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 this episode is all about running cameras,
Speaker 2: but not running them like other folks. Probably one of
Speaker 2: the biggest reasons that I love hunting is because there's
Speaker 2: just sick. There's never a good excuse to stop learning,
Speaker 2: and there isn't anything you can do where you'll just
Speaker 2: know it all. Sure, if you're into a small town
Speaker 2: bar and say southwest Wisconsin about I don't know, mid October,
Speaker 2: you'll inevitably meet someone who is fourteen beers deep, you know,
Speaker 2: wearing a faded real Tree shirt from nineteen ninety seven,
Speaker 2: who will let you know that. But he has the
Speaker 2: whole thing totally dialed. But the truth is he doesn't,
Speaker 2: and neither do you. I was reminded of this recently
Speaker 2: when I drove over to northern Wisconsin to cut down
Speaker 2: some trees, scout some deer, and pull a few cameras
Speaker 2: I had left up from November. The images that I
Speaker 2: found when I checked those cameras, they have literally changed
Speaker 2: the course of my hunting plans for this year. They
Speaker 2: taught me a few things that you might be able
Speaker 2: to learn from as well. As I get older, I
Speaker 2: realized there's just like a lot of things that I
Speaker 2: actively dislike. A forced small talk that's way up there
Speaker 2: on the list. Social media, I was maybe right there
Speaker 2: at the top of the list. Standing in line for
Speaker 2: any reason tends to get under my skin. Mark Kenyon, Well,
Speaker 2: you know, kind of just in general, it's pretty tough
Speaker 2: to deal with. But there is one thing about modern
Speaker 2: society that I absolutely love music, or more specifically, you
Speaker 2: can listen to any damn song you want at any
Speaker 2: time and can be exposed to new music all day long.
Speaker 2: You can search it out, you know, you could watch
Speaker 2: some new TV series that is chock full of interesting music.
Speaker 2: It's all over. It has also led to an interesting
Speaker 2: conundrum for musicians in that anyone who has ever written
Speaker 2: a song might find music that is similar to theirs
Speaker 2: out there somewhere. Every once in a while you see
Speaker 2: a news story on this situation, where some popular artists
Speaker 2: will have to go to court to defend a chord
Speaker 2: progression or a specific melody after a different artist, usually
Speaker 2: a pretty much unknown artist, says that they wrote it
Speaker 2: first and that they got ripped off and are definitely
Speaker 2: entitled to some enormous royalties. This is interesting because some
Speaker 2: musicians openly talk about how they lift certain riffs from
Speaker 2: their favorite guitarists or heavily lean on some type of
Speaker 2: music for inspiration. If there is a spirit of admiration
Speaker 2: in this and a tip of the hat to the inspiration,
Speaker 2: it's often an issue of respect and doesn't go to court.
Speaker 2: This tends to happen when two successful artists or bands collide,
Speaker 2: but isn't the case when a successful artist creates something
Speaker 2: similar to a no namer. Now, there are legitimate cases
Speaker 2: of this, I'm sure, but these no namers also give
Speaker 2: off strong ambulance chaser vibes and it feels like they're
Speaker 2: looking for a payday and not much else. You know,
Speaker 2: then you have the classic plagiarizer accusations. I didn't know
Speaker 2: this until Larry recently, but apparently a lot of people
Speaker 2: thought Nirvana's anthem for disenfranchised teenagers in the early nineties
Speaker 2: smells like teen Spirit apparently sounds a hell of a
Speaker 2: lot like Boston's more than a feeling. I guess maybe
Speaker 2: then you have the big one, led Zeppelin's monster, huge,
Speaker 2: mega hit, Stairway to Heaven, which, for all you young fellows
Speaker 2: out there struggling with the ladies, just learned to play
Speaker 2: the intro to that song on an acoustic guitar and
Speaker 2: at least you'll have a fighting chance since it's been
Speaker 2: a few decades since led Zeppelin topped the charts. Look
Speaker 2: at it this way. They were like a group of
Speaker 2: Taylor Swifts, swifting it up all over the planet for
Speaker 2: quite a few years, and Stairway to Heaven was their
Speaker 2: biggest hit amongst a hell of a lot of big hits.
