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 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 has brought to you by First Light.
Speaker 1: I'm your host, Tony Peterson, and today I'm going to
Speaker 1: talk about how shed antler hunting helps you learn to
Speaker 1: really look for details, which is a skill all deer
Speaker 1: hunters should work to development. This is actually my favorite
Speaker 1: time of year to shed hunt. The snow is sort
Speaker 1: of looking like it might kind of sort of almost
Speaker 1: melt away soon, and that means every day that the
Speaker 1: old sun is shining, there's a chance for me to
Speaker 1: look past the bootprints of all the other shed hunters
Speaker 1: to maybe see some times poking out of the snow.
Speaker 1: It's that sweet window where the ticks come out, and
Speaker 1: it's usually comfortable to walk for quite a while. With
Speaker 1: the most productive shed days happening between now and Turkey season,
Speaker 1: it's also a good time to work on your war's waldo.
Speaker 1: Looking skills which not only benefit you as a shed hunter, obviously,
Speaker 1: they really come into play when you're actually hunting, Dear,
Speaker 1: in the fall, When I'm driving somewhere with my family,
Speaker 1: like many of you, I'm sure if we are near
Speaker 1: fields or woods and not right in the old concrete jungle,
Speaker 1: I'm always looking for critters, dear, mostly, but you never
Speaker 1: know what you'll see, and I suspect most of you
Speaker 1: probably do the same thing when you're driving. If you
Speaker 1: also happen to have a wife who grew up in
Speaker 1: the cities and two daughters who are following that regretful
Speaker 1: life path that I try every day to change, you'll
Speaker 1: notice they can't see for shit. No, no, I mean
Speaker 1: their vision is fine technically, but their ability to see
Speaker 1: animals is pretty rough, really rough. I remember driving up
Speaker 1: north to the lake about four years ago and looking
Speaker 1: out my driver's side window to see a pretty good
Speaker 1: black bear standing in a hay field not very far
Speaker 1: off the highway. Like any good dad, I freaked out
Speaker 1: and yelled for everyone to look at the bear, and
Speaker 1: it was the miracle of all miracles, but my entire
Speaker 1: family saw the bear. Now last year, after leaving Lake
Speaker 1: Malax with the whole family. I spotted another bear at
Speaker 1: the back of another hayfield. Now it wasn't as visible
Speaker 1: as the first bear, but it was still a real dark,
Speaker 1: dark like a shadow kind of spot in a bright
Speaker 1: green field, and pretty obvious to the trained eye. To
Speaker 1: the untrained eyes of my family members, that bear was
Speaker 1: like the predator when that dude who dry shaves during
Speaker 1: the movie is sneaking up to kill him, only to
Speaker 1: get And this is a spoiler here bested by the
Speaker 1: most invisible intergalactic trophy hunter kind of guy out there,
Speaker 1: which the whole series is based on, the same thing
Speaker 1: happens when we're in the woods. Hell, it happens all
Speaker 1: the time on the water. In fact, maybe that's a
Speaker 1: better example to highlight this. I've spent most of my
Speaker 1: life looking into water to see what finned creatures might
Speaker 1: be looking back from site fishing bass like a fiend,
Speaker 1: to fly fishing crystal clear trout streams, and even bow
Speaker 1: fishing a variety of water across the Midwest. I've stared
Speaker 1: into a lot of fish's eyes, and when I fish
Speaker 1: with people who haven't, which is pretty often, they seem
Speaker 1: like they can't see a freaking thing. It's not that
Speaker 1: I'm so much more awesome than them, although that could
Speaker 1: be the case, the reality is that they just haven't
Speaker 1: spent hundreds and hundreds of hours honing that skill. Learning
Speaker 1: to look for specific details is one of the cornerstones
Speaker 1: of being a good hunter. I'll never forget being in
Speaker 1: Argentina several years ago and staring at the sky looking
Speaker 1: for rose bills and other random Southern Hemisphere ducks, only
Speaker 1: to be totally humiliated by the guides with us, some
Speaker 1: of whom weren't born yet when I was already finishing college.
