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 the lockdown
Speaker 2: phase of the rut and how you should probably hunt it.
Speaker 3: It always happens, you know, just like that.
Speaker 2: You wait for the pre rut and it hits, then
Speaker 2: the chase phase happens.
Speaker 3: Boom, it's just gone.
Speaker 2: Then you're stuck in the later innings of the rut
Speaker 2: where we all know the deer are going to go
Speaker 2: totally boom.
Speaker 3: Or bust on us.
Speaker 2: The lockdown phase it's not very well understood. It's a
Speaker 2: great reason to not hunt, and it's a lot of things.
Speaker 2: It's also maybe your best chance to kill a giant,
Speaker 2: or at least a pretty good one. That might seem
Speaker 2: like thin gruel to live on. But hear me out,
Speaker 2: because I'm going to talk about how to hunt this
Speaker 2: phase right now. I have a buddy named Scott, and
Speaker 2: he's the kind of guy who just gets stuff done.
Speaker 2: If you listened a few weeks ago, I talked about
Speaker 2: having to move a giant player piano for him.
Speaker 3: It was not fun.
Speaker 2: It was insanely heavy and awkward, and the kind of
Speaker 2: thing you only do for a good friend, or if
Speaker 2: it's your job and someone is paying you well for it. Now,
Speaker 2: I'm envious of Scott for many reasons. He just gets
Speaker 2: shit done. He's always doing something, rebuilding classic cars, stuff
Speaker 2: like that. He never stops. It's maddening, honestly, because I
Speaker 2: often just want to stop. I'm tired all the time,
Speaker 2: and I bet a lot of you are, especially those
Speaker 2: of you who are in the trenches with your job
Speaker 2: and kids in life. I bet a lot of you
Speaker 2: feel the same way. It's hard to find the motivation
Speaker 2: to fix the landscaping blocks out front, even when the
Speaker 2: old blonde bombshell makes it clear she would really, really
Speaker 2: appreciate it in a wonderful, wifey kind of way. Maybe
Speaker 2: I'm just a natural procrastinator, but I don't know. I've
Speaker 2: lived under the specter of a couple hundred deadlines a
Speaker 2: year for a long time. I guess you don't do
Speaker 2: that forever in a day if you always put stuff off.
Speaker 2: But I still feel like I'm always just procrastinating, and
Speaker 2: I feel it when I'm hunting, and there is no
Speaker 2: greater time when that weighs on me than when we
Speaker 2: go from the bonker's part of the rut to the
Speaker 2: part of the rut that just doesn't hum at the
Speaker 2: same frequency. You know what I'm talking about, the lockdown
Speaker 2: For the first timers here, the lockdown is a phase
Speaker 2: of the rut when a bulk of the does are
Speaker 2: supposed to go into estrs and then they just kind
Speaker 2: of bed down with a big fella for about forty
Speaker 2: eight to seventy two hours. This absolutely happens. It's real.
Speaker 2: It's also, like so many things in deer hunting, not
Speaker 2: totally cut and dry. I'm gonna get to that in
Speaker 2: a second. But you know what, I believe the key
Speaker 2: to the lockdown period is, I tell you, it's rattling
Speaker 2: and grunting and decoying and snort wheezing all kind of
Speaker 2: rolled into one sit. It's super exciting. It's NonStop theater
Speaker 2: to trick a buck into running in so you can
Speaker 2: shoot them. Just kidding, It's not even close. It's a
Speaker 2: fricking waiting game, A boring ass waiting game all deer
Speaker 2: hunting is, my friends, I know that sucks, but you
Speaker 2: have to understand that it is the secret sauce to
Speaker 2: a lot of successful hunting. Of course, you have to
Speaker 2: put yourself around deer first, but honestly, that's part of
Speaker 2: the problem. The waiting game is a hell of a
Speaker 2: lot easier when you believe you're waiting on an actual
Speaker 2: buck to come down the trail. A lot of people
Speaker 2: don't have a very good idea how to put themselves
Speaker 2: around deer right now, and that's a problem. If you're
Speaker 2: sitting old stand by setups and you're crossing your fingers
Speaker 2: like a lot of the gun hunting crowd tends to do,
Speaker 2: it's very hard to wait a good one out. You
Speaker 2: know you're not really in the game as much as
Speaker 2: you should be, and the effort will reflect that. Now.
