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Speaker 1: Welcome to the Wired to Hunt Foundations podcast, your guide

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Speaker 1: to the fundamentals of better deer hunting, presented by first Light,

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Speaker 1: creating proven versatile hunting apparel for the stand, saddle or blind.

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Speaker 1: First Light Go Farther, Stay Longer, and now your host

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Speaker 1: Tony Peterson.

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Speaker 2: Hey, everyone, welcome to the Wire to Hunt Foundation's podcast,

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Speaker 2: which is brought to you by first Light. I'm your host,

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Speaker 2: Tony Peterson, and today's episode is all about aging deer

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Speaker 2: on the hoof and how it's not nearly as easy

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Speaker 2: as we think. This is kind of a fun one

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Speaker 2: for me and that it will undoubtedly piss some people off.

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Speaker 2: But there's something that bothers me in the outdoor space,

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Speaker 2: and it involves people just definitively saying, you know, a

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Speaker 2: deer is a certain age. This came straight from the

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Speaker 2: outdoor TV space and has permeated the white tail hunting culture.

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Speaker 2: But a lot of the talk around aging deer is

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Speaker 2: total bs. Now, maybe you disagree, but I'm going to

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Speaker 2: lay out a case right now for why I'm on

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Speaker 2: that side. But first I have to let you know

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Speaker 2: about our white Tail Week's sale, which is a monster, huge,

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Speaker 2: really big sale we have going on right now here

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Speaker 2: at meat Eater. The sale is different from our past ones,

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Speaker 2: and that you can get a good discount on anything

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Speaker 2: you buy, not just some new stuff. You got to

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Speaker 2: head over to first light dot com and start shopping. Now.

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Speaker 2: If you spend one hundred and fifty bucks, you get

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Speaker 2: free shipping. That's okay. But you bump that order up

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Speaker 2: to two hundred and now you get fifty dollars right

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Speaker 2: off the top. Spend four hundred and you get one

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Speaker 2: hundred back. Keep going and you can get up to

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Speaker 2: two hundred bucks off your order. If you break through

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Speaker 2: that eight hundred dollars mark, which according to my writer

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Speaker 2: math is a twenty five percent discount on everything. You

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Speaker 2: have less than a week to get on this, So

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Speaker 2: if you're looking for a little gear upgrade this season,

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Speaker 2: go check it out. All right, enough of that, let's

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Speaker 2: get onto the show. I like dogs a lot. In fact,

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Speaker 2: aside from hunting and fishing, I think the two things

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Speaker 2: that make my life significantly better besides my kids and

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Speaker 2: I guess my wife are dogs and music. Both are

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Speaker 2: cheat codes for a happier life in my opinion. Now

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Speaker 2: I have two dogs. One is eleven and one is three.

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Speaker 2: They were both born in April. Not that that really matters,

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Speaker 2: but at least might frame us up a little more.

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Speaker 2: I guess now the older dog. She looks older, there's

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Speaker 2: no doubt about that. But she's in good shape too,

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Speaker 2: or I should stay. She still has a healthy body shape.

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Speaker 2: We mostly maintain that through feeding and paying attention to

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Speaker 2: her body conditioning. Although she still does some retrieving and

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Speaker 2: she still swims every chance she can. She isn't all

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Speaker 2: that gray around the muzzle, and so when people meet

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Speaker 2: her they often comment about how she must be pretty young.

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Speaker 2: She just doesn't look as old as she is now.

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Speaker 2: My young dog, Sadie is actually approaching middle age of dogdom.

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Speaker 2: She's three and a half, so you know, young, middle aged,

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Speaker 2: but still now. Sadie is a pipsqueak and she weighs

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Speaker 2: forty eight pounds, and she looks just like a puppy.

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Speaker 2: People consistently guessed her age in months like eight months,

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Speaker 2: and not in years like three and a half years.

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Speaker 2: I knew Sadie had a high likelihood of being very small,

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Speaker 2: because that's part of what I wanted out of her.

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Speaker 2: I had worked with her mom and another pupp that

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Speaker 2: was brought into the World Buyer Mom, who, by some

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Speaker 2: strange connections in my life, is owned by Lee and

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Speaker 2: Tiffany Lakowski, which I guess is a fun fact to

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Speaker 2: toss out there. But anyway, Sadie is a dink and

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Speaker 2: she acts like a puppy and she looks like a puppy,

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Speaker 2: but she's not really a puppy anymore. Now, Luna is old,

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Speaker 2: and she acts pretty old, but she doesn't look super old.

