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: Everyone, welcome to the Wired to Hunt Foundation's podcast, which
Speaker 2: is brought to you by first Light. I'm your host,
Speaker 2: Tony Peterson, and today's episode is all about how to
Speaker 2: suck less at chad hunting. You guys, Anne, I don't know, well,
Speaker 2: probably like the three girls who listen to this show,
Speaker 2: know how much I hate the disingenuous nature of outdoor
Speaker 2: media and social media. I hate how easy things look
Speaker 2: when in practice, most of what we do isn't that easy.
Speaker 2: Quite frankly, a lot of what we do is just
Speaker 2: like a step below impossible at some times. Chad hunting
Speaker 2: isn't that, but it isn't nearly as easy as a
Speaker 2: lot of people make it seen. There's sort of like
Speaker 2: a I don't know, a couple different ways to approach
Speaker 2: chedd hunting, some that require brute force determination and some
Speaker 2: that require a little more of a tactical approach. But
Speaker 2: you kind of got to work in most situations. But
Speaker 2: I'm gonna talk about both of those tactics and some
Speaker 2: other stuff right now. I didn't start duck hunting until
Speaker 2: I got my first retriever when I was in my
Speaker 2: mid twenties. I did about everything wrong that you could
Speaker 2: with that dog, but she turned out to be impervious
Speaker 2: to some of my shortfalls, at least when it came
Speaker 2: to retrieving. She did. That Golden Retriever would literally retrieve anything.
Speaker 2: And while she wasn't the biggest go getter in the
Speaker 2: pheasant slough unless she had a real snoop full of
Speaker 2: fresh rooster scent in her schnas, she would bring me
Speaker 2: anything I asked her to go get. She was kind
Speaker 2: of like the dogs you read about from maybe sixty
Speaker 2: or seventy years ago. Honestly, the hunting dog, like general
Speaker 2: hunting dog that just went with you no matter what
Speaker 2: you were going after, rabbit, squirrels, grouse, quail, pheasants, whatever
Speaker 2: lux was with me, and if I shot it, she'd
Speaker 2: go get it. That actually became real handy when I
Speaker 2: started hunting rabbits in the North Country where the cottontails
Speaker 2: and the snowshoe hares lived together until that dog. I
Speaker 2: didn't realize how many rabbits I shot that actually ran
Speaker 2: maybe ten to thirty or forty yards away before piling up.
Speaker 2: It was an eye opener, especially since a lot of
Speaker 2: them would croak inside of a brush pile. As my
Speaker 2: life progressed with lucks, I started to look for other
Speaker 2: hunting opportunities and realized that where I live in the
Speaker 2: suburbs is sort of a black hole for upland hunting
Speaker 2: aside from woodcock, but it's pretty full of duck hunting
Speaker 2: opportunities if you know where to look, and I do so.
