Speaker 1: Welcome to the Wired to Hunt Foundations podcast, your guide
Speaker 1: to the fundamentals of better deer hunting, and now your host,
Speaker 1: Tony Peterson. Hey everyone, welcome to the Wire to Hunt
Speaker 1: Foundations podcast, which is brought to you by First Light.
Speaker 1: I'm your host, Tony Peterson. In today's episode is all
Speaker 1: about winter scouting. Winter scouting is a phrase that I
Speaker 1: don't know we deer hunters, we tossed us around all
Speaker 1: the time, but there's a reason we qualify it with
Speaker 1: the word winter because this time of year provides a
Speaker 1: unique scouting opportunity. This episode is all about winter scouting
Speaker 1: and why you should consider this the most important seasonal
Speaker 1: window in which to learn about deer. Yeah. I don't
Speaker 1: know about you, guys and gals, but I think March
Speaker 1: is the worst month of the year. Turkey season mostly
Speaker 1: isn't open yet, and in the states that it does open,
Speaker 1: the hunting is often not all that great compared to April,
Speaker 1: unless you're way down south. Fishing opportunities In much of
Speaker 1: the country they're not all that great yet either. In
Speaker 1: the small game seasons they're mostly closed. This is the
Speaker 1: time of year where I start to go a little
Speaker 1: stir crazy and I forced myself to get into the
Speaker 1: gym more to run a few more miles outside and
Speaker 1: just plan more scouting trips. The latter is the most
Speaker 1: relevant to this show, obviously, winner scouting is important. In fact,
Speaker 1: I think it's the most valuable scouting a hunter can do,
Speaker 1: besides some in season scouting. That type of in the
Speaker 1: moment scouting often leads directly to putting yourself in a
Speaker 1: addition to kill a buck. Winter scouting and how a
Speaker 1: lot of summer scouting kind of doesn't, but both are
Speaker 1: valuable in their own way. With winter scouting offering us
Speaker 1: what I think is some of the most actionable intel.
Speaker 1: Allow me to explain for starters, the woods will never
Speaker 1: be more open than they are right now. That's a
Speaker 1: huge benefit that we're all aware of. This lets you
Speaker 1: see more than you would at any other time of
Speaker 1: the season, which seems like a pretty simple advantage. No
Speaker 1: leaves mean you can stand at the bottom of a
Speaker 1: bluff and see all the way to the top in
Speaker 1: a lot of places, or all the way up to
Speaker 1: a bench that is three quarters of the way up there.
Speaker 1: You can stand there and look through the woods and
Speaker 1: see folds in the terrain, you can see the narrowest
Speaker 1: spot on a washout that funnels deer through. You can
Speaker 1: see how the woods are all laid out, and that's
Speaker 1: a gift. This goes for hunters in bluff country and
Speaker 1: for hunters on flat as a pool table ground. This
Speaker 1: goes for big woods hunters and open country hunters. This
Speaker 1: reading ter ain advantage. It's amazing, But there are other
Speaker 1: things the general openness of the woods allows you to
Speaker 1: see as well. Let's say, if you're a big woods
Speaker 1: hunter or hell, I don't know, even if you're not,
Speaker 1: you'll never have an easier time seeing edges. Soft edges
Speaker 1: are dear magnets, those places where two types of different
Speaker 1: cover come together. They're most evident now, and being aware
Speaker 1: of their locations is important for all hunters, but a
Speaker 1: real benefit to anyone who hunts public land or pressured
Speaker 1: private ground being able to recognize those soft edges and
Speaker 1: and use them correctly. I think that's a sign of woodsmanship,
Speaker 1: and I firmly believe woodsmanship kills bucks. You know, of course,
Speaker 1: hard edges are visible too, and I know they are
Speaker 1: easier to see throughout the year than soft edges. But
Speaker 1: the intricacies of a hard edge matter. I liken this
Speaker 1: to some type of underwater structure you might fish for
Speaker 1: walleyes or bass like imagine a sunken island or a
Speaker 1: rocky reef down at the bottom of your favorite wally
Speaker 1: or bass lake. That line of rocks, it's probably gonna
Speaker 1: be a good place to troll lindy rigs for walleyes.
Speaker 1: But there might be you'll find if you really dig
Speaker 1: in and learn that spot like one boulder that's bigger
Speaker 1: than the others, and that will probably be the spot
Speaker 1: on the spot. Or another way to look at it
Speaker 1: would be you might fish milfoil or cabbage weed lines
Speaker 1: for large mouth may especially in the summer. You may
Speaker 1: find them a little deeper, and you might notice that
Speaker 1: where the vegetation makes a forty five degree bend along
Speaker 1: the contour of the bottom, you just catch more bass there.
