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
Speaker 2: House Tony Peterson, and today's episode is all about breaking
Speaker 2: down edges because I keep getting asked about it and
Speaker 2: I feel like there needs to be a definitive, once
Speaker 2: and for all podcasts on understanding edges when it comes
Speaker 2: to white tail habitats and behaviors, just about every day,
Speaker 2: after driving my daughter's somewhere or pick them up from somewhere,
Speaker 2: or usually both, it reminds me of how weird it
Speaker 2: is that so many people we know won't make their
Speaker 2: sixteen year olds get their licenses these days. That definitely
Speaker 2: was not the case when I was growing up. And
Speaker 2: once you're the designated uger driver and door dasher, a
Speaker 2: grub hubber, lifter, shape shifter, whatever of the family, you
Speaker 2: start to fantasize about your kids being able to get
Speaker 2: places without your help. That's not really what this episode
Speaker 2: is about. But during a recent trip to the middle
Speaker 2: school to drop off my daughters, I realized something about
Speaker 2: deer hunting that I'm going to talk about right freaking now.
Speaker 2: If you're not married to a complete and total psycho,
Speaker 2: you might not know this, but there are unfrosted pop
Speaker 2: tarts for sale at grocery stores across the US, and
Speaker 2: I can only guess probably the world. I didn't even
Speaker 2: know they existed until I got married. Growing up, when
Speaker 2: I did, we ate a lot of food that was
Speaker 2: just barely barely real food. I'd rank pop tarts in
Speaker 2: this category, along with toaster strudels, lucky charms, and most
Speaker 2: of the stuff that my sister and I ate while
Speaker 2: we wondered where our parents were. Now, I wouldn't say
Speaker 2: that I eat a lot of pop tarts these days,
Speaker 2: because that would be a lie. We do always seem
Speaker 2: to have a steady supply of them, and they mostly
Speaker 2: get into our house after I shop for hunting or
Speaker 2: fishing trips. I don't know what it is, but I
Speaker 2: never really want a pop tart ever. But if I'm
Speaker 2: going to be hunting out of a tent for five days,
Speaker 2: I will load up on those some bitches and eat
Speaker 2: very few of them, so then they come back home
Speaker 2: and live in the pantry until I have a moment
Speaker 2: of weakness and I just need something quick. My wife,
Speaker 2: on the other hand, you know, the previously mentioned lunatic
Speaker 2: always has a stash of pop tarts. And here's the kicker.
Speaker 2: They are always unfrosted. She prefers them that way. Here's
Speaker 2: my advice to all you young bucks listening who think
Speaker 2: that maybe the right dough can make your life better.
Speaker 2: Don't take a dough back to your bedding area if
Speaker 2: you think she might be the kind of dough who
Speaker 2: intentionally eats unfrosted pop tarts because she prefers them. I
Speaker 2: know there's a lot to unpack here, but I think
Speaker 2: you can hear that giant red flag flapping in the
Speaker 2: morning wind. I don't understand it. There are only two
Speaker 2: good parts to pop tarts, the frosting and the filling.
Speaker 2: The rest is cardboard grade crust that is just basically
Speaker 2: like the caloric equivalent of attacks on your sugary bonus.
