Latest / Wired To Hunt Podcast / Ep. 1054: Foundations - Why We All Need To Relearn the Same Old Deer

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Ep. 1054: Foundations - Why We All Need To Relearn the Same Old 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,
0:22
Speaker 2: which is brought to you by first Light. I'm your host,
0:24
Speaker 2: Tony Peterson. In today's episode is all about how our
0:26
Speaker 2: deer populations change and what that really means for us
0:29
Speaker 2: from season to season. The old ebb and flow of
0:36
Speaker 2: deer populations has been a thing for as long as
0:38
Speaker 2: there have been deer and deer hunters with enough mental
0:41
Speaker 2: horsepower to recognize the whole thing isn't static. While a
0:44
Speaker 2: lot of the hunting industry shows us a view of
0:46
Speaker 2: deer where the populations are not only consistent, but way
0:49
Speaker 2: higher than average, the reality is that for most of
0:52
Speaker 2: us we're going to deal with varying degrees of deer
0:54
Speaker 2: density throughout the course of our hunting careers. This means
0:57
Speaker 2: a lot of things beyond whether you might see one
1:00
Speaker 2: if you're lucky, or see ten on average for every
1:02
Speaker 2: one of your sits. This is something I think we
1:05
Speaker 2: should all be aware of. I'm going to talk about
1:07
Speaker 2: it right now. I might get into trouble for saying this,
1:18
Speaker 2: but something occurred to me recently while I was fishing,
1:20
Speaker 2: mostly unsuccessfully, for some muskies. I honestly don't know why
1:24
Speaker 2: I was thinking about it, but our culture, and all
1:28
Speaker 2: of humanity's culture in various spots across the globe, is
1:32
Speaker 2: kind of tied to recent ancestry. You know, if you
1:35
Speaker 2: go back more than a couple hundred years, we really
1:38
Speaker 2: don't know as much about our ancestors and their connections
1:41
Speaker 2: to the land and their rituals, their beliefs or whatever.
1:44
Speaker 2: Go back beyond that another couple hundred years or maybe
1:46
Speaker 2: a thousand, and whatever contributions those folks made to modern
1:50
Speaker 2: culture are mostly lost or have been folded up into
1:54
Speaker 2: more modern interpretations. Written history hasn't been around all that long,
2:00
Speaker 2: and oral history has a tendency to die off when
2:02
Speaker 2: the folks who need to speak it die off. Art
2:06
Speaker 2: history as a species is one of lost information, amongst
2:10
Speaker 2: many other things. This is largely due to us dying
2:14
Speaker 2: off in large numbers and relatively short periods of time.
2:17
Speaker 2: Take China, from about nineteen fifty nine to nineteen sixty one,
2:21
Speaker 2: where the Great Chinese Famine caused somewhere between fifteen and
2:24
Speaker 2: thirty million people to perish in two years. That's insane.
2:29
Speaker 2: The Irish famine back in the mid eighteen hundreds knocked
2:32
Speaker 2: their population down to about a quarter of what it
2:34
Speaker 2: was in really only about seven years, although emigration contributed
2:39
Speaker 2: to that population decline as well. When the Spaniards encountered
2:43
Speaker 2: the Aztecs, the indigenous populations in central Mexico declined by
2:47
Speaker 2: over eighty percent in just a century. Black death in
2:50
Speaker 2: Europe in the mid thirteen hundreds killed off anywhere from
2:54
Speaker 2: thirty to sixty percent of the population in many parts
2:56
Speaker 2: of Europe. I don't want to minimize any of those events,
3:00
Speaker 2: but if you go back along our timeline deeper into
3:02
Speaker 2: the past, you run into some stuff that nearly took
3:05
Speaker 2: our whole species out. The Toba Supereruption, which happened about
3:10
Speaker 2: seventy four thousand years ago, is one of the more
3:13
Speaker 2: well known events. A volcano located in Sumatra, which is
3:18
Speaker 2: an island in western Indonesia, blew its top in such
3:21
Speaker 2: a spectacular and devastating fashion that it is believed to
3:25
Speaker 2: have dropped the human population down to a few thousand folks.
3:29
Speaker 2: Recent theories suggest it wasn't quite that bad, but still
3:33
Speaker 2: bad enough to really really slow us down. Another event
3:38
Speaker 2: you might have heard about, called the Younger Dryas, consisted
3:41
Speaker 2: of a rapid climate shift in certain parts of the
3:44
Speaker 2: world that caused regional population declines. Essentially, the northern hemisphere
3:48
Speaker 2: got real cold about thirteen thousand years ago for several centuries,
3:52
Speaker 2: and genetic evidence today appoints to serious decreases in human
3:56
Speaker 2: populations in many regions, but not necessarily a global population collapse.