Speaker 2: I started putting the hurt on the teal and the
Speaker 2: wood ducks that like to fly into the small ponds
Speaker 2: and streams on public land around here, at least during
Speaker 2: the early season. But you know how that goes. I
Speaker 2: love woodies and teal and I don't want to diss them,
Speaker 2: but if you duck hunt long enough, you start to
Speaker 2: want a nice greenhead or two so you could fit
Speaker 2: in with the big boys. I'm not proud of that,
Speaker 2: but it is true. And I realized something. I wasn't
Speaker 2: really any good at duck hunting at all. Sure I
Speaker 2: had like seven thousand dollars worth of duck camo on
Speaker 2: a dog in a camel, vests and calls decoys and whatever,
Speaker 2: but my actual experience level was minimal. I also couldn't
Speaker 2: really scout mallards the same way as some of those
Speaker 2: other small water ducks, mostly because they just didn't, you know,
Speaker 2: frequent the places where I could hunt and glass them
Speaker 2: kind of wore on me for a while. And when
Speaker 2: I finally did have some green heads swoop in on
Speaker 2: the leading edge of a cold front in late October,
Speaker 2: I carried those birds out like I had done something
Speaker 2: really special, but I had mostly just gotten lucky. And
Speaker 2: it wasn't until quite a few years later, and well
Speaker 2: into a different dog, that I killed a few more
Speaker 2: and started getting a little more consistent up to a
Speaker 2: lot of folks killing some mallards as a matter of
Speaker 2: just going duck hunting because they know their stuff and
Speaker 2: they have the right spots. You know. Usually it's a
Speaker 2: little of both or a lot of both. To that crowd,
Speaker 2: they think it was insane that someone could struggle for
Speaker 2: whole seasons to kill a couple of greenheads, but that
Speaker 2: was my reality. It reminded me of something else that
Speaker 2: I was terrible at for years and years, which you
Speaker 2: guessed it is golf, Just kidding, golf as child play
Speaker 2: compared to shed hunting. I didn't find my first shed
Speaker 2: antler until I was probably in my early twenties, and
Speaker 2: it wasn't from a lack of trying. And if I'm
Speaker 2: being totally honest, that antler was a turkey hunting bonus
Speaker 2: that had already been run over by a tractor. So
Speaker 2: that's kind of like saying you got your first big
Speaker 2: bonus at work, when really it was a ziplock bag
Speaker 2: with some candy in it and a five dollars gift
Speaker 2: card to a frozen yogurt shop that's been out of
Speaker 2: business for three years. You know why I couldn't find
Speaker 2: a shed antler to save my life for quite a
Speaker 2: few years. There were a couple reasons. I spent my
Speaker 2: time mostly looking on a farm where the deer don't
Speaker 2: winter a whole lot. And while this might seem like
Speaker 2: a little bit of revisionist history, the winters we had
Speaker 2: growing up seemed a hell of a lot worse than
Speaker 2: the ones we have been having lately. Here. The farm
Speaker 2: that I shed hunted, because it was the farm that
Speaker 2: I hunted hunted didn't host a big deer population in
Speaker 2: the winter. If the bucks aren't there to drop their antlers,
Speaker 2: it's pretty hard to find their antlers, if you get
Speaker 2: my drift. I did also shed hunt some public land
Speaker 2: with the few buddies, but that yielded predictable results as well.
Speaker 2: It wasn't until we got antler point restrictions in that
Speaker 2: part of the state and then had some milder winners
Speaker 2: with the right crop rotation on that farm that I
Speaker 2: started finding some antlers. And when I say it went
Speaker 2: from almost impossible to actually pretty easy, real fast, I
Speaker 2: mean that we had more bucks than ever and they
Speaker 2: were sticking around sometimes all winter long. That's a recipe
Speaker 2: for good shed hunting. And I had a few days
Speaker 2: where I found anywhere from like three or four to
Speaker 2: my super best day where I found eight. When I
Speaker 2: shed hunted like a fiend with that golden retriever up
Speaker 2: here in the cities, I might have found six in
Speaker 2: a whole winter. I say that to frame this up
Speaker 2: because it's important. Even though it's painfully obvious, if you're
Speaker 2: not on a decent spot, you won't find very many,
Speaker 2: if any, antlers. There's nothing tactical here, there's no real strategy.
