Speaker 1: Welcome to the Wired to Hunt Foundation's podcast, Your guide
Speaker 1: to the fundamentals of better deer 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 Foundation's podcast.
Speaker 2: I'm your host, Tony Peterson, and today I'm going to
Speaker 2: talk about the hunting trends that come and go and
Speaker 2: how avoiding now is offered the best strategy. It's a
Speaker 2: little more Dear. All those fine folks out there who
Speaker 2: hate me for doing a job related to wild game
Speaker 2: often argue that myself and others like me, we're the
Speaker 2: worst things to happen to hunting. We commoditize the passion
Speaker 2: and a public resource. Fair enough, I get that, but
Speaker 2: I also wonder why those same people folks because solely
Speaker 2: on social media influencers. But I don't know outfitters, not
Speaker 2: the state game agencies who view hunters, especially non resident hunters,
Speaker 2: as cash cows, not the media and the marketing companies
Speaker 2: pulling the strings behind the hunting industry. Or hell, I
Speaker 2: don't know the manufacturers themselves. You know those companies that
Speaker 2: make the gear you buy and who want your money,
Speaker 2: and they figure out how to make you aware of
Speaker 2: their products so you do buy them. It's really an
Speaker 2: old problem viewed in new light. But it also follows
Speaker 2: something that this podcast is about trends. There are trends
Speaker 2: in hunting that just come and go, and I'm sure
Speaker 2: there will be a new enemy at some point. I'm
Speaker 2: sure too that what we think is the answer to
Speaker 2: our deer hunting problems now will be something different in
Speaker 2: the future. And that's what I'm going to talk about,
Speaker 2: because conditioning yourself to be a deer contrary and allows
Speaker 2: you to start making decisions that will differ from your competition,
Speaker 2: and in most cases, this is the best way to
Speaker 2: find the success that eludes most whitetail hunters. People are
Speaker 2: weird at our most fundamental level. We are just kind
Speaker 2: of like hairless monkeys, trying desperately to stay in our
Speaker 2: little tribes. You know. That might be a political or
Speaker 2: religious tribe. It might be a click at work or
Speaker 2: a friend group. It might be in hunting where you
Speaker 2: and your buddies only take self made traditional bows to
Speaker 2: the woods, and you look at anyone who uses a compound, or,
Speaker 2: worse yet, a crossbow, the way I might look at
Speaker 2: the sole of my shoe after stepping in a pile
Speaker 2: of dog shit. It's in our nature to group up
Speaker 2: with like minded individuals want to fit in. It wasn't
Speaker 2: that long ago in our history where being a part
Speaker 2: of a group meant you had the best chance of survival,
Speaker 2: and if you got booted out for some social faux pa,
Speaker 2: you were on your own and very likely to die.
Speaker 2: We still feel this. It's gene deep, and it's one
Speaker 2: of the reasons that the low owners in our society
Speaker 2: can be so dangerous. We crave kinship and companionship, and
Speaker 2: we despise being ostracized and treating like an other whatever
Speaker 2: that means. This need to belong, coupled with the fear
Speaker 2: of being booted, it leads us to do kind of
Speaker 2: weird stuff. Look at any group you want, really, you'll
Speaker 2: see identifiers that people used to signal hey, I'm just
Speaker 2: like you, buddy. This might be the cultivated look of
Speaker 2: a motorcycle gang. It might be sports fans of a
Speaker 2: specific team. Hell, it might be the dumbass boys in
Speaker 2: my daughter's grade who all of a sudden decided mullets
Speaker 2: were cool again, and that for some reason, wearing tights
Speaker 2: undershorts is the hottest fashion trend of the century, and
Speaker 2: to be fair, the girls in their grade aren't spared
Speaker 2: from that stuff either. I recently noticed that one of
Speaker 2: my daughters was adamant about wearing one of those hairclip
Speaker 2: things that your mom used to wear that looks kind
Speaker 2: of like a spider, some kind of multi legged insect
Speaker 2: if you see it on the floor or the kitchen counter.
