Latest / Wired To Hunt Podcast / Ep. 1019: Foundations - How Feathered and Furry Narcs Kill Our Whitetail Plans
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,
- 0:23Speaker 2: which is brought to you by first Light.
- 0:24Speaker 3: I'm your host, Tony Peterson.
- 0:25Speaker 2: In today's episode is all about our impact on the
- 0:27Speaker 2: woods and why when you start to be mindful of it,
- 0:30Speaker 2: you become a way, way better deer hunter. All right, everyone,
- 0:35Speaker 2: I have an assignment for you.
- 0:37Speaker 3: Trust me on this.
- 0:39Speaker 2: If you go do what I say, then you come
- 0:42Speaker 2: back and listen to this episode. You will think about
- 0:44Speaker 2: your hunting in a different light. And I promise you
- 0:47Speaker 2: it will help you kill more big bucks. And I
- 0:49Speaker 2: don't ever really promise that, but I am.
- 0:51Speaker 3: Now.
- 0:52Speaker 2: Go listen to the Mediater podcast episode number eight thirty
- 0:55Speaker 2: eight called how to Translate Animal Language with George. Listen
- 1:00Speaker 2: to every word he says, and then come back and
- 1:02Speaker 2: listen to this episode because I'm going to take his
- 1:05Speaker 2: lessons and apply them to the world of deer hunting.
- 1:07Speaker 2: Now believe me when I say this, that episode might
- 1:10Speaker 2: have more real, actionable hunting advice in it than anything
- 1:14Speaker 2: I've ever produced, or at the very least, anything I've
- 1:17Speaker 2: encountered in a piece of content in a long, long
- 1:20Speaker 2: long time. Do that, and then come back here and
- 1:23Speaker 2: finish this episode.
- 1:24Speaker 3: For real.
- 1:29Speaker 2: Let me describe a common whitetail scenario for you that
- 1:33Speaker 2: I kind of want to use as the basis for
- 1:34Speaker 2: this podcast, or at least as a jumping off point.
- 1:38Speaker 3: You follow all of the best.
- 1:39Speaker 2: Advice in the white tail space as it applies to
- 1:42Speaker 2: your type of hunting.
- 1:43Speaker 3: You winter scout as you should.
- 1:45Speaker 2: You get out and burn some boot leather to find
- 1:47Speaker 2: antlers as you should. As midsummer hits, you spray on
- 1:51Speaker 2: some bug spray, buy some double A batteries, and you
- 1:54Speaker 2: head out into the woods to drop some cameras off.
- 1:56Speaker 2: Some go on field edges, some in the woods on
- 1:59Speaker 2: travel roads, likely on some kind of funnel or pinch point.
- 2:03Speaker 2: The summer ends, fall progresses, and your field edge cameras
- 2:06Speaker 2: show plenty of action, while your pinch point cameras show
- 2:10Speaker 2: some Now you hunt those early field edges you know,
- 2:13Speaker 2: and it just doesn't happen. The field edges start to
- 2:16Speaker 2: go a little dead, except for at night. But occasionally
- 2:19Speaker 2: you get that delicious dopamine hit of an image or
- 2:21Speaker 2: a video showing up on your in the woods cameras. Now,
- 2:24Speaker 2: as October slips away, one of your cameras just starts
- 2:27Speaker 2: going off. The bucks are feeling it, and not just
- 2:30Speaker 2: any bucks, but it seems like bucks of all age classes.
- 2:34Speaker 2: As the end of October looms closer, you make your
- 2:37Speaker 2: first attempt to hunt where that hot camera is. You
- 2:40Speaker 2: slip into a pre hung stand. The wind is perfect,
- 2:44Speaker 2: the seasonal timing is getting real good, and then you blink,
- 2:48Speaker 2: or maybe you have a Dona font come through, maybe
- 2:50Speaker 2: a four ky. You reason it's just not quite time yet.