4:01
Speaker 2: Of course, it's not just the old Homo sapiens who
4:04
Speaker 2: experience population booms and crashes. Our four legged antlered obsessions
4:09
Speaker 2: do as well. We are acutely aware of these on
4:12
Speaker 2: a regional basis, but mostly we focus on the decline,
4:17
Speaker 2: you know, partially because when a whole bunch of our
4:19
Speaker 2: bucks are suddenly no longer on the landscape, we take notice.
4:22
Speaker 2: Up Here in the North Country, the likeliest culprit is
4:25
Speaker 2: old man winter. You have to go pretty far north
4:28
Speaker 2: to experience consistent winterkill, but you don't have to go
4:32
Speaker 2: that far north to experience a once in every decade
4:34
Speaker 2: or two type of winter that will knock your herd
4:36
Speaker 2: back back. In the mid nineties in the upper Midwest
4:40
Speaker 2: and the Northeast, we had one of those winners. From
4:43
Speaker 2: Minnesota to Maine. Mortality rates of white tail herds hit
4:47
Speaker 2: up to fifty percent, with young of the year fawnds
4:50
Speaker 2: making up the brunt of the death toll. It happens,
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Speaker 2: but it's not limited to the north. In February of
4:56
Speaker 2: twenty twenty one, a real winter storm hit Texas, and
5:00
Speaker 2: one thing that the animals of the lone Star state
5:02
Speaker 2: are not generally well prepared for is prolonged freezing temperatures,
5:06
Speaker 2: particularly in areas with limited forage. A few years before that,
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Speaker 2: Hurricane Harvey hit Texas and caused severe deer losses in
5:14
Speaker 2: certain coastal areas. Look if you're silently celebrating not having
5:18
Speaker 2: to worry about hurricane related deer population crashes, hold your horses,
5:22
Speaker 2: my little buckaroos. Many parts of the country have experienced
5:25
Speaker 2: EHD outbreaks, which can make finding a target buck about
5:29
Speaker 2: as difficult as finding a genuine social media post these days.
5:32
Speaker 2: In twenty twelve, a hell of an outbreak of EHD
5:35
Speaker 2: hit the Midwest, and many Great Plain states, causing localized
5:39
Speaker 2: deer populations to decline up to fifty percent in states
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Speaker 2: like Illinois, Ohio, South Dakota, Nebraska, and Iowa. I remember
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Speaker 2: hunting the Dakota's heavy during that timeframe, and I'll tell
5:51
Speaker 2: you what. I found a lot of dead bucks around waterholes.
5:54
Speaker 2: It was, to put it, lightly disheartening. Sometimes the deer
5:59
Speaker 2: populations go the other way, though, and the density goes
6:02
Speaker 2: from ten deer per square mile up to around one
6:04
Speaker 2: hundred and fifty or two hundred. This is most often
6:06
Speaker 2: a suburban problem where traditional management practices can't keep up
6:10
Speaker 2: with a very highly adaptable species like the white tail.
6:14
Speaker 2: Combining the lack of modern management options with a lack
6:17
Speaker 2: of predators, and the deer will breed and breed and
6:19
Speaker 2: breed and become so numerous you could probably kill them
6:22
Speaker 2: with a cinderblock if you could spend enough time in
6:24
Speaker 2: a tree. Deer populations change, and that should affect our
6:28
Speaker 2: entire approach to hunting them. I've been thinking about this
6:31
Speaker 2: a lot while fishing in northern Wisconsin, staying on the
6:34
Speaker 2: water until right around dark and then driving back to
6:36
Speaker 2: the shack at prime deer movement time. Is a good
6:40
Speaker 2: way to get a grasp on the local herd. And
6:42
Speaker 2: when you combine that with data that mymultares have been
6:45
Speaker 2: sent in my way, I'm more optimistic than I have
6:48
Speaker 2: been in a long long time for my hunts over there.
