Latest / Wired To Hunt Podcast / Ep. 1070: Foundations - How to Decipher Early Buck Sign and Use it to Fill Your Tags Now

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Ep. 1070: Foundations - How to Decipher Early Buck Sign and Use it to Fill Your Tags Now · Wired To Hunt Podcast

• 0:01
  Speaker 1: Welcome to the Wired2Hunt Foundations podcast, your guide to the
• 0:05
  Speaker 1: fundamentals of better deer hunting. Presented by First Light, creating proven,
• 0:10
  Speaker 1: versatile hunting apparel for the stand, saddle, or blind. First Light,
• 0:15
  Speaker 1: go farther, stay longer. And now, your host, Tony Peterson.
• 0:20
  Speaker 2: Hey, everyone.
• 0:21
  Speaker 3: Welcome to the Wired2Hunt Foundations podcast, which is brought to
• 0:24
  Speaker 3: you by First Light. I'm your host, Tony Peterson. And
• 0:25
  Speaker 3: today's episode is all about early season deer sign and
• 0:29
  Speaker 3: how you can use it to fill your September buck tags.
• 0:34
  Speaker 3: For a heck of a lot of us, deer season
• 0:36
  Speaker 3: is finally here. For the rest, it's coming very, very soon.
• 0:41
  Speaker 3: What has happened and what will happen is that a
• 0:43
  Speaker 3: lot of folks will get out there. They'll hunt some
• 0:45
  Speaker 3: destination food sources. and then either celebrate their success or
• 0:49
  Speaker 3: start to throttle back until October cold fronts and the
• 0:52
  Speaker 3: first whispers of the rut get them off the couch
• 0:55
  Speaker 3: and back into the woods.
• 0:57
  Speaker 2: In my not-so-humble opinion, that's kind of a bad way
• 0:59
  Speaker 2: to look at it.
• 1:01
  Speaker 3: I think a better way is to try to understand
• 1:03
  Speaker 3: what the bucks do around the opener and then use
• 1:06
  Speaker 3: sign to clue yourself into exactly where to kill them,
• 1:09
  Speaker 3: which is what I'm going to talk about right now.
• 1:16
  Speaker 3: Back in October of 1980, a former security guard from
• 1:20
  Speaker 3: Honolulu with no prior criminal convictions set out to model
• 1:25
  Speaker 3: his life after a fictional character in the novel Catcher
• 1:29
  Speaker 3: in the Rye. That fella who was looking to live
• 1:32
  Speaker 3: his life like Holden Caulfield, the book's protagonist who was
• 1:36
  Speaker 3: obsessed with phonies and hypocrisy, was named Mark David Chapman.
• 1:41
  Speaker 3: If that rings a vaguely familiar bell in some of
• 1:43
  Speaker 3: your brains... It's probably because Chapman had heard John Lennon
• 1:47
  Speaker 3: of the Beatles say that the band was more popular
• 1:50
  Speaker 3: than Jesus. Lennon also wrote the song Imagine, where he
• 1:54
  Speaker 3: sings a line that goes, imagine no possessions, in a
• 1:58
  Speaker 3: nod to how materialism shouldn't really matter and it's not
• 2:00
  Speaker 3: good for us as a society. Chapman thought that line,
• 2:04
  Speaker 3: you know, with Lennon's actual lavish lifestyle and many, many
• 2:08
  Speaker 3: luxury possessions, made him a phony. So he went out
• 2:12
  Speaker 3: and bought a. 38 revolver, and hatched a plan to
• 2:15
  Speaker 3: wait for Lennon. Not only when he actually made that
• 2:18
  Speaker 3: happen did the two exchange pleasantries on the sidewalk, but
• 2:22
  Speaker 3: Chapman is quoted as saying, he was very kind to me. Ironically,
• 2:26
  Speaker 3: very kind and patient with me. But that kindness wasn't enough, though.
