Latest / Wired To Hunt Podcast / Ep. 592: Foundations - Don't Fall In Love With Deer Hunting Ideas
Transcript
- 0:01Speaker 1: Welcome to the Wired to Hunt Foundations podcast, your guide
- 0:05Speaker 1: to the fundamentals of better deer hunting, and now your
- 0:10Speaker 1: host Tony Peterson. Hey, everyone, welcome to the Wire to
- 0:14Speaker 1: Hunt Foundations podcast, which has brought to you by First Light.
- 0:17Speaker 1: I'm your host, Tony Peterson, and today's episode is all
- 0:20Speaker 1: about the deer hunting ideas that we love, but how
- 0:23Speaker 1: most aren't really what they appear to be. This is
- 0:37Speaker 1: kind of like a weird concept this week, my friends,
- 0:41Speaker 1: but you're gonna have to bear with me because I
- 0:43Speaker 1: think it's important to overall deer hunting success and really
- 0:46Speaker 1: the reality of rutt hunting, which is coming up awful
- 0:49Speaker 1: damn quick here. You've probably picked up on this already
- 0:52Speaker 1: from some of these episodes, but I'm a big believer
- 0:56Speaker 1: that a lot of our deer hunting success comes from
- 0:58Speaker 1: two places, hard physical work and the three pound mass
- 1:02Speaker 1: of fat and electricity between our ears. The latter is
- 1:05Speaker 1: what this week is really all about, and I think
- 1:07Speaker 1: you'll get something out of it as we all buckle
- 1:09Speaker 1: in for what should be the best part of the
- 1:11Speaker 1: deer season. There are three definitions for the word idea.
- 1:27Speaker 1: The first is something such as a thought or conception
- 1:32Speaker 1: that is the product of mental activity. The second is
- 1:36Speaker 1: an opinion or conviction or principle. The third is a plan, purpose,
- 1:42Speaker 1: or goal. Now maybe it's the English geek in me,
- 1:46Speaker 1: but honestly don't know why I listed those out for you.
- 1:49Speaker 1: I'm sure you already knew what the hell an idea was,
- 1:51Speaker 1: and if you didn't, you should probably be hunting squirrels
- 1:53Speaker 1: for a few years before you tart your white tails.
- 1:56Speaker 1: Another thing about ideas is that we fall in love
- 1:59Speaker 1: with um. If you were to take a walk through
- 2:03Speaker 1: my house and rummage around every closet, you'd find evidence
- 2:07Speaker 1: that the Peterson's are prone to this very problem. One
- 2:12Speaker 1: in particular, one member of my family, I should say,
- 2:15Speaker 1: who shall remain nameless, has all kinds of physical evidence
- 2:20Speaker 1: of ideas that she has fallen in love with. Where
- 2:23Speaker 1: fantasy land met reality and the whole thing follow the
- 2:26Speaker 1: sky like a goose that has just soaked up the
- 2:28Speaker 1: brunt of a three and a half inch load of
- 2:30Speaker 1: steel yoga mats, an easel for painting random crafty things
- 2:35Speaker 1: meant to be turned into some kind of kitchy home
- 2:38Speaker 1: to core stuff. You'd find them all tucked into our
- 2:41Speaker 1: closets covered in dust, shoved into the back corners away
- 2:45Speaker 1: from the light, and you'd probably think we aren't very
- 2:48Speaker 1: good at seeing things through, and you'd be right, And honestly,
- 2:51Speaker 1: I'm not immune. If you poked around all the random
- 2:55Speaker 1: de tritus of my life, you'd find all kinds of
- 2:58Speaker 1: things like this. You'd find more fly tying and lure
- 3:01Speaker 1: making material than I could use in ten lifetimes. Hell,
- 3:04Speaker 1: you'd find old pots, plastic jig trailer molds, and squeeze
- 3:08Speaker 1: tubes full of goo that are supposed to be heated
