Speaker 1: Welcome to the Wired to Hunt Foundations podcast, your guide
Speaker 1: to the fundamentals better dear hunting, presented by first Light,
Speaker 1: creating proven versatile hunting apparel through the stand Saddler Blind,
Speaker 1: First Light, Go Farther, Stay Longer, and now your host
Speaker 1: Tony Peterson. Hey, everybody, 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's episode is all
Speaker 1: about how to figure out where bucks live and more importantly,
Speaker 1: where they like to travel. Listen, it doesn't matter if
Speaker 1: you run a thousand trail cameras and you scout, you
Speaker 1: know every day of your life. There's just going to
Speaker 1: be aspects of a buck's life that are just not
Speaker 1: available to you. This is true even for the deer
Speaker 1: that are raised on sweet properties that are designed to
Speaker 1: keep bucks around. And granted, in that scenario, there are
Speaker 1: quite a few less secrets than there are. Say on
Speaker 1: I don't know public land in Georgia or Wisconsin or wherever.
Speaker 1: The truth is, bucks do what they do, so we
Speaker 1: won't know what they do, and our best bet to
Speaker 1: figure out what they do is to scout them with
Speaker 1: an eye toward what we are missing. How's that for
Speaker 1: a word salad tasty? Anyway, this whole episode is about
Speaker 1: how to figure out where bucks spend most of their
Speaker 1: time so you can be there this fall when they
Speaker 1: slip up and move in the daylight. If you head
Speaker 1: on over to northern Africa Egypt, to be more precise,
Speaker 1: you'd see that the Pyramids of Giza are the premier
Speaker 1: tourist attraction. These structures, built like forty five hundred years ago,
Speaker 1: have been a source of awe for humans for a
Speaker 1: long long time. We still don't really know how they
Speaker 1: built them, and theories range from thousands and thousands of
Speaker 1: workers building massive ramps and pulley systems to cut and
Speaker 1: move the giant stones, to help from other worldly visitors
Speaker 1: insert crazy hair guy. I'm not saying it was aliens,
Speaker 1: but it was definitely aliens meme here. While some of
Speaker 1: the construction aspects are a tantalizing mystery, it's safe to
Speaker 1: say that the pyramids are just freaking cool. They've also
Speaker 1: been studied for a long long time. We know that
Speaker 1: they were built as tombs, which makes sense since Egypt's
Speaker 1: pharaohs fully expected that once they'd reached the afterlife, they'd
Speaker 1: become gods. The pyramids are also a treasure trove of
Speaker 1: art and explanations for a life at that time. There's
Speaker 1: scenes of farming and religious rituals, and livestock tending and
Speaker 1: even fishing can be found in the walls and pictographs
Speaker 1: and hieroglyphics. These stone structures provide an amazing glimpse into past.
Speaker 1: They also keep revealing their secrets. In early March, it
Speaker 1: was revealed that the discovery of a hidden, unfinished corridor
Speaker 1: had been made through the use of non invasive scanning technology. Essentially,
Speaker 1: scientists use infrared thermography, cosmic ray imaging, and three D
Speaker 1: simulations to look through the pyramids. What they found in
Speaker 1: early March was that they'd previously missed a thirty foot
Speaker 1: long corridor that is located not far from the main
Speaker 1: interests of the Great Pyramid of Giza. Now, while the
Speaker 1: Great Pyramid of Giza isn't small, it measures about four
Speaker 1: hundred and sixty feet tall with a base of about
Speaker 1: seven hundred and fifty six square feet, it's not so
Speaker 1: big that, after a couple hundred years of serious scientific scrutiny,
Speaker 1: you'd expect there to be too many secret chambers left uncovered.
Speaker 1: This isn't Harry Potter here, but they are still finding them.
Speaker 1: And that, my friends, is a good lesson for all
Speaker 1: of us deer hunters, because you can look, use the
Speaker 1: best newest technology, and you're still going to miss things.