Speaker 2: In twenty sixteen, after Stairway to Heaven had been out
Speaker 2: for multiple decades, the bassist from a band called Spirit
Speaker 2: filed a lawsuit saying that led Zeppelin had ripped off
Speaker 2: some of his riffs. I guess a jury found that
Speaker 2: to be great a bullshit, but it was a good
Speaker 2: try anyway. The thing about this stuff is that you
Speaker 2: can't escape inspiration if you're creating things. It's impossible to
Speaker 2: be a music lover and an artist and not draw
Speaker 2: from others' work. That's actually what's pretty cool about music
Speaker 2: and authors and painters and anyone who takes an idea
Speaker 2: and turns it into something that others can enjoy in
Speaker 2: some form. In that way, it's like a giant collaboration
Speaker 2: between different people. And do you know what else is
Speaker 2: like that? Golf? I'm sorry, I actually am sorry. I
Speaker 2: feel really bad. I can't help myself. It's hunting, and
Speaker 2: more specifically hunting strategies and styles. We see what others
Speaker 2: are doing and we emulate them with kind of a
Speaker 2: personal twist. It's no different from hearing a song that
Speaker 2: worms its way into your brain and then finding yourself
Speaker 2: playing some chord progression that sounds an awful lot like
Speaker 2: that song, because, for whatever reasons, those sounds in that
Speaker 2: order make you happy. With hunting, you might see someone
Speaker 2: who puts a series of food plots on a small
Speaker 2: property to not only draw a deer in, but funnel
Speaker 2: them through on a specific route. Or you might have
Speaker 2: a buddy who is a certified public land whitetail nutcase
Speaker 2: who runs cameras in a way that is just better
Speaker 2: and different from your personal strategy. This is what happened
Speaker 2: to me with my buddy Clint Campbell, who coincidentally or
Speaker 2: maybe not, is also one hell of a guitar player,
Speaker 2: but you probably know him as the host of the
Speaker 2: Truth from the Stand podcast. But he's also a hunter
Speaker 2: who plays the long game with trail cameras. He's always
Speaker 2: sending me pictures of big mountain bucks from Pennsylvania along
Speaker 2: with texts that explain how he's piecing together a large
Speaker 2: puzzle on ground that anyone can hunt, even though most
Speaker 2: of his competition isn't hunting the way he is, and
Speaker 2: certainly isn't scouting the way he is now. Clint's scouting style,
Speaker 2: you know, it's just vastly different from a lot of
Speaker 2: public land whitetail hunters. He covers a lot of ground
Speaker 2: which is similar, you know, especially in the winter in
Speaker 2: the early spring months, he obsesses over access, deer sign,
Speaker 2: you know, all the usual suspects. But he also puts
Speaker 2: cameras out and leaves them for months at a time
Speaker 2: to gather a better picture of what the local bucks
Speaker 2: do through you know, different months, different weather events, different
Speaker 2: times of the year, when they might deal with tons
Speaker 2: of people or almost know people. This is not something
Speaker 2: I've done a whole lot in my life, but I've
Speaker 2: started to lift a few riffs from Clint, if you will.
Speaker 2: It happened mostly by an accident of timing, at least
Speaker 2: the first time I left my cameras out. That was
Speaker 2: in northern Wisconsin, and I thought I'd have to have
Speaker 2: some time to run out and grab a camera before
Speaker 2: winter set in. I didn't, and so one of my
Speaker 2: cameras stayed out there, shivering in the cold, but diligently
Speaker 2: taking pictures for me, so that when I pulled it
Speaker 2: in the spring, I got to see all kinds of
Speaker 2: interesting stuff. I got to see who made it through
Speaker 2: the gun season and who survived until various points of
Speaker 2: the winter. I got to see how a huge blizzard
Speaker 2: affected deer movement and what a three week thaw did
Speaker 2: to their travels and habits. It was interesting, but mostly
Speaker 2: showed me that there were a couple of spots I
Speaker 2: probably should have had stands to sit during the rut.
