Latest / Wired To Hunt Podcast / Ep. 902: Foundations - How Understanding Human Behavior Can Help You Kill More Bucks

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Ep. 902: Foundations - How Understanding Human Behavior Can Help You Kill More Bucks · 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 Foundation's podcast, which is brought
0:23
Speaker 2: to you by first Light. I'm your host, Tony Peterson,
0:25
Speaker 2: and today's episode is all about human behavior and why
0:29
Speaker 2: you should study it to be a better deer hunter.
0:33
Speaker 2: A couple of weeks ago and now, I spent some
0:36
Speaker 2: time in Nebraska trying to call in a turkey on
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Speaker 2: public land, and what I learned on that hunt just
0:41
Speaker 2: drove home something I believe about deer hunting is that
0:45
Speaker 2: if you don't understand people, you won't understand how to
0:49
Speaker 2: deer hunt in most places. Now, this might sound like
0:52
Speaker 2: a topic that applies mostly to the public land or
0:55
Speaker 2: pressure ground deer hunter, but that's not true. Human behavior
1:00
Speaker 2: matters in the deer woods no matter where you hunt,
1:02
Speaker 2: which is what I'm going to talk about right now.
1:09
Speaker 2: I pulled up into the ditch off of a drainage
1:13
Speaker 2: on a walk in ranch in central Nebraska, with a
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Speaker 2: turkey tag in my pocket and all of the fixings
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Speaker 2: for a bowhunt ready to go. And while I had
1:22
Speaker 2: poured over on X to try to find likely looking
1:25
Speaker 2: gobbler hotspots, you really don't know what you're getting into
1:29
Speaker 2: on a new place until you show up, especially if
1:32
Speaker 2: that place is a piece of public land six hundred
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Speaker 2: miles from your house. Now, what I saw the instant
1:38
Speaker 2: I pulled into the ditch was five jakes beating their
1:42
Speaker 2: way along a flat toward a cedar covered hillside. Now,
1:45
Speaker 2: if that isn't a good sign, I don't know what is.
1:48
Speaker 2: What was even better was that as soon as I
1:50
Speaker 2: stepped out of the truck, I heard a tom gobble.
1:53
Speaker 2: Now he lit up about five times while I scrambled
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Speaker 2: to get my gear in order and head in between
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Speaker 2: him and the jakes. I figured, you know, it would
2:01
Speaker 2: be an hour long hunt and i'd be on the
2:03
Speaker 2: road to Kansas to try to fill another tag. Except
2:06
Speaker 2: that as soon as I crossed the fence into the
2:08
Speaker 2: best looking spot to climb the hill, I realized that
2:11
Speaker 2: the cover was awful sparse and awful steep. And when
2:15
Speaker 2: I crested the ridge, aside from admiring a set of
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Speaker 2: giant gobbler tracks on the tiny ridge trail that wound
2:21
Speaker 2: its way from Cedar Patch to Cedar Patch. I realized
2:24
Speaker 2: that I was hemmed in by roads. I don't like
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Speaker 2: hunting any animals on public that might be visible from
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Speaker 2: the road, but I thought maybe since it was the
2:32
Speaker 2: early archery season, you know, the pressure would be low
2:35
Speaker 2: and I could make something happen. I wandered around for
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Speaker 2: a little bit and realized that the ideal setup wasn't
2:41
Speaker 2: going to happen, and honestly, neither was a shitty one.
2:45
Speaker 2: I don't know how many times I found a spot
2:47
Speaker 2: I wanted to hunt but couldn't make it work. But
2:49
Speaker 2: if you added up how often that's happened while deer
2:51
Speaker 2: in Turkey hunting, it might be like a billion. Dejected,
2:56
Speaker 2: I walked back past my truck to set up where
2:58
Speaker 2: I had originally planned to go. Now, aside from one
3:01
Speaker 2: double bearded tom that acted as if he had lost
3:03
Speaker 2: every fight he had ever got anywhere near it was
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Speaker 2: super dead for me. So I went looking, and not
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Speaker 2: only did I find the gobbler from the first day,
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Speaker 2: I found about ten other legal birds scattered throughout the
3:16
Speaker 2: same valley. Now that might make it sound like I
3:19
Speaker 2: have some sort of secret, but the truth is they
3:22
Speaker 2: were all visible from the road, which means any idiot
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Speaker 2: with a driver's license could find those birds, and besides
3:28
Speaker 2: this idiot, a lot of other idiots did. I shouldn't
3:31
Speaker 2: say that about other hunters I've never met, but I
3:33
Speaker 2: can say about myself, because I spent the whole next
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Speaker 2: day trying to call in those birds. What happened was
3:40
Speaker 2: that I had long, in depth conversations with various toms
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Speaker 2: and hens who decided I was better off left alone,
3:48
Speaker 2: and all I had to keep me company were some
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Speaker 2: songbirds and about fifty thousand ticks. It was a long,
3:55
Speaker 2: long day in the blind. The plus side was that
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Speaker 2: one of my last days of that short hunt coincided
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Speaker 2: with when the shotgun season would be open, and I knew,
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Speaker 2: after watching truck after truck and one Subaru that made
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Speaker 2: a lot of laps while looking for birds, that I
4:11
Speaker 2: needed to get in somewhere where the turkeys weren't visible
4:14
Speaker 2: and where I could get away from the road, because well, duh,
4:19
Speaker 2: of course the visible birds are going to get messed with.
