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 this episode is all
Speaker 1: about what you can learn about deer while you're chasing
Speaker 1: long beards across the countryside. Last week, I tried to
Speaker 1: make a good case for anyone who is interested in
Speaker 1: traveling for deer to first head out on a turkey
Speaker 1: hunting trip. This week, I want to talk about something
Speaker 1: I never hear anyone in my position, talk about how
Speaker 1: hunting one thing like turkeys can make you much better
Speaker 1: at hunting something else. You know what I mean, of course,
Speaker 1: But maybe you don't really unerstand what I'm talking about.
Speaker 1: Hell sometimes I don't, and neither does Mark because he
Speaker 1: lets me know when he's confused. Anyway, get ready, because
Speaker 1: I'm gonna help you level up as a white tail
Speaker 1: hunter in a pretty unconventional way. In a past life,
Speaker 1: when I was an associate editor for a big game
Speaker 1: bow hunting magazine, one of the writers and I got
Speaker 1: into a conversation about turkey hunting. This guy, who has
Speaker 1: a more prominent name in the white tail space than
Speaker 1: almost anyone, he casually mentioned that he doesn't turkey hunt
Speaker 1: because there's no money in it. The deer where the
Speaker 1: dollar signs are, he said, and honestly, he wasn't totally wrong.
Speaker 1: If you want to be an outdoor writer or hell
Speaker 1: I know these days, a content creator and your soul
Speaker 1: focus is turkey hunting, I hope you really like eating
Speaker 1: ramen noodles and living with your parents. Now, I know
Speaker 1: that's not much of a concern for the listeners of
Speaker 1: this podcast, and so his answer should be interpreted a
Speaker 1: different way. Not hunting an open season in the spring
Speaker 1: for a bird that can be a ton of fun
Speaker 1: to hunt, it's kind of strange and can be defeating
Speaker 1: if you want to level up your woodsmanship game and
Speaker 1: become a better deer hunter. Now, I do understand that
Speaker 1: not everyone likes turkey hunting. Oftentimes, I find it's the
Speaker 1: people who tried it once and either had a really
Speaker 1: difficult hunt or more often a really easy hunt, who
Speaker 1: just aren't big fans. The folks who see turkeys at
Speaker 1: their bird feed are all winter long. There's there are
Speaker 1: the kind of people who seem to devalue the opportunity
Speaker 1: to hunt them as well, and I get it. But
Speaker 1: fortunately there are a ton of different ways to hunt turkeys,
Speaker 1: in a ton of different states, in a ton of
Speaker 1: different types of habitat, And honestly, one of the biggest
Speaker 1: things I love about turkeys is that they are easier
Speaker 1: to kill on public land than about any animal I've
Speaker 1: ever pursued. This makes a compelling case hunting them on
Speaker 1: public land, which leads to a lot of dear discoveries
Speaker 1: which you don't have to just hunt them on public land.
Speaker 1: And I'm going to get to that, but first let's
Speaker 1: backtrack a little to the folks who don't like to
Speaker 1: turkey hunt. If you're in this category, I wonder do
Speaker 1: you really know how to call? Because if not, you're
Speaker 1: missing out on the best part about the whole thing,
Speaker 1: the interaction. It's what makes elk hunting so damn special too, aside.
Speaker 1: I don't know, of course, from like the locations in
Speaker 1: which we tend to pursue elk, and I don't know
Speaker 1: how much pure deliciousness they contain. If you're lucky enough
Speaker 1: to kill one, maybe you've never really used quality turkey decoys,
Speaker 1: which changes the whole thing as well. If you don't
Speaker 1: think it's fun to watch a couple of Tim's run
Speaker 1: into your spread and start fighting with your fake Jake,
Speaker 1: I'm not sure you and I would be friends. I
Speaker 1: say that, but I have to remind myself that there
Speaker 1: are people out there who love country music and the
Speaker 1: taste of coke, Nutter Green peppers, reality television. All of
Speaker 1: those things are very unappealing to me, but they boiled
Speaker 1: down to personal taste. So it's okay if you don't
Speaker 1: like turkey hunting. It's okay if you hate it, in fact,
Speaker 1: but do me a favor. Listen in until the end,
Speaker 1: because maybe there's something about turkeys you haven't thought about
Speaker 1: that will make you a better deer hunter. This something,
Speaker 1: for me, is at least partially just time in the woods.