Speaker 2: Since then, I've conducted a more deliberate trail camera strategy
Speaker 2: over there to see what the long game look into
Speaker 2: the deer world would reveal. This year, I took it
Speaker 2: to a higher level, I guess, kind of by leaving
Speaker 2: three cameras a piece on two different pieces of private
Speaker 2: ground over there. I hung all of them in mid
Speaker 2: October while the rut was still going and the gun
Speaker 2: season was coming up quick. Now, when I went back
Speaker 2: to pull those cameras in the beginning of March, the
Speaker 2: cards showed a story that was fascinating from start to finish. Well,
Speaker 2: if I'm being honest, five of the cameras did, because
Speaker 2: one of them never took a picture because I left
Speaker 2: it on setup mode and never actually started it, which
Speaker 2: is the deer hunting equivalent of filling a knee high
Speaker 2: sock with gravel and then swinging it as hard as
Speaker 2: you can right at your own knackers. The other five
Speaker 2: did much better for starters. I wanted to see what
Speaker 2: the buck movement looked like during the Wisconsin gun season,
Speaker 2: since it's the time when about six hundred thousand people
Speaker 2: hit the woods with rifles in their hands. Now, while
Speaker 2: the deer movement definitely slowed down, then it didn't stop,
Speaker 2: not even the daylight movement at its most basic level.
Speaker 2: It showed that a lot of time and stand on
Speaker 2: either property would have probably led to an encounter with
Speaker 2: a few different bucks. Listen. Not great, but not terrible.
Speaker 2: It also showed a group of dozes on one of
Speaker 2: my properties walking down a trail half an hour into
Speaker 2: the morning on the second day of the season. Then
Speaker 2: they spooked, and my buddy walked down the trail four
Speaker 2: minutes later on his way to sit one of my stands.
Speaker 2: He saw six dos, which is a lot for that area,
Speaker 2: and then walked out an hour and a half later.
Speaker 2: He had no idea. He booted all of those doughs
Speaker 2: ahead of him on the way in, and he wasn't
Speaker 2: there long enough to witness any of the midday movement
Speaker 2: that happened there later. I've unintentionally run this experiment with
Speaker 2: him and his dad several times, and it's always a
Speaker 2: lesson in time on stand. They have very little faith
Speaker 2: in a buck walking by, so they don't put in
Speaker 2: hardly any time on stand in the midday or even
Speaker 2: when it's prime time. Sometimes, judging by the picks I've
Speaker 2: gotten during the gun season, their strategy is costing them dear.
Speaker 2: Another interesting finding from just running multiple cameras during a
Speaker 2: busy gun season was that while there were days when
Speaker 2: the overall movement was really rough, the best buck movement
Speaker 2: was almost always between like nine am and two pm.
Speaker 2: That midday thing is real. It's just hard to believe
Speaker 2: for a lot of folks, especially in a high hunting
Speaker 2: pressure situation. But if you think about it, if your
Speaker 2: state's gun season happens during the rut, which is real common,
Speaker 2: those bucks aren't going to stop chasing and cruising. You know,
Speaker 2: they might do a lot of their looking when there
Speaker 2: is a lull in the hunter activity, which happens in
Speaker 2: the middle of the day. I know you know that,
Speaker 2: but do you know it with experience or because you've
Speaker 2: heard dipshits like me say it? Because there's a big
Speaker 2: difference there. I was also really curious to see who
Speaker 2: it was left after the gun season. I don't mean
Speaker 2: this just in terms of bucks either. The county we
Speaker 2: hunt over there offers up a huge amount of dought eggs,
Speaker 2: which makes zero sense to me, considering it took me
Speaker 2: twenty one days of hunting to see a single dough
Speaker 2: last fall. Maybe the deer managers over there know something
Speaker 2: I don't, or maybe I know something they don't anyway,
Speaker 2: I just wanted to see how many deer made it through.
