Latest / Wired To Hunt Podcast / Ep. 468: Foundations - Don’t Jump the Gun on the Rut
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 host,
- 0:11Speaker 1: Tony Peterson. Hey everyone, welcome to the Wire to Hunt
- 0:16Speaker 1: Foundations podcast, which is brought to you by First Light.
- 0:19Speaker 1: Today's episode is about how easy it is to get
- 0:22Speaker 1: your rut timing wrong. We are on the cusp, or
- 0:38Speaker 1: so it feels. Any day now your trail cameras will
- 0:41Speaker 1: show serious chasing. One of your hunting buddy's gonna call
- 0:43Speaker 1: you to tell you about the toady saw grunting and
- 0:45Speaker 1: cruising knows to the ground. You'll think, well, that's it,
- 0:48Speaker 1: I needg into the woods right now. We've got an
- 0:50Speaker 1: early ruck going on and I'm going to miss it.
- 0:53Speaker 1: Here's the deal. Don't at least don't go in with
- 0:56Speaker 1: a cavalier attitude and thinking that it's the way. It
- 0:58Speaker 1: will be an over mess of it. It won't be,
- 1:01Speaker 1: and you'll just be burning through your best stuff before
- 1:03Speaker 1: the big show comes. Trust me on this one. There
- 1:06Speaker 1: isn't a hunter alive with a decently impressive trophy room
- 1:10Speaker 1: who hasn't learned this lesson the hard way. We all
- 1:24Speaker 1: know the rut is based on photo periodism. The amount
- 1:28Speaker 1: of daylight reaching the brains of all those bucks we
- 1:30Speaker 1: want to shoot, and the does they want to bang
- 1:33Speaker 1: is what sets up the pins. A wicked cold front
- 1:36Speaker 1: can knock them all down, but it isn't necessary. The
- 1:40Speaker 1: rut happens at the same time every year, whether we
- 1:43Speaker 1: like it or not, whether we want to believe it
- 1:46Speaker 1: or not. While this varies from Maine to Alabama, at
- 1:49Speaker 1: least timing wise, the deer in any given region need
- 1:53Speaker 1: their fonts to be born at specific times in the
- 1:55Speaker 1: spring to ensure the greatest chances of survival. This is
- 1:59Speaker 1: an accident. And while there are outliers as far as
- 2:02Speaker 1: late breeding, early breeding, and the corresponding fonn drops, you've
- 2:06Speaker 1: got to forget about those and consider when the rut
- 2:09Speaker 1: has to happen in your neck of the woods. Do
- 2:11Speaker 1: you know what that means? It means the third week
- 2:14Speaker 1: of October for many of us is too early for
- 2:18Speaker 1: a reliable rud hunt. There are exceptions, like I said,
- 2:21Speaker 1: and conception studies have shown that a small percentage of
- 2:24Speaker 1: dose will be bred way outside the main window in November,
- 2:28Speaker 1: but that's a lottery odd stuff. It's probably not gonna
- 2:31Speaker 1: happen to you. You could still play off the staging
- 2:34Speaker 1: area strategy and maybe the scrape strategy described in the
- 2:38Speaker 1: last couple episodes of this podcast. That's a possibility, and
- 2:41Speaker 1: it's not a bad one if you need to get
- 2:43Speaker 1: out and you need to hunt. It does come with
- 2:45Speaker 1: a few caveats if you really want to play it
- 2:47Speaker 1: safe until November drops the base and all the deers
- 2:50Speaker 1: start to wave their glow sticks around and really party.
- 2:52Speaker 1: So first off, while it's easy to get tunnel vision
- 2:55Speaker 1: in relation to bucks, you need to be thinking about
- 2:58Speaker 1: the doz. What don't want to do now is get
- 3:02Speaker 1: careless around the ladies and put them off of their pattern.
