Speaker 1: Welcome to the Wired to Hunt Foundations podcast, your guide
Speaker 1: to the fundamentals of better deer hunting, presented by first Light,
Speaker 1: creating proven versatile hunting apparel for the stand, saddle or blind.
Speaker 1: First Light, Go Farther, Stay Longer, and now your host
Speaker 1: Tony Peterson.
Speaker 2: Hey, everyone, welcome to the Wire to Hunt Foundation's podcast,
Speaker 2: which is brought to you by First Light. I'm your host,
Speaker 2: Tony Peterson, and this week's show is all about a
Speaker 2: common problem so many of us have with deer hunting,
Speaker 2: and let's just kind of keeping thing simple. No one,
Speaker 2: well probably no one would say rabbit hunting is overly complex.
Speaker 2: Even the most diehard beagle owner who loves pushing Southern
Speaker 2: habitat for swamp bunnies. Now, they might try to make
Speaker 2: it seem like more than it is, you know, when
Speaker 2: the same goes for bird hunters, although duck hunters might
Speaker 2: be the exception there. This probably happens because duck hunt
Speaker 2: and can actually be kind of complicated and hardcore duck
Speaker 2: hunters are like a different species of human, but the
Speaker 2: same ghosts for whitetail hunters, and the same rules apply you.
Speaker 2: Deer hunting can be complicated, but it really shouldn't be.
Speaker 2: This is the lesson of the day. My friends, and
Speaker 2: I think you can develop a way of thinking that
Speaker 2: dumbs down deer behavior, and I think that'll make you
Speaker 2: better off every season. In a past life, I flirted
Speaker 2: with becoming a lawyer. I actually got three years down
Speaker 2: the higher education rabbit hole on that quest. Before being
Speaker 2: brutally honest with myself about my abilities in college and
Speaker 2: my future in that role. I switched gears to be
Speaker 2: a writer, which turned out pretty well, even though it
Speaker 2: felt like almost as much of a gamble. The money
Speaker 2: would have been nice, but a lot of the other
Speaker 2: parts of that career path might not have been so
Speaker 2: much fun. One that would have bothered me a lot
Speaker 2: would have been having to communicate with legal lees. As
Speaker 2: a writer by trade, my job is to become more
Speaker 2: precise and direct with each sentence, and not to be
Speaker 2: like intentionally obtuse legal ease. As it's called. It's kind
Speaker 2: of ridiculous. It's like a weird form of gatekeeping where
Speaker 2: those in the law club can decipher the gibberish while
Speaker 2: the common folks can't come close to comprehending it. It's
Speaker 2: unnecessarily complicated and results in sentences like in the event
Speaker 2: that the appellate signs the waiver pursuance any claims against
Speaker 2: the third party, the co signer shall not heed the
Speaker 2: exemplary consequences without the proper damages being attributed to the defendant,
Speaker 2: who to this point has been unnamed, as a countermeasure
Speaker 2: to the incidental yet punitive sorcery related to the actions
Speaker 2: heretoforece renamed in the deposition labeled Exhibit F after the
Speaker 2: injunction filed briefly for emotion. I ran into this recently
Speaker 2: while researching an article about how states can absolutely stick
Speaker 2: it to non residents even if they are hunting federal land,
Speaker 2: and it made me think, why not. Why do we
Speaker 2: stick it to non residence Because the answer is because
Speaker 2: we can, and they are mostly powerless. If the state
Speaker 2: with a capital s wants to abuse you for their
Speaker 2: monetary game and not reap any real repercussions, the state
Speaker 2: will do that. No. The why I asked myself was
Speaker 2: about the wording and the language of legalese. What's the
Speaker 2: point of making it overly complicated except to make people
Speaker 2: feel like they are dumb or not a part of
Speaker 2: the conversation Is it to make those in the legal
Speaker 2: profession feel smarter? Is it actually the best way to
Speaker 2: draw up contracts and work through the morass that is
Speaker 2: the legal system, and actually therefore necessary. I don't know.