Speaker 2: I thought, man, she's really kicking at old score with
Speaker 2: this look, until I showed up to coach softball and
Speaker 2: realized that a lot of the girls her age are
Speaker 2: rocking those bad boys. What goes around comes around and
Speaker 2: the tool song Enema Maynard sings a little about this,
Speaker 2: and while I can't repeat the line, he does mention
Speaker 2: that he thinks anything retro is stupid. I agree, probably
Speaker 2: because I'm getting old and krabby, But I also think
Speaker 2: it's mostly harmless. I mean, who cares if an eleven
Speaker 2: year old boy wants a mullet or an eleven year
Speaker 2: old girl wants to put a grammar level hair accessory
Speaker 2: in When it comes to hunting, the trends are mostly
Speaker 2: harmless too, at least when you view them from thirty
Speaker 2: thousand feet, but at an individual level they might actually
Speaker 2: not be so harmless. Let's take saddle hunting as an example.
Speaker 2: This should work for a couple of reasons. First off,
Speaker 2: saddle hunting is actually an old method. Saddles first got
Speaker 2: kind of popular over twenty years ago, but the options
Speaker 2: on the market they weren't that great. Still, there were
Speaker 2: several companies making them, and some guys found a way
Speaker 2: to put them to good use. They never really caught
Speaker 2: on though in a I don't know a mainstream way, however.
Speaker 2: But fast forward to this more recent decade and saddle
Speaker 2: hunting has come on real strong. This isn't a bad
Speaker 2: thing in and of itself. Hell, last year I killed
Speaker 2: a bull elk and my biggest buck of the year
Speaker 2: from a saddle. Now I'm far from anti saddle. I
Speaker 2: think the options today we have a pretty sweet and
Speaker 2: I think that if you're into mobile hunting, it's one
Speaker 2: hell of a good way to go about things. But
Speaker 2: it's also totally unnecessary for a lot of hunters if
Speaker 2: you're dead set on hunting the same private forty acres
Speaker 2: until you qualify for Social Security, you might not need
Speaker 2: a saddle. You can set up spots with more comfortable
Speaker 2: options well in advance of the season. You don't need
Speaker 2: to put on a camo diaper and a hang sticks
Speaker 2: for every set. You might also just not like hunting
Speaker 2: out of a saddle. For whatever reason, it might not
Speaker 2: be for you. Maybe you're more of a ground hunter
Speaker 2: or a ladder stand hunter. Maybe that's something worth figuring
Speaker 2: out before you jump into the saddle bandwagon. The public
Speaker 2: land hunting thing is another example. This trend sort of
Speaker 2: feels like it's dying now, probably because it has been
Speaker 2: beat to death for a while. You couldn't show your
Speaker 2: face at the local pro shop if you hunted private land,
Speaker 2: and the shame you felt was palpable. It was also stupid.
Speaker 2: And I say this as someone who has a lot
Speaker 2: of pride in his public land skills and as someone
Speaker 2: who has pushed that narrative for a long time when
Speaker 2: I was a younger man trying to make a name
Speaker 2: for myself as a writer. This trend, you know, the
Speaker 2: public land one, has been a weird one. You should
Speaker 2: hunt where you can and where you want to. If
Speaker 2: you have access to private ground haunt that if you
Speaker 2: want to explore public go ahead. If you want to
Speaker 2: shoot a four hundred grain arrow that will blow through
Speaker 2: the biggest whitetail with ease, provided you can shoot it
Speaker 2: where it should go, do that. You don't need a
Speaker 2: kate buffalo arrow to kill white tails. If you want
Speaker 2: to beef up your archery amo and quite your bow down,
Speaker 2: go for it. Just understand why you're doing it, what
Speaker 2: you're giving up, what you're gaining. Maybe it's the right
Speaker 2: move for you, maybe it isn't. The thing about trends
Speaker 2: and hunting is that, well, they are trends and by
Speaker 2: the very definition they're going to be popular and at
Speaker 2: the forefront of our minds till they're not. They'll be
Speaker 2: adopted by many people. And that means you have an
Speaker 2: opportunity you as an individual. For some things, maybe you
Speaker 2: want to catch the same wave as everyone else. For others,
Speaker 2: maybe you want to do something totally different. Let me
Speaker 2: give you an example from my recent hunting life. Back
Speaker 2: in May, I drove down to the heart of Nebraska
Speaker 2: to chase turkeys with Sam Soholt. We hunted sand hill birds.
