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 today I'm gonna be
Speaker 1: talking about learning the land, and by that I mean
Speaker 1: really learning the land. As a I don't know, quote
Speaker 1: unquote content creator, which is I'll admit a pretentious sounding
Speaker 1: titles that also seems totally made up and kind of stupid.
Speaker 1: I'm continually faced with a specific dilemma. I can create
Speaker 1: articles and podcasts and videos on topics that are guaranteed
Speaker 1: to do pretty well. The analytics back that up, but
Speaker 1: they've also been done a million times. Or I can
Speaker 1: take a flyer on other topics that I believe in
Speaker 1: and hope enough of the audience comes along for the
Speaker 1: ride that I get to keep my job. Now I
Speaker 1: have to add in the pressure from the faceless folks
Speaker 1: who answer to the beam counters, and the task gets
Speaker 1: even harder because the mandate from those people is usually
Speaker 1: along the lines of, uh, do whatever draws the most
Speaker 1: eyeballs or in this case, Earballs. This is my struggle
Speaker 1: because I think there are ways to get better at
Speaker 1: deer hunting that don't involve buying a product or being
Speaker 1: indoctrinated into the latest hunting styles and fads. I think
Speaker 1: there's a hell of a lot of good old woodsmanship
Speaker 1: out there that carries far more value than some of
Speaker 1: the more popular topics around deer hunting. So I guess
Speaker 1: that's what I'm gonna get into today and next week,
Speaker 1: and I hope you enjoy it. H I doubt you
Speaker 1: could take any point in human history, at least for
Speaker 1: the last several thousand years, and find one where whatever
Speaker 1: society wasn't focused on wealth. You know, we think of
Speaker 1: wealth just his money now, but you know, throughout our
Speaker 1: history wealth it's food, shelter, and freedom and control over
Speaker 1: one's life. And those are things that us humans have
Speaker 1: been pretty interested in for quite a while, and we
Speaker 1: still are. If you scroll through the front page or
Speaker 1: whatever news apps you have on your phone or tablet,
Speaker 1: you'll see countless stories about the current state of the economy.
Speaker 1: You'll be bombarded with folks arguing that inflation is killing
Speaker 1: the average consumer, while others will argue that it's not
Speaker 1: really that bad. You'll see tons of pieces on retirement planning.
Speaker 1: How much money should you have sucked away on your
Speaker 1: thirtieth birthday? What to do if you're sixty and you
Speaker 1: haven't saved a dime? Will Social Secure already still be
Speaker 1: around after or will it be cut? You'll see articles
Speaker 1: on the Federal Reserve and their likelihood of, you know,
Speaker 1: interest rate hikes or cuts. You'll see stuff on the
Speaker 1: housing market. You can consume endless pieces of content built
Speaker 1: around the stock market. Do you want to go slow
Speaker 1: and steady or do you want to go all in
Speaker 1: on the latest meme stocks? The underlying question of all
Speaker 1: this and so much more around the world of personal
Speaker 1: and business finances, how do I get some of that
Speaker 1: wealth everyone keeps talking about? Do you take your tax
Speaker 1: refund and buying the game stock? Because you heard that
Speaker 1: a bunch of dudes on Reddit are direct registering their
Speaker 1: shares so they can't be land out for shorts in
Speaker 1: the hope that it will keep the interest positive and
Speaker 1: drive up the share price. Do you go boring and
Speaker 1: buy into index funds and mutual funds and play the
Speaker 1: thirty five year game of compounding interest and disciplined contributions,
Speaker 1: or I don't know. Do you cross your fingers and
Speaker 1: hope that a rich uncle will get eaten by great
Speaker 1: whites while snorkeling The great are your reef and leave
Speaker 1: you a couple of million bucks in his will. Listen,
Speaker 1: and I cannot stress this enough. Don't take financial advice
Speaker 1: from me, but I will say this, if you look
Speaker 1: at the reality of most of us folks who aren't
Speaker 1: likely to inherit a fortune or start an AI tech
Speaker 1: company that revolutionizes the health care industry or something like that,
Speaker 1: we kind of just need to look at the best
Speaker 1: path to achieve some financial independence. And it's often pretty simple.
