Latest / Wired To Hunt Podcast / Ep. 1050: Foundations - Summer Buck Diets and the Rut Connection

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Ep. 1050: Foundations - Summer Buck Diets and the Rut Connection · 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 Wire to Hunt Foundation's podcast,
0:22
Speaker 2: which has brought to you by first Light. I'm your host,
0:24
Speaker 2: Tony Peterson, and today's episode is all about understanding not
0:27
Speaker 2: only what bucks eat this time of year, but why
0:30
Speaker 2: it's all sort of tied to what those bucks will
0:33
Speaker 2: be doing in November when it's time to shoot them
0:35
Speaker 2: in the lungs. You've probably noticed that the latest wave
0:43
Speaker 2: in health conscious eating for people involves protein. Walk the
0:47
Speaker 2: aisles of your local grocery store and you'll see protein
0:49
Speaker 2: packed foods advertised loud and proud. If you work out,
0:52
Speaker 2: you probably have also heard all about peptides and how
0:55
Speaker 2: expensive they are, how good they work, and on and on.
0:57
Speaker 2: You can't help ourselves when it comes to health trends,
1:00
Speaker 2: but that's because we need to be told what to
1:02
Speaker 2: eat and what not to eat. These days, we've drifted
1:04
Speaker 2: from simple eating and the kind of eating that follows
1:07
Speaker 2: instincts based off of what our bodies need to kind
1:09
Speaker 2: of comfort eating. That's not great, but at least the
1:12
Speaker 2: deer don't do that. They know what they need. They
1:16
Speaker 2: seek out those nutritional sources and it's honestly one of
1:19
Speaker 2: the primary drivers in a buck's life. It's far more
1:22
Speaker 2: important to him than almost anything else, and understanding that
1:26
Speaker 2: is often the key to meeting up with him during
1:27
Speaker 2: deer season. This is what I'm going to talk about
1:29
Speaker 2: right now. Let's say you have a busy life, so
1:38
Speaker 2: you haven't been working out, and now you have to
1:41
Speaker 2: throw on a speedo like doctor Randall used to wear
1:43
Speaker 2: while guiding fly fishing clients, and you realize you're not
1:47
Speaker 2: quite as cut as you want to beat. So he
1:49
Speaker 2: decided to lose a few pounds, and the easiest way
1:51
Speaker 2: to do that is to eat right, So you lean
1:54
Speaker 2: into prioritizing fiber and lean protein. The one two punch
1:58
Speaker 2: that slows down digestion and reduce us is the munchies.
2:01
Speaker 2: The eggs and venison and chicken and whatever else are
2:03
Speaker 2: a good start, but you also need to mix in
2:05
Speaker 2: something that tastes good, so you eat some fruit, maybe
2:08
Speaker 2: some fresh vegetables. Now you have low calorie, high energy
2:11
Speaker 2: foods keep you going. You feel like you're making some progress.
2:14
Speaker 2: So you ditch the refined carbs like you find in
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Speaker 2: white bread and you go for something nutrient dense and
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Speaker 2: fiber rich, like whole wheat bread. This is all a
2:22
Speaker 2: great start, but you also need to give up the soda,
2:24
Speaker 2: the ice cream, the sour gummy worms, nerd clusters, and
2:27
Speaker 2: whatever else to stay in a calorie deficit. But you
2:31
Speaker 2: do these things, and guess what your body changes, and
2:34
Speaker 2: so does your mind. Now let's say you're already lean,
2:36
Speaker 2: but you want to be jacked. You want to bulk
2:38
Speaker 2: up with muscle and not just gain a bunch of
2:41
Speaker 2: visceral fat. Well, you need to take in some extra calories,
2:44
Speaker 2: say around three hundred to five hundred a day, somewhere
2:47
Speaker 2: around one gram per pound of body weight per day.
