Latest / Wired To Hunt Podcast / Ep. 946: Foundations - How to Beat a Buck's Nose in Real Time
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,
- 0:22Speaker 2: which has brought to you by first Light. I'm your host,
- 0:24Speaker 2: Tony Peterson, and today's episode is all about the reality
- 0:26Speaker 2: of dealing with the wind and how many hunters get
- 0:29Speaker 2: it wrong, especially in the early season when they're just
- 0:31Speaker 2: getting going a tink about the primary ways you know
- 0:37Speaker 2: that we spook deer. You know, we might get busted
- 0:40Speaker 2: looking at our phones and not really thinking about our movement.
- 0:44Speaker 2: Or we might you know, have a noisy ladder stand
- 0:46Speaker 2: that pops and squeaks when we move, But mostly we
- 0:49Speaker 2: just get winded. It's the reality of white tail hunting.
- 0:52Speaker 2: And if you can't figure out how to beat their noses,
- 0:55Speaker 2: you can't really figure out how to beat them. I
- 0:57Speaker 2: think it's that simple, even though it's not all that sense.
- 1:00Speaker 2: That's also what I'm going to talk about right now.
- 1:10Speaker 2: A few weeks ago, I sweated my way through northeastern
- 1:12Speaker 2: Nebraska while hanging stands and putting up blinds for a
- 1:15Speaker 2: rut hunt. A cameraman is a guy who looks like
- 1:18Speaker 2: he climbs mountains, and it turns out he does. Over
- 1:22Speaker 2: the last years, so my daughters and I have gotten
- 1:24Speaker 2: pretty into rock climbing documentaries and the idea that we
- 1:27Speaker 2: too might someday, I don't know, go to a climbing
- 1:30Speaker 2: gym where it's very safe and very climate controlled, and
- 1:33Speaker 2: maybe try the kindergarten training wheels on type of climbing
- 1:37Speaker 2: that isn't the real thing, but would make us feel
- 1:39Speaker 2: a little bit like it kind of was. So I
- 1:42Speaker 2: asked this guy a lot of questions, and I learned
- 1:44Speaker 2: a hell of a lot about rock climbing from him.
- 1:47Speaker 2: One thing he explained to me was how long it
- 1:48Speaker 2: took to successfully climb certain routes, which meant getting all
- 1:52Speaker 2: the way to the top without falling. I know that
- 1:55Speaker 2: sounds pretty self evident, but he explained to me how
- 1:57Speaker 2: often he falls, and how often a certain pitch or
- 2:00Speaker 2: certain route will just get under your skin and force
- 2:03Speaker 2: you to figure out each handhold and foothold, even if
- 2:05Speaker 2: it takes you ten years to master it. It was
- 2:09Speaker 2: super interesting and our conversation was top of mine when
- 2:12Speaker 2: I stared up at another crooked ass tree in another
- 2:15Speaker 2: spot in the Nebraska Sandhills and tried to not only
- 2:18Speaker 2: envision my route up the tree, but how the hell
- 2:20Speaker 2: i'd find two spots big and straight enough to hang
- 2:23Speaker 2: a hunter stand and a camera stand. Hanging double sets
- 2:27Speaker 2: in that area is a weird mixture of physical acrobatics
- 2:30Speaker 2: and mental acrobatics. It's so easy to get wrong. And
- 2:34Speaker 2: the big hang up I had, besides how unfriendly the
- 2:36Speaker 2: trees are in that region, was how often i'd make
- 2:40Speaker 2: a big concession win wise. This is something that's kind
- 2:43Speaker 2: of keeping me up at night because not only do
- 2:45Speaker 2: I need to go down there and try to shoot
- 2:46Speaker 2: a big one on film, I need Steve Vanella and
- 2:48Speaker 2: one of his buddies to have a really good hunt
- 2:50Speaker 2: down there too. There aren't enough setups one guy could
- 2:53Speaker 2: get up in the span of four or five days
- 2:55Speaker 2: to cover all wind options in all the spots I
- 2:58Speaker 2: wanted to hunt. So the voice in my head that
- 3:00Speaker 2: talks me through this shit would go like this, Well,
- 3:03Speaker 2: if you set up here, you can hunt a perfect
- 3:05Speaker 2: south wind, but you're screwed. If a colt front hits
- 3:08Speaker 2: and it comes out of the north, a west wind's
- 3:10Speaker 2: pretty rough too. Then I'd look at another tree and
- 3:13Speaker 2: the voice would say, well, if you set up here,
- 3:15Speaker 2: you can hunt a perfect north wind, But if a
- 3:17Speaker 2: warm front hits and it comes out of the south,
- 3:19Speaker 2: you're screwed. A west wind is rough.