Speaker 1: It was humbling. But those dudes grew up on those
Speaker 1: rivers that carry waters through the heart of the Amazon rainforest.
Speaker 1: They also stake their paychecks and more importantly, their tips
Speaker 1: from clients on the ability to see birds as early
Speaker 1: as possible so they can work the right calls or
Speaker 1: tell they're clueless clients to get down and get ready
Speaker 1: to shoot. This is a learned skill. But you're not
Speaker 1: going to sit in the woods every day trying to
Speaker 1: spot deer before they spot you. That's just not going
Speaker 1: to happen. So you have to fill in the gaps
Speaker 1: and guess what you can do that right Now, my friends,
Speaker 1: this is the time to go out and find some
Speaker 1: antlers anyway, since you have nothing else to do. But
Speaker 1: don't just go for a walk in the woods hoping
Speaker 1: to stumble across a match set. You should shed hunt
Speaker 1: with a purpose. And now I probably should explain that
Speaker 1: it sounds like I'm advocating guerrilla warfare or style el
Speaker 1: shed hunting, which I'm sure is the go to strategy
Speaker 1: for someone out there somewhere, probably someone who I would
Speaker 1: have a hard time being friends with. A good day
Speaker 1: of shed hunting should make you feel it, but not
Speaker 1: the way an elk hunt, or maybe pouring concrete all
Speaker 1: day would make you feel. It's fun and should be
Speaker 1: viewed as such. But you should also do some things
Speaker 1: while you're shed hunting, to work that muscle that allows
Speaker 1: you to pick up details, important crucial little details before
Speaker 1: you walk right on buy and miss them. Now, before
Speaker 1: I tell you how to do that, I'm going to
Speaker 1: tell you how you should shed hunt to learn you're
Speaker 1: not as good at seeing those details as you think.
Speaker 1: Remember at the beginning of the podcast, when I not
Speaker 1: so humbly told you how awesome I am at seeing
Speaker 1: bears and fish and other assorted creatures. Well, I miss
Speaker 1: a lot too. I was filming a shed hunting episode
Speaker 1: for bow Hunter TV about a million of years ago
Speaker 1: when I stop to talk into the camera, which is
Speaker 1: something you're supposed to do often, but it feels kind
Speaker 1: of like taking a bath with your grandpa. I guess
Speaker 1: in some circles that would be acceptable behavior, but mostly
Speaker 1: it just feels weird and gross. Anyway, as I started
Speaker 1: imparting serious wisdom to the audience, I realized that I
Speaker 1: was standing right on top of an antler, and I
Speaker 1: mean literally right on top of it. Not only had
Speaker 1: my dog missed it, I had missed it too. If
Speaker 1: I hadn't stopped there to take a break and address
Speaker 1: the old audience, I might have never scooped that antler up.
Speaker 1: Another time, I was shed hunting with a good buddy
Speaker 1: of mine named Eric. Eric is pretty good at spotting critters,
Speaker 1: and that's what makes him good at spotting antlers. We're
Speaker 1: in one of my spots scouring the snowpack when he
Speaker 1: found a really solid five point side you know, the
Speaker 1: kind of shed that makes your shed hunting partner really jealous.
