Speaker 1: Welcome to the Wired to Hunt Foundations podcast, your guide
Speaker 1: to the fundamentals better dear hunting, presented by First Light,
Speaker 1: creating proven versatile hunting apparel through the stand saddler Blind,
Speaker 1: First Light, Go Farther, Stay Longer, 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: Today I'm talking about turkey hunting and how often something
Speaker 1: happens during turkey season that can increase your dear knowledge.
Speaker 1: You don't really have to listen to too many of
Speaker 1: these podcast episodes before you learn that I'm I don't know,
Speaker 1: sort of like an equal opportunity woodsman. I love small
Speaker 1: game hunting, Western hunting, upland hunting, duck hunting, and of
Speaker 1: course turkey hunting. In addition to the dear thing. Being
Speaker 1: in the fields and in the woods and hell, even
Speaker 1: on the water is always worth it and every activity
Speaker 1: seems to feed the other activities. Now I've talked about
Speaker 1: this a few times over the course of this podcast,
Speaker 1: but today I really want to break down turkey hunting
Speaker 1: and the deer sightings that go with us. And like
Speaker 1: I know, I've touched on this before, but I'm gonna
Speaker 1: take a deep dive here because I think the deer
Speaker 1: that you watch and even spoot when you're turkey hunting
Speaker 1: can tell you a lot about what the deer will
Speaker 1: do in the fall and give you an advantage when
Speaker 1: you go from April or May out to September, October,
Speaker 1: and November. Two years ago, my buddy Adam and I
Speaker 1: sat next to a giant oak tree, overlooking a clover
Speaker 1: plot on a property he had just bought in southwestern Wisconsin.
Speaker 1: He faced one way, I faced another, and together we
Speaker 1: listened to some distant gobbles. It really wasn't an ideal
Speaker 1: May morning for but it wasn't bad. We took turns
Speaker 1: calling and scratching away in the leaf litter until I
Speaker 1: looked up and not twenty yards away stood a deer.
Speaker 1: Through the budding foliage. I could see a doe staring
Speaker 1: straight at me. This happens a lot during turkey season,
Speaker 1: and it almost always sucks. I don't know what deer
Speaker 1: have against decoys or leafy suited hunters sitting statues still
Speaker 1: next to a tree, but they don't like it. In fact,
Speaker 1: they hate it so much so that they almost always
Speaker 1: give you a couple of two steps stomps before snorting
Speaker 1: their stupid faces off and running away. Other deer key
Speaker 1: in on this, but so do the turkeys. And nothing
Speaker 1: will pull a gobbler out of strut faster than a
Speaker 1: deer that is turning inside out over a perceived threat.
Speaker 1: It's kind of just game over when that happens, at
Speaker 1: least for an hour or two. And that's what I
Speaker 1: was thinking about as this dough stared holes in me,
Speaker 1: and then I noticed the deer behind her. They rarely
Speaker 1: travel alone in the spring, so this didn't surprise me
Speaker 1: at all. My dominant thought then was please just go
Speaker 1: away quietly, Please just go away quietly. I was like
Speaker 1: the person hiding in a closet in a horror movie
Speaker 1: while the killer roam the hallway. Well, you know, not
Speaker 1: that dramatic, but you get my drift. She didn't go
Speaker 1: away quietly, though. She took off down the trail, ran
Speaker 1: straight across the food plot, and entered the woods on
Speaker 1: the far side with five other doughs and falls on
Speaker 1: her tail. I didn't think a thing of that encounter
Speaker 1: other than it probably messed up our turkey hunting, which
Speaker 1: wasn't actually true. We found up pretty soon after because
Speaker 1: it wasn't long, and we called in a trio of
Speaker 1: Jake's two of which made a huge mistake by stopping
Speaker 1: in front of me at like twenty yards. But fast
Speaker 1: forward six months and I was sitting in that same
Speaker 1: food plot, but in a ground blind on a different
Speaker 1: wood edge. I had a cameraman next to me, and
Speaker 1: it was the fifth day of a seven day shoot
Speaker 1: for our first season of one week in November. Not
Speaker 1: only did I have a solid eight pointer come out
Speaker 1: right next to the blind and play a perfect game
Speaker 1: of stopping twice where we couldn't get him on camera,
Speaker 1: and when he finally did give me a shot, my
Speaker 1: brain had melted into a puddle of primordial ooze, which
Speaker 1: was totally incapable of complex calculations and tasks like oh,
Speaker 1: I don't know, holding a little green sight pin on
Speaker 1: the body of a nice eight pointer and then hitting
Speaker 1: the release like I've done four million times in my life. Anyway,
Speaker 1: after that whiff, we settled in to watch the only
Speaker 1: deer that didn't leave the plot, a little button buck
Speaker 1: who was too dumb for his own good. As camera
Speaker 1: light faded and I was told we were no longer
Speaker 1: able to film. Several dos charged out of the woods
Speaker 1: on the exact trail. I had watched the doz walk
Speaker 1: during Turkey season, and do you know who followed them
Speaker 1: out one of the biggest bucks I've ever seen while
Speaker 1: hunting on the exact same trail. He even got to
Speaker 1: thirty eight yards imposed broadside. And let me tell you what.