Speaker 1: We often preach a big white tail game as something
Speaker 1: that can be conducted with surgical precision, sort of like
Speaker 1: a drone strike. We just sit back, we look at
Speaker 1: screens to see satellite imagery, then we look at weather data. Bam.
Speaker 1: We head into the woods at the most likely time
Speaker 1: to kill a buck, and we do just that, except
Speaker 1: we mostly don't. This works for a few, but not
Speaker 1: for the many. For most of us, offseason time in
Speaker 1: the woods is more important than any other aspect of
Speaker 1: white tail hunting, aside from actually white tail hunting. The
Speaker 1: problem here is that most of us don't possess whatever
Speaker 1: gene it is that guys like Andy may have that
Speaker 1: make them want to scout constantly. Most of us just
Speaker 1: won't do that, and we think something like trail cameras
Speaker 1: will bridge that gap, but they won't. The reality is
Speaker 1: that the more time you spend in the woods with
Speaker 1: a purpose memori, you'll start to understand how dear you
Speaker 1: use the landscape. It's that simple, even if it's not easy. Now,
Speaker 1: keep in mind that I consider myself to be genetically
Speaker 1: gifted in one way, and that is that I must
Speaker 1: possess some type of coding deep in my cells or
Speaker 1: somehow possess an ancestral calling to hunt a bunch of
Speaker 1: different critters. I just want to Basically, if I can
Speaker 1: eat it, I really want to hunt it. I don't
Speaker 1: have to convince myself to go hunt anything from squirrels
Speaker 1: on up to elk. I love upland game, waterfall, small game,
Speaker 1: big game. I'll love them all, and like I said
Speaker 1: last week, I love turkeys, and turkeys are what we
Speaker 1: can hunt in the spring, So that's what I'm in
Speaker 1: a hunt, and that's what you should hunt. But here's
Speaker 1: the thing. Whether you bow hunt for turkeys from a
Speaker 1: pop up blind or you run and gun while putting
Speaker 1: your back to any random oak tree that tickles your fancy,
Speaker 1: you can learn a lot about deer from these hunts.
Speaker 1: So I want to start here with the turkey bow
Speaker 1: hunt first. There are a few hunts that are more
Speaker 1: mentally taxing than a dark to dark turkey bow hunt
Speaker 1: from a blind. This is a style of hunting that
Speaker 1: can border on pure torture, particularly for anyone with a
Speaker 1: natural wanderlust and who is also short on patients. Usually
Speaker 1: go together, but there are certain situations where your turkey
Speaker 1: scouting leads you to a high traffic area and maybe
Speaker 1: you're hunting a really small parcel where you can't get
Speaker 1: out and cover too much ground. I don't Maybe you
Speaker 1: don't want to carry a whole flock of full body decoys,
Speaker 1: a blind, a chair, and all the makings for a
Speaker 1: long sit all across the countryside. Maybe you want to
Speaker 1: plant your happy ass in one spot call the birds
Speaker 1: to you all day long instead of going to them.
Speaker 1: I I do this probably about fifteen days every turkey season,
Speaker 1: and it helps me kill birds with my bow, oftentimes
Speaker 1: public land birds. It also helps me mentally when fall
Speaker 1: rolls around, because if you can put in like a
Speaker 1: fifteen hour shift during May to kill a bird, it's
Speaker 1: really not so hard to string together a bunch of
Speaker 1: dark to dark sits for deer come November. All day
Speaker 1: turkey bow hunts also allowed me to observe, through every
Speaker 1: hour of the day what the turkeys are doing and
Speaker 1: what the deer doing, and that's something that interests me
Speaker 1: a lot. I'll give you an example of this which
Speaker 1: started a long and widening road to a dead buck
Speaker 1: for me. A few years back, a buddy and I
Speaker 1: drove to Texas to turkey hunt. On the way home,
Speaker 1: we stopped at a spot in Nebraska where we saw
Speaker 1: a bird strutting from the road. We gave him a
Speaker 1: quick hunt and then decided to look around a little more.
