Latest / Wired To Hunt Podcast / Ep. 961: Foundations - How to Use Change in the Deer Woods to Kill More Mature Bucks
Transcript
- 0:01Speaker 1: Welcome to the Wired to Hunt Foundations podcast, your guide
- 0:05Speaker 1: to the fundamentals of better deer hunting, presented by first Light,
- 0:09Speaker 1: creating proven versatile hunting apparel for the stand, saddle or blind.
- 0:14Speaker 1: First Light, Go Farther, Stay Longer, and now your host
- 0:19Speaker 1: Tony Peterson.
- 0:20Speaker 2: Hey everyone, welcome to the Wired to Hunt Foundation's podcast,
- 0:22Speaker 2: which is brought to you by First Light. I'm your host,
- 0:24Speaker 2: Tony Peterson. In today's episode is all about understanding the
- 0:27Speaker 2: subtle and not so subtle changes in the deer woods
- 0:30Speaker 2: and how this can help you kill more mature bucks.
- 0:33Speaker 2: All right, all right, all right. This is a fun
- 0:36Speaker 2: one for me because it taps into something I deal
- 0:38Speaker 2: with in the deer woods all year long. It's probably
- 0:41Speaker 2: the thing that holds me back more than anything. Change
- 0:44Speaker 2: in its many, many forms. It happens throughout the season,
- 0:48Speaker 2: it happens from year to year, and it happens whether
- 0:50Speaker 2: we consent to it or not. It's just the reality
- 0:53Speaker 2: of the world, and the best hunters I know learn
- 0:55Speaker 2: how to deal with it in a positive way, which
- 0:57Speaker 2: is what this episode is all about. A couple of
- 1:03Speaker 2: weeks ago, I was in the gym just picking up
- 1:05Speaker 2: heavy stuff and putting it down like a dozen or
- 1:08Speaker 2: so other gym goers who are all really just trying
- 1:10Speaker 2: to look a little better naked. I guess when I
- 1:12Speaker 2: picked up my phone to choose another song to listen to.
- 1:16Speaker 2: This is probably crazy, and I almost hesitate to say it,
- 1:19Speaker 2: but I sort of feel that music influences my entire
- 1:22Speaker 2: life now in the context of lifting weights. This is
- 1:25Speaker 2: pretty easy to understand for a fellow wired like me.
- 1:29Speaker 2: I probably wouldn't see those sick gains with a Z
- 1:33Speaker 2: if I spent my gym time listening to Whitney Houston's
- 1:36Speaker 2: greatest hits, or I don't know, some band like Coldplay
- 1:39Speaker 2: or something. I need heavy music laced with lots of anger,
- 1:42Speaker 2: lots of drop D guitar riffs, and just something that
- 1:45Speaker 2: shakes your guts loose a little. My affinity toward music
- 1:48Speaker 2: goes way beyond the obvious spots, though, to the point
- 1:50Speaker 2: where I'm pretty superstitious about the music I played before
- 1:53Speaker 2: a hunt and after. Sometimes the vibes are just wrong,
- 1:57Speaker 2: and when you get into the woods, that sticks with you,
- 1:58Speaker 2: and the dear no show so for days at a time,
- 2:01Speaker 2: and you just have to switch things up. Sometimes you
- 2:03Speaker 2: play something with a nice tribal drum beat, go out
- 2:06Speaker 2: and arrow a deer, and then get to listen to
- 2:08Speaker 2: something celebratory on the way back. My girls and I
- 2:11Speaker 2: did this recently, where we drove out to Pearl Jam's
- 2:14Speaker 2: song WMA and we left the woods with a dead
- 2:17Speaker 2: spike and filters. Hey man, nice shot blasting away, which
- 2:21Speaker 2: has become our tradition when the blood trail ends in
- 2:24Speaker 2: hugs and not question marks. I freaking love music, and
- 2:27Speaker 2: I know a lot of you do too, so I'm
- 2:29Speaker 2: always looking for something new, which brings me back to
- 2:32Speaker 2: that gym session. I went to my phone and saw
- 2:34Speaker 2: that my YouTube algorithm had fed me a band called
- 2:38Speaker 2: dead frog Face. I try to listen to a few
- 2:41Speaker 2: new songs or a few new bands every day, and
- 2:43Speaker 2: the name of that band gave me the push I
- 2:45Speaker 2: needed to listen because I just like dead frog Face.
