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 Foundations 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 predators and
Speaker 2: their white tail connection. This is probably the worst time
Speaker 2: of year to be a white tail junkie, at least
Speaker 2: in my opinion. We're just like too far away from
Speaker 2: turkeys for it to be a real distraction. Now. A
Speaker 2: lot of us don't have much for fishing opportunities right now.
Speaker 2: It's a real bummer, so you have to keep slogging
Speaker 2: away at something. And something that kind of fell into
Speaker 2: my lap recently is just a topic of predator control,
Speaker 2: which brings up a bigger topic in my mind of
Speaker 2: just hunting around different predators who aren't humans. This is
Speaker 2: something that might not even be an issue for you,
Speaker 2: or it might be constantly top of mind depending on
Speaker 2: where you hunt. So buckle up because it's time to
Speaker 2: get toothy. Last week, in a desperate bid to get
Speaker 2: my boss to pick up the phone and let me
Speaker 2: know that I'm still employed here at meat Eater, I
Speaker 2: sent a Slack message his way, saying I needed exactly
Speaker 2: one minute of his time. Twenty four hours later, I
Speaker 2: sent another one with roughly the same message, but a
Speaker 2: little more urgent in a little less PC than the
Speaker 2: first one. He messaged me right back then, saying he
Speaker 2: was wrapping up a coyote calling set and would give
Speaker 2: me a shout in a little bit. When he called
Speaker 2: me on his way to the office, which was well
Speaker 2: after normal business hours had started for everyone else, he
Speaker 2: told me all about his morning exploits while trying to
Speaker 2: call in and decoy a few song dogs. You know
Speaker 2: how it is when you're talking to someone about something
Speaker 2: they are really passionate about, and you can hear the
Speaker 2: intensity creeping into their voice by the word. That's what
Speaker 2: this was like. By the time the coyotes were responding
Speaker 2: to him and his story, he sounded a little like
Speaker 2: a heavy set eight year old who had had to
Speaker 2: run upstairs and steal two dollars from his dad's wallet
Speaker 2: because he heard the ice cream truck round the corner
Speaker 2: and start to drive down his street and come hell
Speaker 2: or high water. It was a rocket pop time, so
Speaker 2: he pushed himself to the limit, taking the stairs two
Speaker 2: at a time on the way up and the way down,
Speaker 2: and burst through the screen door like a kool aid man.
Speaker 2: Well that's, you know, kind of what my boss sounded like,
Speaker 2: but honestly like he's in a little bit worse shape
Speaker 2: and also had forgotten to take his ADHD meds with
Speaker 2: his ego waffles for breakfast. In some ways, his excitement
Speaker 2: over predator hunting is totally related to me, and in
Speaker 2: other ways it's not relatable at all. I don't personally
Speaker 2: care to kill predators, and even though I know that's
Speaker 2: not all that popular in hunting circles, it just does
Speaker 2: nothing for me. So I'm not interested in it. And
Speaker 2: I don't know why. But when I see a coyote
Speaker 2: while I'm deer hunting, my instinct is not to shoot it.
Speaker 2: I have in the past, but that's kind of why
Speaker 2: I don't today. I'm just not interested in killing a
Speaker 2: wild dog because he hunts the same critics that I hunt.
Speaker 2: I'm also totally fo anyone who wants to predator hunt
Speaker 2: or trap their happy asses off all winter. It's just
Speaker 2: not for me, I guess. And I don't know if
Speaker 2: this is true or not, but I think it might
Speaker 2: be because it's just rare to see most predators. Most
Speaker 2: hunters talk a big game about some of the apex
Speaker 2: predators out there without ever actually laying eyes on one.