- 3:05Speaker 1: This is easier to do than we like to admit, because,
- 3:08Speaker 1: after all, we think the rut will save us, but
- 3:11Speaker 1: it might not, and that's an important wrinkle to create
- 3:13Speaker 1: in your brain. The rut isn't the end all to
- 3:16Speaker 1: pour deer hunting results for most hunters. It's far, far
- 3:20Speaker 1: far from a guarantee. That only gets worse when you
- 3:24Speaker 1: push into your best rut stands two weeks before the
- 3:26Speaker 1: real action will probably start. So you have to think
- 3:29Speaker 1: about your time in the woods right now in a
- 3:31Speaker 1: way that allows you to do a few things. The
- 3:34Speaker 1: first is to leave the dose alone, or at least
- 3:36Speaker 1: not spook them. I know I told you not that
- 3:39Speaker 1: long ago to target them, but now, don't shooting doses
- 3:44Speaker 1: an early October game, not now. The second thing is
- 3:49Speaker 1: that your time in the woods needs to be valuable.
- 3:51Speaker 1: Are you going to be in places where observation, real
- 3:54Speaker 1: quality observation is possible. That's important. The buck you see
- 3:59Speaker 1: staging at gas light deep in the woods, that buck
- 4:02Speaker 1: is killable in the next couple of weeks. Or you
- 4:05Speaker 1: can see the Doe family groups browsing their way through.
- 4:09Speaker 1: It won't be long and someone will be on their tail,
- 4:11Speaker 1: provided they stick to that routine. Lastly, ask yourself what
- 4:16Speaker 1: the sign looks like right now. Where concentrations of rubs
- 4:20Speaker 1: and scrapes are now is important. It's also important to
- 4:23Speaker 1: note where new sign shows up every couple of days.
- 4:26Speaker 1: The rub line that goes from so so to holy
- 4:29Speaker 1: shit this week is the spy are going to want
- 4:32Speaker 1: to devote some attention to when the rut is on.
- 4:34Speaker 1: But let's start with the dose. The biggest mistake a
- 4:37Speaker 1: lot of hunters make right now is defaulting back to
- 4:40Speaker 1: their field edge or easy to get two stands. They
- 4:43Speaker 1: reason that since there should be a few doughs coming
- 4:46Speaker 1: into the cut corner beans, that the bucks will swing
- 4:48Speaker 1: through as well. This may be true, but it probably isn't.
- 4:52Speaker 1: And you know what I talk about, It probably really isn't.
- 4:55Speaker 1: If you're hunting pressure deer, a more likely outcome is
- 4:59Speaker 1: educating the dose tre presence and putting them off of
- 5:01Speaker 1: a pattern that you really really want them to stick to.
- 5:05Speaker 1: This doesn't just happen to the folks who hunt egg
- 5:07Speaker 1: country either. If you hunt big wood swamps and have
- 5:10Speaker 1: one spot where you usually see a few deer, that's
- 5:13Speaker 1: where you're going to want to go. The same goes
- 5:16Speaker 1: for Western white tails on river crossings and other deer
- 5:18Speaker 1: heavy spots. The poll to go where the action is
- 5:22Speaker 1: as close to as sure thing as you can get.
- 5:25Speaker 1: It's a hard one to ignore. We all do it.
- 5:28Speaker 1: But that's not that dangerous on October one. But it
- 5:31Speaker 1: is dangerous. Now. Let me give you an example to
- 5:33Speaker 1: illustrate this. On opening day of Minnesota season, I slipped
- 5:39Speaker 1: into a stand located where several fingers of timber meat.
- 5:42Speaker 1: It was opening morning and my plan was mostly to
- 5:45Speaker 1: try to shoot a dough. Now, if a good bucket
- 5:47Speaker 1: shown up, i'd just switched gears, but I knew the
- 5:49Speaker 1: odds of that were low in this spot. An hour
- 5:52Speaker 1: into the morning, I spotted alone dough walking down the trail.
