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 Wire 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 show is all about why most
Speaker 2: people never kill Big Bucks. It's a little bit of
Speaker 2: a touchy subject, but I think it's something that needs
Speaker 2: to be addressed. You know. Probably the number one thing
Speaker 2: I hear, you know, when it comes to the randos
Speaker 2: who reach out to me, is that they're all struggling
Speaker 2: to kill Big Bucks. That's probably not a huge surprise
Speaker 2: to a lot of listeners, because if he didn't struggle
Speaker 2: with that, you sure wouldn't waste your time listening to
Speaker 2: yours truly drone on and on on the topic of deer.
Speaker 2: So I'm gonna lay down some truth here on that topic,
Speaker 2: you know, in a second. But first I have to
Speaker 2: do the part of my job I don't really like
Speaker 2: very much. Meat eater has a monster huge, pretty big
Speaker 2: white Tail Week sale going on right now. You've heard
Speaker 2: about it, you've seen it on social. But here's the thing. Normally,
Speaker 2: our sales only get you some level of discount on
Speaker 2: certain new products. But this one's different. It comes with
Speaker 2: a tiered structure where if you spend a certain amount
Speaker 2: of dough on anything, you get a kickback on that
Speaker 2: money spent. So, for example, you go spend two hundred bucks,
Speaker 2: you're gonna get twenty five percent right off the top.
Speaker 2: So you've got to save fifty bucks, spend four hundred bucks,
Speaker 2: maybe get yourself a new white Tail kid or something
Speaker 2: you're gonna save a cool one hundred dollars on that.
Speaker 2: You can go all the way up to the eight
Speaker 2: hundred dollars mark where you're gonna get two hundred dollars
Speaker 2: off of your bill if you spend eight hundred bucks,
Speaker 2: it's pretty good deal. It's twenty five percent off pretty
Speaker 2: much anything you want to go buy. You got to
Speaker 2: go to first light dot com and you got to
Speaker 2: check out there. If you want to feel like a weak,
Speaker 2: total loser, don't lift a single weight in your life
Speaker 2: and then go to the gym and try to start
Speaker 2: lifting This is when the idea of who you are
Speaker 2: will meet the reality of who you actually are. It's
Speaker 2: not really fun, trust me, but it's also an amazing
Speaker 2: feeling to just ignore the noise and start building muscle.
Speaker 2: This is a slow process, but it's worth it. It
Speaker 2: also teaches you a few things about how full of shit,
Speaker 2: or at least totally disconnected from reality a lot of
Speaker 2: people are. And by people here, I mean well men.
Speaker 2: When I was growing up, I heard a lot of
Speaker 2: people talk about benching three hundred pounds. I don't know.
Speaker 2: That just seems to be the magic number for being strong.
Speaker 2: I guess maybe it's like the six pound mark for
Speaker 2: bass or the one hundred and fifty inch mark on deer.
Speaker 2: Either way, benching three hundred pounds is no joke. In fact,
Speaker 2: benching two hundred and twenty five pounds, which is the
Speaker 2: bar in two forty five's on each side, is no joke.
Speaker 2: That's a lot of weight, and only about one point
Speaker 2: three million Americans can do it. That's point zero zero
Speaker 2: four percent of the population, and most of those folks
Speaker 2: that fit into that category are men with a body
Speaker 2: weight of two hundred and twenty pounds plus. Now, the
Speaker 2: path is different for everyone to build muscle, but it
Speaker 2: took me about eight years of lifting to get there.
Speaker 2: And if you watched me try to bench two twenty
Speaker 2: five right now, you'd say that is a guy who
Speaker 2: doesn't look like he's going to get a whole lot
Speaker 2: of reps out of this deal. And trust me, you'd
Speaker 2: be very right. Putting on muscle is a long, long process,
Speaker 2: and it only gets longer as we age and our
Speaker 2: testosterone production starts to take a nose dive. Now, there's
Speaker 2: some ways to get around this, like the obvious one,
Speaker 2: which is TRT, but you could also just get your
Speaker 2: hands on some anabolic steroids and just jump the line
Speaker 2: so speak. Anabolic steroids contain a base ingredient that is
Speaker 2: a type of testosterone referred to as test e, which
Speaker 2: is funny as hell given what it can do to
Speaker 2: your clackers if you take too much of it. Injecting
Speaker 2: anabolic steroids allows those testosterone molecules the chance to weasel
Speaker 2: their way through your bloodstream until they reach your muscle cells,
Speaker 2: where they kickstart hypertrophy, which is what you need to
Speaker 2: build muscle. There are some downsides to this path, though,
Speaker 2: you know, liver damage depression, hypertension, thrombosis, and a bunch
Speaker 2: more bad things can happen with steroid abuse, such as life.
