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 Wire to Hunt Foundation's podcast,
Speaker 2: which is brought to you by first Light. I'm your host,
Speaker 2: Tony Peterson, and today's show is all about how to
Speaker 2: recognize when the deer have you patterned and what you
Speaker 2: can do about it. A few weeks ago, I talked
Speaker 2: about finding some bucks sign on a slight elevation rise
Speaker 2: in the Big Woods, Wisconsin and how it started to
Speaker 2: make total sense to me when I walked it out.
Speaker 2: I set up a killer stand spot there, which you know, well,
Speaker 2: I don't want to get too cocky, is definitely going
Speaker 2: to net me a stud of a Big Woods buck
Speaker 2: fall or you know, possibly a two year old or whatever.
Speaker 2: I thought I was done with that whole situation. I
Speaker 2: even told you so, but I was wrong. Another weekend
Speaker 2: over there looking around made me realize something that I
Speaker 2: do in the White Toau Woods that is so dumb,
Speaker 2: and I bet you do it too, and that's what
Speaker 2: this show is all about. Albert Einstein is famous for
Speaker 2: a lot of things, his theory of relativity and his
Speaker 2: care free, genius level haircut. He's also probably one of
Speaker 2: the most quoted fellas to hit the scene in at
Speaker 2: least a couple of hundred years. A couple of his
Speaker 2: more notable quotes on intelligence go like this. The difference
Speaker 2: between stupidity and genius is that genius has its limits.
Speaker 2: The true sign of intelligence is not knowledge, but imagination,
Speaker 2: and probably the one you hear the most. Everybody as
Speaker 2: a genius. But if you judge a fish by its
Speaker 2: ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole
Speaker 2: life believing that it's stupid. That last one is clever.
Speaker 2: But it's also a little hard to believe that everyone
Speaker 2: is a genius. Maybe this proves his point, not mine.
Speaker 2: But if you spend a little time at the public
Speaker 2: land boat landing on some pretty popular lakes, say on
Speaker 2: July fourth, you'll witness people who are trying real hard
Speaker 2: to disprove that quote. The crazy thing is most of
Speaker 2: us think we are pretty damn smart. This is often
Speaker 2: the folly of young folks heading out into the real
Speaker 2: world to stake their claim. This is something I dealt
Speaker 2: with recently in a situation that not only proved at
Speaker 2: least one youth didn't know a whole lot, but her
Speaker 2: mentor is a stone cold moron at times. This should
Speaker 2: come as no surprise to anyone who listens to this podcast.
Speaker 2: But I don't have a lot of friends. I have
Speaker 2: a handful of good friends, some work besties like Mark,
Speaker 2: and then I have gym friends. When you work from home,
Speaker 2: you make friends where you find them, and for me,
Speaker 2: that's mostly at the gym. Well, one of my work
Speaker 2: friends mentioned her daughter was starting a career as a
Speaker 2: nurse and she needed to set up her benefits and
Speaker 2: most importantly, her four H three B account for retirement,
Speaker 2: and she needed to set up her HSA. I told
Speaker 2: her that I could help, since I'm kind of a
Speaker 2: geek in that realm and I've had to handle that
Speaker 2: stuff on my own for quite a while when I
Speaker 2: was self employed. So we made a plan to meet
Speaker 2: up at the gym in the community area and get
Speaker 2: all of her stuff signed up and ready to plan
Speaker 2: for her future. In doing so, I parked in a
Speaker 2: lot behind the gym instead of in the front where
Speaker 2: I usually park. Now, as we navigated through her onboarding
Speaker 2: for her job and got her retirement contribution squared away
Speaker 2: and her HSA on the way to being funded, I
Speaker 2: was reminded of how often we don't prepare young people
Speaker 2: for the world of finance. This is such a failure
Speaker 2: on our part. Anyway, it didn't take long and she
Speaker 2: was good to go, so I left her to go
Speaker 2: work out, which I did. When I got down to
Speaker 2: the locker room to change to go hit the steam
Speaker 2: room for a little sweat session, I did something I
Speaker 2: do a lot. I bent over to pick up my
Speaker 2: shoes and I hit the top of my head square
Speaker 2: on this stupid little metal tab you know that sticks
Speaker 2: out of the locker so you can lock it now.