- 3:21Speaker 1: Two.
- 3:22Speaker 2: The thing about that region, and a hell of a
- 3:24Speaker 2: lot of the Midwest, is that it's all gritted out
- 3:27Speaker 2: in sections, or at least it was a long time ago.
- 3:30Speaker 2: The roads framed out are in just like square miles,
- 3:33Speaker 2: with each following the cardinal directions. The fence lines on
- 3:37Speaker 2: a lot of the properties, and certainly the one I
- 3:38Speaker 2: was on, follow those same directions. This means that the
- 3:42Speaker 2: deer off I'm going to travel north, south or east west,
- 3:44Speaker 2: and that means that a whole lot of the wind
- 3:46Speaker 2: you might get during the rut is going to favor
- 3:48Speaker 2: them heavily while keeping you in the danger zone. Besides
- 3:52Speaker 2: the reality of crooked ass trees, this is also why
- 3:55Speaker 2: I went with ground blinds more than I intended to.
- 3:58Speaker 2: You can get a little bit bigger margin of error
- 4:00Speaker 2: with ground blinds and wind, and that matters when you're
- 4:03Speaker 2: working with razor thin margins. To begin with, the way
- 4:06Speaker 2: that a lot of deer hunters approach this, at least
- 4:08Speaker 2: if they are on private land, is to have some
- 4:10Speaker 2: stands that are good for various winds and let the
- 4:13Speaker 2: wind direction of the day decide it for them. I
- 4:15Speaker 2: grew up hunting this way, and I can remember pretty
- 4:18Speaker 2: vividly my dad turning on the weather channel on TV
- 4:21Speaker 2: mind you, to check the predicted wind for the evening
- 4:24Speaker 2: or the following morning. Then we decide on who would
- 4:27Speaker 2: sit where based on the limited amount of stands that
- 4:29Speaker 2: we had available. As you can imagine, we weren't exactly
- 4:33Speaker 2: stacking up booners at that point in my life. We
- 4:36Speaker 2: would also go mobile sometimes, either to hang a new
- 4:39Speaker 2: set or just sit on the ground if we had
- 4:41Speaker 2: the itch or the wind was doing something funky like
- 4:43Speaker 2: blowing out of the east. Now maybe I only pay
- 4:46Speaker 2: attention to this because my job depends on it, but
- 4:48Speaker 2: I feel like at least fifty percent of the time
- 4:50Speaker 2: I have a chance to hunt, the weather makes it really,
- 4:53Speaker 2: really difficult. This goes for white tails, but just about
- 4:56Speaker 2: every critter out there, you know from elk and you
- 5:00Speaker 2: know mule's on down de peasants. In small game, it's
- 5:03Speaker 2: the nature of nature and it often sucks. But with
- 5:06Speaker 2: white tails we aren't entirely hopeless when it comes to
- 5:09Speaker 2: win and what our options are. For starters, you can
- 5:12Speaker 2: go by yourself a big old box blind and keep
- 5:14Speaker 2: yourself mostly out of the wind, but that's not fool proof.
- 5:18Speaker 2: You can buy a box blind and point an ozonics
- 5:20Speaker 2: unit out of the downwind facing window, and you're going
- 5:23Speaker 2: to increase your margin for error by quite a bit.