- 5:55Speaker 1: That's the kind of dough I really like to shoot
- 5:56Speaker 1: and I really like to eat. But she was small
- 5:59Speaker 1: and it was early. I hemmed in hot on it
- 6:02Speaker 1: and whether I should shoot her, but I decided to pass,
- 6:05Speaker 1: mostly because she was really small. I sat that stand
- 6:08Speaker 1: a couple of times throughout the season, and I saw
- 6:09Speaker 1: her every single sit. She was just living there. Now
- 6:13Speaker 1: fast forward to the last couple of days of October,
- 6:16Speaker 1: and I desperately wanted to hunt a stand near a
- 6:18Speaker 1: huge community scrape that, according to my cameras, was buck central.
- 6:23Speaker 1: Even better, the buck I had been paying close attention
- 6:25Speaker 1: to for a few seasons used that scrape somewhat frequently,
- 6:29Speaker 1: and by that farm standards, that was huge at at least.
- 6:34Speaker 1: I thought that was my only chance to kill that buck.
- 6:37Speaker 1: So I really really wanted to go in there for
- 6:40Speaker 1: an all day sit that time of year. When I
- 6:42Speaker 1: got out of my truck in the dark on October,
- 6:45Speaker 1: that was exactly my plan. I also almost instantly realized
- 6:50Speaker 1: the wind wasn't gonna allow it. That didn't stop me
- 6:53Speaker 1: from trying to talk myself into hunting there, but I
- 6:56Speaker 1: just couldn't do it because I knew i'd blow the
- 6:58Speaker 1: whole thing up. And it's not very often when a
- 7:00Speaker 1: guy gets to hunt a legitimate booner in Minnesota. So
- 7:04Speaker 1: I called an audible and I headed back into the
- 7:06Speaker 1: stand where the young Doe lived. Nothing showed for the
- 7:09Speaker 1: first two hours, but then I looked down the trail
- 7:12Speaker 1: and a familiar face was trotting my way. She passed
- 7:15Speaker 1: by at fifteen yards, and thirty seconds later I heard
- 7:18Speaker 1: the loudest grunt of my life. I stood up so
- 7:20Speaker 1: fast that I nearly paid myself a little and then
- 7:22Speaker 1: I got ready. I heard a grunt again, and honestly,
- 7:25Speaker 1: it was actually more like a roar. To this date,
- 7:28Speaker 1: it's the only time I've ever heard about make that sound.
- 7:31Speaker 1: And I'll tell you what, if big Bucks did that
- 7:33Speaker 1: more often, the cost of leases would triple because that
- 7:35Speaker 1: ship is crazy exciting. And when he showed, he was
- 7:39Speaker 1: on a mission to catch up to his young girlfriend,
- 7:41Speaker 1: and I had about five seconds to draw, stop him
- 7:43Speaker 1: and shoot. He died just out of sight and proved
- 7:47Speaker 1: to be a split browed ten pointer that I knew
- 7:49Speaker 1: well but thought wasn't using the area whole lot. Maybe
- 7:52Speaker 1: he wasn't, or maybe I just didn't know about it.
- 7:55Speaker 1: But either way, that little doe brought him right in
- 7:57Speaker 1: and placed him in my lap. If she had been
- 7:59Speaker 1: dead or just put off her pattern, things would have
- 8:02Speaker 1: played out differently for me. I'm absolutely confident of that.
- 8:05Speaker 1: So I handle your dose with kid gloves now, because
- 8:08Speaker 1: you're gonna need them really soon. Now let's talk about observation.
- 8:12Speaker 1: The woods are open, ish will call it. You can
- 8:16Speaker 1: usually see quite a bit, and here a fair amount. Now,
- 8:19Speaker 1: dialing into distant deer movement is a real possibility, and
- 8:22Speaker 1: it's important. I do a lot of sets this time
- 8:24Speaker 1: of year, both in trees and on the ground, where
- 8:27Speaker 1: my odds of actually arrowing a deer are really low.
- 8:30Speaker 1: The goal is just to see them and to figure
- 8:32Speaker 1: out who is walking or feeding and where. If you
- 8:35Speaker 1: watch a family group of dose walking along a ridge today,
- 8:38Speaker 1: you can bet they'll probably be there in two weeks.
