Speaker 1: Welcome to the Wired to Hunt Foundations podcast, your guide
Speaker 1: to the fundamentals of better deer hunting, and now your
Speaker 1: host Tony Peterson. Hey everyone, welcome to the Wire to
Speaker 1: Hunt Foundations podcast, which is brought to you by First Light.
Speaker 1: I'm your host, Tony Peterson, and today's episode is all
Speaker 1: about taking buck inventory in the early summer. Before I
Speaker 1: get started on this one, I'm going to just apologize
Speaker 1: in advance. I have COVID right now and my brain
Speaker 1: is a little mushy. Well maybe foggy is a better word. Anyway,
Speaker 1: I'm going to struggle through this one a little bit,
Speaker 1: and if I say something down, you gotta forgive me.
Speaker 1: I'm sorry. With that out of the way, my friends,
Speaker 1: While we are a little early here for really nailing
Speaker 1: down the inventory of bucks on your hunting rounds, it's
Speaker 1: worth thinking about maybe making a little plan and taking inventory.
Speaker 1: Seems pretty simple, and it can be, but it's also
Speaker 1: something that kind of gets misrepresented. Is only valuable to
Speaker 1: private landowners who are managing deer, or for folks who
Speaker 1: only hunt after they've established a hit list and decided
Speaker 1: what bucks are shooters of which ones aren't. There's a
Speaker 1: lot more to this stage or there can be anyway,
Speaker 1: and this is a strategy that can be valuable to
Speaker 1: anyone who dear hunts. So in this episode, that's what
Speaker 1: I'm gonna make the case for. I'm gonna break this
Speaker 1: inventory thing down way beyond what we usually see when
Speaker 1: it comes to getting pictures of bucks in the summer
Speaker 1: not I don't want to brag, but I was taking
Speaker 1: dear inventory before it became the cool thing to do.
Speaker 1: I'm joking, of course, because even before it had a
Speaker 1: label white till hunters were out. He's trying to figure
Speaker 1: out who was living where they could hunt, and the
Speaker 1: bigger the deer, the more we focused on them. We just,
Speaker 1: you know, at least for the first several decades of
Speaker 1: modern deer hunting, never had tools like trail cameras, and
Speaker 1: they really are the lynchpin to this whole thing, but
Speaker 1: they are also limited in their ability to help us.
Speaker 1: Does that sound super clear and concise, like it came
Speaker 1: right from the mouth of a professional writer? Guy? Sorry,
Speaker 1: I know it's not. So let's start with the very
Speaker 1: basics before we move on to the nuances of summer inventory.
Speaker 1: Buck inventory, you know, or summer inventory or whatever. It's
Speaker 1: a simple act of trying to tally up who lives
Speaker 1: where you can hunt them, and just to see how
Speaker 1: many of them there are. For hunters and deer dense states,
Speaker 1: this might just include top end bucks as well as
Speaker 1: some of the up and comers who are off limits.
Speaker 1: For others living in lower deer density areas or just
Speaker 1: hunting tougher ground, it might just be an attempt to
Speaker 1: figure out how many deer of all shapes and sizes
Speaker 1: are around. This helps informed decisions on whether to fill
Speaker 1: antlerless tags or not, and whether to hold out for
Speaker 1: a certain sized buck or just let one fly. Whenever
Speaker 1: you get antlers up close. Inventory is useful for the
Speaker 1: hunter who has been on the same farm since Carter
Speaker 1: lost the Oval office to Reagan, or for the hunter
Speaker 1: who is just starting to mess around on a new
Speaker 1: piece of ground. It's valuable to the private land hunter,
Speaker 1: and it's valuable to the public land hunter, although as
Speaker 1: you can probably guess, this is tied to a pile
Speaker 1: of local and situational variables. Now, with that out of
Speaker 1: the way, I want to start with an easy spot.
Speaker 1: The easiest spot probably to take inventory private land in
Speaker 1: a state with no restrictions on feeding or minerals. If
Speaker 1: you're lucky enough to have a spot like that in
Speaker 1: a state that hasn't put the damper on how you
Speaker 1: can concentrate, dear, your task is pretty easy. Just go
Speaker 1: buy yourself a salt block or a mineral block and
Speaker 1: then head on into the woods, put it on the
Speaker 1: ground about eight ft from a tree, and then put
Speaker 1: your camera on a tree. Done and done, Easy peasy.