Speaker 2: Mountain lions are a great example here. I don't know
Speaker 2: how much time I've spent in the heart of lion country,
Speaker 2: but in total, I've seen two and had a wild
Speaker 2: encounter with a third that I saw. That kitty must
Speaker 2: have been patrolling the highest reaches of the Black Hills
Speaker 2: out there in South Dakota while I was looking to
Speaker 2: call in a long beard while keeping my eye to
Speaker 2: the sky as a monster storm rolled in. In order
Speaker 2: to not get soaked and then have to spend the
Speaker 2: night sleeping in the back of my buddy's truck while
Speaker 2: freezing my giblets off, I decided to cut down a
Speaker 2: cliff and then book it to camp. But as soon
Speaker 2: as I started, I found a spike shed antler, and
Speaker 2: then a four point side, so instead of heading right
Speaker 2: to camp, I shed hunted until dark and then booked
Speaker 2: it as the rain really started to fall. It was
Speaker 2: a miserable night that got real cold, real fast. In
Speaker 2: the morning. When I went to take a leak, I
Speaker 2: looked at my bootprints frozen solid in the mud and
Speaker 2: saw that there were lion tracks on top of my
Speaker 2: tracks all the way to the edge of camp. I'm
Speaker 2: sure that lion was hunting the deer that were dropping
Speaker 2: the antlers I was looking for, and he seemed interested
Speaker 2: enough in me to follow me all the way down
Speaker 2: that hill in the dark. And let me tell you something.
Speaker 2: As skilled as I like to think I am as
Speaker 2: a hunter, I had no clue he was there, and
Speaker 2: judging by how quickly it got cold that night, I
Speaker 2: have to assume he shadowed me down that hill while
Speaker 2: he was wondering how tasty I might be. A few
Speaker 2: years later, I went back to the Black Hills to
Speaker 2: see if I could remove another long beard from the landscape.
Speaker 2: When I bumped into a cat crossing a road at
Speaker 2: dawn while I walked down and listening for a gobble,
Speaker 2: that cat went straight up a limestone cliff on a
Speaker 2: dead run, which was like watching a super athlete do
Speaker 2: something you didn't even realize was possible. It was incredible,
Speaker 2: and I'm not joking. I've never seen anything like it
Speaker 2: before or since. I did, while cow calling next to
Speaker 2: a small pond in Colorado like eight years ago, call
Speaker 2: in another cat that seemed to think it was going
Speaker 2: to have some elk meat for dinner. When that cat
Speaker 2: slow stepped over a log not twenty yards from me,
Speaker 2: my partner and I both looked directly at it and
Speaker 2: realized how easy it was for something that has built
Speaker 2: to be sneaky to sneak up on a couple of
Speaker 2: dudes who aren't as sneaky as they think. I've always
Speaker 2: heard that high country meal deer are so neurotic because
Speaker 2: of the presence of lions, and I kind of believe it.
Speaker 2: I can't imagine having that kind of threat living in
Speaker 2: the same place where you live, and knowing that it's
Speaker 2: a terminator level eating machine with a whole lot of
Speaker 2: patients and nothing else to do but pursue its next meal. Fortunately,
Speaker 2: for most white tail hunters, despite widespread rumors that they
Speaker 2: are everywhere, mountain lions aren't much of an issue for
Speaker 2: most of us. Coyotes, wolves, bobcats, and bears. Different story.
Speaker 2: If you hunt anywhere with a prevalence of these critters.
Speaker 2: You know it because the fawn recruitment will be pretty dismal,
Speaker 2: which tends to result in low deer densities. That feels
Speaker 2: awful real during the season. We all know about coyotes
Speaker 2: and what they're capable of, but bobcats are apparently a
Speaker 2: sneaky predator too, that will take down a deer sometimes.
Speaker 2: I've never seen one mess with it, but I have
Speaker 2: seen quite a few of them in northern Wisconsin, and
Speaker 2: I'll tell you what, they're pretty damn cool. I had
Speaker 2: one walk right up to me a few years ago
Speaker 2: while I was sitting on the ground waiting on a deer,
Speaker 2: and my first indication that it was close was that
Speaker 2: I heard soft purring, and I thought, why can I
Speaker 2: hear a cat purring right now? Do I smell burnt toast?