Speaker 2: If you want to find more antlers, you have to
Speaker 2: shed hunt good spots. The people who promote shed hunting
Speaker 2: a lot that's often their secret, kind of like the
Speaker 2: people who consistently tell you all of it secrets for
Speaker 2: killing big bucks, but who also happen to hunt places
Speaker 2: with tons and tons of big bucks and coincidentally not
Speaker 2: a lot of hunters. This is largely true. Anywhere with
Speaker 2: a decent population of hunters got to outwork them. It
Speaker 2: doesn't take too many hardcore shed hunters, and there are
Speaker 2: some people out there who really put in a lot
Speaker 2: of miles for antlers before you realize that somebody else
Speaker 2: is out there scooping up more than their fair share,
Speaker 2: making it tough for you. So the places where anyone
Speaker 2: can go, or at least several people can go, that
Speaker 2: also have some antlers laying on the ground often don't
Speaker 2: have antlers laying on the ground for very long. So
Speaker 2: this means if you want to suck less at shed hunting,
Speaker 2: you either have to outwork those folks or go somewhere
Speaker 2: where there are fewer people poking around in every wintering
Speaker 2: spot to see what they can find. Now on the
Speaker 2: outwork front, it's best to understand what this means. To
Speaker 2: frame this up, allow me to talk a little about
Speaker 2: pheasant hunting. It's just kind of a natural thing that
Speaker 2: at the end of the day, after following the dogs
Speaker 2: around for roosters, my buddies and I will check to
Speaker 2: see how how many steps we walked and how many
Speaker 2: miles we covered. Now, sometimes you get those dreamy days
Speaker 2: where the birds hold tight and the limits come fairly easy,
Speaker 2: but even then it's usually at least a couple hours
Speaker 2: of effort. Most of the time, especially if there are
Speaker 2: at least two of us, the limits won't fully come
Speaker 2: or we will have to walk a lot for them.
Speaker 2: We often cover at least twenty five thousand steps in
Speaker 2: a day. Now. Those aren't steps on a nice two
Speaker 2: track in good weather. They are on frozen ish slews,
Speaker 2: mostly where you might have seven foot high cattails for
Speaker 2: a good portion of your walk. Many of those days,
Speaker 2: the cattails are kind of glued together with frost, or sometimes,
Speaker 2: like this year, they're just bent over and intertwined due
Speaker 2: to some straight line wind event, which is not that
Speaker 2: uncommon on tabletop flat land where there's no trees. Occasionally
Speaker 2: we break the thirty thousand steps mark, which is something
Speaker 2: that a better man might not feel, but I do.
Speaker 2: At the end of the day, the question is always
Speaker 2: how many birds did you get? Not did you death
Speaker 2: march your way into exhaustion for a few birds. The
Speaker 2: outward appearance of an awful lot of pheasant hunts is
Speaker 2: that it's really about the dead birds, and they really
Speaker 2: aren't that hard to get, but they can be, and
Speaker 2: when they are, they're really hard to get, just like
Speaker 2: how it goes with shed antler hunting. When I was
Speaker 2: really getting after it, i'd average one antler every couple
Speaker 2: of weeks, which, if you broke that down to miles
Speaker 2: per antler, makes the return on investment seem super bad.
Speaker 2: I think that reality keeps a lot of people from
Speaker 2: being serious about shed hunting, and I totally get that
Speaker 2: it's not that much fun to do something when you
Speaker 2: feel like your odds of success are extremely low. Yet
Speaker 2: we all go deer hunting, you know, often, and very
Speaker 2: rarely actually shoot one. Shed hunting is just one of
Speaker 2: those things to do, you know, or at least we
Speaker 2: view it this way. Kind of when the weather sucks
Speaker 2: and the winter gets to you and you haven't done
Speaker 2: anything cool in a while. But it can be a
Speaker 2: lot more than that, and I kind of think we
Speaker 2: should all at least consider being mildly serious about it,
Speaker 2: at least for the month of March. Anyway, For a
Speaker 2: lot of us, by then, most of the antlers are
Speaker 2: on the ground, especially most of the big ones. By
Speaker 2: then it's far enough from deer season where you might
Speaker 2: be missing the woods a little bit. But you can
Speaker 2: also do a hell of a lot of winter scouting
Speaker 2: when you shed hunt the bonus. But I think it's
Speaker 2: more than that. I think setting out to try to
Speaker 2: do challenging things in the woods is good for us,
Speaker 2: because that's just kind of what we do. Even though
Speaker 2: we are generally on a quest to make deer hunting
Speaker 2: easier and easier, we also know that if it gets
Speaker 2: too easy, it just won't matter much anymore. That eternal
Speaker 2: struggle with moderate hunting is no joke, it's real. Now.