Speaker 1: You learn about the investment vehicles available to you, and
Speaker 1: you do your damnedest to pick the ones that work
Speaker 1: for your current situation and your risk tolerance and your
Speaker 1: age and blah blah blah. Then you really do your
Speaker 1: damnedest to fund them as fully as you can, and
Speaker 1: you keep doing that while you keep waiting, and you
Speaker 1: do it again, and you wait. Over time that money
Speaker 1: starts to make you money, and instead of winning the
Speaker 1: lottery and going from broke as a joke to Kardashian
Speaker 1: in a single evening, you steadily work your way towards
Speaker 1: something signific again with some diversified revenue streams that will
Speaker 1: pay for your food, shelter, freedom, and allow you to
Speaker 1: have some control over your life. Eventually you don't have
Speaker 1: to sell hours of your day for a specific amount
Speaker 1: of money. That's how I look at it, anyway, And
Speaker 1: it's not as sexy as pick in the next fifty
Speaker 1: banger penny stock. It is a viable path to a
Speaker 1: good life, though at least for a lot of people,
Speaker 1: it takes time and some work and a lot of discipline,
Speaker 1: but allows you to level up through various stages to
Speaker 1: an enviable position where you've truly earned what you have.
Speaker 1: That's actually pretty incredible, I think. I also think there's
Speaker 1: an aspect of deer hunting that mirrors this long boring
Speaker 1: diet tribe on personal finances. Yeah, learning land, I mean
Speaker 1: really learning land, not necessarily just learning the deer. Although
Speaker 1: that's a topic that definitely warrant some discussion, and I'm
Speaker 1: going to get there, but not this weeker the next.
Speaker 1: For now, I want to talk about forgetting the get
Speaker 1: rich quick stuff in deer hunting, the meme stocks of
Speaker 1: deer hunting. If you will. I want you to think
Speaker 1: about what you can do over years to really start
Speaker 1: to understand how to be a better deer hunter. I
Speaker 1: honestly don't think there is a better way to do
Speaker 1: that than just dedicating yourself to learning land. I should
Speaker 1: clear that up because you're probably thinking, well, I don't know,
Speaker 1: I hunt the same farm, dude, I've always haunted it.
Speaker 1: I know it pretty well, So what is there to learn?
Speaker 1: I'd say probably plenty. But I'd also say it's kind
Speaker 1: of a net negative to get so locked into a
Speaker 1: single property that you stop learning about the habitats in
Speaker 1: which deer live. Because what if that land goes away?
Speaker 1: What if the housing market comes roaring back to life
Speaker 1: and then local developers visit every landowner with a dump
Speaker 1: truck full of cash, or I don't know, that least
Speaker 1: you thought you'd always have might just disappear in an
Speaker 1: instant when a much better offer comes along. What if
Speaker 1: the far armor who you've had a good relationship with
Speaker 1: over a couple of decades happens to have a daughter,
Speaker 1: a fine, strapping dairy farmer's daughter, and she marries a
Speaker 1: dude who happens to have a pickup truck that is
Speaker 1: plastered with bow hunting decals, and that dude, he says
Speaker 1: to his new father in law. You know what, man,
Speaker 1: I love to hunt, but I don't love other hunters.
Speaker 1: What can we do about that, Pops? What if you
Speaker 1: own some land and you think no one's gonna take
Speaker 1: this from me, and you're right. But what if that
Speaker 1: really old neighbor that never set foot in their woods
Speaker 1: sells out and your new neighbor doesn't really care one
Speaker 1: lick about trespassing, or they've got seven sons who are
Speaker 1: all dirt bike enthusiasts who really enjoy writing your property
Speaker 1: lines at first and last light. What if? What if?
