Speaker 1: Welcome to the Wired to Hunt Foundations podcast, your guide
Speaker 1: to the fundamentals of better deer hunting, and now your
Speaker 1: host Tony Peterson. Hey everyone, welcome to the Wire to
Speaker 1: Hunt 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 hunting to kill, not just hunting for the sake
Speaker 1: of hunting. If you don't think there's a difference, keep listening.
Speaker 1: Every once in a while, something so simple but profound
Speaker 1: smacks me upside the head like a tether ball. Does
Speaker 1: anybody actually play tether ball anymore? While hunting elk earlier
Speaker 1: this month, I had a realization as I watched some
Speaker 1: meal deear spook from their beds that I can very
Speaker 1: easily switch between hunting to kill and hunting to hunt,
Speaker 1: but only one, you know, really serves me most of
Speaker 1: the time. So how's that, my friends? Clear as the
Speaker 1: average southern river that can barely hold a population a catfish.
Speaker 1: If so, keep listening and I'll try to make this
Speaker 1: a hell of a lot easier to understand. The forecast
Speaker 1: was actually pretty great. If you're an ambush guy and
Speaker 1: I am, and you are not a great caller, which
Speaker 1: I also am a high pressure system, had rolled over
Speaker 1: a never to be named over the counter unit in Colorado,
Speaker 1: and I had pointed my truck down into the left
Speaker 1: for solo road time. My elk hunting partner, who by
Speaker 1: the way, is a savage in the mountains, had been
Speaker 1: scouting elk hard for us. He had also been keeping
Speaker 1: tabs on some meal deer and a few bears, since
Speaker 1: we both had tags for just about everything that might
Speaker 1: walk by on one of our calling setups, or more
Speaker 1: likely into a and or a small water hole to
Speaker 1: grab a drink. Tyler knows mountain animals better than anyone.
Speaker 1: And if there is a sidebar to this podcast, it's
Speaker 1: that hunting with someone who is really, really good is
Speaker 1: such a benefit. I know that sounds simple, but I'm
Speaker 1: not joking here. This is something you see and I
Speaker 1: don't know just probably just about every facet of life.
Speaker 1: If you play guitar, find someone who is better than you.
Speaker 1: They can teach you something or at the very very least,
Speaker 1: motivate you to get better. If you have a bird dog,
Speaker 1: spend some time around a good trainer. If you are
Speaker 1: a dipship white tail hunter trying to level up on
Speaker 1: your high country Western game. Do what you can to
Speaker 1: buddy up with someone who knows what they're doing. It's
Speaker 1: a true game changer. So anyway, even though I had
Speaker 1: sworn to never, ever, ever, ever hunt the first week
Speaker 1: of elk season in Colorado again after a few earlier
Speaker 1: season not so great hunts, life and you know, just
Speaker 1: the hectic schedule of it all got in a way
Speaker 1: this year and it was first week or nothing for me.
Speaker 1: The plan, instead of being a straight up call fest
Speaker 1: like a dreamy elk hunt, was going to involve a
Speaker 1: mix of ambush sits and some rolling around calling, but
Speaker 1: it would be soft cow calling. We knew the bugling
Speaker 1: wasn't likely to cut it, so we knew that we
Speaker 1: had to do some other stuff to be successful. Here's
Speaker 1: a thing, though, you can know what you need to
Speaker 1: do to be successful and still not do it. In fact,
Speaker 1: that's the point of this whole podcast. And let me
Speaker 1: tell you something. If you do just that, you're not alone.
Speaker 1: We all do it. It's kind of our default mode
Speaker 1: and it's something we should, at the very least all
Speaker 1: think about. Now. This didn't hit me until the second
Speaker 1: day of my hunt with Tyler the first day, after
Speaker 1: packing in the previous afternoon before the opener and setting
Speaker 1: up our bivy camps, I greeted the elk world while
Speaker 1: person a stand over a pretty damn good looking pond.