Speaker 2: I do this like once every couple of weeks, and
Speaker 2: it's one of those self inflicted injuries that hurts like
Speaker 2: a mother bleeper, as my kids might say, But you
Speaker 2: can't show it because you're at the gym in any
Speaker 2: kind of weakness might draw in the hyenas. Or I
Speaker 2: guess it's just embarrassing as hell to make a habit
Speaker 2: out of whacking your skull on a part of a
Speaker 2: locker with enough frequency that it doesn't even surprise you
Speaker 2: anymore when you do it. After nursing my head wound
Speaker 2: in the steam room, I showered up, headed to the
Speaker 2: parking lot, and my heart fell right out of my
Speaker 2: ass as I looked around and realized that my truck
Speaker 2: was just gone, just vanished. I stood there for a
Speaker 2: minute or so thinking about how sometimes it seems the
Speaker 2: world is out to get you and it's just barely
Speaker 2: worth keeping going, and if you could hit the eject button,
Speaker 2: how bad could it really be? And well, I worked
Speaker 2: myself into a pretty wild frenzy thinking about the ways
Speaker 2: I tortured the freaking weasels who took my truck. When
Speaker 2: it hit me that I had actually parked in the
Speaker 2: back lot and my truck was just on the other
Speaker 2: side of the building and not currently being used in
Speaker 2: a multi state crime spree. I felt as dumb then
Speaker 2: as I did in a more recent conversation I had
Speaker 2: with my wife where I mentioned that we should probably
Speaker 2: have more quickies in our marriage. But she thought I
Speaker 2: said cookies because we had a small argument earlier in
Speaker 2: the day over a huge chocolate chip cookie. So she
Speaker 2: got real excited, and then I got real excited because
Speaker 2: I expected a much bigger fight. For at least a minute,
Speaker 2: we both lived in a world where it was like
Speaker 2: we were witnessing our first beautiful sunrise. And then I
Speaker 2: realized that there's no way this is going good, and
Speaker 2: I pretty quickly figured out we were not on the
Speaker 2: same page at all. We are all dumb, my friends,
Speaker 2: just in fun and creative ways. That makes life a
Speaker 2: little harder to handle on a daily basis. While I
Speaker 2: might not have the spatial awareness to not repeatedly give
Speaker 2: myself a traumatic brain injury, or remember where my truck
Speaker 2: is parked, which, now that I think about it, might
Speaker 2: be related, I am a pretty smart fella in the
Speaker 2: deer woods. You guys know that, otherwise you wouldn't listen
Speaker 2: to this podcast. But here's the real truth. I'm pretty
Speaker 2: dumb in the woods too, and I bet you are
Speaker 2: as well. You know that sweet story I told about
Speaker 2: the slight change in elevation, those big woods bucks follow
Speaker 2: and how I'm gonna kill one right there this fall.
Speaker 2: That wasn't dumb. It's actually a pretty sweet partial mystery
Speaker 2: to solve. But I had way underestimated what was going
Speaker 2: on there to understand why you have to visualize what
Speaker 2: that property consists of and what the neighbors have on
Speaker 2: their ground. I'll try to explain this in a short
Speaker 2: and concise way so I don't suddenly break into Mark's
Speaker 2: habit of talking about a bedding area you've never seen
Speaker 2: that features western deer movement with a northern wind, but
Speaker 2: only if he accesses it from the south during a
Speaker 2: high pressure front that also creates thermals and then draws
Speaker 2: some of the deer from the east to also visit
Speaker 2: the secondary bedding area that can only be approached from
Speaker 2: the northwest on a full moon, but only after the
Speaker 2: neighboring farmer has picked as beans. You guys know what
Speaker 2: I mean. This property of mine is thirty acres. There
Speaker 2: is a forty to the east and a ten acre
Speaker 2: proper to the west. The southern boundary is a gravel road,
Speaker 2: which is where all the houses are and all the
Speaker 2: access is. To the north is a huge swamp that
Speaker 2: covers a couple of sections close to the road. On
Speaker 2: the south end, I have a small food plot, so
Speaker 2: does the neighbor to my east, and my neighbors on
Speaker 2: the west have a small hay field. And the most
Speaker 2: annoying rooster I've ever seen that I would strangle with
Speaker 2: my bare hands if he walked by my bloe. I
Speaker 2: hate that freaking chicken so much so. In other words,
Speaker 2: the south end of all three of our properties contains
Speaker 2: most of the human activity, which means it contains most
Speaker 2: of the hunting activity. This wasn't planned, it's just how
Speaker 2: it worked out. It also worked out that there's a
Speaker 2: band of higher, totally wooded and thick as hell ground
Speaker 2: between where we mostly hunt and where the huge swamp is.
Speaker 2: What I had attributed to a high level of understanding
Speaker 2: of how deer use elevation was actually far more interesting.
Speaker 2: They slipped through there to avoid me and the neighbors,
Speaker 2: all of whom hunt. Scratch that, all of whom hunt
Speaker 2: damn near the same way, in the same type of spots.