• 2:31
  Speaker 3: And later that night when Lennon returned, Chapman fired five
• 2:34
  Speaker 3: hollow point bullets into his back. Lennon's murder obviously altered
• 2:38
  Speaker 3: the course of rock and roll and, you know, kind
• 2:40
  Speaker 3: of music in general.
• 2:42
  Speaker 2: And possibly the world to some extent. It was a
• 2:44
  Speaker 2: big deal.
• 2:46
  Speaker 3: This left Lennon's wife, Yoko Ono, who is known for
• 2:49
  Speaker 3: absolutely horrendous singing and, well, being partially responsible for breaking
• 2:54
  Speaker 3: up the Beatles.
• 2:55
  Speaker 1: A widow.
• 2:56
  Speaker 3: But before her, Lennon was married to a woman named Cynthia.
• 3:01
  Speaker 3: They had a turbulent relationship. She eventually got pregnant, and
• 3:05
  Speaker 3: it being about 60 years ago, meant they felt like
• 3:08
  Speaker 3: they needed to get married.
• 3:10
  Speaker 2: Now, that child was.
• 3:11
  Speaker 3: Born, and they named it John Charles Julian Lennon. But
• 3:14
  Speaker 3: he was always called Julian after John's late mother. Now,
• 3:18
  Speaker 3: when Cynthia and John called it quits on their marriage,
• 3:22
  Speaker 3: Beatles frontman Paul McCartney would drive out to visit Cynthia
• 3:26
  Speaker 3: and Julian to try to comfort them during the divorce
• 3:29
  Speaker 3: and the disillusion of their family. On one of those drives,
• 3:33
  Speaker 3: the line, Hey Jules, don't make it bad, take a
• 3:36
  Speaker 3: sad song and make it better, rattled through his brain.
• 3:40
  Speaker 3: That line, and the melody he put to it, ended
• 3:44
  Speaker 3: up being the basis for the hit song, Hey Jude.
• 3:47
  Speaker 3: Just 14 words or so at the start, ended up
• 3:50
  Speaker 3: becoming one of their biggest hits, and is a song
• 3:52
  Speaker 3: that is dang near universally loved still to this day.
• 3:57
  Speaker 3: That songwriting process reminds me of something else that starts
• 4:00
  Speaker 3: very minimal, and then grows to become more complex and nuanced,
• 4:05
  Speaker 3: and which probably won't seem like it makes much sense
• 4:07
  Speaker 3: until I explain it, which is Dearsign. specifically early deer sign,
• 4:13
  Speaker 3: like the rubs and scrapes you might find in the
• 4:15
  Speaker 3: woods right now. You see, over time the woods will
• 4:19
  Speaker 3: be full of deer sign, and the whole picture of
• 4:21
  Speaker 3: buck usage gets a lot muddier pretty quick, especially in
• 4:25
  Speaker 3: areas with high deer densities. Now there's quite a bit
• 4:28
  Speaker 3: of whitetail research out there that really contextualizes this reality.
• 4:33
  Speaker 3: One study conducted in northern Georgia, where the deer density
• 4:36
  Speaker 3: was estimated to be about 37 deer per square mile,
• 4:39
  Speaker 3: revealed nearly 600 rubs per square mile, with rubbing activity
• 4:45
  Speaker 3: occurring pretty consistently throughout the fall. Now, another study up
• 4:48
  Speaker 3: in Pennsylvania, which was conducted in a state forest, showed
• 4:52
  Speaker 3: far fewer rubs at only about 53 per square mile.
• 4:56
  Speaker 3: So there's definitely a range, and it's highly dependent not
• 4:59
  Speaker 3: only on the amount of deer out there in any
• 5:01
  Speaker 3: given area, but the amount of mature bucks that are present.
• 5:05
  Speaker 3: Another study I found showed that mature bucks make about 50%
• 5:08
  Speaker 3: more rubs than yearlings, which means that the.
• 5:11
  Speaker 2: More older deer you have, the more rubs you have
• 5:13
  Speaker 2: to work with.
