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 episode is all about why you
Speaker 2: might want to use a doe decoy instead of a
Speaker 2: buck decoy. If this week doesn't make your giblets tingle
Speaker 2: as a deer hunter, you might want to check your pulse.
Speaker 2: It's go time and all of you folks who sat
Speaker 2: out the hot weather or the lull or whatever to
Speaker 2: hunt the best time of the year, well it's here
Speaker 2: and you better get out there. But first you might
Speaker 2: want to consider a doe decoy, which is something I'm
Speaker 2: going to lean on pretty heavily this year. But first
Speaker 2: I need to explain why I keep leaving the buck
Speaker 2: decoy at home and going with the dough. So buckle
Speaker 2: up my pre rut buttercups, because it's time to talk
Speaker 2: to your Let's do a little imaginary lesson. To start
Speaker 2: this one off, Let's say you're a guy, because that's
Speaker 2: a pretty safe bet for a podcast with this level
Speaker 2: of juvenile humor that is centered on trying to outsmart
Speaker 2: rabbits with antlers, and you're about to head to the
Speaker 2: local watering hole. Now, let's also say that you are
Speaker 2: a single fella. I don't care if your main squeeze
Speaker 2: got hit by a train and it has been the
Speaker 2: appropriate amount of time since the funeral, or you're just
Speaker 2: a pioneer not a settler. Whatever. So you walk into
Speaker 2: some fine establishment adorned with plenty of Neon signage in
Speaker 2: the windows, and you stroll up to the bar to
Speaker 2: order I don't know, seven shots of fireball or whatever
Speaker 2: the kids are drinking these days. I've been out of
Speaker 2: the game for quite a while on that front, so
Speaker 2: you got to fill in the blanks yourself here. Now
Speaker 2: you look to your right and you see what is
Speaker 2: clearly a large collection of women dressed in cowgirl themed
Speaker 2: outfits that they clearly bought for some bridesmade get together
Speaker 2: type thing. Maybe one of them has a veil on
Speaker 2: or something and is carrying a balloon that is shaped
Speaker 2: a lot like a not safer work balloon. If you
Speaker 2: get my drift, you take a head count, you realize
Speaker 2: there are eleven of them and they are doing shots
Speaker 2: and having fun. Then you look to your left. At
Speaker 2: the other end of the bar is a collection of dudes.
Speaker 2: They all have Affliction T shirts on. They are about
Speaker 2: two sizes too small, Several have barbed ware tattoos around
Speaker 2: their biceps, many of them have backwards hats on, and
Speaker 2: all of them are drinking what looks like brown hard
Speaker 2: liquor that is mixed with nothing more than an ice
Speaker 2: cube and bad decision making. To further clarify what's going on,
Speaker 2: one of the bridesmaids she goes to the jukebox and
Speaker 2: plays Mark Kenyon's favorite Taylor Swift love song. Then one
Speaker 2: of the Affliction T shirt wearing dudes struts over and
Speaker 2: plays a German death metal song that sounds a bit
Speaker 2: like what they used to use to make it very
Speaker 2: uncomfortable for the detainees in Guantanamo Bay. You have two choices.
Speaker 2: What group do you approach first? Now, let's say that
Speaker 2: you pose this question to the next one hundred guys
Speaker 2: you run across. Some of them are five feet tall
Speaker 2: and one hundred pounds soaking wet, while others look like
Speaker 2: they failed the NFL draft for being too big and
Speaker 2: too violent, and of course there's everything in between. What
Speaker 2: percentage of guys do you think would stroll up to
Speaker 2: the barboyer tattoo crowd? First, it's probably a pretty small,
Speaker 2: pretty low amount, although there might be a few mixed
Speaker 2: in there that just like the thrill of throwing haymakers
Speaker 2: on a Saturday night, the smart money is on the ladies.