Speaker 1: What if? My friends spots come and go, but your
Speaker 1: ability to understand terrain and habitat doesn't stays with you.
Speaker 1: And the more you sharpen that blade, so to speak,
Speaker 1: the better off you are. So what I mean when
Speaker 1: I say learn the land at least for now? I mean?
Speaker 1: How did deer use different habitats at different times of
Speaker 1: the year. How do they don't like to walk from
Speaker 1: one place to another in bluff Country? Do they really
Speaker 1: care about Sumac at all any point of the season.
Speaker 1: What happens when a clear cut matures from serious ruffed
Speaker 1: grouse cover to far more open turkey habitat. Do the
Speaker 1: bucks in your area utilize cattiles loose all season long
Speaker 1: or just when it gets cold? How about when it's
Speaker 1: a drought year or it's a year when the rain
Speaker 1: never seems to stop and you can hear frogs just
Speaker 1: about anywhere you go. There are an infinite amount of
Speaker 1: questions I could come up with around habitat, terrain and
Speaker 1: just how the deer use everything, And that might seem daunting,
Speaker 1: but it's also kind of not. Just like there are
Speaker 1: a million different funds where you can dump your retirement
Speaker 1: money into, there are some that just makes for certain
Speaker 1: people with certain goals, and those funds work for a
Speaker 1: lot of people who might not seem to have a
Speaker 1: whole lot in common. Some things are just kind of
Speaker 1: simple and they transcend what appears, at least on the
Speaker 1: surface to be an unusually complex landscape. Take I don't
Speaker 1: know the swamps of Louisiana, for example, and compare them
Speaker 1: to the swamps in northern Minnesota. There's definitely gonna be differences,
Speaker 1: But are there similarities? I bet there are. You know why,
Speaker 1: because I know deer would rather walk than swim, mostly
Speaker 1: so all that water is going to influence where they go,
Speaker 1: and a dry year up north might influence them in
Speaker 1: a similar way to a dry year down south. They
Speaker 1: might have far more options for travel in those years
Speaker 1: and be far more limited in wet years. What does
Speaker 1: that mean for your hunting season if you hunt around
Speaker 1: swamps or maybe you hunt egg country and the crop
Speaker 1: rotation is always soybeans and corn. Great? How did the
Speaker 1: deer use the standing corn in September versus the cut
Speaker 1: corn in November? Do you think that deer in Illinois
Speaker 1: behave way differently than deer in South Dakota when it
Speaker 1: comes to standing corn. Let me use this corn thing
Speaker 1: to drive this point home a little better. When I
Speaker 1: first got permission to hunt a farm in Minnesota while
Speaker 1: I was in high school, I didn't know a whole
Speaker 1: lot about how to actually kill deer, And after the
Speaker 1: first season hunting there, I realized something that is just
Speaker 1: stuck with me. The deer seemed to come from the
Speaker 1: corn in the evening, where they had passed through the
Speaker 1: woods on their way to beans or alfalfa. In the morning,
Speaker 1: they'd reverse that course, simple right, They were betting in
Speaker 1: the corn, no biggie. But the big question really is why. Well,
Speaker 1: the woods were pretty wide open. It wasn't thick, and
Speaker 1: apparently they don't like open woods. For years, that property
Speaker 1: hunted that way until a tornado went by. Then my
Speaker 1: pattern of hunting them when they left the standing corn
Speaker 1: to enter the woods changed a lot after that twister
Speaker 1: knocked a pile of trees down and let the sunlight
Speaker 1: hit the long forgotten forest floor. The whole place turned
Speaker 1: into a jungle. Not only did that do wonders for
Speaker 1: the mature buck population, it also changed their betting habits.
Speaker 1: It was like that for years until you guessed it.
