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 host,
Speaker 2: Tony Peterson, and today's episode is all about the rut,
Speaker 2: how we get it wrong, and what we need to
Speaker 2: do to get it right. This might be my favorite
Speaker 2: week of the year. It's probably yours two. It's here.
Speaker 2: It's in full swaying at least if you don't live
Speaker 2: way down south in the Bayou anyway, your chance to
Speaker 2: kill a big dumb one is right now, and it's
Speaker 2: going to be so easy. Accept it often isn't, and
Speaker 2: there is a disconnect between reality and what we expect.
Speaker 2: This is where the rut burns so many of us,
Speaker 2: but it doesn't have too. You just have to acknowledge
Speaker 2: what you're working with, make a good plan, and then
Speaker 2: react to what the deer give you on a day
Speaker 2: to day basis. That's what I'm going to talk about
Speaker 2: right now.
Speaker 1: Now.
Speaker 2: I'm not looking for sympathy here, but I'll take a
Speaker 2: little bit if you want to send some of my way.
Speaker 2: I recently came home after sixteen days on the road
Speaker 2: with one day in between. I don't know if you've
Speaker 2: ever left your house for half a month of work,
Speaker 2: but it's a lot to handle. Not only do you
Speaker 2: have the accumulated stress of a lot of work, but
Speaker 2: you come home to what I would generally describe as
Speaker 2: a certified shit show. I don't know what it is
Speaker 2: about my bride, but the minute I walk out the door,
Speaker 2: I envision a swarm of delivery trucks and construction workers
Speaker 2: showing up at our house. Every time I come home,
Speaker 2: something has changed. This time it was my bedroom walls,
Speaker 2: which are now purple. I didn't even have the energy
Speaker 2: to fight that one. She also decided we needed to
Speaker 2: replace the faucet in our shower. This is one of
Speaker 2: those things that should be so easy and probably is
Speaker 2: for competent people, But I'm not competent when it comes
Speaker 2: to this stuff. So the minute I saw some random
Speaker 2: plumbing tools and parts from the shower spread out on
Speaker 2: the floor, I was like, Oh, this is gonna be
Speaker 2: a thing. The thing it was, what should have been
Speaker 2: so easy just wasn't. First off, getting the old faucet
Speaker 2: off was more an active war than a simple task,
Speaker 2: like it appeared on so many of the YouTube videos
Speaker 2: I watched. At one point we gave up with that
Speaker 2: and just tried to change this little plastic part that
Speaker 2: pops up and blocks the water to send it to
Speaker 2: the shower head. Let me tell you, being crammed under
Speaker 2: that sob while laying in a wet, cold tub and
Speaker 2: trying to get a piece to fit that wasn't meant
Speaker 2: to fit. Was it the kind of thing that can
Speaker 2: nearly end a marriage right quick? I thought it would
Speaker 2: be easy, and it just wasn't. Life goes like that.
Speaker 2: What we expect to be simple gets complicated in a hurry.
Speaker 2: The only thing I can think of where that isn't
Speaker 2: the case is with the simplest game out there, golf.
Speaker 2: You just swing a stick and hit a ball into
Speaker 2: a hole. Easy peasy. Now, for those of you who
Speaker 2: wonder what my deal is with golf, it's entirely because
Speaker 2: of one of my hunting partners who is really big
Speaker 2: into it right now, and it makes him very angry
Speaker 2: that I'm so cocky about a game I've never played,
Speaker 2: but I have played it. I'm pretty good at mini golf,
Speaker 2: and the bigger version can't be that much different. Just
Speaker 2: swing the stick a little harder, right, Eric. Anyway, the
Speaker 2: one thing in my life that I always expect to
Speaker 2: be easy but almost never is, is the rut. Let
Speaker 2: me give you an example from this year. I've been
Speaker 2: talking about this stupid stand I have up in Wisconsin,
Speaker 2: where I've run cameras for several years. I put that
Speaker 2: sucker up this April, just knowing that the big bucks
Speaker 2: will be there, and if I ride it out long enough,
Speaker 2: it's all going to be over. Except the deer aren't there.
Speaker 2: They're just gone. I don't know where they are, but
Speaker 2: I can promise you that some some of them are
Speaker 2: on illegal bait piles, which is an issue I might
Speaker 2: write about someday down the road when I come to
Speaker 2: terms with it. I made my Wisconsin rut hunting plan
Speaker 2: last fall and then put it into motion during Turkey
Speaker 2: season this year. I've been very confident that all I
Speaker 2: needed to do is volume hunt that spot and it'll happen.