Speaker 1: What's worse is you think you might have the whole
Speaker 1: thing dialed. I promise you. Over there in that hot
Speaker 1: African sun, there were some archaeologists who said with conviction
Speaker 1: that there were no chambers left to be discovered in
Speaker 1: the Great Pyramid, and they were obviously wrong. We often
Speaker 1: think like that as deer hunters. We say, well, I
Speaker 1: don't know. They feed here, they sleep the day away there,
Speaker 1: and the space between is where they travel. And it
Speaker 1: can be that simple on paper, but it rarely plays
Speaker 1: out that way in real life. Conditions change, hunting, pressure
Speaker 1: influences movement, and deer have enough free will to walk
Speaker 1: one way to day in a different way tomorrow, and
Speaker 1: they might not even know why. But there are patterns
Speaker 1: to their behavior, just like there are patterns to our behavior.
Speaker 1: And I don't mean them as individuals, although that also
Speaker 1: certainly holds true. What a buck does today very well
Speaker 1: might do tomorrow. I think this is one of those
Speaker 1: things in deer hunting that we often get wrong, though,
Speaker 1: which is that we think of behavior in terms of
Speaker 1: the individual. This probably has a lot to do with
Speaker 1: the one buck hunt mentality that is all the rage
Speaker 1: right now and listen. As much as I personally feel
Speaker 1: that the hit list name every buck something stupid type
Speaker 1: of hunting is a little bit cringey, I also think
Speaker 1: there's a lot of value in learning an individual bucks behavior,
Speaker 1: but I think to get better as a hunter, learning
Speaker 1: what bucks plural do is way way better. I want
Speaker 1: to give you two examples of this to kind of
Speaker 1: frame my whole thought process up here. I've talked a
Speaker 1: few times about bucks I've bumped that have come back
Speaker 1: through within a pretty short period of time. The first
Speaker 1: time this happened to me, it was two bucks better
Speaker 1: than a ridge as far back on a property in
Speaker 1: southeastern Minnesota as I could go, and still beyond that
Speaker 1: landowner's property. I was headed in to hang and hunt
Speaker 1: over a natural seep on a bluff side that I
Speaker 1: had found while spring scouting. The two deer I jump
Speaker 1: both look like pretty good bucks, and after I set up,
Speaker 1: the first two deer I saw were those bucks coming back,
Speaker 1: and they were indeed pretty good, like one twenty and
Speaker 1: a one forty type of buck, which you know, at
Speaker 1: that time was huge to me. A fast forward a
Speaker 1: whole lot of years, and the last time I drew
Speaker 1: an Iowa tag, I bumped a couple of doughs in
Speaker 1: a good buck looking for a place to set up,
Speaker 1: And not long after I did set up, the first
Speaker 1: year to come back was the buck, and he was
Speaker 1: big enough to burn an Iowa tag on. Dear, behavior
Speaker 1: transcends the individual, just as human behavior transcends the individual.
Speaker 1: Now you know, we all know the bump and dump
Speaker 1: thing that people talk about with bucks, but that's a
Speaker 1: luck of the draw type of encounter. Honestly, most of
Speaker 1: the time, where bucks walk and where they live is
Speaker 1: far more reliable if you can figure it out. So
Speaker 1: let me give you another example. Growing up and after
Speaker 1: I got into the hunting industry, I noticed an awful
Speaker 1: lot of bucks getting shot after walking or running right
Speaker 1: out into open fields and food plots. On the videos
Speaker 1: I watched, the articles I read netted in whatever. It
Speaker 1: was like the big deer couldn't help themselves, and they
Speaker 1: had no qualms about sprinting into the wide open to
Speaker 1: chase dos or grab a mouthful of clover. But in
Speaker 1: my own life that never happened, or if it did,
Speaker 1: and that was rare, it was always tied to a
Speaker 1: major front passing through and conditions that were often windy
Speaker 1: or rainy and not great for the casual hunter who
Speaker 1: might prefer a little more fair weather type of sit
Speaker 1: I also realized, on those perfect nights, like in late
Speaker 1: October early November, I still wouldn't see bucks come out
Speaker 1: into the open stuff in broad daylight, but I would
Speaker 1: sometimes see them staging and cutting corners off the food.