- 2:55Speaker 2: You need a few more days, So you wait a
- 2:57Speaker 2: few days. Your camera starts to get active again, and
- 3:00Speaker 2: the season is just getting better. You repeat the process
- 3:04Speaker 2: and have the same results. Now, since the camera shows
- 3:07Speaker 2: plenty of action, you just assume it's bad luck that
- 3:09Speaker 2: the bucks haven't shown up. You have a choice to
- 3:12Speaker 2: make now, keep trusting the camera and the spot, or
- 3:15Speaker 2: hunt somewhere else. A lot of folks will just go
- 3:18Speaker 2: right out back to that field edge with their rattling antlers,
- 3:21Speaker 2: and a whole heart full of hopes and dreams. Some
- 3:24Speaker 2: will ride it out on that pinch point, some will kill,
- 3:27Speaker 2: most won't. But what went wrong for those who didn't?
- 3:32Speaker 2: By anyone who has gone through this is probably has
- 3:35Speaker 2: a pretty good answer, and they probably aren't wrong. There
- 3:39Speaker 2: is always anxiety and excitement rolled up into going into
- 3:42Speaker 2: a spot where you have an active camera because the
- 3:45Speaker 2: wild card is always us being there, and why wouldn't
- 3:48Speaker 2: it be. We are the apex predator out there, and
- 3:51Speaker 2: don't kid yourself that you're not viewed that way. In
- 3:54Speaker 2: my neck of the woods, wolves are the big bad
- 3:57Speaker 2: oh wolves. But the truth is are impact is super
- 4:00Speaker 2: negative on the woods as well. Sure, wild canines don't
- 4:04Speaker 2: follow game laws and will kill a deer at midnight
- 4:06Speaker 2: just as much as they will during legal shooting hours,
- 4:09Speaker 2: But when we take to the woods, we have an
- 4:11Speaker 2: outsized impact on the animals in the woods. Are scent,
- 4:15Speaker 2: our movements, our presence, It's felt, and that would be
- 4:19Speaker 2: enough to keep a lot of deer from going where
- 4:21Speaker 2: we need them to go. But if you followed my
- 4:24Speaker 2: advice from the intro to this podcast and went back
- 4:27Speaker 2: and listened to the mediater podcast with George Buhman called
- 4:30Speaker 2: How to Translate Animal Language. You know there is probably
- 4:34Speaker 2: more to it. In fact, I think most of us
- 4:37Speaker 2: intuitively know there is more to our presence than.
- 4:39Speaker 3: Just us and the deer.
- 4:42Speaker 2: If you've ever been reprimanded by a squirrel in the woods,
- 4:45Speaker 2: you know there is more to it. Or maybe you
- 4:47Speaker 2: flush a covey of quail while sneaking into your stand
- 4:50Speaker 2: out west doc and meal deer, elk and sometimes antelope.
- 4:54Speaker 2: You bump cattle grazing away on public land, and you
- 4:56Speaker 2: might as well lit off a Roman candle and started
- 4:59Speaker 2: firing it into criminately into the sky. When you sneak
- 5:03Speaker 2: into that spot with that hot camera, you're not really
- 5:06Speaker 2: fooling a hell of a lot of the critters out
- 5:08Speaker 2: there that we don't pay any mind to. Sure, a
- 5:12Speaker 2: squirrel barking at a sucks, but squirrels bark at lots
- 5:16Speaker 2: of stuff. But you know what, everything is scared of us,
- 5:19Speaker 2: especially when we are hiding and signaling that we are
- 5:22Speaker 2: in predator mode. The crazy thing about that is most
- 5:26Speaker 2: of what we aren't hunting is very, very afraid of us.