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Speaker 2: She's not really built like a lot of older dogs. Now,

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Speaker 2: take my buddy's golden retriever, Margo. She's eight, but she

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Speaker 2: looks like she's about seventeen. She's had a full gray

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Speaker 2: muzzle for years, and she just has the vibe of

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Speaker 2: an older dog. But she's not ancient. Though. When you

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Speaker 2: have bird dogs, you know that eight can still be

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Speaker 2: pretty amazing, even though you also know that your dog

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Speaker 2: is knocking on the door of, you know, being a

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Speaker 2: little too old to handle the all day hunts and

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Speaker 2: the cattails for the pheasants anymore. The variation in dog

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Speaker 2: size and shape and overall vibe is based on a

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Speaker 2: lot of things, not the least of which is genetics.

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Speaker 2: It's pretty hard to look at them and just guess

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Speaker 2: correctly how old they are, because there are too many

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Speaker 2: variables that could throw you off. But no one is

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Speaker 2: going around saying that, you know that Labrador Retriever is

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Speaker 2: definitively a five year old dog because of the belly

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Speaker 2: and the sway in the back and the j low

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Speaker 2: type bubble butt. When it comes to deer, it's a

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Speaker 2: different story. And maybe the last I don't know, ten

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Speaker 2: or fifteen years, we've just all collectively agreed that we

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Speaker 2: are all deer aging experts and that's that done and

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Speaker 2: freaking done. We base our hunting strategies and goals around

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Speaker 2: the age of deer we would like to shoot, and

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Speaker 2: we obsess over the maturity level of certain But do

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Speaker 2: you know where this came from. It came from the

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Speaker 2: people who make hunting content mostly. But why we decided

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Speaker 2: that maturity was the goal might not be so obvious,

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Speaker 2: and it's really probably not obvious to the younger crowd.

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Speaker 2: But you see, not that long ago, we all just

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Speaker 2: hunted trophy bucks. That was how big deer were described.

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Speaker 2: We were all good with that. After all, we are

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Speaker 2: all kind of trophy hunters at heart, at least to

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Speaker 2: some degree. There isn't a hunter out there who doesn't

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Speaker 2: love a giant buck. And if they say they don't care,

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Speaker 2: that's only because there isn't a giant buck walking down

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Speaker 2: the trail toward their stand. They aren't going to pass

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Speaker 2: a one to fifty to wait on a dough, trust me.

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Speaker 2: It's kind of like the guys who have a problem

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Speaker 2: with good looking women and they find a reason to

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Speaker 2: talk shit about them. They know that at a certain

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Speaker 2: level of physical attractiveness is going to put a woman

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Speaker 2: right out of their league, so it's easy. It's safer

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Speaker 2: to be dismissive or worse about those women because it

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Speaker 2: doesn't matter. They're never going to inner or intersect in

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Speaker 2: any meaningful way. The hunter who has no faith in

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Speaker 2: it ever encountering a big buck. It's kind of in

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Speaker 2: the same world. It's easy to talk shit about it

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Speaker 2: when you know that the odds of one passing by

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Speaker 2: the season or in the next ten seasons are slim

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Speaker 2: to none. It gives you an out to shoot something

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Speaker 2: else but not feel bad about it. It's all weasel

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Speaker 2: word stuff, which is how we got here in the

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Speaker 2: first place. Now, back in the day, whatever day that was,

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Speaker 2: I guess we coveted trophy deer. We called them trophies

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Speaker 2: and we didn't care. Is that's what they were. Then

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Speaker 2: a few high profile people shot lions and giraffes, and

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Speaker 2: the trophy hunting thing went global and the optics were

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Speaker 2: not our friends. That was macro level stuff, though on

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Speaker 2: the micro level we damaged ourselves in simpler, less obvious ways.

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Speaker 2: Talking about deer as if their sole value is derived

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Speaker 2: from the size of their head gear sells the whole thing.

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Speaker 2: Real short, non hunters don't want to hear about hunters

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Speaker 2: prioritizing trophy status first. It's just an ugly look for us.

