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 Wired to Hunt Foundations podcast,
Speaker 2: which is brought to you by First Light. I'm your host,
Speaker 2: Tony Peterson. In today's episode is all about using cameras
Speaker 2: now to figure out where to sit during November rut hunts.
Speaker 2: All right, before I get started here, I gotta talk
Speaker 2: about something. Today is the day that First Light drops
Speaker 2: the new white tail lineup. We have three different systems
Speaker 2: coming out, the early season Phase, the mid season Core,
Speaker 2: and for late season hunters or anyone who just spends
Speaker 2: time in Arctic like weatherwaight on white tails to thermic.
Speaker 2: As I said, these are all systems tailored to seasonality
Speaker 2: and likely conditions, so you'll need to check them out
Speaker 2: to see what's right for you. I spend a lot
Speaker 2: of time in the Phase and the Core offerings last fall,
Speaker 2: and I'll just say this, if you're in the market
Speaker 2: for new white tail hunting clothing, you're probably going to
Speaker 2: want to go check these twenty twenty four offerings out.
Speaker 2: Head on over to first light dot com. That's where
Speaker 2: we'll see them all Right, enough salesy stuff. I think
Speaker 2: the number one reason why I love white tail hunting
Speaker 2: so much is that it's just a pursuit that allows
Speaker 2: you to build in layers to your success. During the
Speaker 2: entire off season. Those nine months are your opportunity to
Speaker 2: do detective work on last year's buck movements and to
Speaker 2: try to figure out what this season's buck movements should
Speaker 2: look like. One of the best ways to do this
Speaker 2: is through trail camera usage, and that's what I'm going
Speaker 2: to talk about right now. Anybody who listens to this podcast,
Speaker 2: they know I love fishing. In fact, when I'm daydreaming
Speaker 2: about my future, I often conjure up a mental show
Speaker 2: that involves me living somewhere close to a beach where
Speaker 2: I can smell the salt water every day and head
Speaker 2: out in the flats to sitefish for whatever might be
Speaker 2: cruising along. Now. I'm not about to plaster my truck
Speaker 2: with salt Life stickers, although I did notice that my
Speaker 2: wife had a salt Life hat on the other day,
Speaker 2: and I thought, Hmm, I can't think of someone less
Speaker 2: comfortable in the ocean than the very pasty and very
Speaker 2: suburban soccer mom. I happen to be married to who
Speaker 2: has the most irrational fear of fish in anyone I've
Speaker 2: ever met, and who is far far more comfortable on
Speaker 2: land than she is even wading in water where it's
Speaker 2: highly unlikely to encounter anything more dangerous than a bluegill
Speaker 2: any huski. I just like the idea of figuring out
Speaker 2: how to fish for a pile of different species in
Speaker 2: an environment that speaks to me on a level I
Speaker 2: can't quite explain. Since I'm quite a ways away from
Speaker 2: buying an ocean front property and retiring early, I bide
Speaker 2: my time fishing the freshwater lakes and rivers here in
Speaker 2: the Upper Midwest. To do this, I need a boat.
Speaker 2: Technically I don't need a boat, but if you love fishing,
Speaker 2: you need a boat. It's kind of like, sure, you
Speaker 2: can love pheasant hunting, but if you don't have a dog,
Speaker 2: do you really love pheasant hunting? Now? I have a
Speaker 2: new boat now, but from nineteen ninety nine until last
Speaker 2: March I had the same boat. It was a great boat.