• 5:15
  Speaker 3: Now, in the context of songwriting, you might have a
• 5:17
  Speaker 3: single line of a melody, or maybe a guitar riff,
• 5:21
  Speaker 3: you know, and eventually the verses and the chorus and
• 5:23
  Speaker 3: the bridge get fleshed out. And somewhere along the way,
• 5:26
  Speaker 3: the drummer sits down and starts a mental count, and
• 5:28
  Speaker 3: then the bass line shows up, and a whole bunch
• 5:30
  Speaker 3: of other elements form the tapestry for a finished song.
• 5:34
  Speaker 3: Right now with Deersign, we have just that one line,
• 5:38
  Speaker 3: a little melody. And you know what it's saying? It
• 5:41
  Speaker 3: says the bucks you want to shoot are right here,
• 5:44
  Speaker 3: right now. In a month, the sign will say that
• 5:48
  Speaker 3: the bucks are here and here and here and there
• 5:51
  Speaker 3: and all over. But right now where you find those rubs,
• 5:54
  Speaker 3: you'll find those bucks. They aren't roaming all over the
• 5:58
  Speaker 3: countryside yet in preparation for the rut. They are just
• 6:01
  Speaker 3: slipping from summer patterns to fall patterns. but they are
• 6:04
  Speaker 3: mostly predictable and mostly on a fairly set schedule. Because
• 6:09
  Speaker 3: of that, you and I as hunters have a huge
• 6:12
  Speaker 3: advantage over them because even though the sign is pretty
• 6:14
  Speaker 3: sparse right now, what sign is out there is very valuable.
• 6:20
  Speaker 3: I've been reminded of this several times in the last
• 6:22
  Speaker 3: 15 days or so. I spent a lot of time
• 6:25
  Speaker 3: over in Wisconsin walking around and looking at 1 billion
• 6:27
  Speaker 3: acorns on the ground and a lot of fresh deer tracks.
• 6:31
  Speaker 3: But one swampy crossing on public land that I checked
• 6:34
  Speaker 3: out where I found an ancient apple tree led me
• 6:37
  Speaker 3: to a low bench on a bluff. You know, it's
• 6:40
  Speaker 3: the kind of bench that is sort of meadowy, but
• 6:42
  Speaker 3: also features plenty of trees. It's just the kind of
• 6:45
  Speaker 3: place where bucks love to bed and stage.
• 6:48
  Speaker 2: But above that bench.
• 6:49
  Speaker 3: I found a smaller, more subtle bench that was not
• 6:53
  Speaker 3: only loaded with acorns, but also loaded with deer poop
• 6:57
  Speaker 3: and several rubs. Every one of those rubs faced uphill
• 7:02
  Speaker 3: toward the ridgetop that leads to a private hayfield. Very
• 7:06
  Speaker 3: classic food to bed stuff. But the interesting thing is
• 7:10
  Speaker 3: that those bucks that made those rubs showed me exactly
• 7:13
  Speaker 3: where they are staging now. And because of that, and
• 7:16
  Speaker 3: because I know very likely where their destination food source
• 7:19
  Speaker 3: is and can make an educated guess on their bedding area,
• 7:23
  Speaker 3: I can predict where they should be most killable. All
• 7:26
  Speaker 3: of that is made possible by finding rubs right now.
• 7:30
  Speaker 3: Of course, it's not that easy because as soon as
• 7:32
  Speaker 3: I walked out that ridge, I found a mulch remounted
• 7:35
  Speaker 3: to a tree facing down the best trail leading to
• 7:37
  Speaker 3: that private buffet. And when I walked it out to
• 7:40
  Speaker 3: try to find a good access route, I also stumbled
• 7:43
  Speaker 3: across a fresh trail marked with flagging tape. Meaning, I
• 7:47
  Speaker 3: would guess, that if I were to go in there
• 7:49
  Speaker 3: early in the season, I'd very likely have company. But
• 7:53
  Speaker 3: I'm also guessing that whoever has that setup ready to
• 7:56
  Speaker 3: go is going to hunt those deer very close to
• 7:59
  Speaker 3: that fence line and that private food source, which is
• 8:02
  Speaker 3: exactly why the bucks are staging where they are. They
• 8:05
  Speaker 3: know where we like to try to kill them, and
• 8:07
  Speaker 3: they structure their lives around that. That hunter might kill one.
