Latest / Wired To Hunt Podcast / Ep. 853: Foundations - Landscape Connective Tissue and the Secret to Buck Travel

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Ep. 853: Foundations - Landscape Connective Tissue and the Secret to Buck Travel · Wired To Hunt Podcast

0:01
Speaker 1: Welcome to the Wired to Hunt Foundations podcast, your guide
0:05
Speaker 1: to the fundamentals of better deer hunting, presented by first Light,
0:09
Speaker 1: creating proven versatile hunting apparel for the stand, saddle or blind.
0:14
Speaker 1: First Light Go Farther, Stay Longer, and now your host
0:19
Speaker 1: Tony Peterson.
0:20
Speaker 2: Hey everyone, welcome to the Wire to Hunt Foundation's podcast,
0:23
Speaker 2: which is brought to you by first Sight. I'm your host,
0:25
Speaker 2: Tony Peterson, and today's episode is all about reading the
0:28
Speaker 2: land to predict buck travel much more efficiently. Sometimes with
0:35
Speaker 2: this podcast I cover topics I really don't want to.
0:38
Speaker 2: Last week was one of those where I broke down
0:40
Speaker 2: some of my bigger mistakes of the year. This isn't
0:42
Speaker 2: one of those, though. I want to talk about this
0:44
Speaker 2: one because I've had a few revelations this season that
0:47
Speaker 2: smacked me upside the head like someone tossed a half
0:49
Speaker 2: frozen salmon my way.
0:51
Speaker 3: In fact, what.
0:51
Speaker 2: I'm going to talk about, as far as reading the
0:53
Speaker 2: land in a specific way, has helped me fill two
0:56
Speaker 2: buck tags this year, one on private land and one
0:59
Speaker 2: on public So buckle up, my little buck loving buttercups,
1:03
Speaker 2: because it's time to learn about connective tissue. You know
1:10
Speaker 2: that old saying that opposites attract. You know where that
1:13
Speaker 2: came from. I don't, but I can tell you that
1:16
Speaker 2: it's some great a bullshit. Well maybe it's not. I
1:20
Speaker 2: take that back for a second. Opposites do attract sometimes
1:23
Speaker 2: because we are hairless monkeys who oftentimes base our choices
1:26
Speaker 2: off of the pure attractiveness of someone else. So two
1:29
Speaker 2: people with nothing in common could be attracted to one another.
1:32
Speaker 2: What doesn't happen after opposites attract, though, is that they
1:35
Speaker 2: stay together for seventy years and dye in each other's arms,
1:38
Speaker 2: knowing they lived a life of fulfillment and love. You
1:42
Speaker 2: have to have something in common. That was something I
1:45
Speaker 2: realized about my life when I quit drinking. My wife's
1:49
Speaker 2: family isn't full of a ton of total drunken idiots,
1:52
Speaker 2: but alcohol is present at an awful lot of their
1:54
Speaker 2: get togethers, in fact, probably all of them. I'd say
1:58
Speaker 2: it's a binding agent for activities like going to twins games, or.
2:02
Speaker 3: Family reunions or I don't know, days of the lake
2:05
Speaker 3: or whatever.
2:06
Speaker 2: When you are one of those people who drinks a lot,
2:08
Speaker 2: you can tolerate a lot of stuff that you might
2:10
Speaker 2: not otherwise want to do.
2:11
Speaker 3: Because hell, you get to drink.
2:14
Speaker 2: But when you decide it's time to give that stuff
2:16
Speaker 2: up so you don't die super young, things just change
2:19
Speaker 2: a little of that connective tissue rips. This happens often
2:23
Speaker 2: in relationships as people age and mature and find new
2:26
Speaker 2: things they like or get sick of things they used
2:28
Speaker 2: to like but don't anymore. While opposites might attract at first,
2:32
Speaker 2: they often don't stay glued together forever. Religious beliefs, political believes,
2:37
Speaker 2: how are you were raised, income, sense of humor, whatever.
2:41
Speaker 2: The more that you're not in line with your partner,
2:42
Speaker 2: the easy it is for the whole thing to come
2:44
Speaker 2: crashing down, or for you to secretly wish it would
2:48
Speaker 2: one hobby, one shared passion, something beyond just the life
2:52
Speaker 2: you've built and often the little people you've created together.
2:55
Speaker 2: It's a huge thing for a relationship. It matters, and
2:58
Speaker 2: it's worth the effort to try to keep that thing
3:00
Speaker 2: going strong, because if it doesn't, it's time to give
3:03
Speaker 2: up half of your hunting land in Wisconsin and fire
3:06
Speaker 2: up that old tinder profile or whatever. You have to
3:09
Speaker 2: have that connective tissue, just like you do with deer hunting.