Speaker 2: I loved it. It was a great boat for up
Speaker 2: to two people and occasionally a couple of dogs for
Speaker 2: taking kids or a whole family. A seventeen foot bass
Speaker 2: boat gets awful cramped in a hurry, And as I
Speaker 2: learned when one of my daughters tried to grab a
Speaker 2: lily pad flower when she was like four, it's very
Speaker 2: easy for a young kid to fall out of and
Speaker 2: go headfirst into the drink. At least she had her
Speaker 2: dad there to grab her by the ankle and haul
Speaker 2: her back in, which is more than I can say
Speaker 2: for myself when I went headfirst into the drink out
Speaker 2: of that boat one time. Now, as the girls got
Speaker 2: older and wanted to cast more, and as their dog
Speaker 2: pack went from one to two, I realized I was
Speaker 2: going to need a new boat. The problem was that
Speaker 2: the old blonde Buzzkill wasn't stoked about me replacing what
Speaker 2: she deemed as a perfectly fine piece of watercraft for
Speaker 2: something that cost a quarter of what our house cost
Speaker 2: when we bought it. After we got married. Since I'm
Speaker 2: a savvy fella, I started talking a lot about how
Speaker 2: the boat was just too small and someone was going
Speaker 2: to get hooked in the face, and really a seventeen
Speaker 2: foot boat was way, way too dangerous to take a
Speaker 2: family fishing it, especially when there were nineteen foot bass
Speaker 2: boats that are so much safer out there. You know.
Speaker 2: I dropped subtle hints for months. I mentioned that a
Speaker 2: couple of power poles on the back of the boat
Speaker 2: could make it really nice to bobber fish with my family,
Speaker 2: which is kind of my bride's chosen fishing style. I
Speaker 2: mentioned how if we just had some new grafts that
Speaker 2: I don't know, communicated with my trolling motor to bring
Speaker 2: us into the high tech world of modern fishing, the
Speaker 2: girls would probably catch more fish. She didn't seem super
Speaker 2: sold on the idea. I pointed out how a new
Speaker 2: boat could have a built in ladder on it, just
Speaker 2: in case we decided to haul some twelve year olds
Speaker 2: on tubes or go swimming for an afternoon in the summer.
Speaker 2: I played the long game, and when the boat sails
Speaker 2: started popping up, I showed my wife what a good
Speaker 2: deal we could get, and she loves a good deal.
Speaker 2: So that was that done and done, And it only
Speaker 2: took me like a year and a half of subtle
Speaker 2: conditioning to get her on board with the whole deal.
Speaker 2: The thing about life is we all want instant gratification.
Speaker 2: We want what we want, and we want that shit
Speaker 2: right now. But that's not how life works. It's not
Speaker 2: how big purchases in a marriage work, and it's not
Speaker 2: how things work in the white Tail woods. This hit
Speaker 2: me last week when I sweated my way through a
Speaker 2: swamp in northern Wisconsin with a backpack full of moultrees.
Speaker 2: While I do plan to hunt the early season over
Speaker 2: there in Packerland, it'll all be about my daughters at
Speaker 2: that time. I'm not going to go boat on over
Speaker 2: there myself until the rut. And you know, I even
Speaker 2: have a rifle hunt plan there this year, which is
Speaker 2: actually kind of one of the bigger reasons why I
Speaker 2: wanted to get cameras out now, even though that probably
Speaker 2: doesn't sound like it makes much sense. But you see,
Speaker 2: last year I spent some time scouting after I arrowed
Speaker 2: a buck over there in mid November. What I found
Speaker 2: was some bucks sign in some hell holes that felt
Speaker 2: like a tip of the old deer iceberg kind of thing.
Speaker 2: Felt like I was in a couple of places that
Speaker 2: bucks use to stay away from people in wolves and
Speaker 2: coyotes and whatever else. Now, I know that typical rut
Speaker 2: strategy is usually just to hang out on a terrain
Speaker 2: trap until something dumb and horny comes rolling along. My
Speaker 2: experience with that strategy is that it works very well
Speaker 2: in good places with high deer numbers. It isn't so
Speaker 2: simple in places with lots of hunting pressure, or where
Speaker 2: the deer density is low, or both. Instead of letting
Speaker 2: the rut put a deer in my lap, I decided
Speaker 2: I'd figure out where the big boys are likely to
Speaker 2: stick to and then cater a bow and rifle hunting
Speaker 2: strategy to those spots. Now, that seems simple enough, but
Speaker 2: hiking through the cattails and feeding roughly seventy five million
Speaker 2: mosquitoes and deer flies made it feel like something else. Oh.
Speaker 2: It's also hard to wrap my head around the reality
Speaker 2: of hanging cameras in July or August that might not
Speaker 2: show a deer on them until well into the bow season.