Speaker 2: I don't even like it when whoever or whatever food
Speaker 2: producing robots get a little lazy and the frosting ratio
Speaker 2: on my pop tarts gets thrown off, you know the
Speaker 2: ones where instead of a nice rectangle of frosting on top,
Speaker 2: it's all shifted to one end or the other, like
Speaker 2: the conveyor belt hit warp speed for a second, and
Speaker 2: the frosting paintbrush just couldn't keep up. Gross anyway, even
Speaker 2: a perfectly frosted pop tart has a fair amount of
Speaker 2: real estate that is unfrosted, and that sucks. They could
Speaker 2: do better, but they don't because at some point you
Speaker 2: just look at a product like that and go, eh,
Speaker 2: that's enough of this shit. They'll eat it anyway, and
Speaker 2: they're right, Bill. We will also feed them to our
Speaker 2: children when we need to take them to school, because
Speaker 2: they have giant tagboard science fair projects that and I'm
Speaker 2: not making this up, nearly tore our family apart because
Speaker 2: it was a lot to ask of sixth graders, and
Speaker 2: a lot to ask of six grader parents, who, you know,
Speaker 2: like they do in the nineteen eighty sitcoms. Really keep
Speaker 2: the whole science fair industry from growing belly up because
Speaker 2: we do all the freaking heavy lifting. Anyway, my daughters
Speaker 2: needed to get their science fair projects to school safely
Speaker 2: and early, so I had to drive them in. The
Speaker 2: route is I don't know, maybe five miles, and we
Speaker 2: often see a few turkeys are deer along the way
Speaker 2: mixed in with the morning traffic. We also drive past
Speaker 2: this giant cattail slew that is pock marked with tiny
Speaker 2: islands of trees, and right through the center this kind
Speaker 2: of subtle line of saplings. When I say line, I
Speaker 2: actually mean it. I don't know if someone planted them,
Speaker 2: which seems kind of unlikely, or if there's just a
Speaker 2: sliver a high ground in there, maybe something that was
Speaker 2: artificially created to help with drainage or something. It doesn't matter,
Speaker 2: because what inevitably happens is I drive down that road
Speaker 2: by their school. I said, I look at that very faint,
Speaker 2: subtle edge in that cattail sleugh and I feel a
Speaker 2: strong desire to walk it. It's a similar feeling to
Speaker 2: driving by a lake or going on a bridge over
Speaker 2: some trout or smallmouth river. There's just some serious gravity
Speaker 2: to certain natural settings that pull us in so we
Speaker 2: can see what fish live there or what deer have
Speaker 2: left rubs on the saplings. Now, listen, I wouldn't want
Speaker 2: to hunt this property. I don't have any desire for
Speaker 2: that due to its location the makeup of the habitat,
Speaker 2: but I just want to walk that edge and pat
Speaker 2: myself on the back when I inevitably find rubs in there,
Speaker 2: because you know they're there. It's just one of those
Speaker 2: things where if you spend enough time inhaling cattail fuzzs
Speaker 2: while chasing roosters or trying to find deer beds, there's
Speaker 2: just some consistencies out there, and that's fun to find
Speaker 2: over and over. Another consistency in the white tail world
Speaker 2: that I've noticed recently, and which plays nicely with the
Speaker 2: idea of edges that I'm going to really dive into here,
Speaker 2: is that I almost never find deer antlers or deer
Speaker 2: beds without feeling like I'm walking through something thorny. This
Speaker 2: might seem like a dumb point, but pay attention to
Speaker 2: that when you're out there this winter. Pay attention when
Speaker 2: you're hunting next fall. Maybe when you're going mobile, or
Speaker 2: when you're blood trailing a deer that hasn't been hit perfectly.
Speaker 2: You'll often realize that you're being careful with the path
Speaker 2: you choose and where you put your hands because there
Speaker 2: are pokey plants all around. I ran into this last
Speaker 2: October while hunting Oklahoma public dirt with Steve. The best
Speaker 2: spot I found was in one hundred yard wide strip
Speaker 2: of timber that funneled deer threw on their way to bed,
Speaker 2: but not before they got a belly full of acorns
Speaker 2: and per simmons. The first buck I arrowed in there
Speaker 2: was a tiny spike where he died. Was just kind
Speaker 2: of a little nightmare to get through. The next buck
Speaker 2: I killed, and the deer Steve killed in there all
Speaker 2: pretty much follow the same program. And it made me
Speaker 2: realize that even though I considered myself to be hunting
Speaker 2: an edge pattern already, just because of the overall shape
Speaker 2: of the woods, inside of that strip of timber was
Speaker 2: a world of smaller edges. It's kind of like fishing
Speaker 2: for smallies or walleyes in a boulder field. If you
Speaker 2: find the edge where it meets mud or sand, you
Speaker 2: will find fish, but you'll also graft piles of boulders
Speaker 2: inside of it, and smaller patches of sand or mud
Speaker 2: that create smaller edges throughout the general area of the fisher.