• 8:11
  Speaker 2: I hope he does.
• 8:12
  Speaker 3: But I also think that it's very likely he's off
• 8:14
  Speaker 3: by a couple hundred yards on that setup. I guess
• 8:17
  Speaker 3: I'll probably never know. But I do know that I
• 8:20
  Speaker 3: drove from Wisconsin to southeastern Minnesota with an old-town kayak
• 8:23
  Speaker 3: in the back of my pickup, and I met up
• 8:25
  Speaker 3: with a videographer buddy of mine to paddle into some
• 8:28
  Speaker 3: landlocked public land that holds a special place in my
• 8:31
  Speaker 3: heart for a.
• 8:32
  Speaker 2: Lot of reasons.
• 8:43
  Speaker 3: We paddled up that river in the pouring rain, through
• 8:46
  Speaker 3: a valley bookended by sheer bluffs, and looked into the
• 8:49
  Speaker 3: water for smallies and into the sky for eagles.
• 8:52
  Speaker 2: It's just beautiful.
• 8:53
  Speaker 3: And I've hunted a lot of beautiful places, but that
• 8:56
  Speaker 3: one is way up there. And I'm hoping the eventual
• 8:58
  Speaker 3: film I'll make out of that hunt will show it
• 9:00
  Speaker 3: just as I see it. And we filmed a clueless
• 9:03
  Speaker 3: beaver for a while on the bank and then beached
• 9:06
  Speaker 3: our kayaks, waded through a river bottom jungle, and then
• 9:09
  Speaker 3: hiked up a large ridge that was crisscrossed with deer
• 9:12
  Speaker 3: trails at the bottom. At one point, the ridge tightened
• 9:17
  Speaker 3: up quite a bit, largely due to a big old
• 9:20
  Speaker 3: limestone outcropping. which means that the bottom of the ridge
• 9:24
  Speaker 3: splays out and allows for travel pretty much everywhere, just
• 9:27
  Speaker 3: as the top of the ridge does, but the middle
• 9:29
  Speaker 3: part doesn't. It's kind of like an hourglass shape. It
• 9:33
  Speaker 3: necks down tight, and all trails converge into one from
• 9:37
  Speaker 3: the top and the bottom, which, if you know anything
• 9:40
  Speaker 3: about pinch points and buck travel, is a very nice
• 9:43
  Speaker 3: thing to find. Now, as I stood at the top
• 9:45
  Speaker 3: of that pinch point looking for a tree to set
• 9:47
  Speaker 3: up in and wondering just how sketchy it would be
• 9:49
  Speaker 3: to climb up there In the dark, on the riverside
• 9:52
  Speaker 3: of the bluff, which is very steep, I spotted.
• 9:54
  Speaker 2: A fresh rub.
• 9:55
  Speaker 3: It was clearly made by a buck that had followed
• 9:58
  Speaker 3: the main trail and then peeled off to go bed.
• 10:02
  Speaker 3: If I were planning to hunt there opening weekend, that
• 10:04
  Speaker 3: one rub would have probably convinced me of finding a
• 10:07
  Speaker 3: way to set up there very early in the morning
• 10:10
  Speaker 3: to wait for that buck to drop off those private
• 10:12
  Speaker 3: fields on top and make his way toward the river
• 10:15
  Speaker 3: bottom to sleep away the day. Since I'm not going
• 10:18
  Speaker 3: back there until October... It was just an encouraging find. Now,
• 10:22
  Speaker 3: we hiked every ridge and valley on that property and
• 10:25
  Speaker 3: specifically catered our route to check out the farthest ridge
• 10:28
  Speaker 3: from the private fields. It's the kind of spot you
• 10:31
  Speaker 3: look at on onX and think, bucks have to use that.