- 5:25Speaker 2: Not everyone wants to do that though, or has the means.
- 5:29Speaker 2: Ground blinds just to pop up hub style ones, as
- 5:31Speaker 2: I mentioned, can be a hedge against the win to
- 5:34Speaker 2: some degree. And again, if you use an ozonics unit
- 5:37Speaker 2: point out out of the blind in the right direction,
- 5:39Speaker 2: you can do pretty well on fooling a deer's number
- 5:42Speaker 2: one defense. But that means you have to hunt out
- 5:45Speaker 2: of ground blind and that isn't that much fun for
- 5:47Speaker 2: a lot of folks. So what do you do? Well?
- 5:50Speaker 2: You can spray down, do whatever you need to, but
- 5:52Speaker 2: you still need to play the win, and that's just
- 5:54Speaker 2: kind of how it goes. You can also try to
- 5:57Speaker 2: figure out how to get an advantage with the win
- 5:59Speaker 2: how to use it in a way where the deer,
- 6:03Speaker 2: you know, kind of think they have the wind in
- 6:05Speaker 2: their favor, but they don't. And that's a tight window
- 6:07Speaker 2: thing that I've talked about a lot. But once you
- 6:09Speaker 2: figure it out, it works really well. This is because
- 6:13Speaker 2: wil ad deer's nose is nearly perfect when it comes
- 6:16Speaker 2: to sniffing out big predators like you and I. It
- 6:18Speaker 2: doesn't work if they aren't generally directly downwind, or at
- 6:22Speaker 2: least in a spot where your scent stream flows no shit. Right, Well,
- 6:27Speaker 2: I want to talk about this part of the equation,
- 6:29Speaker 2: but not yet. Before that, I want to get into
- 6:31Speaker 2: my thought process for those Nebraska setups and what that
- 6:33Speaker 2: might mean for you. So let's take two of the
- 6:36Speaker 2: stands I'm most excited about. They both sit on really
- 6:40Speaker 2: good pinch points along the same river. They are both
- 6:43Speaker 2: on the same bank of that river, and on paper
- 6:47Speaker 2: might seem like they'd only work for the same wind directions.
- 6:51Speaker 2: But because a lot of rivers don't flow perfectly straight,
- 6:54Speaker 2: one of the stands is ideal for a south wind.
- 6:57Speaker 2: The bucks that cruise that spot will almost inevita passed
- 7:00Speaker 2: by within range of that setup and not get my wind,
- 7:03Speaker 2: because they'd have to be out in the middle of
- 7:05Speaker 2: the river to catch me. But if the wind isn't
- 7:07Speaker 2: pretty much straight out of the south, that spot is
- 7:09Speaker 2: going to become a real problem real fast. Now the
- 7:12Speaker 2: other stand set up, you know, it's maybe four hundred
- 7:15Speaker 2: yards downstream, so it essentially covers a lot of the
- 7:19Speaker 2: same deer travel because a cruising buck can cover a
- 7:22Speaker 2: quarter of a mile pretty quickly during the rut. But
- 7:25Speaker 2: the way that stand is set up, a south wind
- 7:27Speaker 2: will be a bad idea and a north wind will
- 7:30Speaker 2: be perfect. West for both of them is a maybe,
- 7:33Speaker 2: depending on how much the west favors the north or
- 7:35Speaker 2: the south. It's hard for me to imagine a situation
- 7:39Speaker 2: where either stand would be a good choice other than
- 7:43Speaker 2: maybe a dead calm day, which is unlikely in Nebraska.
