2: defeat and low key self inflicted misery. The other is
Speaker 2: one of wonder with the type of people who keep
Speaker 2: you looking for answers and questioning what you think you know.
Speaker 2: I get that that's you know, vague, but trust me,
Speaker 2: it's going somewhere. In fact, I think if you're spinning
Speaker 2: your wheels white tail wise, or even if you think
Speaker 2: you really have a handle on things, you're going to
Speaker 2: get something out of this one if you want to
Speaker 2: become a better deer hunter. So listen up, because here
Speaker 2: it goes. I've talked about goals a few times recently
Speaker 2: on this podcast, just because I think they're important. I
Speaker 2: think that a lot of us just don't have the
Speaker 2: discipline to always or mostly always do the things we
Speaker 2: need to. That's where goals come into play, because they
Speaker 2: keep us accountable to ourselves and sometimes others. And that's
Speaker 2: a good thing. So good that I set some lofty
Speaker 2: goals for myself starting this year. In addition to kind
Speaker 2: of randomly setting a goal of running eight hundred miles
Speaker 2: for the year and putting on some serious muscle, I
Speaker 2: decided I was going to do a no sugar thing
Speaker 2: for all of January. Well, to be blunt, I decided
Speaker 2: I was going to do a no extra sugar thing.
Speaker 2: Not a single minem, not a Reese's peanut butter cup,
Speaker 2: bowl of ice cream, forget it, little Debbie's deliciousness, No, sir.
Speaker 2: It was going to be a month of working out
Speaker 2: like a fiend every day actually, and not eating any
Speaker 2: junk food whatsoever. And I damn near did it. Despite
Speaker 2: catching a serious case of the crud that ruined my
Speaker 2: will to live and my ability to easily breathe for
Speaker 2: like a full week. I only took off one day
Speaker 2: of working out and I can tell you something. If
Speaker 2: you've never worked out or it's been a long time,
Speaker 2: the feeling of progress when you get after it is
Speaker 2: just something else. It feels so good. I also made
Speaker 2: it until day twenty seven before I broke the old
Speaker 2: sugar embargo. It was just dumb. It was just a
Speaker 2: January game night at my sister in law's, you know,
Speaker 2: with the temptation of the kind of snacks you put
Speaker 2: out when it's time to cards against Humanity or whatever.
Speaker 2: So I broke. I had a glass of sun Kiss,
Speaker 2: which I never do but is so delicious, and since
Speaker 2: I did, I also had quite a few handfuls of
Speaker 2: Monster Trail Mix, then a whole bunch of strawberry dipped pretzels.
Speaker 2: Then I asked myself, why why is it so hard
Speaker 2: to stick to a diet? Why is it so hard
Speaker 2: to lose weight at any age, let alone forty three?
Speaker 2: Why is it so hard to go lift for an
Speaker 2: hour or run five miles when I know both will
Speaker 2: make me feel so good once I'm done. There are
Speaker 2: academic answers tucked into those questions, like the reality that
Speaker 2: actually losing a pound of body weight is generally going
Speaker 2: to come at the cost of about thirty five hundred calories.
Speaker 2: To put that in scary berry terms, if you want
Speaker 2: to lose twenty pounds to keep it off, you're gonna
Speaker 2: have to find a way to burn about seventy thousand
Speaker 2: more calories than you take in. Then you're gonna have
Speaker 2: to keep up that new program or those lbs will
Speaker 2: come creeping back. That's depressing, and inherently we know the
Speaker 2: answer to why it's so hard to lose weight on
Speaker 2: a physical level. There's an emotional component that is moody
Speaker 2: importante as well, though That one gets personal for each
Speaker 2: of us, and the answer is one that often makes
Speaker 2: us wish we hadn't asked why in the first place.
Speaker 2: So anyway, I was throwing a little pity party for
Speaker 2: myself for being a weak, little biz natcho of a
Speaker 2: human when my daughters asked me if we could go
Speaker 2: shed hunting with two twelve year old girls. I don't
Speaker 2: know how many times I'll get asked to go look
Speaker 2: for antlers, so I always say yes. We sued it up,
Speaker 2: loaded up the dogs, and drove to a chunk of
Speaker 2: public land that has treated me sort of well over
Speaker 2: the years. There are a lot of shed hunters in there.
