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Speaker 1: Welcome to the Wired to Hunt Foundations podcast, your guide

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Speaker 1: to the fundamentals of better deer hunting, presented by first Light,

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Speaker 1: creating proven versatile hunting apparel for the stand, saddle or blind.

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Speaker 1: First Light, Go Farther, Stay Longer, and now your host

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Speaker 1: Tony Peterson.

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Speaker 2: Hi, everyone, welcome to the Wire to Hunt Foundation's podcast,

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Speaker 2: which is brought to you by first Light. I'm your host,

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Speaker 2: Tony Peterson, and today I'm going to talk about how

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Speaker 2: to hunt deer where there just aren't very many of them.

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Speaker 2: I truly believe that there are just a few situations

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Speaker 2: where you can learn to be a really good overall

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Speaker 2: deer hunter. If you focus on big woods deer, you'll

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Speaker 2: probably get there, provided you put in the work. Or

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Speaker 2: if you just happen to hunt someplace with low deer numbers,

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Speaker 2: which not coincidentally happens to be in the big woods

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Speaker 2: a lot, you're going to get there. The challenge of

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Speaker 2: hunting a small population of deer is real, and it's

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Speaker 2: a proving ground for your skills. Now, it's not necessary

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Speaker 2: to go seek out someplace like this, but it is

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Speaker 2: a good idea to understand what to do when you're

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Speaker 2: struggling to just find deer or where every encounter is

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Speaker 2: truly a gift. That's what this episode is all about.

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Speaker 2: And even if you hunt a place with one hundred

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Speaker 2: deer per square mile, you should listen because there's going

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Speaker 2: to be something in here for you too. I've only

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Speaker 2: been to the state of California a handful of times,

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Speaker 2: and each trip was either for a pig hunt or

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Speaker 2: a blacktail hunt. So it wasn't like I spent a

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Speaker 2: lot of time shopping or hanging out at Disneyland or

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Speaker 2: anything like that. It was, to my surprise, at least

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Speaker 2: the first time I went, kind of in an amazing dichotomy.

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Speaker 2: The bigger cities made me feel like I was allergic

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Speaker 2: to the environment, while the areas we hunted made me

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Speaker 2: feel like I was in Wyoming or Montana or some

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Speaker 2: other western state with very few people and a lot

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Speaker 2: of really cool ground that I wanted to hunt. It

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Speaker 2: was weird, but life is like that when you get

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Speaker 2: a little bit of exposure to things that are outside

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Speaker 2: of your normal world. Now, if you take a city

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Speaker 2: like San Francisco, for example, you can break this down

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Speaker 2: even a little bit further. The city by the Bay

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Speaker 2: has sort of become a poster child for the stark

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Speaker 2: difference between the haves and the have nots. Tech executives

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Speaker 2: and other C suite high income folks live there in

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Speaker 2: numbers that are way overrepresented from say, I don't know, Omaha, Nebraska.

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Speaker 2: For a totally absurd example, the median rent in San

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Speaker 2: Francisco as of October this year was three three hundred

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Speaker 2: and seventy six dollars a month. That's a healthy house

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Speaker 2: payment in most of the country and could buy you

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Speaker 2: damn near a mansion in some places. Not just because

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Speaker 2: I was curious, I looked up the median rent in

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Speaker 2: Omaha and it came in at thirteen hundred and fifty dollars,

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Speaker 2: which to me actually seemed pretty high as well. But

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Speaker 2: it's also been a long time since I rented anyway.

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Speaker 2: As you can imagine buying a house in San Francisco,

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Speaker 2: or even going out to eat or playing around a gulf,

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Speaker 2: it's going to be pretty damn expensive compared to the

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Speaker 2: rest of the country. And you have thousands and thousands

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Speaker 2: of people who can afford to do any of those things,

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Speaker 2: and they are living right next to a pretty substantial

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Speaker 2: homeless population. Roughly eight thousand people live on the streets

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Speaker 2: of San Francisco, but I don't know how accurate that is.

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Speaker 2: I don't know how they'd count them. Doesn't matter for

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Speaker 2: this podcast. I just point that out to illustrate something.