Speaker 2: Turns out I wasn't having a stroke. There was a
Speaker 2: bobcat maybe six feet away from me, who was as
Speaker 2: surprised as I was when he figured out I was there.
Speaker 2: Wolves are a different story. There isn't a critter out
Speaker 2: there that more quickly divides hunters. Most of them fall
Speaker 2: on the side of the fewer the wolves out there.
Speaker 2: The better. Hunting in wolf country is tough, and while
Speaker 2: the blame often falls solely on those wild canines, the
Speaker 2: truth is that it's almost always due to a variety
Speaker 2: of factors. Wolves happen to live where winter is real
Speaker 2: and real winters tend to knock back deer number often,
Speaker 2: even if it's only once every five or seven years,
Speaker 2: a real bad winner will set the herd back a
Speaker 2: long ways. Wolves also tend to live where there's woods everywhere,
Speaker 2: but not a ton of destination food sources. Logging helps,
Speaker 2: of course, but it's just a fact of life that
Speaker 2: if you're in wolf territory, you're also kind of just
Speaker 2: in an environment where the deer aren't going to spend
Speaker 2: all winter eating in a pitcornfield to survive. There's plenty
Speaker 2: of food up there. Don't get me wrong, but life
Speaker 2: is tough in the north country, and of course the
Speaker 2: wolves don't help if you hunt around them. At least
Speaker 2: in my experience, they can make it seem like there
Speaker 2: are literally no deer left for very long stretches of time.
Speaker 2: It's not fun, and it's really not fun to see.
Speaker 2: How many non hunters and anti hunters have a weird
Speaker 2: wolf fetish as if they are something more than wild
Speaker 2: dogs and are deserving of as much range as possible.
Speaker 2: I'm not going to get into it, but I'll say
Speaker 2: this only. I think there are enough wolves out there,
Speaker 2: and I think they should be managed. I also don't
Speaker 2: think we need to drop wolves off in places they
Speaker 2: aren't currently at because of the feel good idea that
Speaker 2: we can suddenly turn parts of the country back two
Speaker 2: hundred years and return nature to whatever natural state we
Speaker 2: have romanticized in our heads. It doesn't work like that,
Speaker 2: and it's frustrating to hear from people who have zero
Speaker 2: connection to nature advocate for such things, or worse, weaponize
Speaker 2: the court systems to make it happen. Now, aside from
Speaker 2: the woofies, you have the Black Bears, which is the
Speaker 2: undisputed champion of the Toothy Critters League when it comes
Speaker 2: to turning adorable little spotted fawns into breakfast Yogi doesn't
Speaker 2: get enough credit for this, But when the fawns drop,
Speaker 2: or you know, out west, the elk or moose, calves, whatever,
Speaker 2: bears of all varieties tend to shift gears heavily towards
Speaker 2: scouring meadows and other fawn friendly areas to see what
Speaker 2: they can turn up. It's really a short wind of
Speaker 2: time where they are hell on the youngsters. But they
Speaker 2: are good at it, really really good at it. Does
Speaker 2: any of this have any bearing on how you should hunt?
Speaker 2: I'd say yes, but maybe that's because I think about
Speaker 2: this a lot. Let me give you a couple examples
Speaker 2: on how predators shape my strategy when I'm hunting in
Speaker 2: specific locations. Let's take western North Dakota for example. The
Speaker 2: bad lands are maybe my favorite environment to hunt for
Speaker 2: so many reasons. It's one of the places I've traveled
Speaker 2: to the most to hunt, and I don't know how
Speaker 2: many days I've spent living in a tent out there
Speaker 2: while trying to arrow meal deer and white tails and
Speaker 2: sometimes antelope at least back when you could get a tag.