3:12
Speaker 2: This is something that has really struck me this year,
3:16
Speaker 2: and after the first time, I thought maybe it was something,
3:18
Speaker 2: you know, pretty interesting. But after the second time, I
3:21
Speaker 2: killed a buck while thinking this way, I really decided
3:24
Speaker 2: to explore it. So let me break this down for
3:27
Speaker 2: you with two of these examples. When I drew my
3:29
Speaker 2: I would tag this year. I had a plan. Then
3:32
Speaker 2: I went to where my tag was good for and
3:34
Speaker 2: found out that a lot of people were hunting there
3:37
Speaker 2: in a lot of the spots I wanted to go to.
3:39
Speaker 2: So I went scouting along a river, because if I'm
3:42
Speaker 2: going to find deer on public land, they will often
3:44
Speaker 2: be along moving water. The first thing I found was
3:47
Speaker 2: a dried up ox bow lake that was covered in
3:49
Speaker 2: buck sign, so I walked it out and found more
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Speaker 2: buck sign in.
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Speaker 3: A couple of big beds.
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Speaker 2: I put that in the maybe pile, and then I
3:56
Speaker 2: found a decently used crossing leading to another flat along
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Speaker 2: the river.
4:00
Speaker 3: Now that was two data points.
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Speaker 2: So the first night I was there, we set up
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Speaker 2: on the second flat. While waiting for my cameraman to
4:07
Speaker 2: get settled in, two bucks trotted down the hill right
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Speaker 2: into our laps. I couldn't do anything but pick up
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Speaker 2: a camera and film it for myself while we waited
4:15
Speaker 2: to see how it played out. What happened was that
4:18
Speaker 2: my cameraman finally got settled in and I was halfway
4:21
Speaker 2: up to my saddle platform when he hit some button
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Speaker 2: on his camera that made a lot of digital noise,
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Speaker 2: and I watched those bucks sprint out of my life.
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Speaker 2: We sat there that evening and came back the next morning.
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Speaker 2: We heard deer cross the river in a specific spot.
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Speaker 2: In fact, it was the spot those bucks ran to,
4:37
Speaker 2: but I couldn't see any of the deer, so I
4:39
Speaker 2: figured we'd better walk out that spot, and when we did,
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Speaker 2: I found a much more promising crossing that would allow
4:45
Speaker 2: bucks to travel through three flats along the river, mostly
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Speaker 2: in a straight line. That meant they could cruise the
4:52
Speaker 2: thickest bedding cover around where the most lush and green
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Speaker 2: browse was, they could get a drink, all while avoiding
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Speaker 2: most of the hunting pressure. It was efficient and effective,
5:03
Speaker 2: and when I looked at on X to get a
5:05
Speaker 2: better idea the whole thing, it dawned on me just
5:07
Speaker 2: how linear and straightforward the buck travel would be in
5:10
Speaker 2: that spot. It took an afternoon and then half of
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Speaker 2: a day before we decoyed in a buck on the river,
5:16
Speaker 2: and it was cool as hell. It was all about
5:18
Speaker 2: the connective tissue between those spots. Now, follow me back
5:22
Speaker 2: to Minnesota, where I've been hunting a small twenty five
5:25
Speaker 2: acre property in the suburbs. The spot only allows for
5:28
Speaker 2: a few setups, and for some reason, while I had
5:31
Speaker 2: had deer come through in different areas, there's one stretch
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Speaker 2: of woods between a wet pond and a dry pond
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Speaker 2: that a lot of the deer passed through. I sat
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Speaker 2: watching them from a different stand about seventy five yards
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Speaker 2: off the mark, and the movement didn't make sense. So
5:47
Speaker 2: once again I pulled up on X and had a
5:49
Speaker 2: real aha moment. For starters, the spot was kind of
5:53
Speaker 2: between what looked like an amazing five acre bedding area
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Speaker 2: next to someone's house and the nearest cornfield, which was
6:00
Speaker 2: very far away, but the travel was so linar and
6:04
Speaker 2: allowed them to stay and cover mostly from point A
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Speaker 2: to B and back. When I realized why I had
6:11
Speaker 2: seen so many dos come and go through there, and
6:13
Speaker 2: then why almost every cruising buck on the property seemed
6:16
Speaker 2: to use that twenty yard wide runway through the woods,
6:19
Speaker 2: it just dawned on me that spot is just a
6:22
Speaker 2: connective tissue between the betting and the food, between the
6:24
Speaker 2: food and the betting. That's not much of a dear secret.
