Speaker 1: Welcome to the Wired to Hunt Foundation's podcast, your guide
Speaker 1: to the fundamentals of better deer hunting. Present it by
Speaker 1: First Light, creating proven versatile hunting apparel for the stand,
Speaker 1: saddle or blind. First Light Go Farther, Stay Longer, and
Speaker 1: now your host, Tony Peterson.
Speaker 2: Hey, everybody, welcome to the Wired to Hunt Foundations podcast,
Speaker 2: which is brought to you by First Light. I'm your
Speaker 2: host Tony Peterson. Today I'm going to talk about one
Speaker 2: of the most underrated aspects of white tail hunting, understanding
Speaker 2: deer browse. Hunters talk a lot about browse, but it's
Speaker 2: always kind of like impassive. I mean, how often do
Speaker 2: you hear about someone who killed a big buck on
Speaker 2: a browse pattern? Maybe this is a big maybe if
Speaker 2: you follow some big woods buck hunters, you'll hear mention
Speaker 2: a browse, But it's pretty likely to hear anyone credit
Speaker 2: brows with their buck kills in most places destination food
Speaker 2: sources and food plots. But the truth is deer have
Speaker 2: a crazy diverse diet and understanding your local browse options
Speaker 2: can help you kill more deer, which is what this
Speaker 2: episode is all about. While I'm not as hyped up
Speaker 2: to kill turkeys with a shotgun. As I used to be,
Speaker 2: I still love it. I think I love the satisfaction
Speaker 2: of calling a bird in to my decoys and arrowing
Speaker 2: it at seven yards like a tiny bit more. But
Speaker 2: there's no denying that a day is spent running and
Speaker 2: gunning for longbeards is a day well spent. Now, this
Speaker 2: can be accomplished at any given day in the spring,
Speaker 2: obviously at least when the season's open. But for me,
Speaker 2: if I'm going to carry a shotgun and put my
Speaker 2: back to a tree, there's a timing consideration, and I
Speaker 2: always try to get right if I can. You see,
Speaker 2: many of the states I hunt for turkeys are pretty
Speaker 2: far north. This means that in the early season, which
Speaker 2: I guess we could probably call I don't know, all
Speaker 2: of April, at least up here, just to make things
Speaker 2: easier during that time, the food sources, they're real predictable.
Speaker 2: The birds are going to be out scratching in agricultural fields.
Speaker 2: They'll root around in the leaf litter for acorns, often
Speaker 2: red oak acorns where I live, because most of the
Speaker 2: white oak acorns got eaten up a long time ago.
Speaker 2: Those birds will also go digging around in the swamps
Speaker 2: for some kind of early emergent plant that I have
Speaker 2: yet to really figure out. And actually, honestly, I don't
Speaker 2: even know if it's a plant. They might be digging
Speaker 2: up snails or something for all I know. What I
Speaker 2: do know is about the first week, when I'm hearing
Speaker 2: toads and frogs really chirping away in the backyard pond,
Speaker 2: I know I'm going to go out and watch turkeys
Speaker 2: work the edges of swamps. In fact, I often see
Speaker 2: deer do this too, and I doubt they're eating snails.