Speaker 2: The bucks there that want to avoid us get a
Speaker 2: three for one day on those properties because we all
Speaker 2: allow ourselves to be patterned in the same way. Of course,
Speaker 2: I didn't fully grasp this until I was sitting in
Speaker 2: a Redneck blind in March with one of my daughters
Speaker 2: trying to glass up some turkeys. When three shed bucks
Speaker 2: and two does came out. They stared at the blind,
Speaker 2: fed around, and generally treated the blind like they'd get
Speaker 2: murdered if they got too close, which you know is
Speaker 2: a pretty solid plan since so many deer have been
Speaker 2: shot from that spot even months after the last days
Speaker 2: of the season. Those deer are concerned with a spot
Speaker 2: they associate with hunting pressure in a home range of
Speaker 2: a square mile. Try to imagine how many places they
Speaker 2: know of like that. Try to imagine how many areas
Speaker 2: a mature buck with five or six seasons under his
Speaker 2: belt believes he needs to avoid on a daily basis,
Speaker 2: or at least throughout the fall to stay safe in
Speaker 2: some areas, those regions with high hunting pressure. I bet
Speaker 2: that's dozens and dozens of locations. I bet, just like
Speaker 2: that situation in Wisconsin where I hunt, they are also
Speaker 2: just bands of cover that the bucks use while you
Speaker 2: and your hunting competition go to other areas and tip
Speaker 2: your hand of the deer because here's the thing, we
Speaker 2: want deer to be where we want to hunt. I
Speaker 2: firmly believe this is why so many hunters lean so
Speaker 2: heavily on the rut movement, and why so many hunters
Speaker 2: do not fill their tags during the rut It's not
Speaker 2: just that the bucks will be moving in daylight more vulnerable,
Speaker 2: it's that we believe that means the bucks will move
Speaker 2: to the places where we want to hunt them. It's
Speaker 2: like the rut makes every stand sit a first sit
Speaker 2: of the year, every day kind of thing. But it
Speaker 2: doesn't work that way. Jaded deer that have been through
Speaker 2: a few seasons of real pressure, they don't suddenly risk
Speaker 2: at all for the biscuit. Well, if there is a
Speaker 2: hot dough, they will, but the odds of you being
Speaker 2: where the hottest doll in the woods is at the
Speaker 2: time she's most down to clown with the bucks are
Speaker 2: pretty low. We tend to gravitate towards the easier setups,
Speaker 2: into places with a good view that just provide a comfortable,
Speaker 2: familiar hunt, and then we hope the rut convinces bucks
Speaker 2: that they should definitely go to those spots, and they
Speaker 2: sometimes do, but they oftentimes don't. So in other words,
Speaker 2: we hunt the spots where most of the deer go,
Speaker 2: and we hope that mature bucks go there too, But
Speaker 2: that's not really how it works for most of us, unfortunately.
Speaker 2: Think about it this way. How often do you see
Speaker 2: mature bucks outside of the rut, or even during the rut.
Speaker 2: What's the real frequency? Now, how often do you hunt
Speaker 2: spots and see some deer? Probably hopefully somewhat frequently. We
Speaker 2: often assume the disconnect here is that there are a
Speaker 2: lot more dos and four ky's out there than there
Speaker 2: are one hundred and fifty inches, which is true, But
Speaker 2: we also forget that the deer that most want to
Speaker 2: survive are the older ones who have dealt with us
Speaker 2: and other hunters for a long long time. They know
Speaker 2: what we do and they go where we don't. They
Speaker 2: do this to you and your neighbors and the folks
Speaker 2: you've never met who bohunt three properties away from you.
Speaker 2: They are masters at avoiding the spots you like during
Speaker 2: the hours when you can see your site pins without
Speaker 2: using a light. We encourage this during the season by
Speaker 2: hunting our usual spots, but we also reinforce this with
Speaker 2: our presence during the off season because we tend to
Speaker 2: go to those areas more than anywhere else. We literally
Speaker 2: give them a year round education, and they are very
Speaker 2: good students. Now, the real rub here is that we
Speaker 2: think we don't do this, and even if we know
Speaker 2: we do this, we think we can overcome it by
Speaker 2: using a better scent control or putting out some cent wix,
Speaker 2: or waiting for the new moon in a cold Front's sure,
Speaker 2: you know you can tip the odds in your favor
Speaker 2: and you might get lucky during the rut. But a
Speaker 2: better way to look at it is to get out
Speaker 2: there and try to understand how the deer avoid you.
Speaker 2: And you're a competition. Where are the locations of buck
Speaker 2: might travel in late September or mid October. You find
Speaker 2: those spots and you have a fighting chance of being
Speaker 2: in the game all season long, and guess what, having
Speaker 2: a hell of a lot better chance to kill one
Speaker 2: during the rut as well. The best way to do
Speaker 2: this is to combine boots on the ground scouting with
Speaker 2: ET scouting. Honestly, that's actually the answer to most of
Speaker 2: our deer problems. But it's a hell of a lot
Speaker 2: easier to bang those rattling antlers together and hope a
Speaker 2: nearby buck wants to throw hands or I guess hoofs.