Speaker 2: And what that means is if you don't know. Anyway,
Speaker 2: we had a lot of room to roam, and we
Speaker 2: were hunting where there was really nothing specific to keep
Speaker 2: the birds in one spot. There's no dreamy picked cornfields
Speaker 2: for the birds to end up in on each day
Speaker 2: where they would feed, no multi generational roots, because they
Speaker 2: can roost just about anywhere down there, and when the
Speaker 2: weather is nice they do. There's not much of a
Speaker 2: pattern to those birds because they live in a mono
Speaker 2: habitat where you know, this thousand acres is exactly like
Speaker 2: the next thousand acres. It felt like hunting big woods
Speaker 2: bucks honestly, or hunting elk in Colorado in an over
Speaker 2: the counter unit. They are where you find them today
Speaker 2: and they're probably not going to be there tomorrow. Those
Speaker 2: hybrid birds we were hunting down there, they also happen
Speaker 2: to live in a place where they are highly stockable.
Speaker 2: The sand hills are this fascinating type of habitat with
Speaker 2: rolling grassy hills. You know, often ridge after ridge after ridge,
Speaker 2: all more or less running in the same direction, and
Speaker 2: between those ridges are lush meadows, so it goes meadow ridge,
Speaker 2: meadow ridge, meadow ridge, and on, and in between those
Speaker 2: ridges are scattered pine trees, you know, cedars, the kind
Speaker 2: that offer you really good cover for stalking. They're all
Speaker 2: over the countryside, and the birds in the meadows pretty visible,
Speaker 2: the birds on the ridges somewhat visible, and the birds
Speaker 2: that gobble a decent amount are awful easy to pinpoint
Speaker 2: in that country. The season is long down there, and
Speaker 2: when there is an option to run down a bird
Speaker 2: and set up close or just bush whack it, that's
Speaker 2: what most folks do. There aren't a lot of pop
Speaker 2: up blinds sold in that part of the state, is
Speaker 2: my guess. Decoy sales are probably pretty low too. Locator calls,
Speaker 2: on the other hand, probably make up a bulk of
Speaker 2: the turkey sales down there. Now. The problem with this
Speaker 2: is the popular way to do it results in a
Speaker 2: lot of dead birds, but also a lot of survivors
Speaker 2: who are real hesitant to announce their presence. They're also
Speaker 2: real hesitant to loaf away in the meadows, at least
Speaker 2: on the public dirt weaver hunting hunting them like the
Speaker 2: average hunter, where the goal is to cover ground until
Speaker 2: you hear see one, is a strategy that really dies
Speaker 2: on the vine as the weeks pass. A better bet.
Speaker 2: We found out a little bit too late on our
Speaker 2: hunt was to set up in the cover, use good decoys,
Speaker 2: pay attention, and be patient. Those birds would come in,
Speaker 2: and they'd come in fast and usually quietly. It's a
Speaker 2: different kind of hunt. Now, if you think deer hunting
Speaker 2: doesn't follow the same trajectory, think again. I've hunted places
Speaker 2: where the deer absolutely know that they are most likely
Speaker 2: to get shot by some cameo clad dude up in
Speaker 2: a tree. They look up a lot, and they don't
Speaker 2: put up with much in the way of poor stand setups.