Speaker 1: And the only thing that made that a little bit
Speaker 1: worse was when he found another antler not long after that,
Speaker 1: and we figured, with the dear sign and the reality
Speaker 1: that we had already found two, we should be able
Speaker 1: to match up the big shed. So we criss crossed
Speaker 1: an area that was littered with trails and beds, and
Speaker 1: eventually I turned around on one of the trails and
Speaker 1: reverse my route and you know what I found there,
Speaker 1: laying right off the trail, poking out of the snow,
Speaker 1: a golf club. Just kidding. It was the other side
Speaker 1: to the first big antler Eric had found. My tracks
Speaker 1: were all around it, but I had missed it a
Speaker 1: few times before getting lucky. I love when stuff like
Speaker 1: that happens because it makes me realize that what I
Speaker 1: think about myself versus how I am is actually pretty different,
Speaker 1: and usually not in a good way. It happens to
Speaker 1: you too, trust me. You walk by sheds just like
Speaker 1: you miss seeing deer walking through the woods during certain conditions,
Speaker 1: or maybe when you're scrolling through social media. I can't
Speaker 1: help you with the last part, but I can't help
Speaker 1: you see more deer. Here's how you have to look more.
Speaker 1: How's that for disappointing? Okay, I'll elaborate on it. When
Speaker 1: it comes to shed hunting, you're looking for something that
Speaker 1: doesn't quite fit into the woods. You see sticks all over,
Speaker 1: down trees, leaves, snow, other elements of the forest. Which
Speaker 1: you don't see in the woods too often is the
Speaker 1: specific pattern of tines. You don't see something that is
Speaker 1: pretty white in a brown and gray world very often.
Speaker 1: Either even a hint of white or gray out there
Speaker 1: should be interesting to you, particularly if you're not shed
Speaker 1: hunting in the snow. You also don't see a nice
Speaker 1: shiny curve in the woods very often. A lot of
Speaker 1: antlers land tines down and they are hard to spot,
Speaker 1: but they also, especially in nice even light during cloudy
Speaker 1: type days, kind of just pop. It's kind of like
Speaker 1: when you're on stand and you see the white throat
Speaker 1: patch of a deer or the flicker of a tail,
Speaker 1: maybe the line of a deer's back. That's another one.
Speaker 1: For some reason, there aren't a lot of horizontal lines
Speaker 1: in the woods about three and a half feet off
Speaker 1: the ground. That detail gives away deer quite often when
Speaker 1: you're in summer scouting mode, for example, And maybe your
Speaker 1: glass and bean fields are just a slightly reddish patch
Speaker 1: in an otherwise see a green often reveals itself to
Speaker 1: be a part of a deer. Their camouflage is good,
Speaker 1: but it's not predator good. It does get a hell
Speaker 1: of a lot better when they don't move. That's when
Speaker 1: that simple brown or gray that they are covered with
Speaker 1: really does a good job for them. And often if
Speaker 1: they aren't moving and we are looking for them, we
Speaker 1: do our camel a disservice by not moving, providing the
Speaker 1: advantage to them. And they have a lot of advantages
Speaker 1: despite all of our technology. But the way to get
Speaker 1: ahead of them is to learn to look. So you
Speaker 1: go out shed hunt and that's that podcast over. Not quite.
Speaker 1: Once you've learned that you're not the antler spotting machine
Speaker 1: you tell your buddies you are, especially when you're about
Speaker 1: seven bush lattes deep in the night, you have to
Speaker 1: acknowledge how to get better. An easy way to do
Speaker 1: that when it comes to shed hunting is just to
Speaker 1: slow down. Now, anyone who knows me or better yet,
Speaker 1: who is shed hunted with me is probably laughing hysterically
Speaker 1: right now, slow walker, I am not. I don't know
Speaker 1: what to do about it, but I'm trying. People think
Speaker 1: it's hard to lose weight, and it sure can be,
Speaker 1: or maybe to start running or whatever. I think it's hard,
Speaker 1: at least as hard as anything else to just walk slow.
Speaker 1: It's almost as hard for me as it is to
Speaker 1: get a song that's stuck in my head unstuck. I
Speaker 1: recently started listening to a band called bad Omens, and man,
Speaker 1: oh man, is my family sick of hearing me sing
Speaker 1: their songs. Fortunately, they are just as annoying as me,
Speaker 1: so it all kind of shakes out pretty evenly. We
Speaker 1: all just annoy each other in this nice little family. Anyway,
Speaker 1: Try to walk slow, even if you're a born speed
Speaker 1: walker like I am. Slowing things down allows you to
Speaker 1: take in your surroundings. Now. Sure, if you're shed hunting
Speaker 1: and alfalfa field, you can probably book it pretty fast.