Speaker 1: As the sun rose, which was not readily visible to
Speaker 1: me for hours, considering I was tucked eight down in
Speaker 1: a bowl, the thermal stayed pretty consistent, which is always
Speaker 1: nice in the mountains. An hour into the morning, I
Speaker 1: saw a lone dough sneak off to go bed. I thought,
Speaker 1: it's cool, at least I'm around some mealie's. An hour
Speaker 1: after that, I heard a cow call in the dark
Speaker 1: timber above me, and then a lone bull bugle. It
Speaker 1: felt like it was a matter of time. An hour
Speaker 1: after that, I heard the unmistakable sound of elk crashing
Speaker 1: through the brush, and I watched his two young but
Speaker 1: legal bulls circle around behind me at maybe eighty yards.
Speaker 1: It felt like I was in the epicenter of elk
Speaker 1: activity and that the heat of the midday would bring
Speaker 1: down a thirsty bull or some cows. It really didn't
Speaker 1: even bother me too much when two crusted the ridge
Speaker 1: above me, gave me a dejected wave and then bugled
Speaker 1: with all their might as they worked out of my life.
Speaker 1: But then it went dead, and I had songbirds to
Speaker 1: watch and those annoying dwarf mountain chipmunks, but that was
Speaker 1: about it as I sat there baking away while the
Speaker 1: sun melted my snacks. Now, eventually the old spun enough
Speaker 1: to get the sun out of my life, and the
Speaker 1: evening set in. All felt right, but no bowl showed up.
Speaker 1: I spent a shade over fourteen hours on stand that day,
Speaker 1: and while it was physically the easiest day of my
Speaker 1: elk hunting career, mentally it was one of the toughest.
Speaker 1: Next morning, I settled back in there and I thought,
Speaker 1: there's no way a bull won't get thirsty today and
Speaker 1: come in at some point. But by eleven am I
Speaker 1: had had enough. I climbed down throughout my pack and
Speaker 1: I hiked up to the nearest ridge to make some
Speaker 1: coffee and hunt like you're supposed to when you're in
Speaker 1: the mountains. While sipping some expired Starbucks instant coffee and
Speaker 1: looking at on X, I decided to sneak through a
Speaker 1: long band at dark timber just to see what I
Speaker 1: could find. And what I found was dead, calm, steep
Speaker 1: timber that was not really ideal for stalking. The only
Speaker 1: animals I encountered were two meal deear does that let
Speaker 1: me get to like ten yards before they busted out,
Speaker 1: which not only scared to live and shite out of me,
Speaker 1: but also reminding me of something. When I was sitting
Speaker 1: on stand, I was hunting to kill. The conditions favored
Speaker 1: that setup, and the odds were that if I spent
Speaker 1: enough time, something should visit and offer me a high
Speaker 1: odd shot. Instead, I was not very skillfully sneaking around
Speaker 1: the mountains, which was basically just hunting to hunt, and
Speaker 1: even though it was what my heart wanted, I knew
Speaker 1: it was a bad idea. Well. I eventually overrode my
Speaker 1: instincts and I climbed into that stand for the rest
Speaker 1: of the day. At one point in the mid afternoon,
Speaker 1: I had a nice five point bull come running in randomly,
Speaker 1: but he ran right into my scent stream, where he
Speaker 1: pulled a one eight so fast it was almost like
Speaker 1: it didn't happen. That two second encounter. That was my
Speaker 1: action for the day, other than those meal here that
Speaker 1: I blew out. Now. The following morning brought more of
Speaker 1: the same Tyler and I decided we weren't around the
Speaker 1: concentration of elk. He hoped we would be in that spot,
Speaker 1: So we pulled our camp and hiked into a different
Speaker 1: pond to sit. And while they're just waiting on a
Speaker 1: bowl to come in, we noticed a brand new trail
Speaker 1: camera on a tree. And then we looked over to
Speaker 1: our left and saw that there was a tree over
Speaker 1: the pond that had been trimmed very recently by a chainsaw,
Speaker 1: and it was even outfitted with a brand new climbing
Speaker 1: stand on the bottom. You could call that strike two.