- 7:47Speaker 2: So essentially I have two setups on the same river
- 7:50Speaker 2: to cover the same travel that are good for opposite winds,
- 7:53Speaker 2: And that's you know, how it pretty much goes. It's
- 7:56Speaker 2: twice the work, but also means that when the rut hits,
- 7:59Speaker 2: we are highly likely to be able to hunt that
- 8:01Speaker 2: travel route and not have to risk it or sit
- 8:04Speaker 2: something out. I remember reading an article years ago, probably
- 8:18Speaker 2: in Bowhunter magazine, from a guy who said that if
- 8:20Speaker 2: you found a really good spot, he'd set up four
- 8:23Speaker 2: stands so that he could hunt any wind direction. Now
- 8:26Speaker 2: I don't know anyone who is going to do that,
- 8:28Speaker 2: but thinking about it from that perspective, or at least
- 8:31Speaker 2: of having two setups to key off the same travel
- 8:33Speaker 2: or same pattern, it's not a bad idea. This is
- 8:37Speaker 2: also maybe the best argument out there for considering a
- 8:40Speaker 2: mobile strategy. But it's not enough to just buy a
- 8:43Speaker 2: saddle and some lightweight sticks. You also have to have
- 8:46Speaker 2: the mobile strategy mindset, which is often kind of misunderstood.
- 8:50Speaker 2: Let me give you an example from my last season
- 8:52Speaker 2: to sort of frame this up. When I was down
- 8:54Speaker 2: to the wire in North Dakota, I figured my best
- 8:56Speaker 2: bet was to hunt a cattle tank for any whitetail
- 9:00Speaker 2: buck that might come in for a drink or a
- 9:03Speaker 2: bite of something a little more lush due to the
- 9:05Speaker 2: tanks runoff in that very, very dry land. The problem
- 9:09Speaker 2: was that there was literally no good stand trees within
- 9:11Speaker 2: shooting range, and really not a whole lot of covered
- 9:14Speaker 2: to set up blind it. Now, I tried to sit
- 9:17Speaker 2: on the ground and cover a likely approach rout, but
- 9:19Speaker 2: that didn't work very well because what I thought was
- 9:22Speaker 2: a likely approach rout turned out to not be the case.
- 9:25Speaker 2: And while we saw a lot of deer, a hell
- 9:27Speaker 2: of a lot of them saw us, and even more
- 9:29Speaker 2: of them smelled us. I looked at every tree in
- 9:32Speaker 2: about three acres and every spot on the ground that
- 9:35Speaker 2: might allow us to play the wind and not get caught.
- 9:38Speaker 2: Now I ended up sitting in a spot that really sucked,
- 9:41Speaker 2: and it required me to mostly lie on my back
- 9:43Speaker 2: for most of the sit but it was really the
- 9:45Speaker 2: best option and it worked. It wasn't comfortable or overly enjoyable,
- 9:49Speaker 2: but it was the only way to play the wind
- 9:51Speaker 2: in that spot. And really, all the best tree standards,
- 9:54Speaker 2: sal gear, all the best scent killing products and all
- 9:56Speaker 2: that jazz just couldn't overcome the reality of having to
- 9:59Speaker 2: tuck in on the ground and cross my fingers because
- 10:02Speaker 2: it was just only going to work that way. And
- 10:05Speaker 2: this happens to me a lot, and it might be
- 10:07Speaker 2: because I'm going into more situations to set up on
- 10:09Speaker 2: the fly than a lot of hunters, But there is
- 10:12Speaker 2: a big time private land lesson here as well. But
- 10:15Speaker 2: this goes back to the mobile mindset thing. Think about
- 10:19Speaker 2: all of the data we have on weather and how
- 10:21Speaker 2: you can look at your individual stand site and see
- 10:23Speaker 2: exactly how the wind should be. Think about how often
- 10:27Speaker 2: you go in and realize it's not quite right. You
- 10:30Speaker 2: could push it, but that might be trouble. It often is,
- 10:34Speaker 2: especially if you're not hunting a place with a lot