Speaker 1: If I didn't have a job to do that required
Speaker 1: footage of deer, there would have been arrows flying out
Speaker 1: of that blind in his general direction because there was
Speaker 1: still legal shooting light and it was wide open between
Speaker 1: me and him. But instead I watched him chase dose
Speaker 1: right out of my life. Now, last season, my buddy
Speaker 1: was set up on that food plot and he watched
Speaker 1: even more deer walk that trail across the plot from
Speaker 1: both directions. Now I know you're thinking, okay, so if
Speaker 1: you guys had scouted that trail, you would have known
Speaker 1: it was a deer highway. But the thing is, in
Speaker 1: that area southwest Wisconsin, there are deer highways everywhere. That
Speaker 1: specific trail doesn't look any more worn down than the
Speaker 1: hundreds of other trails on his property. They all look good.
Speaker 1: And when they all look good, they all kind of
Speaker 1: carry equal weight as far as scouting is concerned, at
Speaker 1: least till you get some cameras on them. Now, I've
Speaker 1: had several experiences in multiple states. Take the goat of
Speaker 1: deer hunting opportunities. Iowa. I'm slightly obsessed with some public
Speaker 1: land and a part of the state I'm not going
Speaker 1: to talk about on this podcast, but suffice it to
Speaker 1: say it's just good deer in Turkey Ground, and even
Speaker 1: though there is a decent amount of hunting pressure there,
Speaker 1: I just love it. The first time I hunted it,
Speaker 1: I was in high school and it was a random
Speaker 1: trip down there. I was a one off Turkey hunt
Speaker 1: with a buddy of mine and I didn't return until
Speaker 1: like twenty nineteen again to Turkey hunt. What I saw
Speaker 1: brought back a lot of memories and it made my
Speaker 1: decision up that I was going to apply for a
Speaker 1: deer tag there as soon as I thought I could draw.
Speaker 1: But before that, I turkey hunted, and during those Turkey
Speaker 1: hunts a couple of sits in particular, I saw deer,
Speaker 1: I saw spring deer cross a meadow to go bed,
Speaker 1: and when I drew a deer tag, I hunted that
Speaker 1: meadow and shot and unfortunately lost the biggest of my
Speaker 1: life on public land. Where I ended up actually killing
Speaker 1: a deer was several miles down the road on a
Speaker 1: different chunk, but not on an unfamiliar parcel. I had
Speaker 1: turkey hunted that too, and had watched deer walk along
Speaker 1: a very specific part of a river bottom. Spring deer
Speaker 1: movement often equals fall deer movement, my friends, hell probably
Speaker 1: equal summer and winter movement as well, at least in
Speaker 1: many places. When you're sitting out there at first light
Speaker 1: and listening for some gobbles, don't just passively take note
Speaker 1: of deer that you see. Watch them, watch them through
Speaker 1: your binos. Watch exactly what trails they take, Watch exactly
Speaker 1: where they go over, through or under barbed wire fences,
Speaker 1: Watch how they leave the neighbor's field. This goes for
Speaker 1: land that you actually deer hunt and land that you don't.
