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, everybody, welcome to the Wire to
Speaker 1: Hunt Foundations podcast, which has brought to you by First Light.
Speaker 1: I'm your host, Tony Peterson, and this episode is all
Speaker 1: about keeping your presence to an absolute minimum while trying
Speaker 1: to kill a buzzer Peter Deer. It's bitter sweet. It
Speaker 1: just is watching another deer season screeched to a halt.
Speaker 1: Hopefully you had a good one. Maybe have a full freezer,
Speaker 1: and I don't know what taxidermy bill If you don't,
Speaker 1: or you're just out there trying to fill one last tag,
Speaker 1: I feel for you. I'm in the same boat. While
Speaker 1: I love late season hunting, sometimes I mostly kind of
Speaker 1: hate it for one reason. I have to be so
Speaker 1: damn careful. You probably do too, and if not, you
Speaker 1: probably either have an amazing spot or never kill anything.
Speaker 1: This episode is kind of just all about that reality,
Speaker 1: you know, the reality of treading real lightly, and honestly,
Speaker 1: it's a pretty good lesson for any part of the season,
Speaker 1: although it's most noticeable during the last gasps of a
Speaker 1: dying season. Many of you find folks are probably a
Speaker 1: little bit too young to be married yet, so you
Speaker 1: probably think life is going to be pretty sweet for
Speaker 1: a long time, and that I don't know, you'll be
Speaker 1: the master of your domain. Now, I'm sure the older
Speaker 1: already married and maybe unmarried crowd is laughing at you
Speaker 1: as I am. All of us beaten down wise old
Speaker 1: married folks. We're having a good hearty chuckle at your expense,
Speaker 1: our best ah, Count Dracula laugh perhaps, Now, why do
Speaker 1: we do this, this mocking laugh of ours, you might ask, Well,
Speaker 1: because we know better. We've been in the trenches dodging
Speaker 1: sniper fire and looking for grenades that were lobbed in
Speaker 1: our direction, and I don't know, just trying to keep
Speaker 1: our heads down and weather the old firefight. Now, some
Speaker 1: of you might argue that I'm being a bit too dramatic,
Speaker 1: and you'd probably be right, but I don't care. The
Speaker 1: thing about being married is that sometimes your spouse will
Speaker 1: get a little spicy, and not in a good way either.
Speaker 1: They'll decide that today when you should be able to
Speaker 1: lay around and watch football, or maybe tinker with some
Speaker 1: of your old fish and tackle, or take a goddamn nap,
Speaker 1: because you're forty two and you're tired, and you should
Speaker 1: be able to partake in an afternoon siesta if you
Speaker 1: so desire. They'll decide that today you have some chores
Speaker 1: to do. You'll be volunteered for cleanup of the gutters
Speaker 1: or some other crappy homeowner task you should have already done,
Speaker 1: but you spent too much time in a tree standard
Speaker 1: maybe following the labs around while trying to shoot a
Speaker 1: limited roosters. In this situation, you are done for. The
Speaker 1: crosshairs have not only settled on your forehead, but the
Speaker 1: sniper has slowed her breathing down and started squeezing the
Speaker 1: old trigger puff right into your stupid head. Goes another
Speaker 1: honeydew list bullet. That's a bummer. But there's an almost
Speaker 1: scarier time in marriage. That's when the spiciness sounds like
Speaker 1: it's coming on, but it isn't quite there. Kind of
Speaker 1: like when you're standing on a beach of a I
Speaker 1: don't know, some island somewhere and all the water sucks
Speaker 1: away and you go, I think I've heard about this before,
Speaker 1: and you realize there's potentially a tsunami coming. It's that
Speaker 1: time where you know one wrong move and suddenly you're
Speaker 1: getting the ladder out of the garage to go scoop
Speaker 1: leaf slop out of the gutters. This is tiptoe through
Speaker 1: the old living room tulips time, my friends, and if
Speaker 1: you have kids, they'll also learn pretty quickly to recognize
Speaker 1: this danger zone. The key here is discretion, subtlety, subterfuge, submarines.