Speaker 2: It took me about five seconds of being in that
Speaker 2: swamp to realize that not a lot of deer would
Speaker 2: choose to be in there. Now, that's okay, I want
Speaker 2: those cameras soaking in there for a while and just
Speaker 2: waiting for when the nights get much cooler and the
Speaker 2: deer start realizing that it's hunting season once again. So far,
Speaker 2: my prediction of deer movement and those spots has been
Speaker 2: pretty much dead. On the sum total of deer pictures
Speaker 2: I've received has been a don of fawn that came
Speaker 2: in to sniff around after I left. I haven't had
Speaker 2: even a single spike on camera yet, no bucks, and
Speaker 2: I don't expect to anytime soon. I do expect that
Speaker 2: eventually the bucks will show up and they'll tip me
Speaker 2: off to something in their lives. The spots where I
Speaker 2: put those cameras are all pain to get to. They
Speaker 2: are also thick and just generally nasty, and they are
Speaker 2: all on trails where I have tree stand trees picked out,
Speaker 2: but I haven't hung any stands yet because I don't
Speaker 2: know if this strategy is going to work enough to
Speaker 2: convince me of the effort. I also know that since
Speaker 2: I have trees picked out, I can just slip in
Speaker 2: for a mobile hunt when the time is right, if
Speaker 2: that's the best or the easiest play. Now, is this
Speaker 2: a revolutionary trail camera strategy? Nope, not really. But if
Speaker 2: we dig into it a little, bit. I think it'll
Speaker 2: highlight why it's different, and different can be very good.
Speaker 2: So think about your summertime trail camera strategies. I bet
Speaker 2: most year hunters who deploy a few digital scouters each
Speaker 2: summer lean super heavily toward food sources or water sources,
Speaker 2: or in a hell of a lot of places over
Speaker 2: some kind of attractant that has been placed specifically to
Speaker 2: draw a deer in. That's great, do whatever, But the
Speaker 2: extent of the potential knowledge you can glean from this
Speaker 2: strategy doesn't favor a great rot hunt. What it does
Speaker 2: is offer you information for early season hunting potentially and
Speaker 2: definitely information on inventory. That's not nothing. But a lot
Speaker 2: of folks also happen to not hunt very hard in
Speaker 2: the early season, and so what they do is gather
Speaker 2: from this type of camera a strategy that you know
Speaker 2: tends to be less useful than it seems because they're
Speaker 2: probably not going to put the effort in right away
Speaker 2: to take advantage of that intel. And I've been guilty
Speaker 2: of this many many years, which is why I'm taking
Speaker 2: a different approach this year. My thought is that if
Speaker 2: I can start to see when the big DearS show up,
Speaker 2: in the hell holes where they leave a lot of
Speaker 2: sign throughout the season, I can probably figure out a
Speaker 2: little better about how they will react to hunting pressure overall,
Speaker 2: you know, both from me and the girls and from
Speaker 2: the general pressure in the areas I hunt. I should
Speaker 2: be able to get a look into what happens when
Speaker 2: the bachelor groups break up and the deer go to
Speaker 2: the spots there's so advantageous to them. This is something
Speaker 2: I've been thinking about a lot, and was reminded of
Speaker 2: when I found a clear buckbed while scouting last week.
Speaker 2: Deer are prey animals, so their best offense is a
Speaker 2: great defense. The buckbed was right next to a dead fall,
Speaker 2: with thick brush behind him and some open meadow in front.
Speaker 2: It was ideal for a south wind, pretty dang good
Speaker 2: for a west wind, both of which we get a
Speaker 2: lot in the summer. Now. I don't know who made
Speaker 2: that bed, but I know that he understands what to
Speaker 2: do to survive. That's what I want to learn more
Speaker 2: about with this trail camera strategy. If it shows sporadic
Speaker 2: movement by something mature in any one of these spots,
Speaker 2: I should be able to dial down the most likely
Speaker 2: places that deer will cruise or lay down, sign or
Speaker 2: start to chase when the rut gets closer. And when
Speaker 2: I'm over there with a rifle in my hand and
Speaker 2: the rut is winding down, I should have a good
Speaker 2: idea of where the deer should go, you know, to
Speaker 2: get to those hell holes to evade the Orange army.