6:27
Speaker 2: But the truth is that little patch just concentrates travel
6:30
Speaker 2: and it doesn't look like a funnel. Neither did this
6:33
Speaker 2: stuff in Iowa that I hunted, because they weren't funnels.
6:36
Speaker 3: They aren't funnels.
6:37
Speaker 2: Neither spot necked down movement physically, it was just where
6:41
Speaker 2: they chose to travel. After seeing two bucks one evening
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Speaker 2: use that spot, I told the landowner that I was
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Speaker 2: going to go rogue the next day during mid morning
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Speaker 2: and hang a stand right over it. The wind was
6:52
Speaker 2: going to be pretty good and it was going to
6:54
Speaker 2: be November seventh, So I got set up in this
6:57
Speaker 2: dreamy red oak that was positioned so well for the
7:00
Speaker 2: and honestly was something I appreciated a lot after spending
7:04
Speaker 2: so much time on public land trying to just find
7:06
Speaker 2: a tree that might work in the areas I wanted
7:09
Speaker 2: to hunt. And at one point thirty I looked behind
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Speaker 2: me and saw a buck standing where I didn't want
7:13
Speaker 2: to see a buck standing. He was going to have
7:16
Speaker 2: to come around my end of the pond, and that
7:17
Speaker 2: meant he was probably going to get my win.
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Speaker 3: Now. I had a NOSONYX unit running.
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Speaker 2: Specifically because I was worried about that exact thing happening.
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Speaker 2: But I thought, there's just no way that buck did
7:28
Speaker 2: win me. I'm sure of it. He also wanted to
7:31
Speaker 2: get past me so bad that I could see him
7:34
Speaker 2: almost weighing the danger. Now, these deer live in the suburbs,
7:38
Speaker 2: so they smell people a lot. They aren't the brightest
7:40
Speaker 2: year I've ever hunted, but they don't tolerate big mistakes either.
7:44
Speaker 2: This buck had like a real battle of wills as
7:47
Speaker 2: he almost offered up a shot and then started to
7:50
Speaker 2: finally walk off. I thought, well, you know, I guess
7:53
Speaker 2: it wasn't meant to be. But he wanted to get
7:55
Speaker 2: to that dope betting area so bad, and the only
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Speaker 2: way was to go through the pond or walk past me.
8:03
Speaker 2: And he made the wrong choice, And it was a
8:05
Speaker 2: wonderful feeling watching him pile up seventy yards away. The
8:16
Speaker 2: truth was, the whole reason I killed him was from
8:18
Speaker 2: deer observation in satellite imagery. This isn't revolutionary stuff, but
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Speaker 2: I find myself thinking too small on this front a
8:27
Speaker 2: lot of times, or maybe a better way to put
8:29
Speaker 2: it is, I find myself thinking mostly like to the
8:33
Speaker 2: size of the property, Like I limit my thought process
8:36
Speaker 2: to what do I have to hunt?
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Speaker 3: And that's it.
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Speaker 2: Now, when you hunt that small twenty five acre property,
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Speaker 2: you know, I was mostly thinking about just what the
8:43
Speaker 2: wind is going to do and what limited options I have.
8:47
Speaker 2: I'm not thinking about the fact that there's no good
8:49
Speaker 2: food source anywhere near me other than one standing cornfield
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Speaker 2: on the north end of a sod farm that is
8:54
Speaker 2: well over a half a mile away. I'm not thinking
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Speaker 2: about a scrubby patch of grass and brush that might
9:00
Speaker 2: be three acres that a handful of does bed in
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Speaker 2: every day. That's way on somebody else's land. But both
9:07
Speaker 2: of those spots are vital to the overall deer movement
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Speaker 2: on that small place I can hunt, and I'll probably
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Speaker 2: never set foot on either property. I just needed the
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Speaker 2: deer to show me what they do where I can hunt,
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Speaker 2: then figure out why via a bird's eye view of
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Speaker 2: the land. That gave me the confidence to sit there,
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Speaker 2: and it worked out really well, really fast.
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Speaker 3: What does this mean?
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Speaker 2: Well, there's two things in Iowa. I had to decide
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Speaker 2: that the connective tissue between those three spots would be
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Speaker 2: strong enough to host some good buck movement. It was,
9:40
Speaker 2: and it didn't take long to see that. With a
9:42
Speaker 2: private place by my house, I had to figure out
9:44
Speaker 2: why the deer I saw did what they did, and
9:47
Speaker 2: it made a hell of a lot more sense when
9:49
Speaker 2: I put those pieces together. This is where I like
9:52
Speaker 2: to go with deer hunting. You know how, either on
9:55
Speaker 2: a spot you know really well, or maybe you hunt
9:57
Speaker 2: with a buddy on his place. There's just like stay
10:00
Speaker 2: spots where you or he is like, hey, they I'll
10:03
Speaker 2: just go through the woods here, knowing that might be
10:06
Speaker 2: just good enough to kill it here, and that's it.