Speaker 1: They're schooled up there, or that's the spot where you
Speaker 1: always hook into the biggest fish. In both of these scenarios,
Speaker 1: it's no accident that a little something extra in an
Speaker 1: already good location concentrates the fish. And white tails are
Speaker 1: no different, my friends. And while you might not notice
Speaker 1: the way there's a subtle rise in elevation on a
Speaker 1: hard edge while you're out there swatting mosquitoes in the summer.
Speaker 1: When you hike through there in the winter, it'll be
Speaker 1: plain as day. And you might also notice in that
Speaker 1: spot that one of my fishing partners would refer to
Speaker 1: as the juicy juice, there are more rubs, possibly a
Speaker 1: great big loan bed tucked up against some windfall. Two. Again,
Speaker 1: this is no accident. The opportunity to find those types
Speaker 1: of terrain features and really be able to read them
Speaker 1: it's out there right now. Just about any type of
Speaker 1: terrain feature you can imagine that should theoretically funnel dear
Speaker 1: movement or concentrate deer activity will be easiest to read
Speaker 1: right now. Just think about that for a second. Think
Speaker 1: about it from the perspective of someone who wants to
Speaker 1: take a week off during the rut this year. Now,
Speaker 1: while November is still half a year away, you know
Speaker 1: that your future self is sure as how gonna want
Speaker 1: to sit over the best funnels possible. The way to
Speaker 1: ensure that, at least to a large extent, is to
Speaker 1: get out there now and start snooping around. Now, this
Speaker 1: might not be as big of a deal to someone
Speaker 1: who has a lot of good ground to work with,
Speaker 1: maybe with some really good food plots some other manmade
Speaker 1: deer magnets. But even then, those people are still gonna
Speaker 1: want to get out there and really learn their dear ground.
Speaker 1: And if you're a pressure ground hunter, this advantage can't
Speaker 1: be overstated. And better yet, let's say you walk into
Speaker 1: a spot and you find a location that just looks
Speaker 1: like it should be a deer highway during the rut.
Speaker 1: Don't you want to know how to get into that spot?
Speaker 1: And don't you want to know how to get out
Speaker 1: of that spot? How about what tree is positioned perfectly
Speaker 1: for a specific kind of wind? All of that will
Speaker 1: be visible now this time of the year. And here's
Speaker 1: a pro tip for you. If you go into winter
Speaker 1: scout and you find something that really blows the wind
Speaker 1: up your camera skirt, use your mapping app and drop
Speaker 1: a pin on it. Now, write some notes on the
Speaker 1: wind direction you'd probably want to hunt it. Give yourself
Speaker 1: a chance to come back and hunt it with a
Speaker 1: really good plan by taking notes now. And I know
Speaker 1: you think you'll remember everything about your new hot spot,
Speaker 1: But if you're like me and you pickled your brain
Speaker 1: for like two decades with wild turkey, you'll probably forget
Speaker 1: a few lines of notes on wind direction and approach
Speaker 1: direction and how you're gonna access it and get out.
Speaker 1: That can really prompt your memory and save you from
Speaker 1: having to relearn a spot you already kind of figured out.
Speaker 1: In addition to winter scouting, in order to dive into
Speaker 1: terrain features and soft and hard edges, you should also
Speaker 1: take a look at every acre you have to hunt.
Speaker 1: I know that probably sounds like overkill, but let me
Speaker 1: give you two examples out of my own recent life.
Speaker 1: Both happened while winter scouting a farm in southeastern Minnesota
Speaker 1: that I've hunted since I was fifteen. A couple of
Speaker 1: years ago, I found a subtle crossing while I was
Speaker 1: out there scouting in February that just took the deer
Speaker 1: from one side of this long roo mean to another,
Speaker 1: and it was right in the middle of the ravine.
Speaker 1: I've hunted the top and the bottom of that spot
Speaker 1: dozens and dozens and dozens of times. Because those washouts
Speaker 1: on hillsides they pushed deer up and they pushed dear down.
Speaker 1: But I didn't realize because I couldn't see it from
Speaker 1: the top of the bottom, because there was also a
Speaker 1: place right in the middle where that washout narrowed way
Speaker 1: down and it had a bang and deer trail on it.
Speaker 1: It also had a hell of a lot of rubs
Speaker 1: on both sides of it, which is a topic I'll
Speaker 1: get into next week and way more detail, but suffice
Speaker 1: it to say, it was kind of a shot to
Speaker 1: the old ego to realize that on the one dear
Speaker 1: property I've spent more time hunting and scouting than any
Speaker 1: other property in my life, there were still things to learn.