Speaker 1: If you can find one to take you on an
Speaker 1: underwater escape, you have to choose every move wisely. You
Speaker 1: have to look busy and look productive without actually being either.
Speaker 1: You get bonus points and often overlooked. If that business
Speaker 1: involves putting your little allies to pretend work too, everyone
Speaker 1: must be careful not to tip their hand. It's not
Speaker 1: a dance as old as time, but I'll bet we've
Speaker 1: been doing some version of it ever since we left
Speaker 1: one too many clubs out in the corner of our cave,
Speaker 1: and our hairy but lovely Neanderthal wives grunted and grunted
Speaker 1: at us until we organized them in the corner. Do
Speaker 1: you know what this has to do with late season
Speaker 1: deer hunting? A lot? Take the moment when your lovely
Speaker 1: spouse is at peak spiciness. I mean, I don't like
Speaker 1: ghost pep per level spiciness. It's too late for you.
Speaker 1: You have to accept your fate and get to work.
Speaker 1: That's like ignoring how crunchy the snow is, or that
Speaker 1: the wind is blowing right into the main bedding area
Speaker 1: and walking into hanging hunt without thinking for one second
Speaker 1: about how much noise you'll make, or how visible you are,
Speaker 1: or how you keep clanking every piece of metal you
Speaker 1: can on different pieces of metal until it sounds like
Speaker 1: a high school shop class out there in the woods.
Speaker 1: Instead of going bowl in the china shop here, you
Speaker 1: should consider it red zone time. How are you going
Speaker 1: to sneak in and seal the deal when you know
Speaker 1: the deer are prone to peak spiciness at any hint
Speaker 1: that some camel clad asshole is out there trying to
Speaker 1: kill them subtly sneakiness ninja moves. You have to keep
Speaker 1: your presence to an absolute minimum when you're dealing with
Speaker 1: late season deer. How do you do that for starters?
Speaker 1: I actually think the late season might be the best
Speaker 1: time to run trail cameras aside from the early season.
Speaker 1: If you want to know who is walking by without
Speaker 1: having to be there to see them the it's kind
Speaker 1: of your moment. I'd also say don't be afraid to
Speaker 1: hide your cameras this time of year. I hunt some
Speaker 1: places where deer never ever, ever, ever look at cameras,
Speaker 1: and other places where they not only almost always look
Speaker 1: at them, but often obviously spook from them. To keep
Speaker 1: your felt presence, even lower cell crammers are a pretty
Speaker 1: sweet option for this time of year. Now. You can
Speaker 1: hide your cameras by blending them in with some sticks
Speaker 1: or maybe a few pine boughs or red oak limbs,
Speaker 1: or you can hang them high and point them down.
Speaker 1: That's my go to strategy, but I also think this
Speaker 1: keeps some of the deer from getting photographed. Keep this
Speaker 1: in mind if you go this route, because it's likely
Speaker 1: that your cameras are missing some deer, especially if you're
Speaker 1: mounting them high. Now, the next step in this whole
Speaker 1: subtle late season hunter thing is to accept that you
Speaker 1: can only control your pressure. Maybe you have a spot
Speaker 1: to yourself, then great things are gonna be pretty easy
Speaker 1: for you. A few hunt public land or permission based
Speaker 1: ground that you have to share, You're gonna have to
Speaker 1: forget what the other people might be doing and focus
Speaker 1: on your own hunting. Now, this is tough, but it
Speaker 1: is what it is. Now. It does require surgical timing
Speaker 1: for your hunts and an eye towards resting spots. I
Speaker 1: know this. It's really tough because for most of us,
Speaker 1: we just have to hunt when we can. I also
Speaker 1: know that I've bitched a lot about the advice of
Speaker 1: resting spots because it mostly comes from people who have
Speaker 1: primo ground and kind of a special hunting situation. I mean,
Speaker 1: how often have you watched some unfortunate hundred and seventy
Speaker 1: in or walk into a food plot on the Outdoor
Speaker 1: Channel after the host said or whispered into the camera
Speaker 1: that they have it on this plot all season. You
Speaker 1: don't have that, but you also have the chance to
Speaker 1: be a better hunter for it. Those folks won't get
Speaker 1: any better despite having a wall full of booners, So
Speaker 1: I don't know, take some solace in that, I guess
Speaker 1: us anyway, As much as I hate to be a hypocrite,
Speaker 1: the idea of resting spots and only hunting them when
Speaker 1: the conditions line up is something I hate for every
Speaker 1: part of the season, but the last couple of weeks
Speaker 1: that's when I stop hating it. Now. I've said this
Speaker 1: a lot because I've seen in action my whole life.