Speaker 2: Every path you choose has its ups and downs as
Speaker 2: positives and negatives. Now, when it comes to being a
Speaker 2: stone cold big buck killer who should just pre notch
Speaker 2: his tags before heading out because the deer don't stand
Speaker 2: a chance, there are many paths to take as well.
Speaker 2: If you want to flex a lot for your wife
Speaker 2: and show that you are in the elite percentage of
Speaker 2: people who can bench press two hundred and twenty five pounds.
Speaker 2: If you have money or just an unbelievable spot, the
Speaker 2: path to mature box is much shorter and easier to walk.
Speaker 2: If you don't have either, well, it might take you
Speaker 2: a long time to get there if you ever do,
Speaker 2: and most folks don't. Just like most folks who walk
Speaker 2: into the gym on New Year's Day with some fresh
Speaker 2: resolutions in their heart and some even fresher workout clothes
Speaker 2: on their body, will never put up the bar with
Speaker 2: two plates on each side. Why is it this way? Well,
Speaker 2: on the surface, and I guess as far underneath as
Speaker 2: you're willing to dive. Killing a big buck isn't easy.
Speaker 2: It's much much harder than it appears. So let's start
Speaker 2: with an easy one here, the population of big bucks
Speaker 2: in your area. Now, I don't say mature bucks here
Speaker 2: because I don't know what that means where you live
Speaker 2: and hunt. I'll frame it up with one of the
Speaker 2: places I hunt over there in Packerland, in the county
Speaker 2: I primarily hunt. In northern Wisconsin. They did a comprehensive
Speaker 2: study on FONND predation several years back. The cliff notes
Speaker 2: of the study were that ninety percent of the fawns
Speaker 2: that they tracked were dead within the first eleven months
Speaker 2: of their lives. Predator prevalence, hunting pressure, a couple of
Speaker 2: real nasty deer killing winters every decade. All that stuff
Speaker 2: conspires to keep the deer numbers low. Now, while the
Speaker 2: bucks over there have all the makings of giants if
Speaker 2: they can get the age on them, most just never
Speaker 2: do a two year old over there really gets your attention,
Speaker 2: trust me. So in that case, targeting a big buck,
Speaker 2: let's say, even just your typical three year old plus
Speaker 2: type of deer, means you just don't have very many options.
Speaker 2: But that's the nature of hunting. Big woods deer or
Speaker 2: deer in places with a ton of pressure, it's hard
Speaker 2: to kill what mostly isn't there. Now. Contrast that to
Speaker 2: some of the hunts I've had in Iowa. The last
Speaker 2: time I hunted there on public land, I saw about
Speaker 2: the same amount of one hundred and twenty five inch
Speaker 2: plus deer in four days of hunting in October. By
Speaker 2: the way that I've seen in all of my Northern
Speaker 2: Wisconsin hunts on private and public land combined, of which
Speaker 2: I have about fourteen years of hunting with at least
Speaker 2: a couple of weeks during each season, that's quite the difference.
Speaker 2: So at a very simple level, you might not kill
Speaker 2: too many big bucks because there just aren't too many
Speaker 2: big bucks there to kill. Now, I will say this, though,
Speaker 2: I've never hunted anywhere that didn't have some big bucks. Now.
Speaker 2: Locals have told me they aren't there, and I've seen
Speaker 2: it proclaimed on social media and hunting forums over and
Speaker 2: over about certain spots, but they were wrong. In my experience,
Speaker 2: not many is far different from none. So in this way,
Speaker 2: big is all relative. But let's say we're dealing with
Speaker 2: the top twenty percent of bucks in your area. The
Speaker 2: other eighty percent, they're not big enough for you to
Speaker 2: consider them big. And you want to get in on
Speaker 2: that good stuff that leads to a taxidermy bill, but
Speaker 2: you can't, and you wonder why. Well, one of the
Speaker 2: reasons might be that we are so good at trying
Speaker 2: to supplement real world experience with vicarious lessons or academic lessons.