Speaker 1: Now all you have to do is let that sucker
Speaker 1: soak until I don't know August. Then you go in
Speaker 1: count up the monster velvet box you've got on camera,
Speaker 1: you know, making sure to divide them into neat piles
Speaker 1: of deer you'd kill and deer you wouldn't. And that's
Speaker 1: about it. You've got your inventory. As you can imagine.
Speaker 1: Doing that doesn't give you much insight on how to
Speaker 1: hunt those deer or anything else, but it does establish
Speaker 1: a baseline for the season. That's better than nothing. But
Speaker 1: what if you can't run mineral sites or salt blocks
Speaker 1: or dump a pile of apples out every week, Well,
Speaker 1: then you have to think about the deer a little more.
Speaker 1: And I think that's a good thing. This issue with
Speaker 1: chronic wasting disease in white tails is not going to
Speaker 1: go away likely ever, so rules against concentrating deer with
Speaker 1: attractants are probably here to stay as well. You can
Speaker 1: think of that what you will, but it is the
Speaker 1: law of the land in many, many places. And it's
Speaker 1: also worth noting that some states outlaw all types of attractants,
Speaker 1: while others have specifics in place and what kind of
Speaker 1: attractans can be used and when they can be used.
Speaker 1: This means you might be able to have a salt
Speaker 1: block out until the day before the bow opener, but
Speaker 1: then it has to be removed. In some states there
Speaker 1: can't be any evidence even in the soil of that
Speaker 1: salt block or mineral station. This has gotten more than
Speaker 1: a few people in trouble over the years, especially when
Speaker 1: they shoot a monster buck and the jealousy thing comes
Speaker 1: out and people call them in for a suspected violation
Speaker 1: of violation they might not even have known they committed.
Speaker 1: You also have some states where mineral blocks are just fine,
Speaker 1: but anything that can be construed as bait isn't. To
Speaker 1: put another way, if an attractant has some type of
Speaker 1: food in it, you can't use it. There are a
Speaker 1: lot of attractives on the markets with names like I
Speaker 1: don't know, a super big buck mineral magnet or giant
Speaker 1: toad buck cocaine that promises your deer will be hooked
Speaker 1: on it and party like it's in Miami. What you
Speaker 1: need to be aware of with those products is that
Speaker 1: they often have some food component or ingredient in them,
Speaker 1: even if they really aren't advertised that way. A little
Speaker 1: bit of corn mixed in, or some kind of ground
Speaker 1: up apples or whatever food sources in there, and now
Speaker 1: you're on the wrong side of the law when you
Speaker 1: thought it was just maybe some kind of a mineral thing.
Speaker 1: Pay attention to your local laws scratch. Pay attention to
Speaker 1: your current local laws because this stuff is always changing.
Speaker 1: And make sure you don't do something silly like buying
Speaker 1: a product that is totally illegal and then putting it
Speaker 1: out there and advertising it to the world when you
Speaker 1: start posting your summer images on the Graham. Now, before
Speaker 1: I move on from this, I just want to say
Speaker 1: one more thing about it. Even if your local sporting
Speaker 1: goods store sells something that doesn't mean it's legal to
Speaker 1: use in your state, I can go to my local
Speaker 1: Cabella's right before the gun season opens in Minnesota, and
Speaker 1: see palettes of corn, bags of corn. I can see
Speaker 1: automatic deer feeders, I can see all kinds of products
Speaker 1: that are totally illegal to use while hunting in my state.
Speaker 1: That's a cautionary tale on this stuff. And better yet,
Speaker 1: I'll say that you don't need any of those products
Speaker 1: to take inventory. In fact, I think it's more valuable
Speaker 1: to gather your intel a more old fashioned way, So
Speaker 1: you might you might want to think about inventory differently.
Speaker 1: Instead of contriving a situation to concentrate deer in a
Speaker 1: three foot circle, you have to take stock in what
Speaker 1: your ground offers and to decide where are the best
Speaker 1: places to put your cameras to capture the images of
Speaker 1: all the deer that live there. This does a couple
Speaker 1: of things for you. First off, attracting the local deer
Speaker 1: to one spot and taking pictures of them tells you
Speaker 1: very little. It does tell you who is around, which
Speaker 1: seems like the only goal. And it does tell you,
Speaker 1: I guess what direction they approached the mineral site from.
