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 has brought to you by First Light. I'm your host,
Speaker 2: Tony Peterson, and today's episode is all about the opportunity
Speaker 2: that winter offers you to truly understand the land, which
Speaker 2: is kind of the ticket for figuring out big deer.
Speaker 2: This happens all the time. Someone sends me an email
Speaker 2: or a message asking me about how they should.
Speaker 3: Scout to kill more big bucks.
Speaker 2: The general tone is always like there's some kind of
Speaker 2: secret that I'm withholding and they just haven't been told yet.
Speaker 2: And once they get it, they're the club and their
Speaker 2: taxidermy bill is going to skyrocket like the cost of
Speaker 2: well just about everything lately. But there are no real
Speaker 2: secrets left. I'm sorry to say that, but it's true.
Speaker 2: The dead bucks will come, but only if you put
Speaker 2: in the work to do the things in a way
Speaker 2: that should produce results. How's that for disappointing and pretty weaselish.
Speaker 2: But now for the good news. I'm of the belief
Speaker 2: that the one thing you can do for yourself that
Speaker 2: will really help you overall for the rest of your
Speaker 2: life is to make an effort to understand the land,
Speaker 2: not just the land you hunt all the time, but
Speaker 2: land in general. What I mean by this is all
Speaker 2: about to become a hell of a lot clearer right
Speaker 2: about now. I'd guess that just about every one of
Speaker 2: us has, you know, at least a few places in
Speaker 2: our lives that we drive to a lot.
Speaker 3: Work is the most obvious.
Speaker 2: If you have to commute to an office or a
Speaker 2: job site, you know what it's like to travel the
Speaker 2: same route over and over and over again. Maybe you're
Speaker 2: lucky and you get to work from home while writing
Speaker 2: about deer hunting and dog training and you don't have
Speaker 2: to commute. You probably have a few places in your
Speaker 2: town that you travel too often. The gym, the grocery store,
Speaker 2: gas stations, whatever. I'll bet you something about these routes
Speaker 2: and those destinations. There's a lot of stuff you don't
Speaker 2: notice on the way to and from these places. This
Speaker 2: is a weird phenomenon, but you can see if you're
Speaker 2: susceptible to it. The next time you commute to work
Speaker 2: or drive to the gym, just try to look at
Speaker 2: something different. What I mean by that is, try to
Speaker 2: see some houses or stores, or woodlots or something that
Speaker 2: you just normally don't look at during your drive. Because
Speaker 2: you see, when we are used to going certain places
Speaker 2: in a certain way, we tend to focus our attention
Speaker 2: on specific aspects of the trip. There's probably an evolutionary
Speaker 2: component to this somewhere, you know, maybe the preservation of
Speaker 2: some brain energy or something.
Speaker 3: I don't really know. What you might realize.
Speaker 2: If you intentionally try to look at different landmarks and
Speaker 2: buildings and stuff along the way is that you've been
Speaker 2: missing a lot of things. Another easy way to do
Speaker 2: this is to go for a run along a route
Speaker 2: you usually drive. Since you probably run quite a bit
Speaker 2: slower than you drive, you have a lot of time
Speaker 2: to take in the scenery. And I'm telling you it's
Speaker 2: eye opening, not so much because you might notice a
Speaker 2: taco bell where you didn't realize there was one, but
Speaker 2: because your blind spots are probably huge on your most
Speaker 2: known and familiar routes. I'll give you an example. About
Speaker 2: two hundred yards from my house is one of those
Speaker 2: ninety degree turns that almost should have been a cul
Speaker 2: de sac, if that makes sense. It's like a three
Speaker 2: quarter cul de sac. I drive that route dozens of
Speaker 2: times a week. I can see most of it my
Speaker 2: picture window in my living room. I also almost always
Speaker 2: passed through there when I go for a run or
Speaker 2: a bike ride with the girls. Last summer, I walked
Speaker 2: out the front door to go for a run when
Speaker 2: I saw emergency lights in that mutant cul de sac.
Speaker 2: As I jogged past several cop cars in an ambulance,
Speaker 2: I saw them carding out someone from a house that
Speaker 2: I really didn't even know was there. It's tucked back
Speaker 2: into a wooded lot, and I guess I'm always just
Speaker 2: looking ahead around the corner instead of off to the side.