Speaker 2: What I mean by that, and you've heard me say
Speaker 2: this a lot because I believe it so true, is
Speaker 2: that you can't replace experience with anything. It's the number
Speaker 2: one ingredient in woodsmanship, and woodsmanship kills big bucks. This
Speaker 2: is because people with lots of experience and a high
Speaker 2: level of woodsmanship don't need to focus on the obvious stuff.
Speaker 2: They can go deeper, and they are more in tune
Speaker 2: to the in the moment details that really matter. So
Speaker 2: let me frame this up in a way that's kind
Speaker 2: of easy to understand. Let's say you read every book
Speaker 2: there is on bass fishing, you consume a thousands of
Speaker 2: hours of you know, ass fishing content on YouTube, You
Speaker 2: fill your brain with knowledge from other folks on the topic.
Speaker 2: Do you think it's possible that you could consume enough
Speaker 2: content on this topic to make you a better fisherman
Speaker 2: than the top pros, meaning is there an academic way
Speaker 2: to beat the people who have tens of thousands of
Speaker 2: hours on the water. There is not. There, just isn't.
Speaker 2: You're not going to be able to read about catching
Speaker 2: smallies in a post front in June and outfish somebody
Speaker 2: who's had to figure out on the water how to
Speaker 2: catch big small mouth in cold fronts in June several
Speaker 2: years in a row. It doesn't work that way. This
Speaker 2: doesn't work in deer hunting either. You have to get
Speaker 2: out there with the deer and you have to give
Speaker 2: yourself to the process of being a deer hunter who
Speaker 2: is trying to get better. This means doing the challenging
Speaker 2: stuff versus you know, not hunting. It means figuring out
Speaker 2: how to kill a buck on October eighth, when most
Speaker 2: folks would rather stay home until the pre rut. The
Speaker 2: advice on how to kill big bucks probably mostly doesn't
Speaker 2: apply to you, and it will never beat out your
Speaker 2: instincts and intuitions if you work to develop them by
Speaker 2: being in the woods solving the problem of where are
Speaker 2: the deer, where are the big deer? And how do
Speaker 2: I get to them? Undetected? Most people also won't kill
Speaker 2: big Bucks with any level of consistency because most people
Speaker 2: aren't very good at trying new things out. We put
Speaker 2: stands where we like stands. We sit the food plot
Speaker 2: a lot because it's easy, but we also just lay
Speaker 2: down a pattern of ourselves that the deer can figure out,
Speaker 2: and they do figure it out super quickly. But trying
Speaker 2: out new stuff, tactics, sitting different spots you know where
Speaker 2: it's probably a real crap shoot, you know, that will
Speaker 2: help you kill big Bucks more often. And do you
Speaker 2: know why? Because you'll encounter deer where and when you
Speaker 2: think you shouldn't. You'll have encounters with deer when other
Speaker 2: people say you won't. You'll learn about the deer and
Speaker 2: about yourself at the same time. And how important this
Speaker 2: process is. Now, There's one thing I'm getting more and
Speaker 2: more obsessed with as I age, which is like the
Speaker 2: importance of momentum on life. If you sit the same
Speaker 2: stands over and over and you see fewer deer, your
Speaker 2: momentum is going to slow down and you're going to
Speaker 2: give into it. This is bad. Now. If you try
Speaker 2: new stuff and believe you're giving yourself a fighting chance
Speaker 2: of meeting up with a big one. You'll mostly fail,
Speaker 2: but you'll be actively failing at something that will almost
Speaker 2: always work at some point. And when it does work,
Speaker 2: even if it's just a long distant sighting for three
Speaker 2: seconds through the woods, that's a momentum shift. It's a
Speaker 2: reinforcement thing. It makes it a hell of a lot
Speaker 2: easier to keep going, keep trying new stuff out. This
Speaker 2: is hard to do, but as I've said, killing big
Speaker 2: deer is hard. In fact, I'm sick of telling people
Speaker 2: how to do it, because even when we know the
Speaker 2: best ways to kill big deer, we fight with ourselves
Speaker 2: because we don't want to give the process what it needs.
