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 everyone, 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 today's episode is all
Speaker 1: about finding big bucks when the ruts starts winding down
Speaker 1: and the gun hunting starts winding up. Before I explained
Speaker 1: what this episode is all about, I gotta give you
Speaker 1: a quick sales pitch. Meat Eater is running a massive
Speaker 1: Black Friday sale. Now, I know, I know you're sick
Speaker 1: of hearing about the sales, but probably not as sick
Speaker 1: of them as I am. They are still a hell
Speaker 1: of a good chance to pick up some sweet First
Speaker 1: Light or f h F Gear, Phelps or meat Eater
Speaker 1: or some of our partner gear. You'll find a bunch
Speaker 1: of killer products at off Just head on over to
Speaker 1: the meat eater dot com and check it out. And
Speaker 1: here's the better part. If you don't want me to
Speaker 1: get fired, because I'm literally as low on the totem
Speaker 1: pole as you can get here at meat Eater and
Speaker 1: likely the first one on the chopping block. You can
Speaker 1: visit the Meat Eater store under the old shop tab
Speaker 1: and look for the crew picks pages. Way at the
Speaker 1: end you'll see a picture of yours truly sitting in
Speaker 1: a tree stand waiting on a big buck. If you
Speaker 1: click on it, you'll see some of my gear picks. Now,
Speaker 1: this is the stuff I use, and if enough of
Speaker 1: you visit that page, I might get to keep producing
Speaker 1: this podcast and make some I don't know, really cool
Speaker 1: public land hunting films next year instead of getting fired
Speaker 1: and having to go back to the freelance world. Thank
Speaker 1: you in advance, and enough of that stuff. We are
Speaker 1: at the stage of the rut where the roller coaster
Speaker 1: is almost finished, the fun is mostly over, the grind
Speaker 1: is almost upon us, and well that kind of sucks.
Speaker 1: But not all hope is lost. There's still a chance
Speaker 1: to catch a cruiser, still a chance to out hunt
Speaker 1: the Blaze Orange Masses, and still a chance to have
Speaker 1: one hell of a good time hunting. You just need
Speaker 1: to learn how to play hide and seek at a
Speaker 1: high level, with a heavy emphasis on the seek part.
Speaker 1: Way back in and Astronomer came up with a crazy idea.
Speaker 1: He said that he thought the universe started as a
Speaker 1: single point and has expanded ever since. I'm sure a
Speaker 1: lot of people then thought he was an idiot, just
Speaker 1: as a lot of people now probably think he's an idiot.
Speaker 1: But a couple of years later, a different astronomer named
Speaker 1: Edwin Hubbell noticed that other galaxies were moving away from us.
Speaker 1: He also noticed that the farther galaxies were moving away
Speaker 1: from us faster, and the closer ones. Since then, a
Speaker 1: hell of a lot of science has gone into trying
Speaker 1: to disprove the Big Bang theory, but it has done
Speaker 1: the opposite. Using the known laws of physics, scientists and
Speaker 1: astronomers have worked back the origins of the universe to
Speaker 1: nearly fourteen billion years ago, but have also discovered quite
Speaker 1: a bit of evidence to support the theory that all
Speaker 1: of this came to be from one really, really big
Speaker 1: and powerful explosion. But this is where things get real wonky.
Speaker 1: This isn't an explosion of matter into the universe, but
Speaker 1: an explosion of the universe itself. All of space is expanding,
Speaker 1: and it's taking the stuff inside of it with it.
Speaker 1: It's expanding pretty fast. Too. By studying the brightness of
Speaker 1: known stars through the observable universe, scientists now say that
Speaker 1: the rate is forty five point five miles per second
Speaker 1: per mega parsak, which is a unit of measurement equal
Speaker 1: to three point two six million light years. Keep in
Speaker 1: mind a light year is six trillion miles. So put
Speaker 1: another way, in the next nine point eight billion years,
Speaker 1: at the current expansion rate of the universe, the distance
Speaker 1: between cosmic objects will double. That might not sound like
Speaker 1: a lot, but it is actually unreal. The question is
Speaker 1: what is the universe expanding into does it ever stop?