2:49
Speaker 2: And you need fuel to keep picking up heavy stuff
2:52
Speaker 2: and putting it down, you know, and that comes from
2:54
Speaker 2: the right carbs. And amongst all that, you need those
2:57
Speaker 2: healthy fats that are found in avocados and olive oil
3:00
Speaker 2: and some nuts. To lose weight. You kind of eat
3:03
Speaker 2: what you eat to gain the right weight. But the
3:05
Speaker 2: path is quite a bit different. Now. If you were
3:08
Speaker 2: a buck or hell really animal in the wild, you
3:11
Speaker 2: wouldn't even consider eating to lose weight. Nature doesn't much
3:15
Speaker 2: go in that direction very often, but instead is generally
3:18
Speaker 2: looking for ways to get as many calories as needed
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Speaker 2: without the risk of becoming someone else's lunch. Bucks are
3:24
Speaker 2: wired for this, of course, but they are also eating
3:27
Speaker 2: to bulk up for the rut. This isn't likely a
3:30
Speaker 2: conscious decision, but honestly, who knows. I don't really think
3:34
Speaker 2: bucks are out there in their bachelor groups thinking, man,
3:37
Speaker 2: I need to eat some more soybean leaves tonight because
3:39
Speaker 2: in four months it is on and those doves that
3:42
Speaker 2: always bed in the waterway down by the pond are
3:44
Speaker 2: looking real good this year. But maybe they do think
3:47
Speaker 2: that way, or maybe they think I'm going to eat
3:49
Speaker 2: a bunch of elfalf right now because in three weeks
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Speaker 2: I'm going to kick that wonky nine pointers ass. Probably not.
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Speaker 2: But what does happen right now and up to the
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Speaker 2: rut is that bucks eat to be the best physical
4:01
Speaker 2: specimens they can be. We don't really consider that because
4:04
Speaker 2: if you broke down the diet of a buck on
4:05
Speaker 2: any given day in July, it would probably consist of
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Speaker 2: dozens of different plants. We like simple, we like straightforward,
4:14
Speaker 2: like the way food plots give us something to sit over.
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Speaker 2: That deer generally will eat at some point with all
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Speaker 2: the background noise of everything else he might eat in
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Speaker 2: any given day. To start with, you need to think
4:25
Speaker 2: about it this way. That buck out there, he's an
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Speaker 2: athlete getting ready for the amorous Olympics, and he needs protein,
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Speaker 2: lots of it. But if you know anything about protein,
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Speaker 2: it's not that easy to get by just eating a
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Speaker 2: leafy salad without any topics. Lucky for him, he understands
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Speaker 2: this and knows where to look for the best sources
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Speaker 2: out there. He will, if he has access to it,
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Speaker 2: seek out soybean fields. Anyone who hunts white tails an
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Speaker 2: egg country at all knows that summer bucks and soybeans
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Speaker 2: go together like mark and butterfly tramp stamps. Lush green
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Speaker 2: soybean leaves contain twenty five to thirty five percent crude protein.
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Speaker 2: They're highly digestible, offer two to four percent fat, and
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Speaker 2: also contain calcium and phosphorus. In other words, if you
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Speaker 2: don't hunt soybeans in the early season, but you could
5:12
Speaker 2: or you don't really understand why you should consider that.
5:15
Speaker 2: It might literally be the best food source for them
5:18
Speaker 2: at that time. In September, if they can get to
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Speaker 2: the green leaves, they will. Every day in October, if
5:25
Speaker 2: they can get to the green leaves, they will. I've
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Speaker 2: mentioned this many times, but one of the easiest ways
5:30
Speaker 2: to kill a good buck in the early season is
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Speaker 2: to focus on the patches of soybean fields you know
5:35
Speaker 2: that are in low or shady areas where the leaves
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Speaker 2: will stay green longer when the rest of the field
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Speaker 2: starts to yellow. Now, instead of focusing on a fifty
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Speaker 2: acre field, you might have three acres in total where
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Speaker 2: the deer really want to be, which means you can
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Speaker 2: predict with a high level of accuracy where they'll go feed.
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Speaker 2: And on top of that, those spots are often the
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Speaker 2: places they want to be anyway, because they're not that visible. Now.
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Speaker 2: Alfalfa is another brainer for early season and summertime bucks.
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Speaker 2: You know it has eighteen to twenty five percent crude protein,
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Speaker 2: high digestibility, a fat percentage similar to soybean leaves, and
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Speaker 2: a tendency to be real high in calcium. Right there
6:14
Speaker 2: with alfalfa are a couple of different kinds of clover
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Speaker 2: and peas now where egg isn't everywhere. Bucks will munch
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Speaker 2: on young forbes like ragweed and pokeweed, which can offer
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Speaker 2: fifteen to thirty percent protein. And they'll even eat BlackBerry leaves.