Speaker 2: If you'd asked me beforehand how many houses were on
Speaker 2: that little bend there, i'd have been one short, and
Speaker 2: there's only four in total. Our brains have the amazing
Speaker 2: capacity to mostly filter out unnecessary stuff. If you think
Speaker 2: that doesn't happen to you, and I'm just the most
Speaker 2: unobservant fool out there, just try to pay attention more
Speaker 2: just for the hell of it. I bet you'll see
Speaker 2: things that you just totally have ignored for years larger
Speaker 2: because you didn't need or think you needed to know
Speaker 2: they were there. Guess what, my little ombres, we do
Speaker 2: this in deer hunting. In fact, the best way to
Speaker 2: kill big bucks for a lot of folks is to
Speaker 2: intentionally create scenarios where there is no penalty for not
Speaker 2: noticing stuff. If you have a managed property with food
Speaker 2: plots and ponds and box blinds, does it really matter
Speaker 2: if you know where a certain rub line is or
Speaker 2: a specific ditch crossing that only gets good for a
Speaker 2: few weeks in October exists?
Speaker 3: Not really.
Speaker 2: This is why it's so popular to try to raise
Speaker 2: dear on a specific property versus learning how to figure
Speaker 2: them out. On any piece of land you might step
Speaker 2: foot on with any kind of weapon in your hands,
Speaker 2: you probably don't have the means to block off a
Speaker 2: section or two to let a handful of bucks get
Speaker 2: old and comfortable so that you can shoot them when
Speaker 2: they are mature enough to not being harassment on social media.
Speaker 2: That drive to work where you don't notice a whole
Speaker 2: lot of stuff.
Speaker 3: That's like the walk.
Speaker 2: Into your favorite stand, you know, the one where you
Speaker 2: always see a few deer, the one that's easy to
Speaker 2: get to, the one you run cameras on, you know,
Speaker 2: from summer, you know, midsummer, probably to the season's end,
Speaker 2: that stand. We all have at least one spot like that,
Speaker 2: typically on private land, on public land.
Speaker 3: Whatever.
Speaker 2: It gets worse though, think about shed hunting season, which
Speaker 2: we're coming into right now. We all want to scoop
Speaker 2: up a bunch of shed antlers, and we all have
Speaker 2: our best spots to go, but how we move from
Speaker 2: spot to spot is probably similar from shed hunt to
Speaker 2: shed hunt, and from.
Speaker 3: Year to year.
Speaker 2: We probably follow the same routes. When we're looking for antlers,
Speaker 2: just like we do and we're going to our stands,
Speaker 2: we are so very predictable and that hurts us as
Speaker 2: dear unters in two ways. The first is the obvious one,
Speaker 2: where the deer figure us out when we were actually
Speaker 2: hunting and our stands go cold as they just tiptoe
Speaker 2: around the ambush sites we default to over and over
Speaker 2: the other is that it keeps us from learning the
Speaker 2: land and really how the deer used the land that
Speaker 2: we aren't really paying attention to. Let me give you
Speaker 2: two examples here. The first time I drew in Iowa,
Speaker 2: tag I got permission to hunt a farm in northeastern
Speaker 2: corner of the state. It was a decent property, it
Speaker 2: wasn't great, but it was Iowa, and I was hunting
Speaker 2: the rut with a buddy of mine. I ended up
Speaker 2: snort wheezing in a great ten pointer and killing him
Speaker 2: about halfway through my rut cation. So I stuck around
Speaker 2: and tried to arrow a doe and just give my
Speaker 2: buddy some help. One morning, while waiting on a doe
Speaker 2: to walk by, I saw a solid one hundred and
Speaker 2: forty class buck walking through the woods above me. Instead
Speaker 2: of taking the ridge on top of the bluff or
Speaker 2: walking the creek bottom below, which is what I was
Speaker 2: set up on, he just sidehilled. I thought that was
Speaker 2: kind of interesting until I saw more bucks take the
Speaker 2: exact same trail. Fast forward about thirteen years to this
Speaker 2: past season, where I was hunting some public land in
Speaker 2: North Dakota. This land is quite a bit different from
Speaker 2: that private farm in Iowa, but I managed to errow
Speaker 2: a decent ten point round my second day there. Since
Speaker 2: I had a bit of free time to just kind
Speaker 2: of poke around. I went scouting in the midday, after
Speaker 2: checking to make sure there weren't any other hunters parked
Speaker 2: at this particular parcel. What I found was that the
Speaker 2: area had the most confidence in was not surprisingly, a
Speaker 2: ridge stop over a river, kind of like that Iowa spot.