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Speaker 2: So we came up with a new way to trophy hunt. Now,

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Speaker 2: over time we settled on mature deer. After all, that

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Speaker 2: sounds way more responsible, right. I hunt mature deer, not

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Speaker 2: immature baby deer that are just cute and still have

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Speaker 2: a little milk stash and are attached at the hip

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Speaker 2: to their mamas. Mature deer have served their purpose in

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Speaker 2: nature and need to be removed from the herd before

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Speaker 2: they do I don't know some damage. I guess. I

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Speaker 2: don't know what a buck is going to do at

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Speaker 2: eight years old. That is different than what he did

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Speaker 2: at five, but that's not really a point. We figured

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Speaker 2: out a way to not be trophy hunters, which was

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Speaker 2: the goal, except that it just so happens that the

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Speaker 2: mature bucks we hunt also happened to be at their

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Speaker 2: peak antler growing stage. I promise you that if we

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Speaker 2: suddenly found out that bucks had a huge gross spurt

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Speaker 2: in antlers at ten and a half years old for

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Speaker 2: some reason, five and a half year old bucks would

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Speaker 2: not be considered mature for much longer. We'd figure out

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Speaker 2: a way to target deer that are ten and a

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Speaker 2: half for now, though, the optics of hunting mature deer

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Speaker 2: and the feel good reasons we throw around to do it,

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Speaker 2: they're better than the alternative. We don't want to be

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Speaker 2: viewed as trophy hunters because that's a fast track to

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Speaker 2: losing support in this current culture where we're glad to

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Speaker 2: take away hunting opportunities from anyone as long as it'll

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Speaker 2: make it easier for us. We don't want to give

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Speaker 2: the non hunters and the antis anymore, AMMO. We make

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Speaker 2: enough problems for ourselves. Mature bucks are a better message.

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Speaker 2: But are we so sure we are hunting mature bucks?

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Speaker 2: Kind of sort of a little bit, because here's the thing,

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Speaker 2: how do you know how old a deer really is now?

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Speaker 2: Unless you have like a double throat patch buck that

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Speaker 2: you can track from his fond days to whatever season

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Speaker 2: it is now, you can't, not as well as you

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Speaker 2: probably think. Anyway. Now, a lot of folks are thinking,

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Speaker 2: I've got that dipshit Peterson guy now because I know

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Speaker 2: when my bucks hit two and a half years old

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Speaker 2: and I can track them from there. Fair enough. Are

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Speaker 2: you basing that age assessment off of antler size at all?

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Speaker 2: Or is it body shape or astrological sign maybe what

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Speaker 2: energy the crystals are giving off today? When we look

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Speaker 2: at the general guidelines for aging deer on the hoof,

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Speaker 2: we see some stuff that absolutely makes sense and generally works.

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Speaker 2: Young deer have slim bodies, They look tall because they

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Speaker 2: don't have that sagging belly. They have small sets of antlers.

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Speaker 2: Year and a half old bucks are easy to judge.

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Speaker 2: They all kind of look the same, kind of like puppies.

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Speaker 2: Then we get to two year olds. Now they're supposed

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Speaker 2: to have that lit body, no real definition to it

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Speaker 2: yet and better than forky racks, but still small antlers.

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Speaker 2: But with age comes the expression of genetics. Now, those

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Speaker 2: of you listening who have kids, think about the difference

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Speaker 2: in an infant versus a kindergartener and how they might

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Speaker 2: look to you, or how they might start to act

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Speaker 2: like your spouse. At some point, it's suddenly a little

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Speaker 2: less certain that, for sure, without a doubt, you have

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Speaker 2: a two year old buck in front of you. But

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Speaker 2: we all say we can tell, and I think we

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Speaker 2: can tell them still pretty easily compared to other ages.

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Speaker 2: But where we get into trouble is the buck we

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Speaker 2: deem two and a half that has, you know, one

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Speaker 2: hundred and thirty five inch rack, or the buck that

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Speaker 2: is two and a half that has the forty inchrack.

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Speaker 2: When we get way on the right side or the

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Speaker 2: left side of the antler growth bell curve, things start

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Speaker 2: to get a little wonky and we start to fill

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Speaker 2: in the blanks. But then you get into three and

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Speaker 2: a half year old bucks, and this is where the

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Speaker 2: wheels really start to fall off. How many of us

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Speaker 2: get to spend a lot of time watching three and

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Speaker 2: a half year olds doing wild three and a half

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Speaker 2: year old type of things. Not many. And at this

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Speaker 2: point a buck is middle aged ish, he's expressing his

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Speaker 2: genes in both antler size and body characteristics. So we

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Speaker 2: look and see one hundred and thirty five incher with

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Speaker 2: a decent sized body, and we go, well, I know

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Speaker 2: how old that buck is done and done in two

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Speaker 2: years he'll be mature and I'll kill him. But how

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Speaker 2: do you know you're not looking at a deer with

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Speaker 2: a just naturally smaller body. You don't, No one does.