Speaker 2: I think this is possible to learn with this trail
Speaker 2: camera strategy. I think this strategy will actually go beyond
Speaker 2: just identifying some little sanctuaries too. The biggest thing that
Speaker 2: you know, us deer hunters get wrong about the rut
Speaker 2: is that it'll just put a buck in our laps
Speaker 2: no matter where we sit. So many hunters go to
Speaker 2: burned out stands in November thinking that the rut will
Speaker 2: erase six or eight weeks of overhunting. And in some
Speaker 2: cases they are right, but in a lot of cases
Speaker 2: they aren't. If you burn the doze out in an area,
Speaker 2: you're in trouble. If you burn the bucks out in
Speaker 2: an area, well, you're in trouble. Will the rut put
Speaker 2: some deer back in play, absolutely, but it often doesn't
Speaker 2: make hunting as easy as we'd like to believe. The
Speaker 2: rut is harder to hunt successfully than we've been told.
Speaker 2: It is an awesome time to be in the woods,
Speaker 2: for sure, but it's also true that if you're not
Speaker 2: hunting someplace unbelievably good, you're still hunting deer that know
Speaker 2: you and everyone else is after them. They do take
Speaker 2: more risks, but not as many as we want them
Speaker 2: to know. They do move in daylight, but not randomly.
Speaker 2: Their desire to pass on their jeans is no joke,
Speaker 2: but it doesn't compare to their desire to be around
Speaker 2: for another sunrise. In fact, there might be only a
Speaker 2: couple of days a year where a mature buck is
Speaker 2: really that vulnerable at all, and if he spends most
Speaker 2: of his time hold up with an astisk dough, you're
Speaker 2: mostly out of luck. The way to hedge your bets
Speaker 2: in favor of killing a deer like that is to
Speaker 2: get close to where he feels safe, to post up
Speaker 2: twenty five yards downwind of a trail that he uses
Speaker 2: because it offers him a lot of survival advantages to
Speaker 2: play off of his strategy to survive, and not just
Speaker 2: his desire to meet a receptively. He has lots of
Speaker 2: nighttime hours to go that way and not too many
Speaker 2: daylight hours in November where he has to be super
Speaker 2: concerned with his safety, so he really only has to
Speaker 2: get things right about eleven hours a day then, and
Speaker 2: that matters. So I guess my question for you, find
Speaker 2: folks would be how often do you have amazing rut hunts?
Speaker 2: How often do you have clunkers on the years where
Speaker 2: you wait for the rut to save you? How often
Speaker 2: does that work out? Or let's look at it another way,
Speaker 2: how many days would you need for your planned rut
Speaker 2: cation where you'd make a big bet that you definitely
Speaker 2: are going to kill a deer that qualifies as big
Speaker 2: to you? Is it two days or twenty? Maybe you
Speaker 2: don't need to sweat it out now to try to
Speaker 2: figure out where your local bucks feel most safe, because
Speaker 2: the rut usually delivers something amazing to you. That's great. Now,
Speaker 2: if you're listening to this and thinking that you've had
Speaker 2: more than your share of clunker hunts during November, you
Speaker 2: might want to ask yourself why, what is your typical
Speaker 2: strategy for hunting the rut. Does it involve going mobile
Speaker 2: on the edge of a known bedding area, or does
Speaker 2: it involve hauling a couple of bottles of dope and
Speaker 2: some rattling antlers out to the field edge stand. You've
Speaker 2: been hunting every week since mid September. Maybe to put
Speaker 2: a little finer point on this, I think a good
Speaker 2: way to look at rut strategies is to ask ourselves
Speaker 2: how confident we generally are in our November hunts. Are
Speaker 2: you confident because it's the rut and hey, anything can happen,
Speaker 2: or are you confident because you feel you put yourself
Speaker 2: in a really good situation to kill a cruiser. There's
Speaker 2: a huge difference there, and it's often the thing that
Speaker 2: divides the really successful hunters from folks who post up
Speaker 2: average results on any given season. Now, I'm not much
Speaker 2: interested in average, although I find myself there a lot.