Speaker 2: A good way to sharpen the blade is to decide
Speaker 2: that this is the winter where you're going to find
Speaker 2: x amount of sheds or spend x amount of days
Speaker 2: looking now, even if you only hunt thirty acres, finding
Speaker 2: other areas to shed hunt is important. This will likely
Speaker 2: occur on public land, and spending time on public land
Speaker 2: looking around is good for anyone who only has a
Speaker 2: small chunk of land to hunt otherwise. Now, there are
Speaker 2: a couple of great gifts that being a somewhat dedicated
Speaker 2: shed hunter can give you, Besides the obvious reward of
Speaker 2: finding antlers. The first is one I talk about all
Speaker 2: the time that I'll just mention, which is that time
Speaker 2: in the woods is the secret ingredient to being a
Speaker 2: better hunter. It's also the secret ingredient to having generally
Speaker 2: better mental health, which is no small thing. But shed hunting,
Speaker 2: even when the prospects are predictably grim, it's something else.
Speaker 2: It's a chance to work on your optimism and work
Speaker 2: through a changing type of plan. I do a lot
Speaker 2: of podcasts where I'm the guest, and I often get
Speaker 2: a vague question like how would you approach hunting my
Speaker 2: farm or the public land that I hunt? My answer
Speaker 2: is sort of always to default to the scout observe
Speaker 2: hunt scout observe hunt pattern. There's obviously a lot tucked
Speaker 2: into that. Truth is that it's a strategy that works,
Speaker 2: and it conditions me to accept failure as a necessary
Speaker 2: part of the whole thing. Not seeing or not killing deer,
Speaker 2: you know, is that kind of failure, But it doesn't
Speaker 2: feel like a failure when you know it'll happen on
Speaker 2: some sits and it's part of the process. Hell, it
Speaker 2: might happen on many of them, you know, as you
Speaker 2: work through the old steps to get around one that
Speaker 2: you'll eventually get a shot at. So what does this
Speaker 2: have to do with shed hunting and honestly becoming a
Speaker 2: better shed hunter? Quite a bit. Actually. While you can
Speaker 2: go out on a Saturday afternoon with your buddies and
Speaker 2: walk where the deer trails take you, and I'll note
Speaker 2: there is nothing wrong with that, you can also decide
Speaker 2: to give it a bit more effort. You can look
Speaker 2: at your farm or the least or the public ground
Speaker 2: you like and break it down into different areas. You
Speaker 2: can walk the easy stuff for a gimme andler, but
Speaker 2: eventually the sheds in the fields will be scooped up
Speaker 2: by you or someone else. Eventually you'll have to start
Speaker 2: walking the cover and you won't want to walk the
Speaker 2: same routes. Eventually you'll have to start to develop some
Speaker 2: kind of a plan or at least some type of
Speaker 2: acknowledgment that you've already done this thing, so it's time
Speaker 2: to do something else. This is what I love about
Speaker 2: this time of year, when I fully expect to eventually
Speaker 2: find an antler or three. I know where I should
Speaker 2: walk according to typical advice and quite honestly my experience,
Speaker 2: but I know where I will walk right away, and
Speaker 2: then I know I'll have to figure out where I
Speaker 2: need to go to find the antlers that didn't give
Speaker 2: themselves up earlier. That's when it starts to get rewarding,
Speaker 2: because it starts to feel like you're actively working through
Speaker 2: something toward a goal. If you walk a certain route
Speaker 2: through the main betting areas today and along a well
Speaker 2: traveled ridge and you don't find an antler, that's okay,
Speaker 2: because you're going to use that as a jumping off
Speaker 2: point for the next time you go where you won't
Speaker 2: walk that same route. It's fun to just go out
Speaker 2: and explore and freelance a bit, but it's also fun
Speaker 2: to decide that in the next few weeks you're going
Speaker 2: to go out for even just an hour or two