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Speaker 2: Just like some bloodlines will have outsized racks, some will

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Speaker 2: have outsized bodies or undersized here's another way to look

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Speaker 2: at it. I just wrapped up a successful bear hunt

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Speaker 2: with my daughter. I've probably one hundred bears ten times

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Speaker 2: in my life. And while most black bears all kind

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Speaker 2: of look the same, some are kind of squatty and stout,

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Speaker 2: and others are kind of long and lean. They don't

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Speaker 2: have antlers to cloud our assessments. They have bodies, and

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Speaker 2: their bodies vary a lot by the bear. They don't

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Speaker 2: follow a strict path for development, and neither do deer

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Speaker 2: because they have different genetics. Not to make things even worse,

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Speaker 2: antler size, like I mentioned, exists on a bell curve.

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Speaker 2: You've all heard this, but it's true. We don't think

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Speaker 2: of it like this when we're looking at deer, though,

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Speaker 2: there are outlier five year old bucks that won't grow

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Speaker 2: a rack bigger than one hundred inches, even in Iowa,

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Speaker 2: while other five year olds can grow one hundred and

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Speaker 2: eighty inch track. Most though, fall in the middle of

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Speaker 2: those two. You might be thinking, so, what, how do

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Speaker 2: we even figure this out? Well, the easiest way is

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Speaker 2: to start sending in the teeth from the bucks you

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Speaker 2: kill to get them cementum annuli aged. There's no more

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Speaker 2: accurate way to find out the age of the bucks

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Speaker 2: you kill. And even then it's not an exact science

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Speaker 2: because those rings on the bucks teeth that they count

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Speaker 2: they can vary a lot, depending on it being from

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Speaker 2: the south or the north, and the corresponding severity of

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Speaker 2: winters that your buck had to deal with. It's a

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Speaker 2: good way to learn that you can't age deer worth

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Speaker 2: of shit. Though. I say that because for a few

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Speaker 2: years a couple buddies and I sent in the teeth

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Speaker 2: on our bucks. I can safely say we were mostly wrong,

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Speaker 2: and often wrong, in that we were chronically underaging our deer.

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Speaker 2: The one hundred and twenty inches we love to shoot.

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Speaker 2: We're all over the map, and a lot we're way

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Speaker 2: older than we cementum annuallye aging can turn two and

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Speaker 2: a half year old bucks into five year old bucks

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Speaker 2: pretty quickly. Now, one of the reasons you don't hear

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Speaker 2: about a lot of people doing this, especially the people

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Speaker 2: who claim to know the exact age of deer, is

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Speaker 2: because it's a little bit of a pain in the

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Speaker 2: ass and they don't actually care what the age of

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Speaker 2: the buck is. They don't really want to know. It

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Speaker 2: really doesn't matter. But if you want to give yourself

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Speaker 2: a reality check, this is a good way to do it.

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Speaker 2: It makes the idea of aging deer on the hoof

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Speaker 2: seem like far more of an inexact science than we believe,

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Speaker 2: because honestly it is. Now, there's nothing wrong with laser

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Speaker 2: focusing on what you think is a mature buck, really

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Speaker 2: nothing at all. You do you seriously, There is no

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Speaker 2: question that age is a secret sauce in growing big bucks.

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Speaker 2: It just is, and it's what makes some places so

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Speaker 2: easy to hunt and most places so hard to hunt.

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Speaker 2: But what I want to say as I wrap this up,

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Speaker 2: is that if you're confident of your aging abilities, check

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Speaker 2: your don't do it by looking at a deer's jaw,

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Speaker 2: because that's a coin flip as far as being worth anything.