Speaker 2: The easy example of this to understand anyway, is the
Speaker 2: rut hunt on a pinch point or funnel. You know,
Speaker 2: train traps are the ticket during the rut, and if
Speaker 2: you learn to look for them and identify them, you're
Speaker 2: ahead of the competition in a lot of ways, but
Speaker 2: not as much as you will be if you can
Speaker 2: just be more patient. The all day said thing has
Speaker 2: been done to death, but time on stand kills big
Speaker 2: bucks when they are looking for does most quality pinch
Speaker 2: points in funnels will see some big buck movement during
Speaker 2: prime time at some point, you know, maybe it's once
Speaker 2: every few days, and your cameras show you that. And
Speaker 2: since your cameras show you that, you can look at
Speaker 2: it one of two ways. You can look at it
Speaker 2: and say, if I put in five dark to dark
Speaker 2: sits in a row, which is a big ask, but
Speaker 2: if I do that in that spot, the odds are
Speaker 2: way in my favor to have a good one come
Speaker 2: through when I'm there. But the way we mostly look
Speaker 2: at it is that there's only a random good one
Speaker 2: going through every couple of days. It's not consistent enough
Speaker 2: to justify the extra hours in the midday watching squirrels,
Speaker 2: you know, running around and fighting off those tree stand
Speaker 2: naps that always seem to hit so hard at lunchtime.
Speaker 2: So now we reinforce these thoughts, which ties right into
Speaker 2: the momentum thing, by saying, well, you know, such and
Speaker 2: such put in fifty six hours this week and he
Speaker 2: didn't kill one, So what chance do I have. Well,
Speaker 2: you can put in a lot of hours and not
Speaker 2: kill a big buck, but you still have a better
Speaker 2: chance of killing one with lots of hours on stand
Speaker 2: versus fewer hours on stand. I don't know how to
Speaker 2: put that any other way. This is where hunting gets
Speaker 2: even wonkier. Though in the early season. If you put
Speaker 2: fifty six hours into a pattern in it it doesn't work.
Speaker 2: You probably put about forty eight hours too many into it.
Speaker 2: It clearly wasn't the right choice. And volume hunting a
Speaker 2: spot to the point of insanity doesn't increase your odds
Speaker 2: of success, it decreases them. During the rut, that's a
Speaker 2: different story. We often do the exact opposite of what
Speaker 2: we should by sitting the same field edge stands over
Speaker 2: and over early and then deciding that we have to
Speaker 2: be super mobile rut hunters who set up in five
Speaker 2: different trees per day when November hits. If you want
Speaker 2: to kill big Bucks, you have to play the odds
Speaker 2: game a lot, and you have to try to do
Speaker 2: the stuff that's necessary to get you close. Now, another
Speaker 2: thing that keeps most of us from consistently killing big
Speaker 2: Bucks is we give our sits too much weight, like
Speaker 2: each individual sit is too important. We put too much
Speaker 2: faith that this will be the morning, you know, because
Speaker 2: the weather is perfect and the deer hunting app says
Speaker 2: they'll all be moving, and you know, the moon phase
Speaker 2: is right, and whatever else. Almost every time you believe
Speaker 2: that stuff, you're going to be proven wrong by the
Speaker 2: deer themselves. You have to hunt for one encounter, and
Speaker 2: you have to understand that most of the time your
Speaker 2: best plans will definitely not put you in bow range
Speaker 2: of a big buck. Maybe you can get really good
Speaker 2: and have one out of every twenty or thirty days
Speaker 2: in the field result in a close encounter or a
Speaker 2: big one, But the key is to understand that you
Speaker 2: can do everything right and you're almost guaranteed to still fail.
