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 Wired to Hunt Foundation's podcast,
Speaker 2: which has brought to you by first Light. I'm your host,
Speaker 2: Tony Peterson, and this week's show is all about understanding wind.
Speaker 2: A couple of weeks ago, I did an episode on
Speaker 2: bugs and creepy crawleys and the inevitable multi legged nastiness
Speaker 2: that you'll deal with while scouting and hunting at some point.
Speaker 2: There are just some parts of what we do that
Speaker 2: are always there and always influencing our hunts and never
Speaker 2: get as much love as I don't know. Three hot
Speaker 2: new tactics for hunting the rud or how to east
Speaker 2: scout whatever. Well. Wind is one of those elements of
Speaker 2: any hunt. And let me tell you this, if you
Speaker 2: don't understand how moving air affects your hunts, you're gonna
Speaker 2: have a lot of bad hunts. You are out of luck, partner.
Speaker 2: This goes for a lot of different pursuits, but it's
Speaker 2: so important to deer hunting, elk hunting, bear hunting, probably
Speaker 2: some other kinds of hunting I'm forgetting. When I was
Speaker 2: in high school, a buddy and I drove six hours
Speaker 2: north to the edge of the Boundary waters to stay
Speaker 2: with my aunt and uncle while we fished our hearts out.
Speaker 2: Those Ely area lakes were like heaven to us, partially
Speaker 2: because the undeveloped shorelines and unpressured fish, and partially because
Speaker 2: the folks who did spend a lot of time on
Speaker 2: the water up there always fished hungry. They targeted walleyes
Speaker 2: and mostly crappies throughout the summer, and would often spear
Speaker 2: northerns in the winter. The pressure was on the good
Speaker 2: eating fish, so the smallies in the large mouth up
Speaker 2: there were largely ignored by the locals, which made it
Speaker 2: so much fun. Well, my buddy, who will call Hawk
Speaker 2: because that's what we call him, he and I drove
Speaker 2: up there to fish for a few days, and like
Speaker 2: we did in that time of our life and for
Speaker 2: way too many years afterwards, we brought a bottle of
Speaker 2: vodka with us. Right before my aunt and uncle went
Speaker 2: to sleep. My aunt casually said that we should go
Speaker 2: outside and check out the northern lights, being from a
Speaker 2: place where you don't see them often hardly. Ever, we
Speaker 2: did just that with screwdrivers in our cup. That's vodka
Speaker 2: and orange juice and not some weird tool fetish. Hawk
Speaker 2: and I went outside and craned our next toward the heavens.
Speaker 2: It was unbelievable. If you've ever seen real northern lights,
Speaker 2: you know what I mean. We were in awe and
Speaker 2: as we chipped away at that bottle of vodka, we
Speaker 2: just stared at the shimmering green lights in the sky.
Speaker 2: The next morning, as we bounced across the waves of
Speaker 2: Bear Island Lake, Hawk turned awful pale, and then lost
Speaker 2: his breakfast in the drink, and then very urgently asked
Speaker 2: me to bring him to shore so he wouldn't shit
Speaker 2: his pants. Now, I've seen a few people hop urgently
Speaker 2: out of a boat when nature called, but that one
Speaker 2: was the most urgent, the most athletic, and the most shameless,
Speaker 2: considering the boat was maybe three feet away when he
Speaker 2: dropped trow and cut loose. While I can't explain really
Speaker 2: how dumb we were, then I can now explain kind
Speaker 2: of how northern lights work. You see, the Sun is
Speaker 2: an enormous ball of fuel that is really, really hot.
Speaker 2: You guys probably knew that part, but did you know
Speaker 2: that the Sun is in a constant state of throwing
Speaker 2: off solar wind, which carries charge particles at nearly five
Speaker 2: hundred miles per second, not miles per hour per second.
Speaker 2: That wind and all the charge particles it's made of,
Speaker 2: shoot across the cosmos, and if you're unlucky enough to
Speaker 2: be on the wrong planet, it'll strip away the atmosphere completely.
Speaker 2: This is something that happened on Mars. What keeps it
Speaker 2: from happening to us is the magnetic field that surrounds
Speaker 2: the Earth. Thanks to all of that molten iron rolling
Speaker 2: around in the core of our planet. When solar winds
Speaker 2: hit that invisible shield, they bounce and scatter around it.
Speaker 2: If you're in an area with low light pollution and
Speaker 2: clear skies, you'll see that as northern lights pretty wild huh,
Speaker 2: well far below where that's happening. We hunt deer in
Speaker 2: areas with wind that doesn't blow quite as fast as
Speaker 2: solar winds, but still influences us in many many ways.