- 2:48Speaker 2: It was a song called bad and boy was it good,
- 2:51Speaker 2: you know, like outlaw country type of good if you're
- 2:54Speaker 2: wondering the genre now. I listened to that song and
- 2:56Speaker 2: a few of their other songs all day long, and
- 2:58Speaker 2: I had the feeling, you know, that really really good
- 3:01Speaker 2: feeling of having found another band that will make this
- 3:03Speaker 2: suburb life a little more tolerable. That night, I thought
- 3:07Speaker 2: about one of their songs and I decided to look
- 3:08Speaker 2: up the lyrics, but there were none. There's no information
- 3:12Speaker 2: on dead frog face anywhere, no wiki, not a you
- 3:16Speaker 2: know a band member list, nothing. I got a weird
- 3:19Speaker 2: feeling before heading to Spotify to see if they were
- 3:22Speaker 2: on there, and that's where I read the band description
- 3:24Speaker 2: and figured out that it's all AI. I felt well,
- 3:30Speaker 2: not great about it. I'm not a great negotiator, so
- 3:33Speaker 2: it kind of reminded me of having to sell something
- 3:36Speaker 2: or go back and forth with my boss on a
- 3:38Speaker 2: raise and then realizing that I could have done much better,
- 3:41Speaker 2: like I got outwitted, outplayed or whatever. It instantly made
- 3:46Speaker 2: me not want to listen to that band ever again,
- 3:48Speaker 2: and I've mostly stopped. But you know what, that shit
- 3:52Speaker 2: isn't going away. This thing I do here where I
- 3:55Speaker 2: write these scripts and then I read them for you
- 3:57Speaker 2: by the week, this is going to go away too.
- 4:00Speaker 2: Probably in the not too distant future, you'll be able
- 4:02Speaker 2: to dial up your own Foundation style podcasts, but they'll
- 4:06Speaker 2: be customizable to your region, to your hunting style, to
- 4:09Speaker 2: your sense of humor, to whatever, and what sucks is
- 4:13Speaker 2: they'll probably be really good. I'm positive that most of
- 4:16Speaker 2: us at a certain age view this new reality with
- 4:19Speaker 2: some level of disdain and suspicion. But you know what,
- 4:22Speaker 2: it doesn't matter. This change is coming and it doesn't
- 4:25Speaker 2: care about our feelings or the fact that it could
- 4:27Speaker 2: take our jobs in an instant. It just is the
- 4:29Speaker 2: next thing, and after that there'll be something else. That
- 4:33Speaker 2: whole experience got me thinking about change and what it
- 4:36Speaker 2: means to us. Most humans are pretty resistant to change
- 4:39Speaker 2: because we are generally pessimistic at heart. This manifests itself
- 4:44Speaker 2: in the deer woods in a million different ways. One
- 4:47Speaker 2: that I bitch about a lot is the talk which
- 4:50Speaker 2: has weirdly died down some lately on too many people
- 4:53Speaker 2: in the woods, the elkwoods, the deer woods, the whatever woods.