Speaker 1: I suppose the third spot, we packed for five days
Speaker 1: of bivvy life and hiked in. This time I brought
Speaker 1: a saddle and three climbing sticks because the water was
Speaker 1: six miles deep. Now, I mean the water that I
Speaker 1: was gonna hunt was six miles into the mountains. I
Speaker 1: wasn't hunting a mountain pond that was six miles deep.
Speaker 1: It was also surrounded by elk and meal, deer, rubs,
Speaker 1: fresh tracks, and is beautiful of a location to hang
Speaker 1: off of a tree as I've ever seen in my life.
Speaker 1: When I saw it, I told myself, I'm gonna sit
Speaker 1: here as long as the wind works for me for
Speaker 1: as many hours as I have to. I mean, it
Speaker 1: was only going to get drier, was only going to
Speaker 1: get hotter, and the elk should have only been getting
Speaker 1: pushed up to us by the day as more and
Speaker 1: more people hunted lower and pushed him up. The first evening,
Speaker 1: I saw nothing except a turkey, which was kind of
Speaker 1: a surprise. At ten thot the next morning, I didn't
Speaker 1: even see a turkey. But that afternoon I climbed in
Speaker 1: just as the thermal started a suck down the mountain,
Speaker 1: and ten minutes later I heard the sound of a
Speaker 1: stick crack. Then another three bowls were on their way in,
Speaker 1: and while the lead bowl didn't like what he smelled,
Speaker 1: he didn't spook too hard, and he eventually gave me
Speaker 1: a shot. The shot didn't go as well as I hoped,
Speaker 1: mostly because it was pretty much the point where I
Speaker 1: was melting down to nothing from elk fever. But it
Speaker 1: went well enough that he only went two d yards,
Speaker 1: so I'm not going to complain about it. The bowl,
Speaker 1: you know, probably a squeaker into pope and young and
Speaker 1: way better than I could have hoped for. He came
Speaker 1: from a few different things. The first that I have
Speaker 1: to give credit to is Tyler scouting. That was huge.
Speaker 1: The next was that the conditions were just right for
Speaker 1: sitting water. The third was that I was hunting there
Speaker 1: to kill, not wandering around hunting for the sake of hunting.
Speaker 1: That one is important. Think about how often we do
Speaker 1: this to ourselves in the white tail world. The easiest
Speaker 1: to understand, and probably the best way to really frame
Speaker 1: this up is the field edge stand, or hell, any
Speaker 1: stand with a lot of visibility. Now you know, if
Speaker 1: you hunt western white tails on a river bottom, every
Speaker 1: stand option might fit into this category. But even then,
Speaker 1: especially if say I don't know the hunting public, guys
Speaker 1: shoot a big buck in your spot and then the
Speaker 1: masses show up to repeat Zach success, those open country
Speaker 1: deer will suddenly become small pockets of cover. Type of
Speaker 1: deer pressure pushes deer into the cover period. It just does.
Speaker 1: And the reason the dear behaves so differently on those
Speaker 1: sportsmen's channel shows is because you're literally watching deer that
Speaker 1: received little to no hunting pressure. The bucks that stroll
Speaker 1: into a food plot and broad daylight are bucks that
Speaker 1: have done so for years without neg of repercussions. If
Speaker 1: you're hunting those deer, then you don't need this podcast
Speaker 1: if you're not think about it this way. How often
Speaker 1: do you think those soldiers over in Ukraine walk straight
Speaker 1: across the field on their way to the front lines.
Speaker 1: Probably not often, because even if it might be a
Speaker 1: poor comparison, danger is danger. Expose yourself to it unnecessarily.
Speaker 1: That's a dumb idea, My friends, Deer aren't soldiers, and
Speaker 1: either are we. But we are the worst thing to
Speaker 1: happen to dear since wolves. Hell, We're worse in some ways.
Speaker 1: They know it, and the more we remind them of it,
Speaker 1: the more they say, I think I'm just going to
Speaker 1: hang out in this thicket to avoid all those elm
Speaker 1: or fud sitting on the edges of fields and staring
Speaker 1: down cleared power lines. We know this, yet we go
Speaker 1: sit where we want to sit. Why. First off, we
Speaker 1: just have our favorite setups. We all have a spot
Speaker 1: or two that is just a confident spot, and seeing
Speaker 1: a few deer almost every time we hunt is often
Speaker 1: good enough. But what if that spot is the same
Speaker 1: spot where you never ever ever see a good buck.