Speaker 2: It's also a coyote heavy region, or at least it
Speaker 2: seems that way. It might not have a higher density
Speaker 2: of song dogs than a lot of other places, but
Speaker 2: they are highly visible in that terrain and they are
Speaker 2: really easy to hear out there, so maybe it just
Speaker 2: seems like they are everywhere. I honestly don't know. There
Speaker 2: are also quite a few lions living in that area,
Speaker 2: and while I've never seen one. I sure have found
Speaker 2: a lot of their tracks. I've also spent a stupid
Speaker 2: amount of time trying to stalk animals out there and
Speaker 2: just kill them from the ground in natural blinds. Those
Speaker 2: deer in that territory are masters of spotting movement or
Speaker 2: something out of place on the ground, but it's like
Speaker 2: they are blind when you get into a tree, even
Speaker 2: if you only get like eight feet into a tree. Now,
Speaker 2: part of this is influenced by a hunter tactics. We
Speaker 2: all know that the deer that don't get hunted from
Speaker 2: tree stands a lot don't understand how dirty of a
Speaker 2: trick it is. That's a huge contributor. But I also
Speaker 2: think the reason they are so good at figuring out
Speaker 2: who is on the ground waiting for them is because
Speaker 2: they are so keyed into predators stalking them all the time.
Speaker 2: This means that if you're heading into an area with
Speaker 2: lots of coyotes and enough lions where they are a consideration,
Speaker 2: your best bet might be to leave the stalking to
Speaker 2: the flat brimmers out west and get up in a
Speaker 2: tree Eastern bow hunter style. Now, I'll give you a
Speaker 2: life pro tip here, just because I'm on the topic.
Speaker 2: If you are a white tail hunter who primarily sits
Speaker 2: stands or saddles, and you go out west with the
Speaker 2: idea you're going to spot in stock, do yourself a
Speaker 2: favor and bring one mobile tree stand setup, just some
Speaker 2: sticks in a stand or your saddle. Then if you
Speaker 2: find yourself not being good at stocking, which is pretty likely,
Speaker 2: you have the chance to get a leg up on
Speaker 2: the deer and the other hunters by using a tactic
Speaker 2: that is absolutely deadly on Western critters. Now, what if
Speaker 2: you're nowhere near the west and you're hunting around predators.
Speaker 2: I think the best way to look at this is
Speaker 2: lump all of the hunters into the same category. I
Speaker 2: know that doesn't really make sense, So let me explain.
Speaker 2: Hunting pressure is hunting pressure, and it doesn't seem to
Speaker 2: matter much if it comes from two legged or four
Speaker 2: legged predators. The more things that are trying to kill
Speaker 2: the deer, the fewer deer there will be, and the
Speaker 2: harder those deer will be to kill. That's it. It's
Speaker 2: not revolutionary, it's not something that you don't inherently know.
Speaker 2: What that means is that Southern Iowa idea that you
Speaker 2: can rattle all morning, or put a bunch of cent
Speaker 2: out and just wait on bucks to come in. As
Speaker 2: some grade A level bullshit. The more you announce your presence, generally,
Speaker 2: the worse you'll be off as a hunter in a
Speaker 2: high predator area. This is something that hunters in wolf
Speaker 2: territory often get wrong, and it's part of the reason
Speaker 2: they genuinely believe that all of the deer are gone.
Speaker 2: They aren't. But what we do to compensate for low
Speaker 2: confidence in our hunts is to try to make something
Speaker 2: happen in spots where we always hunt. So we go
Speaker 2: back to the same stance and we increase the level
Speaker 2: of our presence in those spots, spots where we undoubtedly
Speaker 2: run cameras, which causes us to increase our general presence there.
Speaker 2: It's a bad spiral to get into, but it's really
Speaker 2: really common. We take a situation where we should be
Speaker 2: as stealthy as possible, and we should be open to
Speaker 2: trying to find current deer concentrations, and instead we default
Speaker 2: to the spots that we are comfortable hunting while trying
Speaker 2: more and more tactics that only work Sometimes in really
Speaker 2: good areas, it's easy to compartmentalize the presence of predators.