- 4:58Speaker 2: The people complaining the most really want two things. They
- 5:02Speaker 2: want easier hunting, which is really the hunting they think
- 5:05Speaker 2: they can remember having before everyone else showed up and
- 5:08Speaker 2: ruined it for them. In some ways, they can complain
- 5:11Speaker 2: enough and get a result on that front, but it
- 5:13Speaker 2: won't change the fact that more and more residents are
- 5:15Speaker 2: also being pushed into the fewer spots that are left
- 5:18Speaker 2: to hunt. The change that's happening in the woods right now,
- 5:21Speaker 2: that's a big one, and it's one that is just
- 5:24Speaker 2: like we are all collectively losing ground to development and
- 5:27Speaker 2: people who have the means to tie up land financially,
- 5:31Speaker 2: and that means that unless we figure out how to
- 5:33Speaker 2: create more public ground, we are all kind of in
- 5:36Speaker 2: the same boat here. Now, another big change that's happening
- 5:39Speaker 2: right now that affects an awful lot of us is
- 5:41Speaker 2: one like crossbow inclusion. Fight at all you want, my friends,
- 5:45Speaker 2: but over a long enough timeline, the battle is already decided.
- 5:49Speaker 2: What that means to us as individuals varies a lot.
- 5:52Speaker 2: Some folks will jump ship instantly for an easier weapon,
- 5:56Speaker 2: some will hold out for a while, and a small
- 5:58Speaker 2: percentage will avoid it entirely. But over time, the change
- 6:02Speaker 2: keeps going one way, and it isn't the way that
- 6:04Speaker 2: it was before they really became a part of the conversation.
- 6:08Speaker 2: Change is happening all the time, on a huge scale
- 6:11Speaker 2: and at a subtle, almost imperceptible scale. It's always happening,
- 6:16Speaker 2: and the more you can recognize it for what it
- 6:18Speaker 2: is and react to it for what you think it
- 6:20Speaker 2: will be the better your season will go. So what
- 6:24Speaker 2: does this all mean. We'll think about it this way.
- 6:28Speaker 2: If you don't know what has changed, you won't know
- 6:30Speaker 2: how to react. I think this is a huge problem
- 6:33Speaker 2: with hunters in general, and a huge reason why so
- 6:36Speaker 2: many folks ride a dead program year after year. Let
- 6:39Speaker 2: me give you an example from my life. Recently, I
- 6:42Speaker 2: spent some time up in the north Woods, Wisconsin hunting
- 6:44Speaker 2: public land. Some spots are brand new to me this year,
- 6:48Speaker 2: while others I've hunted for almost a decade now. One
- 6:51Speaker 2: spot in particular, I've killed a few of my best
- 6:53Speaker 2: bucks on. It's a parcel. I took one of my
- 6:56Speaker 2: daughters in for a rut hunt last year and got
- 6:58Speaker 2: oh so close to a really great deer. Now. I
- 7:01Speaker 2: went into that property this spring the scout and have
- 7:04Speaker 2: been in there maybe parts of six days this season.
- 7:07Speaker 2: Last year, it was covered in buck sign and when
- 7:10Speaker 2: I say covered, I mean covered more than I've ever
- 7:13Speaker 2: seen up there or almost anywhere. It felt like I
- 7:16Speaker 2: was in Iowa on private land. Honestly, while my first
- 7:20Speaker 2: hunt there this season, I walked into a creek bottom
- 7:23Speaker 2: that I haven't hunted in a few years and was
- 7:25Speaker 2: absolutely struck by how thick it was. It was like
- 7:28Speaker 2: when you haven't seen someone in ten years and you
- 7:31Speaker 2: think about how much they've aged, and then you quickly
- 7:33Speaker 2: realize that they are thinking the same thing about you,
- 7:36Speaker 2: But it doesn't register quite the same way. That property
- 7:39Speaker 2: was logged right before I started hunting it. So it
- 7:41Speaker 2: has gone through major changes in the last decade, and
- 7:45Speaker 2: it's at the right level of thickness to soak up
- 7:47Speaker 2: a whole bunch of deer who would rather hide in
- 7:49Speaker 2: the thick shit than the generally far more open public
- 7:53Speaker 2: land around it. The access roads have become largely blocked too,
- 7:57Speaker 2: with falling trees and just overgone brush, and that has
- 8:00Speaker 2: changed the game in there as well. That change might
- 8:03Speaker 2: seem welcome, because now you have a high concentration of
- 8:06Speaker 2: deer in a small ish spot. That's huge, But hunting
- 8:11Speaker 2: it is a hell of a lot different than it
- 8:12Speaker 2: used to be. It's not like I can brush hog
- 8:25Speaker 2: access trails to stand trees in there, and with no
- 8:28Speaker 2: trail cameras and no tree trimming for shooting lanes and whatnot,
- 8:31Speaker 2: it has become a really challenging spot. But I can
- 8:34Speaker 2: look at it like it's not what it used to
- 8:35Speaker 2: be and be sad about that, or I can just
- 8:38Speaker 2: try to figure out how to use it to my advantage.