Speaker 1: But white tails now in most places are as intolerant
Speaker 1: of our mistakes as they will be at any point. Now.
Speaker 1: I know we say stuff like that all the time,
Speaker 1: especially when it comes to mature bucks, but I don't
Speaker 1: actually believe that mature bucks are that special compared to
Speaker 1: the rest of the deer. Right now, I don't think
Speaker 1: that mature bucks are nearly as cagy as we like
Speaker 1: to say, and I don't think they behave like a
Speaker 1: different species, which is something I've heard from a lot
Speaker 1: of outdoor communicators. This often comes from people who have
Speaker 1: a knack and the opportunity to keep bucks dumb all
Speaker 1: through their lives until they choose to kill them. But
Speaker 1: who wants to say I hacked nature and made what
Speaker 1: could be a crafty animal into the equivalent of a
Speaker 1: lobotomized moron type of deer, so I can kill it
Speaker 1: easily and show the world how skilled by them. In
Speaker 1: a way, those high fence without defence deer prove my point.
Speaker 1: If you leave them alone, they'll get easier to kill.
Speaker 1: This goes for five years of their life and five
Speaker 1: days in the late season. Now, even though even those
Speaker 1: bucks you know that aren't on primo ground, I just
Speaker 1: think they're mostly rare and they live a selfish life
Speaker 1: where they look out for numero uno. So we tend
Speaker 1: to think of them as cagier than everyone else. But
Speaker 1: that's a mind trick we play on ourselves instead of
Speaker 1: factoring in their general rarity. I think those deer have
Speaker 1: mostly witnessed how the general hunting public tends on them,
Speaker 1: and they've altered their lives to avoid our patterns. I
Speaker 1: think it's pretty simple example, a prey animal, you know,
Speaker 1: just reacting over and over to a specific type of
Speaker 1: predatory behavior until beneficial habits become ensconce in their being.
Speaker 1: And then I think when you take that in a
Speaker 1: deer that's of a caliber that there might only be
Speaker 1: one or two in a section, or one or two
Speaker 1: on the property, and it can seem like they are
Speaker 1: pretty special at avoiding us. I also think that when
Speaker 1: it comes to all dear in the herd, they just
Speaker 1: tend to be less tolerant of our presence the later
Speaker 1: it goes into the season. But this is an ebb
Speaker 1: and flow thing which can work to your advantage. If
Speaker 1: you can leave them alone for a few days or
Speaker 1: a week in a specific spot, they're more likely to
Speaker 1: give you a chance than if you hunt them every day,
Speaker 1: because the more they hear, see, and smell us, the
Speaker 1: more they react. The less they hear, see and smell us,
Speaker 1: the less they react. So your job is to keep
Speaker 1: the times when they see here smell you to a minimum.
Speaker 1: But here's the thing. These rules don't apply to just
Speaker 1: mature bucks. I'll give you a real world example. I
Speaker 1: have permission to hunt late season doughs on a farm
Speaker 1: by my house that is a sad example of urban sprawl.
Speaker 1: What was four thirty acres a few years ago is
Speaker 1: now just over a hundred. The rest of the land
Speaker 1: is full of mc mansion's that will cost you seven
Speaker 1: fifty k just for a big house on a tiny lot.
Speaker 1: This property still holds dear the remaining part of the
Speaker 1: property anyway, But the landowner and his family and his
Speaker 1: buddies big time shotgun hunters. Someone hunts that farm every
Speaker 1: day of the shotgun season, and often lots of people hunted.