Speaker 2: Just give me four or five days of all day
Speaker 2: sis and just wait for those grippe grins. But now
Speaker 2: I'm not so sure such is the way with the rut.
Speaker 2: It's not nearly as easy as we make it sound.
Speaker 2: It's just a time of year with more hope than usual.
Speaker 2: But that's a double edged sword for most hunters. It
Speaker 2: makes it seem like the rut should be a low
Speaker 2: effort of fare, which is what a lot of us
Speaker 2: are looking for in deer hunting. You can see this
Speaker 2: trend in everything we use. And I'm not knocking it,
Speaker 2: because I'm right there with you. I'm just pointing out
Speaker 2: that we all kind of cross our fingers for something easy,
Speaker 2: we usually don't get it because the deers still require effort.
Speaker 2: And what's worse is that, aside from a few magical
Speaker 2: days where it really does seem like they are everywhere,
Speaker 2: it's mostly more of a ghost town than we expect.
Speaker 2: This is what always gets me. Sometimes I go out
Speaker 2: on November fifth, or seventh, or tenth, and the weather
Speaker 2: is right and my plan is solid, and then I
Speaker 2: either blank or see like one foky passing through at
Speaker 2: sixty yards. When that happens on public land, I just
Speaker 2: chalk it up to increase pressure out there, But when
Speaker 2: it happens on private land, where the expectations are higher,
Speaker 2: it's not so easy to dismiss that failure, and we
Speaker 2: ask ourselves what happened. It must be that a hot
Speaker 2: dough took all of the bucks away. Maybe it's the
Speaker 2: moon phase, the weather, the something out of your control.
Speaker 2: But it also might be for some simple reason, like
Speaker 2: we just chose a bad spot to sit, or we
Speaker 2: let the second guessing creep in, and instead of giving
Speaker 2: a spot the amount of time it needs, we bailed
Speaker 2: early with the idea that one of the usual reasons
Speaker 2: was exactly why we had a bad sit. This leaves
Speaker 2: more tags unfilled than anything else. I've talked about this
Speaker 2: a lot, but time is your best friend during the rut.
Speaker 2: I've hunted low deer density places where I see maybe
Speaker 2: one deer a day during the rut, but I have
Speaker 2: to be there all day to see that deer. There's
Speaker 2: no other good way around it. We recently released a
Speaker 2: film of mine from a public land bohunt in North
Speaker 2: Dakota that I produced last year. Now spoiler alert, but
Speaker 2: the second day I have to hunt is an all
Speaker 2: day deal during a super cold front late October and
Speaker 2: it took me all day to see a single deer.
Speaker 2: This happened to me a few times last season. Are
Speaker 2: you willing to sit all day to see one deer
Speaker 2: or the one right deer? That? It's often what it takes,
Speaker 2: and it might not be one day, it might be
Speaker 2: three or five. Do you know anyone who has gone
Speaker 2: dark to dark? You know, for three or four days
Speaker 2: in a row. It's not that common, but it is
Speaker 2: extremely effective for killing a buck during the rut. This
Speaker 2: is due to two reasons. The first is what I
Speaker 2: just said, and we all know they are real hard
Speaker 2: to kill from the couch. But more importantly, if you
Speaker 2: don't give yourself an out and you buy into the plan,
Speaker 2: it's best to just see it through. This is so
Speaker 2: much harder than it sounds, but it's the truth. If
Speaker 2: you want to kill during the rut, you have to
Speaker 2: choose your spots well, and you have to give them
Speaker 2: a lot of time. You can get lucky and make
Speaker 2: up for that by running into the right deer that
Speaker 2: just wants to be rattled in or maybe decoy or whatever,
Speaker 2: but mostly the best bet is to put yourself where
Speaker 2: they are eventually going to be and then give them
Speaker 2: the time to get there. So how do you set
Speaker 2: up this rut plan and make it happen? First off,
Speaker 2: try to forget about the stands that you have up
Speaker 2: in the usual spots that you like to hunt, at
Speaker 2: least for now. I think starting frush during the rut
Speaker 2: is a good move. The reason for that is it
Speaker 2: gets you in the mindset to either try spots that
Speaker 2: should work or go find them right now. Now. You
Speaker 2: might sit on a picked cornfield and see a lot
Speaker 2: of deer in the evening, or you might slip into
Speaker 2: a creek bottom off a destination food source and play
Speaker 2: the morning movement. Both can be great. But what I
Speaker 2: look for when I have the time is the spot
Speaker 2: where a big buck can show up at any time. Now.
Speaker 2: In Iowa on primo ground, that might be that cut cornfield.