- 8:40Speaker 2: Now that's what I'm going to do this season, and
- 8:43Speaker 2: I can safely say so far it's totally kicking my ass.
- 8:47Speaker 2: But there is a lot of season left, and I
- 8:49Speaker 2: think the bucks will keep moving in there as the
- 8:51Speaker 2: rut gets closer, and I'm going to just try to
- 8:53Speaker 2: use that to my advantage. In fact, I almost killed
- 8:56Speaker 2: the maturre doo in there recently, which is a huge
- 8:59Speaker 2: win in that part of the world for me, and
- 9:01Speaker 2: the whole reason I almost killed her is because the
- 9:03Speaker 2: oak trees in this tiny spot between swamps were just
- 9:06Speaker 2: raining down the good stuff. She was betted in the
- 9:09Speaker 2: thick shit that's almost impossible to hunt. But on the
- 9:12Speaker 2: edge of that, I found some of the best here today,
- 9:14Speaker 2: gone tomorrow food you can find in early October. And
- 9:18Speaker 2: if I hadn't screwed it up by making just a
- 9:20Speaker 2: bit too much noise when I tried to draw on her,
- 9:23Speaker 2: she'd likely be in my freezer instead of well wherever
- 9:26Speaker 2: she is right now, probably cleaning up the last of
- 9:29Speaker 2: the acorns while I sit at the stupid desk believe
- 9:32Speaker 2: you me. I'm going to file away that encounter for
- 9:35Speaker 2: future hunts, and at some point that's going to be
- 9:38Speaker 2: a dead program too, most likely. But for now, all
- 9:41Speaker 2: of those changes, they are forcing me as a hunter
- 9:43Speaker 2: to scout more and do a few more observation sits
- 9:46Speaker 2: and just react to a new world in the same
- 9:48Speaker 2: old place, if that makes any sense. The thing about
- 9:51Speaker 2: change is that you're going to be forced to deal
- 9:53Speaker 2: with it, whether you want to or not. We see
- 9:56Speaker 2: this with weather all the time. I spent all last
- 10:00Speaker 2: bitching about south winds and how my stand setups for
- 10:02Speaker 2: north and west winds were mostly worthless for most of
- 10:05Speaker 2: the season. Then you know what happened. The fricking wind
- 10:09Speaker 2: just kept right on blowing from the south, and this
- 10:12Speaker 2: year there has been more east in it than usual,
- 10:15Speaker 2: which is kind of like a Mike Tyson upper cut.
- 10:17Speaker 2: To your delegates, a simple wind change means one of
- 10:21Speaker 2: a few things for us. We choose to not hunt
- 10:24Speaker 2: because we have no good setup, or at least one
- 10:26Speaker 2: that's not good enough for that wind, you know, probably
- 10:29Speaker 2: the most common reaction there. Or we hunt a setup
- 10:32Speaker 2: that we talk ourselves into because we want to go
- 10:35Speaker 2: out even though we know that it'll probably be a
- 10:37Speaker 2: train wreck, or we grab a mobile setup and head
- 10:40Speaker 2: out to make something happen in the less than ideal conditions.
- 10:43Speaker 2: You know, that cause a lot of other folks to
- 10:46Speaker 2: just stay away or settle. It really is that simple,
- 10:49Speaker 2: and we all know what the best approach probably is.
- 10:52Speaker 2: It's so easy to not take the best approach, though.