Speaker 1: What we found was a pretty decent spot to turkey hunt.
Speaker 1: So the following spring we drove back down there with
Speaker 1: our camping gear ready to go. There was snow on
Speaker 1: the ground, The birds were still pretty flocked up and
Speaker 1: it was ideal weather. But I did manage to set
Speaker 1: up on top of a spot some jake's really wanted
Speaker 1: to be, and I did manage to call three of
Speaker 1: them in almost immediately an arrow one. I peaked early
Speaker 1: turkey wise on that trip, but I also put in
Speaker 1: a full day in that very spot, and the next
Speaker 1: morning I watched several deer leave the private fields and
Speaker 1: work their way up into the sand hills. I even
Speaker 1: watched a doll with two fons bed down on a
Speaker 1: small bench for quite a few hours. As the sun
Speaker 1: crept toward the western horizon and my sanity frayed further
Speaker 1: from my voluntary confinement, I watched some of the same
Speaker 1: dear from the morning reverse their course. Then I saw
Speaker 1: a bachelor group of shed bucks take the same route
Speaker 1: out of the hills down to the fields. And that's
Speaker 1: actionable intel, my friends. How dear use the landscape is
Speaker 1: mostly what I'm interested in about deer, and watching them
Speaker 1: from a turkey blind can turn up lots of useful
Speaker 1: nuggets of information. It also often shows you how wrong
Speaker 1: we are about thinking what dear do when they're betting.
Speaker 1: Instead of a buck heading into his best safest bed
Speaker 1: and laying there until dark, they seem to bed down
Speaker 1: for a little while and then get up. They look around,
Speaker 1: they stretch, they take a dump, they reposition themselves. Oftentimes
Speaker 1: they get up, they go to water, or they browse
Speaker 1: for an hour before laying it back down. It's really
Speaker 1: a fascinating glimpse into the world of white tails. We
Speaker 1: originally only speculate about it, and then we get it
Speaker 1: wrong a lot. Turkey hunting can give you a glimpse
Speaker 1: into that world, and in this case, the deer observations
Speaker 1: led me to come back for the early September opener,
Speaker 1: where I killed a great velvet ten pointer the first
Speaker 1: evening of the season. Part of that dear success was
Speaker 1: due directly to turkey hunting that spot, I promise you.
Speaker 1: Another time in South Dakota, I watched a whole herd
Speaker 1: of deer leave a private alf alpha field to browse
Speaker 1: their way through patches of sumac and scrub brush. Once
Speaker 1: they got to a little thicker cover, a couple of
Speaker 1: coyotes set up a deer drive for them that damn
Speaker 1: near worked, except that the object of their push was
Speaker 1: a little master than they anticipated. It was an amazing show,
Speaker 1: one that I'd have never seen if I hadn't been
Speaker 1: posted up in a blind waiting on a gobbler to
Speaker 1: come in that property, the one where I watched those
Speaker 1: deer and those coyotes play out their deadly chess game. Well,
Speaker 1: I went back there that fall. In fact, I went
Speaker 1: back there four years in a row, and I killed
Speaker 1: four bucks there on public land. Some of those bucks
Speaker 1: ended up wearing my tag because of what I saw
Speaker 1: during subsequent turkey hunting trips. Not only does springtime observations
Speaker 1: sometimes translate to good fall deer hunting strategies, but it
Speaker 1: also gives you a good reason to cover some ground.