Speaker 2: As hunters. We know this intuitively, but it helps to
Speaker 2: understand what wind is before we get into why. It's
Speaker 2: important to understand as hunters, So for starters, wind is
Speaker 2: the result of different temperatures of air meeting. This is
Speaker 2: most easily understood with thermals, but in my experience a
Speaker 2: lot of hunters don't really understand thermals. Wind is just
Speaker 2: the replacement of one temperature of molecules with another. Teen
Speaker 2: p butture molecules. How fast are they moving? Generally, as
Speaker 2: air gets warmer, it gets less dense than it rises.
Speaker 2: This creates a space for cooler air to move in,
Speaker 2: and well, there you have it. This is why with
Speaker 2: thermals the scent moves uphill in the morning and downhill
Speaker 2: in the evening, or why when you're elk hunting, which
Speaker 2: basically involves thermals on steroids, the wind at times will
Speaker 2: absolutely rush uphill or downhill, depending on whether you're there
Speaker 2: in the morning or the evening, or whether the sun
Speaker 2: is out or not, whether it's early September or late November,
Speaker 2: or often unfortunately, whether you have an elk coming in
Speaker 2: or not. You might think, well, I hunt the big
Speaker 2: woods and as flat as a pancake and harder to
Speaker 2: hunt than those dumb deer that just walk into every cornfield,
Speaker 2: and so I don't deal with thermals, and the wind
Speaker 2: just blows straight across the landscape every day. Hold on there, partner,
Speaker 2: you might be missing something. There's another kind of thermal
Speaker 2: that you might want to consider. Although to be honest,
Speaker 2: I don't know if it's actually called a thermal or not.
Speaker 2: I'm going to call it that because it makes sense
Speaker 2: to me and it's my podcast. If you're that big
Speaker 2: woods hunter, ask yourself, do you hunt around swamps or reservoirs, rivers, ponds,
Speaker 2: some kind of standing water, some kind of body water?
Speaker 2: Because the air above land tends to heat up faster
Speaker 2: than the air above water. You know what that means. Yep,
Speaker 2: the air is going to move and create wind. But wait,
Speaker 2: there's more. The air above the water not only heats
Speaker 2: up slower in the morning, but it cools off faster
Speaker 2: than the air over the land in the evening. So
Speaker 2: you once again have a situation where your scent might
Speaker 2: be getting pulled somewhere by the ever present temperature differential
Speaker 2: in the air around you. Here's what I know about
Speaker 2: this stuff, at least when it comes to thermals. The bigger,
Speaker 2: the temperature difference, the faster the thermals will move. We
Speaker 2: often talk about thermals as if they are a constant
Speaker 2: in bluff country in the mountains, and while they probably
Speaker 2: are to some extent in elk Habitat for white tails,
Speaker 2: they aren't exactly a sure thing. If it's twenty seven
Speaker 2: degrees before first light and supposed to reach seventy at noon,
Speaker 2: you're going to see a rapid change in temperature that
Speaker 2: is going to create thermals. If it's twenty seven degrees
Speaker 2: before first light, it's only in the claw its way
Speaker 2: up to thirty one, you won't see much for thermals.
Speaker 2: This is worth understanding because it's also the driving force
Speaker 2: and why so many people won't hunt in valleys or
Speaker 2: in bottoms they reckon wrongly. I might add that the
Speaker 2: wind will always be swirling in the odds of not
Speaker 2: getting busted or zero, so it's not worth hunting. But
Speaker 2: calm conditions exist, Reliable winds exist even in broken, weird terrain.
Speaker 2: Experience in these spots is the key to understanding when
Speaker 2: to hunt and when to stay out. Staying out without
Speaker 2: hunting and the experience what the wind actually does is
Speaker 2: a shortcut and not a smart one. Wind is unreliable sometimes,
Speaker 2: but understanding how it works is important. It flows over
Speaker 2: the land kind of like water. It takes easy routes
Speaker 2: when it can. The best wind, in my experience, is
Speaker 2: wind that is blowing a decent amount, say ten to
Speaker 2: fifteen miles an hour, but sticking to a very predictable direction.
Speaker 2: That's the easiest wind to play for your setups, but
Speaker 2: also the easiest wind to predict deer movement around. This
Speaker 2: is the other part of wind that we don't really
Speaker 2: give a lot of love to how it influences deer movement,
Speaker 2: since they trust their noses more than anything. A deer
Speaker 2: are heavily motivated to travel certain directions and at certain
Speaker 2: times in relation to how strong the wind is blowing
Speaker 2: and in what direction it's blowing. They enter fields on
Speaker 2: specific trails just because of how the wind is blowing.