- 5:31Speaker 2: I think about this when I walk into my backyard
- 5:33Speaker 2: in the late spring, as the evening sets in the
- 5:36Speaker 2: amount of frogs we have here with our pond, which
- 5:39Speaker 2: is really just a swamp that they couldn't build a
- 5:41Speaker 2: dollar general in is bananas. If I step outside to
- 5:45Speaker 2: shoot a few rounds of arrows, the calling of amphibians
- 5:48Speaker 2: is pretty unreal until I walk up to my targets,
- 5:51Speaker 2: which are right on the edge of the pond. Then
- 5:53Speaker 2: it's like someone flips a series of switches as all
- 5:57Speaker 2: of the frogs shut up in waves across the pond.
- 6:00Speaker 2: I'm not hunting them, In fact, I love frogs, but
- 6:03Speaker 2: they don't know that. And you know what, I notice
- 6:07Speaker 2: that a lot when I hunt ponds in the early season.
- 6:10Speaker 2: When I walk in, things go silent, and I can
- 6:13Speaker 2: promise you a buck bedded within earshot notices that too.
- 6:19Speaker 2: Since they are frogs, they don't wait forever to start
- 6:22Speaker 2: up again. But there is a time period where the
- 6:24Speaker 2: silence spreads a credible rumor through the animal kingdom that
- 6:28Speaker 2: something scary is there, and the animals listen to that stuff.
- 6:32Speaker 2: I'm convinced this is a reason we are gravitating toward
- 6:35Speaker 2: blinds more and more in the white tail space. Now
- 6:38Speaker 2: I know what it seems like on the surface, you
- 6:39Speaker 2: don't seem simple. Get in there and you can move
- 6:42Speaker 2: around and not get spotted by the deer. This goes
- 6:45Speaker 2: for pop up blinds and box blinds, and you have
- 6:48Speaker 2: the added benefit of a little noise suppression and some
- 6:51Speaker 2: sense suppression, but you also have the benefit of not
- 6:55Speaker 2: having nearly as big of an impact on all of
- 6:57Speaker 2: the songbirds and squirrels and turk and whoever else might
- 7:01Speaker 2: be going through that isn't on your hit list. Think
- 7:05Speaker 2: about it this way. The dominant style of hunting for
- 7:08Speaker 2: most people who have been filming for a long time
- 7:12Speaker 2: is to get into a box blind on a food plot.
- 7:15Speaker 2: This is no accident. It's the easiest way to keep
- 7:18Speaker 2: your felt presence down to a bare minimum, which makes
- 7:22Speaker 2: hunting easier.
- 7:23Speaker 3: Now.
- 7:23Speaker 2: Anyone who has filmed a hang and bang public land
- 7:26Speaker 2: hunt with a cameraman knows exactly why a lot of
- 7:29Speaker 2: TV shows are filmed out of box blinds. This style
- 7:33Speaker 2: has added benefits when it comes to comfort and spot burnout,
- 7:36Speaker 2: of course, but there's no denying that if you walk
- 7:39Speaker 2: out to your elevated redneck blind in the middle of
- 7:42Speaker 2: an acre of clover, you're definitely keeping your negative presence
- 7:46Speaker 2: out of the areas where all of the forest critters
- 7:49Speaker 2: might subtly announce your presence to anyone listening, and trust me,
- 7:54Speaker 2: everyone's listening.
- 7:55Speaker 3: Think about it this way.
- 7:57Speaker 2: If you were in Africa sitting on a bank above
- 8:00Speaker 2: a muddy river, and you watched a herd of blue
- 8:02Speaker 2: wildebeest walk down to the edge of the river to
- 8:04Speaker 2: grab a drink, and one of them ended up with
- 8:07Speaker 2: its nose in between the teeth of a crocodile, you
- 8:10Speaker 2: wouldn't just walk down there to splash around and cool
- 8:12Speaker 2: off under the rationale that you're not a wildebeest, so
- 8:14Speaker 2: you're probably not on the menu. The things that eat
- 8:18Speaker 2: deer eat rabbits and squirrels and songbirds and whatever they
- 8:23Speaker 2: can get their teeth on. There is a risk reward
- 8:26Speaker 2: metric for prey animals who ignore the warning calls of
- 8:30Speaker 2: other prey animals, and I'd guess that the ones that
- 8:33Speaker 2: pass on their jeans with some regularity are the ones
- 8:37Speaker 2: who heed that call relatively equally. When I listen to
- 8:50Speaker 2: that Meat Eater podcast, I realized that a lot of
- 8:52Speaker 2: my hunting style has been in a response to this reality.