Speaker 2: Maybe not all the guys go that way, of course,
Speaker 2: but the numbers would be in your favor there. Now,
Speaker 2: let's think about deer. I had the recent pleasure of
Speaker 2: snort wheezing in a giant eight pointer on public land.
Speaker 2: That was clearly a dominant buck, and he was the
Speaker 2: kind of deer that could handle the deer version of
Speaker 2: you know what are you looking at? Pal? I also
Speaker 2: had the displeasure of cutting hairs off of his back
Speaker 2: when I guess the rains wrong, because I was in
Speaker 2: full meltdown mode from thinking that he was going to
Speaker 2: walk out a frame and get out of my life,
Speaker 2: which he did later on, and which stung a lot.
Speaker 2: But that buck was the buck to challenge I tried
Speaker 2: the same thing on a smaller deer and it worked
Speaker 2: exactly like it often does. That buck was a lover
Speaker 2: and not a fighter. In fact, almost every deer you
Speaker 2: see will choose the lover approach because in nature it
Speaker 2: makes more sense to burn precious calories passing on your
Speaker 2: genes versus locking the cage of the octagon for five rounds.
Speaker 2: Yet we almost always choose a buck decoy over a
Speaker 2: dough decoy. Why is that? Well for starters, the people
Speaker 2: who sell you buck decoys tend to hunt places that
Speaker 2: you definitely wouldn't be allowed on. If your farm is
Speaker 2: hovered up in prime age bucks, a buck decoy is
Speaker 2: no big deal. You can weed through the little tiny
Speaker 2: one hundred and forty inches and wait on the one
Speaker 2: sixty five who rules the roost. You also probably have
Speaker 2: a very good idea where he likes to travel and win,
Speaker 2: So a buck decoy with an aggressive body posture is
Speaker 2: the right call there, and it works. You can turn
Speaker 2: on your favorite hook and Bullet channel or go on
Speaker 2: over to YouTube and watch this play out a lot
Speaker 2: this time of year, and it is cool as hell.
Speaker 2: A buck that approaches sort of sideways while licking his
Speaker 2: lips and side eyeing a plastic rival. It's just a
Speaker 2: sight to behold. And when he sucker punches a fake
Speaker 2: buck in the guts, it's pretty damn amazing. But again,
Speaker 2: if you choose a buck decoy, you're playing the odds game,
Speaker 2: and what you're doing is saying I don't want a
Speaker 2: certain number of bucks to come in to range, and
Speaker 2: I certainly don't want any actual doze around me. This
Speaker 2: is the equivalent of casting a huge bucktail for muskies.
Speaker 2: You aren't going to accidentally catch very many bass on it,
Speaker 2: and maybe, just maybe you might catch a mongo pike,
Speaker 2: but mostly you're going to either catch nothing or hook
Speaker 2: into a big musky. Now, if that's what you're into,
Speaker 2: doughnuts for deer doughnuts, But if you're listening to this podcast,
Speaker 2: my guess is that maybe you're open to the possibility
Speaker 2: that decoying in one hundred inch dear would be pretty
Speaker 2: sweet too. That's where I'm at and I'm going to
Speaker 2: get to it, But first I should talk a little
Speaker 2: bit about a third option. You can use a small
Speaker 2: buck decoy. I'm trying to get Dave Smith to make
Speaker 2: me a realistic looking basket rack six pointer. But it
Speaker 2: turns out he knows the decoy market better than me
Speaker 2: and isn't interested in my suggestion for how to run
Speaker 2: his business. I also asked him to make me a
Speaker 2: feeding dough decoy, and that got me a response that
Speaker 2: was similar to what I told my wife that I thought,
Speaker 2: after this whole filming whitetail run, I'm on wraps up.
Speaker 2: I'm just gonna go hunker down in Wisconsin for a
Speaker 2: few weeks until I run out of season or kill
Speaker 2: a big buck. Anyway, a little buck decoy opens up
Speaker 2: your options more. A big buck's not usually going to
Speaker 2: fear a little buck, but that doesn't mean he's gonna
Speaker 2: mess with him. Sometimes they come in and it seems
Speaker 2: like they just want to push them around, kind of
Speaker 2: like when you use a quarter strut jake for spring turkeys.