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Speaker 2: There are Silicon Valley execs and homeless people living in

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Speaker 2: the same block, or within at least a few blocks

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Speaker 2: of one another. They are both technically residents of the

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Speaker 2: same city, I guess, but their individual existence from day

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Speaker 2: to day life couldn't be further apart. Now. I don't

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Speaker 2: know anyone who would be so dumb as to suggest

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Speaker 2: that just because those two types of people live in

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Speaker 2: the same general place, that they experience the same general lives.

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Speaker 2: That would be stupid and obviously disingenuous. Yet we do

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Speaker 2: this all the time in hunting. We stereotype our fellow

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Speaker 2: hunters or the difficulty of all our deer hunting, based

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Speaker 2: around somewhat arbitrary things like what state we live in

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Speaker 2: or how many gun hunters there are in our county.

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Speaker 2: We take credit for how tough our personal hunting might

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Speaker 2: be by attaching something to it that might not have

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Speaker 2: any actual effect on how difficult our hunting is. You know,

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Speaker 2: the number of folks who buy a gun tag is

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Speaker 2: just a good example of this. You know, even if

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Speaker 2: you live in Pennsylvania or Michigan or Wisconsin or some

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Speaker 2: other state with several hundred thousand firearms hunters, what really

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Speaker 2: matters is what happens in the general neighborhood of your

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Speaker 2: hunting spots. Now, I know a lot of folks who

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Speaker 2: live in high hunter density states who also control decent

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Speaker 2: sized chunks of ground. They don't really struggle killing big

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Speaker 2: bucks in any given year because their experience isn't the

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Speaker 2: general experience of other hunters. It's unique to them. This

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Speaker 2: is one of the reasons why I talk so much

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Speaker 2: about going out and figuring this stuff out on your own.

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Speaker 2: It's also why I always caution against taking too much

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Speaker 2: advice from anyone who's hunting experience is vastly different from yours.

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Speaker 2: If somebody controls six thousand acres of land in the

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Speaker 2: heart of the best deer country out there, and they

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Speaker 2: tell you planting a certain type of brasscas will definitely

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Speaker 2: help you arrow a giant in the late season, what

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Speaker 2: they mean is they want you to spend money on

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Speaker 2: a product they get paid to use, which also helps

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Speaker 2: them shoot giants in the late season because they have

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Speaker 2: amazing hunting. But what good does that do you? What's worse?

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Speaker 2: And I promise you this is true. Most of the

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Speaker 2: deer hunting advice you're going to get is going to

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Speaker 2: come from people who hunt where the density is really,

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Speaker 2: really high. If you don't hunt a similar situation, most

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Speaker 2: of the advice you're getting has very little bearing on

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Speaker 2: your hunts. It will probably make things worse.

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Speaker 1: Now.

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Speaker 2: I know I talked about this last week, but I

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Speaker 2: want to break this down further because I think I

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Speaker 2: think it's super important. Take. I don't know the first

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Speaker 2: time I tried to find a good buck on public

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Speaker 2: land in North Dakota. Scratch at take. The first day

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Speaker 2: I tried to find a good buck on public land

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Speaker 2: in North Dakota. As I sat up on that ridge

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Speaker 2: with my spotting scope of my binoculars a couple days

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Speaker 2: before the season opened a long time ago, I saw

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Speaker 2: fifteen bucks that I considered good enough for my non

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Speaker 2: resident tag. Now, I killed the smallest of those fifteen

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Speaker 2: bucks on the first night, and he ended up scoring

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Speaker 2: one forty as a clean eight. At the same time,

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Speaker 2: I was messing around on public land in Minnesota near

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Speaker 2: the Twin Cities. I couldn't find fifteen deer total there

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Speaker 2: in an entire season, and was super lucky to see

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Speaker 2: a deer on any given sit Advice or strategies on

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Speaker 2: how to hunt that North Dakota spot might have been

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Speaker 2: the worst thing I could have done while hunting those

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Speaker 2: chunks of public land here forty five minutes from the

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Speaker 2: Concrete Jungle can be broken down further because that's kind

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Speaker 2: of an extreme example. Take where I hunt in southeastern Minnesota.