Speaker 2: when you can, and you're going to decide where you'll
Speaker 2: start your shed hunts where they'll take you roughly and
Speaker 2: where you'll end up, and when one is done, the
Speaker 2: next one is already being planned. This is so close
Speaker 2: to how you often have to be to kill deer,
Speaker 2: at least deer in spots where they aren't easy, and
Speaker 2: that I feel it's absolutely worth it to try. I
Speaker 2: don't want to turn shed hunting into a not very
Speaker 2: fun mission to divide and conquer the landscape. So I'll
Speaker 2: say this, If you do this, and you pay attention,
Speaker 2: you'll kind of notice a progression. Like I mentioned, the
Speaker 2: first few miles will be spent looking at the fields,
Speaker 2: in the open areas, and just generally the easiest stuff
Speaker 2: to walk. This is true in egg country, and it's
Speaker 2: true in the big woods. You're not going to deal
Speaker 2: with a lot of open ground there, so just generally
Speaker 2: the easiest, highest odds routes are where you'll begin your
Speaker 2: shed hunts. When those are played out, you'll have to
Speaker 2: get creative and go where the deer like to walk
Speaker 2: and probably where they like to bed. This is the
Speaker 2: exact same path most hunters follow, but you know what,
Speaker 2: most of them never get away from those first easy paths.
Speaker 2: Those are the spots where the power couples kill giants
Speaker 2: on hunting shows, So why wouldn't you stick to them? Well,
Speaker 2: that's not where the deer are likely to be a
Speaker 2: lot of us, at least not big mature bucks. If
Speaker 2: you want to kill big pressure deer, you almost always
Speaker 2: have to go where other people won't. It might seem
Speaker 2: like a leap to go from that back to just
Speaker 2: an attempt to find a few antlers, but there's nothing
Speaker 2: wrong with conditioning yourself to not only work harder than
Speaker 2: most hunters, but to also go where most hunters won't,
Speaker 2: which not coincidentally, is just generally more work. You don't
Speaker 2: have to do this to find antler. It's just like
Speaker 2: you don't have to hunt that way to kill pressure deer.
Speaker 2: But if you want to do either consistently, there's just
Speaker 2: kind of a template to follow. Most of us just
Speaker 2: want to swim downstream, but it's better to point your
Speaker 2: nose into the current and start moving. I know this
Speaker 2: might seem crazy, but I believe it to be true.
Speaker 2: If you shed hunt like most people won't, you'll find
Speaker 2: more antlers, and you'll put yourself in more spots where
Speaker 2: the deer or the deer sign can really teach you something.
Speaker 2: It's sort of like bringing a training dummy along when
Speaker 2: you take your dog for a walk in the park. Sure,
Speaker 2: the walk is a good enough reason to go, but
Speaker 2: why not mix in a few steadiness drills or fun
Speaker 2: or trees or something. It won't take anything away from
Speaker 2: the walk, but we'll definitely give your dog something it
Speaker 2: needs and that it's only going to benefit you as
Speaker 2: the owner of that dog. So go find some antlers
Speaker 2: scratch that make the decision to do some shed hunting
Speaker 2: in the next few weeks. You'll probably find something, and
Speaker 2: if you don't, at least early on, you have the
Speaker 2: power to change things up and give yourself better odds
Speaker 2: to work through the problem. Eventually you're going to see
Speaker 2: that wall of times and it'll be worth it. And
Speaker 2: if not, hell, at least you tried, and you probably
Speaker 2: found a whole bunch of interesting deer sign along the
Speaker 2: way while also spending time in the woods. So do
Speaker 2: that and come back next week because I'm going to
Speaker 2: talk about why we should all be more honest about
Speaker 2: deer hunting and just not lie so dang much. That's
Speaker 2: it for this week. I'm Tony Peterson. This has been
Speaker 2: the Foundations podcast, which is brought to you by first Light.
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