Speaker 1: But if you're in the woods or even the CRP,
Speaker 1: slow is better. Treat it like a speedy version of
Speaker 1: a still hunt. Walk slow stop, look, walk slow stop, look,
Speaker 1: take your time. The best way to do this is
Speaker 1: to shed hunt spots where you know there's a concentration
Speaker 1: a deer. Now, I know you're thinking, no shit, dude,
Speaker 1: I wasn't going to shed hunt where there are no deer,
Speaker 1: But that's not what I mean. Spend your time in
Speaker 1: spots where there could be an antler anywhere, betting areas,
Speaker 1: staging areas, travel hubs, Walking a cut cornfield's great, but
Speaker 1: it's not the same hunt as one that occurs in
Speaker 1: an overgrown homestead. If you get yourself into a place
Speaker 1: where the deer activity is all around, you slow way
Speaker 1: way down and look around, not just on the trail
Speaker 1: ahead of you, but the spots where a buck would
Speaker 1: peel off to nibble some brows or bed down by
Speaker 1: a deadfall. We get kind of laser focused on the trails,
Speaker 1: but the trails aren't the only places dear travel. This
Speaker 1: is the strategy that has put a lot of antlers
Speaker 1: in my backpack on public land. Honestly, I feel like
Speaker 1: a lot of shed hunters walk trails quickly, and they
Speaker 1: rarely look around for the antlers that didn't fall right
Speaker 1: on the deer highways. And you need to glass too.
Speaker 1: I know I've talked about this a lot, but glassing
Speaker 1: is an art that isn't solely destined for the world
Speaker 1: of a Western hunter. White Tail hunters who are more
Speaker 1: proficient with their binos than others see more deer obviously,
Speaker 1: they also kill more deer as they see more deer.
Speaker 1: Think about it this way, would you rather know a
Speaker 1: buck as coming your way when he is one hundred
Speaker 1: and twenty five yards out or when he's suddenly at
Speaker 1: forty When it comes to that skill, shed hunting provides
Speaker 1: a pretty unique opportunity. Now, I'm not going to say
Speaker 1: that just because you bring your binos along, you'll be
Speaker 1: spotting match sets half a mile away. But there are
Speaker 1: two times when you're shed hunting where a little glass
Speaker 1: goes a long way. The first is that open field
Speaker 1: situation I keep talking about. Sometimes you scan a field
Speaker 1: and spot something that looks awful. Ant lery out there,
Speaker 1: ant luri ant lurie looks like an antler. This happens
Speaker 1: to me rarely, but it does happen. I shot a
Speaker 1: buck in twenty nineteen that was one hundred and forty
Speaker 1: three in eight pointer with really tall bladed tines. He
Speaker 1: was a cool deer. But what was extra cool about
Speaker 1: it was that two years earlier I was standing on
Speaker 1: the edge of the wood shed hunting and I looked
Speaker 1: into a wide open alfalfa field. The only break up
Speaker 1: in the field was a couple of small terraces and
Speaker 1: drainage ditches. I glassed them anyway, just for the hell
Speaker 1: of it, and in one I saw what looked like
Speaker 1: a ghost given me the middle finger. It turned out
Speaker 1: after I walked over there to be the G two
Speaker 1: of the buck that i'd eventually shoot. I would have
Speaker 1: never seen that antler with my naked eye, and I
Speaker 1: didn't see any reason to go walk that part of
Speaker 1: the field until I glassed it. The other situation where
Speaker 1: you're shed hunting and binos come in handy is when
Speaker 1: you're in the woods and something just catches your eye.
Speaker 1: It might be twenty feet away or seventy five yards away,
Speaker 1: but it's usually something white that just doesn't quite look right.