Speaker 1: One theory that addresses these questions is the Big Crunch.
Speaker 1: This theory says that eventually the universe will stop expanding
Speaker 1: and the force of gravity will start to cause it
Speaker 1: to reverse course. Eventually, over cosmological scales of tens of
Speaker 1: billions of years, all that super spread out matter will
Speaker 1: come back together into one big singularity. And once it does,
Speaker 1: guess what, there could be a giant explosion from all
Speaker 1: that energy that pushes things back out again. In other words,
Speaker 1: we might just be living in an unfathomably huge accordion.
Speaker 1: Well that's not exactly it, and the big accordion theory
Speaker 1: which I just invented, probably isn't going to gain a
Speaker 1: lot of traction in the scientific community. The folks at
Speaker 1: NASA are so stuck up they never actually listened to
Speaker 1: squirrel hunting writers. Anyway, What does this have to do
Speaker 1: with white tails. Well, we went through the big bang
Speaker 1: of the rut, and guess what, the big crunch it's
Speaker 1: on us now. There's still some chasing and some breeding
Speaker 1: going on, but a lot of it is slowing down.
Speaker 1: Part of this is just timing, but part of it
Speaker 1: is due to the pressure of so many hunters in
Speaker 1: the woods. There is no more popular time to hunt
Speaker 1: than the rut, and there are many many states where
Speaker 1: the gun season opens up at some point in November. Hell,
Speaker 1: probably almost all of the states that have white tails
Speaker 1: have a white tailed gun season in November, except for
Speaker 1: a few of the premier trophy states. I wonder if
Speaker 1: there's a connection there. Anyway, if the thought of the
Speaker 1: big white tail crunch makes you sad, think about it
Speaker 1: this way. Now is the time to understand how white
Speaker 1: tails survive and how you can use that to beat
Speaker 1: the odds before the whole thing collapses in on itself
Speaker 1: and we get stuck in the dreaded late season. The
Speaker 1: way to do this is to understand how dear move,
Speaker 1: not how they put one hoof in front of the other,
Speaker 1: but how they get from point A to point B
Speaker 1: without getting shot in their lungs or harassed by road hunters.
Speaker 1: They do this by being masters of hide and seek.
Speaker 1: They do this by understanding everywhere they can travel that
Speaker 1: offers them an advantage. Now, I know I've talked about
Speaker 1: this a lot, but I think it's worth a lot
Speaker 1: of talking. I think it's worth a lot of thought
Speaker 1: for most of us because this is how white tails survive,
Speaker 1: and we honestly make it pretty easy for them to
Speaker 1: do so. This lesson is just driven home to me
Speaker 1: every year in ways that make me believe it might
Speaker 1: be the most important thing for white tail hunters to
Speaker 1: understand survive. Eval instinct is no joke, and it's the
Speaker 1: primary driver behind so much of a deer's daily movements.
Speaker 1: I don't mean that in the realm of getting enough
Speaker 1: calories in their belly to see another day, or enough
Speaker 1: water or whatever. I mean it in terms of predator avoidance,
Speaker 1: of which we are the biggest threat. Now, allow me
Speaker 1: to go off on a tangent here about this topic,
Speaker 1: because I think it deserves a deeper look years ago,
Speaker 1: in a past life as an associate editor for Peterson's
Speaker 1: Bow Hung magazine, I had a conversation with one of
Speaker 1: our columnists who is a big name in the dear world.
Speaker 1: He casually said, I don't know what it is, but
Speaker 1: the bucks on my place seemed to get dumber once
Speaker 1: they hit five and a half years old. They just
Speaker 1: move more in daylight, and they get easier to kill.
Speaker 1: My first reaction was, what the hell are you talking about?
Speaker 1: How could that even be true? But it is true,
Speaker 1: and the reason for it is those deer have dull
Speaker 1: survival instincts. They've been conditioned to accept risky behavior because
Speaker 1: it hasn't been risky to them at all for all
Speaker 1: of their lives. This is kind of like if you
Speaker 1: took a trust fund kid and you just nerfed up
Speaker 1: the world for them. You deliver to them the best food,
Speaker 1: the best houses on the best beaches all over the world.