Speaker 3: I'm not shitting on anyone here either. I do this
Speaker 3: all of the time.
Speaker 2: Hence the reason I'm so jealous of my buddy Scott
Speaker 2: for his drive to just keep doing the work. But
Speaker 2: how do you remedy this and how do you get
Speaker 2: yourself into a position to sit tight and kill one eventually? Well,
Speaker 2: you got to forget the crazy days where they are
Speaker 2: running all over the landscape. The pre rut in the
Speaker 2: chase phase is like a bunch of conscripts in a
Speaker 2: war who have very little training and no combat experience.
Speaker 2: Some hunker down, some go full Leroy Jenkins and blitz
Speaker 2: across the landscape, and generally they create ordered chaos by
Speaker 2: the lockdown, though those conscripts are gone. It's a special
Speaker 2: forces mission, It's a targeted approach. Those dear travel with intention,
Speaker 2: with efficiency. The Bucks have wasted enough extra calories chasing
Speaker 2: doze already, and now they are looking for the ones
Speaker 2: who are left, who will go for a long weekend
Speaker 2: with them to some nice thicket and just get a
Speaker 2: little freaky. What does this mean for you, Well, it
Speaker 2: means the best pinch points and the best funnels. You know,
Speaker 2: those traps you believe in, They are where you need
Speaker 2: to be. WHI just simple, But it's not just that
Speaker 2: you need to check your notes. Bucks crews with the
Speaker 2: wind not necessarily in their face, but definitely in their favor.
Speaker 2: I doubt they think about it. They just react, but
Speaker 2: that stuff matters. So if you sat a certain funnel
Speaker 2: the first week of November during a south wind and
Speaker 2: didn't see much, forget it. If the wind is supposed
Speaker 2: to be out of the south during the lockdown, figure
Speaker 2: out not only the high odd spots, but the best
Speaker 2: conditions to spend your time there. This is not something
Speaker 2: you can figure out by reading one of Mark's many
Speaker 2: many Instagram posts. It's something you have to learn by
Speaker 2: being there. A good way to reinforce this and figure
Speaker 2: it out better is to run trail cameras on those
Speaker 2: terrain traps. I've talked about this a whole bunch with
Speaker 2: that Wisconsin spot where I'm hoping to kill a big
Speaker 2: one while you're listening to this, because I'm about ready
Speaker 2: to go over there and find out. But right now,
Speaker 2: I feel like that spot is just kind of not right.
Speaker 2: The wind hasn't been right there, and the deer haven't
Speaker 2: been moving through there. That's something I think we miss
Speaker 2: about cameras, and I see a lot of guys doing
Speaker 2: this in a way that just makes sense. Beau Martonic
Speaker 2: out there in Pennsylvania, who hosts the East Meets West podcast,
Speaker 2: seems to have a real grasp on this. He's a
Speaker 2: good hunter. He has that figured out. My buddy Clint
Speaker 2: Campbell with Truth from the Stand podcast, he's a master
Speaker 2: at this strategy. It's using cameras for multi year intel
Speaker 2: on one spot.
Speaker 3: Now.
Speaker 2: I realize that it's probably too late for you to
Speaker 2: use this for this year's lockdown, but it's a really
Speaker 2: good reminder to remember that for the next seventeen seasons
Speaker 2: in a row. If I had one year of data
Speaker 2: to go off, Just to give you an example, I
Speaker 2: believe that my odds of encountering one during the lockdown
Speaker 2: on that one spot over there in Wisconsin are pretty low,
Speaker 2: but two years showed me that it's probably just a
Speaker 2: matter of having enough days. Now, this is my third
Speaker 2: year running a trail camera all season long in that spot,
Speaker 2: and what I've seen so far pretty much reinforces my
Speaker 2: belief that this is the way to go, although it
Speaker 2: has also taught me that I need a north or
Speaker 2: west wind.