Speaker 2: Once April is in the rear view mirror, you know,
Speaker 2: then I start to get excited about the prospect of
Speaker 2: running a gun for turkeys. This is because it's usually
Speaker 2: warm enough for the plants to start butting out. There's
Speaker 2: usually some really consistent insect activity at that point, and
Speaker 2: I'd think after five or six months and no fresh
Speaker 2: salad and no buggy delicacies, the turkeys, you know, they're
Speaker 2: gonna split up if they were still flocked up, and
Speaker 2: they're going to hit these new food sources hard. And
Speaker 2: they often go from being super visible in the fields
Speaker 2: to being far less visible, which simply means that they're
Speaker 2: in the woods, and for some reason, a reason I
Speaker 2: can't really explain, I love setting up in the woods
Speaker 2: to calling gobblers. It's so fun to hear them sound
Speaker 2: off and to know they are coming, but not be
Speaker 2: able to see them till they're damn near within shotgun
Speaker 2: range already. Then you just catch that glimpse of a
Speaker 2: fan in the brush or a you know, a redhead
Speaker 2: bobbing through the woods, and oh so sweet. It's also
Speaker 2: pretty damn reliable experience. In other words, the transition of
Speaker 2: food sources. It's gonna happen during turkey season at some point,
Speaker 2: and when it does, I know that I'm gonna get
Speaker 2: out and try to shoot one in the face with
Speaker 2: my twelve gage in the woods. If this sounds like
Speaker 2: something I'm making up, do yourself a favor. If you
Speaker 2: happen to shoot a bird when the woods are really
Speaker 2: greening up and you're worried about, you know, being carried
Speaker 2: off by ticks by that point, dissect his crop while
Speaker 2: the toms don't eat as much as the hens do
Speaker 2: throughout the spring, which is why I don't know. If
Speaker 2: you want to shoot a real heavyweight, like a twenty
Speaker 2: eight pounder, you're going to want to do it in
Speaker 2: early spring versus later. They do still eat all season long,
Speaker 2: They're not going to pass up a quick snack while
Speaker 2: they're in the midst of their lusty strutting and gobbling,
Speaker 2: you know, across the landscape looking for a girlfriend, you know.
Speaker 2: And if you do cut open their crop, you'll probably
Speaker 2: see some fresh leaves and often some kind of bugs.
Speaker 2: Sometimes those insects will still be moving, which you'd think
Speaker 2: would have to be kind of a weird feeling for
Speaker 2: the birds, although they're probably used to it and probably
Speaker 2: like it anyway. I'll bet if you could figure out
Speaker 2: how to do it, you could shoot deer in at
Speaker 2: least September and October, and you know, probably much later
Speaker 2: farther south, and you'd see all kinds of interesting plants
Speaker 2: in their stomach. I'll bet the diversity of that would
Speaker 2: rival any gobbler in the spring. In fact, this with
Speaker 2: deer has been studied quite a bit to find folks
Speaker 2: at the Mississippi State University Deer Ecology and Management Lab.
Speaker 2: They have studied this so of other researchers, and the
Speaker 2: findings are fascinating. But for starters, it pays to understand
Speaker 2: not only what white tails eat, but why they do it.
Speaker 2: They seem to have filled an ecological hole that other
Speaker 2: ungulates like elk, moose, and even cattle just didn't fill.
Speaker 2: For whatever reason, those grass grazers got a far different
Speaker 2: diet than the white tail deer, highly specialized feeders. You
Speaker 2: can understand this just by looking at their long, slender
Speaker 2: snout and their tongue. This allows them to nibble on
Speaker 2: really small parts of plants, really specific parts of plants,
Speaker 2: instead of just wholesale mowing down on huge mouthfuls of grass.
Speaker 2: And they also have superactive salivary glands which produce enzymes
Speaker 2: and help them break down and deactivate certain plant compounds
Speaker 2: like tannins, which are found in food sources like those
Speaker 2: red oak acorns I mentioned earlier. Their gastro intestinal track
Speaker 2: further aids them in eating foods other critters can't, allowing
Speaker 2: them to fulfill their energy requirements from a variety of plants.
Speaker 2: How big of a variety you might ask, Well, in
Speaker 2: one study of southeastern white tails, they were shown to
Speaker 2: eat over four hundred species of plants. Now keep in
Speaker 2: mind that's just what they documented during the study and
Speaker 2: probably undershoots the total amount of plants that deer can eat,
Speaker 2: maybe by a lot. Of course, just because deer can
Speaker 2: and do eat hundreds of different kinds of plants throughout
Speaker 2: the year doesn't mean they do so equally. In another study,
Speaker 2: researchers noted that they're subjects eight over one hundred and
Speaker 2: forty different species of plants, but just one third of
Speaker 2: those plants made up ninety three percent of the deer's diet.