Speaker 2: But the more times you do everything right and don't
Speaker 2: see or kill a big buck brings you closer to
Speaker 2: the time when he will actually walk by a twenty
Speaker 2: yards Deer hunting is a numbers game in so many
Speaker 2: different ways, and this one is important because understanding that
Speaker 2: the failure part is just fine when you did your
Speaker 2: best isn't just some kindergarten level bullshit. It's true. And
Speaker 2: those great deer hunters you look up to who seem
Speaker 2: to always kill, they mostly always fail at killing big
Speaker 2: deer when they hunt. They're just more consistent than most people,
Speaker 2: so their failure rate is lower, and that's pretty tightly
Speaker 2: correlated to hunting. The way they think they need to
Speaker 2: as much as they can, and they also scout a ton,
Speaker 2: So it's probably the number one reason most hunters don't
Speaker 2: kill big bucks. Scouting time in season scouting time, i
Speaker 2: should say, is as valuable, if not more valuable, than
Speaker 2: actually hunting. We have this idea that scouting in the
Speaker 2: season is a good way to bump our bucks onto
Speaker 2: the neighbors. But if you're not seeing or encountering big bucks,
Speaker 2: how could that possibly matter? Now, sure, you know your
Speaker 2: trail cameras tell you that big deer are around, and
Speaker 2: so you can use that as an excuse to not
Speaker 2: go looking for fresh sign. That's a bad idea. Deer
Speaker 2: concentrations they shift and they move throughout the season, you know,
Speaker 2: depending on pressure and food and available cover. Big bucks
Speaker 2: move throughout the season two and they leave a lot
Speaker 2: of sign when they get to new areas or start
Speaker 2: spending lots of time in very specific spots. Now, the
Speaker 2: off season stuff is important, believe me. Winter scouting, you know,
Speaker 2: it's a great way to develop good rout spots. Summer scouting,
Speaker 2: you know, it's a great way to get into the
Speaker 2: season and kill one early. But if you want to
Speaker 2: kill a big one, in October or the pre rod
Speaker 2: scouting right now for where the big bucks are is
Speaker 2: the ticket. Now. Too many of us wait for the
Speaker 2: deer to show up where we want to hunt them,
Speaker 2: instead of going to find where they are and hunting
Speaker 2: them in their spots. And when you do that, you
Speaker 2: give yourself a whole season of being in the game versus,
Speaker 2: you know, trying to utilize a couple of windows of
Speaker 2: time that you and everyone else is waiting for where
Speaker 2: we kind of all deem that the deer should be
Speaker 2: the most vulnerable. The easy way to combat this stuff
Speaker 2: is to try to force yourself to use some time
Speaker 2: to go look at some spots. Let's say you have
Speaker 2: a day to hunt and you're going to do a
Speaker 2: morning sit in an afternoon sit. Find one spot to
Speaker 2: sneak into during the midday that won't affect your other hunts.
Speaker 2: Go look at a spot or maybe a couple sneak
Speaker 2: in like you plan to hunt, because you might need
Speaker 2: to call an audible and hunt what you find. Understand though,
Speaker 2: that mostly you won't find anything good, But when you do,
Speaker 2: you'll be in a better position to kill a big
Speaker 2: buck right now then you will at any other point
Speaker 2: of the season and even sometimes during the rut. That's
Speaker 2: the power of in season scouting, and it's so much
Speaker 2: more important to us than sitting out and waiting for
Speaker 2: the bucks to get dumb, which is the last thing
Speaker 2: I want to talk about here. The rut is great,
Speaker 2: it's fun. It's a leveling agent that gives each of
Speaker 2: us a better chance. But it doesn't make pressure deer
Speaker 2: super dumb. It just doesn't. If you believe that you're
Speaker 2: probably not going to kill big bucks very often. They
Speaker 2: aren't just super good at surviving for only eleven months
Speaker 2: of the year, even if they are prone to some
Speaker 2: riskier behavior during November, which they are. Got to give
Speaker 2: them the respect and the effort they deserve, and you'll
Speaker 2: be surprised at what happens if you keep at it
Speaker 2: for a whole season. Do that, and come back tomorrow
Speaker 2: where I'm going to keep this podcast train rolling right
Speaker 2: along the tracks with another episode of Foundations. That's it
Speaker 2: for this episode. I'm Tony Peterson. This has been the
Speaker 2: Wired to Hunt Foundations podcast, which is brought to you
Speaker 2: by First Light. And if you like first Light and
Speaker 2: you want to add to your kid or you want
Speaker 2: to try it out for the first time. You need
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Speaker 2: white Tail Weeks sale is going on and there's a
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Speaker 2: much for your support. I can't tell you how much
Speaker 2: it means to us at meet eatter, so truly thank you.