Speaker 3: They're bad. But you know what else this trail camera
Speaker 3: strategy does for you.
Speaker 2: It not only shows you the big old boss Bucks
Speaker 2: who go through there, but everyone else. And this is
Speaker 2: something I want to talk about. The lockdown is known
Speaker 2: for putting mature bucks down for two or three days
Speaker 2: at a time. Now, if you only have one deer
Speaker 2: you consider mature enough to be a shooter at your place,
Speaker 2: that's a problem. What are the odds that you'll catch
Speaker 2: him in between ladies?
Speaker 3: Not good?
Speaker 2: Not good at all. Now, what if you have three
Speaker 2: deer you'd shoot? Well, the odds are well, I don't know,
Speaker 2: three times better, I guess. Here's the thing. The advice
Speaker 2: you get from a lot of folks, and what you
Speaker 2: think you're getting from me here is that it's all
Speaker 2: about mature bucks. Now, what I look for during the
Speaker 2: run is a good enough buck, and during the lockdown
Speaker 2: that depends on who is nice enough to walk by
Speaker 2: me a lot of times. When you start looking at
Speaker 2: it this way, you realize that while the biggest cahoona
Speaker 2: in the woods might be out of play for three
Speaker 2: whole days, it's not all the bucks that are out
Speaker 2: of play. Plenty of them won't be synced up to
Speaker 2: time periods when the biggest dear doesn't do anything but
Speaker 2: fend off some rivals while his girlfriend sits tight some
Speaker 2: thicket in a river bottom.
Speaker 3: So what about the other bucks? There are other bucks
Speaker 3: out there, you know.
Speaker 2: And while I do believe the lockdown is one of
Speaker 2: the better times to kill a giant, I also believe
Speaker 2: it's a great time to kill a good deer. That's
Speaker 2: one of the big reasons I like running trail cameras
Speaker 2: on these types of spots.
Speaker 3: I want to believe.
Speaker 2: I have a bunch of deer to work with, you know,
Speaker 2: something like that, So it'll give me the fortitude to
Speaker 2: stick it out in one of those spots. And that's
Speaker 2: the real thing about the lockdown. You're not going to
Speaker 2: have very many encounters. You just won't. The dose are
Speaker 2: sick of being run around and chased and harassed and
Speaker 2: hashtag me too, to the point where they just soon
Speaker 2: not see another buck for eleven months. Some of them
Speaker 2: are in need of boyfriends still though, And that's the
Speaker 2: key to this whole thing. Those bucks are there, and
Speaker 2: they will go where they believe those does are and
Speaker 2: they will do that in the cover. They will do
Speaker 2: that with the wind largely in their favor, like I said,
Speaker 2: and they might only do it once every couple of
Speaker 2: days during daylight. Now, when I put it that way,
Speaker 2: it seems maybe like a better idea to go golfing
Speaker 2: than it is to sit on a stand, but it's not.
Speaker 2: That's never a better option than going deer hunting. But
Speaker 2: you want to know how I'm going to make it worse.
Speaker 2: I think the lockdown is not a great time for tricks.
Speaker 3: Now.
Speaker 2: I know there are plenty of people who will rattle
Speaker 2: in a giant or grunt one inn or whatever, but
Speaker 2: I feel like the mission is to get where deer
Speaker 2: like to walk and then put in the hours.
Speaker 3: That's it.
Speaker 2: So forget trying to get them to you, and start
Speaker 2: thinking about how you're going to get your ass to them.
Speaker 2: At least, this is how I do it. I look
Speaker 2: at the block of time I have to work with.