Speaker 2: And this brings up an interesting thing about white tails,
Speaker 2: even if it really doesn't have any bearing on how
Speaker 2: you'll hunt them better. They are constantly testing out food sources,
Speaker 2: likely to figure out, you know, how palatable they are
Speaker 2: and what kind of nutritional value they offer, and this
Speaker 2: probably hits a fever pitch for deer from the months
Speaker 2: of May through I don't know, maybe September or October,
Speaker 2: when the most brows is available to them. In fact,
Speaker 2: it has been shown that brows and forbes are the
Speaker 2: most important forages for deer, providing over eighty percent of
Speaker 2: their diet at least until fall. So as summer progresses,
Speaker 2: their diet starts to move towards soft mass, and then
Speaker 2: during the fall it ratches up to hard mass. But
Speaker 2: the brows still a very real part of their diet
Speaker 2: and a huge component of their ability to stay well fed, healthy,
Speaker 2: and survive the winter. Okay, so you've gotten a science lesson,
Speaker 2: a biology lesson, and some super exciting facts to what
Speaker 2: your appetite. But what does this mean to you as
Speaker 2: a hunter. Well, I don't know. Basically, it means that
Speaker 2: you should probably think about how brows could play into
Speaker 2: your hunting strategy. Let me give you an easy example
Speaker 2: of this, forestry or logging. If you're a big woods hunter,
Speaker 2: or really you hunt anywhere where old growth forests might
Speaker 2: meet the chainsaws at some point and the sun might
Speaker 2: get to hit the forest floor in a meaningful way
Speaker 2: after a couple of decades of being blocked out by
Speaker 2: the canopy. You know a couple of things. The first
Speaker 2: is that fresh clearcuts they look nothing like old growth forests.
Speaker 2: Aside from the obvious changes, like most of the big
Speaker 2: trees are gone, the ground cover just explodes. Nature is
Speaker 2: a quick eraser, and this is never more clear than
Speaker 2: when you watch a section of forests that has been
Speaker 2: logged starts as suddenly mature. The variety of plant life
Speaker 2: that springs up is always impressive. Often we only pay
Speaker 2: attention to fresh clearcuts when they start to grow up
Speaker 2: just a little bit, because they provide excellent security cover
Speaker 2: for white tails. They are also the best places to
Speaker 2: find rough grouse a lot of times, if that's your thing.
Speaker 2: But it's not just the security of a thick, fresh
Speaker 2: clearcut that draws deer in. There are a couple other factors.
Speaker 2: For one, there's almost always an edge created in this scenario,
Speaker 2: and you know that I know and love to talk
Speaker 2: about how much deer love edges. But what matters here
Speaker 2: for this podcast is the brows. A section that has
Speaker 2: been recently log is going to offer brows that the
Speaker 2: deer just cannot get in older growth forests. I've spent
Speaker 2: quite a bit of my time hunting big woods deer,
Speaker 2: and I'll tell you that nothing gets me to change
Speaker 2: my plans faster than when I run across a fresh clearcut.
Speaker 2: I know that it might play into my plans for
Speaker 2: ten years or more. To be honest, they're that good
Speaker 2: and that valuable to the deer. But what if you
Speaker 2: don't live in the North country, or you know some
Speaker 2: of the huge pine plantations down south, the big woods
Speaker 2: swamps down there, brows can still be key. I'll give
Speaker 2: you another example. When I last drew an Iowa tag,
Speaker 2: which is about as not big woodsy type of hunting
Speaker 2: as you can get, I spent my first full day
Speaker 2: covered in deer on public land. Now, this land offered
Speaker 2: the deer more than the private land does. In addition
Speaker 2: to woods, meadows and river bottoms, it has state planted
Speaker 2: food plots and is checkerboarded between private farms that are
Speaker 2: mostly agricultural fields. If you were to draw up a
Speaker 2: perfect deer scenario type of region, this area would serve
Speaker 2: pretty well as inspiration. Now, during my opening morning sit
Speaker 2: when I eventually hit and lost the biggest buck of
Speaker 2: my life that I'm going to talk about a lot
Speaker 2: because it still stings, I watched several bucks and doze
Speaker 2: leave a private alfalfa field. When they got to my
Speaker 2: side of the fence, they spent some time looking around.
Speaker 2: Some of them eventually just headed off to go straight
Speaker 2: to their bedding, but others hit the edge of the
Speaker 2: meadow and they really started browsing. They'd pick and nibble
Speaker 2: their way along and then dive into the woods for
Speaker 2: a while, picking and nibbling along their way there, then
Speaker 2: they'd break back out into the meadow. It was awesome
Speaker 2: and a really good lesson. The destination food source was
Speaker 2: definitely a part of their daily routine. It was far
Speaker 2: from their only source accountries. And since I could hunt
Speaker 2: the brows, but I couldn't hunt where they were coming
Speaker 2: from the destination food source, that browse and that little
Speaker 2: pattern around the meatow became even that much more important.