Speaker 2: In Pennsylvania on public land not so likely. If you
Speaker 2: hunt a place where you don't have a bunch of
Speaker 2: six and a half year old bucks named, you might
Speaker 2: want to think about where where would a big one
Speaker 2: feels safe to move during the rut during lunchtime. That's
Speaker 2: the question you want to ask yourself, and the question
Speaker 2: to which you absolutely want to have confidence in your answer. Now,
Speaker 2: you won't have one hundred percent confidence, probably, but let's
Speaker 2: say you're better than a coin toss that something will
Speaker 2: show up on a certain pinch point or whatever. Now,
Speaker 2: what's the wind going to do there? What kind of
Speaker 2: setup can you put in there? Is this a groundblind
Speaker 2: situation or a mobile stand setup? How much time are
Speaker 2: you going to give it? And what will you do
Speaker 2: if in two days the wind switches from the south
Speaker 2: to the north and that spot is suddenly out where
Speaker 2: to next? I find myself thinking about this a lot
Speaker 2: and trying to sort out what my next couple of
Speaker 2: days will entail, and then about half the time, it
Speaker 2: all goes to shit because as much as I can
Speaker 2: think about what they should be doing and how I'm
Speaker 2: going to get close to them, I mostly get it wrong.
Speaker 2: And so do you. I bet that's the game we play,
Speaker 2: and we mostly lose, but once in a while we don't.
Speaker 2: Oftentimes those winds come from another source if they don't
Speaker 2: come from our original plan. What I mean by that
Speaker 2: is I often feel like I have a pinch point
Speaker 2: or a funnel totally figured out, so I give it
Speaker 2: a full day or two, and the bucks keeps skirting
Speaker 2: me halfway up a hillside. For some dumb reason. This
Speaker 2: happened to me the first time I drew an Iowa tag,
Speaker 2: and it messed with me. Actually, it didn't mess with me.
Speaker 2: It just reminded me that what I think I know
Speaker 2: isn't as important as what the deer actually do. Now,
Speaker 2: I had been posting up for a few days in
Speaker 2: this valley with a stream meandering through it, so essentially
Speaker 2: dreamy Iowa deer country. But what kept happening was that
Speaker 2: bucks kept going through above me, and I couldn't figure
Speaker 2: out why. Now I ended up snort wheezing in a
Speaker 2: good one, eventually in a different spot, and then all
Speaker 2: I had left was a dough tag. So I went
Speaker 2: back to that creek bottom to try to figure something
Speaker 2: out for a buddy of mine who was still hunting. Now.
Speaker 2: That morning, I saw some good deer, including a really
Speaker 2: cool one hundred and forty inch type of buck that
Speaker 2: followed the same path as the rest of them. When
Speaker 2: I talk to my buddy about it, we both struggled
Speaker 2: and realized that we don't really need to know the reason.
Speaker 2: We just needed to know that's what they do there,
Speaker 2: And instead of trying to call them downhill to us,
Speaker 2: which is often a disaster. We just needed to move
Speaker 2: our setup up hill to where they like to walk.
Speaker 2: It wasn't a matter of really outsmarting the deer or
Speaker 2: employing a new stealthy tactic. It was simply that we
Speaker 2: just had things wrong and what the deer showed us
Speaker 2: was right. I don't know how often this happens to me,
Speaker 2: but it's every single season, and it always stings a little.
Speaker 2: You can try to outthink them and sometimes that works,
Speaker 2: but mostly they just show you what they're doing and
Speaker 2: what you're doing wrong, and it's up to you to
Speaker 2: accept it and to do something right. And speaking of
Speaker 2: doing something right, I want to go back to that
Speaker 2: time thing for a second, because there's another mistake I
Speaker 2: see a lot of people make. If the weather doesn't
Speaker 2: line up with what you think is perfect deer weather
Speaker 2: or some other condition makes it seem like it's not
Speaker 2: worth hunting, you need to tell those voices to shut up.
Speaker 2: The rut is going to happen whether you're out there
Speaker 2: or not, whether it's eighty degrees or twenty five south
Speaker 2: wind or north rain or shine. The deer don't have
Speaker 2: a choice. Only we do, and that choice is whether
Speaker 2: we want to go sit when we believe the odds
Speaker 2: are lower or not. The answer to that is to
Speaker 2: always hunt. Don't kid yourself that you're preserving your best
Speaker 2: stuff for a later cold front. Use those conditions to
Speaker 2: figure out where to sit during the rut, not why
Speaker 2: you should sit out hot weather, get low, find some water, rain,
Speaker 2: buckle up with some decent gear, and wait out a
Speaker 2: big one because he will move. Do what others won't do,
Speaker 2: and get out there when others say it isn't good enough,
Speaker 2: then adapt. If you sit the field edge and it's
Speaker 2: twenty degrees warmer than it should be and you don't
Speaker 2: see much, you'll be like those dumb ass podcast hosts
Speaker 2: who don't know anything about deer. That's not where you
Speaker 2: should be hunting. The rut requires a good plan and
Speaker 2: then execution on that plan. It's not enough to get
Speaker 2: married to the idea of sitting a specific spot until
Speaker 2: one comes by, because Mother nature might not give you
Speaker 2: what you need to have one come by. That's a
Speaker 2: hard truth to deal with. I don't know how many
Speaker 2: times I've watched the sun set on a day during
Speaker 2: the rut that has just left me totally flummixed by
Speaker 2: what I didn't see. It's happened to me a lot.