Speaker 2: If that's just an evening or a morning, then you
Speaker 2: just have to go with your best option for the
Speaker 2: conditions and cross your fingers. But if you can get
Speaker 2: a couple of days at least, which is the minimum
Speaker 2: I'd probably take to try to get this job done,
Speaker 2: then it's time to make a plan. So I look
Speaker 2: at my timeframe and then I check the weather. What
Speaker 2: is the wind going to do for all of those days?
Speaker 2: I don't really care much about sun or clouds or
Speaker 2: moon phase or rain or whatever I want to know
Speaker 2: where the wind is going to blow, so I can
Speaker 2: plan where I'll sit based on whether I'll get busted
Speaker 2: and whether I believe they'll use the spot given the
Speaker 2: wind direction that's predicted. With that information, it's a matter
Speaker 2: of going through your options.
Speaker 3: Now.
Speaker 2: I am a terrible second guesser when it comes to
Speaker 2: stand sites. I talk myself into circles for a long
Speaker 2: time and then just settle on something, or at least
Speaker 2: I do this often enough during the season, but not
Speaker 2: during the lockdown. This is one of the secrets here.
Speaker 2: Although it seems maybe like it won't be I think
Speaker 2: this is almost like the first few days of the
Speaker 2: season as far as how important it is to develop
Speaker 2: a plan and stick with it. You can predict with
Speaker 2: some certainty what behavior the bucks will exhibit, and you
Speaker 2: can predict with some certainty where they'll engage in those behaviors.
Speaker 3: So how is that like the early season.
Speaker 2: Well, you know where they're feeding, where they might water,
Speaker 2: how likely they are to show up. You have a
Speaker 2: lot of inputs to work with. It can help you
Speaker 2: put together a day to day plan. This is what
Speaker 2: I do for the lockdown because it helps me hunt
Speaker 2: the way I need to if I walk out there
Speaker 2: with no real idea what I'm going to do for
Speaker 2: the day, or tomorrow or the next couple of days,
Speaker 2: it's so easy to cut things short or head out
Speaker 2: there later than I should. It's easy to call one
Speaker 2: slow day the way things will be for the whole time,
Speaker 2: and decide not to hunt as much or not as hard,
Speaker 2: or to jump from spot to spot looking for the
Speaker 2: hot which you're probably not going to find. It has
Speaker 2: to find you in this face of the rut. Typically,
Speaker 2: a good plan, one that is built upon at least
Speaker 2: a couple of days time, which factors in the wind direction,
Speaker 2: in the likelihood of travel, is like a huge mental
Speaker 2: benefit to the whole thing. Take some of the best
Speaker 2: hunters you know of Andy May You know why he's
Speaker 2: a scouting machine, the same reason a guy like Kobe
Speaker 2: Bryant worked his ass off during every practice, because when
Speaker 2: it's game time, those guys have a plan and the
Speaker 2: conviction to see it through because they did the physical
Speaker 2: and mental prep work. Everyone wants to be able to
Speaker 2: hunt like Andy May I do, but they can't because
Speaker 2: they won't think like him. There isn't any other way
Speaker 2: around it. This is an important lesson for when the
Speaker 2: rut goes from haywire to you know, kind of sort
Speaker 2: of horseshit. The mental work you put in to think
Speaker 2: through your daily plan there is huge will help you
Speaker 2: stick to the plan, and that's what you need to do.
Speaker 2: I'm working on mine right now, and honestly it has
Speaker 2: changed some given the fact that I found a crazy
Speaker 2: amount of buck sign on some public land over there
Speaker 2: in Wisconsin. Instead of going to sit that stand, I
Speaker 2: set up in April on my personal piece, which would
Speaker 2: be easy and probably would produce a buck. I'm looking
Speaker 2: at the wind direction and deciding how to give that
Speaker 2: spot and this new stuff that I found on this
Speaker 2: public land enough time. I want three days in each,
Speaker 2: although I don't know if I'll be able to get it.
Speaker 2: Ideally I will, and the truth is that it'll be simple.
