Latest / Wired To Hunt Podcast / Ep. 632: Foundations - Understanding The Whitetail Timing Game
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
- 0:10Speaker 1: host Tony Peterson. Hey, everyone, welcome to the Wire to
- 0:13Speaker 1: Hunt Foundations podcast, which is brought to you by First Light.
- 0:16Speaker 1: I'm your host, Tony Peterson, and today I plan to
- 0:18Speaker 1: break down how we can figure out our personal impact
- 0:21Speaker 1: on the deer and how to mitigate the negative effects
- 0:24Speaker 1: of the pressure that we put on them. Now, I
- 0:37Speaker 1: know this might seem like kind of a weird offseason topic,
- 0:40Speaker 1: but it's not. It's actually kind of a play on
- 0:42Speaker 1: last week's show about learning the land. Right now, we
- 0:46Speaker 1: have a free window of time at least till the
- 0:49Speaker 1: ticks come out, where we can learn a bunch about
- 0:52Speaker 1: our local white tails. No matter how many we spook
- 0:55Speaker 1: or how many miles we walk on our hunting grounds,
- 0:57Speaker 1: the passage of time will erase any negative effects associated
- 1:01Speaker 1: with it. And it's just a really good thing that
- 1:03Speaker 1: truly understand how to cut down on the amount of
- 1:06Speaker 1: negative juju we bring to the woods that those pesky
- 1:09Speaker 1: bucks and does might just pick up on. When your
- 1:24Speaker 1: job involves talking for hundreds of hours and then thousands
- 1:28Speaker 1: of people listen to your ramblings, you find out all
- 1:31Speaker 1: kinds of interesting things. Honestly, the same goes for writing
- 1:34Speaker 1: articles or creating videos posting on social media. What you
- 1:39Speaker 1: learn is that most people don't care that much one
- 1:41Speaker 1: way or the other what you say or do, as
- 1:43Speaker 1: long as it fits roughly into the role they believe
- 1:46Speaker 1: you fill. If you don't stray too far out of
- 1:49Speaker 1: your lane, they pretty much let it slide and don't
- 1:52Speaker 1: get a red ass about it. You also find a
- 1:55Speaker 1: smaller subset of the audience that is just your ride
- 1:58Speaker 1: or die crowd. They decide, for whatever reason, that you're
- 2:01Speaker 1: a pretty swell guy, and they'll defend that to the
- 2:04Speaker 1: bitter end. Obviously, having a few of those people on
- 2:07Speaker 1: your side is pretty nice. But there's another subset. Those
- 2:11Speaker 1: are the folks who seem to be looking to get offended.
- 2:15Speaker 1: They suck and I wish they would go do something
- 2:17Speaker 1: challenging in their lives every day, so they had learned
- 2:20Speaker 1: that the reason they seek drama is because they aren't
- 2:23Speaker 1: getting what they need out of life. We see examples
- 2:26Speaker 1: of these folks all the time, but I think there
- 2:29Speaker 1: are a much smaller segment of society than it seems
- 2:32Speaker 1: they just happen to be real vocal and really into
- 2:35Speaker 1: getting attention. They are the folks who will try to
- 2:38Speaker 1: get you to self censor or worse. A lot of
- 2:41Speaker 1: this behavior seems to come from main character syndrome that
- 2:44Speaker 1: seems to make them real sensitive, and they take things personal,
- 2:49Speaker 1: even if the things they are mad about couldn't possibly
- 2:51Speaker 1: be personal, because well, the person they are mad at
- 2:54Speaker 1: doesn't know them or care about them. One of the
- 2:57Speaker 1: first times I really encountered this was when I wrote
- 3:00Speaker 1: the white Tail column for Outdoor News, now my weekly column.
