Latest / Wired To Hunt Podcast / Ep. 898: Foundations - Is it Time to Think About the "Other" Deer?

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Ep. 898: Foundations - Is it Time to Think About the "Other" Deer? · 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 Wired to Hunt Foundation's podcast,
0:23
Speaker 2: which is brought to you by first Light. I'm your host,
0:25
Speaker 2: Tony Peterson, and today's episode is all about hunting the
0:27
Speaker 2: deer that are not white tails. Look, I know most
0:35
Speaker 2: people will never go hunt meal deer, let alone blacktails,
0:38
Speaker 2: or you sick a deer up in Alaska or a
0:40
Speaker 2: COO's deer down in the desert, but that doesn't mean
0:42
Speaker 2: they shouldn't at least consider it now. While it's true
0:45
Speaker 2: that the days are easy to get tags done died
0:48
Speaker 2: in the last decade for most of these non white
0:50
Speaker 2: tail species, there are still some opportunities out there and
0:53
Speaker 2: where they can take you is pretty amazing. That's what
0:55
Speaker 2: I'm going to talk about right now. About a decade ago,
1:03
Speaker 2: I got off a plane in San Jose and met
1:06
Speaker 2: up with the then editor of Bowhunter magazine, Kurt Wells,
1:09
Speaker 2: and a pair of videographers. We grabbed our rental car
1:13
Speaker 2: and drove a couple hours away from the city and
1:15
Speaker 2: the people into a part of California that would be
1:18
Speaker 2: indistinguishable from most Western states if you didn't know exactly
1:22
Speaker 2: where you were. It was honestly one of the most
1:25
Speaker 2: beautiful environments I've been lucky enough to hunt in. We
1:28
Speaker 2: glassed feral hogs and then stalked them for a few days,
1:31
Speaker 2: and mixed in with those plentiful pigs, which you could
1:34
Speaker 2: see from a long long ways away, rooting around in
1:37
Speaker 2: oak mots or crossing grassy hillsides in single file, were
1:41
Speaker 2: plenty of blacktail deer. Now, the thing about blacktails is
1:44
Speaker 2: that if you talk about the ones that call California
1:47
Speaker 2: home to someone who lives, let's say, in the Pacific Northwest,
1:51
Speaker 2: they will almost inevitably make a snarky comment about how
1:54
Speaker 2: they aren't real blacktails. They'll say that the Oregon and
1:58
Speaker 2: Washington dwellers are the real deal because I guess of
2:01
Speaker 2: where they live and what they live in, while the
2:03
Speaker 2: California blacktails are just the kindergarteners of the whole thing.
2:06
Speaker 2: Even though blanket statements about deer and entire states are
2:10
Speaker 2: often just kind of dumb. The first time it happened
2:13
Speaker 2: to me, I remembered instantly the amount of shitty comments
2:17
Speaker 2: my uncles would make about the deer I hunted in
2:19
Speaker 2: southeastern Minnesota while I was growing up. Since all my
2:22
Speaker 2: uncles were all iron Rangers, which means they were born
2:25
Speaker 2: and raised in the topmost part of Minnesota, where the
2:28
Speaker 2: deer numbers are extremely sparse and the wolf numbers aren't,
2:32
Speaker 2: they had the view that anything that wasn't a big woods,
2:34
Speaker 2: low density hunt was just too easy. Never mind they
2:38
Speaker 2: never hunted anywhere else. They'd casually say things like, we
2:42
Speaker 2: don't have the luxury of just picking a trail on
2:44
Speaker 2: a cornfield and shooting them when they walked by. I
2:48
Speaker 2: remember thinking, one of the farms I hunt has a
2:50
Speaker 2: one hundred acre cornfield on it, and that corn is
2:53
Speaker 2: usually standing for the bulk of bo season, and almost
2:55
Speaker 2: all the bucks I hunt seemed to live in it,
2:58
Speaker 2: and it was not something that was easy for me
3:00
Speaker 2: to overcome. It's a myopic view that we as hunters
3:04
Speaker 2: just can't seem to shake. Just as every one of
3:07
Speaker 2: us thinks we have the best dog in the world,
3:09
Speaker 2: we believe that our hunting is the most difficult, and
3:13
Speaker 2: anyone who isn't from where we are would struggle to
3:16
Speaker 2: fill a dough tag. You know, they couldn't even kill
3:19
Speaker 2: a dough on where we hunt, let alone a decent buck.