Speaker 1: After enough of those encounters, you start to put together
Speaker 1: some thoughts, like, geez, those bucks never sprint out here
Speaker 1: into the wide open, but once in a while, when
Speaker 1: the wind is right, they seem to cut the corners
Speaker 1: of the field while staying in the cover or I
Speaker 1: don't know. In other words, they're just taking the safest
Speaker 1: route possible to scent check a field. They use their
Speaker 1: nose to tell them everything they need to know about
Speaker 1: danger and the potential for a one night stand, and
Speaker 1: they stay in the cover where they are far less
Speaker 1: likely to encounter a hunter. Since most hunters can't help themselves,
Speaker 1: but sit right on the field edge. Simple survival behavior,
Speaker 1: and if you hunt pressure deer, you can count on
Speaker 1: some of the bucks figuring this trick out. I've seen
Speaker 1: this in multiple states, always well, not always, but often
Speaker 1: on public land, and it's often pretty apparent. If you
Speaker 1: go out and winter scout, which you should, you'll see
Speaker 1: rubs leading out to the food sources, which tells you
Speaker 1: what you already knew. You'll see rubs leading away from
Speaker 1: the food sources, which tells you again what you already knew.
Speaker 1: Bucks leave the cover to go feed, and then they
Speaker 1: leave the food to go to bed. But you'll also
Speaker 1: see rub lines paralleling the open stuff, but far enough
Speaker 1: back in the cover to be interesting, and you'll often
Speaker 1: see a concentration of rubs off the back corners of fields.
Speaker 1: This is two things, and both are worth understanding. The
Speaker 1: simple explanation is they stage there waiting on darkness to
Speaker 1: go out do their thing, or when they leave the
Speaker 1: food in the morning, kill a little bit of time
Speaker 1: before they go back to bed. But they're also cutting
Speaker 1: those corners and taking in the whole scene from the
Speaker 1: safety of the cover so they don't encounter you. The
Speaker 1: parallel to the open trail stuff. That tells you a
Speaker 1: lot too a pressure buck is rarely, and I mean rarely,
Speaker 1: going to spend time in the open when he doesn't
Speaker 1: have to. Sure, he could get to the bedding area
Speaker 1: on some knob by walking right across the cut cornfield
Speaker 1: in the morning, but he's not going to do that
Speaker 1: most of the time. Most of the time he's going
Speaker 1: to slip into the timber and work his way back
Speaker 1: through the The good thing is he's killable there when
Speaker 1: he does that, just like he's killable when he cuts
Speaker 1: corners while sent checking doze. But you need to get
Speaker 1: in there ahead of him and hunt him like your
Speaker 1: competition won't. If you go out winter scouting, look for
Speaker 1: those rubs to tell you what I'm telling you. You'll
Speaker 1: get bonus points on some of your inside corner scouting
Speaker 1: if you find a community to scrape back off the
Speaker 1: open stuff, because you probably will. Now some of you
Speaker 1: listeners are thinking, well, I don't hunt where the dirt
Speaker 1: is black and productive and grows corn ten feet tall,
Speaker 1: and the bucks are dumb. Listen, I hear your cluck
Speaker 1: in their big chicken, So think about buck travel in
Speaker 1: another way, like I don't know you hunt the big woods,
Speaker 1: and they could go any damn where they please. Fine,
Speaker 1: look for rubs, then look for soft edges or hard edges.
Speaker 1: Then when you find both, which you will because bucks
Speaker 1: are suckers for edges, you have something to work with.
Speaker 1: The deal here, whether you're up north in the swamps
Speaker 1: or down south somewhere in the swamps, is finding some
Speaker 1: spot where the randomness of big woods travel suddenly isn't random.
Speaker 1: I'll give you an example. I spent a lot of
Speaker 1: years trying to figure out a property in northern Wisconsin.
Speaker 1: In fact, I'm still trying to figure it out, and
Speaker 1: this place is section after section of timber and swamps.
Speaker 1: One year I killed a decent eight pointer who was
Speaker 1: playing a stupid game of skirting the parking area to
Speaker 1: go from some bedding knobs to some flats to feed.
Speaker 1: When I went back the following spring to winter scout
Speaker 1: the area, I found a massive bed on a ridgetop.
Speaker 1: Standing in that bed, I could see rubs leading up
Speaker 1: and down the ridge and a rub line heading straight
Speaker 1: down to the creek bottom, where I killed a buck
Speaker 1: on an old, long abandoned logging road that happened to
Speaker 1: pass between two swamps. It's a classic funnel. Now that
Speaker 1: randomness of deer travel in the Big Woods isn't quite
Speaker 1: as random. It also led to a spot where I
Speaker 1: killed a different buck a few years earlier along that
Speaker 1: creek bottom, but that he wasn't following the creek. He
Speaker 1: was following the edge of a clear cut, a soft edge.