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Speaker 2: The farm that I've roamed around on since I was

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Speaker 2: fifteen looks amazing on paper and in person, but it's

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Speaker 2: owned by a dairy farmer who is not a huge

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Speaker 2: fan of deer eating his crops. He doesn't really care

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Speaker 2: about white tails and is very happy when a bunch

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Speaker 2: of them get shot. Every year. That farm has a

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Speaker 2: decent population of deer because it is, you know, in

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Speaker 2: southeastern Minnesota, mildish winters, good egg, all that stuff, but

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Speaker 2: it's pretty tough to find a big one on there

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Speaker 2: in any given year. There's just a lot of pressure

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Speaker 2: in all the seasons, but it's really obvious during the

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Speaker 2: gun season when large parties of shotgun hunters push the

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Speaker 2: woods every day. Now, this property corners up to a

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Speaker 2: different property that my buddy is leased for several years.

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Speaker 2: It's also a place that I bought into this year.

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Speaker 2: It's about a third of the size of the dairy

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Speaker 2: farm next to it and doesn't have a whole lot

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Speaker 2: of cover. In fact, i'd say it's probably about twenty

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Speaker 2: percent woods and the rest is just fields. But the

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Speaker 2: pressure is highly controlled. The deer know this, and it's

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Speaker 2: always good in there and only gets better when the

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Speaker 2: neighboring properties start to really get pounded. It's one of

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Speaker 2: the most fun and honestly easiest places I've ever hunted. Now.

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Speaker 2: Part of that is because my buddy is a pretty

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Speaker 2: good deer hunter and he has the place figured out,

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Speaker 2: but it's also just a function of low pressure and

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Speaker 2: good ground. The only difference between the lease and my

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Speaker 2: permission farm next to it is how many people go

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Speaker 2: in there to shoot deer on any given season. This

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Speaker 2: affects everything, and it highlights a key point to this podcast.

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Speaker 2: Deer density is relative. It might be awesome on one

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Speaker 2: farm and terrible on the neighbors. You can't draw a

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Speaker 2: ton of conclusions from a thirty thousand foot view of

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Speaker 2: your hunting ground. You have to be honest about what

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Speaker 2: you're working with and what you find on the ground.

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Speaker 2: I think that starts with thinking about how how high

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Speaker 2: or lower deer density really is. Not what your state

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Speaker 2: is or your county is, but what's happening on your property,

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Speaker 2: Like where are you hunting now? This is totally arbitrary,

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Speaker 2: so bear with me, but a good way to understand

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Speaker 2: if you're working with a truly low deer density is

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Speaker 2: to think about how surprised you are to blank on

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Speaker 2: any given sit. If you're like, holy shit, I can't

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Speaker 2: believe I didn't see a single deer this afternoon, you

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Speaker 2: probably have a fairly high deer density or way too

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Speaker 2: much confidence in yourself. If you're like, well, I thought

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Speaker 2: i'd see one, but I didn't, then you're probably working

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Speaker 2: with lower deer density, and if you are, you're gonna

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Speaker 2: have to cater your strategy to handle this needle in

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Speaker 2: the haystack. Reality. This all begins with sign, whether your

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Speaker 2: winter scouting or summer scouting or in season scouting, Any

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Speaker 2: and all deer sign you can find so important. This

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Speaker 2: is not the case with high deer density hunts because

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Speaker 2: a lot of deer make a lot of sign, but

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Speaker 2: not a lot of deer makes a not a lot

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Speaker 2: of sign. If you find a crossing in the swamp

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Speaker 2: that has a okay amount of tracks in it, that's

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Speaker 2: a big deal. A concentration of rubs in a creek

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Speaker 2: bottom that cuts its way through a huge tract of

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Speaker 2: timber also a big deal. Several beds on a slight

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Speaker 2: knob and a sea of trees, big deal. A good

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Speaker 2: sized scrape and a place where two old logging roads intersect,

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Speaker 2: you guessed it, big deal. Now this is where a

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Speaker 2: lot of hunters struggle. They might see a rub on

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Speaker 2: a one inch in diameter sapling and not pay it

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Speaker 2: any attention. Or they might see a small scrape and

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Speaker 2: just assume it with some scrapper passing through who felt

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Speaker 2: a little excited for a little while. But the truth is,

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Speaker 2: if you don't have a lot of deer to deal with,

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Speaker 2: every bit of sign is a clue to how the

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Speaker 2: deer used the area. For high deer density hunts, a

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Speaker 2: lot of sign is the equivalent to white noise. You

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Speaker 2: just need to drown it out a bit. Find the

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Speaker 2: stuff that matters. In areas where you might only have

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Speaker 2: a dozen deer per square mile. That little rub tells

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Speaker 2: you a lot. This is because your job is to

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Speaker 2: get around deer first. We don't acknowledge this a whole lot,

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Speaker 2: but so many people have hunting situations where they already

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Speaker 2: know they're going to be around a ton of deer

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Speaker 2: just by getting into the woods. They don't have to

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Speaker 2: try to be around deer because they just will be.