Speaker 1: You hire security teams to watch over their every move
Speaker 1: and keep them safe, and they live their entire life
Speaker 1: this way, let's say, until they are seventy years old.
Speaker 1: But then you pull the old switcher rou on them.
Speaker 1: You cut off their bank accounts, you change the locks
Speaker 1: on all those mansions you sell the private jets, and
Speaker 1: you say, you know what, buddy, you're on your own. Now.
Speaker 1: Do you think that person would function pretty well in
Speaker 1: the real world. Probably not. Now, maybe this is a
Speaker 1: poor comparison, But take a buck on a thousand acres
Speaker 1: of private land in southern Iowa. Sure he has coyotes
Speaker 1: to worry about, but those song dogs have a smorgasvord
Speaker 1: of critters to eat that buck. He's born there. He
Speaker 1: eats on food plots every day, or knobs down on
Speaker 1: some supplemental feed in the winter. He's healthy and relatively
Speaker 1: free to do as he pleases. Every year he grows
Speaker 1: a bigger set of antlers, and sure he's gonna smell humans. Hell,
Speaker 1: he probably sees hunters in the trees, but even when
Speaker 1: he does, they don't shoot at him. They leave him alone.
Speaker 1: He chases does, he beds where he wants to, and
Speaker 1: he enjoys his nerve up dear world. He grows old
Speaker 1: in that place, learning every year that he's safer and safer,
Speaker 1: so finally he's had no negative consequences for going to
Speaker 1: his favorite food source two hours before dark, or chasing
Speaker 1: does wherever the scent of the ladies take him, but
Speaker 1: he's also six point five years old, sports about antlers
Speaker 1: on his head, and suddenly his once benign human benefactor says,
Speaker 1: I'm done babysitting you. You're on a hit list. That
Speaker 1: dear survival ice is at an enormous disadvantage. He's been
Speaker 1: conditioned to believe there isn't much in the way of
Speaker 1: danger out there, kind of like these dipshit Yellowstone visitors
Speaker 1: who try to get a selfie with a bison and
Speaker 1: end up riding its horns for a while, all the
Speaker 1: while becoming not only a viral video star, but also
Speaker 1: sometimes paralyzed or dead. That's the name of the game
Speaker 1: for the one percentage of the white to a world,
Speaker 1: And good for them the deer part, not the bison part.
Speaker 1: If they want to arrow a babysat deer every year,
Speaker 1: so be it. I'm happy for them, but that's probably
Speaker 1: not you, is it. Deer hunting deer that live with
Speaker 1: constant threats on their lives, or, if not constant, at
Speaker 1: least pretty damn consistent throughout much of the fall those threats.
Speaker 1: They likely reached a fever pitch in the last few
Speaker 1: weeks so that the rut that was supposed to deliver
Speaker 1: unto you a dumbass LUs craze buck also delivered onto
Speaker 1: the deer the highest concentration of two legged predators in
Speaker 1: the woods. Do you think that doesn't affect them? It does.
Speaker 1: I promise you that this is one of the darkest
Speaker 1: secrets about the deer hunting industry. It's that we don't
Speaker 1: know the truth, or we do, and we don't want
Speaker 1: to tell it to you because we have ways of
Speaker 1: getting around the difficulties that most hunters face. But reality
Speaker 1: is reality. And while the rut can be great, nature
Speaker 1: and deer hunting in life has a way of finding
Speaker 1: a level set. So the good things the rut can
Speaker 1: do for you are often offset by the increase in
Speaker 1: hunting pressure. What should be easier almost never is acknowledge
Speaker 1: that and think about what it means. In mid November,
Speaker 1: the big crunches coming, but not before the bucks do
Speaker 1: their best to pass on their genes a few more times.
Speaker 1: The wildest days are likely over, but all the good
Speaker 1: days aren't. They're just going to happen to people who
Speaker 1: figure out what November survival means to dear, and it
Speaker 1: means cover maybe tighter cruising loops, it often means concentrated
Speaker 1: deer movement away from where most hunters want to hunt.