Speaker 1: Binos will tell you a lot in that situation, and
Speaker 1: you can pretty quickly eliminate white branches or styrofoam cups
Speaker 1: or whatever, or see that it is actually an antler.
Speaker 1: Eyeglass objects in the woods all of the time that
Speaker 1: aren't antlers, but sometimes they are. The good thing is
Speaker 1: that's an exercise in getting better, just going slowly through
Speaker 1: the woods looking for details like a tine or a
Speaker 1: main beam, getting binos to your eyes and focusing quickly
Speaker 1: to assess your finding is part of the skill, and
Speaker 1: if you think that won't come in handy sometime in
Speaker 1: the fall, you're sadly mistaken, my little embrace. Shed hunting
Speaker 1: also teaches you how to look at the woods under
Speaker 1: different conditions. There are times when the light is even
Speaker 1: and those times I've talked about where shed hunting is
Speaker 1: kind of magical and the deer easy to spot. Other times,
Speaker 1: like during sunny days with plenty of shadows mixed in,
Speaker 1: were an antler or I don't know, a perfectly still
Speaker 1: deer is really tough to get a visual on. You
Speaker 1: can also use binos to assess the best routes to walk.
Speaker 1: That might seem weird, but think about it this way. Sometimes,
Speaker 1: usually when I'm in bluffy country, I don't want to
Speaker 1: drop all the way down to the bottom just on
Speaker 1: a whim. But if I suspect I can see a
Speaker 1: creek crossing that has pounded, or some other deer trail
Speaker 1: with heavy usage, it's binos to the rescue time. Maybe
Speaker 1: the trail, upon closer inspection, isn't really that beat down,
Speaker 1: or maybe it shows that it's covered in tracks and
Speaker 1: I better get down there. Maybe you're not sure, you
Speaker 1: want to do the work to check it out. But
Speaker 1: you follow that trail and you see that it intersects
Speaker 1: an old fence in the woods that deer have to jump.
Speaker 1: Now your bino work has convince you to go because
Speaker 1: you have to look at a spot like that. Do
Speaker 1: you see where all this is going? View an act
Speaker 1: like shed hunting as kind of like this point A
Speaker 1: to B transaction. I go into the woods without antlers.
Speaker 1: I come back to my truck with antlers ring that register.
Speaker 1: But it's usually not like that. You mostly won't find
Speaker 1: antlers when you shed hunt, at least if you're anything
Speaker 1: like me. But you should be looking because it's more
Speaker 1: than just about finding some bone. It's about woodsmanship. It's
Speaker 1: about developing your skills as a hunter, one of which
Speaker 1: is being able to pick up the tiniest details that
Speaker 1: might lead to the discovery of a eighty three and
Speaker 1: six point side or in about sixty seven months, a
Speaker 1: real live buck standing fifty yards away from your stand
Speaker 1: while he surveys the woods in front of him. So
Speaker 1: get out there, my friends, and know that even if
Speaker 1: you don't find any antlers, you're getting better as a hunter.
Speaker 1: And that's not nothing. And listen in next week because
Speaker 1: I'm going to talk about the stuff you'll never learn
Speaker 1: no matter how much or what kind of hunting content
Speaker 1: you consume. That's it for this week, my friends. I'm
Speaker 1: Tony Peterson. This has been the Wired to Hunt Foundations podcast,
Speaker 1: which has brought to you by First Light. As always,
Speaker 1: thank you so much for listening, and if you want
Speaker 1: some more whitetail content, you can check out our Wired
Speaker 1: to Hunt YouTube channel where we have a whole bunch
Speaker 1: of how to videos, or you can visit them meat
Speaker 1: eater dot com, slash Wired to Read articles by myself,
Speaker 1: mark dudes like Beaumartonic and Alex Gilstrom, and see all
Speaker 1: kinds of how two strategies on whitetail hunting, basically articles
Speaker 1: that cover everything you need to know