Speaker 1: And that season here where I live is almost the
Speaker 1: entire month of November this year, when they wrapped up.
Speaker 1: It was my turn to go out there with a muzzleloader.
Speaker 1: Do you know how nice it felt to pick up
Speaker 1: a scoped gun after like eight years of only bow hunting.
Speaker 1: I honestly felt like I was going grocery shopping. I
Speaker 1: felt bad that it was going to be so easy. Well,
Speaker 1: deer hunt likes to remind us that we often don't
Speaker 1: understand reality until it's kicking us right in our asses.
Speaker 1: With fresh snow and a weapon that I can really
Speaker 1: reach out and touch them, I headed out to sit
Speaker 1: on a beautiful, icy cold afternoon after resting that property
Speaker 1: for I guess about six days, since the gun season
Speaker 1: had ended that night. I mostly watched turkeys, which will
Speaker 1: be real trouble this spring, but we're not the reason
Speaker 1: I was out there now. I also saw a few deer,
Speaker 1: but nothing anywhere near the best cover. The cover you know,
Speaker 1: with all the box blinds and ladder stands in it
Speaker 1: that have witnessed a revolving cast, a blaze, orange clad
Speaker 1: characters over the last four weeks throughout all parts of
Speaker 1: the rut. When I drove out that first night, the
Speaker 1: bean field on the farm was covered, and I mean
Speaker 1: covered in dear they were all feeding right next to
Speaker 1: rush our traffic. It's so I figured i'd cut them
Speaker 1: off the next night by going in really sneaky like
Speaker 1: into an area that I figured they just had to
Speaker 1: be staging to get to where they were when I
Speaker 1: saw them, But they weren't. As soon as I settled
Speaker 1: in that next night, I could see six of them
Speaker 1: across the highway on a property that might as well
Speaker 1: have been on the moon. The only deer I saw
Speaker 1: that night was at eight pointer that stood up out
Speaker 1: of a little cedar thicket and walked right past me.
Speaker 1: I even texted the landowner that there was a good
Speaker 1: one coming to see if maybe he'd feel a little
Speaker 1: charity towards the guy who guides all of his kids
Speaker 1: on the farm to turkeys and is the primary supplier
Speaker 1: of slightly used bows to his family members. But his
Speaker 1: response was a hard no, okay. I also realized that
Speaker 1: night that the deer I was hunting, after one night
Speaker 1: of my pressure, were I was pretty sneaky, had reverted
Speaker 1: back to a less quality property across the road, where
Speaker 1: not coincidentally, no one can hunt them. But with nothing
Speaker 1: to lose and the muzzle over season coming to a close.
Speaker 1: I went back out there the next night, deeper into
Speaker 1: the timber to see if I could pick up a
Speaker 1: straggler that wasn't on the main herd program. While out there,
Speaker 1: the landowner texted me that if a scrapper buck came by,
Speaker 1: I could shoot it. Now. That might not seem like
Speaker 1: a big deal in this podcast and too many of
Speaker 1: you find listeners, but it made me really really happy.
Speaker 1: I was hunting hungry on a burned out property in
Speaker 1: single digit temperatures in Minnesota. And what made me even
Speaker 1: way happier was that the only deer that came out
Speaker 1: that night to wind his way through the cat tails
Speaker 1: was a three pointer that might break twenty inches if
Speaker 1: I give him a bonus half a foot or so.
Speaker 1: That book, a year and a half old, obviously was
Speaker 1: one of the few deer that didn't get the pressure memo,
Speaker 1: and he made a bad mistake of walking by the
Speaker 1: only outdoor writer in the industry who has a soft
Speaker 1: spot in his heart for shooting sports and a never
Speaker 1: ending desire to see the white packages with shitty handwriting
Speaker 1: pile up in his freezer. The takeaway from this story,
Speaker 1: because I'm probably not making it all that clear, is
Speaker 1: that even careful pressure can be too much pressure. In
Speaker 1: the late season. If you're not paying attention to the details,
Speaker 1: and I mean all of the details, you have a
Speaker 1: great opportunity to push the deer out of most of
Speaker 1: your hunting area or send them back to their old
Speaker 1: nocturnal ways. Now a good way to look at this
Speaker 1: is to be honest about the deer you're seeing and
Speaker 1: what dear you think are around. What what's showing up
Speaker 1: on your camera when you go hunt. Are you seeing
Speaker 1: anything or is it totally dead? Is the sign still there?