Speaker 1: He was heading up the ridge to bed on it
Speaker 1: somewhere after a morning and doing his thing in mid October. Now,
Speaker 1: there were three years between those two Bigwoods buck kills,
Speaker 1: and I'm still figuring out their travel there. But the
Speaker 1: lesson is the bucks betting there now and using that
Speaker 1: huge tract of public are probably still relating to the
Speaker 1: same spots where I was killing deer quite a few
Speaker 1: years ago, and a hell of a lot of that
Speaker 1: sign is out there waiting to be discovered by some hunter.
Speaker 1: But let me break it down a little bit further.
Speaker 1: If you hunt big timber, you will see from year
Speaker 1: to year a lot of what looks like randomness in movement.
Speaker 1: This is especially true the flatter the country is, because
Speaker 1: there are a fewer pinch points and terrain traps. The
Speaker 1: oak that's dropping this week might draw deer from one
Speaker 1: direction while some kind of soft mast next week might
Speaker 1: draw them from another direction. In my opinion, if that
Speaker 1: matters at all, if you hunt flat big woods and
Speaker 1: you consistently kill decent bucks, you could probably just about
Speaker 1: go anywhere and get it done. It's tough shit, but
Speaker 1: there are always edges somewhere to work with. There's always
Speaker 1: something they're going to give you a little clue into.
Speaker 1: And this might be a swamp edge, which is kind
Speaker 1: of always a buck magnet. Or it might be the
Speaker 1: edge of some meadow or some type of wetland that
Speaker 1: is soggy but not swimmable. It might be a seven
Speaker 1: year old clear cut next to a one year old
Speaker 1: clear cut, or an old growth forest that hasn't heard
Speaker 1: the wine of chainsaws for forty years. Whatever the edge,
Speaker 1: if you find it, you probably have found a spot
Speaker 1: where bucks like to travel throughout the season. But you know,
Speaker 1: this is painting with broadbrush type of thinking too. What
Speaker 1: many deer do, many more will do kind of thinking.
Speaker 1: I guess. It also seems like individual properties also seem
Speaker 1: to have their own quirkiness, where bucks almost always take
Speaker 1: this trail but not that one. This is where trail
Speaker 1: cameras and in person observation really shine. I have a
Speaker 1: spot like this in northern Wisconsin that I'm going to
Speaker 1: put my daughters on this fall. It's going to take
Speaker 1: some work and be a different kind of hunt than
Speaker 1: what they're used to, but I can't ignore the trail
Speaker 1: camera intel anymore. For a few years, I've left cameras
Speaker 1: soaking to cover that spot. And it's a spot where
Speaker 1: not only the bucks cut through to avoid the neighbor's
Speaker 1: small hayfield where they keep their horses, but they move
Speaker 1: at all hours of the day through there. It's a
Speaker 1: patch of timber that is connected to several sections of
Speaker 1: swampy big woods cover. I'm confident by looking at the
Speaker 1: aerial photos and talking to the neighbors randomly that even
Speaker 1: though the hunting pressure is pretty intense in the area,
Speaker 1: there aren't too many people hunting that big timber. And
Speaker 1: a benefit here is because baiting is legal there, and
Speaker 1: so my neighbors are sitting over cornpiles in places they
Speaker 1: can drive their four wheel or two, and this place
Speaker 1: is just not that easy to access. So bucks know it,
Speaker 1: and they know they walk through there and rarely encounter hunters.
Speaker 1: But they're gonna this year. Those guys you know around there.
Speaker 1: They're all sitting in the edges of openings. And you
Speaker 1: know who knows that. Like I said, it's the bucks.
Speaker 1: While they could just but walk anywhere through that cover
Speaker 1: and be relatively safe from bow hunters, they lean real
Speaker 1: heavy on one trail. I can speculate why, but it
Speaker 1: doesn't matter because the evidence is clearly visible when I
Speaker 1: check my trail cameras every year. This, in my humble opinion,
Speaker 1: is important. If I know one trail on a property
Speaker 1: that is more likely to host some buck travel than
Speaker 1: any other, I can plan my entire fall around it.
Speaker 1: I can go in when the conditions should put bucks
Speaker 1: on their feet and it gives me a wind advantage.