• 10:35
  Speaker 3: The way it flattens out at the top and allows
• 10:37
  Speaker 3: for different routes to get into the bedding cover below
• 10:39
  Speaker 3: or through the nearest valley to get toward the private
• 10:41
  Speaker 3: ag was just money. And when we got on the
• 10:44
  Speaker 3: top of it, we walked to the very point of
• 10:46
  Speaker 3: that ridge before it drops off and I spotted a rub.
• 10:49
  Speaker 3: then another, and pretty soon we could stand in one
• 10:52
  Speaker 3: spot and spin it a circle and count several rubs
• 10:55
  Speaker 3: and see a very fresh scrape. One of the trees
• 10:59
  Speaker 3: was actually rubbed so hard that it was broken and
• 11:01
  Speaker 3: laying on the ground, and it wasn't a super tiny
• 11:03
  Speaker 3: tree either. It was clear that several bucks were using
• 11:07
  Speaker 3: that ridgetop, and they were spending a lot of time there.
• 11:10
  Speaker 3: In fact, we jumped three deer around there, and all
• 11:13
  Speaker 3: three of them were bucks. Two of them were scrappers,
• 11:16
  Speaker 3: but one was really nice, and he was bedded just
• 11:18
  Speaker 3: below that ridge top. That concentration of sign, when I
• 11:23
  Speaker 3: found it on September 8th, was plain as day. The
• 11:28
  Speaker 3: bucks are there now, and they are spending a lot
• 11:31
  Speaker 3: of time there. What's better is that those rubs showed
• 11:34
  Speaker 3: me the direction of travel of those bucks and made
• 11:37
  Speaker 3: a pretty clear case that that they were bedding there
• 11:40
  Speaker 3: or close by and just killing time in that spot
• 11:43
  Speaker 3: in the evenings before they walk the valley out to
• 11:45
  Speaker 3: get to that egg. This is the thing that seems
• 11:49
  Speaker 3: to be missing from a lot of hunters in their
• 11:51
  Speaker 3: strategy for getting on a big deer when it comes
• 11:53
  Speaker 3: to sign. We like it when sign shows up around
• 11:56
  Speaker 3: our favorite spots as the season progresses.
• 11:59
  Speaker 2: But what does that mean?
• 12:01
  Speaker 3: Well, in some ways it means that the bucks are
• 12:03
  Speaker 3: laying down a lot of sign and some of that
• 12:05
  Speaker 3: happens to be around our stands. To me, that's more
• 12:08
  Speaker 3: of a measure of just increased buck activity in general,
• 12:12
  Speaker 3: but it's not being used to get on buck movement
• 12:14
  Speaker 3: right now, if that makes any sense. Another way we
• 12:17
  Speaker 3: use sign is by going in, finding some rubs or
• 12:20
  Speaker 3: a big old community scrape, and hunting over either. And
• 12:24
  Speaker 3: this can work, but it doesn't take into account not
• 12:27
  Speaker 3: only why the sign is there, but what that sign
• 12:30
  Speaker 3: means to current buck movement.
• 12:33
  Speaker 2: Now, don't get me wrong.
• 12:34
  Speaker 3: I'd rather always hunt around buck sign than not, but
• 12:36
  Speaker 3: it's just not so simple. There are times of the season,
• 12:40
  Speaker 3: especially when you get closer to the pre-rut and the rut,
• 12:43
  Speaker 3: where you can almost always find yourself hunting around fresh
• 12:46
  Speaker 3: sign because it's everywhere. This is true in high deer
• 12:49
  Speaker 3: density areas and in areas where there isn't a whole
• 12:52
  Speaker 3: lot of meaningful cover. I've seen this in the plain
• 12:55
  Speaker 3: states a lot, where every patch of timber or piece
• 12:59
  Speaker 3: of brush is ringed by scrapes or rubs, but because
• 13:01
  Speaker 3: every patch is... None of them are like obviously special.