- 10:56Speaker 2: I recently had a conversation with a good buddy of
- 10:58Speaker 2: mine who has a killer delease. I'm honestly super jealous
- 11:02Speaker 2: of him for it. Anyway, he knows that eventually that
- 11:05Speaker 2: lease is going to go away. He says as much often,
- 11:09Speaker 2: but recently I also said he'll probably just mostly fezan
- 11:12Speaker 2: hunt when the lease goes away, because it'll be too
- 11:15Speaker 2: hard to go hunt someplace that isn't as good. Now,
- 11:18Speaker 2: that's an understandable reaction, sort of, Well not really, but
- 11:22Speaker 2: I see where he's coming from. The thing is that
- 11:25Speaker 2: change is coming, It's plain as day now. Instead of
- 11:29Speaker 2: just waiting for it to change the arc of his
- 11:31Speaker 2: life as a deer hunter forever, a better bet would
- 11:34Speaker 2: be to start looking to hedge that loss somehow. Now.
- 11:36Speaker 2: That would be through tapping his network to find a
- 11:39Speaker 2: spot looking for another small lease to get to learn
- 11:41Speaker 2: scouting public land something. But he probably won't because he
- 11:45Speaker 2: doesn't have to yet. And that's a very understandable thing.
- 11:48Speaker 2: Most of us don't want to do extra work for
- 11:50Speaker 2: any reason, and I'm not being facetious there. I had
- 11:53Speaker 2: a cameraman earlier this summer mentioned to me that he
- 11:56Speaker 2: feels like he was born to be retired, and I
- 11:58Speaker 2: don't know if I've ever related to anything more. This
- 12:01Speaker 2: is a hard thing to do, but looking at change
- 12:04Speaker 2: like a negative by default is bad for all of us.
- 12:07Speaker 2: When I was fourteen, my dad and I lost our
- 12:10Speaker 2: two private hunting spots that were just awesome. It sucked
- 12:14Speaker 2: so much. Then we picked up a farm that I
- 12:17Speaker 2: still hunt to this day. And I can tell you
- 12:19Speaker 2: with certainty that you wouldn't be listening to me talk
- 12:22Speaker 2: about deer every week if that hadn't happened. It forced
- 12:25Speaker 2: me to be a mobile hunter before that was a thing,
- 12:28Speaker 2: and it put me in the woods so much. Another
- 12:31Speaker 2: time when change really really sucked for me was when
- 12:34Speaker 2: the company I was working for got bought out by
- 12:36Speaker 2: a private equity firm. When forty percent of the company
- 12:39Speaker 2: got let go, I wasn't in the lucky sixty percent,
- 12:43Speaker 2: and I realized that my dream of staying in the
- 12:44Speaker 2: hunting industry wasn't on nearly as firm of ground as
- 12:47Speaker 2: I thought. That forced me into the freelance world, where
- 12:50Speaker 2: I said screw it and put my mind toward figuring
- 12:53Speaker 2: out public land deer. That changed my life professionally, but
- 12:57Speaker 2: also resulted in me just finding out the exact kind
- 13:00Speaker 2: of hunting that I love more than anything else. It
- 13:04Speaker 2: was a horrible personal change that ended up turning positive,
- 13:08Speaker 2: but that transition wasn't quick or easy. So what's changing
- 13:12Speaker 2: in your world? I bet you feel like you have
- 13:14Speaker 2: less free time than you ever have. I bet you
- 13:17Speaker 2: feel like a lot of your time on stand isn't
- 13:20Speaker 2: being used in a way that makes you feel as
- 13:21Speaker 2: good as it should. I bet you're sick of the
- 13:24Speaker 2: new neighbors, or tired of never having a shooter on camera,
- 13:27Speaker 2: or a lot of things. The world and the deer
- 13:30Speaker 2: woods are in constant flux. We are in the October
- 13:34Speaker 2: low right now, which is a perceived change in deer
- 13:37Speaker 2: behavior where all the bucks go nocturnal and there's no
- 13:39Speaker 2: good reason to hunt right This change happens every year,
- 13:43Speaker 2: and those bucks are still out there, and they're still killable,
- 13:46Speaker 2: but they won't be killable if you don't hunt, or
- 13:49Speaker 2: you keep hunting, maybe the same old field edge stands.