Speaker 2: When we think about hunting, we know there are coyotes
Speaker 2: out there, or wolves or bobcats or bears, whatever, but
Speaker 2: we don't think of them as competition. We think of
Speaker 2: them as something tangential to the experience of being in
Speaker 2: the woods. But the deer don't see it that way.
Speaker 2: You wouldn't either, if you were being hunted every single
Speaker 2: day of your life. You'd be neurotic anxious, while more
Speaker 2: anxious than usual, and you'd have a low tolerance for
Speaker 2: threats of any type. The deer do too, and that's
Speaker 2: something to remember. I know that when I hunt northern Wisconsin,
Speaker 2: I'm more cautious about the scent I leave around and
Speaker 2: the noise I make and the ways I access spots
Speaker 2: that I am just about anywhere else I hunt. When
Speaker 2: you're dealing with very few deer that are just fed
Speaker 2: up with being on the menu, just feels like the
Speaker 2: only way, at least that I've ever found to keep
Speaker 2: finding deer and give myself that feeling like I'm someone
Speaker 2: in the game. Still, I also tend to set up
Speaker 2: as high as I can, often like eighteen to twenty
Speaker 2: feet up, which is kind of my personal limit for
Speaker 2: reasons I can't explain other than I don't have a
Speaker 2: fear of heights when I'm below that arbitrary mark, and
Speaker 2: when I get above it, I'm suddenly not comfortable at
Speaker 2: all with how much gravity there is and how if
Speaker 2: it could that invisible force it all matter has would
Speaker 2: bring me from being in a tree to being a twisted,
Speaker 2: first light covered pretzel of a human on the forest floor.
Speaker 2: The height generally feels necessary unless there's a way to
Speaker 2: get into a big, old pine tree or some clump
Speaker 2: of trees that provides real c I pay attention more,
Speaker 2: I move less too. Some deer are pretty tolerant a
Speaker 2: poor hunting behavior while you're on STAN, but that deal
Speaker 2: with a lot of predators genuinely are not fun. Fact
Speaker 2: about this too. But other than maybe a few random
Speaker 2: bears I've seen off Stan, I've had very few encounters
Speaker 2: with bobcats and coyotes where they didn't pick me out
Speaker 2: of the tree almost instantly. You know, this obviously depends
Speaker 2: on a lot of factors, but it sure seems like
Speaker 2: they are just good at noticing anything that's a little unnatural.
Speaker 2: I don't know if that's the case for wolves, because
Speaker 2: I've only seen a few and they were all on
Speaker 2: the ground and I was not hiding. I guess the
Speaker 2: gist of it is it's worth thinking about the prevalence
Speaker 2: of predators where you hunt or where you are thinking
Speaker 2: about hunting, which might even be more important. You know,
Speaker 2: they might not affect your strategies much, or they might
Speaker 2: factor into your plan in a major way. This will
Speaker 2: depend on a lot of things. But it's not something
Speaker 2: that is this abstract idea that doesn't influence your hunt,
Speaker 2: because that's just not how it works. They are out
Speaker 2: there pressuring the deer too. Use that however, you need to,
Speaker 2: but at the very least acknowledge that it's true and
Speaker 2: consider what it might do to your hunts, and at
Speaker 2: least come back next week to keep listening because I'm
Speaker 2: going to talk about water access and how it can
Speaker 2: be a white tail hunter's best friend. That's it for
Speaker 2: this week. I'm Tony Peterson and this has been the
Speaker 2: Wire to Hunt Foundation's podcast, which is brought to you
Speaker 2: by First Light. I say this every week and I
Speaker 2: absolutely truly mean it. Thank you so much for your
Speaker 2: support everybody here at Meat Eater. We truly appreciate it.
Speaker 2: We would not be anywhere. We wouldn't be able to
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