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Speaker 3: But I want to know why, and so should you.
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Speaker 2: Why do the deer walk through the woods in that
10:13
Speaker 2: particular spot during certain conditions and not during others. Where
10:17
Speaker 2: are they coming from and where are they going? What
10:20
Speaker 2: is the connective tissue holding things together there. The more
10:24
Speaker 2: you susce out the answer to those questions, the more
10:27
Speaker 2: you can put that together anywhere you go. This is
10:30
Speaker 2: why it's important to use satellite imagery to figure out
10:33
Speaker 2: as much as you can about the whole dear neighborhood
10:36
Speaker 2: you hunt, not just the spots you can actually shoot
10:39
Speaker 2: a deer in Let me give you another example. I
10:41
Speaker 2: love to hunt states where you can bait on private
10:43
Speaker 2: land but not on public. If those states allow feeders,
10:46
Speaker 2: that's even better. You know why, because the deer will
10:50
Speaker 2: often be very shy of those spots in daylight, so
10:53
Speaker 2: they'll stage up in the cover on public and then
10:56
Speaker 2: feed on the private at night. You can sometimes see
10:59
Speaker 2: feeder on aerial photos, or you can at least see
11:02
Speaker 2: the spots where there's very likely to be a feeder.
11:05
Speaker 2: In other situations, you can see food plots in the woods, ponds,
11:09
Speaker 2: egg fields, all kinds of interesting things that you may
11:12
Speaker 2: never get to hunt yourself, but could very well influence
11:15
Speaker 2: movement on your ground. This is something that you almost
11:19
Speaker 2: have to understand to be successful with any level of consistency.
11:23
Speaker 3: On public land. If you don't.
11:25
Speaker 2: Understand how the private land influences your hunts there, you're
11:28
Speaker 2: going to be shit out of luck a lot. But
11:31
Speaker 2: on private ground you can do a lot of looking
11:34
Speaker 2: into the neighboring properties to figure out not only why
11:36
Speaker 2: the deer you hunt might do what they do, but
11:39
Speaker 2: also to try to predict what the deer should be
11:41
Speaker 2: doing in the places you might not hunt.
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Speaker 3: A lot.
11:44
Speaker 2: Let me give you a hint about this. Even if
11:46
Speaker 2: you mostly hunt big woods, unbroken tracks of timber way
11:50
Speaker 2: up north or down south, there will almost always be
11:53
Speaker 2: some type of cover where the deer feel more secure.
11:57
Speaker 2: The interesting connective tissue is often just the best cover
12:00
Speaker 2: for them to go from point A to B and
12:03
Speaker 2: feel safe while they're in it. Where a lot of
12:05
Speaker 2: hunters make a mistake here is thinking that any woods
12:08
Speaker 2: is good cover.
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Speaker 3: It's not.
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Speaker 2: Open wood sucks, and deer mostly don't like it unless
12:13
Speaker 2: they literally don't have a better option or they get
12:15
Speaker 2: no hunting pressure. Generally, the connective tissue between spots will
12:19
Speaker 2: be something that has a soft edge, or something that
12:22
Speaker 2: just allows them to travel without being seen by people.
12:25
Speaker 2: This is most evident and easy to understand. If you
12:28
Speaker 2: hunt open country, the deer will gravitate toward ever so
12:32
Speaker 2: slight elevation changes like it's their job, which it kind
12:35
Speaker 2: of is, because their job is to not get shot
12:37
Speaker 2: by you. They'll cater their routes to every patch of
12:40
Speaker 2: willows or sumac or the little bit taller CRP field
12:44
Speaker 2: so that they can go from where they want to
12:46
Speaker 2: be to where they want to be without being spotted.
12:50
Speaker 2: It's really that simple, but it's also not because these
12:53
Speaker 2: routes exist because they are safe. They not only have
12:56
Speaker 2: the visibility advantage mostly, but they often have a wind
13:00
Speaker 2: advantage too. That spot that I killed my Minnesota buck
13:03
Speaker 2: in favors me very specifically around that pond because that
13:07
Speaker 2: puts a slight wrinkle into their travel plans. They just
13:10
Speaker 2: kind of have to go to the one side of
13:12
Speaker 2: it or the other, and primarily to one side, which
13:16
Speaker 2: allows me to set up and play very specific wind directions.