Speaker 1: I ended up hunting that spot a few times two
Speaker 1: seasons ago. Well, I didn't arrow a buck on that
Speaker 1: specific crossing. I did have a few go through when
Speaker 1: I sat there, and I did arrow a buck very
Speaker 1: close to their Much of that success can be attributed
Speaker 1: to the one time I winter scouted through there and
Speaker 1: I found that spot. Now. The other example on the
Speaker 1: same farm is one that I found in while taking
Speaker 1: my daughter's shed hunting. We were just messing around and
Speaker 1: dipped into a valley that is split by a trout stream,
Speaker 1: and I looked around, and while we didn't have any
Speaker 1: luck finding sheds there, I was standing on the bank
Speaker 1: of that trout stream, thinking about fishing more than anything,
Speaker 1: and I realized that the hillside along it had a
Speaker 1: very subtle dip to it in one spot. Now, I've
Speaker 1: walked up and down that hill so many times, and
Speaker 1: I've killed deer on the top of that ridge and
Speaker 1: in that creek bottom. But this train feature caught my eye.
Speaker 1: It made me think about a lot of the deer
Speaker 1: movement I've seen over the years, and also some of
Speaker 1: the deer movement my buddy sees on a neighboring farm. Well,
Speaker 1: he and I put two and two together and started
Speaker 1: a factor in how the deer moved from one property
Speaker 1: the next. That, in a small way, led us to
Speaker 1: hang a stand for the rut this past season. And
Speaker 1: if you want to see how that worked out for
Speaker 1: me the first time I sat there, head on over
Speaker 1: to the meat Eat YouTube channel and watch the very
Speaker 1: first episode of one Week in November. This example leads
Speaker 1: right back to what I said earlier about how winner
Speaker 1: scouting obviously won't put you on a buck right away,
Speaker 1: but it will help you to more clearly see the
Speaker 1: bigger picture of deer usage on your hunting ground, those
Speaker 1: subtleties to the terrain that you'll see more clearly now
Speaker 1: than ever. They also give you a chance to engage
Speaker 1: in some high level white tail thinking. Last summer, Mark
Speaker 1: and I interviewed big buck killer Adam Hayes for Wire
Speaker 1: to Hunt, and he talked about how there are just
Speaker 1: certain spots in a buck's travel route where he has
Speaker 1: a slight wind disadvantage. This is a weakness in an
Speaker 1: otherwise solid survival game that you can exploit if you
Speaker 1: know how. The best way to understand this is to
Speaker 1: win or scout and really really look at travel routes.
Speaker 1: Whether you're on top of a ridge, in a flattish
Speaker 1: section of big woods, or wherever. Right now, you can
Speaker 1: dissect those routes. You can often see a hundred yards
Speaker 1: down the trail, or stand at the top of the
Speaker 1: hill and see hundreds of yards down exactly the different
Speaker 1: directions that deer are likely to walk in those routes.
Speaker 1: At some point there might be a spot where the
Speaker 1: deer have to dip around a low part, or avoid
Speaker 1: some dead falls, or maybe jump across an old barbedware fence.
Speaker 1: Seeing and visualizing exactly where a buck might walk for
Speaker 1: two hundred yards gives you the chance to find in
Speaker 1: that distance the one spot where, for whatever reason, he
Speaker 1: might abandoned his reliance on the wind for just a second,
Speaker 1: simply because it makes it easier to go from point
Speaker 1: A to B, or because he just has to duke
Speaker 1: a little one way or the other to get around something.
Speaker 1: This is what makes river crossing so potentially awesome right,
Speaker 1: and can play out in a variety of ways that
Speaker 1: have nothing to do with them choosing to wait across
Speaker 1: the waterway in an easy spot. I honestly think finding
Speaker 1: spots like this is exactly like realizing that your favorite
Speaker 1: walleye reef has one huge boulder where most of the
Speaker 1: fish will stage up and aggressively chomp a crawler or
Speaker 1: a leach troll past. Do you see what I did there?
Speaker 1: Winner scouting does something else for us too, you know,
Speaker 1: way back last summer and then later this past fall,
Speaker 1: when I talked about rifle hunting, I mentioned how addicted
Speaker 1: we are to hunting spots that allow for nice views.
Speaker 1: Much of that stems from us just really wanting to see, Dear.
Speaker 1: Our confidence is highest will encounter some kind of deer
Speaker 1: if we set up on the edge of a bean
Speaker 1: field or set up over a recent clear cut wherever
Speaker 1: we can get a good view. But what if you
Speaker 1: could develop an extreme level of confidence in a spot,
Speaker 1: or better yet, several spots without worrying about defaulting to
Speaker 1: the areas with the most visibility. That's one of the
Speaker 1: things that winter scouting does for you. Seeing the woods
Speaker 1: laid bare now and realizing that buck's absolutely walk down
Speaker 1: a certain trail or around a wash out in a
Speaker 1: certain way gives you a heck of a lot of confidence.