Speaker 2: There's also a lot of deer in the winter, so
Speaker 2: it kind of levels off. Since it was the first
Speaker 2: trip of the season, we took a route that I've
Speaker 2: walked many times and has produced a few antlers for
Speaker 2: me over the years, including my first match set. It
Speaker 2: was weird walking through the woods in Minnesota in January
Speaker 2: and not seeing a single patch of snow anywhere. Felt
Speaker 2: more like early April, and I figured that might allow
Speaker 2: us to find an antler or two, even though we
Speaker 2: were a little early for my taste. Anyway, We hiked alone,
Speaker 2: looking at fresh deer poop and walking trails while the
Speaker 2: labs ran circles around us. Even the old girl who
Speaker 2: will be eleven in April was getting after it. We
Speaker 2: walked through some patches of woods and through some meadows,
Speaker 2: and at one point we entered a decent sized patch
Speaker 2: of old growth woods and found not only tons of
Speaker 2: evidence of turkey scratching up last falls acorns, but watched
Speaker 2: as maybe two dozen of them ran out of there
Speaker 2: in front of us. My daughters asked me a lot
Speaker 2: of questions about animals and their behavior and made me
Speaker 2: realize that the power of asking why is important. To
Speaker 2: us as hunters. For starters. We checked out a monster
Speaker 2: oak tree that looks like it's mostly hollow. Why the
Speaker 2: tree is like that now, I couldn't answer, but I
Speaker 2: could guess some of the critters that call that massive,
Speaker 2: hollowed out tree home. We found a pine tree with
Speaker 2: very there, symmetrical holes in it, like they were drilled
Speaker 2: at specific intervals. My daughter asked me why, and my
Speaker 2: best answer was that some type of woodpecker must have
Speaker 2: a system for locating bugs beneath the bark that involves
Speaker 2: drilling holes in a line for a while and then
Speaker 2: moving up the trunk six inches and starting over, very systematic. Later,
Speaker 2: as we stood up on a ridge looking down at
Speaker 2: one of my favorite types of funnels, I asked the
Speaker 2: girls if they would hypothetically hunt there, and then to
Speaker 2: explain why they would or wouldn't. They looked at the
Speaker 2: way the wetland made mostly a figure eight between two
Speaker 2: ridges and said maybe it would be a good spot
Speaker 2: for a deer to get a drink. You know, not
Speaker 2: a bad answer, but it was a little short. So
Speaker 2: I asked them if the deer would probably like to
Speaker 2: get all muddy and wet going through the swamps, or
Speaker 2: if they'd probably just like to walk the high spine
Speaker 2: between the two lowland spots, and as if it was
Speaker 2: meant to be. While we were looking at the land
Speaker 2: right there and I was explaining how deer probably go
Speaker 2: through there, three little bucks got up out of their
Speaker 2: beds and ran right through that funnel. They were the
Speaker 2: only antlers we saw that day, and they were all
Speaker 2: riding around on deer's foreheads. Later we looked at a
Speaker 2: huge collection of rubs just off of a meadow. We
Speaker 2: talked about why they were there and why they were
Speaker 2: facing more or less all in the same direction. The
Speaker 2: answer was that the bucks were likely bedded in the
Speaker 2: scrub seaters and patches of dogwood in the meadow, and
Speaker 2: then staged on the edge where the brush met the
Speaker 2: old growth. We later confirmed that theory with the discovery
Speaker 2: of a couple of beds tuck tight to either thick
Speaker 2: seaters or dead falls, which made the girls ask why
Speaker 2: once again. Now, if you don't want to get eaten
Speaker 2: by a coyote or surprised by a hunter with a
Speaker 2: gun in his hands, a good way to do it
Speaker 2: is to put some structure to your back while working
Speaker 2: the wind and using your eyes to look over the
Speaker 2: downhill approach. Now we blanked on antlers, which is what
Speaker 2: we mostly always do, but it was a really good
Speaker 2: time anyway. The dogs got muddy enough to truly annoy
Speaker 2: my wife. When we got home, the girls got to
Speaker 2: ask their favorite questions over and over as we picked
Speaker 2: apart the world of the white tail and the rest
Speaker 2: of the critters that share their neighborhood. I think this
Speaker 2: is something that is crazy important to hunters, but we've
Speaker 2: been led to believe that we don't need to ask
Speaker 2: why anymore. The trail cameras shows us the buck walk
Speaker 2: through three times this week. Does it really matter why
Speaker 2: he's daylighting and it's time to kill him? So that
Speaker 2: should be good enough, right. Or we sit on stand
Speaker 2: and don't see deer on one night and are snowed
Speaker 2: in with them the next night. Why why was it
Speaker 2: a snooze fest before and now it's on fire? What changed?
Speaker 2: Or I don't know. We sit on October tenth just
Speaker 2: because we need to go into the woods, and even
Speaker 2: though we just know we won't see a big buck,
Speaker 2: we go sit anyway, and then a big buck walks through,
Speaker 2: just out arranged two hours before dark. Why this stuff
Speaker 2: seems random but it's not. This happened to me last
Speaker 2: year while filming a show in Minnesota during opening week.