3:22
Speaker 2: I don't know why we were like this, but we are,
3:24
Speaker 2: and blacktail hunters definitely don't break them old there. But
3:28
Speaker 2: you know what, when I got a chance to board
3:30
Speaker 2: another flight to San Jose a few months later and
3:32
Speaker 2: hunt those blacktails on the same pig infested ranch I
3:35
Speaker 2: had been to earlier, I didn't say no because they
3:39
Speaker 2: weren't real blacktails. I said yes because getting to hunt
3:42
Speaker 2: some kind of deer in a new environment is almost
3:45
Speaker 2: always a yes for me. And I'll tell you what,
3:48
Speaker 2: hunting those blacktails out there and patches of live oak
3:52
Speaker 2: strud was just like dangling Spanish moss was cool as hell.
3:57
Speaker 2: The Bucky shot was quite a bit short of the
3:59
Speaker 2: record book, if you get my drift, but he was
4:02
Speaker 2: also cool as hell, and he was in velvet and
4:04
Speaker 2: nice enough to walk in with a buddy and good
4:07
Speaker 2: camera light. This was maybe a decade ago now, and
4:10
Speaker 2: the tag I hunted on was over the counter for
4:12
Speaker 2: non residents. When I think back on the other deer
4:15
Speaker 2: that I've hunted, many of them were on over the
4:18
Speaker 2: counter licenses. Today not so much, although it's not impossible
4:24
Speaker 2: to hunt a mule deer or one of the other
4:26
Speaker 2: subspecies and I'll walk up to the counter and buy
4:28
Speaker 2: it tag. And speaking of meal deer, if you want
4:32
Speaker 2: to get in on that action in any meaningful way,
4:34
Speaker 2: you should probably start thinking about it now. You know
4:38
Speaker 2: how I feel about hunting opportunities for non residents, so
4:41
Speaker 2: I'm not going to get into that, but I don't
4:43
Speaker 2: mind stressing this point for the billionth time. It's not
4:46
Speaker 2: going to get cheaper and the tags aren't going to
4:49
Speaker 2: get easier to come by. There is one trend when
4:52
Speaker 2: it comes to both of those, and that trend is
4:54
Speaker 2: definitely not your friend. You can jump in line now
4:57
Speaker 2: and take whatever chances come your way or not, but
5:01
Speaker 2: if you don't start now, you will only probably ever
5:04
Speaker 2: hunt white tails, and that's kind of a shame. For example,
5:08
Speaker 2: if you put a gun to my head and said
5:11
Speaker 2: what's the most fun you can have with a bow
5:13
Speaker 2: in your hand, I'd instantly say that spotting and stalking
5:17
Speaker 2: meal deer is at the top spot on the podium.
5:20
Speaker 2: It gets even better when you get to hunt them
5:22
Speaker 2: in breaky, rolling country, where every hill you climb opens
5:27
Speaker 2: up a new world beyond, and it's usually just a
5:29
Speaker 2: matter of covering ground until you see a deer that
5:32
Speaker 2: will give you a chance to stalk it. Now, that's
5:35
Speaker 2: not to say those high country early season bachelored up
5:38
Speaker 2: meal deer aren't pretty special, because buddy, they are sitting
5:42
Speaker 2: on a glassing knob as the sun starts to light
5:44
Speaker 2: up the mountainside and the deer just seemed to glow.
5:47
Speaker 2: Is an experience I wish every hunter could have, even
5:50
Speaker 2: if just once. Just frantically picking a part a basin
5:54
Speaker 2: that is banked on top by alpine and on the
5:56
Speaker 2: bottom by the timberline while you shiver in the early
5:59
Speaker 2: more warning chill because you undoubtedly sweated your ass off
6:03
Speaker 2: getting up there, even if you tried really hard not
6:06
Speaker 2: to is an experience that goes way way beyond just
6:10
Speaker 2: being fun. It's damn near transcendental and only gets better
6:15
Speaker 2: when you see something big and velvety, lay down to
6:18
Speaker 2: snooze away the lunch shift, and you get to start
6:20
Speaker 2: planning your route to him, a route that will take
6:23
Speaker 2: you down and then be grudgingly up and then who knows,
6:28
Speaker 2: And when those high country bucks start losing their velvet
6:30
Speaker 2: and the pressure of idiots from Minnesota trying in vain
6:33
Speaker 2: to stalk them gets on their nerves enough they often
6:36
Speaker 2: drop down into the timber. When they do, they get
6:40
Speaker 2: a hell of a lot harder to spot. But if
6:42
Speaker 2: you do spot one, they are usually pretty close and
6:45
Speaker 2: usually have a lot of cover to work with to
6:47
Speaker 2: get right in range. It's hard to describe this in
6:51
Speaker 2: a way that resonates, because we have something innate in
6:54
Speaker 2: our brains that makes us focus on the dead animal
6:57
Speaker 2: part of a hunt and not what surely will be
6:59
Speaker 2: nine nine point nine nine percent of the reason to
7:02
Speaker 2: be there. When you do the work to get a
7:04
Speaker 2: mule deer tag, whether that's buying points in a state
7:08
Speaker 2: like Wyoming for years before applying, or you suss out
7:11
Speaker 2: one of the dwindling over the countertags still floating around,
7:15
Speaker 2: you are buying a ticket to an experience that the
7:17
Speaker 2: whitetail is mostly never going to give you. The mule
7:22
Speaker 2: deer is a big country deer. He lives where white
7:25
Speaker 2: tails live, but even then, the white tails will almost
7:28
Speaker 2: all be concentrated along the corridors where the water flows
7:31
Speaker 2: and the big cottonwoods grow. The rest of the land,
7:34
Speaker 2: of which there is plenty, will be pockmarked by mulder.