Speaker 1: Now it's obviously more valuable if you're watching a chef
Speaker 1: bucket his buddies walk across the corn stubble to enter
Speaker 1: a wood lot that you absolutely can a deer hunt,
Speaker 1: but seeing deer in general is worthwhile. Accumulated hours of
Speaker 1: watching wild deer interact with their environment is one of
Speaker 1: the best ways to level up your skills in general. Specifically,
Speaker 1: it's even better to watch a deer do something on
Speaker 1: a property that you'll be summer scouting and eventually hunting
Speaker 1: during the fall. This goes for private ground as well
Speaker 1: as public and even public ground, you might not want
Speaker 1: a deer hunt because you have access to something better
Speaker 1: or you think is better. This is one of the
Speaker 1: things that has really surprised me over the years, and
Speaker 1: was honestly one of the things that convinced me to
Speaker 1: start hunting deer on public land pretty hard. I have
Speaker 1: no hang ups at all about hunting public land turkeys,
Speaker 1: just like hunting upland birds on public land. I've been
Speaker 1: to enough states, walked enough properties to believe that there
Speaker 1: are so many good opportunities out there for gobblers or
Speaker 1: pheasants or grouse and hell even quail. And even when
Speaker 1: I was younger and thought that public land was always
Speaker 1: second to private, no questions about it, thank you very much.
Speaker 1: I still hunted other critters on public land, and I
Speaker 1: found shed antlers, and I found rubs and scrapes, and
Speaker 1: I watched deer from Missouri to Minnesota to Wisconsin to
Speaker 1: the Dakotas, to Nebraska, down to Oklahoma and quite a
Speaker 1: few other states. Over and over, I'd chased turkeys and
Speaker 1: I'd find more deer than I expected. That was a
Speaker 1: benefit personally, because those experiences rewired my brain at least
Speaker 1: a little bit to think about deer hunting differently, especially
Speaker 1: deer hunting on pressured ground, of which it could be
Speaker 1: public or it could be private. I had a lot
Speaker 1: of hang ups, but they didn't come from action will
Speaker 1: experience of being out there. They came from hearing and
Speaker 1: believing a lot of the bullshit I still hear to
Speaker 1: this day about hunting opportunities and how so many of
Speaker 1: them aren't worth it for whatever reason. The thing is,
Speaker 1: this is stuff you can go verify for yourself, and
Speaker 1: it's pretty easy to do that on a low pressure
Speaker 1: run and gun turkey hunt. You have to look for
Speaker 1: the deer sign and the deer, of course, but the
Speaker 1: bigger thing is just to pay attention to what the
Speaker 1: white tails are showing you. Seeing a lot of them
Speaker 1: it's just a good confidence booster, but so as seeing
Speaker 1: only a handful, but a handful of them doing something valuable.
Speaker 1: This goes for anywhere you hunt and isn't limited to
Speaker 1: watching white tails that are totally unaware of your presence
Speaker 1: and are making their way across the landscape totally unbothered.
Speaker 1: Spring also offers an advantage that we rarely get during
Speaker 1: other parts of this season, the opportunity to see deer
Speaker 1: actually lay down in bed or jump from their beds
Speaker 1: at super close range and take off. Both of these
Speaker 1: things have happened to me during the last few years
Speaker 1: of turkey hunting, and both have provided some pretty valuable intel.
Speaker 1: I've watched more open country dear bed farther west while
Speaker 1: working Miriam's turkeys, and it's always fascinating, you know. And
Speaker 1: while there are bed hunting specialists out there and plenty
Speaker 1: of disciples following their teachings, the truth is it's pretty
Speaker 1: uncommon to actually observe a deer in its bed. Now
Speaker 1: we find beds. We make a lot of assumptions about
Speaker 1: betting areas and the behavior connected to betting, but rarely
Speaker 1: do we actually get to witness them while they are betted.