- 3:04Speaker 1: At one point I wrote about a Wisconsin buck I shot,
- 3:07Speaker 1: like I don't know seven or eight years ago. All
- 3:10Speaker 1: that buck came in and I hit him in the
- 3:12Speaker 1: shoulder on opening night, and when he ran away, it
- 3:15Speaker 1: looked like the penetration was good enough, even if my
- 3:18Speaker 1: shot placement wasn't so great. Now, with a forecast in
- 3:21Speaker 1: the low thirties overnight, I left him for the morning,
- 3:25Speaker 1: not wanting to risk pushing him if I was dealing
- 3:27Speaker 1: with a one long hit or something else that wasn't
- 3:30Speaker 1: going to be immediately fatal. So when a buddy and
- 3:32Speaker 1: I returned at first light, we ended up finding a
- 3:35Speaker 1: pretty sparse blood trail, but it was good enough that
- 3:38Speaker 1: we eventually found that buck after I think dont an
- 3:41Speaker 1: hour and a half two hours. He was nice and
- 3:43Speaker 1: cool and dead and ready to be field dressed and
- 3:46Speaker 1: wrestled back to the truck. Now, so I wrote about that, dear,
- 3:49Speaker 1: because I had to write about deer every week. And
- 3:51Speaker 1: the week after that column published, they ran a letter
- 3:55Speaker 1: to the editor about how irresponsible I was to leave
- 3:58Speaker 1: a buck overnight. The letter writer made it clear there
- 4:02Speaker 1: was never a good reason to leave a deer in
- 4:04Speaker 1: the woods overnight, and he also not so subtly made
- 4:08Speaker 1: it known that the meat could not have possibly been
- 4:11Speaker 1: worth saving. Honestly, it was bizarre. So I sent my
- 4:16Speaker 1: editor an email and I said, uh, what's up with
- 4:19Speaker 1: this dude? And he called me up and he said,
- 4:22Speaker 1: the guy who sent that letter in sends a letter
- 4:25Speaker 1: in every week, literally fifty two times a year. That
- 4:31Speaker 1: seems that this old farmer from northwestern Minnesota goes through
- 4:34Speaker 1: that paper when he gets it until he finds something
- 4:37Speaker 1: to be offended about, and then he fires off a
- 4:39Speaker 1: nastygram or an old fashioned letter. I'm sure someone with
- 4:44Speaker 1: a degree in psychology could weigh in on that with
- 4:47Speaker 1: some interesting insights with regard to that fellow. Now here's
- 4:51Speaker 1: the thing. In my position, I can get mad at
- 4:54Speaker 1: that dude, which I usually do, or I could let
- 4:58Speaker 1: it go. I can self answer to not have to
- 5:00Speaker 1: deal with people like him. I can do a lot
- 5:03Speaker 1: of things. But the truth is, it wouldn't matter if
- 5:06Speaker 1: I cleaned up my act and try to make any
- 5:08Speaker 1: one individual happy. There would be someone else who was
- 5:11Speaker 1: just ready to try to cancel me or force my
- 5:13Speaker 1: speech in a certain way. Because that's the nature of
- 5:16Speaker 1: this whole thing. Now, why do I tell you this
- 5:19Speaker 1: Because so many of the things we do impact others
- 5:22Speaker 1: in ways we probably can't imagine. If you think this
- 5:27Speaker 1: isn't true, go work customer service or retail for a
- 5:30Speaker 1: day or two. Maybe try out being a waiter or
- 5:34Speaker 1: a waitress for a week, Go do a right along
- 5:37Speaker 1: with a local police officer. Maybe talk to a nurse
- 5:40Speaker 1: or an E M T about their work. My point
- 5:43Speaker 1: is we make decisions every day that we think might
- 5:47Speaker 1: benefit us or make us feel a little superior, and
- 5:50Speaker 1: we often don't see how far those ripples spread in
- 5:52Speaker 1: the old pond of life. We might not see who
- 5:56Speaker 1: is affected by them, and we might not care, but
- 6:00Speaker 1: I think we should just like it's not the waitress's
- 6:03Speaker 1: fault you don't like your burger, or maybe she has