Speaker 1: That's maybe a little bit valuable, but beyond that doesn't
Speaker 1: really do you much. That's as basic of inventory as
Speaker 1: you're gonna get and that might be enough for some folks.
Speaker 1: That might be okay. But if you can't or don't
Speaker 1: want to use some kind of attractive then you're in
Speaker 1: a different spot. You've got to think about how you
Speaker 1: can strategically capture images of as many deer as possible
Speaker 1: while building up your hit list in a more natural way.
Speaker 1: Obvious spots for this include field edges and food plots,
Speaker 1: but you can also dive a little deeper and post
Speaker 1: a camera up over a pond or other water source,
Speaker 1: or maybe focus on a fence crossing or some other
Speaker 1: high traffic area you find. I really like this style
Speaker 1: of taking inventory for two reasons. The first is that
Speaker 1: while it's not as easy as just using some kind
Speaker 1: of attractant to concentrate deer, it will still show you
Speaker 1: a complete roster of the deer on your property. The
Speaker 1: second is that it combines actual scouting with taking inventory.
Speaker 1: That's important. While it's nice to know that there are
Speaker 1: three bucks using your ground that would all score between
Speaker 1: say fifty inches, it's better to know that, plus know
Speaker 1: that the biggest buck loves to water a certain stock tank,
Speaker 1: and that the two other decent you're always seem to
Speaker 1: travel together, and they really like to use one certain
Speaker 1: trail that leads out to the neighbor's bean field. In
Speaker 1: this way, there's a very thin membrane that divides deer
Speaker 1: inventory from good old summer scouting. But there's more. Let's
Speaker 1: say you're a public land hunter and would never ever
Speaker 1: ever name a deer in your life. You just like
Speaker 1: to hunt, and you make your judgment call on who
Speaker 1: gets shot by who walks down the trail and get
Speaker 1: your heart pounding. Now, if that's you and you don't
Speaker 1: listen to too much pop country, we could probably be
Speaker 1: best friends or pretty good friends anyway. Now, all potential
Speaker 1: friendships aside, there might be another reason to take inventory.
Speaker 1: You know, first off, it's just fun to know who's around.
Speaker 1: Even if you think the bucks you get on camera
Speaker 1: will be pushed out long before you have a chance
Speaker 1: to shoot them, it never hurts the old motivation any
Speaker 1: to know there are some big bucks around in your neighborhood.
Speaker 1: You might also want to just know what caliber a
Speaker 1: buck is mostly of ailable or how many deer are
Speaker 1: using the woods in total, or at least as much
Speaker 1: of that as you can know. So let's say you
Speaker 1: live in a not so great trophy state, and you
Speaker 1: just want to have a rough idea what your odds
Speaker 1: are of shooting a certain kind of buck, and your
Speaker 1: summer inventory, whether on a salt liquor on natural movement,
Speaker 1: shows you that the entire crop of bucks all appear
Speaker 1: to be under three and a half years old. This
Speaker 1: is really not uncommon, and it is telling. It tells
Speaker 1: you that holding out for a hundred and seventy inch
Speaker 1: is pretty stupid, and in fact that holding out for
Speaker 1: maybe a d five inch or might be almost equally
Speaker 1: as stupid. It might show you that a ninety seven
Speaker 1: inch two year old is a real, actual trophy in
Speaker 1: your region. That's good knowledge to have. And besides the bucks,
Speaker 1: a comprehensive look at all the deer or most of
Speaker 1: the deer in your woods will tell you you know
Speaker 1: if you should shoot five does all this season or
Speaker 1: just let every mamma walk talk. Now, a lot of
Speaker 1: hunters default to the state biologists or wildlife biologists or
Speaker 1: whoever is deciding on tag allocations, but I don't. Of course,
Speaker 1: you can't just overshoot the available tags, because that's poaching
Speaker 1: and not good. But there are situations where the recommendation
Speaker 1: might be for everyone to get three antlerless tags, or
Speaker 1: some county being a lot at a certain amount of
Speaker 1: dough tags, which seems like way too much from your perspective.