- 8:56Speaker 2: Even though I didn't fully understand it. Over the last
- 8:59Speaker 2: several seasons, I've started sitting way later in the mornings
- 9:03Speaker 2: and going out way earlier in the evenings, and then
- 9:06Speaker 2: sitting all day whenever I can. I figured it was
- 9:09Speaker 2: just good business to be out there for more hours,
- 9:11Speaker 2: and in fact I still believe that. But I also
- 9:15Speaker 2: think there's way more to it. I think that subconsciously,
- 9:19Speaker 2: I knew that I was making a big impact on
- 9:21Speaker 2: the places I wanted to hunt, especially when I was
- 9:23Speaker 2: sitting over a little water hole or hunting a patch
- 9:26Speaker 2: of small cover somewhere. For as long as I've been
- 9:30Speaker 2: consuming hunting content, which started as magazines when I was
- 9:33Speaker 2: a kid, people have been talking about letting the woods
- 9:37Speaker 2: settle down, that you have to give it time to
- 9:40Speaker 2: return to normal, and they aren't wrong. We view that
- 9:44Speaker 2: as a deer centric thing, but it's not. It's a
- 9:47Speaker 2: nature thing. The worst thing to happen to most of
- 9:50Speaker 2: those animals just walked into their world and climbed into
- 9:54Speaker 2: a tree or put his back to a tree, or got.
- 9:56Speaker 3: Into a blind.
- 9:58Speaker 2: That's no small thing, and something, some songbird, some insects,
- 10:04Speaker 2: some roadent, something is going to express its displeasure at
- 10:08Speaker 2: that big, bad man's presence. Now, if you lived out
- 10:12Speaker 2: there and were hunted daily or at least often enough
- 10:16Speaker 2: to realize that you're definitely in danger, you'd listen to
- 10:19Speaker 2: those alarms and react accordingly. Now you might be thinking, well,
- 10:23Speaker 2: sometimes I walk in and shoot a buck two minutes
- 10:25Speaker 2: after I get there. Right, me too, But mostly no.
- 10:30Speaker 2: This is one of the big reasons we love the rut,
- 10:32Speaker 2: because the deer we want to kill the most are
- 10:34Speaker 2: likely to ignore danger that they normally wouldn't. Mostly we
- 10:38Speaker 2: should pay attention to this stuff because given the amount
- 10:40Speaker 2: of time we have to hunt and how little of
- 10:42Speaker 2: that actually is, the rut means this is pretty important stuff.
- 10:46Speaker 2: I think it goes deeper than this too. I was
- 10:49Speaker 2: texting back and forth with the CEO of Tethered recently,
- 10:52Speaker 2: and he was showing me a really good buck that
- 10:55Speaker 2: he was after last season. He mentioned that he tried
- 10:57Speaker 2: to call him in but the buck just wasn't having it.
- 11:01Speaker 2: I asked him if he snort weezed, and he said
- 11:03Speaker 2: he did, but that he didn't think that buck was
- 11:05Speaker 2: much of a fighter, by the way he responded, Now,
- 11:08Speaker 2: I thought about that, and he might be right, But
- 11:11Speaker 2: I'm not so sure.
- 11:12Speaker 3: I think that all the deer fight.
- 11:14Speaker 2: Because they all live in a hierarchy, and I just
- 11:17Speaker 2: don't think the snort wheeze call always ends up in
- 11:19Speaker 2: a fight, because a lot of nature is just posturing
- 11:22Speaker 2: for dominance, since an actual fight is a high stakes action.