Speaker 1: Now.
Speaker 2: Later that evening, when I scrambled to set up to
Speaker 2: mostly observe a river bottom flat that it probably I
Speaker 2: don't know has four feet of flowing water in it
Speaker 2: right now, I watched a whole parade of dozen fawns.
Speaker 2: They all browsed their way through the river bottom, which,
Speaker 2: if you hunt river bottoms as much as I do,
Speaker 2: you know how much they loved that. I'd bet quite
Speaker 2: a bit of money that there is some sort of
Speaker 2: microhabitat situation going on in floodplains that promote certain kinds
Speaker 2: of plant growth, and that the deer know there's good
Speaker 2: stuff to nibble on there. In fact, one of the
Speaker 2: primary plants I find in those situations are nettles, which
Speaker 2: I don't know suck to walk through, but you know
Speaker 2: what the deer eat the crap out of them somehow.
Speaker 2: Maybe it's like when we eat a ghost pepper. I
Speaker 2: don't know. Another super annoying plant that deer are prone
Speaker 2: to chomping on as Multiflora rose. These thorny bitches are
Speaker 2: an invasive species that is despised by farmers and ranchers
Speaker 2: and just a healthy population of landowners overall. It's also
Speaker 2: on the menu for white tails and grows in plenty
Speaker 2: of different places, which also provides pretty dang good bedding
Speaker 2: cover in addition to brows. Now, I could list more
Speaker 2: specific type of plants that deer brows, but it doesn't
Speaker 2: matter because you guys live all over the place. And
Speaker 2: what that means is that you have to learn what
Speaker 2: is in your region, at least to some extent, and
Speaker 2: then try to understand what would be valuable to the
Speaker 2: deer when you're hunting them. This is most easily, although
Speaker 2: I'll admit it's not really that easy to accomplish two
Speaker 2: different ways. The first is to scout and look for
Speaker 2: nipped off plants. I guess that is kind of easy.
Speaker 2: When the local deer are really keying in on a
Speaker 2: specific food source. It's pretty obvious. Now. If you do
Speaker 2: this now, you'll get a chance to see what the
Speaker 2: deer eat in the spring, which it might not be
Speaker 2: of much use to you for your fall hunting. But
Speaker 2: as the summer progresses and you get out to put
Speaker 2: up some trail cameras or maybe spend some time on
Speaker 2: the spotting scope, you have the opportunity to dial in
Speaker 2: some browse intel. Again. Oh, maybe you're hiking into a
Speaker 2: secluded spot like a pond to hang your camera, and
Speaker 2: wherever you put it, it's going to allow you the
Speaker 2: chance to look at some greenery for signs of browsing
Speaker 2: on the way in and out. When you're glassing, you
Speaker 2: actually have a better chance to figure out what deer
Speaker 2: like to browse on. Remember when I mentioned watching those
Speaker 2: deer in Iowa browsing along a meadow, Well, when you
Speaker 2: spend time glassing summertime, deer in fields see the exact
Speaker 2: same behavior. I mean, it's crazy how often you can
Speaker 2: watch a bachelor group head out into the alfalfa or
Speaker 2: soybeans or whatever where they're going to definitely feed for
Speaker 2: a while, but often they'll start to pingpong their way
Speaker 2: back into the cover and then out of it. I
Speaker 2: watched a pile of deer do this back in twenty
Speaker 2: fifteen at the back end of a beanfield, and when
Speaker 2: I snuck in there to hang a stand, I found
Speaker 2: a bunch of wild grapes growing there where many of
Speaker 2: the bucks seemed to disappear to On the second night
Speaker 2: of the season, when the wind was right, I slipped
Speaker 2: into that stand. Two little bucks showed up first, and
Speaker 2: then they were joined by a much bigger eight pointer.
Speaker 2: While I managed to grunt him in. It also just
Speaker 2: happened to be that the two youngsters prayed it right
Speaker 2: over to me and started browsing on the field edge.