- 6:05Speaker 1: twice as many tables to handle on a given night
- 6:07Speaker 1: because they're stoner coal worker called in sick again. It's
- 6:10Speaker 1: also a reality that when we go into the woods,
- 6:13Speaker 1: we make a lot of decisions for ourselves. We think
- 6:16Speaker 1: they'll benefit us or make us feel better because they'll
- 6:20Speaker 1: hopefully get us closer to putting an arrow through the
- 6:22Speaker 1: lungs of a buck. But those same decisions, when we
- 6:26Speaker 1: often think are pretty benign, can be working against us
- 6:30Speaker 1: in ways we can't really imagine, and we'll probably never
- 6:33Speaker 1: fully understand. Those are the worst, I bet, because they
- 6:38Speaker 1: are the ones that your target buck is paying attention
- 6:40Speaker 1: to and might be the ones that make him decide
- 6:43Speaker 1: he's had enough a daylight movement for a couple of weeks,
- 6:47Speaker 1: or that even though he'd rather take a specific trail
- 6:49Speaker 1: through the woods to get to his betting area, he's
- 6:52Speaker 1: going to travel a different one that leads through a
- 6:55Speaker 1: much thicker habitat and around the stand that you've sat
- 6:58Speaker 1: three times in a row. You see, we often think
- 7:02Speaker 1: about how other hunters or coyotes or whatever affect the
- 7:06Speaker 1: deer movement. We give I think a little too much
- 7:09Speaker 1: weight to those things sometimes because it's easier than acknowledging
- 7:14Speaker 1: that we are the ones putting the deer down. We
- 7:17Speaker 1: are the ones burning our spots or leaving a cent
- 7:20Speaker 1: trail through an area a hunter hasn't set foot in
- 7:23Speaker 1: for a month. What we do impacts the deer we
- 7:27Speaker 1: are hunting, maybe more than anything else, and at least
- 7:31Speaker 1: a lot of different situations. I believe that to be true.
- 7:34Speaker 1: I learned this early on in my dear hunting career,
- 7:37Speaker 1: although I probably didn't really understand it fully until I
- 7:41Speaker 1: had been at this stuff for a long time. When
- 7:45Speaker 1: I was just starting out, it seemed like the guys
- 7:48Speaker 1: my dad and I hunted with, and hell, my dad
- 7:51Speaker 1: either killed bucks right away in the season or often
- 7:55Speaker 1: not at all. I bet you can guess why, but
- 7:59Speaker 1: if not, I'll tell you. Those scrapper bucks they mostly
- 8:02Speaker 1: shot around the mid September opener here in Minnesota hadn't
- 8:06Speaker 1: been messed with four nine months. I know that's a letdown,
- 8:10Speaker 1: but it's true. The reality was that back then we
- 8:15Speaker 1: didn't have trail cameras we didn't have food plots. We
- 8:18Speaker 1: had our feet and our eyeballs, and we saw deer
- 8:20Speaker 1: in fields at last light, or we looked at tracks
- 8:22Speaker 1: on the trails and we set stands for those deer.
- 8:26Speaker 1: We did this in midsummer and then just got the
- 8:28Speaker 1: hell out of the woods. In the first couple of
- 8:31Speaker 1: times we hunted, or those guys hunted anyway, someone would
- 8:35Speaker 1: occasionally shoot a buck that just hadn't had time to
- 8:38Speaker 1: catch up to the program. That was it. After opening weekend,
- 8:42Speaker 1: all bets were off and things got a lot harder.
- 8:45Speaker 1: You can see this on a much larger scale when
- 8:47Speaker 1: you look at the breakdown of when deer are shot
- 8:49Speaker 1: during a general gun season. The bulk of them will
- 8:53Speaker 1: die on opening day or opening weekend, and then the
- 8:57Speaker 1: harvest numbers fall right off the old cliff. Now it's
- 9:01Speaker 1: not as simple as the deer going holy crappy Oli.
- 9:04Speaker 1: There are thousands of predators in the woods right now.