Speaker 2: But sometimes they almost don't pay them any mind at all,
Speaker 2: even if you pair that decoy up with some rattling
Speaker 2: or grunting or snort wheezing or whatever. The bucks that
Speaker 2: are out there this time of year are looking for
Speaker 2: one thing first and foremost. That's not a fight. It's
Speaker 2: something that while I'm not a dear biologist here seems
Speaker 2: like it's more likely to get offered up by doze
Speaker 2: than bucks. There is also the reality that putting out
Speaker 2: a buck decoy has a ripple effect on the rest
Speaker 2: of the non target deer That doesn't seem to do
Speaker 2: you too many favors if you like having non target
Speaker 2: deer around you. What I mean by that is, by
Speaker 2: the time the pre rudd is really kicking in, it
Speaker 2: seems like the doughs have had enough of the harassment already.
Speaker 2: They are generally pretty leery of decoys anyway, which I
Speaker 2: think is funny because we always talk about them as
Speaker 2: if they are easy to kill while acting like big
Speaker 2: bucks are super smart. I think the average dough, at
Speaker 2: least pressure dough, has better survival instincts than the average
Speaker 2: big buck. But that's fodder for a different podcast, and
Speaker 2: one that might get me shunned out of the deer
Speaker 2: on In community because it's built on the notion that
Speaker 2: mature bucks are the masters of avoiding hunters. Any huski.
Speaker 2: If you put a buck decoy out, you are generally
Speaker 2: admitting a few things. The first is you're calling out
Speaker 2: bucks that are just not big enough, or the ones
Speaker 2: that don't have the right mentality to mess with your decoy.
Speaker 2: The second is you're probably going to alarm some non
Speaker 2: target deer with its presence, which can have a negative
Speaker 2: effect on your sit. With a dough decoy, you mitigate
Speaker 2: a lot of that stuff, And to be honest, doesn't
Speaker 2: it just makes sense to give the deer what they're
Speaker 2: looking for. I really don't get the idea that it
Speaker 2: should always be a buck decoy, but maybe that's a
Speaker 2: personal problem. This really started to take shape for me
Speaker 2: a long time ago when I started using some portable
Speaker 2: fold out deer decoys. One of them was a meal
Speaker 2: deer decoy, but represented a feeding meal deer, so in
Speaker 2: other words, it just looked like a relaxed deer that
Speaker 2: was munching on some greenery or acorns. The white tails
Speaker 2: didn't seem to notice that it wasn't their species. And
Speaker 2: what blew me away was that I could use it
Speaker 2: in the early season, like in a beanfield setup, and
Speaker 2: almost all of the deer would eventually come over and
Speaker 2: feed by it. Now, some of the dose would look
Speaker 2: very suspiciously at it at first, but almost always they'd
Speaker 2: end up feeding over to it. It kind of shattered
Speaker 2: my notion of what I knew about decoying at the time,
Speaker 2: but the lesson there was one that stuck with me.
Speaker 2: We absorb a lot of information about deer hunting vicariously.
Speaker 2: I you it at least partially as an academic pursuit,
Speaker 2: which it is, but it's all so experiential. In fact,
Speaker 2: experience is just the real difference maker between being good
Speaker 2: at this stuff or not. In my experience messing around
Speaker 2: with that feeding mule deer dough decoy and then later
Speaker 2: their white tailed dough decoy, was that a lot of
Speaker 2: what I'd always heard about decoying is just not always true.
Speaker 2: You can say I had a natural bend toward doe
Speaker 2: decoys to begin with, but that really became something different
Speaker 2: last season when I hunted with my daughters. Now I
Speaker 2: know I've talked about this a lot, so bear with me.