Speaker 2: The trail on the ridge was pounded and also under
Speaker 2: heavy observation by several trail cameras. The trail on the
Speaker 2: river bottom wasn't pounded, but it showed some usage. Then
Speaker 2: there was the trail halfway up the hillside that was
Speaker 2: real pounded and there were no cameras watching it that
Speaker 2: I could see. Sit up on that ridgetop, you probably
Speaker 2: wouldn't see any bucks cruising that trail below you. If
Speaker 2: you were on the bottom, the bucks would be level
Speaker 2: or slightly above you, which is a great way to
Speaker 2: get busted. It was an interesting find, one that will
Speaker 2: probably play into my twenty four hunting plans. The thing
Speaker 2: about these little aha moments is they don't happen all
Speaker 2: that frequently to most of us. In the likelihood they
Speaker 2: are going to happen on a property you know pretty well,
Speaker 2: or you think you know pretty well.
Speaker 3: It's not so great.
Speaker 2: This isn't because there aren't Aha moments waiting for you
Speaker 2: on your grandma's farm. It's that you probably don't think
Speaker 2: you even need to look for them.
Speaker 3: Here's the rub.
Speaker 2: An awful lot of folks are stuck between thinking they
Speaker 2: have things pretty dialed and still not being able to
Speaker 2: consist instantly killed big bucks. If you have things dialed,
Speaker 2: let's say like Andy May, you probably wouldn't feel that way.
Speaker 2: You'd believe that the mature deer will be there and
Speaker 2: that you'd kill a handful of them each season. But
Speaker 2: you probably don't. And I'm going to make an educated
Speaker 2: guess here, you probably aren't like Andy May in a
Speaker 2: lot of ways. The one that's Germane to this podcast
Speaker 2: is that he scouts like a fiend and tries to
Speaker 2: understand the land and how the deer use it more
Speaker 2: than anyone I've ever met. And that's saying something because
Speaker 2: I know a lot of really good deer hunters, as
Speaker 2: well as being someone who just personally loves the scout. Now,
Speaker 2: scouting comes in many forms and involves many things.
Speaker 3: For some folks.
Speaker 2: When the scouting or in season scouting, you know it's
Speaker 2: all about deer sign rubs and scrapes and beds. That's great,
Speaker 2: there's nothing wrong with that strategy, But there's an undercurrent
Speaker 2: to the whole thing that you might never experience if
Speaker 2: you focus too much on just finding locations that have
Speaker 2: some good bucks sign There's the whole thing about how
Speaker 2: deer get to those spots, when they should be there,
Speaker 2: and where they go when they leave. This will be
Speaker 2: dictated almost entirely by how secure those bucks feel on
Speaker 2: certain routes and what they have to do to stay
Speaker 2: off the radar of most hunters, including you. Take a
Speaker 2: buck that wants to rut hard find a couple of girlfriends,
Speaker 2: but he also lives on a property that gets a
Speaker 2: ton of pressure. Let's say that property has a few
Speaker 2: valleys in it. He might just, through random encounters in
Speaker 2: the presence of stands and cameras, start to realize that
Speaker 2: the two legged predators he's trying to avoid often hunt
Speaker 2: on top. They might even park where he can see
Speaker 2: them drive in and walk to those stands in the
Speaker 2: pre dawn hours. So he says, man, I really wouldn't
Speaker 2: mind finding a new girlfriend this morning, but I know
Speaker 2: that the ridgetop is a danger zone. He might also
Speaker 2: feel the same way about those nice flats along the
Speaker 2: creek in the bottom of the valley, where there have
Speaker 2: been a handful of ladder stands since Reagan was in office.