Speaker 2: The reason you need the eat scouting aspect is because
Speaker 2: you can scout the neighboring properties. If you looked at
Speaker 2: my property on satellite imagery, you'd see my food plot
Speaker 2: and the neighbor's food plot, and the other neighbors small field.
Speaker 2: You'd see the giant swamp to the north. It would
Speaker 2: on a macro level look kind of like the hunting
Speaker 2: pressure and human activity is all sort of centered in
Speaker 2: the same line, and the best cover is to the north.
Speaker 2: It's kind of simple, but also kind of not. In
Speaker 2: a different scenario, you might have small patches of timbers
Speaker 2: brought out like islands in a sea of agg or
Speaker 2: you might be down south and trying to figure out
Speaker 2: swamp books where most of the land offers the same
Speaker 2: kind of stuff. The et scouting aspect allows you to
Speaker 2: see these areas in a way where you can come
Speaker 2: up with a rough idea of how deer might move
Speaker 2: through on their way to the stuff they like, but
Speaker 2: also how people might get into or move through it.
Speaker 2: You know, the same cover, then you got to get
Speaker 2: in there, and you got to get that micro look. Now.
Speaker 2: I know this sounds like generic scouting advice, because it is.
Speaker 2: We aren't inventing the wheel here. But the goal isn't
Speaker 2: to go out and find some rubs and decide that's
Speaker 2: good enough. The goal is to try to figure out
Speaker 2: where the hunting concentration is and how deer avoid it.
Speaker 2: If you have a food plot with a box blind
Speaker 2: on it, this is a pretty simple task because the
Speaker 2: deer will probably show you just how easily they avoid
Speaker 2: your presence. The next closest cover to your setup, it's
Speaker 2: going to have some sign. The next closest thick cover
Speaker 2: will probably have more sign and more trails that allow
Speaker 2: the deer to pass by without getting spot. We often
Speaker 2: use those findings to validate our strategy to sit where
Speaker 2: we want to sit, because, after all, look at that
Speaker 2: huge community scrape and all those rubs just one hundred
Speaker 2: and twenty five yards downhill from the kill plot. That's
Speaker 2: not necessarily evidence of deer that will visit the plot
Speaker 2: when you're hunting there, though, it's very likely it's evidence
Speaker 2: of deer doing things to avoid you while waiting for
Speaker 2: you to get out of there. I hope that makes sense,
Speaker 2: because I believe it's true. I believe we often win
Speaker 2: our scout to confirm what we want to believe, But
Speaker 2: those findings might not jive with our hunts and our sightings,
Speaker 2: and the deer we killer don't kill. In those cases,
Speaker 2: we have to ask ourselves why the answer is almost
Speaker 2: always because we are doing what we like to do.
Speaker 2: The deer figure that out, and so they do what
Speaker 2: they have to in order to avoid us and anyone
Speaker 2: else who might be staged up in the area trying
Speaker 2: to kill them. In reality, what I'm saying is that
Speaker 2: there is a window of time right now to try
Speaker 2: to gain some insight into how the deer might avoid.
Speaker 2: This is really just scouting with a different mindset while
Speaker 2: trying to piece together a plan for next season that
Speaker 2: allows you to break out of your traditional setups and
Speaker 2: try something new. Here's the last thing I'll say about that.
Speaker 2: Go actually do this if you want to have a
Speaker 2: better season. I know it's easy to get distracted and
Speaker 2: decide that scouting can happen later, but it won't be
Speaker 2: the same thing. You're not going to go into the
Speaker 2: woods in July and figure this out. By then, It's
Speaker 2: way too late. It'll be too easy to default to
Speaker 2: your usual setups during the hunting season. Instead, make an
Speaker 2: effort to understand this now. Because the deer don't expect
Speaker 2: you to change your habits, and the other hunters you
Speaker 2: share the woods with you know they're not likely to
Speaker 2: change either. It's up to you to be different, acknowledge
Speaker 2: the stupid choices we all make when it comes to
Speaker 2: our setups, and try something that might surprise the bucks.
Speaker 2: Do it and come back next week because I'm going
Speaker 2: to talk about recognizing patterns in the whitetail world in
Speaker 2: a way that might not be totally obvious at first.
Speaker 2: That's it. I'm Tony Peterson. This has been the Wired
Speaker 2: to Hunt Foundation's podcast, which is brought to you by
Speaker 2: First Light. As always, thank you so much for listening
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