7:40
Speaker 2: He is one of a macro game, whereas the whitetail
7:43
Speaker 2: lives in the micro. There is something that both subspecies share,
7:48
Speaker 2: and that is the misconception about them as trophies. If
7:51
Speaker 2: you mention a I don't know, one hundred and thirty
7:54
Speaker 2: five inch meal deer to a western resident, they'll respond
7:57
Speaker 2: as most whitetail hunters would when they hear mentioned of
8:00
Speaker 2: one hundred inch eight pointer. There's probably not going to
8:03
Speaker 2: be much interest those deer to a lot of folks,
8:06
Speaker 2: at least in their minds, are a dime a dozen
8:09
Speaker 2: and not special. When you're on your first meal deer
8:12
Speaker 2: hunt and you lay eyes on a bed at one
8:14
Speaker 2: hundred and thirty five inch four by four, I promise
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Speaker 2: you that you won't be dismissive of it unless you've
8:19
Speaker 2: drawn a once in a lifetime tag for a unit
8:21
Speaker 2: with almost no pressure and that buck that a lot
8:24
Speaker 2: of residents wouldn't take the safety off for he's going
8:27
Speaker 2: to kick your ass at the predator prey game, almost
8:30
Speaker 2: guaranteed just like if those Western hunters who think white
8:33
Speaker 2: tails are all shot on food plots and require no
8:36
Speaker 2: effort or skill would never ever see a hundred inch
8:39
Speaker 2: white tail if they showed up most places where the
8:41
Speaker 2: hunting pressure is real, which is a hell of a
8:44
Speaker 2: lot of the places that most of us hunt. It's
8:56
Speaker 2: not just the deer that factor into our decisions, it's
8:59
Speaker 2: us too, and not just what we want out of
9:02
Speaker 2: the deer, but what we want out of us. The
9:05
Speaker 2: meal deer, for example, is often pretty thirsty because he
9:10
Speaker 2: often lives in pretty dry locales. Now, stalking him the
9:13
Speaker 2: way you want to, because that's what you want for
9:15
Speaker 2: yourself in that dry grass when the wind isn't blowing
9:18
Speaker 2: really hard is super difficult unless you're toting a high
9:22
Speaker 2: powered rifle, and even then it's not a sure thing.
9:25
Speaker 2: But there is no meal deer hunt without at least
9:28
Speaker 2: a few stalks, because otherwise, what the hell are you doing?
9:31
Speaker 2: The thing is those thirsty deer. We'll head to water,
9:34
Speaker 2: and that's where you can kill him if you're patient.
9:36
Speaker 2: But is that what you want out of the hunt?
9:39
Speaker 2: Who cares? Do it your way? I say I've shot them,
9:44
Speaker 2: you know, after running into them while mostly glassing and
9:46
Speaker 2: giving up on my chances. I've shot them after finding
9:49
Speaker 2: them bedded and crawling in, and I've shot them while
9:52
Speaker 2: sitting in a stand over a cattle guzzler. It was
9:55
Speaker 2: all amazing, and it was all a hell of a
9:57
Speaker 2: lot of fun to figure out. Getting out out of
10:00
Speaker 2: your comfort zone to hunt deer that aren't your deer
10:04
Speaker 2: is just a low grade adventure that is almost always
10:07
Speaker 2: worth the price of admission. I have yet to hunt
10:10
Speaker 2: the little desert dwelling cous deer because at the time
10:12
Speaker 2: of the year when I should be doing that, I've
10:14
Speaker 2: had just about enough of deer in general, and the
10:17
Speaker 2: pheasant hunting is usually starting to get really, really interesting.