Speaker 1: What's going on right now? Not? What should they be doing?
Speaker 1: What are they doing now? If you're not seeing them,
Speaker 1: they know you're there. Most likely they know where you park,
Speaker 1: they know how you walk in, and they know where
Speaker 1: you sit. This means you have to get tricky with
Speaker 1: your presence when you do finally hunt. You know, take
Speaker 1: a few days off, lull them into a false sense security,
Speaker 1: but then do something different. Park in a different spot,
Speaker 1: if you can walk in from the north instead of
Speaker 1: the south, if you can take some calculated risks, depite
Speaker 1: despite what you think you know, because if the deer
Speaker 1: aren't showing then it doesn't matter your best laid plans
Speaker 1: are burned. It's time to show them something they haven't
Speaker 1: seen before, and please pay attention. I mean, really pay attention.
Speaker 1: I don't know how many of my late season deer
Speaker 1: kills have come from seeing something, some glimpse of brown
Speaker 1: hide in the timber or the swamps, and then sneaking
Speaker 1: in later at a different time for a closer look. Now,
Speaker 1: of course, this is also the time when a lot
Speaker 1: of us should just be hunting deer. I recently accorded
Speaker 1: a Wired Hunt episode with Alex Gilstrom, and this came up. Actually,
Speaker 1: it always does when I talked to Alex, for a
Speaker 1: simple reason. It's crucial. If you can't find daylight movers
Speaker 1: of any variety, you sure as hell won't kill a
Speaker 1: mature uck. Now, a lot of hunters have a problem
Speaker 1: with this in a late season because they can find
Speaker 1: daylight movers in the other parts of the season. But
Speaker 1: this isn't the early season with those barely hunted deer
Speaker 1: on their soybean field pattern. It's not those stages in
Speaker 1: October they are looking for acorns in a good place
Speaker 1: to make a scrape back in the timber. It's not
Speaker 1: the rut and all the goodness that that brings. It's
Speaker 1: the last gasp part of the season with cold weather
Speaker 1: that amplifies sound, a diminished deer herd due to so
Speaker 1: much hunting, and that post apocalyptic feel of the whole
Speaker 1: thing where the four legged survivors duck and move and
Speaker 1: make decisions based solely on not wanting to be anywhere
Speaker 1: near us. The most basic tenant of finding success right now,
Speaker 1: whether that is measured in a mature dough for the freezer,
Speaker 1: an unlucky sport who thinks he's got the whole place
Speaker 1: to himself, or a hundred seventy buck with double drop times,
Speaker 1: is to not let them know you're in the woods
Speaker 1: with them. No, this is a good move all season,
Speaker 1: but an absolute necessity now. Without that veil of secrecy,
Speaker 1: you're going to have a hell of a time with
Speaker 1: those buzzer beat or deer. So keep hunting, but tread lightly,
Speaker 1: my friends. There's still time, but it's dwindling away right now.
Speaker 1: And be sure to tune in next week because I'm
Speaker 1: going to do kind of a seasonal recap and talk
Speaker 1: about how to analyze your past season and what to
Speaker 1: do if you're like me and you feel like it
Speaker 1: was kind of a clunker type of hot garbage season.
Speaker 1: That's it for this week. I'm Tony Peterson. This has
Speaker 1: been the Wired to Hunt Foundations podcast. As always, thank
Speaker 1: you so much for listening, and if you want more
Speaker 1: white tail wisdom, check out the metator dot com slash
Speaker 1: wired and visit our Wired Hunt YouTube feed to watch
Speaker 1: how to videos. Until you're sick to death is seeing
Speaker 1: Mark and I spouting off about how to kill the
Speaker 1: big ones.