Speaker 2: I was posted up on a waterway between two standing
Speaker 2: cornfields in the morning when I saw a young buck
Speaker 2: and a doe walk through the woods. No big deal,
Speaker 2: they were just coming back from the neighbor's beanfield. That
Speaker 2: was an easy one to answer. But then we saw
Speaker 2: those two deer reverse course and go back the direction
Speaker 2: in which they came. Why, I didn't know. I also
Speaker 2: didn't know why too much. Bigger bucks followed in their tracks,
Speaker 2: and then a spike ran down and cross right in
Speaker 2: front of us. Suddenly it was a buckfest, and I
Speaker 2: couldn't tell you why, at least not until I talked
Speaker 2: to another hunter as we were loading up the truck
Speaker 2: and he told me where he was hunting, which made
Speaker 2: it all make sense. Past run ins with him have
Speaker 2: shown me that he mostly tries to kill one by
Speaker 2: walking around, so he was up on top and booted
Speaker 2: all those deer down. To me. Now, that's not the
Speaker 2: best way to level up as a deer, but once
Speaker 2: in a while you get an answer without having you
Speaker 2: look too hard for it. And that's possible for us
Speaker 2: right now, with the dual opportunities of shed hunting and
Speaker 2: winter scouting being really our main activities as deer hunters
Speaker 2: for the next couple of months, there is no better
Speaker 2: time to ask why and to hopefully get an answer.
Speaker 2: A good way to do this is to go out
Speaker 2: and specifically not go where you always like to go.
Speaker 2: This is even easier if you can head out on
Speaker 2: a property you aren't super familiar with, because the worst
Speaker 2: scouting we do is the scouting that confirms what we
Speaker 2: already believe about a property. That's a great way to
Speaker 2: never level up, and it holds a lot of us
Speaker 2: back far more than we'd like to admit. Instead, go
Speaker 2: somewhere that isn't on your usual routes, then try to
Speaker 2: call your shots. When you drop down a hill, or
Speaker 2: enter a valley, or just get a new view of
Speaker 2: the big woods. Stop, take a look around. What do
Speaker 2: you say that the deer would use? Then call your shot.
Speaker 2: Should there be a scrape line on the soft edge
Speaker 2: where the hardwoods and the swamp meat. Where do you
Speaker 2: think you'll find beds or a bunch of rubs? Why
Speaker 2: would a buck bed in the spot you think you should,
Speaker 2: and then go figure out if he actually does. Some
Speaker 2: of the best lessons I felt like I could impart
Speaker 2: on my girls during our recent shed hunt just involve
Speaker 2: soft edges in the direction of likely deer travel. It's
Speaker 2: almost just an intuition thing. But if you've been doing
Speaker 2: this stuff long enough, you can look at the cover
Speaker 2: and figure out if they are going to parallel it
Speaker 2: or where there should be a trail leading into and
Speaker 2: out of it. Sometimes you get it right, of course,
Speaker 2: sometimes you get it wrong, and when you do get
Speaker 2: it wrong, it's a great time to ask yourself why
Speaker 2: this happened to me. Once with the girls out there
Speaker 2: on that meadow, my daughter's enjoyed pointing out that I
Speaker 2: had confidently stated we'd find a well used trail skirting
Speaker 2: the edge of it. But when we got there, the
Speaker 2: trail I was sure would be there wasn't. I don't
Speaker 2: know why, and as we walked around, I never really
Speaker 2: got a good answer. That's an important part of this too.
Speaker 2: There is the notion that this stuff can be mastered,
Speaker 2: and the truth is the only ones who believe that
Speaker 2: are folks that have manipulated the land so much that
Speaker 2: they can force to dear movement in certain ways. Go
Speaker 2: ask some hardcore public land whitetail hunter if he or
Speaker 2: she thinks that you can master this stuff, and you
Speaker 2: should get an answer that goes something like, uh, Nope,
Speaker 2: not a chance. They are out there scouting, they're out
Speaker 2: there asking why, and while they are answering their own
Speaker 2: questions as often as they can, they are also finding
Speaker 2: out over and over and over again that there just
Speaker 2: might not be an answer available to them for specific questions.
Speaker 2: But the good thing is that's kind of the best part,
Speaker 2: not being too stupid to answer a question on why
Speaker 2: dear do something or not, but instead conditioning yourself to
Speaker 2: just ask why. To look at a dished out scrape
Speaker 2: and not stop at the realization that you've found a
Speaker 2: banging community scrape and that you should probably hang a
Speaker 2: stand by it, but instead why there is it a
Speaker 2: hub of activity? Is it the kind of place where
Speaker 2: lots of dough groups pass through and the wind is
Speaker 2: off an advantageous to bucks looking to check the latest
Speaker 2: deer census and leave their own calling card there? What
Speaker 2: about that rub, the thigh sized rub in the middle
Speaker 2: of the woods. It just sort of seems out of place.