Speaker 1: I can avoid it when the odds of an encounter
Speaker 1: are lower because I don't have that wind advantage or
Speaker 1: the bucks shouldn't be on their feet. I can force
Speaker 1: myself to pay extra special attention when I do hunt
Speaker 1: it because I want to know exactly how they approached
Speaker 1: the spot and how they'll leave it. Because the buck
Speaker 1: I'm hunting today he might not be around tomorrow, but
Speaker 1: eventually another buck will be. So maybe the best question
Speaker 1: to ask when you're trying to figure out where bucks
Speaker 1: travel on your hunting ground. Is why when you see
Speaker 1: the rubs, or you get a trail camera pick, or
Speaker 1: you make an in person observation, ask yourself what he's
Speaker 1: doing there. It wasn't random. It wasn't random when the
Speaker 1: forky walk through, and it won't be random when one
Speaker 1: hundred and sixty five inchro walks through. What convinced a
Speaker 1: buck to do what he did, because it'll convince other
Speaker 1: bucks to do the same thing. What can you learn
Speaker 1: about buck travel in general? And what can you learn
Speaker 1: about buck travel that is specific to the ground you hunt.
Speaker 1: Take another example here, cattail sluse talk him out all
Speaker 1: the time. I love them. I love them for what
Speaker 1: they offer pheasants and deer, and as a hunter, I'm
Speaker 1: pretty interested in both those critters. And there are some
Speaker 1: universal truths about cattail slows. As long as they aren't
Speaker 1: too wet, bucks are gonna bed in them. And even
Speaker 1: if they are pretty wet, those deer often find some
Speaker 1: high spot and use it to their advantage. This is
Speaker 1: like universal behavior because the cover is that good. They'll
Speaker 1: also travel from point A to B, often at the
Speaker 1: narrowest point of the slough pretty consistently. Again, it's a
Speaker 1: pretty universal behavior. It lets them get to where they
Speaker 1: need to go while working as little as possible and
Speaker 1: staying in the most protective cover. That's pretty smart behavior
Speaker 1: for a prey animal. But if you break down individual properties,
Speaker 1: you'll see that while buck's behavior transcends specific ground, it
Speaker 1: also caters itself too specific ground. If there is a
Speaker 1: cattail slu that has a finger that extends up into
Speaker 1: a draw the main slough, you can bet your ass
Speaker 1: that a buck will bed there at some point because
Speaker 1: he knows he now has an extra escape route that
Speaker 1: allows him to get him away if he needs it.
Speaker 1: He also probably has some kind of thermal hub or
Speaker 1: at least some type of wind advantage there as well,
Speaker 1: which is going to be tied directly to the terrain.
Speaker 1: So you can know that bucks bed in and travel
Speaker 1: through cattiles flows in a specific way. But then you
Speaker 1: can look at an individual property and probably call your
Speaker 1: shots for exactly or at least approximately where they'll bed.
Speaker 1: That's powerful stuff and you can use it to your advantage.
Speaker 1: You should too, And I know you're sick of me
Speaker 1: saying this, but the window for figuring out the winter scouting.
Speaker 1: Part of this stuff is closing hell. You might still
Speaker 1: have some snow like we do and are looking at
Speaker 1: a couple of weeks left of it, you know, but
Speaker 1: you're going to have a real melt at some point
Speaker 1: and before the onslaught of ticks, you need to get
Speaker 1: out there. You need to use that time figure out
Speaker 1: where bucks like to travel. And you need to tune
Speaker 1: in next week because I'm going to talk about paying
Speaker 1: attention and how easily we get distracted and how hard
Speaker 1: staying on the mission is for most of us. That's it.
Speaker 1: I'm Tony Peterson and this has been the Wire to
Speaker 1: Hunt Foundations podcast, which has brought to you by First Light.
Speaker 1: As I always, thank you so much for listening, And
Speaker 1: if you want some more whitetail content, you can of
Speaker 1: course check out the regular Wire to Hunt podcast, or
Speaker 1: you can head on over to thumbetter dot com slash
Speaker 1: wired and see a pile of hunting articles from guys
Speaker 1: like Dylan Tramp and Any May and Alex Gilstrom and
Speaker 1: Beaumartonic and Mark Kennan and myself. Head on over there.
Speaker 1: Tons of info