Speaker 1: I have a spot like that on a farm in
Speaker 1: southern Minnesota. I love hunting it it's good morning or evening,
Speaker 1: it doesn't matter. Early in the year, late in December.
Speaker 1: It's one of the most consistent stand sites for seeing
Speaker 1: deer that I've ever found in my life. But I've
Speaker 1: only ever seen a handful of good ones in there,
Speaker 1: and I've only ever killed one. The man hours on
Speaker 1: stand there versus the tags filled on good bucks, it's
Speaker 1: not so great. We just can't help ourselves, though, So
Speaker 1: instead of going to where the deer like to go
Speaker 1: to avoid us, we ride out these dead programs and
Speaker 1: try to spruce them up with calls or sense or whatever.
Speaker 1: But that's a lost cause mostly as well. Deer, just
Speaker 1: like elkin turkeys, are most collable where they are most comfortable.
Speaker 1: I've talked about this a lot, and they are most
Speaker 1: comfortable where they feel the least amount of danger. I
Speaker 1: actually think, and this might sound Captain Coco Puffs crazy
Speaker 1: the pressure, deer just generally grow suspicious of open areas
Speaker 1: in daylight. They use them, and boy will they leave
Speaker 1: plenty of deceptive sign in these areas as they rub, scrape,
Speaker 1: and throw deer level raves at midnight in these spots,
Speaker 1: but daylight moving in these areas that's a different story
Speaker 1: even during the rut. And I know you're sad to
Speaker 1: hear that, but it's true. The rut can make those
Speaker 1: spots better, but they won't be as good as some
Speaker 1: staging area back in the thick stuff, or a banging
Speaker 1: crossing on a ridge top located deep in the timber.
Speaker 1: Knowing that, how do you fight that immense gravity of
Speaker 1: hunting where you want to hunt instead of hunting some
Speaker 1: spot to kill. Well, this is what's cool about hunting,
Speaker 1: and a lot of non theoretical science. You can test
Speaker 1: this ship out. You want to sit a meadow on
Speaker 1: some public land in Nebraska, because it's absolutely ringed by scrapes,
Speaker 1: go ahead, do it. Sneak in there and set up,
Speaker 1: then pay attention to what you see. The deer will
Speaker 1: show you all you need to see to know if
Speaker 1: it's worth hunting. And man, you should listen to them.
Speaker 1: If it's just does and fawns and scrappers, and then
Speaker 1: just does and faons and then just random deer. The
Speaker 1: spot was okay to begin with, but is burned out
Speaker 1: now and you're hunting a spot just to hunt it.
Speaker 1: You know, the same goes for just about any spot.
Speaker 1: If you hunt it because you like hunting it, but
Speaker 1: not because of what the deer do there. You're hunting
Speaker 1: to hunt. Scouting in season scouting is probably the best key,
Speaker 1: the most important thing to break out of that mindset,
Speaker 1: but it's also worth considering the odds. Again, this is
Speaker 1: just head game stuff, but it helps me because when
Speaker 1: I'm hunting to kill, I'm often not seeing that many deer,
Speaker 1: but I do get a boost from my confidence in
Speaker 1: a spot. I think, Well, it's mid October, the rut
Speaker 1: is too far off to save me. The pressure from
Speaker 1: a month of the season has been pretty intense, and
Speaker 1: the weather is mild. What are the odds of a
Speaker 1: big buck coming into a bean field and shooting light
Speaker 1: right now where I hunt in most places? Not so great?
Speaker 1: So what would give me better odds? A buck browsing
Speaker 1: his way along an old clear cut? Yep, those are better.
Speaker 1: What if that edge of a clear cut offers him
Speaker 1: a pretty safe travel route, given prevailing I don't know,
Speaker 1: westerly winds. Well, now that's even better. Now what if
Speaker 1: that route also takes him across a little stream where
Speaker 1: he can grab a drink while staying deep in the cover.