Speaker 1: The woods grew up and the trees started forming a
Speaker 1: real canopy again. Two years ago, with the woods open
Speaker 1: as I've ever seen them there, I realized we'd gone
Speaker 1: full circle. The sign showed it, the sighting showed it,
Speaker 1: and my hunting strategies reflected it. Now, imagine, I don't know,
Speaker 1: I go to a new property in the Midwest somewhere,
Speaker 1: and I see the woods and I see standing corn,
Speaker 1: and I'm no dummy, so I make the connection. Now,
Speaker 1: that's not the end all the shooting big bucks, but
Speaker 1: it's a hell of a starting point, river crossings, terrain traps,
Speaker 1: big woods, clear cuts, overgrown fence, liness, destination, food sources, brows,
Speaker 1: bedding cover all of these things and so many more
Speaker 1: involved learning specific pieces of ground and learning ground overall.
Speaker 1: The idea is to have the been there, done that
Speaker 1: mentality whenever you're hunting white tails, even if you actually
Speaker 1: haven't been there or done that. I'll never forget. When
Speaker 1: I got hired at Peterson's Bow Hunting in two thousand
Speaker 1: and six, one of my first tasks was to write
Speaker 1: a tree stand buyer's guide. Because of that, I had
Speaker 1: to call each manufacturer to request a tree stand so
Speaker 1: we could set up a photo shoot for the piece.
Speaker 1: With a flatbed trailer and like a dozen brand new stands,
Speaker 1: me and a couple other guys who worked for the
Speaker 1: company drove to my editor's property. He had like five
Speaker 1: acres around his house, but it didn't really matter. We
Speaker 1: just needed some suitable trees in white tail looking type
Speaker 1: of habitat. And as we were putting up various ladder
Speaker 1: stands and hang ons and climbers, my editor at one
Speaker 1: point asked me to look at a slight rise in
Speaker 1: the woods. He said, do you see the way the
Speaker 1: ground folds up there and just creates that little ridge.
Speaker 1: It was subtle, but in March it was obvious. And
Speaker 1: he then said, just a matter of factly, the box
Speaker 1: always run that. And I had probably walked past a
Speaker 1: million subtle, barely there ridges in the woods over my
Speaker 1: lifetime and never once consider them as a route Bucks
Speaker 1: would specifically choose to run. But you know what I
Speaker 1: do now, especially after moving from bluff country to much
Speaker 1: flatter country, I started to learn that it doesn't take
Speaker 1: much elevation to mean something to the deer, both for
Speaker 1: travel and betting, and for how they can use their
Speaker 1: noses to avoid people and other predators. And I know
Speaker 1: I've talked about this before, but I think these connections
Speaker 1: and this level of understanding the land in a general
Speaker 1: sense as it relates to deer so valuable. It's why
Speaker 1: winter scouting is so valuable. It's not just to find
Speaker 1: a big rub where you can hang a camera and
Speaker 1: a stand. Next year is to train yourself to think
Speaker 1: about the why behind what deer do in a variety
Speaker 1: of different environments. Not only does this prepare you for
Speaker 1: year to your success as you filter your ever advancing
Speaker 1: understanding of the land through your actual sightings and scouting.
Speaker 1: But it prepares you for change. It prepares you for
Speaker 1: when the landowner does say no and you've got to
Speaker 1: find a new spot, or when you show up to
Speaker 1: spring scout in the logging trucks and skitters are all
Speaker 1: over the woods. The woods you've known as a constant
Speaker 1: for decade, and you know now it's not going to
Speaker 1: be the same. This is, in a weird way, sort
Speaker 1: of the antidote to scouting constantly, which is a great
Speaker 1: strategy for some folks who have the time and the
Speaker 1: motivation and the land to work with. You don't have
Speaker 1: to scout NonStop. If you've already learned to some decent level,
Speaker 1: how did you use the kind of environments you hunt?