Speaker 2: I've also hunted deer, primarily out west, who simply haven't
Speaker 2: caught onto the program yet. I've killed bucks out there
Speaker 2: from six feet up that never once looked at me,
Speaker 2: even when I was in a tree that was barely
Speaker 2: big enough to hold a pine squirrel. It doesn't matter
Speaker 2: what style of stand or saddle you use. If you're
Speaker 2: hunting where the deer look up a lot, you might
Speaker 2: be better off bucking the train and figuring out how
Speaker 2: to kill them from the ground. You might also notice
Speaker 2: that every hunting show you watch has a host who
Speaker 2: will happily rattle, grunt, snort, wheeze at the bucks they
Speaker 2: see and often when they don't see a buck, just
Speaker 2: to get something to happen. And you might think, well,
Speaker 2: I'm gonna call my butt off when I get into
Speaker 2: the woods because it sure looks like it works. But
Speaker 2: then you hike out to your favorite spot on public
Speaker 2: land and you rattle just like everyone else, and guess what,
Speaker 2: very few booners come running into pose up at twenty yards.
Speaker 2: I know it's shocking. The trends are everywhere, and they
Speaker 2: mostly aren't your friend. Now. I know that I've often
Speaker 2: said you need to find your own path out there,
Speaker 2: which is kind of really what this episode is all about,
Speaker 2: and I believe it. But I also think that harboring
Speaker 2: a deep need to be a hunting contrarian is super important,
Speaker 2: particularly if you happen to hunt pressure ground. This is
Speaker 2: because what most people do on any given hunt doesn't
Speaker 2: work very well. The styles, the strategies, and tactics that
Speaker 2: most hunters attempt just aren't very effective. The big buck
Speaker 2: tricks that you can read about or watch tutorials on
Speaker 2: YouTube about mostly don't work. Most of the stuff people
Speaker 2: do to try to kill deer and especially big bucks,
Speaker 2: almost never ever works. How's that for depressing? You have
Speaker 2: to acknowledge this, and then you have to figure out
Speaker 2: what does work for you and how you can lean
Speaker 2: into whatever that is to further increase your odds. It
Speaker 2: also pays to learn how to hunt other stuff and
Speaker 2: broaden your horizons. The way to become a good hunter
Speaker 2: is to learn about what the deer do, and not
Speaker 2: learn what other people think the deer do or what
Speaker 2: other people say deer do. The real path is to
Speaker 2: learn that stuff for yourself, to figure out that yes,
Speaker 2: you probably should hunt mornings in the early season, or no,
Speaker 2: you probably shouldn't use a buck decoy on public land
Speaker 2: on November seventh, because the deer have been hunted super
Speaker 2: hard every day and they aren't likely to see your
Speaker 2: fake buckster and walk in sideways with their eyes rolled
Speaker 2: and their fists baled up, all ready to throw down.
Speaker 2: This is what I'm going to talk about in the
Speaker 2: entire next year on the podcast. If I'm being honest,
Speaker 2: It's been two full years of white tail hunting, and
Speaker 2: I'm ready to talk about other stuff. I want to
Speaker 2: talk about Western hunting and how it applies to white tails.
Speaker 2: I want to talk about spot and stock hunting. I
Speaker 2: want to talk about why pheasant hunting will make you
Speaker 2: a better deer hunter, and why it's just worth to
Speaker 2: go do these things. Maybe how learning to call a
Speaker 2: turkey will help you call on elk, and how learning
Speaker 2: to be patient for one critter will help you be
Speaker 2: patient for all critters. Now, I'm not going to abandon
Speaker 2: the white tail entirely, trust me, so don't bail yet.