Speaker 2: Relating to we often think of edges in terms of
Speaker 2: hard edges, like where the swamp meets the hardwoods, or where
Speaker 2: a pine plantation meets a patch of CRP. Those are edges,
Speaker 2: no doubt, just like the edge of a bean field
Speaker 2: or a food plot or a clearcut is also an edge,
Speaker 2: an easy to identify edge that a lot of people
Speaker 2: will be drawn to, and they're hunting setups in fact.
Speaker 2: But there is so much more more to it than
Speaker 2: those hard edges that every hunter out there can easily
Speaker 2: identify that edge in the cattails by my daughter's school,
Speaker 2: That one might contain one hundred saplings in total, and
Speaker 2: it would be really easy to miss. You wouldn't even
Speaker 2: be able to hunt it from the middle, because you'd
Speaker 2: essentially be either right on top of where the deer
Speaker 2: are going to go, or you'd be hunkered down in
Speaker 2: six foot cattails, listening to them as they walk by,
Speaker 2: but probably not being able to see them. So what
Speaker 2: good does that soft edge in the middle of a
Speaker 2: nearly impenetrable piece of cover do for you? Well, it
Speaker 2: tells you how they'll get through that slew for starters,
Speaker 2: and that's not nothing this game of white tail hunting.
Speaker 2: If you're not in a situation where you can manipulate
Speaker 2: the land to get them to come to you. Is
Speaker 2: all about figuring out where they lie to walk, and
Speaker 2: then figuring out if where they like to walk also
Speaker 2: takes them through a spot that gives you some kind
Speaker 2: of advantage, you know, a spot that allows you to
Speaker 2: set up somewhere while hiding your presence and surprising them
Speaker 2: with an arrow through their chest cavity. This is the
Speaker 2: whole game. And I'll tell you something else. I've been
Speaker 2: finding a lot of random scent wicks hanging in trees
Speaker 2: this winter while I'm out winter scouting and shed hunting.
Speaker 2: Here's the deal on that, my friends. If you want
Speaker 2: to use scents, go ahead, but think about this. If
Speaker 2: you know where a buck is going to walk, where
Speaker 2: he'll be close enough to smell that scent and will
Speaker 2: come in, you already know enough to not need that scent.
Speaker 2: You know enough to not have to go leave more
Speaker 2: than the scent of bottle Dopey down there, because you're
Speaker 2: gonna have to go in and hang that wick. If
Speaker 2: you think that doesn't send mixed messages to passing bucks,
Speaker 2: you're probably wrong. They can smell that synthetic dopey or
Speaker 2: that doughinestra scent that was probably not collected from a
Speaker 2: doan estris. And they also smell you in some way
Speaker 2: because you were there and you handled that wick, and
Speaker 2: so did whoever made it and packaged it, not to
Speaker 2: mention the brush you touched while hanging it and the
Speaker 2: noise you made as well. You sent, don't you sent?