Speaker 2: They bet according to the wind direction and will reposition
Speaker 2: if the wind changes direction. They mostly, and I say
Speaker 2: that with an asterisk, walk into the wind or crosswise
Speaker 2: with it if it's possible, although that's far from written
Speaker 2: in stone. They often approach decoys and calling sequences according
Speaker 2: to wind direction. If they see something they don't like,
Speaker 2: or here's something they don't like, they'll head down wind
Speaker 2: to verify their suspicions. Bears do this a lot, too,
Speaker 2: and if you think you can fool a bear's nose, well,
Speaker 2: you have more confidence in yourself than you should. Ditto
Speaker 2: with elk. Most of their movements are influenced by wind,
Speaker 2: even during the rut, when they have other reasons for
Speaker 2: going from one would lot to the next. I also believe,
Speaker 2: through lots of personal observation, that pressure deer rely more
Speaker 2: heavily on their noses and the wind than unpressured deer.
Speaker 2: Now I know that's not revelatory, but let me explain.
Speaker 2: I've hunted Texas deer that were so dumb and so
Speaker 2: oblivious that they wouldn't run away when they winded me.
Speaker 2: They just didn't care. Most of us don't deal with
Speaker 2: those deer. We deal with deer that are far less forgiving.
Speaker 2: I've seen deer in other places get a whiff of
Speaker 2: me that left but didn't totally turn inside out. And
Speaker 2: I've seen deer that snorted five thousand times at the
Speaker 2: mere hint of a whiff of a human. Where I
Speaker 2: hunt in northern Wisconsin, I see the wind play a
Speaker 2: major role in deer movement and how they position themselves
Speaker 2: to feed. Since the hunter numbers are high and the
Speaker 2: predator numbers are really high over there, the deer are
Speaker 2: just kind of neurotic. They don't take a lot of risks.
Speaker 2: That makes them really challenging and really frustrating to hunt.
Speaker 2: The times I've had a chance to hunt them on
Speaker 2: a meadow or a hay field over there, I've watched
Speaker 2: how they leave the cover and either go out into
Speaker 2: the middle where they have a good field of view
Speaker 2: in every direction, or often they'll position themselves out far
Speaker 2: enough into the field where they can still check the
Speaker 2: cover while watching the rest of the field with their eyes.
Speaker 2: The harder the wind blows, the cagier they get, but
Speaker 2: also the more predictable it is. When they do come out.
Speaker 2: They trust their noses to tell them what is in
Speaker 2: the woods that they can't see, and they give themselves
Speaker 2: an advantage by being far enough out there to get
Speaker 2: away as soon as they smell something fishy. How they
Speaker 2: travel out of the cover is related to wind oftentimes,
Speaker 2: but how they travel in cover is almost always influenced
Speaker 2: by the wind. This is why a really good funnel
Speaker 2: or pinch point is so beneficial to find. It forces
Speaker 2: them to give up their noses a lot of times,
Speaker 2: which is something they will do. Elk will too, so
Speaker 2: will bears, but it has to be a very specific situation.
Speaker 2: For white tails, you can find these spots where they're
Speaker 2: just going to walk even though the wind isn't going
Speaker 2: to give them an edge and will actually take away
Speaker 2: their best predator detecting sense. The folks who figure out
Speaker 2: how to identify these spots and then the conditions when
Speaker 2: they should hunt these spots to reap the real wind
Speaker 2: benefits are the hunters who kill more big bucks than
Speaker 2: the rest of us. Trust me on that. So how
Speaker 2: do you figure out how they use the wind in
Speaker 2: certain spots, and then how you can use use that
Speaker 2: wind to hide your presence and position big bucks so
Speaker 2: you can shoot them. Well, you can look at the
Speaker 2: terrain first. Ridge tops are great for this because you
Speaker 2: have built in locations to hang stands where your scent
Speaker 2: will blow out over a big valley of nothingness. But
Speaker 2: it's not so simple. If the wind is blowing across
Speaker 2: the top of a ridge perpendicular to the ridge, we
Speaker 2: will say then playing it is as simple as getting
Speaker 2: on the downwind side. But if it's a knife ridge,
Speaker 2: they might not want to walk up and down it
Speaker 2: if the wind is blowing across it, because they can't
Speaker 2: smell what's ahead of them. So you'd need a wind
Speaker 2: that blows down the ridge lengthwise. But then your scent
Speaker 2: is also blowing down to where the deer will be
Speaker 2: coming from or where they're going. It's quite the dilemma. Now,
Speaker 2: imagine a little juke in the ridge somewhere, or a
Speaker 2: bunch of dead falls to concentrate travel on one side.
Speaker 2: You might be able to set up off of that
Speaker 2: ridge with your scent blowing straight down it, or real
Speaker 2: close to straight down it, but not quite. It might
Speaker 2: be enough of the right direction to get the bucks
Speaker 2: to walk it and trust their nose, but it's just
Speaker 2: off by a few degrees, giving them a disadvantage, and
Speaker 2: you a slight margin of an advantage. Now he thinks
Speaker 2: he's safe to walk it, and that is when you
Speaker 2: kill him. There are situations like this in the woods
Speaker 2: all over waiting for you to find them. There are
Speaker 2: situations like this in the mountains too, that you might
Speaker 2: find if you haunt elk, if you bait bears, You
Speaker 2: can look for a situation like this where you put
Speaker 2: water or some kind of wet swamp to your back
Speaker 2: and set up with a bait just into the higher ground.