- 8:41Speaker 1: This goes for public land and it goes for private land.
- 8:44Speaker 1: Now I know it's random, and they can get put
- 8:46Speaker 1: off of there, but you just have to operate on
- 8:48Speaker 1: the assumption that if you don't screw him up, nobody
- 8:50Speaker 1: else will. It also goes for the random does on
- 8:53Speaker 1: your trail cameras. If you're getting semi regular images of
- 8:56Speaker 1: dose and one of your spots, don't go sit there yet.
- 8:59Speaker 1: The cameras on the work for you. Keep those does
- 9:02Speaker 1: there and be patient. Now if you have to observe
- 9:05Speaker 1: or you just want to pay attention to all of
- 9:08Speaker 1: the bucks as well. Obviously you're going to make note
- 9:11Speaker 1: of the hundred and forty inchure that works his way
- 9:13Speaker 1: out of a wood had drawn into a patch of sumac,
- 9:15Speaker 1: But what about the forkey that feeds and scrapes his
- 9:18Speaker 1: way along an overgrown fence line. That deer is important too.
- 9:22Speaker 1: What one deer does, other deer will do, including big bucks.
- 9:27Speaker 1: You should remember this. In high density areas with lots
- 9:31Speaker 1: of deer, it's crucial, and for everyone hunting in low
- 9:35Speaker 1: density areas it's even more important. Bigwood swamps, whatever. When
- 9:42Speaker 1: I'm hunting where very few deer live, every sighting is
- 9:45Speaker 1: a gift. It doesn't matter if it's a clueless spike,
- 9:49Speaker 1: because how he travels through the Big Woods is probably
- 9:51Speaker 1: how other deer will travel through there as well. Even
- 9:54Speaker 1: in flat, mostly featureless cover, there are preferred routes that
- 9:58Speaker 1: are easiest to ide if I through observation. Remember that
- 10:03Speaker 1: because it's important not only to dialing in those daily
- 10:05Speaker 1: travel routes, but keeping sane when you sat for a
- 10:08Speaker 1: few days and haven't seen hardly any deer. Those situations
- 10:12Speaker 1: are when confidence in the spot is huge, and you
- 10:15Speaker 1: can really develop confidence by watching. Dear do what, Dear do?
- 10:19Speaker 1: I say that a lot in this podcast, and I
- 10:21Speaker 1: know it, but I mean it every time. I also
- 10:24Speaker 1: shouldn't have to say this, but I will. If you're
- 10:27Speaker 1: going to observe, you can check out all of Mark
- 10:29Speaker 1: kenyan sweet insta posts about the best moors ingredients later,
- 10:33Speaker 1: because now is the time to be watching, to be glassing.
- 10:37Speaker 1: When that buck goes through the power line two yards away,
- 10:40Speaker 1: you want to be able to look at him with
- 10:41Speaker 1: your binos and mark the exact trees he walks by.
- 10:45Speaker 1: When the does pop out in the clear cut, the
- 10:47Speaker 1: same rules apply. You're not just there to see, dear,
- 10:50Speaker 1: You're there to learn about what the deer doing right now.
- 10:53Speaker 1: Just like with summer glassing, make note of the wind
- 10:56Speaker 1: direction and the conditions. If the buck you just saw
- 10:59Speaker 1: slip through was heading in a certain direction, did he
- 11:01Speaker 1: also happen to have a favorable wind? I'll bet he did,
- 11:04Speaker 1: and I'll bet that's not a coincidence. This also goes
- 11:07Speaker 1: for trail cameras. It's fun to see an image of
- 11:09Speaker 1: a buck working a scrape or moving along a trail,
- 11:12Speaker 1: But can you look up what the wind direction was,
- 11:14Speaker 1: then you should. You might think he'll just go nuts
- 11:17Speaker 1: during the rut and run everywhere, but he won't. He'll
- 11:19Speaker 1: run where the wind favors him, and those routes are
- 11:21Speaker 1: routes he's probably traveled hundreds of times in his life,
- 11:25Speaker 1: partially because of how he can live off his nose
- 11:27Speaker 1: when he's not concerned about making little bucks. Lastly, let's
- 11:31Speaker 1: just talk about sign right now. If you're sitting up
- 11:34Speaker 1: in your stand and staring through your binos, can you
- 11:36Speaker 1: see an your rubs, the peninsula of high ground that
- 11:38Speaker 1: juts into the swamp below you? Is it all rubbed up?