- 3:10Speaker 1: into fishing plastics. Now, let me tell you, I loved, loved,
- 3:15Speaker 1: past tense, the idea of making my own stuff in
- 3:18Speaker 1: my own colors so that the outdoor big box stores
- 3:20Speaker 1: wouldn't get all my money every spring and summer when
- 3:22Speaker 1: I wanted to fish. But it took me just one
- 3:25Speaker 1: session where I heated the plastic compound up on the
- 3:28Speaker 1: kitchen stove to realize that inhaling burnt plastic fumes is
- 3:32Speaker 1: a great way to nearly pass out and also have
- 3:34Speaker 1: a hazy conversation with God. That was the second worst
- 3:39Speaker 1: experience I've had with the kitchen stove. The first was
- 3:41Speaker 1: when I decided to try to try to boil a
- 3:43Speaker 1: buck skull on it when my wife was gone for
- 3:45Speaker 1: the day. Now, if you can't imagine the smell of that,
- 3:49Speaker 1: I'd say that my house kind of stunk like if
- 3:51Speaker 1: you let a skunk spray a road kill deer in
- 3:53Speaker 1: August in Death Valley. Then it marinated for a few
- 3:57Speaker 1: hours before he started adding discarded undergarden. It's from our
- 4:00Speaker 1: less personal hygiene, concerned members of society. If after that
- 4:04Speaker 1: you soaked it in dog diarrhea, you'd be in the ballpark.
- 4:08Speaker 1: It wasn't my finest moment, and neither was nearly sending
- 4:11Speaker 1: myself to the Great Tree standing in the sky to
- 4:13Speaker 1: save four dollars a bag on flipping jig trailers. In
- 4:17Speaker 1: other words, not all the ideas are great, and falling
- 4:20Speaker 1: in love with ideas is generally a bad idea. Take
- 4:24Speaker 1: an obvious example here, the all day sit with the
- 4:29Speaker 1: rut speeding right at us right now. All day sits,
- 4:33Speaker 1: they should be pretty common, but are they. Let's break
- 4:37Speaker 1: this down for a second. As an idea, the all
- 4:40Speaker 1: day sit makes near perfect sense unless you absolutely have
- 4:44Speaker 1: to leave the woods to attend to life or the
- 4:47Speaker 1: conditions switch up on you, and your stand situation changes,
- 4:51Speaker 1: most likely with the wind. But all days sits are
- 4:54Speaker 1: a major, major biz nacho, my friends. They are hard
- 4:59Speaker 1: most But I know and I know a lot of
- 5:01Speaker 1: hunters with pretty solid track record of killing big deer rarely,
- 5:05Speaker 1: if ever do them. I think this is one of
- 5:08Speaker 1: those things that has talked about so much in the
- 5:10Speaker 1: hunting space, kind of like I don't know, bivy hunting
- 5:13Speaker 1: for elk at twelve ft elevation and thirteen miles from
- 5:16Speaker 1: the nearest trailhead. Does that happen? Sure, I guess do
- 5:20Speaker 1: all days it's happen. They sure do. But the frequency
- 5:24Speaker 1: in which they are discussed and the frequency in which
- 5:27Speaker 1: a dark to dark sit actually happens are not the
- 5:29Speaker 1: same number. They're not even close. Why Because the idea
- 5:35Speaker 1: of never leaving the woods when bucks should be running
- 5:37Speaker 1: around crazy is a good one. That idea makes sense,
- 5:41Speaker 1: And you can kill a midday buck. You absolutely can.
- 5:45Speaker 1: Last year, while hunting for a one week in November show,
- 5:47Speaker 1: I killed the Wisconsin buck at one pm. I knew
- 5:51Speaker 1: from sunrise on that morning that I had a really
- 5:53Speaker 1: good chance of doing just that. This confidence in your
- 5:57Speaker 1: set up and in the conditions is a huge mode
- 5:59Speaker 1: of waters. Sit all day, at least it is for me.