Speaker 2: I know that it's a bend that a lot of
Speaker 2: us have, and it has even invaded our space as
Speaker 2: whitetail hunters. There are a few reasons why, but I
Speaker 2: think it is so we can make ourselves sound better
Speaker 2: at hunting. I mean, it's not that cool to tell
Speaker 2: a story where you're like, well, I killed this buck
Speaker 2: on the edge of the bean field because I know
Speaker 2: like to eat beans, and so that's where I sat,
Speaker 2: and that's where he walked in. It's better to say,
Speaker 2: you know something, like I knew this buck was betting
Speaker 2: halfway down a ridge after all the winter scouting I
Speaker 2: did with my trail camera intel in my midsummer glassing sessions,
Speaker 2: I identified his core destination food source. I knew that
Speaker 2: the pressure would be intense, so I set up a
Speaker 2: stand for a south or a west wind, with the
Speaker 2: idea that this old buck would give me one shot
Speaker 2: before he went nocturnal. And on and on and on
Speaker 2: and on. This thing happens in fishing. It happens in
Speaker 2: dog training when someone catches a giant bass or has
Speaker 2: a three musky day. It's never simple. It's always about
Speaker 2: a specific pattern and a specific presentation that the average
Speaker 2: fishermen would have never identified. With dogs, the behavior is
Speaker 2: always challenging, and this situation is always unique, Like I
Speaker 2: don't know this lab really prefers to be stubborn during
Speaker 2: morning training sessions, so I always work into our double
Speaker 2: blind retrees by setting up wagon wheel drills first, and
Speaker 2: then I switch it up just to as the wind
Speaker 2: start switching directions, so he has to quarter the opposite
Speaker 2: way and will need my help in telling him where
Speaker 2: the bumpers are. In reality, it's not that complicated most
Speaker 2: of the time. And even if we tell our stories
Speaker 2: like we are pretty gifted at this outdoor thing, it's
Speaker 2: better to keep things simple. It's better to look at
Speaker 2: this stuff for what it is, which is largely cut
Speaker 2: and dry. Let me give you an example that's easy
Speaker 2: to understand. A few years ago, I killed a good
Speaker 2: buck on public land in North Dakota. This was a
Speaker 2: pre rut right into the beginnings of the real rut
Speaker 2: kind of hunt. I knew it was going to be
Speaker 2: a low deer affair, so my best bet was to
Speaker 2: do all day sits in a place that funnel deer movement. Simple, right,
Speaker 2: It really was. I parked my happy ass in a
Speaker 2: spot for four days and I averaged maybe a couple
Speaker 2: of deer sightings a day. The spot was just a
Speaker 2: strip of river bottom on public land that attaches private
Speaker 2: woods on both sides. The rest of the land, at
Speaker 2: least the public land was open ground covered in cattle.
Speaker 2: If the deer wanted to go from one woodlot to
Speaker 2: the other and they wanted to stay in the cover,
Speaker 2: their options were real limited. That's it. The whole setup
Speaker 2: was just a pinch point during a time when the
Speaker 2: bucks should have been cruising and they were. There really
Speaker 2: wasn't anything high level about it, and it resulted in
Speaker 2: a great public land deer that most private land hunters
Speaker 2: would have been thrilled to shoot. I guess I could
Speaker 2: add in a bunch of details about the spot that
Speaker 2: made it better, but the truth was, it's not the
Speaker 2: kind of thing that needs to be complicated, because it wasn't.
Speaker 2: Most of deer hunting is like that. Hell, most of
Speaker 2: any type of hunting is like that. Elk hunting is
Speaker 2: like that, and the biggest hurdle there is just getting
Speaker 2: around them. After that, they aren't that difficult to hunt
Speaker 2: most of the time until they figure out you're there,
Speaker 2: or the whims of the mountain dwellers take them to
Speaker 2: two drainages over for some reason. Take another example that's
Speaker 2: near and deer. No pun intended to my heart water holes.