• 13:06
  Speaker 3: It would kind of be like if you just ate
• 13:07
  Speaker 3: awesome pizza and your favorite apple pie every day. At
• 13:10
  Speaker 3: some point, the treat aspect is just meaningless because you've
• 13:12
  Speaker 3: done it too much. Maybe that's a bad example. But
• 13:15
  Speaker 3: the main point here is that there is a window
• 13:17
  Speaker 3: in the early season where sign really matters a lot
• 13:20
  Speaker 3: because it's rare. And because it's rare, where it shows
• 13:23
  Speaker 3: up matters a lot. Now, most people will never engage
• 13:28
  Speaker 3: in this type of hunting I'm talking about, though. because
• 13:31
  Speaker 3: it involves scouting right before you plan to hunt or
• 13:34
  Speaker 3: during the first week or two of the season. When
• 13:37
  Speaker 3: we generally try to be super cautious about our presence,
• 13:40
  Speaker 3: the risk-reward ratio feels out of whack for a lot
• 13:43
  Speaker 3: of us. And that's partially because we've been conditioned to
• 13:45
  Speaker 3: play things a little too safely with the deer by,
• 13:48
  Speaker 3: you know, listening to people who have the luxury of
• 13:50
  Speaker 3: waiting out perfect conditions and perfect seasonal timing. A better
• 13:54
  Speaker 3: bet is to scout now for fresh sign and then
• 13:57
  Speaker 3: hunt it as soon as you possibly can. Now maybe
• 14:00
  Speaker 3: you need to wait for a rainstorm to go poking
• 14:02
  Speaker 3: around to minimize your impact on the deer. It's a
• 14:04
  Speaker 3: good idea and something I do intentionally a lot in
• 14:07
  Speaker 3: the early season. Or maybe your season is already open
• 14:10
  Speaker 3: and you can grab your saddle and some sticks and
• 14:12
  Speaker 3: go sneak around until you find a couple fresh rubs.
• 14:16
  Speaker 3: The key is to try to make an educated guess
• 14:17
  Speaker 3: on where the bucks are likely to feed and then
• 14:20
  Speaker 3: backtrack those travel routes. Like I said earlier, right now
• 14:24
  Speaker 3: really the name of the game is bed to food and.
• 14:27
  Speaker 2: Food to bed.
• 14:28
  Speaker 3: Even in areas where browse largely dominates, because there will
• 14:32
  Speaker 3: be highly preferred browsing areas, often low areas with lush,
• 14:35
  Speaker 3: moisture-filled vegetation this time of year. Now, I know this
• 14:39
  Speaker 3: won't help everyone, but if you do hunt an area
• 14:41
  Speaker 3: that's pretty dry, and you can get around some dark,
• 14:44
  Speaker 3: green vegetation, you're usually on to something.
• 14:48
  Speaker 2: Either way, if you can make.
• 14:49
  Speaker 3: An educated guess on where your summer-turned-early-fall bucks are likely
• 14:53
  Speaker 3: to feed overnight, you can probably figure out how they
• 14:56
  Speaker 3: get there.
• 14:57
  Speaker 2: And roughly where they might bed.