Speaker 2: I'm going to hunt one or the other based on
Speaker 2: the wind and then on the sightings. I'm not going
Speaker 2: anywhere else because I know both of those spots have
Speaker 2: plenty of bucks and eventually one of them is probably
Speaker 2: going to come through there. Now, I know there are
Speaker 2: routes out there that bucks use to feel safe and
Speaker 2: to find those in those spots, I also know that
Speaker 2: I might not see a deer in either spot all day,
Speaker 2: but I'm going to sit all day for several days anyway.
Speaker 2: The lockdown's not going to deliver a lot of bucks.
Speaker 3: To me over there.
Speaker 2: That's hard, but I believe in the plan. I believe
Speaker 2: it will result in one single deer that is big
Speaker 2: enough to wear my tag, so nothing else really matters
Speaker 2: to me. Now, if you believe something like that and
Speaker 2: you have a plan for it, it's not that hard
Speaker 2: to sit dark to dark for a couple of days
Speaker 2: in a row.
Speaker 3: Now.
Speaker 2: I know that's easy to say and not everyone can
Speaker 2: do it, But I also thought I'd never look at
Speaker 2: that as something easy to do. But something clicked for
Speaker 2: me years ago. I probably just grew up a tiny
Speaker 2: little bit or something, but it kind of became so
Speaker 2: obvious that time. Time is your friend when it comes
Speaker 2: to filling deer tags, and time and spots that you
Speaker 2: believe in is really the key. They don't have to
Speaker 2: be the best spots. Sometimes you have to stop looking
Speaker 2: for those. Sometimes you have to pick a trail that
Speaker 2: skirts a swamp and sees just enough traffic to keep
Speaker 2: you on your toes, and you have to look at
Speaker 2: your calendar and figure out what you can give to
Speaker 2: that spot. Then you have to give yourself to the process.
Speaker 2: Oh that sounds like grade ABS, but it's not. If
Speaker 2: you commit to the plan, eventually one of those Bucks
Speaker 2: will get kicked to the curb by his lady friend
Speaker 2: and will wander by you. But only if you're out there.
Speaker 2: And I want to tell you something else about this.
Speaker 2: The camera work I mentioned before. That's the thing that
Speaker 2: will not only help you figure out good lockdown spots,
Speaker 2: but will convince you that they might be good at
Speaker 2: sunrise and sunset, but also randomly throughout the day.
Speaker 3: I don't know why this is, but a lot of
Speaker 3: the big.
Speaker 2: Bucks I get pictures of or I see or occasionally
Speaker 2: kill this time of year are definitely midday movers. I
Speaker 2: see this now almost more than I see it when
Speaker 2: it's bonkers chasing time, at least with big Deer. That
Speaker 2: seems to be the case that for me is kind
Speaker 2: of the final push. I need to see this last
Speaker 2: phase of the rut through. It's not as fun as
Speaker 2: the other phases, but it doesn't have to be. If
Speaker 2: just enough Bucks decide that they're going to go on
Speaker 2: a strategic mission during the lunch shift to see if
Speaker 2: they and find one of the last dose who might
Speaker 2: be willing to bed down for a few hours with them.
Speaker 2: Don't give up yet, forget hitting the links one last time.
Speaker 2: Understand that there is still a very good opportunity out
Speaker 2: there to fill your tag. It's just going to take
Speaker 2: some mental fortitude in a real plan of attack, but
Speaker 2: if you see it through, you are likely to not
Speaker 2: regret it. So go do that and then come back
Speaker 2: because I'm going to switch gears here and I'm going
Speaker 2: to talk about gun hunting for deer and why I
Speaker 2: suck at it, but I'm going to try to get
Speaker 2: a lot better this year. That's it for this episode.
Speaker 2: I'm Tony Peterson. This has been the Wired to Hunt
Speaker 2: Foundation's podcast, brought to you by First Light. I just
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Speaker 3: Thank you so much,