10:20
Speaker 2: But I have spent a stupid amount of time looking
10:23
Speaker 2: at public land in places like Arizona, which on most
10:26
Speaker 2: years might as well be on Mars. But it doesn't
10:29
Speaker 2: hurt to humor yourself a little bit and drop a
10:31
Speaker 2: few pins on random water holes on public land that
10:34
Speaker 2: you could only get too if you drove for twenty
10:36
Speaker 2: four hours straight or hopped on a couple of planes
10:39
Speaker 2: and then rented a truck, And even if you got
10:42
Speaker 2: out to the desert and started picking apart the landscape
10:44
Speaker 2: with some high end optics, you might not find a
10:47
Speaker 2: whole lot of deer. The folks I know who are
10:50
Speaker 2: just totally ate up with cous deer hunting, at least
10:53
Speaker 2: in the States and not down in Mexico, where the
10:55
Speaker 2: game can be vastly different, they remind me of my
10:58
Speaker 2: buddies who run ultra marathons. After every hunt. Just like
11:03
Speaker 2: those guys, after every race, it's kind of the same thing.
11:06
Speaker 2: They say, I'm not doing that shit again. That's the
11:08
Speaker 2: last one for this reason and that reason, in all
11:11
Speaker 2: the usual suspects. But then a little time passes and
11:14
Speaker 2: the memory of the misery starts to blur, the edges soften,
11:19
Speaker 2: and before too long there are outright conversations about doing
11:22
Speaker 2: it all again. And then they do. Why am I
11:25
Speaker 2: trying to not so subtly convince you that maybe it's
11:28
Speaker 2: time to hunt something other than our typical white tails.
11:31
Speaker 2: I mean, besides the fact that I believe it's worth
11:34
Speaker 2: it and that any hunt that takes us out of
11:35
Speaker 2: our comfort zone will change us for the better, it's
11:38
Speaker 2: also just because most of us find excuses to not
11:41
Speaker 2: do things like this. When I talk to folks about
11:44
Speaker 2: traveling out of state or to a different part of
11:46
Speaker 2: their home state to hunt white tails. I almost inevitably
11:49
Speaker 2: hear the same response, why would I go there to
11:52
Speaker 2: shoot the deer I can shoot at home. It's because
11:55
Speaker 2: you can have a different hunt, That's it. And I
11:58
Speaker 2: know we are all clamoring to have the same hunt
12:01
Speaker 2: year after year so we don't have to think about
12:03
Speaker 2: it and we don't have to worry about failing. But
12:05
Speaker 2: the same hunt on the same ground with wildly predictable
12:08
Speaker 2: results is a hunt that is going to feel a
12:10
Speaker 2: little more hollow with each incarnation. A hunt for the
12:14
Speaker 2: same deer in just a different place isn't a hunt
12:17
Speaker 2: for the same deer. One hundred and twenty inch big
12:20
Speaker 2: woods buck for the Pennsylvania hunter isn't the same as
12:23
Speaker 2: one hundred and twenty inch deer in the flooded timberlands
12:25
Speaker 2: of southern Arkansas anymore than it would be a hunt
12:28
Speaker 2: for a I don't know, one hundred and twenty inch
12:30
Speaker 2: deer in the Milk River a Montana. Just imagine the
12:33
Speaker 2: difference in landscape for those three, Not to mention the
12:36
Speaker 2: difference in behaviors of deer and the difficulty levels. There
12:41
Speaker 2: is still a mental roadblock with a lot of us
12:43
Speaker 2: that just says you don't need to travel for deer.
12:46
Speaker 2: So maybe that's the case with white tails for you,
12:48
Speaker 2: great fine, But who amongst us doesn't want to try
12:52
Speaker 2: to arrow a mule deer as he lays around in
12:54
Speaker 2: the midday sun thinking he's perfectly safe, Or who amongst
12:59
Speaker 2: us doesn't want to leave the tight confines of much
13:01
Speaker 2: of the white tails world these days to go where
13:04
Speaker 2: the deer live all over in big country that is
13:07
Speaker 2: open to each one of us lucky bastards who call
13:09
Speaker 2: this country home. Or who doesn't want to take a
13:13
Speaker 2: bush plane to an island in Alaska that's just a
13:16
Speaker 2: few degrees closer to Jurassic Park than anywhere else and
13:19
Speaker 2: see if they can weave between the brown bears to
13:21
Speaker 2: tag out on Sikka deer while the wind blows seventy
13:24
Speaker 2: five miles per hour for the whole trip. Okay, maybe
13:27
Speaker 2: not everyone is on board with that last one, and
13:29
Speaker 2: that's fair. That one isn't for everyone, and it's out
13:33
Speaker 2: there and doable though for some, mostly folks with some
13:37
Speaker 2: expendable income and a true desire for adventure. But you
13:40
Speaker 2: don't need to go wrestle small car size brownies and
13:43
Speaker 2: the alders for a different deer. When you can go
13:45
Speaker 2: to other places with less danger and more options, That's
13:49
Speaker 2: what I'm looking into hard right now. For my daughters,
13:52
Speaker 2: I highly doubt they'll get to hunt anything other than
13:56
Speaker 2: whitetails mostly in their lives, but I want to facilitate
13:59
Speaker 2: it a little bit because I want my daughters to
14:02
Speaker 2: shoot meal deer so badly, although I definitely definitely do,
14:06
Speaker 2: but I also want them to experience hunting that isn't
14:09
Speaker 2: walking out on a well used trail to a perfectly
14:11
Speaker 2: set up blinder tree stand to wait on deer that
14:14
Speaker 2: we know live where they live because we get them
14:16
Speaker 2: on camera and often see them with our own eyes.