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Speaker 2: So they have the luxury of trying to get close

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Speaker 2: to big bucks and focus on that goal. Now that

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Speaker 2: has bled into other hunting situations, But I promise you this,

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Speaker 2: if you hunt really low deer density stuff, you won't

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Speaker 2: get close to too many big deer until you figure

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Speaker 2: out how to consistently get close to just deer. Think

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Speaker 2: about it this way. If you don't know how to

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Speaker 2: consistently catch a limit of eater sized walleyes, you're probably

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Speaker 2: not gonna want to target thirty inch plus fish. If

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Speaker 2: you get my drift, all sign is important to the

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Speaker 2: low deer density hunter because what little sign there is

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Speaker 2: was made by the deer you have to hunt. I

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Speaker 2: can't make it any more simple than that. Now. If

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Speaker 2: that sounds a little depressing, sorry, it's about to get worse.

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Speaker 2: I can't prove this because it's anecdotal, but when I

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Speaker 2: hunt where there are not very many deer, I feel

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Speaker 2: like the deer are just generally harder to kill. They

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Speaker 2: seem to be on their a game for spotting me

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Speaker 2: in a tree, and they seem to be very intolerant

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Speaker 2: of my mistakes. This is probably due to two reasons.

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Speaker 2: The fewer prey animals there are, the more they are

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Speaker 2: targeted by all predators. It's also probably because every blown

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Speaker 2: encounter represents a limited chance going bye bye. It's not

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Speaker 2: like you can spook a buck in the big woods

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Speaker 2: and just expect several more to come down the trail

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Speaker 2: that might, you know, have been your one chance all

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Speaker 2: day or all weaker all season. And it's not just

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Speaker 2: the big bucks. The does that live where few deer

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Speaker 2: lives seem to be real cagy. They are tasked with

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Speaker 2: raising fawns in areas where they'll livin. Ain't easy, and

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Speaker 2: that puts them on red alert a lot. If you

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Speaker 2: have fifty deer per square mile where you hunt, getting

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Speaker 2: blown at by a dough sucks, but it's not that

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Speaker 2: big of a deal. She's going to run off. Another

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Speaker 2: deer will walk in eventually, if that's the only dough

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Speaker 2: in the three hundred acres you like to hunt, or

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Speaker 2: at least one of the only does around, that's a

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Speaker 2: different story. Now. Mistakes are going to be made, but

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Speaker 2: the more you make with limited amount of deer, the

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Speaker 2: harder the whole thing gets. And this can snowball pretty quickly.

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Speaker 2: This is because you can't just move down the ridge

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Speaker 2: and hit the reset button. Knowing that a bunch of

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Speaker 2: deer are still around. You are most likely going to

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Speaker 2: have to find them again and be even more careful

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Speaker 2: and then try to capitalize on your scouting and your

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Speaker 2: mobility and hope you don't blow it again, all while

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Speaker 2: hunting a small number of deer that are trying real

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Speaker 2: hard to not die. Because I've spent a lot of

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Speaker 2: my time hunting in situations like this, I'm overly cautious

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Speaker 2: about trying anything extra on my sits. You know, the

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Speaker 2: guy who hunts private land in Iowa can rattle all

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Speaker 2: he wants because he's going to get a positive response eventually,

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Speaker 2: and it doesn't matter much if he has some negative interactions.

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Speaker 2: It'll all work out. If you bang those same antlers

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Speaker 2: together where the deer are few and far between. You're

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Speaker 2: already creating a scenario for the deer to encounter something

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Speaker 2: they just don't expect. You're also almost guaranteeing that the

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Speaker 2: deer that do respond will do so in a cautious

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Speaker 2: way where they'll approach downwind. It's not to say that

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Speaker 2: calling or decoying or using sense can't work, certainly can.