Speaker 2: One of the ways that I'm trying to do better
Speaker 2: this season is to learn about the bucks in some
Speaker 2: of the spots I hunt in a way that I've
Speaker 2: never really tried before. Those cameras right now out there
Speaker 2: might show me something valuable, or they might not show
Speaker 2: me anything at all, But I think they will show
Speaker 2: me something I can work with. I'm curious if they
Speaker 2: show me height and travel around the bow opener or
Speaker 2: just around weekends in general, when there should be more
Speaker 2: people out in the woods. I'm curious what they'll show
Speaker 2: me when the youth gun season or whatever happens, will
Speaker 2: there be more activity in those spots, Let's say when
Speaker 2: the duck hunters hit the water, because that might actually
Speaker 2: play into some of the spots I hung cameras. What
Speaker 2: I'm looking for with this strategy is that if I
Speaker 2: can connect the likelihood of a buck using a little
Speaker 2: sanctuary around any human intrusion, or any other variable like
Speaker 2: certain wind directions or some kind of weather, the prevalence
Speaker 2: of coyotes or wolves. I'm also curious to see if
Speaker 2: there's any connection between deer movement in one part of
Speaker 2: a particular swamp versus another. Because I have cameras positioned
Speaker 2: on trails in two different spots. It might be all
Speaker 2: a bust, or it might not. The cool thing about
Speaker 2: whitetails is that we have this off season to work with,
Speaker 2: and we have plenty of days throughout the actual deer
Speaker 2: season to gather up a few nuggets of the good
Speaker 2: stuff that could point us in the right direction by
Speaker 2: early November. So while you're out there hanging a camera
Speaker 2: on the edge of the soybeans, or maybe your clover
Speaker 2: plot or hew over a mineral block where it's legal,
Speaker 2: or as I see from people who send me trail
Speaker 2: camera photos, or in real estate land listings in a
Speaker 2: hell of a lot of places where they aren't legal.
Speaker 2: Think about what you're going to learn. Think about your
Speaker 2: plan for the season. Is the goal to get on
Speaker 2: a bachelor group for the bow opener and try to
Speaker 2: tag out just hours into the season, or are you
Speaker 2: just doing something deer wise because you feel like you
Speaker 2: should and it's fun to get picks of bucks doing
Speaker 2: what they do in the summer. Maybe there is a
Speaker 2: way for you to divide up your cameras to serve
Speaker 2: vastly different services for you. In fact, I think old
Speaker 2: school non cell cameras are ideal for this strategy, if
Speaker 2: that makes it more palatable to put some of them
Speaker 2: in spots where you expect pretty dismal results for weeks
Speaker 2: on end. You know, obviously this whole thing is highly individualistic,
Speaker 2: but I want you to think about your camera usage.
Speaker 2: Maybe a single camera and a question mark spot can
Speaker 2: clue you into something really important for your rough hunts,
Speaker 2: something that the other hunters are never going to figure out.
Speaker 2: Because they are going to do exactly what they always do.
Speaker 2: Think about that and think about listening next week, because
Speaker 2: I'm going to talk about understanding dominance in the deer
Speaker 2: herd and why it can help your summer scouting. That's it.
Speaker 2: I'm Tony Peterson. This has been the Wire to Hunt
Speaker 2: Foundation's podcast, which has brought to you by first Light.
Speaker 2: As I mentioned in the intro, First Light has a
Speaker 2: whole pile of new white tail stuff coming out that
Speaker 2: you're going to want to check out at first light
Speaker 2: dot com. And if you want more hunting content videos,
Speaker 2: maybe a big game or recipe. Maybe you're heading on
Speaker 2: your first Antelope Houn or elkont here soon, whatever it is,
Speaker 2: whatever it you want to scratch in the outdoor, as
Speaker 2: we probably have you covered with some kind of content
Speaker 2: over at the media here dot com. Go check it out.