- 6:02Speaker 1: I like all day sits. But that doesn't make it easy,
- 6:05Speaker 1: and that's the problem. Most of us decide that since
- 6:08Speaker 1: it's November seven and there is a super cold front
- 6:11Speaker 1: rolling through that the eleven ish twelve ish type hours
- 6:14Speaker 1: of daylight we can hunt would be best utilized by
- 6:17Speaker 1: planting our butts on stand and staying. Yet that cold
- 6:22Speaker 1: front brings well cold weather, and cold weather is often
- 6:26Speaker 1: an all day sit killer, especially when it comes with
- 6:29Speaker 1: some wind. And then there is the unfortunate reality of
- 6:32Speaker 1: the rut, which means that while we expect tons of action,
- 6:36Speaker 1: it's mostly a weight and not see anything kind of game.
- 6:41Speaker 1: I relearned this lesson every single season, and at this
- 6:43Speaker 1: point I should understand it, but I don't. I always
- 6:48Speaker 1: think the rut is going to be amazing, and it
- 6:50Speaker 1: tends to be the same deer hunting grind as the
- 6:52Speaker 1: rest of the season, except it sprinkled with more optimism
- 6:55Speaker 1: and occasionally a day where the dear Gods do smile
- 6:59Speaker 1: upon us, but mostly they don't. Mostly they frown or
- 7:02Speaker 1: flip us off or whatever, and mostly you are uncomfortable
- 7:07Speaker 1: board and racked with doubt on whether you are using
- 7:10Speaker 1: your time wisely. The idea of all day sits crashes
- 7:15Speaker 1: headlong into the reality of all day sits, and guess what,
- 7:19Speaker 1: it's so easy to get down. It's so easy to
- 7:22Speaker 1: fall into the mind grinding, the second guessing, and to
- 7:26Speaker 1: talk yourself into leaving. Now, if this sounds about right,
- 7:29Speaker 1: if this sounds a little familiar, you really have two options.
- 7:33Speaker 1: Acknowledging that you're more of a three or four hour
- 7:36Speaker 1: at a time hunter, or you've got to change things
- 7:39Speaker 1: up so that you can tolerate sitting from dark to dark. Now.
- 7:42Speaker 1: I've talked about this several times, but for me, it
- 7:45Speaker 1: takes a few things. I need to be in a
- 7:47Speaker 1: spot that has some kind of all day feature that
- 7:50Speaker 1: should draw deer, or more appropriately, I guess I should say,
- 7:53Speaker 1: should funnel them through. If I'm not on a banging
- 7:57Speaker 1: terrain trap or some water source tucked into the cover,
- 8:01Speaker 1: I have a hard time with all day sits now.
- 8:04Speaker 1: If I'm not fully loaded with food and coffee and candy,
- 8:07Speaker 1: I'm also in trouble. And if I don't have a
- 8:09Speaker 1: book or something to distract myself with I'm in trouble too.
- 8:15Speaker 1: The physical aspect of an all day sit is real,
- 8:18Speaker 1: but it's nothing compared to the mental side of things.
- 8:21Speaker 1: Think about that as we get closer to the rut.
- 8:24Speaker 1: Another idea that we love but often doesn't work out
- 8:27Speaker 1: too well for us is the hunt the does during
- 8:30Speaker 1: the rut strategy. Now, if you're not around does during
- 8:33Speaker 1: the right you might be in trouble. That's pretty elementary stuff.
- 8:37Speaker 1: But where do we usually find does on food sources
- 8:41Speaker 1: that cut corn field or kill plot or whatever source
- 8:44Speaker 1: of groceries you like to hunt? Who visits it most
- 8:47Speaker 1: often probably does and fawns. Then the rut comes around
- 8:51Speaker 1: and we think, well, I need to be around the does.