Speaker 1: Although to learn that you do need to scout quite
Speaker 1: a bit, So we have ourselves a chicken and egg
Speaker 1: situation here. I guess the best way to look at
Speaker 1: this is to think of your individual hunting situation as
Speaker 1: something thing that constantly encounters a generalized reality when it
Speaker 1: comes to white tails. Sure, your public land hunts might
Speaker 1: not seem anything like the private land hunts your buddy
Speaker 1: stalk about, and they are different in many ways. But
Speaker 1: maybe not as many as you think. Now, the deer
Speaker 1: on their ground might just be a little more suicidal,
Speaker 1: but they probably also do a hell of a lot
Speaker 1: of the things that the deer do on public land
Speaker 1: where you hunt them. They use that subtle ridge. Although
Speaker 1: your deer might be far more nocturnal, they're gonna chase
Speaker 1: through those terrain traps. Although your buddies might have a
Speaker 1: great hunt on a Saturday afternoon, when your best odds
Speaker 1: are like Tuesday morning, when fewer hunters are out, more
Speaker 1: of them are at work. Okay, so what does this
Speaker 1: really mean? I know, I said you don't need to
Speaker 1: scout super hard if you learn the land. But then
Speaker 1: I said learning the land involves a lot of scouting.
Speaker 1: Both are true, even if that sounds dumb. The key
Speaker 1: is to figure out just what you can spend some
Speaker 1: time out there this offseason and look at how the
Speaker 1: deer use the woods. Now, look at how they used
Speaker 1: it last fall. At least if last year sign will
Speaker 1: tell you anything, and it probably will, think about your
Speaker 1: trail camera images from last year or the last five years.
Speaker 1: What do they tell you that will help you understand
Speaker 1: more about the land. Now? Can you make any connections
Speaker 1: between some of the picks and where you find buck
Speaker 1: sign now, or where you jump a bunch of deer
Speaker 1: or maybe stumble across an antler. Does it all seem
Speaker 1: totally random? Because I promise you it isn't, and you
Speaker 1: should think about what doesn't seem random, like the location
Speaker 1: of some rubs, or why you always saw a deer
Speaker 1: from a certain stand when the wind was straight out
Speaker 1: of the west or the north. Do you know where
Speaker 1: all the subtle ridges are on the properties you hunt?
Speaker 1: Could you name five types of brows that exist there
Speaker 1: right now and should exist there next October? If not,
Speaker 1: do you know the land well enough? It's so worth
Speaker 1: it to understand what the woods and the fields and
Speaker 1: the grasslands and the swamps offer the deer and how
Speaker 1: they use those features and more throughout the year, not
Speaker 1: just the deer season, but the whole year. You want
Speaker 1: this knowledge for obvious reasons, but also to help you
Speaker 1: understand why you keep screwing every damn thing up. Sorry,
Speaker 1: that was the old data me coming out and not
Speaker 1: a good lead into how I'm going to expand on
Speaker 1: this topic next week. What I'm going to do is
Speaker 1: break down why learning the land helps you understand your
Speaker 1: impact on it, or more specifically, your impact on the
Speaker 1: deer on that land, like a boring, consistent contribution to
Speaker 1: a handful of funds that cover domestic markets and international
Speaker 1: markets and the bond market. This accumulation of knowledge works
Speaker 1: in your favor as a deer hunter, but it doesn't
Speaker 1: do you any good if you don't understand your impact
Speaker 1: on the deer at any given time, which is kind
Speaker 1: of like selling all those stocks in your portfolio after
Speaker 1: the market craft because you're scared of losing more even
Speaker 1: though you have a twenty five year investment horizon. So
Speaker 1: listen in next week because I'm going to tell you
Speaker 1: how to know if you're screwing things up with the
Speaker 1: deer and what you have to do to well, uh
Speaker 1: not screw things up as much. I guess that's it,
Speaker 1: my friends. I'm Tony Peterson has been the Wire to
Speaker 1: Hunt Foundations podcast. Head on over to the wire to
Speaker 1: Hunt YouTube channel to check out our latest how two videos,
Speaker 1: and feel free to visit the meat eator dot com
Speaker 1: slash wired to read up on the latest and greatest
Speaker 1: and hunting advice, and as always, thank you so much
Speaker 1: for your support.