- 10:36Speaker 2: of elevation to force very specific deer movement. The flatter
- 10:39Speaker 2: it is, the harder this stuff is, generally, but a
- 10:43Speaker 2: lot of people are scared to sit on the ground
- 10:45Speaker 2: or call an audible in the moment, and then they
- 10:47Speaker 2: push it with a setup because they reckon that being
- 10:49Speaker 2: in a tree is better than being on the ground,
- 10:52Speaker 2: which is kind of like how a lot of hunters
- 10:54Speaker 2: think that no matter what, hunting private land always trump's
- 10:57Speaker 2: hunting public. It doesn't. And when you learn that lesson,
- 11:01Speaker 2: it's like a whole new world of hunting opportunities opens
- 11:03Speaker 2: up before you. The best way to go about this
- 11:06Speaker 2: is to be prepared. I keep a go box in
- 11:09Speaker 2: my truck that has a saddle and sticks and whatever
- 11:12Speaker 2: I need to go mobile at any time. This is
- 11:15Speaker 2: a no brainer if you have the gear, because if
- 11:17Speaker 2: you pull up into the ditch along your farm and
- 11:19Speaker 2: the wind is not what you need, you can switch
- 11:21Speaker 2: gears and still be in the game. But I also
- 11:25Speaker 2: keep the stuff that's necessary to sit on the ground
- 11:27Speaker 2: in my go box too, And if I'm walking into
- 11:30Speaker 2: some place this kind of a question mark, I generally
- 11:33Speaker 2: have pruner's, a saw, and a cushion and off in
- 11:35Speaker 2: a gilly suit style jacket tucked into my pack. Those
- 11:39Speaker 2: few pieces of gear have saved a lot of my
- 11:41Speaker 2: private land hunts and have killed me some deer. The
- 11:44Speaker 2: thing about this is if you don't have an easy
- 11:46Speaker 2: option to play the wind better, it probably won't try.
- 11:50Speaker 2: And this is just the best way to get busted.
- 11:53Speaker 2: And if you haven't done this at least a few
- 11:54Speaker 2: dozen times in your deer hunting career, keep hunting. You're
- 11:57Speaker 2: gonna get there. I'd say maybe a parallel point worth
- 12:00Speaker 2: making here is to expect the wind to work against you. Now,
- 12:05Speaker 2: maybe that seems crazy, but it's so often true, and
- 12:07Speaker 2: it's not often super evident until you get settled into
- 12:11Speaker 2: your spot and realize that the wind is just not
- 12:14Speaker 2: doing what you expected. If that's the case, you have
- 12:17Speaker 2: to make the call on whether it's likely to switch
- 12:20Speaker 2: or likely to settle down to a non factor type
- 12:23Speaker 2: of level, or whether you need to just get down
- 12:26Speaker 2: and go for plan be. My general rule for how
- 12:29Speaker 2: to play the last one is how much faith I
- 12:31Speaker 2: have in the spot, and when I think I can
- 12:33Speaker 2: hunt it again. If it might not be for a
- 12:35Speaker 2: couple of weeks, I might just push it because it
- 12:37Speaker 2: might be worth it to just see. If I have
- 12:40Speaker 2: a few days in a row to hunt and I
- 12:41Speaker 2: really believe the spot could produce, I'm just not going
- 12:44Speaker 2: to risk blowing it out. The bad part about this
- 12:47Speaker 2: is that you have to see how it plays out
- 12:48Speaker 2: to really know. Hell, this might be the most important
- 12:52Speaker 2: thing to recognize about all of this. How does the
- 12:54Speaker 2: wind in your area act? You know, it's kind of
- 12:57Speaker 2: just like what kind of deer are you really hunting?
- 13:00Speaker 2: Do they look up in the trees all the time
- 13:02Speaker 2: or never? Are they jumpy as hell or as kind
- 13:05Speaker 2: of oblivious? Now with the wind, in some places, it'll
- 13:09Speaker 2: blow all night, just as fiercely as in the day.