6:51
Speaker 2: When I first started hunting there in about two thousand
6:54
Speaker 2: and eight, the deer population was good enough to be
6:57
Speaker 2: somewhat selective on bucks. Then it got really bad four years,
7:02
Speaker 2: to the point where if you saw a deer two
7:04
Speaker 2: off stand you felt pretty good. Now, it seems after
7:07
Speaker 2: three truly mild winners in a row, the deer are
7:10
Speaker 2: kind of back. So are the turkeys too, which is
7:12
Speaker 2: a nice bonus to see. But what does this mean, Well,
7:16
Speaker 2: it should mean that my daughters, who have standards so
7:18
Speaker 2: low they are resting on the floor, should have lots
7:21
Speaker 2: of options for deer to shoot. They might get to
7:23
Speaker 2: learn what it's like to be a little picky and
7:26
Speaker 2: why that can change the flavor of a hunting season
7:28
Speaker 2: and make it just a bit sweeter. But that's an
7:31
Speaker 2: easy way to look at it, because who doesn't want
7:33
Speaker 2: more deer on the landscape to hunt, especially in areas
7:36
Speaker 2: that often have pretty low deer densities. Well, no one really,
7:41
Speaker 2: except maybe someone who works for an insurance company and
7:43
Speaker 2: whose bonus is tied directly to not paying out too
7:45
Speaker 2: many claims on vehicle deer collisions. Otherwise, we are generally
7:50
Speaker 2: all four more deer in the woods. But that comes
7:52
Speaker 2: with a different hunting style. When the density is low,
7:56
Speaker 2: your biggest job is to find them first and then
7:58
Speaker 2: hunt them in a way that preserves the natural movement
8:01
Speaker 2: as long as possible. Hunting low density white tails sucks,
8:05
Speaker 2: but it does come with some advantages. Look, this is
8:18
Speaker 2: purely anecdotal and might not be true for you at all,
8:21
Speaker 2: but I'm pretty convinced that there isn't a buck out
8:23
Speaker 2: there who is more likely to go to a dough
8:26
Speaker 2: decoy than a buck that lives in an area where
8:28
Speaker 2: he has to work real hard to find any real dos.
8:31
Speaker 2: In two seasons, I've watched three different bucks come directly
8:34
Speaker 2: to my Dave Smith doe in Wisconsin and all died
8:37
Speaker 2: shortly after. And nowhere else have I had that good
8:41
Speaker 2: of a success rate decoying. It stands to reason, right,
8:45
Speaker 2: I mean, think about you know, something like when the
8:48
Speaker 2: oil boom happened and they started fracking out in western
8:50
Speaker 2: North Dakota about fifteen years ago, and all those young
8:54
Speaker 2: roughnecks showed up in an area not known to be
8:56
Speaker 2: flush with women. I bet you good money that the
8:59
Speaker 2: average single woman of that region at that time had
9:01
Speaker 2: pretty much her pick of the litter, if you get
9:03
Speaker 2: my drift. If you think that kind of setup doesn't
9:06
Speaker 2: exist in nature, you're probably wrong. A low deer density
9:10
Speaker 2: situation offers another advantage, which is that if you do
9:14
Speaker 2: get on some deer, you don't usually have to worry
9:16
Speaker 2: too much about a lot of other deer getting downwind
9:19
Speaker 2: of view and screwing up the whole thing. Look, that
9:21
Speaker 2: might be thin gruel to live on, But if you've
9:24
Speaker 2: ever hunted a high density situation, you know how often
9:27
Speaker 2: a deer you didn't expect to be around suddenly stomped
9:30
Speaker 2: and blue and generally tanked your chances. It happens all
9:33
Speaker 2: the time. This might mean that you need to be
9:35
Speaker 2: extra diligent with your setups when the population is high,
9:38
Speaker 2: because the likelihood of non target deer getting a whiff
9:41
Speaker 2: of you, or spotting you in the tree or smelling
9:44
Speaker 2: your entrance route it's just way higher. It's an odds game.
9:48
Speaker 2: This also has ramifications for entering and exiting your stands.
9:51
Speaker 2: One of the things I love to do, you know,
9:54
Speaker 2: more than about anything, is summer scouting, particularly long range glassing.
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Speaker 2: When I do that in southeast US for Minnesota, I'm
10:01
Speaker 2: always planning my escape as the evening progresses, because the
10:05
Speaker 2: odds of a deer getting close to my glassing setup
10:07
Speaker 2: grow with each passing minute. I often end up slipping
10:11
Speaker 2: out through a cornfield or inside a wood edge well
10:13
Speaker 2: before dark to not spoil the whole scene with my presence.