Speaker 1: Now we're talking but the downside is that I have
Speaker 1: to go in extra early because the hike is far
Speaker 1: and I want to be quiet. I also noticed that
Speaker 1: since it's thick in there, my visibility is gonna be
Speaker 1: pretty limited. Couple that with the reality that I only
Speaker 1: have a couple of good shooting lanes to the best trail,
Speaker 1: and now I know that my sip might be boring
Speaker 1: and full of anxiety if a good one does show.
Speaker 1: But what are the odds if I hunt that way?
Speaker 1: I'm hunting to kill. It's a spot where a good
Speaker 1: one should be, and if the sign supports it, I
Speaker 1: have every reason to believe that's true. So while it's
Speaker 1: easier and less stressful to hunt to hunt, I have
Speaker 1: a better chance of having a good encounter if I
Speaker 1: do some extra work and I hunt to kill. But
Speaker 1: you want to know what's worse than that? Though this
Speaker 1: almost never works, I mean it does, but it's hunting,
Speaker 1: so it mostly doesn't. That might mean that you have
Speaker 1: to hunt to kill through several spots in a season
Speaker 1: just to get one chance. But I would rather have
Speaker 1: one good close encounter with a buck who thinks he
Speaker 1: has won the game than some long distance sightings from
Speaker 1: an easier set up with better visibility. Do you know why,
Speaker 1: Because my odds are outsmarting him and killing him in
Speaker 1: a spot like that are higher. They still aren't great,
Speaker 1: but they are much better than if I phone it
Speaker 1: in and I sat a standard. I just like to
Speaker 1: sit because the hike is easy. It takes me three
Speaker 1: yards from the truck and will almost guarantee a sighting
Speaker 1: of some kind of ear the there's a difference to
Speaker 1: this stuff, my friends. I bet if you could follow
Speaker 1: around some of the best public land white tail hunters
Speaker 1: out there, you'd spend far more time in the thick
Speaker 1: stuff than you would in the open. In fact, I
Speaker 1: know you would if you were so lucky to be
Speaker 1: guided on a hunt by some of those folks. You'd
Speaker 1: also start to develop a little bit of claustrophobia over
Speaker 1: the spots you sat in because they'd be tight, but
Speaker 1: the first crack of a stick or the first sighting
Speaker 1: of a big brown body coming your way would change
Speaker 1: things in a hurry. You'd feel it like that tether
Speaker 1: ball swinging tightly around a pole and slapping you straight
Speaker 1: in the dome. You'd realize that you're not hunting the
Speaker 1: spot just for the sake of hunting. But you're sitting
Speaker 1: somewhere on the belief that you will kill there right now.
Speaker 1: To me, there is no better feeling. Now, maybe you're
Speaker 1: different and deer hunting is just purely an excuse to
Speaker 1: escape the suckiness of normal life. That's perfectly okay, and
Speaker 1: I'm real happy for you to have that outlet. But
Speaker 1: if you want more out of hunting, and it means
Speaker 1: something to you to come out of the woods heavier
Speaker 1: than you went in, then ask yourself off. Ask yourself
Speaker 1: all season long when you go to sit, am I
Speaker 1: hunting to hunt today? Or am I hunting to kill?
Speaker 1: Do that and tune in next week because I'm gonna
Speaker 1: break down confidence and how important it is to not
Speaker 1: only be a successful hunter, but also to level up
Speaker 1: your enjoyment of hunting. That is it for this week,
Speaker 1: my friends. I'm Tony Peterson. This has been the Wire
Speaker 1: to Hunt Foundations Podcasts, which has brought to you by
Speaker 1: First Light. As always, I want to thank you from
Speaker 1: the bottom of my heart for your support for this
Speaker 1: podcast and for all of our Meat Eat content. I
Speaker 1: really appreciate it. If you want to support us more
Speaker 1: while leveling up your white tail game. Further, check out
Speaker 1: our how to videos on the Wire to Hunt YouTube channel,
Speaker 1: and visit the meat eater dot com slash wire to
Speaker 1: read weekly articles by Mark myself and a whole bunch
Speaker 1: of deer killers