Speaker 1: This is something that mirrors public land elk hunts, and
Speaker 1: it's a powerful motivator to keep looking. When you do
Speaker 1: find a little sanctuary, you can have a pretty damn
Speaker 1: good hunting, even in November when the peak of the
Speaker 1: run is passed. It's also worth while to think about
Speaker 1: the average life of does in your woods right now.
Speaker 1: They are sensitive to that hunting pressure too, probably more
Speaker 1: sensitive than your average buck. I would guess. They have
Speaker 1: that pretty big inconvenience visited upon them. But they also
Speaker 1: have the harassment from all the boys. And while there
Speaker 1: are social animals, they also seem to appreciate being mostly
Speaker 1: left alone. Where those does and fawns go, so too
Speaker 1: will go your bucks. This, at least on paper, probably
Speaker 1: cuts down on the need to cruise all over the
Speaker 1: countryside with their noses to the ground and a little
Speaker 1: extra leading their pencils. If you get my drift, what's
Speaker 1: the secret to figuring them this out? Well, look at
Speaker 1: the positives. Maybe, and obviously this varies wildly by staton,
Speaker 1: by individual properties. Maybe some of the initial fervor over
Speaker 1: the rut has died off. Maybe some of your competition
Speaker 1: is at home getting their ice shacks ready instead of
Speaker 1: going full pumpkin and sitting in their favorite ladder stands
Speaker 1: for another dear list set. Maybe there are still some
Speaker 1: big deer left looking for ladies, and maybe they're getting
Speaker 1: a little desperate as they dribble around at mid court
Speaker 1: watching the shot clock wind down. They might not be
Speaker 1: visible in as many places on your property, but they
Speaker 1: might be awful vulnerable in a couple. This is, in
Speaker 1: my experience, the most important time to put your faith
Speaker 1: in the rut. It's still happening out there, and that's
Speaker 1: a good thing. You just need to go find it.
Speaker 1: And I'm going to tell you something that might not
Speaker 1: make you feel better. Trail cameras probably aren't the ticket here. Now.
Speaker 1: I'm not saying don't run them. I really don't care
Speaker 1: if you do or don't. But if you're running a
Speaker 1: traditional camera only checking it once a week, you're a
Speaker 1: week behind. If you're running cell cameras, they're showing you
Speaker 1: a percentage of the deer. That's it, and it's probably
Speaker 1: not a great percentage. If you decide a November twenty
Speaker 1: all days it is worthless because your cell camps aren't
Speaker 1: showing chasing. Every day you're missing the point. You are
Speaker 1: literally not hunting for reasons that make no sense. Instead,
Speaker 1: it's time to treat this part of the rut differently. Gone,
Speaker 1: or at least going, are the days we're just planting
Speaker 1: your button. A seat over a promising funnel is good enough. Now,
Speaker 1: if the trails are still pounded and the action seems okay,
Speaker 1: by all means, keep at it, but pay attention, especially
Speaker 1: if you're out there gun hunting. If your favorite funnel
Speaker 1: or pinch point doesn't deliver in an all days sit,
Speaker 1: you gotta go somewhere else instead of settling for the
Speaker 1: old excuse that the bucks are all nocturnal, or the
Speaker 1: lockdown is in total effect, or the rut is over.
Speaker 1: Go find it. It's still happening somewhere. It won't be
Speaker 1: in that beautiful deciduous forest look that looks like it's
Speaker 1: straight out of a painting. It will be in some
Speaker 1: place tight, like it usually is on pressured ground. Now
Speaker 1: what I like to do this time of year? Let's
Speaker 1: just get a little curious. I asked myself, where am
Speaker 1: I not seeing them? Kind of again, like when I'm
Speaker 1: el hunting. If they aren't in the meadows and don't
Speaker 1: seem to be using those postcard worthy aspen veins, they
Speaker 1: must be in the dark timber. If the bucks I'm
Speaker 1: after aren't hitting the cut corn and daylight and they
Speaker 1: aren't using the open woods, does that mean they aren't running?