14:20
Speaker 2: Mystery is an important part of hunting, and we keep
14:24
Speaker 2: trying to remove it. And I'd say the same thing
14:26
Speaker 2: about a little adventure. I'd also say that this is
14:29
Speaker 2: a good time of year to start doing a little research.
14:32
Speaker 2: Maybe that's nothing more than sitting in a turkey blind
14:34
Speaker 2: staring at your phone when the gobblers go tight lipped
14:37
Speaker 2: and you're trying to see where you can get a
14:38
Speaker 2: tag for a meal deer or a black tail or
14:40
Speaker 2: a coups, deer or whatever. Because when you figure that out,
14:44
Speaker 2: the next logical step is to start looking at on
14:46
Speaker 2: X just to see where the biggest chunks of public
14:48
Speaker 2: land are. This might seem a little bonkers, but I
14:52
Speaker 2: honestly think that planning a trip that might never happen
14:55
Speaker 2: is a good way to work a few muscles we
14:56
Speaker 2: often don't really work. And the more you kick around
15:00
Speaker 2: trip like that, the more likely you are to do
15:03
Speaker 2: something like that. Now, maybe you'll never drive thirty five
15:06
Speaker 2: hours up to Oregon to hunt real blacktails that are
15:09
Speaker 2: the toughest to kill in the whole world. But maybe
15:11
Speaker 2: you realize during your research that the white tails that
15:13
Speaker 2: live one or two states over seem kind of appealing. Now,
15:17
Speaker 2: and maybe you have a teenage daughter or two who
15:19
Speaker 2: would like a hunt that's different than the one on
15:22
Speaker 2: Grahama's farm out of the same box line, maybe you
15:26
Speaker 2: should just try to make that hunt happen, because those
15:29
Speaker 2: kids are going to keep growing up and the opportunities
15:32
Speaker 2: are going to keep going away. Now, it's easy to
15:35
Speaker 2: doom and gloom hard here, but a better bet is
15:37
Speaker 2: to accept the opportunities that are still available is worthwhile,
15:41
Speaker 2: and then figure out how to make something happen. If not,
15:45
Speaker 2: the worst thing you'll get out of it is a
15:46
Speaker 2: way to pass the time when you're waiting for the
15:48
Speaker 2: next strutter to pop into the field. And the best
15:51
Speaker 2: outcome is pretty damn special, no matter where the other
15:55
Speaker 2: deer take you. So think about that and think about
15:59
Speaker 2: coming back, because I'm going to talk about how to
16:01
Speaker 2: find more places to hunt at home, on the road, wherever,
16:05
Speaker 2: how to get permission, how to find lease. It's just
16:08
Speaker 2: how to expand your hunting opportunities for white tails. That's it.
16:14
Speaker 2: I'm Tony Peterson. This has been the Wired to Hunt
16:16
Speaker 2: Foundations podcast, which is brought to you by First Light.
16:19
Speaker 2: Thank you so much for all of your support. And
16:22
Speaker 2: we just had Turkey Week a little bit ago. You
16:23
Speaker 2: guys showed up big time for that. You voted in
16:26
Speaker 2: the Turkey Calling contest. You load it up on a
16:29
Speaker 2: lot of calls and decoys stuff like that. Thank you
16:31
Speaker 2: so much for that. If you want some more hunting content,
16:35
Speaker 2: maybe you want a new recipe, you know, cook that gobbler.
16:38
Speaker 2: You're going to be arrowing here soon. Whatever the meat
16:40
Speaker 2: eater dot Com has you covered. We drop new content
16:43
Speaker 2: every single day on that site, and I'm talking films, podcasts, articles, everything,
16:51
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