Speaker 2: It honestly probably happens to me at least half of
Speaker 2: the time I hunt the rut. That's a lot of
Speaker 2: time too, But the other half I feel like I
Speaker 2: have a fighting chance. And when you have the willingness
Speaker 2: to give it absolutely you're all or at least all
Speaker 2: the time you can muster. You put yourself in the
Speaker 2: running to have one of those rut sits where things
Speaker 2: are just going bonkers. If you've never had one of those,
Speaker 2: just wait. Some days it's just electric out there, and
Speaker 2: for whatever reason, they're just cruising and chasing and putting
Speaker 2: on a show, and you're on pins and needles the
Speaker 2: whole time because you know another one is going to
Speaker 2: come down the trail before too. I get maybe one
Speaker 2: of those a year, maybe a couple if I'm real lucky.
Speaker 2: But I'll tell you what, they can erase a lot
Speaker 2: of bad decisions or bad luck or whatever. The dark
Speaker 2: to dark snooze fests are gonna happen, but the sting
Speaker 2: wears off pretty quickly when the whole thing just busts
Speaker 2: loose around you. And the best part about those days
Speaker 2: is that while you might kill one, they are real
Speaker 2: amazing even if you don't. They also do something else
Speaker 2: for us. They serve as a constant reminder that at
Speaker 2: some point, that kind of hunting is waiting for us
Speaker 2: in some spot of our choosing, during a small window
Speaker 2: in the fall, when it's even possible, when you witness
Speaker 2: it and you believe that, it's so much easier to
Speaker 2: dedicate yourself to sitting all day in a spot where
Speaker 2: you believe the action could show up again When it doesn't.
Speaker 2: You did a lot to try to make that happen,
Speaker 2: and you know that today just wasn't your day, but
Speaker 2: tomorrow could be, or the next day. And that's the
Speaker 2: thing about the rut. It's always sort of a grind,
Speaker 2: but it's always worth it if you put in the effort.
Speaker 2: It can be frustrating, it can be a mess on
Speaker 2: any given day, or it can give you an eleven
Speaker 2: hour stretch of daylight in the woods where you would
Speaker 2: not want to be anywhere else. And I hope you
Speaker 2: all get to experience some days like that this week
Speaker 2: or next week, or whenever you get out there, because
Speaker 2: the closing bell is coming and another season will be
Speaker 2: behind us before we know it. Just remember that if
Speaker 2: you do build a plan and it doesn't work out
Speaker 2: right away, it might just mean that the timing wasn't right,
Speaker 2: but it'll get there. It might mean that another day
Speaker 2: is all that matters. Or you might just see a
Speaker 2: few scrappers cut across a ridge in a way that
Speaker 2: makes you think maybe there's something to that, and instead
Speaker 2: of sitting there and hoping the deer or wrong and
Speaker 2: you're right, you just need to pull a stealth operation
Speaker 2: and get yourself where they want to be. It can,
Speaker 2: honestly be that simple to just allow the rut to
Speaker 2: be what it promises to be instead of what it
Speaker 2: mostly is. Do that, my friends, and come back next week,
Speaker 2: because I'm going to talk about a frustrating part of
Speaker 2: the rut where you know those mature bucks they go
Speaker 2: into that lockdown phase and a lot of people kind
Speaker 2: of spin their wheels. I'm going to talk you through
Speaker 2: that phase of the rut. Next. That's it for this week.
Speaker 2: I'm Tony Peterson. This has been the Wire to Hunt
Speaker 2: Foundation's podcast, which is brought to you by First Light.
Speaker 2: As always, thank you so much for your support. If
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Speaker 2: something to fill the void while you're sitting in your
Speaker 2: cubicle or you're making that drive out to hunt or
Speaker 2: driving across the country to go hunt something way cool
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Speaker 2: We've got Cutting the Distance. We've got a whole bunch
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Speaker 2: a always, thank you so much for listening.
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