- 9:07Speaker 1: It's also a matter of hunter effort, with a majority
- 9:10Speaker 1: of hunter spending opening weekend in the woods and then
- 9:12Speaker 1: not hunting again. So I guess if you're gonna have
- 9:15Speaker 1: five hunters in the woods one day versus a hundred
- 9:18Speaker 1: thousand the next day, five hundreds gonna kill more deer
- 9:22Speaker 1: A fe've hunted guns season after the opener. You know
- 9:25Speaker 1: that even though the woods are much more empty of
- 9:27Speaker 1: hunters on I don't know, Wednesday than they were on Saturday,
- 9:30Speaker 1: the deer movement can be real disappointing. That's grand scale
- 9:35Speaker 1: stuff and pretty easy to understand. But what about your
- 9:39Speaker 1: own hunting on your own spots. Remember in the intro
- 9:43Speaker 1: to this podcast where I mentioned the window we have
- 9:45Speaker 1: right now to scout without negative hunting repercussions. So true
- 9:51Speaker 1: time is your friend, because it works to convince the
- 9:53Speaker 1: deer they're safer by the day. Your presence, whether observed
- 9:57Speaker 1: directly or felt strongly after you're gone, kind of resets
- 10:02Speaker 1: the old clock. Enough presence and you create the dear
- 10:06Speaker 1: version of the kind of lunatic who writes a nasty
- 10:08Speaker 1: letter to a newspaper every week about something that really
- 10:10Speaker 1: doesn't matter at all. You don't want your whole audience
- 10:14Speaker 1: full of those guys, if you get my drift. So
- 10:17Speaker 1: why does it matter now? Because it pays to think
- 10:20Speaker 1: about how you'll impact the deer when you do hunt
- 10:23Speaker 1: them in like seven or eight months. It pays to
- 10:26Speaker 1: understand the weight of the decisions you make around pressure
- 10:29Speaker 1: and your presence, and how you'll mitigate the whole thing
- 10:32Speaker 1: to keep the deer from being overly sensitive to your presence.
- 10:37Speaker 1: This is not as easy as it sounds. You know why.
- 10:41Speaker 1: There are several reasons. The first is that we look
- 10:44Speaker 1: at white tails like they just aren't going anywhere. They
- 10:48Speaker 1: do have relatively small home ranges, and we often get
- 10:51Speaker 1: lulled into too much false confidence that the bucks aren't
- 10:54Speaker 1: going to leave our ground. If we spook them in
- 10:57Speaker 1: late September, they'll still be around a chase dose during
- 11:00Speaker 1: the rut. That may be true, But why I spook
- 11:03Speaker 1: them at all? If you don't have to or think
- 11:06Speaker 1: about it a different way. Most of the places you
- 11:08Speaker 1: and I hunt probably don't encompass a deer's whole home range.
- 11:13Speaker 1: Maybe you're hunting forty acres and too much sloppy presents
- 11:16Speaker 1: on it will push the deer to the neighbor's ground.
- 11:19Speaker 1: After all, the deer lived there too. I don't know.
- 11:22Speaker 1: If you had one room in your house that was
- 11:24Speaker 1: infested with scorpions or black mambas, you'd probably spend more
- 11:28Speaker 1: time in a room that wasn't infected with scorpions, and
- 11:31Speaker 1: black Mamba's right. The danger of believing the bucks really
- 11:36Speaker 1: aren't going anywhere because of their genetic hardwearing that tells
- 11:39Speaker 1: them six or seven acres is plenty is that we
- 11:42Speaker 1: often don't think of how much ground that actually is.
- 11:46Speaker 1: What's worse is that these rules only apply when the
- 11:49Speaker 1: sun is shining, but our trail cameras work at night,
- 11:53Speaker 1: when all bets are off. So the buck that might
- 11:56Speaker 1: be as good as gone because he's onto you in
- 11:57Speaker 1: the daylight could eat easily walk by your camera at
- 12:01Speaker 1: midnight and make you think that he's still in play.