Speaker 2: Even if the approaching bruins want to get down wind,
Speaker 2: they might not do it because they don't want to
Speaker 2: get their feet too wet or go swimming. There are
Speaker 2: a lot of ways to play the wind that go
Speaker 2: far beyond simply hunting a spot in such a way
Speaker 2: that you think the wind won't get you busted. That's
Speaker 2: part of it, and believe me, it's no small part,
Speaker 2: but a bigger part is learning how animals bed and
Speaker 2: feed and travel in relation to the wind. Because when
Speaker 2: you start thinking about that, start to be able to
Speaker 2: see into the future a little bit. You see, you
Speaker 2: have to think about the wind as a constant in
Speaker 2: your world as a hunter. Then once you do, you
Speaker 2: have to think about it as a constant in the
Speaker 2: deer's life, or an elks or a pheasant for that matter, anything.
Speaker 2: It's going to have an effect on them every day
Speaker 2: because they sure as hell think about the wind and
Speaker 2: whether it's going to carry sent to them from a
Speaker 2: wallow in the meadow, or whether it's going to make
Speaker 2: it impossible to spot hawks and other aerial preudters that
Speaker 2: might be looking for a rooster snack. It's an ever
Speaker 2: present element of all hunts, and it goes so far
Speaker 2: beyond just some invisible thing that carries are sent to
Speaker 2: their noses or not. It's the number one way in
Speaker 2: which some of these critters survive to see another day
Speaker 2: because it's such an advantage to them. But every advantage
Speaker 2: is also some sort of weakness, and that is that
Speaker 2: if you can give them too much confidence in their safety,
Speaker 2: you can beat them. Recognizing those situations is the key
Speaker 2: to figuring out season after season spots that will always
Speaker 2: produce sightings and encounters. So think about the wind not
Speaker 2: just as a reason to sit one stand that's set
Speaker 2: up for the northwest or west or south or whatever,
Speaker 2: but as something that controls to some extent, you know,
Speaker 2: oftentimes small, but sometimes larger, the overall movements of the
Speaker 2: animals you hunt. Once you get it figured out, you
Speaker 2: not only have more educated guesses on where to sit,
Speaker 2: but you can figure out where the deer or elk
Speaker 2: or whatever should be coming from because they will bet
Speaker 2: or feed in certain locations based on the wind. This
Speaker 2: means that the buck that entered soybeans from a specific
Speaker 2: trail while the wind was out of the northwest today
Speaker 2: will probably do that very same thing the next time
Speaker 2: the wind is out of the northwest. Unless some other
Speaker 2: factors change. That small herd of public land elk you
Speaker 2: find heading up a certain drainage to bed on September
Speaker 2: tenth might do the same thing on the twelfth. Is
Speaker 2: the wind is in the same direction. How bears approach
Speaker 2: bait sites, how bucks approach scrapes, how bulls approach what
Speaker 2: they think is a rival, bogling it head off in
Speaker 2: a bad ideal of challenge. It all depends on the wind.
Speaker 2: So think about it and think about what the wind
Speaker 2: is doing. When you see animals doing something, Which direction
Speaker 2: was it blowing? When you watch that big woods buck
Speaker 2: cross the tiny stream and enter the clear cut, how
Speaker 2: hard was it blowing? Is there a reason to believe
Speaker 2: there were some thermals that play where he crossed? Think
Speaker 2: about this when you see bucks and does and all
Speaker 2: kinds of animals moving around naturally, All of it, or
Speaker 2: quite a bit of it anyway, has a little bit
Speaker 2: to do with the wind. And lastly, think about coming
Speaker 2: back next week for more hunting wisdom, because I plan
Speaker 2: to talk about how to figure out dear by accident,
Speaker 2: but sort of on purpose, whether you hunt the big
Speaker 2: woods or the western plains or wherever. Now, I know
Speaker 2: that doesn't make any sense at all, so just give
Speaker 2: it a listen and I'll clear the whole thing up.
Speaker 2: That's it for this week. I'm Old Antonio and this
Speaker 2: has been the Wire to Hunt Foundation's podcast, which is
Speaker 2: brought to you by first Light. Thank you, thank you,
Speaker 2: thank you so much for listening for supporting us here
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Speaker 2: thank you, thank you for that. If you want some
Speaker 2: more white tail content, you want to listen to Clay's
Speaker 2: podcast or the Elements podcast, or you want to check
Speaker 2: out some of our series in our videos some articles,
Speaker 2: go to the meeteater dot com. You'll find all that stuff.
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Speaker 2: See you next week.