6:29
Speaker 2: I watched a dough a few years ago eating actual
6:32
Speaker 2: raspberries in August. I don't know why I'm telling you that,
6:35
Speaker 2: but maybe someday somewhere someone will shoot a deer on
6:37
Speaker 2: a berry pattern. I don't know. All of this is
6:40
Speaker 2: pretty simple and well known stuff, and most hunters don't
6:43
Speaker 2: seem to care a whole lot because it seems like
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Speaker 2: their summer pattern for those deer is pretty disconnected from
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Speaker 2: the fall pattern they'll be on. But it's not. And honestly,
6:53
Speaker 2: I think most people who are struggling to kill mature
6:55
Speaker 2: bucks would do a hell of a lot better forgetting
6:58
Speaker 2: about the rut for a minute and trying to action
7:00
Speaker 2: patterned summer bucks and then kill them in the first
7:03
Speaker 2: week or two of the season. That used to be
7:06
Speaker 2: such a popular method of hunting, and it was talked
7:09
Speaker 2: about a lot, but now it seems like it's just
7:11
Speaker 2: not as popular. I can't help but wonder if that's
7:15
Speaker 2: partially due to the fact that it's easier to sell
7:17
Speaker 2: rut hunters a lot of gear than it is to
7:19
Speaker 2: sell an early season hunter a lot of gear. I
7:22
Speaker 2: don't want to be that cynical, but I've seen how
7:25
Speaker 2: the sausage is made, and I'm not so sure that
7:27
Speaker 2: isn't true to some extent. Now, the key to this
7:30
Speaker 2: strategy and just learning what bucks need to eat to
7:34
Speaker 2: do what they need to do throughout the year, is
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Speaker 2: that it introduces a level of predictability to their behavior.
7:41
Speaker 2: We think that the rut will do this, and it does,
7:44
Speaker 2: but not in the same way. You can predict that
7:47
Speaker 2: a buck will move more in daylight during the rut,
7:50
Speaker 2: because he generally will. You can try to predict where
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Speaker 2: that movement is likely to happen, and with the right
7:55
Speaker 2: funnel or pinch point and enough time and patience, you
7:58
Speaker 2: can be right on you know, often enough to rely
8:01
Speaker 2: on it. What a rut plan is just ripe for
8:04
Speaker 2: something to blow up. Higher than expected temperatures, east winds,
8:09
Speaker 2: you know, the most hunting pressure of the season. One
8:11
Speaker 2: hot dough on the neighbors. You name it. Promise of
8:14
Speaker 2: the rut in all of its awesomeness also glosses over
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Speaker 2: the sheer unpredictability of the whole thing. When a buck
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Speaker 2: is thinking with his not his stomach, he's difficult to
8:35
Speaker 2: pin down. When he's thinking about food, you have the
8:39
Speaker 2: chance to almost know where he's going to be on
8:42
Speaker 2: any given day. Now, it's not that simple, of course,
8:45
Speaker 2: but it is an advantage we often overlook, and that's
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Speaker 2: a mistake. So think about it this way. You can
8:51
Speaker 2: absolutely know what foods are most beneficial to him. On
8:54
Speaker 2: the day of the bowseason opens up in your neck
8:56
Speaker 2: of the woods. You can hopefully glass those foods. Is
9:00
Speaker 2: to develop some kind of pattern on him, or use
9:02
Speaker 2: cameras or both. If you have access to the right
9:06
Speaker 2: food source, he will at the very least show you
9:09
Speaker 2: an awful lot about how he uses it. That intel
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Speaker 2: is real valuable. I'd place a higher value on a
9:16
Speaker 2: buck showing up on the edge of an alfalfa field
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Speaker 2: three out of seven nights during shooting hours in September,
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Speaker 2: way above that same buck showing up on a camera
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Speaker 2: and shooting light three out of seven days in the
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Speaker 2: first week of November. This is simply because the factors
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Speaker 2: that could throw him off that early season pattern aren't
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Speaker 2: as numerous as those that could keep him from crossing
9:34
Speaker 2: through that funnel in the next week. And when you
9:37
Speaker 2: think about it, what we do as hunters is just
9:41
Speaker 2: kind of gamble on this stuff. We take in the
9:43
Speaker 2: data we can, we decide what to do with it,
9:46
Speaker 2: and then place our bets on hunting this stand or
9:49
Speaker 2: that blind or not hunting today to hunt next week.
9:52
Speaker 2: Whatever the best friend a gambler can have is predictability,
9:57
Speaker 2: and nothing in a buck's life is more predictable than
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Speaker 2: where he is likely to feed before the rut kicks in. Now,
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Speaker 2: I'm not trying to talk you out to hunting the rut.