- 8:54Speaker 1: Then I know I need to be around the food
- 8:56Speaker 1: source that has the does on it. Now I know
- 8:59Speaker 1: you can watch bucks sprint across corn fields at noon
- 9:01Speaker 1: in some places, but for the most part, you aren't
- 9:05Speaker 1: going to have doze feeding in the wide open in
- 9:07Speaker 1: the midday. And if you don't, why would the bucks
- 9:11Speaker 1: be there. The idea of being around the dose to
- 9:14Speaker 1: kill a buck it's a great one, especially if you
- 9:17Speaker 1: have a badass dough betting area, But you have to
- 9:20Speaker 1: filter that idea through your hunting reality. A much much
- 9:26Speaker 1: better bet, like I said, is to say, do I
- 9:29Speaker 1: know where the does are going to bed? Where are
- 9:32Speaker 1: they going to be? Maybe from sunrise to sunset? Where's
- 9:36Speaker 1: a better odds? Because I know they're not going to
- 9:37Speaker 1: be out in that cut cornfield all day. Getting downwind
- 9:40Speaker 1: of a spot like that during the rut, especially if
- 9:42Speaker 1: that spot is tucked into some cover, It's a much
- 9:45Speaker 1: better bet than posting up all day on a hunter
- 9:48Speaker 1: acre alfalfa field. For most of us, I think an
- 9:51Speaker 1: even better bet is to make an educated guess on
- 9:53Speaker 1: where a couple of different dough betting areas are and
- 9:56Speaker 1: then look for the terrain traps between them. Now you
- 10:00Speaker 1: have bucks that should be coming and going, and you
- 10:03Speaker 1: have the makings of catching a cruiser at any point
- 10:06Speaker 1: of the day. Now, another idea that we fall in
- 10:10Speaker 1: love with during the rut, and I've talked about a lot,
- 10:13Speaker 1: is get rich quick products. We just can't help ourselves.
- 10:17Speaker 1: And honestly, it's such a situationally variable thing that I'm
- 10:21Speaker 1: kind of nervous about even addressing it. So I'll say this,
- 10:25Speaker 1: pay attention to the deer you are hunting and how
- 10:27Speaker 1: they react and pay attention to how often these things
- 10:30Speaker 1: work for you. If you love the idea rattling like
- 10:33Speaker 1: crazy because it's the pre rut in the bucks should
- 10:36Speaker 1: be feeling a little froggy, great, go nuts, But pay attention.
- 10:41Speaker 1: If you rattle in a buck even once every five sessions,
- 10:44Speaker 1: you're doing pretty well. If you rattle all day and
- 10:47Speaker 1: nothing shows, or if you rattle for a full week
- 10:50Speaker 1: right at first light and it doesn't work, then acknowledge
- 10:53Speaker 1: that the idea isn't really matching reality. The same goes
- 10:58Speaker 1: for decoys or grunt calls or whatever. A lot of
- 11:00Speaker 1: hunters view them as a net neutral type of strategy
- 11:03Speaker 1: during the rut, but I don't. I think every book
- 11:06Speaker 1: can be grunted in at the right time, but that
- 11:08Speaker 1: window is small. I think most bucks can be decoyed into,
- 11:12Speaker 1: but again, the odds of getting the timing right they're
- 11:16Speaker 1: not great. Now, this doesn't mean you shouldn't try any
- 11:18Speaker 1: of these, because you should, just don't overplay your hand.
- 11:22Speaker 1: If the deer show you in your area that your
- 11:26Speaker 1: idea of what should happen during the rut is vastly
- 11:29Speaker 1: different from what is actually going to happen, or what
- 11:32Speaker 1: actually does happen now. Another category in white toil hunting
- 11:37Speaker 1: that is right for this problem is the traveling hunt.
- 11:41Speaker 1: We romanticize the over the road adventure, and if you're
- 11:44Speaker 1: on social media at all, you're probably inundated with images
- 11:48Speaker 1: and stories from hunters who traveled to a different state
- 11:50Speaker 1: shot an enormous buck. Most of these posts tell a
- 11:53Speaker 1: surprisingly sparse story on the actual hunt. I bet that
- 11:57Speaker 1: at least of the people who travel have a hell
- 12:01Speaker 1: of a good spot to travel too. Whether that's an
- 12:04Speaker 1: outfitted property or a lease, or a grandparent on a
- 12:08Speaker 1: homestead farm that is loaded with deer and devoid a
- 12:10Speaker 1: hunting pressure, it doesn't matter. Those situations are everywhere, and
- 12:14Speaker 1: they are almost always left out of the story or
- 12:17Speaker 1: glossed over in a major and I might add not
- 12:21Speaker 1: unintentional way. Now, there are plenty of people out there
- 12:24Speaker 1: doing d i y hunts, many of which occur on
- 12:26Speaker 1: public land. Some of those people are killing good deer too,
- 12:30Speaker 1: and in a similar but different way, are also kind
- 12:32Speaker 1: of glossing over the realities of their hunts. This is
- 12:35Speaker 1: because when we see success, we focus on it and
- 12:38Speaker 1: we assign it a way heavier weight than it deserves.