- 11:26Speaker 2: But then it occurred to me that I've had dozens
- 11:28Speaker 2: and dozens of deer and turkeys that I've called to
- 11:31Speaker 2: react negatively or neutrally, and quite a few of them
- 11:34Speaker 2: that have responded positively have done so until they suddenly didn't.
- 11:40Speaker 3: Now, think about this.
- 11:42Speaker 2: When you're sitting out there trying not to move too much,
- 11:44Speaker 2: and you spot that buck in the woods or that
- 11:47Speaker 2: gobbler out in the field, and you decide to make
- 11:49Speaker 2: a call, what do you do well? With deer, You
- 11:53Speaker 2: usually have to reach for a grunt tube or a
- 11:55Speaker 2: set of antlers, and often you stand up to get
- 11:58Speaker 2: ready to shoot. That's big movement stuff. Now, if your
- 12:02Speaker 2: back is to a tree and your turkey hunting, you
- 12:04Speaker 2: might have to reach on the ground for your box
- 12:06Speaker 2: call or a slate call, maybe grab a mouth call
- 12:09Speaker 2: and pop it back in quick while getting your shotgun
- 12:11Speaker 2: up on your knees. Big movements. You do both in
- 12:14Speaker 2: a way that you know that the buck or longbeard
- 12:17Speaker 2: can't see you. But what about the songbirds and the
- 12:19Speaker 2: trees with you? What about the stuff you aren't paying
- 12:22Speaker 2: attention to at all because they don't matter in the moment.
- 12:26Speaker 2: I'm not saying this is how it always goes, or
- 12:28Speaker 2: that this is the primary reason a calling sequence doesn't work,
- 12:32Speaker 2: But imagine this. You're a buck and you hear a
- 12:35Speaker 2: grunt call. You look and you don't see anything, but
- 12:38Speaker 2: you also hear the alarm call of some songbird I
- 12:41Speaker 2: don't know, say a robin. That's two strikes. It's not
- 12:45Speaker 2: the same thing as spotting some cameo clad do in
- 12:47Speaker 2: a tree and busting him flat out, but it's something,
- 12:51Speaker 2: and it might be just enough to get you to
- 12:53Speaker 2: question the intelligence of heading over there when you really
- 12:56Speaker 2: don't need to. Their curiosity just often isn't enough. Take
- 13:01Speaker 2: the long beard think about it. He sees your decoys,
- 13:04Speaker 2: he hears your calls, but watches a whole bunch of
- 13:07Speaker 2: songbirds sort of listens to a chipmunk freak out or
- 13:10Speaker 2: whatever make their alarm calls. And he's not that curious
- 13:15Speaker 2: about anything. Because turkeys just don't have that. He probably
- 13:19Speaker 2: doesn't even actively acknowledge what is going on, but something
- 13:23Speaker 2: trips a tiny little alarm in his brain that says, eh,
- 13:27Speaker 2: I'm close enough, I'm going to strut here and see
- 13:30Speaker 2: if the hen comes over to me. That might be
- 13:33Speaker 2: all it takes. I think that kind of thing happens
- 13:36Speaker 2: to us a lot. In fact, there's a stupid stand
- 13:39Speaker 2: on my property in Wisconsin I've been talking about for
- 13:42Speaker 2: two stupid seasons now where I can't get a frickin'
- 13:44Speaker 2: deer to walk by it, even though the camera I
- 13:47Speaker 2: have there is my most active camera in that whole
- 13:50Speaker 2: stupid county. It has really bothered me that out of
- 13:53Speaker 2: multiple all day sits over two seasons, I've seen exactly
- 13:57Speaker 2: one deer, a button buck, and that deer came through
- 14:01Speaker 2: within like two minutes of the shooting light. The very
- 14:03Speaker 2: first time I sat there, I just didn't believe that
- 14:06Speaker 2: the deer were winding me, and I know they aren't
- 14:08Speaker 2: seeing me because it's pretty thick. But last year, as
- 14:11Speaker 2: I sat there for three dark to dark sits during
- 14:15Speaker 2: the rut, I realized that I almost constantly have pine
- 14:19Speaker 2: squirrels bitching me out. There are also a lot of
- 14:22Speaker 2: blue jays in there for some reason, and they aren't
- 14:24Speaker 2: shy about making alarm calls. I don't know if this
- 14:28Speaker 2: is the reason or not, but it got me wondering.