Speaker 2: So he does something simple. He splits the difference and
Speaker 2: uses a side hill trail. This way, he can use
Speaker 2: the thermals avoid the two most likely spots where he'd
Speaker 2: encounter danger, and he has the option to go high
Speaker 2: or low if he does meet someone who wants to
Speaker 2: deflate his lungs. It's honestly that simple a lot of times,
Speaker 2: but we don't learn the land as well as we should,
Speaker 2: so we set up on top and rattle our happy
Speaker 2: asses off, thinking that since it's the rut, every big
Speaker 2: buck is going to throw caution to the wind and
Speaker 2: risk their necks. But they mostly won't. That side hill
Speaker 2: trail you're missing, it's out there waiting for you to
Speaker 2: walk it this month. If you're a big woods hunter
Speaker 2: that has thousands of acres of flat timberland to work with,
Speaker 2: you might not have that bluff side trail to discover,
Speaker 2: since the land's just pancake flat. But there might be
Speaker 2: a subtle fold in the train somewhere that offers a
Speaker 2: bit of elevation, and that might be all you need
Speaker 2: use onex to look at the land and the elevation changes,
Speaker 2: and then get out there and see them in person.
Speaker 2: Don't just half asset, but set out to learn with
Speaker 2: the idea that you have definitely been missing stuff over
Speaker 2: the years. This is one of the reasons I think
Speaker 2: hunting new ground is so important. When you leave the
Speaker 2: lease your dad has paid for since two thousand and
Speaker 2: three and go scout some new properties, you accept the
Speaker 2: reality that you don't know what you're going to find.
Speaker 2: You know you have to go look, and that you
Speaker 2: have to go learn. When you walk that lease this winter,
Speaker 2: it's very likely that you don't feel the same way.
Speaker 2: You're going to walk the same routes and try to
Speaker 2: confirm what you believe you know. That's a great way
Speaker 2: to manifest a fun, familiar destiny come fall. Instead, consider
Speaker 2: the advantages you have right now. The woods are as
Speaker 2: bare as they'll be all seasoned for most of us.
Speaker 2: Most of the hunting seasons are over. They're damn close,
Speaker 2: so there isn't a whole lot of danger to going
Speaker 2: into sanctuaries or betting areas or just generally walking anywhere
Speaker 2: you damn well. Please couple this with the reality that
Speaker 2: you have a lot of time this winter to work
Speaker 2: things out, and the opportunity to learn is real now.
Speaker 2: While the average YouTube celebrity or influencer or whatever will
Speaker 2: feed you content on this subject like it's a mission
Speaker 2: to locate every huge rub and betting area an important
Speaker 2: land feature in a matter of twenty minutes or so,
Speaker 2: a more realistic take is to mostly just go for
Speaker 2: a walk in the woods while staying curious. Scouting is
Speaker 2: a lifelong, cumulative process, not something that is easy to
Speaker 2: knock out and master in one January afternoon. So go
Speaker 2: where you don't go. You know, I've talked about that
Speaker 2: a lot, but I think it's so important. I mean,
Speaker 2: even if that's just fifty yards from where you always go,
Speaker 2: don't stare at your feet. Look around. What does that
Speaker 2: land show you as you walk through it. Is there
Speaker 2: a knob or a bench on a hill that you
Speaker 2: just never go look at? Well, go look at it
Speaker 2: and then look around. Imagine what you would do if
Speaker 2: you were a buck standing there in November. What can
Speaker 2: you see? What would you be able to smell if
Speaker 2: you had his nose? What would it be like to
Speaker 2: be bedded there in September versus November. What wind direction
Speaker 2: would make it a really safe spot if you were
Speaker 2: a mature buck? Is there a spot right next to
Speaker 2: the road that you never hunt because you don't want
Speaker 2: to listen to people driving by all evening? I don't
Speaker 2: know how often this happens to me, but every year
Speaker 2: I find all kinds of animals and areas like that.
Speaker 2: Western critters know this trick, and so do white tails.
Speaker 2: Hell pheasants are pretty keyed into it too. Go walk
Speaker 2: that spot. What do you have to lose? Look around?