- 12:42Speaker 1: I'll give you a dumb example. In September, I took
- 12:45Speaker 1: one of my daughters to Wisconsin to hunt opening weekend.
- 12:48Speaker 1: The weather was hot, like mid sixties overnight, like eight
- 12:51Speaker 1: in the day kind of hot. It was hazy, muggy,
- 12:54Speaker 1: and not that much fun to sweat while hiking a
- 12:56Speaker 1: couple of hundred yards to our blinds. And the blind
- 12:59Speaker 1: we did sit because it was our best opportunity. In
- 13:01Speaker 1: a south wind was full of spiders, and I mean
- 13:06Speaker 1: full of spiders. Now, listen, I'm pretty manly, as you
- 13:10Speaker 1: guys probably all know, but when it comes to spiders,
- 13:13Speaker 1: I'm not. I hate them. There's some ancestral memory in
- 13:17Speaker 1: my jeans of distant slope foreheaded grunting and butt scratching
- 13:20Speaker 1: pre Peterson type of people who dealt with venomous, disgusting spiders.
- 13:25Speaker 1: I know it because when I see a spider, I'm
- 13:27Speaker 1: filled with revulsion. When I see like fourteen of them,
- 13:31Speaker 1: big bastards too in a small blind that I need
- 13:34Speaker 1: to climb into, it's not that much fun for me.
- 13:38Speaker 1: It's also not that much fun. I learned for a
- 13:41Speaker 1: ten year old girl who screams if a ladybug is
- 13:44Speaker 1: in her room. A couple of those eight legged bastards
- 13:47Speaker 1: with hot weather in eight hours of hunting without seeing
- 13:49Speaker 1: a deer, and you have the makings of a full
- 13:51Speaker 1: day that really wasn't that much fun. Now, the second
- 13:54Speaker 1: morning of the season, however, with attempts still stupid high
- 13:58Speaker 1: in the humidity at roughly a hundred and twelve percent,
- 14:01Speaker 1: we managed to have a spike buck walk right in
- 14:03Speaker 1: and pose up at like twelve yards. He ran maybe
- 14:06Speaker 1: fifty yards before piling up, and is honestly a perfect
- 14:10Speaker 1: first buck for my daughter. So now the hunt looks
- 14:13Speaker 1: like it was amazing, and in that one specific way
- 14:17Speaker 1: it sure was, But in many other ways it honestly
- 14:20Speaker 1: wasn't that much fun. The same goes from my elk
- 14:24Speaker 1: hunt in September. People see a gripping and granted with
- 14:26Speaker 1: a good bull from public land and they think, well,
- 14:28Speaker 1: that must have been like a vacation. It wasn't, and
- 14:32Speaker 1: elk hunting for most of us common folks never is.
- 14:35Speaker 1: Traveling hunts are a great idea. I actually wish everyone
- 14:40Speaker 1: could and would do them. I wish they could. The
- 14:43Speaker 1: rewards are worth it, and there is nothing better in
- 14:46Speaker 1: life than cool experiences. There isn't but that doesn't mean
- 14:50Speaker 1: that there won't be a ship ton of work to
- 14:51Speaker 1: do on those hunts, and it won't mean that they
- 14:54Speaker 1: aren't expensive, And then you know, maybe there's going to
- 14:57Speaker 1: be some added pressure to kill you. I p camping,
- 15:00Speaker 1: which is something that everyone says they love, but I
- 15:03Speaker 1: suspect that they just haven't camped enough. I used to
- 15:06Speaker 1: camp like forty to fifty days a year on all
- 15:07Speaker 1: my public land hunts, and I can tell you that
- 15:09Speaker 1: the shine wears off the old camping apple after a while.