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Speaker 2: You just have to do the right due diligence on

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Speaker 2: your setup and the conditions to make sure the odds

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Speaker 2: are in your favor as much as they can be.

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Speaker 2: Most owners don't do that. They instead use these tactics

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Speaker 2: to try to make something happen because they aren't having

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Speaker 2: the encounters they want from their hunting tactics and effort.

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Speaker 2: There's a huge difference between the two. There's another consideration

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Speaker 2: with low deer density hunts I want to talk about,

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Speaker 2: which is just randomness. It seems random to see a

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Speaker 2: buck do something once every ten or twenty sits. It's

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Speaker 2: probably not, though if you hunt it in I don't know,

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Speaker 2: Pike County, Illinois or Buffalo County, Wisconsin. On private ground,

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Speaker 2: you might see a buck walk a certain ridge one

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Speaker 2: day and not the next, but a few days later

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Speaker 2: he or another buck will probably walk that ridge. The

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Speaker 2: odds are good that where a buck walk today, other

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Speaker 2: deer are going to walk tomorrow. The odds are good

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Speaker 2: that a big woods buck that crosses a creek one

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Speaker 2: morning might not repeat that pattern anytime soon, but he

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Speaker 2: or other deer will likely travel the same route at

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Speaker 2: some point. This is something that is very very hard

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Speaker 2: for me to acknowledge because it leads to a lot

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Speaker 2: of second guessing if I observe something and then can't

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Speaker 2: get it to quickly repeat. But most deer in most

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Speaker 2: situations aren't as predictable day to day as we'd like

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Speaker 2: them to be. They do eventually run the same routes

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Speaker 2: and patterns, but it's nothing for there to be a

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Speaker 2: few days in between. This means that not only is

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Speaker 2: signed real important to low deer density hunts, but so

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Speaker 2: is observation. Even if it seems random, it's probably not.

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Speaker 2: It just might only happen a couple of times a

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Speaker 2: week or less. This is something that trail cameras show us,

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Speaker 2: yet we kind of gloss over it to see what

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Speaker 2: we want to see. If you do this where a

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Speaker 2: few deer live, you'll miss a lot of the clues

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Speaker 2: that tell you where you should volume hunt and when

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Speaker 2: you should really be there. It's hard to do when

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Speaker 2: you're stacking up the blanks or just not seeing many deer,

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Speaker 2: but you have to try to do this in order

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Speaker 2: to understand how it works. This is how my daughter

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Speaker 2: and I both killed our northern Wisconsin deer this year.

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Speaker 2: It was just a matter of factoring in the odds

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Speaker 2: that eventually abuq would emerge from the swamp to cruise

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Speaker 2: a certain woodline, and while it took a lot of hours,

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Speaker 2: two bucks did just that. We never saw any other deer,

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Speaker 2: but we saw two we wanted to shoot, and we

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Speaker 2: shot them. Low deer density hunts are like this, and

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Speaker 2: they can be frustrating as hell, but they will make

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Speaker 2: you better and they sure are rewarding when they go right. Now.

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Speaker 2: The other side of the coin are those places where

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Speaker 2: the deer are thick. That situation is more fun to

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Speaker 2: hunt for most folks, and it actually comes with its

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Speaker 2: own set of challenges. Now, that's what I'm going to

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Speaker 2: talk about next week, so come back for more if

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Speaker 2: you're so inclined. That's it for this week. I'm Tony Peterson.

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Speaker 2: This has been the ware to hunt Foundation's podcast. As always,

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Speaker 2: thank you so much for your support. Truly appreciate you

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Speaker 2: listening and reading the articles and heading on over to

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Speaker 2: the mediater dot com and consume all of our content.

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Speaker 2: We honestly truly appreciate that, so thank you for that.

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Speaker 2: Like I said, if you go over there, you're gonna

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Speaker 2: find a lot of stuff. It's not just whitetail stuff.

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Speaker 2: You're gonna find recipes, you're gonna find hunting series, you're

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Speaker 2: gonna find other podcasts, a ton of different content to consume,

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Speaker 2: which you're probably gonna want here because it's gonna be,

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Speaker 2: you know, the dead of Winner, the hunting seasons are

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Speaker 2: gonna end, and you're not gonna have a lot to do,

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Speaker 2: so that's a good place to go. The meat Eater

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Speaker 2: dot Com Thanks again,