- 12:05Speaker 1: This is kind of a white tail specific thing. It
- 12:09Speaker 1: would probably really be driven home if you were lucky
- 12:12Speaker 1: enough to hunt out west for big meal deer with
- 12:15Speaker 1: an absolute killer like Randy Armer or Nate Simmons over
- 12:18Speaker 1: at Western Hunter. Those guys find a big deer and
- 12:21Speaker 1: their whole goal is to not let them know they're
- 12:24Speaker 1: being hunted, because those mountain bucks that are so visible
- 12:27Speaker 1: in a specific basin now will bust the hell on
- 12:30Speaker 1: out of there when they figure out that they're being
- 12:32Speaker 1: stalked or even watched. Sometimes could badass hunters like those
- 12:37Speaker 1: guys find them again three basins over sure, but they
- 12:41Speaker 1: don't want to have to try because it's not a
- 12:43Speaker 1: guarantee and the whole thing is going to get a
- 12:45Speaker 1: lot harder than next go round. So where does all
- 12:48Speaker 1: this rambling intersect with you, a white tail hunter and
- 12:51Speaker 1: the offseason conditions we are facing now? Because it's never
- 12:55Speaker 1: too early to figure out how you'll go about your
- 12:57Speaker 1: year as a white tail hunter with a keen I
- 13:00Speaker 1: towards your impact on the deer. I think about it
- 13:04Speaker 1: all in reference to timing. Right now, I can blow
- 13:08Speaker 1: mll the deer out of there all I want and
- 13:11Speaker 1: it won't affect me in September. What can I learn
- 13:14Speaker 1: about the land, which is what last week's episode was
- 13:17Speaker 1: all about. It's just damn near like a positive. Anything
- 13:23Speaker 1: I learned is good. The downsides are so low they
- 13:26Speaker 1: might not even really register. That's why so many of
- 13:29Speaker 1: the best deer hunters spent so much time winter scouting.
- 13:32Speaker 1: I know you've heard me say that a lot, but
- 13:34Speaker 1: I'm gonna keep saying it. You know you might, but
- 13:37Speaker 1: what if you only hunt a small property and it
- 13:40Speaker 1: doesn't really require a bunch of winter scouting? Okay, how
- 13:44Speaker 1: many stand sites do you have? How many access points?
- 13:48Speaker 1: How do they allow you to play potential conditions throughout
- 13:50Speaker 1: the various months of the hunting season, and how can
- 13:53Speaker 1: you lay out your options to keep your impact as
- 13:56Speaker 1: light as possible. Can you go out and trim a
- 13:59Speaker 1: few entrance trail now? Okay? Do that The trails you
- 14:03Speaker 1: cut now will grow in some during the summer, but
- 14:05Speaker 1: to give you a real advantage for going in and
- 14:07Speaker 1: out undetected, and they won't have any effect right now.
- 14:10Speaker 1: If you go in, it's free time. It's a free hit,
- 14:13Speaker 1: free play or whatever. That's a good start. Or do
- 14:16Speaker 1: you have a favorite stand site that starts out really
- 14:19Speaker 1: good but fizzles out after a few hunts? Is there
- 14:22Speaker 1: a better way to get there? Or is it your
- 14:24Speaker 1: favorite because it's easy to get to and hunt and
- 14:27Speaker 1: you don't really give yourself too many other options. Should
- 14:31Speaker 1: you be looking at other parts of your property that
- 14:33Speaker 1: might be better suited for a few ground blinds? What
- 14:36Speaker 1: kind of an ambush plan can you put together? Now?
- 14:38Speaker 1: While you've got tons of time. Now, even if you
- 14:42Speaker 1: don't hang stands, you had to put out some blinds.
- 14:45Speaker 1: You can start to decide where you'll do it and
- 14:47Speaker 1: maybe trim some shooting lanes or whatever. Right now, maybe
- 14:50Speaker 1: you can stack up some dead falls on the edge
- 14:52Speaker 1: of a meadow so that in August you can slip
- 14:54Speaker 1: in and really brush in the ground line. This is
- 14:57Speaker 1: like at certain times when the yellow penalty flag goes
- 14:59Speaker 1: fly in an NFL game and the quarterback knows he
- 15:02Speaker 1: essentially has a free play to work with, so he
- 15:03Speaker 1: takes a shot deep. As you're thinking about this and
- 15:07Speaker 1: how you can cut down on your felt presence in
- 15:10Speaker 1: September by doing stuff, now, think about your trail camera
- 15:14Speaker 1: strategy too. Can you buy some lithium batteries to keep
- 15:18Speaker 1: your cameras running for months while you stay the hell
- 15:20Speaker 1: out of the woods. Remember, your presence in the woods
- 15:24Speaker 1: is a negative no matter what, even if it's just
- 15:27Speaker 1: a seemingly innocuous little camera check. Three weeks before the
- 15:30Speaker 1: season opens, do you have an idea where you might
- 15:34Speaker 1: sit around the opener? But also, three weeks into the season,
- 15:38Speaker 1: how about a little rut funnel that you can leave alone.