10:17
Speaker 2: On the other hand, in an area like northern Wisconsin,
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Speaker 2: where if I can find a place to glass that
10:22
Speaker 2: is somewhat open, I rarely worry about the deer picking
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Speaker 2: me off because there are so many fewer noses and
10:28
Speaker 2: eyeballs to worry about. A swing in density can mess
10:31
Speaker 2: with us in other ways too. Think about a high
10:34
Speaker 2: density situation where you run a camera on a field
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Speaker 2: edge all summer long. It's a great way to get
10:40
Speaker 2: some intel, but also a great way to get a
10:43
Speaker 2: false read on how to kill a big one. In
10:45
Speaker 2: the first week of the season. The more deer we
10:48
Speaker 2: get on camera, dough, small bucks, monster bucks, the more
10:52
Speaker 2: we get convinced that the spot the camera is on,
10:54
Speaker 2: is the one we will kill on. But how many
10:56
Speaker 2: of those deer are ones that we wouldn't shoot? And
10:59
Speaker 2: what happened when they come out first and feed past
11:01
Speaker 2: our stand while we wait for that bachelor group to
11:04
Speaker 2: show up. Instead of drilling down on the best spot
11:08
Speaker 2: to kill the biggest dude in that bachelor group, which
11:11
Speaker 2: might mean getting off that field edge into the timber
11:13
Speaker 2: on a specific trail, we use an active camera to
11:16
Speaker 2: tell us that it's a good enough spot. The flip
11:19
Speaker 2: side of that is hunting a lower density than we
11:22
Speaker 2: expect and not being blown away by our camera data.
11:25
Speaker 2: A deer or two a day on a camera might
11:27
Speaker 2: indicate a loss cause spot in southern Iowa, but it
11:31
Speaker 2: might be the best location for a stand in northern Michigan.
11:36
Speaker 2: The reason I think this stuff is important to think
11:38
Speaker 2: about is because it's an opportunity to be proactive with
11:41
Speaker 2: our strategies, which is the opposite of how most people hunt.
11:45
Speaker 2: Think about it this way. If you live in a
11:47
Speaker 2: state with a real deer camp style tradition, you have
11:51
Speaker 2: a lot of folks who only go into their deer
11:53
Speaker 2: woods maybe one or two times each year, with one
11:57
Speaker 2: always being the first couple days of the season. I
12:00
Speaker 2: know a lot of hunters like this, and their first
12:01
Speaker 2: window into how many deer they have to hunt opens
12:05
Speaker 2: the very first time they go hunting. By then, it's
12:08
Speaker 2: just too late to even react to anything, because the
12:11
Speaker 2: knowledge of how many deer are out there just trickles
12:14
Speaker 2: in by the hour and through conversations back at deer camp.
12:19
Speaker 2: By then, at least for a lot of folks in
12:21
Speaker 2: that crowd, it's just too late to do anything about it.
12:23
Speaker 2: Trail camera usage can certainly nullify some of that, and
12:26
Speaker 2: does for some folks, but it's just hard to truly
12:29
Speaker 2: understand where your deer population is at until you get
12:32
Speaker 2: out there with the deer in the places they live
12:34
Speaker 2: and experience the whole thing. I run into a form
12:37
Speaker 2: of this population shock when I travel to hunt. I
12:40
Speaker 2: don't spend time with deer in Oklahoma or North Dakota
12:43
Speaker 2: or wherever until I drive out to actually hunt them,
12:46
Speaker 2: and then it's a crash course in determining not only
12:49
Speaker 2: where they live and like to walk, but how many
12:51
Speaker 2: of them are really living there in North Dakota. This
12:55
Speaker 2: has bit me in the ass a few times when
12:57
Speaker 2: I've driven out with the expectation that the numbers will
12:59
Speaker 2: be high and the hunting will not be super tough.
13:03
Speaker 2: But the winners can mess with that, and so do
13:06
Speaker 2: you know a multitude of other factors. It stings to
13:09
Speaker 2: realize during the first couple of days on a trip
13:11
Speaker 2: that the deer aren't there in the numbers I expected,
13:14
Speaker 2: But at this point I probably should just expect it.
13:17
Speaker 2: I won't, but I should. This is an easy lesson
13:20
Speaker 2: to understand. If you travel enough to hunt white tails,
13:23
Speaker 2: you know, to experience a far flung destination through its
13:26
Speaker 2: various population cycles. It's often a little harder for us
13:29
Speaker 2: to grasp at home, though, which might seem counterintuitive. But
13:33
Speaker 2: when we are home, we hunt largely based on memories,
13:36
Speaker 2: and our memories are really good at filtering out suffering
13:39
Speaker 2: and negative experiences over a long enough timeline. I'm not
13:42
Speaker 2: saying that we forget when we miss giant bucks or
13:44
Speaker 2: go multiple seasons without killing anything, but instead that our
13:48
Speaker 2: brains are pretty good at creating sizzle reels of the
13:50
Speaker 2: highlights while trying, you know, not too hard to focus
13:54
Speaker 2: on the low lights. So we go into this season
13:57
Speaker 2: expecting something, and it's not like on opening day actually
14:00
Speaker 2: get the whole thing sauced out. It doesn't work like that.