- 13:12Speaker 2: But in a lot of places it'll die down hard
- 13:15Speaker 2: around sunset and it won't really get a lot of
- 13:18Speaker 2: steam going until a few hours into the morning. You know,
- 13:22Speaker 2: you've already had some shooting light pass. That North Dakota
- 13:25Speaker 2: hunt I mentioned early is always an interesting one for
- 13:27Speaker 2: me because the general area is almost always windy, but
- 13:31Speaker 2: being tucked into a deep river valley where the sun
- 13:34Speaker 2: will hide behind the cliffs long before you need to
- 13:36Speaker 2: climb down, means the wind often goes from one extreme
- 13:39Speaker 2: to the other in a pretty short time window. That
- 13:42Speaker 2: almost never happens quite the same in my home state hunts,
- 13:45Speaker 2: but it's important to know because, depending on seasonal timing,
- 13:48Speaker 2: I might not worry too much if the wind isn't
- 13:50Speaker 2: great until the last hour, because I know most of
- 13:53Speaker 2: the deer won't show up before that, so to muddy
- 13:56Speaker 2: the waters even further. The truth of this matter is
- 13:58Speaker 2: that you won't know how good or how bad your
- 14:00Speaker 2: strategy is until you see it through.
- 14:03Speaker 1: Now.
- 14:03Speaker 2: The good news here, although I guess it's not really
- 14:05Speaker 2: good news, is that we often see it through out
- 14:08Speaker 2: of a lack of options, and that will show us
- 14:10Speaker 2: at least one outcome when the wind isn't perfect. And
- 14:14Speaker 2: when you do that, pay attention. If you don't see
- 14:17Speaker 2: much or anything, or you do spook some deer. It's
- 14:19Speaker 2: hard to argue with those data points. Next time, don't
- 14:23Speaker 2: push it, try something else, and when you do, pay
- 14:26Speaker 2: attention to how plan B shook out. Did it allow
- 14:29Speaker 2: you to tuck into the standing corn, to sit in
- 14:31Speaker 2: a fence row and have some action when your tree
- 14:33Speaker 2: stands are totally out of play that's important? Or did
- 14:37Speaker 2: it force you to throw up a mobile set somewhere
- 14:38Speaker 2: else and show you some other deer movement that you
- 14:40Speaker 2: didn't expect, Because that stuff is important too, and it
- 14:43Speaker 2: really helps you feel less helpful when the wind is
- 14:46Speaker 2: an ideal and you don't have another pre hung set
- 14:48Speaker 2: to go to. I realize this might sound like advice
- 14:52Speaker 2: coming from big properties where lots of setups are possible,
- 14:56Speaker 2: but this is in my experience at least crazy important
- 15:00Speaker 2: small parcels. Not blowing out your whole thirty acres is
- 15:03Speaker 2: a good thing if you want to enjoy your whole
- 15:05Speaker 2: season there. Anyway, as we get into the seasons across
- 15:09Speaker 2: the country, think about the win and how it will
- 15:11Speaker 2: inevitably be wrong for you quite a bit, and what
- 15:14Speaker 2: you're going to do about that. Then come back next
- 15:18Speaker 2: week because I'm going to talk about bad habits in
- 15:20Speaker 2: the white tail woods and how they cost us big
- 15:22Speaker 2: Bucks all the time. That's it for this week. I'm
- 15:26Speaker 2: Tony Peterson. This has been the Wire to Hunt Foundations podcast.
- 15:30Speaker 2: Thank you so much for listening and for all your support.
- 15:33Speaker 2: Maybe you're getting ready to drive across the country to
- 15:35Speaker 2: go hunt some meal deer, antelope, or something. Maybe you
- 15:38Speaker 2: just need something new to listen to on your way
- 15:40Speaker 2: to work. Go to the mediater dot com. Check out
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- 15:46Speaker 2: a hell of a lot of hours of fresh content
- 15:49Speaker 2: every single week. If you want to watch some hunts,
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- 16:01Speaker 2: go check it out, and again, thank you so much
- 16:03Speaker 2: for your support.