- 15:40Speaker 1: Now you might be thinking, sure, but there are other
- 15:43Speaker 1: people hunting my ground, and who knows what those idiots
- 15:46Speaker 1: will do? No one, probably not even those idiots. Really no.
- 15:50Speaker 1: But you can't control them, so you just have to
- 15:53Speaker 1: decide on how to set yourself up for success. And
- 15:56Speaker 1: a big part of that he's understanding how to lessen
- 15:59Speaker 1: your impact and play the timing game. This all goes
- 16:03Speaker 1: back to what I talked about last week about learning
- 16:06Speaker 1: the land and learning the habitat and how dear use
- 16:09Speaker 1: specific parts of the terrain and when they should use it.
- 16:13Speaker 1: I mean, think about this in terms of the lead
- 16:15Speaker 1: up to the season. You just have this amazing window there,
- 16:20Speaker 1: but throughout the season, when you hunt and where you
- 16:23Speaker 1: hunt should also be filtered through how much of an
- 16:26Speaker 1: impact you've had on the deer recently and how much
- 16:28Speaker 1: you'll impact them with each hunt. If you have set
- 16:33Speaker 1: ups for various winds and have worked on some access
- 16:35Speaker 1: in the off season, you're probably already ahead of the competition.
- 16:39Speaker 1: This allows you to keep the deer from getting overly
- 16:42Speaker 1: sensitive to your presence and allows you to create a
- 16:45Speaker 1: situation where, even on smallish properties you know you're gonna
- 16:48Speaker 1: have some options, they'll tend to hunt a little bigger.
- 16:50Speaker 1: If you really think it through now, all of this
- 16:53Speaker 1: might seem so far off and not really that urgent
- 16:57Speaker 1: right now, but now is when you should start war
- 17:00Speaker 1: working on that plan. This is like the corner stone
- 17:03Speaker 1: of winter scouting. You get a freebee and you get
- 17:07Speaker 1: to do this work now that's going to pay off.
- 17:10Speaker 1: Every little bite of work you take now can add
- 17:12Speaker 1: up to a pretty damn satisfying meal come deer season,
- 17:15Speaker 1: and if you actively try to keep the deer from
- 17:17Speaker 1: knowing you're after them to the best of your abilities,
- 17:20Speaker 1: the dessert will be something sweet and delicious and hopefully
- 17:24Speaker 1: worthy of a gripping grin. So think about the land,
- 17:28Speaker 1: think about how the deer use it, Think about your
- 17:29Speaker 1: individual spot, and then think about timing. Plan for the
- 17:35Speaker 1: best options to rest spots, to mitigate your felt presence,
- 17:39Speaker 1: and to keep the deer moving during daylight hours in
- 17:42Speaker 1: areas where you can have close encounters. Start that right
- 17:45Speaker 1: now and keep it going all summer long, and you
- 17:48Speaker 1: have the recipe for one hell of a good season.
- 17:51Speaker 1: And tune in next week when I plan to talk
- 17:54Speaker 1: about how to get creative in finding new places to hunt,
- 17:58Speaker 1: because it's never a add thing to be trying to
- 18:01Speaker 1: suss out some places they are going to give you permission,
- 18:04Speaker 1: or maybe some new public land or whatever that's it
- 18:09Speaker 1: for this week, my friends, I'm Tony Peterson has been
- 18:11Speaker 1: the Wire to Hunt Foundations podcast, which is brought to
- 18:14Speaker 1: you by First Light. As I always thank you so
- 18:16Speaker 1: much for listening and for supporting us here at meat Eater,
- 18:19Speaker 1: we really appreciate it. If you want more white tail content,
- 18:22Speaker 1: head on over to our wire to Hunt YouTube channel
- 18:25Speaker 1: or to the meat eater dot com slash wired and
- 18:28Speaker 1: you'll get everything you need to be the baddest ask
- 18:31Speaker 1: deer hunter you could possibly imagine. Maybe