Speaker 2: I don't care, but I do care. If you think
Speaker 2: about why you're setting up in a specific spot and
Speaker 2: why you think that a quarter ounce of dopey on
Speaker 2: a cent wick is the final piece of the puzzle
Speaker 2: for that setup, it might be can work, but think
Speaker 2: about what you're doing, think about why the deer would
Speaker 2: be there, or why they'd pass too far away for
Speaker 2: you to shoot them, and maybe think about changing your
Speaker 2: setup if you can. This might seem like I'm talking
Speaker 2: in circles or that I got distracted by a squirrel here,
Speaker 2: but the benefit to figuring out soft edges in the
Speaker 2: world of white tails is that they tend to give
Speaker 2: you options for your setups. Let's say hypothetically that you're
Speaker 2: walking through the woods. You know, a nice deciduous forest
Speaker 2: with old growth trees, and you're thinking that maybe it'd
Speaker 2: be a good place to hunt when the acorns are
Speaker 2: dropping fair enough, there's nothing wrong with that plan. But
Speaker 2: then you see an old barber ware fence. It's intact
Speaker 2: in some places, but in others it's sagging or held
Speaker 2: down by fallen trees. It's also just kind of this
Speaker 2: little vein of brush and shrubs in in otherwise pretty
Speaker 2: open woods. You know, maybe there's a few vines that
Speaker 2: have climbed up and used the old fence like lattice
Speaker 2: work on a house. That line of cover in the woods.
Speaker 2: That soft edge might be fifty yards longer, it might
Speaker 2: be five hundred. It might have one good crossing or many.
Speaker 2: It will almost undoubtedly convince the deer to parallel it,
Speaker 2: but also to cross through it at specific points. Anytime
Speaker 2: you find that you have a spot that gives you
Speaker 2: two chances to encounter deer, you know, the parallel traveler
Speaker 2: and the jumping across travelers. My right mass says that
Speaker 2: doubles your chances of seeing deer, although that might not
Speaker 2: be true. Who instead of finding one good crossing and
Speaker 2: calling it good enough, walk the length of it, find
Speaker 2: all the crossings, find where it hangs across a ravine
Speaker 2: or where it ends completely. You know, dude to time
Speaker 2: and disrepair. The more you investigate, the more you'll find
Speaker 2: setups for the morning or the evening, or a north
Speaker 2: wind and a west wind, all from a stupid fence
Speaker 2: in the woods that has created a soft edge. The
Speaker 2: same rules apply when you're dealing with swamps, when you're
Speaker 2: dealing with timber harvest in the big woods or not
Speaker 2: so big woods, anywhere the two types of habitat meet
Speaker 2: up is an edge, and those edges are all over
Speaker 2: out there, and the deer use them a lot. And
Speaker 2: the reason for this is, well, remember what I said
Speaker 2: about thorns being a good sign you might be around
Speaker 2: deer antlers, or deer beds, or hell, real live deer
Speaker 2: throughout the season. Well, soft edges like that represent a
Speaker 2: boundary between where some hunters will go, but where most won't.
Speaker 2: That's almost it. We can say that they might like
Speaker 2: soft edges for the brows, which could certainly be true.
Speaker 2: We can say it's a great option to allow for
Speaker 2: escape should the sudden need arise, which is also true.
Speaker 2: There are a lot of reasons for deer to relate
Speaker 2: to edges. This means more than you might think. Consider
Speaker 2: what the typical deer hunting strategies hinge upon feeding areas.
Speaker 2: If you don't know where the food is, good luck
Speaker 2: betting areas, find them and all of your big buck
Speaker 2: woes are over. But not really. It's good knowledge, for sure,
Speaker 2: but food and betting is highly variable when it comes
Speaker 2: to actionable choices. Then you have edges places deer will
Speaker 2: stage walk, browse, bed, and cruise for company. If you
Speaker 2: don't know anything about deer and you want to start somewhere,
Speaker 2: this is a good place to start. This is especially
Speaker 2: true if you're hunting a place with some pressure. The
Speaker 2: easy stuff, particularly the easy food in the nice open woods.
Speaker 2: Those places are hunter magnets. They concentrate pressure. Very few
Speaker 2: weekend warriors or average hunters are out there trying to
Speaker 2: figure out an edge pattern. And edges are also highly
Speaker 2: visible on aerial photography, which is a huge advantage for you.