Speaker 1: While I do go on a fair amount of turkey
Speaker 1: bow hunts, even on those, you'll end up looking at
Speaker 1: the places you think public land turkey should frequent. Those
Speaker 1: are also the places, often the exact same places the
Speaker 1: public land bucks and does frequent. And if you choose
Speaker 1: to run and gun with a twelve gauge slung over
Speaker 1: your shoulder, which is a more popular style of turkey hunting,
Speaker 1: you'll probably see a lot of ground depending on how
Speaker 1: much running you do. Here's the thing about this that
Speaker 1: if you listen to enough of these episodes already, you
Speaker 1: probably know this about me or my beliefs. But I
Speaker 1: don't think there are too many accidents in nature. I
Speaker 1: don't think there's a ton of randomness out there in
Speaker 1: a weird way. Nature in the animals that it consists of,
Speaker 1: are always in survival mode. I guess it's really not
Speaker 1: that weird. This means they do things on purpose. Whether
Speaker 1: they can reason that out or not, it doesn't really matter.
Speaker 1: They don't take unnecessary risks very often. They don't walk
Speaker 1: randomly through their world, burning extra calories and exposing themselves
Speaker 1: to potential death unless they have a reason, a reason
Speaker 1: that is almost always tied either to survival or the
Speaker 1: propagation of their species. What does that mean? It means
Speaker 1: that every observation of a deer tells you something. Every
Speaker 1: track in the sand tells you something. Every old rub
Speaker 1: you run across while your turkey hunting tells you something.
Speaker 1: Every bleached and half chewed up antler you find tells
Speaker 1: you something. Everything out there, deer wise is giving you
Speaker 1: little hints. When you're running a mouth call and propping
Speaker 1: a twelve gage in your lap while putting your back
Speaker 1: to a tree. Your focus is first on the gobblers,
Speaker 1: but don't ignore the deer and the deer sign. One
Speaker 1: of my favorite things to do, which I recently talked
Speaker 1: about on a different episode, is to run and gun
Speaker 1: for turkeys on public land that I'm curious about deer hunting.
Speaker 1: This is a scouting method that really gets me out
Speaker 1: there from dark to dark every day. It might mean
Speaker 1: that I cover miles and miles in search of a bird,
Speaker 1: but those miles and all of those setups where I
Speaker 1: have time to sit and watch the woods around me
Speaker 1: for an hour or two, they put me right where
Speaker 1: the deer live. And while it could, this doesn't have
Speaker 1: to happen in a situation where your three states from home,
Speaker 1: running and gunning with a nonresident turkey tag in your pocket.
Speaker 1: You can learn about deer by doing this on your
Speaker 1: home farm too. In fact, this is sometimes the best
Speaker 1: way to learn about dear Scratch that it's sometimes the
Speaker 1: best way to learn about what you think about the
Speaker 1: deer that isn't actually true, or that your picture of
Speaker 1: dear usage on the property you've hunted for a while
Speaker 1: is incomplete. I'll give you an example. Last spring, my
Speaker 1: buddy bought an amazing property in southwestern Wisconsin. We met
Speaker 1: up to hunt one of the late seasons in May
Speaker 1: and we set up on one of his fields. It
Speaker 1: was simple stuff. We knew the birds were coming into
Speaker 1: the picked corn field, and we knew they'd see our decoys.
Speaker 1: It worked very well, and I was out of tags
Speaker 1: within an hour. But in that hour and in the
Speaker 1: hours after when we tried to get my buddy a bird,
Speaker 1: we saw quite a few deer. Some of them entered
Speaker 1: that field on a very subtle trail and they crossed
Speaker 1: it without stopping to leave on a very subtle trail.
Speaker 1: At the time, it honestly didn't feel that important. But
Speaker 1: fast forward to last November and I was sitting in
Speaker 1: a ground blind with a cameraman next to me, filming
Speaker 1: an episode of our One Week in November series. My
Speaker 1: goal was mostly to try to arrow a dough on
Speaker 1: that field, while I was really trying to just leave
Speaker 1: a couple other areas alone so that the conditions would
Speaker 1: break in my favor and I could sneak in and
Speaker 1: sit where I really wanted to hunt. Well, I missed
Speaker 1: a nice eight pointer and a colossal melt down that night.