- 15:13Speaker 1: It's still my favorite way to go about d I
- 15:15Speaker 1: Y hunts, but camping is something that can be a
- 15:18Speaker 1: whole lot of no fun, especially if you don't have
- 15:20Speaker 1: a really good system down and at least marginally decent gear.
- 15:24Speaker 1: In fact, this is a really bad comparison, but I'll
- 15:26Speaker 1: do it anyway. I think camping is the man's version
- 15:29Speaker 1: for childbirth, not in the pain and suffering aspect or
- 15:32Speaker 1: anything like that. It's just something that we get this
- 15:35Speaker 1: weird amnesia over. Anyone who has witnessed or gone through
- 15:40Speaker 1: birthing a child wouldn't say the act itself is a nice,
- 15:43Speaker 1: easy thing that is no big deal. But is it
- 15:46Speaker 1: worth it? Of course, but fun and relaxing sure didn't
- 15:51Speaker 1: look like it camping for us, dudes, It's kind of
- 15:54Speaker 1: like that. We go through it, we remember how much
- 15:57Speaker 1: it can suck, especially if it's super hot or rainy
- 15:59Speaker 1: or a gear suck, and we swear it off never again,
- 16:02Speaker 1: we say, than a few months pass and the next
- 16:04Speaker 1: year season is coming up and we start to forget
- 16:06Speaker 1: the misery and decide that, you know what, I can't
- 16:08Speaker 1: wait to go camping. Camping is a great idea and
- 16:12Speaker 1: I'm super stoked for it. Lather rents repeat. So what's
- 16:17Speaker 1: the lesson in all of this That everything sucks and
- 16:19Speaker 1: we should probably stay home and watch football. Nope, the
- 16:22Speaker 1: lesson is to be realistic about hunting and about ourselves,
- 16:27Speaker 1: to find that homeostasis, that equilibrium between what we think
- 16:31Speaker 1: about hunting and what hunting actually is when we do it.
- 16:34Speaker 1: The more you acknowledge that there are a lot of
- 16:36Speaker 1: sucky parts to hunting, but they are worth wading through
- 16:39Speaker 1: for the experience, the easier it is to tolerate the
- 16:41Speaker 1: not so fun parts. When you do that, you'll hunt more,
- 16:45Speaker 1: you'll hunt smarter, and you'll enjoy the whole process a
- 16:48Speaker 1: hell of a lot more. And when you do that,
- 16:51Speaker 1: when that happens, you feel more tags, which makes those
- 16:55Speaker 1: all day sits or the seventh night in a row
- 16:57Speaker 1: in a small tent so much more palatable because it's
- 17:00Speaker 1: not the idea of what we do that matters, it's
- 17:02Speaker 1: the reality of what we do. While that reality isn't
- 17:06Speaker 1: quite as rose colored as our fantasies about craze bucks
- 17:09Speaker 1: chasing at noon, it's still pretty damn good. It's worth
- 17:13Speaker 1: it every single time you can go. Now, next week,
- 17:18Speaker 1: I'm going to talk about the rut. I'm going to
- 17:20Speaker 1: talk about how often we kind of look for all
- 17:26Speaker 1: the deer when we should be looking for the right Dear.
- 17:32Speaker 1: That's it for this week, my friends. I'm Tony Peterson.
- 17:34Speaker 1: This has been the Wire to Hunt Foundations podcast, which
- 17:36Speaker 1: has brought to you by First Light. As always, thank
- 17:38Speaker 1: you so much for your support, and if you want
- 17:40Speaker 1: more of a white tail fix, feel free to check
- 17:42Speaker 1: out Mark's new show on the meat eat Or YouTube channel,
- 17:44Speaker 1: which is called Deer Country. You can also visit the
- 17:47Speaker 1: wire to Hunt YouTube channel for our how to videos,
- 17:49Speaker 1: and go to the meat eator dot com slash wired
- 17:52Speaker 1: to read all kinds of white tail related articles,