Speaker 1: Maybe you just feel like, after a month or two
Speaker 1: of inventory that it would be best for the herd
Speaker 1: if you laid off the does, Or maybe you see
Speaker 1: so many deer on camera that you green light yourself
Speaker 1: to fill your freezer this fall and fill every antlerless
Speaker 1: tag they'll sell you. I realized this is a weird tangent,
Speaker 1: but in some ways, we all own some level of
Speaker 1: responsibility with the deer we hunt. Besides the obvious, we
Speaker 1: know our woods and we know our critters that live
Speaker 1: in them better most of the time than somebody who's
Speaker 1: never been there could know. Somebody who might be using
Speaker 1: population models to predict how many deer living there, and
Speaker 1: they've never set foot in the county that you hunt in. Now,
Speaker 1: even if you think it possibly really can't matter one
Speaker 1: way or the other whether you personally shoot one or
Speaker 1: ten deer this season, it's still up to us to
Speaker 1: police ourselves. To some extent. We are as the stewards
Speaker 1: of this resource, and I think we should be in
Speaker 1: tune to it. At the very least. Inventory helps us
Speaker 1: with that. Sorry, enough of that tangent, because I want
Speaker 1: to talk about something else with some inventory. The fact
Speaker 1: that it's often great a bullshit. Well, not exactly, that's
Speaker 1: too harsh. But I've interviewed quite a few dear biologists
Speaker 1: in my life who have done extensive research on summer
Speaker 1: ranges and home ranges and everything related to where deer live,
Speaker 1: and all of them have said at one point or
Speaker 1: another that some bucks are homebodies and some bucks just aren't.
Speaker 1: Some deer and we really still don't know the reason
Speaker 1: for this have a bring in summer range and then
Speaker 1: a fall and winter range. Those ranges might be miles apart.
Speaker 1: And while not every deer lives this way, the ones
Speaker 1: that do seem to be pretty reliable in their migrations.
Speaker 1: This doesn't seem to be tied to available food or
Speaker 1: summer cover or anything like we can definitively put our
Speaker 1: fingers on yet. But I refuse to believe it isn't
Speaker 1: some evolutionary path that took hold in certain deer and
Speaker 1: not others. That means it is, or more likely was
Speaker 1: beneficial to the deer somehow. Now it might be or
Speaker 1: it might not be. We don't know, and it really
Speaker 1: doesn't matter. That's all just kind of purely academic, and
Speaker 1: it's kind of fun to think about. But the reality
Speaker 1: is we just need to acknowledge that that exists, and
Speaker 1: those traits vary from buck to buck, summer homebodies, some aren't.
Speaker 1: And what we do know is that you might run
Speaker 1: a camera on a corn pile all summer long and
Speaker 1: have every buck named, and suddenly, right around the bow opener,
Speaker 1: two of your hit listeners are just gone poof, And
Speaker 1: you think maybe they got hit by a car, or
Speaker 1: maybe the neighbor poach them, or maybe aliens sucked them
Speaker 1: up to the mother ship to try venison for their
Speaker 1: first time. It doesn't matter where they went, because they
Speaker 1: are gonzo, and that is that now they're gone from you.
Speaker 1: But somewhere down the road, some other hunter will be
Speaker 1: the beneficiary of a few new bucks that just showed
Speaker 1: up out of nowhere. He's probably sitting there thinking, what
Speaker 1: the hell where did these bucks come from? Now that
Speaker 1: sucks if you're the one who loses the bucks, but
Speaker 1: it's pretty awesome if you're the one who gains a
Speaker 1: couple of good bucks. And even if you're on the
Speaker 1: losing end of this deal, the good news is that
Speaker 1: you might pick up a few fresh recruits from somewhere else.
Speaker 1: And if not, oh well, they are just dear. And
Speaker 1: on that note, I want to talk about one last
Speaker 1: thing with summer inventory. Don't get married to it, or
Speaker 1: more specifically, don't fall in love with the bucks that
Speaker 1: you see and get images of all summer long. Some
Speaker 1: of them will undoubtedly be around for you in the fall,
Speaker 1: and some of them will undoubtedly be gone, so deer
Speaker 1: might live on your place. Others might pass through from
Speaker 1: time to time. The buck that you have the most
Speaker 1: pictures of, who you know is going to bet on
Speaker 1: a certain knob and always enters the soybeans from a
Speaker 1: specific trail. The buck who is I don't know all
Speaker 1: of or thirty inches bigger than anything you've ever shot before,
Speaker 1: and he's oh so predictable in his patterns. That buck
Speaker 1: might just disappear, or we might get shot by your
Speaker 1: neighbor opening morning, who has the deer hunting skills of
Speaker 1: a throw pillow and probably drank six bush lattes before
Speaker 1: climbing into a widowmaker wooden tree stand he built with
Speaker 1: his grandpa seventy three years ago. Hunting works like that.