Speaker 1: That resulted partly from my own flaws and partly from
Speaker 1: the Bucks stopping the first time right where he couldn't
Speaker 1: be filmed. By the time he walked where he was
Speaker 1: in frame, I'd mostly just lost my mind and I
Speaker 1: flat out whiffed, which isn't that much fun when you're
Speaker 1: not on camera, and it's a special kind of not
Speaker 1: fun when you are. Later that evening, when the camera
Speaker 1: light faded and we were thinking about packing up, one
Speaker 1: of the biggest Bucks I've ever seen, ran into the
Speaker 1: far end of the plot and started chasing Dose. And
Speaker 1: the trail that he took to get there. You guessed it.
Speaker 1: It was the one that the random deer took during
Speaker 1: Turkey season. Now, recently, my buddy and I walked that
Speaker 1: trail as far as we could and we found an
Speaker 1: amazing crossing at the bottom of a ravine, And I
Speaker 1: do mean amazing. Next year, I'll have a stand on
Speaker 1: it for sure, and I'll have a trail tacked straight
Speaker 1: up the bluff from a highway so I can get
Speaker 1: into that crossing in the morning without any dear knowing. Now,
Speaker 1: the point here and all of this rambling is this
Speaker 1: the initial question of why deer are doing what they
Speaker 1: are doing. Came to my buddy and I while we
Speaker 1: were sitting on the ground waiting on some turkeys to
Speaker 1: lose their minds and come charging in. We didn't have
Speaker 1: to be in the woods scouting deer to learn something
Speaker 1: very valuable about scouting deer, even if the full lesson
Speaker 1: didn't reveal itself right away. My friends, I believe in
Speaker 1: this stuff, and I believe that the time you spend
Speaker 1: in the woods turkey hunting, whether you're running, gunning solo,
Speaker 1: or maybe you've got a youngster with you, maybe you're
Speaker 1: junior all day bow hunt, it's all important. It's important
Speaker 1: for the act in and of itself, but it's also
Speaker 1: ancillari lee important as a deer hunter. All of your
Speaker 1: time in the woods is just as all of your
Speaker 1: time e scouting is. But what's cool about the spring
Speaker 1: is that you can have a hell of a lot
Speaker 1: of fun focusing on turkeys while you're just keeping an
Speaker 1: eye out for interesting deer clues. Do this, even if
Speaker 1: you think you know everything about your dear Pay attention
Speaker 1: to where you see spring deer traveling, because that's how
Speaker 1: they'll travel in the fall. A lot of times, pay
Speaker 1: attention to not only the travel and the sightings and
Speaker 1: the sign that you fully expect to see, but also
Speaker 1: the stuff that makes you stop and wonder why those
Speaker 1: deer and that sign. They help you grow as a
Speaker 1: deer hunter. That's how you level up, and that's how
Speaker 1: you kill deer you wouldn't have killed five years ago
Speaker 1: because you're learning and you're questioning what you know. You're
Speaker 1: confirming some beliefs and shattering others with every hour you
Speaker 1: spend in the woods. That's a beautiful thing. And it
Speaker 1: only gets better when you're zoned out and thinking about
Speaker 1: birds and how they're not going to play, and suddenly
Speaker 1: a butt pucker and close gobble rattles your chest and
Speaker 1: it's all you can do to slowly get your gun
Speaker 1: to your shoulder. So get out there, huntsome birds, learn
Speaker 1: about the deer, have some fun, and listen in next
Speaker 1: week because I'm gonna start switching things up a little
Speaker 1: bit to some episodes that focus on hunting gear and
Speaker 1: maybe possibly buying a little piece of deer ground for yourself.
Speaker 1: That's it for this week, my friends. I'm Tony Peterson
Speaker 1: and this has been the Wire to Hunt Foundations podcast.
Speaker 1: As I always thank you so much for listening. If
Speaker 1: you need some more white tailed goodness, head on over
Speaker 1: to our YouTube channel or visit The Metiator dot com,
Speaker 1: slash wire