14:04
Speaker 2: We try the stands and the blinds that worked in
14:06
Speaker 2: the past, and when they don't, we look for reasons
14:09
Speaker 2: to explain away the failures. Deer density is a moving
14:13
Speaker 2: target and highly localized, so it's easy to believe that
14:16
Speaker 2: the whole thing doesn't move much. But it certainly might
14:19
Speaker 2: on your farm or your lease or wherever you hunt.
14:22
Speaker 2: I've seen that with wolves on some of my North
14:24
Speaker 2: Country hunts, and boy does that make things feel real
14:27
Speaker 2: tough in a hurry. Now, as I said, it goes
14:29
Speaker 2: the other way too, and you can see this in
14:32
Speaker 2: the poverty mindset of some hunters, yours truly included here.
14:36
Speaker 2: If you've hunted long enough in enough places, you've probably
14:39
Speaker 2: been through the lean years and the good years. And
14:42
Speaker 2: when you are conditioned to those lean years, it can
14:44
Speaker 2: be hard to adjust your standards up when the times
14:46
Speaker 2: of plenty finally show. I have a good buddy like
14:49
Speaker 2: that who hunts northern Wisconsin, and he'd probably you know about,
14:53
Speaker 2: have to be trampled by deer on his waist to
14:55
Speaker 2: the stand to even believe that it was anything other
14:58
Speaker 2: than a near hopeless day. Ever, to go hunt for
15:01
Speaker 2: any buck let alone, one that might be outpasses ears. Honestly,
15:06
Speaker 2: this is sort of a litmus test for not only
15:08
Speaker 2: how hard you'll have to work to kill a buck
15:10
Speaker 2: that would make you happy, but how likely that kind
15:14
Speaker 2: of buck is to even be in the woods with
15:15
Speaker 2: you at any given moment. This is sort of like
15:18
Speaker 2: a whole herd type of inventory versus just trying to
15:21
Speaker 2: figure out the year's buck crops so that you can
15:24
Speaker 2: start filling out your hit list. But it's also a
15:27
Speaker 2: way to get better at deer hunting, because the more
15:29
Speaker 2: you understand about herd dynamics and population fluctuations, the more
15:33
Speaker 2: prepared you are for the inevitable out there, which is change.
15:38
Speaker 2: The thing that kills most hunters chances of success on
15:41
Speaker 2: any given season is that any given season is not
15:45
Speaker 2: going to be a carbon copy of any other given season,
15:48
Speaker 2: as much as we want it to be, it's just
15:50
Speaker 2: not the nature of nature. It's not the nature of
15:52
Speaker 2: white tails. You might have five years of great populations,
15:56
Speaker 2: you know, good buck to dough ratios and plenty of
15:58
Speaker 2: mature deer to target, and then some dry summer wear
16:02
Speaker 2: a stupid little midge that carries a stupid disease that
16:04
Speaker 2: kills off bucks in large numbers in the late summer
16:06
Speaker 2: and early fall just does its thing. And now your
16:10
Speaker 2: one forty or bust attitude might as well be a
16:13
Speaker 2: two point fifty in bust attitude because both are about
16:16
Speaker 2: as likely to happen, and that might echo through the
16:19
Speaker 2: herd for three or four years or more, which is
16:21
Speaker 2: a long time to hunt the way you used to. Instead,
16:25
Speaker 2: it's better to just try to be more in tune
16:27
Speaker 2: with what you're dealing with on a year to year
16:28
Speaker 2: basis and understand that whether you're in a feast or
16:32
Speaker 2: famine year, you have plenty of options for staying in
16:35
Speaker 2: the game. And the more you try, no matter how
16:38
Speaker 2: EASi or hopeless it seems, the better you'll become as
16:42
Speaker 2: a deer hunter. For just that effort alone, at the
16:45
Speaker 2: very least, you'll separate yourself from the pack sum which
16:48
Speaker 2: is a huge advantage for us modern hunters. So think
16:51
Speaker 2: about that. I think about coming back next week for
16:54
Speaker 2: some more white tail wisdom. That's it for this week.
16:57
Speaker 2: I'm Tony Peterson. This has been the Wired to Hunt
16:59
Speaker 2: Foundation podcast. Thank you so much for all of your support.
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