Speaker 1: I look at this kind of like listening to deer
Speaker 1: actually makes some kind of vocalization or I don't know,
Speaker 1: watching two bucks spar or fight. We know these behaviors
Speaker 1: happen all the time, but how often do you actually
Speaker 1: get to see them in person? For most of us,
Speaker 1: it's not very often. But I'll tell you what. If
Speaker 1: you're into calling deer with a grunt tube or a
Speaker 1: set of rattling antlers, watching deer actually grunt, or witnessing
Speaker 1: two bucks really go at, it is an absolute learning experience.
Speaker 1: It's a game changer for becoming a better hunter watching
Speaker 1: their behavior when they bed and then I don't get
Speaker 1: up to reposition and bet again, and then get up
Speaker 1: to munch and brows and then bet again, and then
Speaker 1: get up to stare down in the drainage for fifteen
Speaker 1: minutes without moving. It's a game changer. Two Or sneaking
Speaker 1: up a bluff side while trying not to scare any
Speaker 1: turkeys and then looking up ahead to see a buck
Speaker 1: stand up out of his bed that is situated oh
Speaker 1: so perfectly on a knob halfway down a ridge. That's
Speaker 1: another game changer. When that happens, you need to ask yourself,
Speaker 1: what's the wind doing right here? What was his advance
Speaker 1: nage in this spot at this moment? Because you know what,
Speaker 1: he'll do that again and again all year long. If
Speaker 1: the conditions favor his survival, he'll do it in the
Speaker 1: fall when you can hunt him. And if you know
Speaker 1: a specific knob that is covered in prickly ash and
Speaker 1: perfect for betting during a south or west wind, then
Speaker 1: you know an awful lot about what a buck could
Speaker 1: do during certain conditions that you might face when you're
Speaker 1: hunting in the fall. All of that can be gleaned
Speaker 1: from a twenty second throwaway encounter during a turkey hunt.
Speaker 1: You might also answer questions you've always asked yourself about. Dear,
Speaker 1: take a private land situation where you have five stands.
Speaker 1: Every season, you know roughly where and when to hunt.
Speaker 1: You say that's good enough. You kind of follow the
Speaker 1: same strategy from season to season, and some years it works,
Speaker 1: some years it doesn't. But you have questions like why
Speaker 1: isn't a certain stand any good after mid October? Or
Speaker 1: why do you always catch a glimpse of deer at
Speaker 1: last light coming out of the swamp at a certain spot,
Speaker 1: or crossing the river on a deeper crossing when there
Speaker 1: are several shallow water crossings that would be easier. Time
Speaker 1: on stand leads to questions, just like trail camera usage,
Speaker 1: leads to questions and sometimes answers. But we are creatures
Speaker 1: of habit and we don't often go out of our
Speaker 1: way to address what we think our anomalies in dear behavior,
Speaker 1: because then we'd have to question what we think we know,
Speaker 1: and that's scary country there, So it's easier just to
Speaker 1: be dismissive about observations that don't fit into our expectations.
Speaker 1: When you turkey hunt far far away from the actual
Speaker 1: deer season, you might put your back to a tree
Speaker 1: in the heart of your best deer bedding area, a
Speaker 1: place you wouldn't dream of setting foot in until November fifth,
Speaker 1: during the actual deer season. What do you see, dear
Speaker 1: do then when you're in there? Or maybe you'll work
Speaker 1: your way along a sparse tree line, hoping to call
Speaker 1: in a long beard who decided to go roaming for
Speaker 1: the lunch shift, or who decided to show his stuff
Speaker 1: in its drunting zone in a high visibility spot. What
Speaker 1: if while you're sitting there staring at your decoys, you
Speaker 1: see some dear ghosts their way through forty yards behind you.
Speaker 1: You might never deer hunt the spot because there aren't
Speaker 1: any stand trees there and the cover is thin, and
Speaker 1: because you know that, you're not going to really scout it,
Speaker 1: either you don't go in there and look for sheds
Speaker 1: or look for a concentration of rubs. It might signal
Speaker 1: you're missing something. Yet in April you see deer doing
Speaker 1: what you don't think they should do. What's the best
Speaker 1: reaction here? If you think it's to write that off
Speaker 1: as inconsequential randomness, I have bad news for you. That's
Speaker 1: what we like to do with information that doesn't reinforce
Speaker 1: our biases. But the truth is it's not a random
Speaker 1: They're there for a reason. And if you think that
Speaker 1: reason is tied to something important in the spring that
Speaker 1: won't be important in the fall, you may be right.