- 13:53Speaker 2: You can see this change coming, just like a full
- 13:56Speaker 2: moon or the weather that the ten day forecast tells
- 13:59Speaker 2: you is coming. You can see the new development being
- 14:02Speaker 2: built next to your deer property. You can feel the
- 14:04Speaker 2: free time slipping away by the year as the kids
- 14:07Speaker 2: get more into sports and other activities, and for some reason,
- 14:10Speaker 2: our jobs become such an outsized part of our lives
- 14:13Speaker 2: instead of just being a means for us to trade
- 14:15Speaker 2: forty hours a week for a life that is tolerable enough.
- 14:18Speaker 2: Some of these changes are super predictable, some aren't. What
- 14:22Speaker 2: they all are are just challenges to overcome. You think
- 14:26Speaker 2: you can't kill a mature buck right now, Well what
- 14:29Speaker 2: are you going to do to make that happen? If
- 14:31Speaker 2: you're checking your cameras a few times a day and
- 14:33Speaker 2: nothing more, then you will never beat the lull. You
- 14:36Speaker 2: think the rut won't be as fun this year because
- 14:39Speaker 2: you have less time to hunt and there are a
- 14:41Speaker 2: couple of new hunters who have permission to trump around
- 14:43Speaker 2: on your favorite farm. Well that change might mean that
- 14:46Speaker 2: you have to be far more efficient with the time
- 14:48Speaker 2: that you do have. Maybe two or three all days
- 14:51Speaker 2: sits all you can get instead of a week of
- 14:54Speaker 2: you know, a morning sit here and an evening sit there.
- 14:58Speaker 2: So much of life is beyond our control, so it's
- 15:01Speaker 2: mostly about how we react to that stuff. It's easy
- 15:04Speaker 2: to bemoan what once was, like how you remember the
- 15:07Speaker 2: elk woods being devoid of other hunters while the bulls
- 15:09Speaker 2: screamed their heads off two hundred yards away from the trailhead.
- 15:13Speaker 2: But you don't get that world anymore unless you could
- 15:15Speaker 2: write a giant check. How do you go out there
- 15:17Speaker 2: and find them now that the change has happened. How
- 15:21Speaker 2: do you find the deer when the woods aren't what
- 15:23Speaker 2: you want them to be. That's the challenge for all
- 15:26Speaker 2: of us, and it's often just a matter of perspective.
- 15:29Speaker 2: The people who kill big bucks consistently, at least on
- 15:32Speaker 2: ground they can't tightly control. They look at that stuff
- 15:36Speaker 2: like just more variables to plug into the equation. They
- 15:39Speaker 2: work through them. They scout, they hunt as much as possible,
- 15:42Speaker 2: and just try to figure out what those changes mean
- 15:44Speaker 2: to the deer, because in the end that's what really
- 15:47Speaker 2: matters if you want to fill more tags, So think
- 15:50Speaker 2: about that. Think about coming back next week because I'm
- 15:53Speaker 2: going to talk about the value of buck sign and
- 15:55Speaker 2: what it means in the weeks leading up to the
- 15:57Speaker 2: pre rut. That's it for this episode. I'm Tony Peterson
- 16:01Speaker 2: and this has been the Wired to Hunt Foundations podcast.
- 16:04Speaker 2: I want to thank you all for your support. You
- 16:06Speaker 2: show up for us every week, and I know you
- 16:09Speaker 2: don't hear this enough, but I mean this from my heart.
- 16:12Speaker 2: We would be nothing without you guys, So your support
- 16:14Speaker 2: is everything, So thank you for that. If you want
- 16:17Speaker 2: some more content, and I know you do, because everybody's
- 16:19Speaker 2: in hunter mode right now. When we're all watching videos
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