Speaker 2: The entire reason I love hunting water is because it's
Speaker 2: so damn simple. Deer get thirsty, they go to drink.
Speaker 2: That's it. The hotter it is, the easier it is
Speaker 2: to run this program. There isn't anything super technical about it,
Speaker 2: at least as a hunting style or strategy. The little
Speaker 2: details like how to approach a water hole and where
Speaker 2: to set up will involve some mental horsepower because every
Speaker 2: situation is a little different, you know, in the variables
Speaker 2: of wind and weather can alter plans in a hurry.
Speaker 2: But again, a lot of that is pretty simple. If
Speaker 2: it's ninety degrees and there's a south wind blowing, you
Speaker 2: have a perfect tree to set up in for just
Speaker 2: that wind. I don't know, man, it's pretty simple. If
Speaker 2: it's forty degrees with a variable wind, now it's a
Speaker 2: different story, But that's not when you'd really want to
Speaker 2: be on water anyway, and instead should maybe hunt some
Speaker 2: travel quarters. Now, there is a difference in simplicity when
Speaker 2: it comes to hunting deer versus hunting individual bucks. When
Speaker 2: you're hunting just deer, which is what everyone should do
Speaker 2: for some years before they are to hunt specific bucks,
Speaker 2: the rules are simple. Where do they probably bed? How
Speaker 2: about travel feed? What trails connect those spots? How can
Speaker 2: you get into those areas while causing the least amount
Speaker 2: of disturbance? These questions are about all you need to
Speaker 2: answer correctly to really be in the game. If you're
Speaker 2: hunting pressure, dear, you can add in the idea that
Speaker 2: the easy stuff will get hunted and the hard stuff
Speaker 2: maybe won't. This is actually really simple, too, but we
Speaker 2: make it way more complicated because even when we know
Speaker 2: it to be true, we have a hard time not
Speaker 2: hunting spots we want to hunt. We like familiarity a lot,
Speaker 2: we don't like change. As hunters, both of these predispositions
Speaker 2: can make us bad at the task. In this way,
Speaker 2: we actually keep it too simple so that we don't
Speaker 2: have to think about things, and that makes hunting seem
Speaker 2: hard and complicated. I know that's a word salad made
Speaker 2: mostly with kale, which is hard to handle, but it's true.
Speaker 2: Deer are simple creatures, but so are we. What makes
Speaker 2: things more complicated is mostly between our ears, and that's
Speaker 2: the danger we all face. This is no more true
Speaker 2: than when we are struggling, which is what I'm going
Speaker 2: to talk about in next week's podcast. Think of it
Speaker 2: this way, when are you most likely to believe this
Speaker 2: is all really complex? When are you most likely to
Speaker 2: believe the ways of deer are complicated and beyond the
Speaker 2: understanding of our sad, smooth brains when things go wrong,
Speaker 2: or at least when things don't go really right. Take
Speaker 2: a hunt I shared with one of my daughters in
Speaker 2: the end of September as an example. It was pretty
Speaker 2: cut and dry. She wanted a deer, so we hunted
Speaker 2: a few blinds that should have produced encounters. Since it
Speaker 2: was pouring rain for our first sit and the wind
Speaker 2: was blowing from the southeast, which sucks mostly, we went
Speaker 2: to a backup spot to preserve a better spot. The
Speaker 2: wind was good for that backup spot, but the question
Speaker 2: was if we'd bumped deer on the way in, since
Speaker 2: they sometimes bed there. Well, I don't know what happened,
Speaker 2: because we blanked. We then blanked on three sits after that,
Speaker 2: while looking at a lush little kill plot tucked into
Speaker 2: the big woods of Wisconsin. I was flustered. It made
Speaker 2: me think a lot of things. Now. I talk a
Speaker 2: lot of shit about people who buy into moon phase
Speaker 2: as a primary driver of deer movement, but let me
Speaker 2: tell you this. I was staring at that full moon
Speaker 2: during that trip like it had just kicked my dog
Speaker 2: and made a pass at my wife. I was like,
Speaker 2: you rotten chunk of rock and regolith just spinning out.