- 11:41Speaker 1: The thing about rubs is they prompt you to ask
- 11:43Speaker 1: the question why they're Why would a buck make a
- 11:47Speaker 1: series of rubs on a ridge or down in the bottom.
- 11:50Speaker 1: Why is there a random signpost rub in the middle
- 11:53Speaker 1: of a thousand acres of Northwood's timber. You might not
- 11:56Speaker 1: be able to answer those questions definitively, but you can
- 11:59Speaker 1: make him educated guesses. You can probably figure out why
- 12:02Speaker 1: a buck would travel in a certain direction while leaving
- 12:04Speaker 1: his calling card along the way the big timber rub.
- 12:08Speaker 1: Maybe it's at the junction of two soft edges, or
- 12:10Speaker 1: maybe it's situated at the top of a slight rise
- 12:13Speaker 1: that leads from a gnarly swamp bottom to a higher
- 12:15Speaker 1: spine a ground. I am convinced that some bucks make
- 12:18Speaker 1: random rubs because they enjoy tussling with saplings. But I'm
- 12:21Speaker 1: also convinced that those random rubs rarely show up in
- 12:24Speaker 1: random spots. How's that for a terrible explanation. What I
- 12:28Speaker 1: mean is that a rub here there might not look
- 12:30Speaker 1: like it gives you much to work with, but it
- 12:33Speaker 1: tells you where a buck was at some point. One
- 12:35Speaker 1: or two rubs isn't all that exciting. But what if
- 12:38Speaker 1: you look around and realize there are ten or twenty
- 12:40Speaker 1: within a couple of acres. It's a different story, my friends.
- 12:43Speaker 1: It's also going to get you thinking about why a
- 12:46Speaker 1: buck or a couple of bucks spent so much time
- 12:48Speaker 1: there and where they came from, where they're going clues,
- 12:51Speaker 1: my friend clues. This is set up time. You should
- 12:55Speaker 1: be learning as much as you can about right where
- 12:59Speaker 1: the deer want to be right now. It's almost like
- 13:01Speaker 1: glasting summertime bucks in the weeks leading up to the
- 13:04Speaker 1: bow open. You know that they might stick to their
- 13:06Speaker 1: usual bed to food routes, and if they do and
- 13:08Speaker 1: the conditions don't conspire against you, you can kill one.
- 13:12Speaker 1: But the setting has changed and the motivation for movement
- 13:14Speaker 1: has somewhat changed, But the same rules apply again, same rules.
- 13:19Speaker 1: Where you see deer doze, little bucks whoppers is where
- 13:22Speaker 1: you'll see them in two weeks in a way that
- 13:24Speaker 1: is probably going to be amplified. Where the sign is
- 13:27Speaker 1: now is where you can call your shots later, or
- 13:29Speaker 1: at least narrow down your best stand sites into relation
- 13:32Speaker 1: to where the bucks are likeliest to feel most comfortable.
- 13:35Speaker 1: And of course you're gonna have to factor in those
- 13:37Speaker 1: train features at all funnel movement as well. It all
- 13:40Speaker 1: comes together, But the key right now is caution and
- 13:43Speaker 1: the realization that you've got the opportunity to remove a
- 13:45Speaker 1: fair amount of randomness right out of the rut. Of course,
- 13:49Speaker 1: you can't control your target buck taking a two mile
- 13:51Speaker 1: stroll in the wrong direction, or the three bucks in
- 13:53Speaker 1: your bigwood section that all glom onto an early Estra stoll.