Speaker 2: The downside to this is they are everywhere. That cat
Speaker 2: tail slewed by my daughter's school has that cool little
Speaker 2: spine of saplings that I consider an edge, but it
Speaker 2: also has a bunch of little islands of trees and
Speaker 2: a mix of plumb thickets and dogwood thickets. All edges
Speaker 2: within edges within edges. Then you have mode yards around it,
Speaker 2: which represent another edge. Then you have busy roads and
Speaker 2: not so busy roads. In that little forty acresh chunk,
Speaker 2: you might find all kinds of edges that either draw
Speaker 2: deer traffic or possibly repel it, like in the case
Speaker 2: with certain roads or certain bodies of water, certain wide
Speaker 2: open pastures that are full of cows. It's an easy
Speaker 2: concept on paper to understand, but gets a lot muddier
Speaker 2: when you try to figure this stuff out in person.
Speaker 2: But the good news this is the kind of thing
Speaker 2: that transcends states and regions. It's something that a Florida
Speaker 2: hunter will deal with while messing around into palmeadows and
Speaker 2: trying not to get eaten by a giant swamp lizard
Speaker 2: or carried away by biblical swarms of mosquitoes. It's actionable
Speaker 2: in Pennsylvania on public land when you're on top of
Speaker 2: the mountain or roaming the valleys below. The Midwest the South.
Speaker 2: Those wonderfully dumb Western white tails who don't look up
Speaker 2: too often, it's good for them too, So if you're
Speaker 2: struggling to kill big bucks, or more importantly, just have
Speaker 2: more enjoyable hunts when you feel you're putting yourself in
Speaker 2: the game versus just sitting the same field edge and
Speaker 2: crossing your fingers. Go out there now, look around, Ask
Speaker 2: yourself where you can see hard edges on aerial photos
Speaker 2: and soft edges. Look at them from a bird's eye view,
Speaker 2: and then go look at them in person. Pay attention
Speaker 2: to the sign particularly the trails. Are there parallel trails
Speaker 2: along the soft edge or just one or two that
Speaker 2: cut right through it for some reason. Then follow the
Speaker 2: advice of last week's show and ask yourself why. The
Speaker 2: more you do this now, the more you'll give yourself
Speaker 2: an edge this season. It'll take you from the spots
Speaker 2: that literally any hunter with a season or two hundred
Speaker 2: his belt could find to something most hunters don't even
Speaker 2: look for. This not only helps you actually find overlook
Speaker 2: good hunting locations, but it also puts you in the
Speaker 2: mindset of thinking differently from your competition. That's probably the
Speaker 2: most valuable asset a hunter could have when dealing with
Speaker 2: pressure ground, and honestly, often when dealing with lightly pressure ground,
Speaker 2: Because even if the deer on your lease rarely get pressured,
Speaker 2: they probably spend time on the neighbor's place at some
Speaker 2: point they deal with typical hunters somewhere, and if they don't, well,
Speaker 2: you're probably not going to listen to this podcast because
Speaker 2: you probably don't need any help killing. If you do,
Speaker 2: think about those edges, my friends, go look at them now.
Speaker 2: Don't wait until turkey season when it's green and the
Speaker 2: ticks are all over. Go now and come back next
Speaker 2: week because I'm going to talk about hunting around predators,
Speaker 2: the four legged kind. That's it for this week. I'm
Speaker 2: Tony Peterson. This has been the Ware to Hunt Foundation's podcast,
Speaker 2: which is brought to you by First Light. As always,
Speaker 2: thank you so much for listening and for all your support.
Speaker 2: Everybody here at Meat Eater we love you to death.
Speaker 2: We wouldn't be anywhere we would be able to do
Speaker 2: anything without you, so thank you for your support. If
Speaker 2: you want more white tail content, or you just want
Speaker 2: to check out some cool hunting videos or some other
Speaker 2: podcasts or whatever, themeatheater dot com is your place to go.
Speaker 2: So much content there for you to check out. Thanks again,
Speaker 2: talk to you next week.