Speaker 2: There's two hundred and sixty thousand miles away from me,
Speaker 2: with your dumb tides and your werewolf connections. I also
Speaker 2: blame the weather, since it was either pouring or stupid hot.
Speaker 2: I blamed a lot of things for the turd sandwich
Speaker 2: that was that hunt. But I think the truth is
Speaker 2: far more simple. When I hunt that property and keep
Speaker 2: things really safe, I almost always have a few days
Speaker 2: where the dos are scrapper bucks. They cooperate pretty well.
Speaker 2: But I took a gamble on our first sit of
Speaker 2: that weekend, and I think it cost us. I think
Speaker 2: the deer knew we came in there, and they don't
Speaker 2: like those intrusions. Usually, when I go in there and
Speaker 2: get busted, you know, or I'm grouse hunting or whatever,
Speaker 2: the will disappear for at least a few days. I
Speaker 2: didn't think that first hunt in that betting area would
Speaker 2: produce those results, but those results happened, and I think
Speaker 2: that's why, so Lesson learned. Maybe the moon did affect
Speaker 2: our hunt, maybe it was the weather, but I know
Speaker 2: I did something I never do. And the following hunts
Speaker 2: were highlighted by rabbit and squirrel sightings and one fat
Speaker 2: raccoon moving way too late in the morning. From now on,
Speaker 2: with a bad wind, I'll hunt somewhere other than that property.
Speaker 2: Now Here's where the main Lesson probably comes in. I'm
Speaker 2: an outdoor communicator, and my natural reaction is to break
Speaker 2: that hunt down in a way that makes the deer
Speaker 2: sound like they are super smart while also making me
Speaker 2: sound pretty damn crafty. But the deer we were hunting
Speaker 2: aren't super smart. We were literally targeting four key's and
Speaker 2: does not seven and a half year old public land bruisers.
Speaker 2: The gravity I feel to make things sound more complicated
Speaker 2: and thus less accessible to some of my audience is real.
Speaker 2: This is endemic in the outdoor world, and it's most
Speaker 2: often noticeable on someone who has a specific style of hunting.
Speaker 2: I don't care what it is, either bed hunting experts,
Speaker 2: stalking experts, ground hunting experts, early season experts, rod hunting experts,
Speaker 2: to your calling experts, whatever. If someone is selling you
Speaker 2: information about hunting, the odds are decent that they might
Speaker 2: intentionally or unintentionally overcomplicate things. I mean, it's a pretty
Speaker 2: short sales pitch for your skills. If you're like, I
Speaker 2: don't know, I like hunting buck beds because that's where
Speaker 2: bucks go to spend their day. If I set up
Speaker 2: close by, I can sometimes shoot them. Because of this,
Speaker 2: that's not that cool, even though it's kind of true.
Speaker 2: Making the whole process and strategies sound way more complicated
Speaker 2: means that the audience has to follow along, and they'll
Speaker 2: have a lot of questions about why they failed and
Speaker 2: you didn't. But the truth is you did almost every time.
Speaker 2: You just have the luxury of talking about your wins
Speaker 2: and skipping over the many, many losses, and they are
Speaker 2: far more aware of their losses because they are trying
Speaker 2: something out of their comfort zone, and while they hope
Speaker 2: to succeed, most people expect to fail at this stuff,
Speaker 2: and when they do. An easy reason why is because
Speaker 2: the task was so complicated. Oh oh, most folks would
Speaker 2: have failed. There's comfort and shared misery. If there wasn't,
Speaker 2: we wouldn't all be so addicted to social media. So
Speaker 2: the balance lies in recognizing when things actually are complicated,
Speaker 2: or where we are making them be so without them
Speaker 2: actually needing to be so. A good way to find
Speaker 2: this balance is to spend time watching deer, which is
Speaker 2: what I've talked about a lot. The more you can
Speaker 2: see them do their thing, the less crafty they really seem.