Speaker 2: I'd have guessed I might have had a couple of
Speaker 2: bucks on each property and a couple of dos but
Speaker 2: it was clear that at least six bucks made it
Speaker 2: through in each place, and that a decent amount of
Speaker 2: doz did as well, you know, pretty similar to the
Speaker 2: number of bucks. What was cool was that there was
Speaker 2: a mix of bucks at each place, ranging from barely
Speaker 2: spikes to one deer that is probably pushing one hundred
Speaker 2: and sixty inches, and who, by the couple of times
Speaker 2: I got pictures of him, showed me he does not
Speaker 2: like trail cameras one bit. There's a lesson in there too.
Speaker 2: In fact, his reaction was not unlike just about every
Speaker 2: old long nosed dough that spotted my cameras over there.
Speaker 2: This year, all of my cameras will be a lot
Speaker 2: more discreet. What was really interesting in the post gun
Speaker 2: season findings, besides taking stock and the survivors, was seeing
Speaker 2: the conditions that got the deer moving. We've had the
Speaker 2: mildest winter pretty much ever, I think, but the few
Speaker 2: cold fronts we had, you know, kind of during December,
Speaker 2: got the deer on their feet. No surprise there. It
Speaker 2: was just interesting to see on two different properties and
Speaker 2: also see once again how often they moved right in
Speaker 2: the middle of the day when it was very unlikely
Speaker 2: to be motivated by anything other than food. Definitely probably
Speaker 2: not the rut. What really started to stand out to
Speaker 2: me as I filed through thousands of pictures was that
Speaker 2: the buck activity didn't really change much. From at least
Speaker 2: one perspective, there was far more consistent movement over there,
Speaker 2: even if that movement wasn't all that frequent. What I
Speaker 2: mean by that is, for example, on one of the
Speaker 2: cameras that allows me to monitor a subtle trail that
Speaker 2: keeps the deer in the woods and away from the
Speaker 2: houses or openings or anything anywhere nearby where they might
Speaker 2: get spotted, there is always a buck in daylight at
Speaker 2: some point in every two or three day time period.
Speaker 2: Now this is in southern Iowa, so that's actually pretty good,
Speaker 2: considering a whole section over there might not even have
Speaker 2: a dozen bucks using it on any given year. Where
Speaker 2: that camera was, there is now a sneaky access trail
Speaker 2: cut to a double trunk pine tree that will have
Speaker 2: a stand in it. For next fall, and I will
Speaker 2: go in there and I will hunt it hard during
Speaker 2: the rut. If I still have a tag left. I'm
Speaker 2: honestly more excited for that than anything this fall, besides,
Speaker 2: you know, getting another crack at putting one of my
Speaker 2: daughters on a bear. And keep in mind, I'm probably
Speaker 2: going to draw an I would tag this year. Another
Speaker 2: zoom out epiphany that I had, which my buddy still
Speaker 2: doesn't believe, is that the northern Wisconsin deer don't behave
Speaker 2: much different from deer in you know, much better regions.
Speaker 2: There just aren't very many of them and they deal
Speaker 2: with a lot more predation. This is another thing that
Speaker 2: my camera showed me, even though I knew it. I
Speaker 2: can't prove this, but other than bears, it seems like
Speaker 2: the coyotes, bobcats, and wolves all showed up and stuck
Speaker 2: around before moving on. Now this isn't to say there
Speaker 2: weren't plenty of random picks of predators, because I had plenty,
Speaker 2: but there were also times where it was obvious the
Speaker 2: same three coyotes were working the area around my camera heavily,
Speaker 2: and that the deer movement went way down because of this.
Speaker 2: I saw that saturation of coyotes and on both places
Speaker 2: wolves at different times, and as you can guess, when
Speaker 2: that happens, it's best to go somewhere else. Even the
Speaker 2: bobcats seem to kind of group up and hang around
Speaker 2: for a while. But I'm, you know, a little bit
Speaker 2: more inclined to believe that's just a family unit that
Speaker 2: I'm seeing there. I also have no idea what I'm
Speaker 2: talking about when it comes to this, I'm just spitballing.