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Speaker 2: The beauty of all of this is that you can
10:08
Speaker 2: actually hunt the early season, the mid season, and the
10:11
Speaker 2: rut even a late season. But if you want to
10:13
Speaker 2: kill big bucks, and I know you do, and you're
10:15
Speaker 2: not actively trying to figure out the early season game,
10:18
Speaker 2: you're not giving yourself the best shot you can to
10:21
Speaker 2: kill big bucks. It's kind of that simple. But what
10:24
Speaker 2: happens if your deer go from you know, the summer
10:27
Speaker 2: tissue building phase of eating to the building fuel reserves phase.
10:33
Speaker 2: These are very different things, and the window before they
10:35
Speaker 2: turn over is one in which you can kill big
10:37
Speaker 2: bucks with consistency. But the turnover might happen the first
10:41
Speaker 2: week of September in some places and not you know,
10:44
Speaker 2: at least until deep into October and others. But it
10:47
Speaker 2: will happen, and when it does, you'll know because that
10:50
Speaker 2: field edge camera that has been pretty consistent will suddenly
10:53
Speaker 2: show more sporadic movement, and a lot of your daylight
10:56
Speaker 2: visitors will start to show up at midnight. This is
10:58
Speaker 2: the time when a lot of hunters say, say, well,
11:00
Speaker 2: the lull is on and it's time to rake some
11:02
Speaker 2: leaves and bank up the brownie points at home because
11:04
Speaker 2: the bucks aren't moving in daylight. That's just wrong. Though.
11:08
Speaker 2: I believe hunting pressure has a big influence on this shift,
11:11
Speaker 2: but that is just what it is, and is so
11:13
Speaker 2: highly variable amongst different hunters in their different hunting situations.
11:17
Speaker 2: It's a wild card. You just have to evaluate for yourself.
11:21
Speaker 2: But even if you hunt public land with lots of pressure,
11:24
Speaker 2: you need to remind yourself that the bucks in your
11:25
Speaker 2: neighborhood still have very specific nutritional needs. The easiest food
11:31
Speaker 2: source to identify here is good old corn fall dear
11:35
Speaker 2: love corn and it's probably not for the taste, or
11:38
Speaker 2: at least not solely for the taste. Corn averages eight
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Speaker 2: to ten percent crude protein and four to five percent fat.
11:45
Speaker 2: It's low in fiber but high end calorie density, considering
11:49
Speaker 2: it's about seventy percent starch, which is just a form
11:52
Speaker 2: of carbs, you know, just the kind of thing you
11:55
Speaker 2: want to eat if you're bulking up and getting ready
11:57
Speaker 2: to run yourself ragged for a few weeks. Corn is obvious, though,
12:01
Speaker 2: and so are acorns. White oak acorns contain about four
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Speaker 2: to six percent protein but forty five to fifty five
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Speaker 2: percent carbs and plenty of fat. They are like little
12:11
Speaker 2: energy balls raining from the trees, and the deer know it.
12:15
Speaker 2: Red oaks are similar in nutritional value, but just loaded
12:18
Speaker 2: with tannins, which a wildlife researcher told me recently is
12:21
Speaker 2: tied to their germination timelines. Red oak acorns apparently need
12:25
Speaker 2: to sit on the ground a lot longer, so they
12:27
Speaker 2: need a defense against getting eaten up, which is cool
12:30
Speaker 2: as hell. Then you have apples per Simon's grapes, you know,
12:33
Speaker 2: stuff like that that offers a lot of sugar, you know,
12:36
Speaker 2: which is carbs and probably tastes better than soybean leaves
12:40
Speaker 2: or field corn. Now there are other food sources I
12:42
Speaker 2: could get into, but that's not really the point. The
12:45
Speaker 2: point is to think about not what a buck likes
12:48
Speaker 2: to eat, but what he needs to eat and why
12:50
Speaker 2: he would choose one source over another. A good way
12:53
Speaker 2: to think about this is with the acorn drop, which
12:56
Speaker 2: happens all across the country with various types of trees.