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Speaker 2: Cement to manualie aging, which is available through quite a

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Speaker 2: few different labs, that's the closest you're going to get,

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Speaker 2: and it's pretty exciting to send in teeth and wait

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Speaker 2: for the results, which in my experience are always pretty

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Speaker 2: interesting and rarely lined up with what I believe to

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Speaker 2: be true. Now does that matter in the grand scheme

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Speaker 2: of things. Not really, But there is a message here

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Speaker 2: that I kind of want to leave everyone with. The

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Speaker 2: idea of aging deer on the hoof comes from a

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Speaker 2: place where we had to change our messaging so we

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Speaker 2: didn't appear to be trophy owners. It has morphed into

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Speaker 2: something else, especially with so many people interested in quality

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Speaker 2: deer management and raising deer in a specific property. Now,

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Speaker 2: I'm not saying focusing on age is a bad thing,

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Speaker 2: because I don't believe it is. I just think it's

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Speaker 2: best to be honest about what we are actually doing

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Speaker 2: and understand that while our current messaging might sound a

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Speaker 2: hell of a lot more responsible and palatable to non hunters,

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Speaker 2: it's also a little bit damaging to a lot of

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Speaker 2: other hunters. Newbies to the sport. Hear the talk of

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Speaker 2: mature bucks, and they want in. But that's a terrible

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Speaker 2: way to start. It's almost a guarantee to create and

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Speaker 2: destroy a new hunter in a matter of not too

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Speaker 2: many seasons. You don't pick up a football at target

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Speaker 2: shopping out your lunch break and then go play in

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Speaker 2: the super Bowl the next week. For a lot of

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Speaker 2: folks hunting in heavily pressured areas, this aging deer thing

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Speaker 2: is a bad idea too. If ninety nine percent of

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Speaker 2: the bucks in your county are destined for the big

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Speaker 2: betting area in the sky before they reach four and

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Speaker 2: a half years old, it doesn't do anyone much good

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Speaker 2: to try and hunt mature bucks. In the conventional sense.

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Speaker 2: You might as well pick up a unicorn tag when

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Speaker 2: you're at it, because you're just as likely to fill

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Speaker 2: that one. Now. I do believe there are bigger bucks

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Speaker 2: in a lot more places than we like to think.

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Speaker 2: But there's also the reality of a lot of hunting

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Speaker 2: pressure in a lot of places, And there's also bad winners,

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Speaker 2: heavy predator loads in certain places, and just the truth

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Speaker 2: about genetics and what they will give you. Wise being

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Speaker 2: in a place where you can age bucks or pass

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Speaker 2: up bucks and wait on them to get mature. That's great,

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Speaker 2: but a hell of a lot of hunters aren't anywhere

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Speaker 2: near that. If you're in that crowd, the path is

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Speaker 2: going to look a lot different, and it can still

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Speaker 2: be super fun and crazy rewarding. But the idea of

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Speaker 2: holding out for a truly mature deer might just be

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Speaker 2: a bad one for you. There might be no way

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Speaker 2: around that. Plus, it's way way harder to age deer

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Speaker 2: than we generally present. In fact, on the hoof, it's

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Speaker 2: impossible to be super accurate. Now you can lump bucks

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Speaker 2: into age brackets by looking at them, at least some

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Speaker 2: of them, but overall, this is a much harder task

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Speaker 2: than we believe it to be. That gets way harder

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Speaker 2: by how we are biased around rack size too, which

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Speaker 2: while we talk a big game about looking at body

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Speaker 2: shape and size, rack size just definitely factors into our

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Speaker 2: age estimates. So take that in the reality that we

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Speaker 2: generally don't know shit about the specific genetics any one

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Speaker 2: buck is carrying around, and you'll know that age is

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Speaker 2: just a moving target, one where we're shooting at while

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Speaker 2: blindfolded and hanging upside down by our ankles. While a

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Speaker 2: bunch of angry hornets buzz around our heads. It's just

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Speaker 2: tougher to do than we think. Think about it and

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Speaker 2: think about coming back tomorrow when I'm going to drop

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Speaker 2: another episode about why most people don't kill Big Bucks

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Speaker 2: and the hard truths some of us just need to accept.

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Speaker 2: That's it. I'm Tony Peterson. This has been the Wired

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Speaker 2: to Hunt Foundation's podcast, which is brought to you by

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Speaker 2: first Light and first Light has eight ton of stuff

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Speaker 2: on sale right now. In fact, pretty much anything met

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Speaker 2: discount if you go over there to first light dot

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Speaker 2: com and start spending some money. As always, thank you

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Speaker 2: so much for listening and for all your support. We

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Speaker 2: truly appreciate it. Here. Keep checking back because we're going

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Speaker 2: to have a lot more content dropping this week. And again,

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Speaker 2: thank you, thank you, thank you,