Speaker 2: We often frame productive scouting as going farther than the
Speaker 2: average hunter, but it's not always about being miles from
Speaker 2: the parking area. It's about finding the spots people don't
Speaker 2: go and learning the lay of the land. It's about
Speaker 2: giving yourself more to think about, more options for when
Speaker 2: it's October and you're struggling and you don't know what
Speaker 2: to do about your burned out stand sites. You know,
Speaker 2: if you give your chance to go sneak in and
Speaker 2: hang in hunt on that bench you found in January,
Speaker 2: you might be surprised what you see. But now here's
Speaker 2: where this gets tough. Most of us think about our
Speaker 2: hunting properties as a whole chunk of land, but every
Speaker 2: individual acre probably holds a secret about deer usage. We
Speaker 2: focus on finding the whole ridgetop that might be good
Speaker 2: for a hunt instead of learning what each part of
Speaker 2: it contains. We walk field edges and decide to hunt
Speaker 2: the corners because that's where deer like to concentrate in
Speaker 2: the early season. But even a couple hundred yards of
Speaker 2: field edge can offer dozens of spots to hunt if
Speaker 2: you take into account that some trails will be good
Speaker 2: at certain times while others will be dead. You know,
Speaker 2: how will mast influence certain things, How will it be
Speaker 2: different to hunt that field edge when it's eighty five
Speaker 2: degrees versus sixty or forty. Then you've got swamps and
Speaker 2: slews and monoculture, pine deserts and a hell of a
Speaker 2: lot more all existing on the land. And you know
Speaker 2: there's easy travel routes out there and not so easy
Speaker 2: travel roads. There's deer hiding cover, and there's brows and
Speaker 2: a whole lot of things that are important to dear
Speaker 2: on the land. If you want to be better at
Speaker 2: deer hunting, there's no better way than to learn the ground,
Speaker 2: and there's no better time to do it than now.
Speaker 2: The miles you walk while keeping your eyes open and
Speaker 2: your curiosity peaked will be more beneficial to you than
Speaker 2: the trail cameras you put up this summer. They'll be
Speaker 2: more beneficial than the bottles of dopey you'll buy in
Speaker 2: late October. All of that stuff's great, but it really
Speaker 2: starts to hum when you put it together with an
Speaker 2: actual understanding of the land. Commit yourself to this, not
Speaker 2: only the scouting aerial photos of your ground or any
Speaker 2: ground you might consider hunting, but to also just walk it.
Speaker 2: Maybe once a week, maybe twice a week, whatever depends
Speaker 2: how much land you have to work with, how ambitious
Speaker 2: you are, go where you don't go. Try to understand
Speaker 2: the land. This is fundamental and it allows you to
Speaker 2: develop a base level that won't change. The hills aren't
Speaker 2: going to be flat next year, and the ditch isn't
Speaker 2: suddenly going to change somehow. Hunting pressure probably will, the
Speaker 2: weather definitely will, food, the density, maturity, you, predators, whatever,
Speaker 2: Most of the variables of your hunt are open to
Speaker 2: not being the same as they were before. But the land,
Speaker 2: you know how it rolls, that generally won't change a ton,
Speaker 2: And that's a huge benefit to you because it gives
Speaker 2: you something to start with on every single hunt. So
Speaker 2: get out there, put on the miles, bring your binoculars,
Speaker 2: stay curious, try to learn something each time you go.
Speaker 2: Then come back next week because I'm going to dive
Speaker 2: deeper into this topic of winter scouting, because I think
Speaker 2: it's the one thing that really separates great hunters from
Speaker 2: average hunters, and I think a lot of people don't
Speaker 2: get how important it truly is. That's it for this week.
Speaker 2: I'm Tony Peterson. This has been the Wired to Hunt
Speaker 2: Foundation's podcast, which is brought to you by First Light.
Speaker 2: As always, I just want to thank you so much
Speaker 2: for all the support. It's been amazing putting together this
Speaker 2: podcast for the last couple of years and hearing from
Speaker 2: a lot of you folks, and I just I just
Speaker 2: want you to know that I absolutely appreciate you tuning
Speaker 2: in and heading on over to the medeater dot com
Speaker 2: and reading the articles and checking out to everybody you know,
Speaker 2: everybody under our stable, their shows, their other podcasts, all
Speaker 2: that we truly appreciate you. And of course if you
Speaker 2: want more of that stuff, like I just said, the
Speaker 2: meeteater dot com is your place to go, check it out,