Speaker 2: Why there, where's he coming from to work on that rub?
Speaker 2: Why that kind of tree? Are there any other rubs
Speaker 2: around that might give you a clue? If so? Good?
Speaker 2: If not? Why? The more you ask why now in
Speaker 2: this off season here in February March, the more you'll
Speaker 2: have the right answers in hunting season. I know that
Speaker 2: seems too simple, but think about it this way. The
Speaker 2: best deer hunters out there scout a lot, and they
Speaker 2: are curious. I'm not talking about the folks who have
Speaker 2: a thousand acres of primo ground, because I don't consider
Speaker 2: them to be the best. They're very successful, and I'm
Speaker 2: happy for them. But when you're in a situation where
Speaker 2: you don't really have to scout aside from running cell cameras,
Speaker 2: a lot of the challenges is gone. In fact, if
Speaker 2: you took those people and forced them at gunpoint to
Speaker 2: hunt public land for a year, I bet most of
Speaker 2: them would almost instantly realize that they needed to scout
Speaker 2: and scout hard. They'd also soon realize that it's not
Speaker 2: enough to get in the woods with the deer and
Speaker 2: try to find a few antlers. While looking for some
Speaker 2: deer heavy spots to hunt next season. They'd realize they
Speaker 2: need to figure out why bucks might go here but
Speaker 2: not there, why the match set is tucked into the
Speaker 2: brush in the old homestead below the main road and
Speaker 2: not way way way back on the farthest corner of
Speaker 2: the property. What this mindset does for you is allow
Speaker 2: you to confidently figure some stuff out while filtering your
Speaker 2: answer through as many factors as you can come up with.
Speaker 2: For example, that spot the girls and I found that
Speaker 2: was just loaded with rubs and was an obvious staging
Speaker 2: area close to bedding is also one of the few
Speaker 2: patches of brush in that area that is just thick, thick, thick.
Speaker 2: That property does get hunted, but the odds of somebody
Speaker 2: crawling in there with the bucks instead of sitting in
Speaker 2: the nice, open deciduous forest nearby pretty low. So the
Speaker 2: bucks hole up where they are safe, and they leave
Speaker 2: a lot of sign there because they spend a lot
Speaker 2: of time there. Sometimes they leave to go to nearby fields.
Speaker 2: Sometimes they leave to go scuffle around for acorns if
Speaker 2: the timing is right. But what they do more than
Speaker 2: anything is start in a specific couple of acres and
Speaker 2: expand outward. As they do this over and over in
Speaker 2: the fall, they leave sign that shows that they in
Speaker 2: fact did do that. A small collection of rubs in
Speaker 2: a spot where there should be a small collection of
Speaker 2: rubs asks a simple question why. There a lot of
Speaker 2: walking around to fill in the blanks with some other findings,
Speaker 2: and then maybe a little time on on X looking
Speaker 2: at the lay of the land from a bird's eye view,
Speaker 2: and you suddenly realize that you found a hell of
Speaker 2: a lot cooler thing that's more actionable than just a
Speaker 2: concentration of rubs in a very specific spot. You've damn
Speaker 2: near deciphered buck movement in that specific area, all while
Speaker 2: walking around with two twelve year olds in January, while
Speaker 2: feeling sorry for yourself because sometimes you have the self
Speaker 2: control of a toddler when it comes to candy. So
Speaker 2: I guess I'll leave you with this. You know you're
Speaker 2: supposed to win or scout. You know you're probably going
Speaker 2: to go out look for some antlers. Do both, do
Speaker 2: them as much as you can, but stop often to
Speaker 2: look around and ask yourself why. Ask why when it
Speaker 2: comes to annual Ask why when it comes to animal
Speaker 2: behavior that doesn't seem like it has anything to do
Speaker 2: with deer, like when turkeys are scratching acorns in a
Speaker 2: specific spot, although that one actually does have something to
Speaker 2: do with deer. Anyway, ask why, then try to find
Speaker 2: the answer. If you do, great, If not, that's also great.
Speaker 2: Keep trying, keep looking, keep asking yourself why. That's what
Speaker 2: really matters, and keep coming back to this podcast so
Speaker 2: I don't have to go lasid or go sell fishing
Speaker 2: rods at Cabela's or something. That's it for this week.
Speaker 2: I'm Tony Peterson. This has been the Wire to Hunt
Speaker 2: Foundation's podcast, which is brought to you by First Light.
Speaker 2: As always, I just want to thank you so much
Speaker 2: for listening to this podcast and reading the articles put
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Speaker 2: to stuff, gear reviews, you name it, it's all over there.
Speaker 2: I know you got some time because we're in the
Speaker 2: middle of the winter. Go check it out, and again,
Speaker 2: thanks for everything.