12:59
Speaker 2: When the acorns are dropping, the deer is just generally
13:01
Speaker 2: going to eat them. We know this. We hunt those trees,
13:05
Speaker 2: and when we don't see deer under a certain tree,
13:07
Speaker 2: or don't get buck picks on the camera we sat
13:10
Speaker 2: on the oak ridge, we just assume something else is
13:12
Speaker 2: going on. Deer eat a lot of stuff, but when
13:15
Speaker 2: a highly desirable here today, gone tomorrow food source comes on,
13:19
Speaker 2: they focus on it. They just likely know where more
13:23
Speaker 2: of the best trees are than you, and they very
13:26
Speaker 2: likely feed not where the heaviest drop is, but the
13:29
Speaker 2: safest drop is happening. There's a big difference there, because
13:33
Speaker 2: not only are all mass trees not created equal, they
13:37
Speaker 2: aren't located in equally safe spots. You have to work
13:41
Speaker 2: off the assumption that bucks are going to hit prime
13:43
Speaker 2: masked food sources and really all prime of the seasoned
13:47
Speaker 2: food sources, but they won't be so suicidal over per
13:51
Speaker 2: simmons on public land that they feed next to the
13:53
Speaker 2: parking lot all day. Doesn't work that way, and that
13:56
Speaker 2: is one of the reasons that a lot of people
13:58
Speaker 2: really miss out on the food pattern of deer. This
14:01
Speaker 2: only gets worse for some hunters because they pick something,
14:04
Speaker 2: you know, like an alfalfa field, and they know deer
14:07
Speaker 2: eat alfalfa all season, so that's just what they hunt
14:10
Speaker 2: over and over. But now you have a food source,
14:13
Speaker 2: you know, with kind of varying levels of appeal depending
14:16
Speaker 2: on the part of the season, but that is also
14:18
Speaker 2: wide open and a hub of hunting activity. I keep
14:22
Speaker 2: coming back to the same line of thought with white
14:24
Speaker 2: tails and how to kill them consistently, and it's this,
14:28
Speaker 2: not only do you need to learn about bucks and
14:30
Speaker 2: where they like to walk, but you have to learn
14:33
Speaker 2: how to get there to those spots, how to find them.
14:37
Speaker 2: We are primarily comfortable waiting for some feature on the
14:40
Speaker 2: land to bring deer to us, and we volume hunt
14:42
Speaker 2: those spots until the seasonal conditions conspire to put a
14:45
Speaker 2: buck in our laps with enough time. That works a lot,
14:49
Speaker 2: but it often doesn't because of many reasons. It's much
14:53
Speaker 2: better to try to go to the deer when you can,
14:56
Speaker 2: and well, you almost always can unless you hunt a
14:59
Speaker 2: very small property. Most people don't like to go to
15:02
Speaker 2: the deer because they aren't you confident in that style,
15:05
Speaker 2: and they buy into the advice of not messing with
15:08
Speaker 2: bedding areas and sanctuaries and all that stuff. But most
15:11
Speaker 2: people will never kill a pope and young buck in
15:13
Speaker 2: any given season, let alone a whole bunch of seasons,
15:16
Speaker 2: So how much of that strategy should you adopt. A
15:20
Speaker 2: better bet a lot of times is to look at
15:22
Speaker 2: your whole season from start to finish and try to
15:24
Speaker 2: figure out what is going to get bucks moving in
15:26
Speaker 2: the daylight hours. If it's super hot, that's going to
15:29
Speaker 2: be water. If it's November seventh, it's going to be
15:31
Speaker 2: the ladies. But pretty much the whole season, though close
15:35
Speaker 2: to it anyway, it's what he needs to eat to survive.
15:39
Speaker 2: We think about food from the perspective of desirability because
15:43
Speaker 2: most of us aren't in any danger of starvation. You know,
15:46
Speaker 2: we don't have to eat buds off trees. For five
15:48
Speaker 2: months in the winter, and I'm sure deer have flavors
15:51
Speaker 2: and food sources that just taste good, but mostly they
15:54
Speaker 2: are eating to accomplish something with their bodies, you know,
15:57
Speaker 2: bulk up for the rut, produce enough milk for triplet fawns,
16:01
Speaker 2: stay warm all night long in December. Whatever they eat
16:05
Speaker 2: to survive and thrive, and that means they have to
16:08
Speaker 2: move to eat and put themselves at risk at some point,
16:12
Speaker 2: often some point every single day of their lives during
16:15
Speaker 2: shooting hours, or at least every single day during the
16:18
Speaker 2: fall when we can hunt them. Think about that and
16:21
Speaker 2: think about coming back next week for more white tail talk.
16:26
Speaker 2: That's it for this week. I'm Tony Peterson. This has
16:28
Speaker 2: been the Wired to Hunt Foundations podcast, which is brought
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Speaker 2: to you by First Light. As always, thank you so
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17:00
Speaker 1: He