Speaker 2: This goes for in season observation any time of the
Speaker 2: year when you can watch deer, even dozen fawns and
Speaker 2: scrapper bucks. It's also important to break down what should
Speaker 2: be simple and what might not be. Hunting deer shouldn't
Speaker 2: be complicated, it's just not. Your job is to figure
Speaker 2: out where deer like to walk, and that isn't that hard.
Speaker 2: They leave a lot of sign They are influenced by terrain,
Speaker 2: and while they're pretty predictable in general, we know a
Speaker 2: lot about deer. My friends The part where it gets
Speaker 2: complicated sometimes is when to hunt a spot, how to
Speaker 2: hunt a spot. This is where you can get bogged
Speaker 2: down in the overthinking and the over analysis, and that's trouble.
Speaker 2: A good hedge against a mental meltdown over this stuff
Speaker 2: is just to accept the risk of trying something. If
Speaker 2: you feel like you know where deer like to walk
Speaker 2: in the evening, but you have a few different options
Speaker 2: for setups, just try something. Whether it's saddling up in
Speaker 2: the best tree or building a natural ground blind, whatever,
Speaker 2: give it a go. Sometimes the deer do what you expect.
Speaker 2: A lot of times they don't. When they do, you've
Speaker 2: learned something, and when they don't, you've learned something. Over time,
Speaker 2: especially if you' into a mobile hunting strategy, you start
Speaker 2: to get very comfortable with this process. It teaches you
Speaker 2: that trying is almost always worth it because sometimes it
Speaker 2: works out, and even when it doesn't, you're probably like
Speaker 2: a little better hunter because of it. You're not sitting
Speaker 2: in the same tree stand over and over wondering why
Speaker 2: the jury brothers are killing huge bucks left and right
Speaker 2: and you can't see a spike to save your life. Instead,
Speaker 2: you're actively working the deer in a way that takes
Speaker 2: into account the simple things we know about them, the
Speaker 2: stuff like where they probably bed and where they definitely
Speaker 2: sometimes walk, and where they for sure like to fill
Speaker 2: their bellies, even if it's at midnight. The basics are
Speaker 2: all right there, and they aren't out of reach of
Speaker 2: any hunter. Even big woods hunters who have to play
Speaker 2: the brows pattern with low deer densities can do this stuff,
Speaker 2: although that situation can be a little more complicated and
Speaker 2: a hell of a lot more frustrating. Still attainable, though,
Speaker 2: if you keep it simple and understand that a lot
Speaker 2: of the reason deer hunting seems so complicated is because
Speaker 2: it's just a different task to begin with, and so
Speaker 2: much of the advice comes from folks who have a
Speaker 2: vested interest in making the whole process sound way more
Speaker 2: complex than it really is. This is just good stuff
Speaker 2: to think about, but it might not help you with
Speaker 2: next week's topic, which is why it's so damn hard
Speaker 2: for so many of us to keep our shit together.
Speaker 2: I'm mature, bucks, That's what I'm going to talk about.
Speaker 2: And even if you're in the I don't know, shoot
Speaker 2: any deer phase of your hunting journey, you're gonna want
Speaker 2: to give it a listen. And if you're real interested
Speaker 2: in big Bucks, you're definitely gonna want to give it
Speaker 2: a listen. That's it for this week, my friends. I'm
Speaker 2: Tony Peterson. This has been the Wire to Hunt Foundation's podcast,
Speaker 2: which is brought to you by first Light. Head on
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Speaker 2: but whatever, it's all there. Mm hmm