Speaker 1: Does it mean that they aren't looking for love? And
Speaker 1: what about the does have your sightings of the ladies
Speaker 1: fallen off the cliff too? If so, go looking. Fresh
Speaker 1: tracks are huge here because fresh scrapes and rubs might
Speaker 1: not be a really good option. You want to at trails,
Speaker 1: fence crossings, river crossings, anywhere where there might be an
Speaker 1: opportunity to read fresh deer movement in the dirt of
Speaker 1: the sand. You get bonus points, super super bonus points
Speaker 1: if those spots happen to be around thicker cover. Now,
Speaker 1: this doesn't mean that it needs to be so thick
Speaker 1: that you couldn't push a cotton tail out of it,
Speaker 1: even if you owned a dozen beagles. It just needs
Speaker 1: to be thicker than the other habitat that's available. This
Speaker 1: is an important point, and I'm going to cover it
Speaker 1: next week quite a bit in a rut Reflections episode.
Speaker 1: But for now, I think thicker than average and get
Speaker 1: in there to watch. Also, think about the fact that
Speaker 1: you're looking for a real concentration of deer now. It
Speaker 1: doesn't matter if what you think you find is just
Speaker 1: some dozen fonts, because the bucks will find them too.
Speaker 1: You want to find out where they're hold up and
Speaker 1: make a plan and not bump them in into a
Speaker 1: different sanctuary. This is harder than it sounds, because if
Speaker 1: you go from zero to something to work with, it's
Speaker 1: easy to push it with access or wind or your
Speaker 1: setups or any other thing that might be trade or present.
Speaker 1: These deer you're hunting now, they don't suffer fools. They're
Speaker 1: looking for an excuse to big crunch into a smaller
Speaker 1: and smaller presence in the woods, and you could be
Speaker 1: that catalyst. But if you play it safe and smart,
Speaker 1: that relocated concentration of deer can give you a few
Speaker 1: magical days. This strategy works on another level too, because
Speaker 1: they'll have you hunting like others. Don't think about the
Speaker 1: average gun hunter. Is he going to saddle up and
Speaker 1: try observation sits and tight creep bottoms and I don't know,
Speaker 1: abandon homesteads now. I'm sure if you do, but I
Speaker 1: bet most don't. They go the opposite direction. Or think
Speaker 1: about your average bow hunter now, as the hunting gets harder,
Speaker 1: is he likely to dig in and go mobile while
Speaker 1: actively trying to find a deer concentration to hunt right
Speaker 1: this moment? Or is he more likely to phone it in,
Speaker 1: hunt the easy stuff and make excuses for not finding deer.
Speaker 1: Those hunters in both categories, they've done you a weird
Speaker 1: favor by hunting the way that they do. They've pushed
Speaker 1: the deer into specific spots, deepen the cover, and they
Speaker 1: have concentrated them. That's a silver lining on what is
Speaker 1: really not an easy time to kill a buck. It's
Speaker 1: just not one wrong approach where your wind blows out
Speaker 1: one of these spots and it's back to square one.
Speaker 1: But if that doesn't happen and you spend some time
Speaker 1: seeking out these mid November sanctuaries, you can still have
Speaker 1: good hunting. You can salvage your season, and this is
Speaker 1: the truth, have the chance to bump into your biggest
Speaker 1: buck ever. I don't know what it is about the
Speaker 1: dwindling days of the rut, but it seems to get
Speaker 1: the mature bucks on their feet and moving, so use
Speaker 1: that as motivation. Get out there with your gun or
Speaker 1: bow or spear or whatever to your chosen weapon is
Speaker 1: find those hotspots and then listen in next week as
Speaker 1: we reflect a little on this past rut. That's it
Speaker 1: for this week. I'm Tony Peterson. This has been the
Speaker 1: Wired Hunt Foundations podcast, which has brought to you by
Speaker 1: First Light. As I always thank you so much for
Speaker 1: listening and all of your support, I truly truly appreciate it.
Speaker 1: If you want to check out some more of our
Speaker 1: whitetail content, head on over to the meatia dot com
Speaker 1: slash wired and you'll see a bunch of articles by me,
Speaker 1: Mark Alex Gilstrom in a whole bunch of white tail
Speaker 1: Killers