Speaker 1: Maybe some food source popped up and it means nothing
Speaker 1: to a fall hunt. Or maybe you just had your
Speaker 1: blinders on during deer season and now they've shown you
Speaker 1: something that you should probably believe instead of doubt. This
Speaker 1: kind of thing happens to me a lot when I'm
Speaker 1: turkey hunting, and not all of my encounters lead to
Speaker 1: filling deer tags in the fall, But have really started
Speaker 1: to believe what the deer in April and may tell
Speaker 1: me their moments are truthful if that makes sense. If
Speaker 1: they cross a field a certain way or travel a
Speaker 1: soft edge in the big woods in a specific direction,
Speaker 1: there aren't any lies there, and there probably is no
Speaker 1: randomness to it. It's most likely an answer to a
Speaker 1: question you haven't even thought to ask. That's the beauty
Speaker 1: of being in the woods and taking a long look around.
Speaker 1: Whether you're the running gun type who has to chase
Speaker 1: every gobble and can't sit still for more than ten minutes,
Speaker 1: or you'd rather open a good book with your bow
Speaker 1: leaned up against the wall you're blind and ride out
Speaker 1: a monotonous twelve hours sit in a pre scouted spot.
Speaker 1: The deer during turkey season they just might give you
Speaker 1: something real to work with, no matter how your turkey hunt.
Speaker 1: So again, while you're out there yelping your happy ass
Speaker 1: off in the hopes of earning another set of spurs
Speaker 1: to hang from your rearview mirror or a whole plate
Speaker 1: full of turkey nuggets, keep your eyes open for the deer,
Speaker 1: and when you do see them, watch them. Get those
Speaker 1: binos up to your eyes and pay attention to what
Speaker 1: they do, whether they spook or walk casually through the
Speaker 1: woods to bed down. And view or twenty of them
Speaker 1: all leave a cut cornfield single file that head down
Speaker 1: to the river bottom for the morning. Take note, and
Speaker 1: really really take note if those deer happen to be bucks,
Speaker 1: which will be pretty obvious through your optics, and should
Speaker 1: be traveling in a little bachelor group, because what bucks
Speaker 1: do during the spring indicates travel and behavior that they
Speaker 1: feel safe engaging in. They'll do some of that behavior
Speaker 1: again in the fall if they feel those safety advantages
Speaker 1: are still there. This is sort of the opposite of
Speaker 1: deer scouting with a mission kind of thing that I
Speaker 1: just talked about, but it can be even almost more valuable.
Speaker 1: Kind of like when you're fishing for bass at noon
Speaker 1: on a sunny day and you happen to catch a
Speaker 1: twenty seven inch walleye and five feet of water on
Speaker 1: a swimming jig. Could be a total fluke, but probably isn't.
Speaker 1: There's probably a here today, gone to moral food source
Speaker 1: there that is drawing in all kinds of big toothy predators,
Speaker 1: and it'll probably happen again tomorrow or next year. It's
Speaker 1: just like that with deer. Right now, That's all I
Speaker 1: have for you this week. Good luck with the gobblers.
Speaker 1: Be sure to tune in next week when I plan
Speaker 1: to talk about the most underrated aspect of deer knowledge,
Speaker 1: which is brows. I know it sounds boring, but I'm
Speaker 1: gonna try to make it not boring. This has been
Speaker 1: the Wire to Hunt Foundations podcast, which has brought to
Speaker 1: you by First Light. I'm your host, Tony Peterson, and
Speaker 1: as I always, thank you so much for listening, we
Speaker 1: really appreciate it. Here at meat Eater, if you want
Speaker 1: more deer hunting advice, head on over to the meat
Speaker 1: eater dot com slash wired and you can check out
Speaker 1: a ton of hunting articles by Mark Kenyon, Alex Skills,
Speaker 1: Strom Beomartonic, Andy May Myself, Dylan Tramp, whole bunch of
Speaker 1: white tail killers. Head on over there check it out.