Speaker 2: I saw them eating some of those grapes, but I
Speaker 2: also saw them browsing on something else that was in there.
Speaker 2: I don't know what it was, but it didn't matter.
Speaker 2: Eventually that bigger deer followed them in, and when he
Speaker 2: got to twenty yards he made my whole season awful
Speaker 2: short and awful sweet. Of course, this example involves a
Speaker 2: destination food source and soft mast and some field edge brows,
Speaker 2: but that's better than focusing on just a single type
Speaker 2: of food. The more things your stand sites have going
Speaker 2: for him, the better. Like having a river crossing that
Speaker 2: is a natural funnel while also being a water source,
Speaker 2: and hell, maybe it leads up to a fence crossing,
Speaker 2: and that means that you really have three things working
Speaker 2: for you instead of one in a given spot. I
Speaker 2: like those types of setups a lot. But what if
Speaker 2: you can't pin down a specific type of brows that
Speaker 2: should be hot during a specific part of the season. Well,
Speaker 2: go back two weeks and listen to the episode I
Speaker 2: put out about where bucks like to travel. In it,
Speaker 2: I talk a lot about security cover and how they
Speaker 2: stick to the thick stuff but also gravitate toward edges.
Speaker 2: If you just want to find brows without getting too specific,
Speaker 2: edge cover is probably your ticket. Where two types of
Speaker 2: habitat meet, you'll often have the chance for very specific
Speaker 2: types of greenery. This might be an old homestead and
Speaker 2: a bigger wood lot, It might just be an overgrown
Speaker 2: fence row, or it might be where a floodplain meets
Speaker 2: a little bit higher ground. These types of spots exist
Speaker 2: all over the country, all over where deer live, and
Speaker 2: it's almost a guarantee that no matter where you hunt,
Speaker 2: there is an edge pattern to work with, and often
Speaker 2: the edge pattern is good because of multiple factors. It
Speaker 2: might be a type of cover that connects bigger wood lots,
Speaker 2: or it just might be a little bit thicker than
Speaker 2: the surrounding area. It might offer ideal sized saplings to rub,
Speaker 2: or you know, just a good place to lay down
Speaker 2: some sign, or maybe it just coincides with the best
Speaker 2: safest travel routes. But no matter what, it's also very
Speaker 2: very likely to contain some brows. There's one more thing
Speaker 2: I want to say on this before I wrap it up.
Speaker 2: I've been preaching a lot about paying attention. It's just
Speaker 2: plain old good advice. But there's something else to say
Speaker 2: on it. Pay attention to what the deer brows on
Speaker 2: when you're hunting them. Take no to what the does
Speaker 2: nibble on, and the little bucks observe the deer because
Speaker 2: what they nibble on is they pass through on their
Speaker 2: way back to bed in the morning. It's going to
Speaker 2: tell you an awful lot about what they're interested in
Speaker 2: eating from year to year to year, and file that
Speaker 2: away the old memory bank. What the deer eat during
Speaker 2: a certain week in the fall this year, they may
Speaker 2: very well eat the same week next year. What a
Speaker 2: forky finds delicious tonight One hundred and forty incher might
Speaker 2: not be able to resist tomorrow. Watch them work through
Speaker 2: the woods, and pay special attention to deer that seem
Speaker 2: to concentrate on a specific, tiny little patch of woods,
Speaker 2: because it's probably some brows right there that they're really on.
Speaker 2: Whatever they are all gravitating toward to you, It's pretty
Speaker 2: important being a hunter. Don't be afraid to either go
Speaker 2: set up over it, or at least walk over and
Speaker 2: take a closer look to dig in. What you find
Speaker 2: might serve you extremely well in the next few days
Speaker 2: or the next twenty seasons. That's it for this week,
Speaker 2: my friends. I'm Tony Peterson. It's been the Wire to
Speaker 2: Hunt Foundations podcast, which is brought to you by First Light.
Speaker 2: As always, thank you so much for listening. If you
Speaker 2: want some more white Till advice, head on over to
Speaker 2: the meadeater dot com slash why and you can see
Speaker 2: a ton of hunting articles written by hunting experts on
Speaker 2: all kinds of things, hunting styles, tactics, strategies, understanding other
Speaker 2: food sources, all kinds of good stuff. Go check it out.