- 14:31Speaker 2: In fact, this year, I'm not going to do anything
- 14:34Speaker 2: different other than brush in a blind there in the
- 14:37Speaker 2: late summer and let it soak inuntil the rut. I'm
- 14:40Speaker 2: going to slip in well before first light to hunt
- 14:43Speaker 2: that spot and see if being contained in a blind
- 14:45Speaker 2: instead of up in a pine tree with a local
- 14:47Speaker 2: squirrel population affects my success there at all. And I
- 14:52Speaker 2: kind of believe it will, but I might be wrong
- 14:55Speaker 2: either way. I'm going to find out. I'm also convinced
- 14:58Speaker 2: that this is something that is a real factor for
- 15:00Speaker 2: success when you hunt where the hunting is really tough. Now,
- 15:03Speaker 2: if you have a high deer density or you just
- 15:05Speaker 2: hunt lightly pressure deer, I don't think they take their
- 15:08Speaker 2: survival as seriously as deer that live you know, where
- 15:12Speaker 2: there are very few of them and where they get
- 15:14Speaker 2: hunted really hard. I know that might sound crazy, but
- 15:17Speaker 2: the best way to kill giant bucks, we've found a
- 15:19Speaker 2: date is to convince them they aren't in any danger.
- 15:22Speaker 2: For five years of their life by putting no pressure
- 15:25Speaker 2: on them. I also know that I'm going to try
- 15:28Speaker 2: hard to think about this stuff this fall when I'm
- 15:30Speaker 2: out hunting by myself or with my daughters. I don't
- 15:33Speaker 2: know exactly what that means for me, other than I'm
- 15:37Speaker 2: going to try my best to keep my presence down,
- 15:41Speaker 2: my negative presence not felt as much as possible, and
- 15:45Speaker 2: to get out there for as many hours as i
- 15:47Speaker 2: can on each sit. I don't really love the idea
- 15:51Speaker 2: of getting into more blinds, so I'm not going to
- 15:53Speaker 2: lean too hard into that direction, even though that is
- 15:56Speaker 2: an easy move for at least part of the issue.
- 15:59Speaker 2: But this isn't about just being a better big buck
- 16:02Speaker 2: killer either. The idea of learning what the birds say
- 16:06Speaker 2: to each other, not only when I walk through, but
- 16:09Speaker 2: when a coyote or a bobcat is around, or what
- 16:12Speaker 2: the crows have to say at the bait site, when
- 16:14Speaker 2: my daughters are trying to arrow a bear, or just
- 16:16Speaker 2: about any of the sounds nature wants to offer up
- 16:18Speaker 2: to teach me a thing or two. They're just interesting,
- 16:22Speaker 2: something worth paying attention to, and that should interest you too,
- 16:26Speaker 2: Because woodsmanship actually kills big deer, but developing it is
- 16:30Speaker 2: also a cheat code to enjoying time in the woods more,
- 16:33Speaker 2: which is something we can all probably use. Think about
- 16:37Speaker 2: that and think about coming back next week because it's
- 16:39Speaker 2: time to talk turkeys, calling decoys, blind setups, and a
- 16:43Speaker 2: whole bunch of other good gobbler stuff. That's it for
- 16:47Speaker 2: this episode. I am Tony Peterson. This is the Wired
- 16:51Speaker 2: to Hunt Foundations podcast, which is brought to you by
- 16:54Speaker 2: First Light. Thank you so much for your support showing
- 16:57Speaker 2: up every week for us.
- 16:58Speaker 3: We really really appreciateciate it.
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