- 13:56Speaker 1: But you can play the odds. You can set yourself
- 13:59Speaker 1: up to be where a buck will eventually cruise through
- 14:01Speaker 1: at some point because of multiple reasons which are way
- 14:04Speaker 1: more in depth than simply crossing your fingers and hoping
- 14:07Speaker 1: that the rut sends when your way through a likely
- 14:09Speaker 1: looking funnel. Now, the rut does send a lot of
- 14:11Speaker 1: bucks in a lot of different ways, and you can
- 14:13Speaker 1: figure out where by doing something right now and getting
- 14:17Speaker 1: into the woods. So go out there, my friends, but
- 14:19Speaker 1: be careful. Consider this like a nine split maybe between
- 14:24Speaker 1: mostly recon and and real serious hunting. Get the info
- 14:28Speaker 1: you need to be the killer you want to be soon.
- 14:30Speaker 1: But that comes with a big old butt. It always does.
- 14:34Speaker 1: There is a danger to being too cautious if you're
- 14:37Speaker 1: onto something good right now. If you see a buck
- 14:39Speaker 1: that is giving you the green light to move in
- 14:41Speaker 1: on him, or or the sign is just so hot
- 14:44Speaker 1: that it needs to be hunted, there's really no reason
- 14:47Speaker 1: to wait. In fact, waiting is a bad idea, but
- 14:50Speaker 1: this is special circumstance stuff that you'll learn to read
- 14:54Speaker 1: with more encounters and more experience. So what I mean
- 14:57Speaker 1: by that is there's a difference between seeing a few
- 15:00Speaker 1: rubs and talking yourself into hunting every second you can,
- 15:02Speaker 1: because you feel that this shows the rut is definitely
- 15:06Speaker 1: on Versus walking into a soft edge in the big
- 15:10Speaker 1: woods that is absolutely littered with fresh rubs, scrapes, and droppings,
- 15:14Speaker 1: or you know, maybe seeing a buck out at last
- 15:17Speaker 1: light as he came out to feed and he looks
- 15:19Speaker 1: pretty decent, versus watching one two nights in a row
- 15:23Speaker 1: stage on a ridge that provides really good cover a
- 15:25Speaker 1: place he looks comfortable. The beauty and the frustration of
- 15:29Speaker 1: deer hunting is that there is no right answer for
- 15:32Speaker 1: everyone in every situation. It's too variable. You've got to
- 15:36Speaker 1: be the one to judge your own situation and be
- 15:38Speaker 1: honest with yourself. If you have the discipline to mostly
- 15:41Speaker 1: watch but strike if the stars aligned, then you're on
- 15:44Speaker 1: the right track. If you're worried that you'll talk yourself
- 15:46Speaker 1: into hunting your best spots just because the rut is
- 15:49Speaker 1: kind of close or you see one you know giving
- 15:52Speaker 1: you just a glimpse of this antler's walking through the brush,
- 15:55Speaker 1: or more likely, you get a photo of a buck.
- 15:59Speaker 1: Then factor that in to your decision making. Be careful
- 16:01Speaker 1: to not mess up something that could really work in
- 16:04Speaker 1: your favor in a couple of weeks when that your
- 16:06Speaker 1: do get dumber. But don't be so careful you talk
- 16:09Speaker 1: yourself out of hunting when you absolutely have something to
- 16:12Speaker 1: work with right now, even I'm tired of listen to myself,
- 16:17Speaker 1: so I'm gonna wrap it up right there until next
- 16:19Speaker 1: week when we get into almost the best part of
- 16:23Speaker 1: the season and what you should be doing as the
- 16:25Speaker 1: end of October closes in. That's it for this week,
- 16:30Speaker 1: my white tail loving brothers and sisters. I'm your host,
- 16:33Speaker 1: Tony Peterson, and this has been the Wire to Hunt
- 16:35Speaker 1: Foundations podcast. Be sure to tune in next week for
- 16:38Speaker 1: more white tail wisdom and to check out our Wire
- 16:40Speaker 1: to Hunt YouTube channel, which is chock full of how
- 16:43Speaker 1: to content.