Speaker 2: But instead, the next year of this podcast is going
Speaker 2: to be about hunting other stuff in hunting in ways
Speaker 2: that aren't all that common in the deer woods. But
Speaker 2: everything we do with our gear and our hunts is
Speaker 2: tethered to the whitetail in some way. The connections might
Speaker 2: not make sense on the surface, but my job is
Speaker 2: to make sure they get there. I think the strategy
Speaker 2: of becoming a hunting jack of all trades is better
Speaker 2: than trying to become a master of one. I know
Speaker 2: that's probably counterintuitive to a lot of folks, but I
Speaker 2: believe it's a viable path to success in the outdoors,
Speaker 2: and I believe it's going to become more viable as
Speaker 2: the years pass and it becomes tougher to do just
Speaker 2: any old hunt. We might set our sights on the
Speaker 2: availability of tags and hunting opportunities is tightening up. You
Speaker 2: might not get to hunt elk, but you might get
Speaker 2: a chance to hunt antelope. You might lose your favorite
Speaker 2: deer property to some city slicker with more money than
Speaker 2: hunting skill, and you might find yourself tramping around on
Speaker 2: ground that anyone can tromp around on. You might not
Speaker 2: get permission to hunt deer, but maybe you'll get small
Speaker 2: game permission somewhere. Change is inevitable, and I think we
Speaker 2: are entering a world of white tails and hunting in general,
Speaker 2: where if you're not trying to get better, you better
Speaker 2: have some real disposable income. I know that might sound depressing,
Speaker 2: and honestly, it kind of is, but it's also sort
Speaker 2: of a cosmic call to action from Mother Nature herself.
Speaker 2: Even though we want hunts to happen the way we
Speaker 2: want them to happen, it rarely works that way for
Speaker 2: most of us. And even though we might not be
Speaker 2: interested in grouse hunting or bear hunting or whatever they
Speaker 2: might be, the opportunities we have to spend time in
Speaker 2: the woods when we aren't in a tree stand targeting deer,
Speaker 2: or when for whatever reason we just can't get into
Speaker 2: a tree stand to target deer. I also plan on
Speaker 2: covering concepts that are not directly tied to white tails,
Speaker 2: but do affect our white tail hunts. You know how
Speaker 2: to use your gear to the fullest ability. Why understanding
Speaker 2: your own shortcomings is important. How pressure on public land
Speaker 2: roosters or maybe public land meal deer is in a
Speaker 2: hell of a lot different from pressure on public land
Speaker 2: white tails. And if you can figure out one, you
Speaker 2: can figure out all of them. You know, stuff like that,
Speaker 2: So please stick with me as we shift gears in
Speaker 2: the podcast for the next year and dive into a
Speaker 2: deeper pool of general hunting, one that will always revolve
Speaker 2: around the white tails, even if the orbit isn't quite
Speaker 2: as tight as it used to be. I think you'll
Speaker 2: find there's plenty to think about and plenty to consider
Speaker 2: if you want to become a better hunter overall, a
Speaker 2: better woodsman or woodswoman. Is that a thing has to
Speaker 2: be anyway. Next week I plan to start this process
Speaker 2: and talk a little bit about spotting and stalking and
Speaker 2: how much fun it is, how it ties to white tails,
Speaker 2: and how if you have any inkling at all, you
Speaker 2: should probably try to find a spot in stock hunt
Speaker 2: before it's too late. And lastly, I just want to
Speaker 2: say thanks again for your support. This weird little podcast
Speaker 2: is a lot of fun to produce, and I hope
Speaker 2: you keep getting something from it because that means a
Speaker 2: lot to me, just as much as your overall support
Speaker 2: has over the last few years. That's it. I'm Tony Peterson.
Speaker 2: This has been the Wire to Hunt Foundation's podcast, which
Speaker 2: is brought to you by furs As. I always thank
Speaker 2: you so much for your support. And if you want
Speaker 2: more white tail content or more hunting content, maybe just
Speaker 2: want to watch a cool series like our new buck
Speaker 2: Truck series out there, head on over to them meeteater
Speaker 2: dot com and you're gonna see all kinds of articles
Speaker 2: and videos and links to podcasts and everything. Basically, if
Speaker 2: you want to get a hunting fix, that's where you
Speaker 2: need to go.