Speaker 2: Maybe the biggest takeaway from this experiment, besides how important
Speaker 2: time in the woods really is no matter where you hunt,
Speaker 2: is that we often think about deer movement the wrong
Speaker 2: way or in an incomplete way. I should probably say
Speaker 2: we think of summer bucks when we first start putting
Speaker 2: cameras out, you know, and seeing our bachelor groups, and
Speaker 2: as the summer moves toward fall, we start to think about,
Speaker 2: you know, well, fall movement. This is where we laser focus,
Speaker 2: and we think about feeding areas, staging areas, and funnels.
Speaker 2: You know, something that might work this week but not
Speaker 2: the next, or might be on fire next week, but
Speaker 2: the deer just aren't quite there yet. A long game
Speaker 2: camera strategy kind of exposes that as faulty thinking, of course,
Speaker 2: a funnel might get busier in November when the chase
Speaker 2: is on, But that same funnel we'll probably host some
Speaker 2: buck travel in December two and January, and February and
Speaker 2: March and every dang month of the year, including September
Speaker 2: and October. What this means is that while you're waiting
Speaker 2: for everything to get right for a certain spot, the
Speaker 2: deer might be out there using it their own leisure. Already,
Speaker 2: all of the cameras I hung in November were in
Speaker 2: spots that I thought would catch November movement. But November
Speaker 2: movement isn't as different from the movement in other months
Speaker 2: as we think, And that's important to acknowledge and if
Speaker 2: you can try to understand, because it has ramifications beyond
Speaker 2: where you'll do an all day sit during your rutation.
Speaker 2: Just think about it this way. Take your favorite pinch
Speaker 2: point or maybe your favorite river crossing, run a camera
Speaker 2: on it for a year. What do you think you'd learn.
Speaker 2: My guess is that you'd learn that they are good
Speaker 2: spots beyond their usefulness and the timing window we focus
Speaker 2: on to actually hunt them. That's important for no other
Speaker 2: reason than to rewire your willingness to hunt whenever you can,
Speaker 2: versus hunting when you believe it only should be good.
Speaker 2: A long game camera strategy can teach you this, and
Speaker 2: it's a lesson that is worth learning for everyone. It
Speaker 2: might not matter if you have a banging spot to
Speaker 2: hunt that no one else can set foot on, but
Speaker 2: when you're dealing with smaller spots or shared spots, understanding
Speaker 2: how consistent the deer movement is all year can put
Speaker 2: you in a spot to take advantage of that movement
Speaker 2: well outside the rut, or well outside of whatever weekends
Speaker 2: you feel like you might just want to hunt. It's
Speaker 2: honestly a confidence thing, and that matters. It's intriguing enough
Speaker 2: to me that I'm already getting ready to put some
Speaker 2: cameras out and leave them at least until Midsummer. I
Speaker 2: feel like the value of their intel we won't be
Speaker 2: that high. But I also feel like I might be
Speaker 2: totally wrong on that. Plus, it's kind of like getting
Speaker 2: paid dividends on some stock or earning royalties from a
Speaker 2: book you wrote seven years ago. In other words, you
Speaker 2: know you're making money while you sleep, sort of. A
Speaker 2: long game camera strategy is like that, and it's worth
Speaker 2: it if you have the opportunity. It's also worth it
Speaker 2: to listen next week because I'm going to take a
Speaker 2: deep dive into the topic of game management. That's it
Speaker 2: for this episode. I'm Tony Peterson and it's been the
Speaker 2: Wired to Hunt Foundation's podcast, which is brought to you
Speaker 2: by First Light. As always, thank you so much for
Speaker 2: all your support. We honestly appreciate it so much. Here
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Speaker 2: this podcast, if you want to listen to Clay's podcast
Speaker 2: or something else, you want to check out some how
Speaker 2: to videos, some hunting episodes, read some articles, whatever, you
Speaker 2: can head on over to the medeater dot com. Tons
Speaker 2: of hunting content there. Maybe you want a new recipe. Ever,
Speaker 2: go there, check it out, and once again, thank you
Speaker 2: so much for your support. H