Speaker 1: The point here is that even though you thought that
Speaker 1: buck was yours, he wasn't. He never was. They aren't
Speaker 1: until we wrap our tags around their antlers, and that's
Speaker 1: how this stuff goes. So inventory is cool. Can be
Speaker 1: really fun to take stock in the local white tails
Speaker 1: and get involved in a little census taking. It can
Speaker 1: prove to be a useful tool for overall decision making
Speaker 1: throughout the season, and even help you become a better
Speaker 1: hunter when you're doing it. It can do a lot
Speaker 1: of things for you, regardless of the type of land
Speaker 1: you hunt or the type of hunter you are. But
Speaker 1: I also can lead to some of the nastiness that
Speaker 1: just rears its ugly head up and deer hunting quite
Speaker 1: often because it's never easier to expose yourself to trophy
Speaker 1: bucks than through summer trail camera usage, and that trophy
Speaker 1: over everything else. Mentality, hatred for other hunters or neighboring
Speaker 1: landowners and all that stuff. Honestly can just lead to
Speaker 1: a weird hatred of the deer. Well, I don't know.
Speaker 1: Hatred is probably too strong of a word, but it
Speaker 1: can lead to a lot of frustration, a lot of
Speaker 1: frustration actually, which tends to show up when the bucks
Speaker 1: we count on decide they're going to ghost us faster
Speaker 1: than a crazy tinder hookup. That's life part of deer
Speaker 1: hunting the bucks, you know, no matter how familiar we
Speaker 1: get with them, they'll almost always give us the slip.
Speaker 1: They'll almost always tease us with their presence and improve
Speaker 1: to us that they are better at surviving than we
Speaker 1: are at killing them. But that's also what keeps us
Speaker 1: coming back, and if you can learn to live with it,
Speaker 1: keeps us developing a love for them. And this weird
Speaker 1: game we play where we try to run sharp sticks
Speaker 1: through their ribs. It's a wild thing we do here.
Speaker 1: This obsession of ours and taking inventory can be this
Speaker 1: a creative, enjoyable aspect, as long as we don't let
Speaker 1: it add too much fuel to the crazy antler fire
Speaker 1: that that is so prone to burning out of control anyway,
Speaker 1: So take that for what it's worth and come back
Speaker 1: next week. The next episode is going to be a
Speaker 1: morale booster, a self confidence booster, a plea to get
Speaker 1: you to understand how good of a deer hunter you
Speaker 1: are and how good of a deer hunter you could become.
Speaker 1: Because really, after a year of droning on and on
Speaker 1: and on, which is a line I stole from a
Speaker 1: wonderful song called black Dogs and Bubbles, I'm going to
Speaker 1: tell you how freaking awesome you are at this and
Speaker 1: why that matters. I'm gonna lay it all out because
Speaker 1: that's what I want to talk about next week, and
Speaker 1: I want to get into more of that stuff as
Speaker 1: we enter into the year two of this foundation's podcast,
Speaker 1: so I hope you stick around with me. That's it
Speaker 1: for this week, my white tail obsessed friends. I'm Tony
Speaker 1: Peterson and this has been the Wire to Hunt Foundations podcast,
Speaker 1: which is brought to you by First Light. As I always,
Speaker 1: thank you so much for listening, for your support, and
Speaker 1: if you want to get some more white tail content,
Speaker 1: you can head on over to them eat eater dot com,
Speaker 1: slash Wired to read all kinds of articles by Mark myself,
Speaker 1: Beaumartonic Andy May a whole bunch of white tail killers.
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Speaker 1: covering a whole wide range of how to white tail science,
Speaker 1: you name it, strategy whatever. Head on over there, check
Speaker 1: them up.