• 14:59
  Speaker 3: This travel will often be somewhat condensed because the woods
• 15:03
  Speaker 3: are thick and cover is everywhere. But somewhere on those routes,
• 15:07
  Speaker 3: if you guess right, the bucks will tell you far
• 15:10
  Speaker 3: more precisely where they are traveling. They'll show you rubs
• 15:14
  Speaker 3: leading to the food or away from the food, which
• 15:17
  Speaker 3: can tell you whether you need to get in super
• 15:19
  Speaker 3: early in the pre-dawn darkness or pretty dang early in
• 15:22
  Speaker 3: the afternoon for an evening sit. This is not a
• 15:25
  Speaker 3: situation where you want to find a few rubs and
• 15:27
  Speaker 3: then drop a camera on them, because that will have
• 15:29
  Speaker 3: you in reactive mode instead of a proactive mode. The
• 15:33
  Speaker 3: rubs that are out there right now, and the scrapes
• 15:35
  Speaker 3: if you can find them, show you where the bucks
• 15:38
  Speaker 3: are right now, and that means you know where they
• 15:41
  Speaker 3: are killable. I don't mean to make this sound easy,
• 15:44
  Speaker 3: because it generally isn't, but I can say that I
• 15:47
  Speaker 3: have quite a few September bucks mounted in my basement,
• 15:50
  Speaker 3: and a heck of a lot of them are there,
• 15:53
  Speaker 3: because of me finding a few rubs right before the
• 15:56
  Speaker 3: season opened or during the first week or two. Now
• 15:59
  Speaker 3: it's also important to note that I don't care at
• 16:02
  Speaker 3: all right now about the size of the rubs. A
• 16:05
  Speaker 3: big one's great, because that usually means you're not dealing
• 16:07
  Speaker 3: with a forky, but small rubs are important too. I've
• 16:10
  Speaker 3: watched a couple of really big deer make really small
• 16:14
  Speaker 3: rubs in my life, and I have found that they
• 16:16
  Speaker 3: just don't seem to make too many giant rubs early.
• 16:20
  Speaker 3: A lot of the rubs I find now are on
• 16:22
  Speaker 3: saplings that might be, I don't know, like an inch
• 16:24
  Speaker 3: in diameter. But that doesn't tell me how big the
• 16:27
  Speaker 3: bucks are that made them. What I do know is
• 16:29
  Speaker 3: that if I find and hunt rubs right now, regardless
• 16:32
  Speaker 3: of the size of the rubs, I find I'm often
• 16:35
  Speaker 3: in the running to shoot a mature buck. I think
• 16:38
  Speaker 3: big bucks rub early and more often than little ones.
• 16:41
  Speaker 3: And some of the research seems to back that up.
• 16:43
  Speaker 3: Either way, what I do know now is that you
• 16:46
  Speaker 3: can play the only hunt field edge evening game Or
• 16:49
  Speaker 3: you can go burn some boot leather and find some
• 16:52
  Speaker 3: fresh buck sign and then figure out if they should
• 16:55
  Speaker 3: be hunted in the morning or the evening or both.
• 16:58
  Speaker 3: And if you do that, you'll be doing something most
• 17:00
  Speaker 3: hunters won't. And that is often the biggest difference between
• 17:03
  Speaker 3: killing mature bucks and just watching squirrels. It's also a
• 17:07
  Speaker 3: hell of a lot of fun to play that chess
• 17:09
  Speaker 3: game with them right now. So give it a shot
• 17:12
  Speaker 3: and come back next week because I'm going to drop
• 17:13
  Speaker 3: another episode about how I look at my setups as
• 17:17
  Speaker 3: being killer setups. versus just setups that maybe won't produce
• 17:22
  Speaker 3: close shots. That's it for this week. I'm Tony Peterson.
• 17:25
  Speaker 3: This has been the Wired to Hunt Foundations podcast, which
• 17:28
  Speaker 3: is brought to you by First Light. As always, thank
• 17:31
  Speaker 3: you so much for all your support. All of us
• 17:34
  Speaker 3: here at MeatEater, it means the world to us to
• 17:36
  Speaker 3: have such a great audience.
• 17:37
  Speaker 2: So thank you for that.
• 17:39
  Speaker 3: If you need some more deer hunting content, maybe you're
• 17:42
  Speaker 3: planning your first Western trip. Maybe you just need to
• 17:44
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• 17:48
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• 17:56
  Speaker 2: On how to kill a buck, how to catch a trout.
• 17:58
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• 18:02
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• 18:04
  Speaker 3: More than enough content to keep you busy for a long, long,
• 18:07
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• 18:09
  Speaker 3: again for your support.