Speaker 1: When you go back to those spots to hang a
Speaker 1: stand or maybe just set up and hunt after the
Speaker 1: season is open, you won't feel that deep draw to
Speaker 1: the default spots where you can really use your new binos.
Speaker 1: That's important, and it's a key differentiator between hunters who
Speaker 1: set up to see deer and hunters who's set up
Speaker 1: to shoot deer. I hope I've made a good case
Speaker 1: to get out and winter scout, and I promise you
Speaker 1: I'll dive into sign next week. Before that, I want
Speaker 1: to just explain a few more things about winter scouting.
Speaker 1: The first is you should probably have some kind of
Speaker 1: loose plan, just like with shed hunting. If you're just
Speaker 1: going into the woods for a winter walk, then by
Speaker 1: all means totally freelance it. But if you're going into
Speaker 1: winter scout and try I had to become a better
Speaker 1: deer hunter, then you should have a rough plan. This
Speaker 1: will keep you on task and keep you away from
Speaker 1: walking familiar, easy routes. This is important for new ground,
Speaker 1: like if you're scouting a random chunk of public land,
Speaker 1: but it's crucial if you're scouting a property you're already
Speaker 1: familiar with. We are awesome at walking the same routes
Speaker 1: and taking the same paths as we have in the past,
Speaker 1: but those will take us to spots we already understand.
Speaker 1: Altering a route by a little bit changes everything, and
Speaker 1: a fresh look is what helps you find the spots
Speaker 1: you really want to find. It's also important to acknowledge
Speaker 1: that this might take a few sessions, even on a
Speaker 1: small property. How it might take you the entire month
Speaker 1: to find one good new spot that will be worth
Speaker 1: sitting come September. This is the reality of winter scouting.
Speaker 1: But I'm not done yet. I don't know how many
Speaker 1: miles I put on too winter scouting a given year,
Speaker 1: but it's quite a few. This is due to a
Speaker 1: few reasons, the first of which I already mentioned, which
Speaker 1: is that I really really value my winter scouting time.
Speaker 1: I firmly believe it helps me kill more deer than
Speaker 1: trail cameras and summer scouting does. And like I said
Speaker 1: at the beginning, I also don't have a hell of
Speaker 1: a lot else to do, and I'm usually burning up
Speaker 1: with cabin fever by this time of the year, so
Speaker 1: putting out a bunch of miles to look at the
Speaker 1: woods isn't any kind of sacrifice. I like it. I
Speaker 1: also think it's necessary to keep developing as a deer hunter.
Speaker 1: The more you can understand terrain and dear usage of
Speaker 1: that terrain on a given property, or better yet, a
Speaker 1: bunch of properties, the better your white tailed resume will
Speaker 1: look as the years progress. Plus more miles just increases
Speaker 1: the chance of finding the jackpot, so to speak. This
Speaker 1: is something worth explaining a little bit more. I think
Speaker 1: while you might go out and have a bang in
Speaker 1: winter scouting session right off the bat, you're also more
Speaker 1: likely to find not much of anything, or not much
Speaker 1: of anything that really gets your gears turning. Sometimes it
Speaker 1: takes a few days and a couple dozen miles to
Speaker 1: stumble across something really special. This is often the case
Speaker 1: when I winter scout the big woods. But those findings
Speaker 1: are always worth the effort. So don't look at this
Speaker 1: like it's a one and done proposition, but instead a
Speaker 1: bigger part of the process. Even a couple hours session
Speaker 1: once a week is going to reveal something to you
Speaker 1: eventually that you didn't know existed before. And adding one
Speaker 1: rut spot option per year, or finding one really great
Speaker 1: fence crossing every march can be a game changer to
Speaker 1: your overall hunting success. And those findings might take an
Speaker 1: hour or a month, or they might take you a
Speaker 1: few years if you're in a hunting situation that is
Speaker 1: just plain difficult. But all of those miles, all those
Speaker 1: hours walking around and looking at the bare woods, they're
Speaker 1: making you a better hunter. They're putting you in a
Speaker 1: different category from most of your hunting competition. They are
Speaker 1: also showing you every rub in the woods, maybe every scrape,
Speaker 1: depending on whether you're dealing with snow or not. They
Speaker 1: show you tracks, trails, and deer poop, all of of
Speaker 1: stuff you're going to hear about next week in an
Speaker 1: episode where I'm going to explore the topic of winter
Speaker 1: scouting at a more granular level. That's it for this week,
Speaker 1: my friends. I'm Tony Peterson and this has been the
Speaker 1: Wired to Hunt Foundations podcast, which is brought to you
Speaker 1: by First Light. As I always, thank you so much
Speaker 1: for listening, and if you want to get more of
Speaker 1: a white tail fix, head on over to our YouTube
Speaker 1: channel and check out the how to videos we drop
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Speaker 1: by some of the best hunters in the business.