Speaker 2: After one of my daughters shot a spike on the
Speaker 2: first night of the season, her sister was up to
Speaker 2: bat and while I tried really hard to get a
Speaker 2: buck in front of her, I couldn't even get a
Speaker 2: deer to show itself. We sat in the north woods
Speaker 2: and blanked and blanked and blanked, and it got to
Speaker 2: be the first week of November, and I told her
Speaker 2: that our shot was going to be to post up
Speaker 2: with that dough decoy and just wade out a buck.
Speaker 2: My rationale was that in a low deer density area,
Speaker 2: a lone dough would draw some serious attention if we
Speaker 2: could get a buck to even look at it. And
Speaker 2: it took us all day, but the buck that did
Speaker 2: look at it liked what he saw so much that
Speaker 2: he put on a scraping show for us and then
Speaker 2: trotted into about fourteen yards and gave our fake deer
Speaker 2: a good butt sniff. He seemed very confused at what
Speaker 2: he got a whiff of, but he didn't get much
Speaker 2: time to ponder it because my daughter shot him right
Speaker 2: through the lungs and in a matter of seconds we
Speaker 2: were getting out of the blind to go look at him.
Speaker 2: A week later, I sat in the exact same blind
Speaker 2: with the doe set up in the exact same spot
Speaker 2: and watched a cruising two year old eight pointer pop
Speaker 2: out of the field and trot right past my setup.
Speaker 2: It was one of those deer hunting moments that went
Speaker 2: from oh he's in so much trouble to oh shit,
Speaker 2: please come back, please come back so fast that happened
Speaker 2: that you can barely believe it. I could almost see
Speaker 2: that buck stop at the edge of the swamp and
Speaker 2: process that he had a plan to go cruise somewhere else.
Speaker 2: But his rut dulled brain had just seen the very
Speaker 2: thing he was looking for, even though he wasn't expecting it.
Speaker 2: He turned to one eighty and came back into my life.
Speaker 2: And while he made a tiny bit farther than my
Speaker 2: daughter's deer, it didn't matter. We went two for two
Speaker 2: after struggling all season, all because of a Doe decoy.
Speaker 2: Now you might be thinking, well, if I had such
Speaker 2: sweet ground to hunt like those dumb ass podcast hosts,
Speaker 2: I could decoy one too. Now, I assure you most
Speaker 2: of the public land I hunt in the Midwest is
Speaker 2: better than this private ground up in northern Wisconsin, and
Speaker 2: I can barely see a deer on it with my
Speaker 2: best efforts, which sometimes are pretty good. It was just
Speaker 2: the right situation to put out a fake lady. And
Speaker 2: that's just it. In fact, I'm really hoping that by
Speaker 2: the time you listen to this episode, I'm posing with
Speaker 2: a giant public land buck down on Iowa that falls
Speaker 2: for the same trick. That's a TB kind of thing
Speaker 2: at the moment, though. The truth is a dough decoy
Speaker 2: is a good idea for a lot of folks, but
Speaker 2: it isn't just as simple as putting it out and waiting.
Speaker 2: You want visibility first. You don't have to post up
Speaker 2: on one hundred acre alfalfa field to make it happen,
Speaker 2: but obviously you want it where a buck might look
Speaker 2: at it and see it. You don't want to surprise
Speaker 2: anyone with it. Deer like a lot of things, but
Speaker 2: what they don't like is walking into a small kill
Speaker 2: plot or meadow and suddenly seeing a deer that they
Speaker 2: haven't heard or smelled before getting there. Now, some bucks
Speaker 2: might tolerate it, but you're likely to get a reaction
Speaker 2: that's negative out of a lot of deer. You got
Speaker 2: to give them some space and then think about what
Speaker 2: deer would naturally do. In that setting where my daughter
Speaker 2: and I killed, a lot of the deer come out
Speaker 2: of the corner of the field from this nearby swamp
Speaker 2: where they bed. So a deer that looks like it's
Speaker 2: forty yars out from that corner facing in the right
Speaker 2: direction just looks very natural. Now, maybe this isn't as
Speaker 2: big of a deal as I believe, But I do
Speaker 2: the same thing with turkey decoys in the spring. I
Speaker 2: want them to look as much like how real turkeys
Speaker 2: would use the landscape as possible, So with a dough decoy,
Speaker 2: I look for that kind of thing, even though maybe
Speaker 2: that's just to settle my brain down and make it
Speaker 2: think that it's doing some smart stuff. But you do
Speaker 2: have to think about how they'll approach. This is one
Speaker 2: of the reasons I like doe decoys more than buck decoys.