13:19
Speaker 2: Every other location on that property that is along that
13:22
Speaker 2: travel route doesn't offer the same advantage. So really this
13:27
Speaker 2: is kind of a big first step to think about
13:30
Speaker 2: where do the deer prefer to travel because it offers
13:32
Speaker 2: security and it connects to places they want to be,
13:35
Speaker 2: Then how the hell do you hunt it? This is
13:38
Speaker 2: the one that a lot of folks get tripped up on,
13:41
Speaker 2: but it's a good idea to think about these types
13:42
Speaker 2: of spots first. As big as you can on that
13:46
Speaker 2: property by my house, I could probably say that the
13:48
Speaker 2: travel route that I can hunt might consist of maybe
13:51
Speaker 2: two hundred and fifty yards of open country and cover
13:54
Speaker 2: of that, there's one spot where a pond forces some
13:57
Speaker 2: level of movement. There are no hills, there are no
14:00
Speaker 2: fence crossing. There's just two hundred and fifty yards to
14:02
Speaker 2: work with, of which about twenty five of them offer
14:05
Speaker 2: me a real advantage if the prevailing north or west
14:08
Speaker 2: winds show up like they're supposed to, but mostly haven't
14:11
Speaker 2: this year for some reason. And why does this matter again,
14:14
Speaker 2: I'm going to say this because I have to. People
14:16
Speaker 2: like to sit the easy spots and try to draw
14:18
Speaker 2: deer to them by calling or rattling or decoying or whatever.
14:21
Speaker 3: That's great.
14:22
Speaker 2: It can be in the nail in the coffin when
14:24
Speaker 2: you've done the rest of the work to identify a
14:26
Speaker 2: spot like this, But the ticket to being a good
14:29
Speaker 2: consistent hunter is figuring out exactly where deer like to
14:31
Speaker 2: walk first. You can be a master deer caller, but
14:35
Speaker 2: if you don't have the first part, you won't be
14:37
Speaker 2: as successful as you could be. It's the defining factor
14:40
Speaker 2: in great hunters, and it's something that all of us
14:43
Speaker 2: can benefit from. It's great for bow hunting. It's damn
14:46
Speaker 2: near a necessity if you gun hunt anywhere with real
14:49
Speaker 2: hunting pressure. If you spend time on public land, You
14:52
Speaker 2: better think about this stuff because it'll come into play
14:54
Speaker 2: in so many different scenarios. And this isn't just a
14:57
Speaker 2: white tail thing either. Connective tissue between spots and animals
15:01
Speaker 2: prefers huge in the elkwoods. It'll make you a deadly
15:04
Speaker 2: turkey hunt once you understand how it works. It's something
15:07
Speaker 2: to think about no matter what you hunt, where you hunt.
15:10
Speaker 2: So take a little time to think about your season
15:12
Speaker 2: thus far. Does any of this give you any idea
15:15
Speaker 2: on what you should scout digitally? Does it make you
15:19
Speaker 2: think about the stuff you might be missing. Maybe you
15:22
Speaker 2: didn't have a great season and you can't figure out
15:24
Speaker 2: where the deer are. That might be as simple as
15:26
Speaker 2: something along some part of their travel route changing, and
15:29
Speaker 2: it might not have anything to do with the property
15:31
Speaker 2: you hunt. Take a look at the most current satellite
15:35
Speaker 2: imagery you can find. Think about the deer you did see.
15:39
Speaker 2: Were any of them doing something you thought was random,
15:41
Speaker 2: Because it probably wasn't. It was probably just tied into
15:44
Speaker 2: something you don't quite understand yet. There's more to this
15:48
Speaker 2: stuff than deer like to walk along the swamp across the.
15:51
Speaker 3: Ridge here in September, but they're in November.
15:54
Speaker 2: Figure out why if you can and get your ass
15:56
Speaker 2: into some of those spots and look for that connective
15:59
Speaker 2: tissue to with the whole thing together. And come back
16:02
Speaker 2: next week because I'm going to talk about the challenges
16:04
Speaker 2: of cold weather hunting and how to overcome some of them.
16:09
Speaker 3: That's it for this week. I'm Tony Peterson.
16:10
Speaker 2: This has been the Wired to Hunt Foundations podcast, which
16:12
Speaker 2: is brought to you by First Light. As always, thank
16:15
Speaker 2: you so much for listening and for all your support.
16:17
Speaker 3: You know, we just went through a big sale.
16:19
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16:22
Speaker 2: whatever you're doing, or maybe you're just going to the
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16:28
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16:32
Speaker 2: If you want to get a fix, you can see
16:33
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16:36
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16:38
Speaker 3: Go check it out.