Speaker 2: While bucks will generally approach a buck decoy head on,
Speaker 2: or at least in the general direction of the head
Speaker 2: which has all of the weapons on it, a dough
Speaker 2: decoy is not a threat, it's an invitation, and they'll
Speaker 2: generally approach it from straight behind. This gives you a
Speaker 2: very good chance to position them exactly how you want.
Speaker 2: They also seem to forget about swinging down wind more
Speaker 2: with dough decoys than buck decoys, which is an added bonus.
Speaker 2: Although it's not a hard and fast rule, you should
Speaker 2: think about the wind in any ascent. You might leave
Speaker 2: around the decoy, for sure, but generally they walk in
Speaker 2: right behind her and stick their necks out to give
Speaker 2: her a good sniffing. This means, if you like fifteen
Speaker 2: or twenty hour broadside shots that distracted deer, a doe
Speaker 2: decoy is a great idea. This is something that is
Speaker 2: amazing even for forty four year old adult hunters with
Speaker 2: pretty extensive resumes, but who still screw up shots enough
Speaker 2: to think about it way too much when they are
Speaker 2: trying to fall asleep and their dumb brains decide to
Speaker 2: run a low light reel of failures just to remind
Speaker 2: them that they should probably be golfers. And it's even
Speaker 2: more amazing when that happens for inexperienced hunters who need
Speaker 2: shots set up as predictably as possible. Plus, and I
Speaker 2: want to stress this all lot, it's super fun. Deer
Speaker 2: hunting should be fun. And watching a buck c and
Speaker 2: then approach a decoy that's just about as fun as
Speaker 2: it gets. It's cool knowing that you have that ace
Speaker 2: up your sleeve where instead of waiting for them to
Speaker 2: choose a route that brings them close, they might walk
Speaker 2: in from anywhere to exactly where you want them to be,
Speaker 2: all because they decided it was better to approach the
Speaker 2: bride'smaid party instead of the dudees chugging yagger bombs and
Speaker 2: mean mugging the rest of the patrons. So think about
Speaker 2: that if you're looking to juice up your rut hunts
Speaker 2: this year, a good dough decoy might be the missing
Speaker 2: piece there. And think about listening next week because I'm
Speaker 2: going to talk about how people get the rut wrong
Speaker 2: and what they should do to get it right. That's
Speaker 2: it for this week. I'm Tony Peterson and this has
Speaker 2: been the Wired to Hunt Foundation's podcast, which is brought
Speaker 2: to you by First Light. I know you need some
Speaker 2: hype content this time of year. You want to see
Speaker 2: some big bucks get killed. You want to listen to
Speaker 2: some podcasts on the way out to your hunting spot.
Speaker 2: The meat eater dot com has you covered. We just
Speaker 2: recently dropped my North Dakota hunt from last year that
Speaker 2: happened on public Land. You can watch me struggle mightily
Speaker 2: on that one. Or if you're not in the mood
Speaker 2: for tons of whitetail content which we have, you can
Speaker 2: go listen to Clay's podcast. He's always covering something just fascinating.
Speaker 2: We've got Meet Eat Radio on Thursdays now dropping on
Speaker 2: Fridays too. You can check that out. A whole bunch
Speaker 2: of stuff there, tons of content the mediator dot com.
Speaker 2: Please go check it out, and thank you again for
Speaker 2: all your support.