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Speaker 2: And you know what, I wandered around and sat through
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Speaker 2: a couple of dead calling sequences before finding some real
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Speaker 2: turkey sign later in the day, which led me deeper
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Speaker 2: into a huge chunk of walk in land. Now, eventually
4:36
Speaker 2: I spotted a windmill in there, and since I'm a
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Speaker 2: smart guy and I was very thirsty, I thought maybe
4:43
Speaker 2: there would be some turkey activity around the only water
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Speaker 2: source on maybe two thousand acres of patched or ground.
4:50
Speaker 2: And there was. And it didn't take a whole lot
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Speaker 2: of yelping and purring and clucking before six redheads popped
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Speaker 2: up and wandered close to my decoys. Now, I know
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Speaker 2: some hunters brown on shooting jakes, but I've also noticed
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Speaker 2: that most of those guys aren't hunting cage public land birds,
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Speaker 2: and even if they are, I don't care. I'm not
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Speaker 2: about to start trophy hunting turkeys. And I can say
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Speaker 2: with the utmost sincerity that I was pretty excited to
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Speaker 2: see a lot of jakes rolling into my decoys, and
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Speaker 2: very excited to see one of them split from the
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Speaker 2: group and poke his head up in the air at
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Speaker 2: twenty yards. Now, after I sent him to the happy
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Speaker 2: strutting grounds in the sky, I realized I had only
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Speaker 2: actually laid eyes on one turkey while hunting in about
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Speaker 2: four days at least until that gang of Jake's wandered
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Speaker 2: in because I had hunted like everyone else. I don't
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Speaker 2: know why it's so hard for us to break away
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Speaker 2: from what everyone else does to what we should do
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Speaker 2: while we're hunting, but it just is. I also know
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Speaker 2: that people are going to listen to this and think
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Speaker 2: that the hunting they have is different from me or
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Speaker 2: anyone else, and maybe assume these rules don't apply. I'm
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Speaker 2: telling you they probably do. And I want to frame
6:02
Speaker 2: this up with an easy one. You know, those shitty
6:05
Speaker 2: out of state hunters who only road hunt and just
6:08
Speaker 2: don't want to burn a calorie to kill a deer
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Speaker 2: or a turkey. They exist everywhere, and if you think
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Speaker 2: the residents in your state don't do that, you're being
6:16
Speaker 2: intentionally glib. I see it everywhere I hunt, and honestly
6:21
Speaker 2: probably see it the most out West, where everyone is
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Speaker 2: supposed to be snorting lines of mountain oops off of
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Speaker 2: their ninety pound packs and engaging in almost superhero level
6:30
Speaker 2: feats of strength that would make the average whitetail hunter
6:33
Speaker 2: ball like an abandoned newborn. This isn't because Western hunters
6:37
Speaker 2: are lazier than whitetail hunters. It's because they live where
6:40
Speaker 2: road hunting can be productive because of the visibility and
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Speaker 2: the sheer scope of land they have to work with.
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Speaker 2: There are plenty of whitetail hunters who try to spot
6:49
Speaker 2: deer from their vehicles too. It just doesn't, you know,
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Speaker 2: probably work as well in quite a few places where
6:55
Speaker 2: big concentrations of deer and hunters mix, the less if
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Speaker 2: I can tease one out of the morass. Here is this.
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Speaker 2: If something is visible from the road and it's not
7:07
Speaker 2: on a highly managed property, then it's probably not worth hunting. Now,
7:13
Speaker 2: you can check an awful lot of spots like that
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Speaker 2: and find sign, because deer will leave sign at night.
7:19
Speaker 2: But for the most part, that should be left to
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Speaker 2: the people who aren't in too much danger of going
7:23
Speaker 2: over their bag limits on deer in any given season.
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Speaker 2: Human behavior is predictable like that, and you should think
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Speaker 2: about it. You should use it to your advantage. Let
7:34
Speaker 2: me give you another example. Think about how often you
7:37
Speaker 2: call to deer that don't come in. Now, think about
7:41
Speaker 2: that same deer living in a square mile and how
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Speaker 2: many hunters he's encountered who operate just like you. Maybe
7:50
Speaker 2: you can grun him in or snort we's him in,
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Speaker 2: But the odds are pretty good that unless the mood
7:55
Speaker 2: is just right, it's not gonna happen. We often think
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Speaker 2: that they won't commit just because they didn't want to,
8:02
Speaker 2: but I think it's often because they get called to
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Speaker 2: a lot, and that creates kind of an association between
8:08
Speaker 2: frantic grunting or rattling with danger up in a tree.
8:12
Speaker 2: I think they get conditioned. Now you might think, wasn't
8:16
Speaker 2: that sort of a no harm, no foul type of situation.
8:19
Speaker 2: So I grunt out a buck and he doesn't commit,
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Speaker 2: Who cares? What if he spooks? What if he comes
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Speaker 2: in and you didn't think about it, But it's only
8:26
Speaker 2: a matter of him swinging around just a little bit
8:29
Speaker 2: so he can check the wind upon which you're sending
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Speaker 2: plenty of old factory warning signs. Or what if you
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Speaker 2: spook him out right? That happens a fair amount to
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Speaker 2: deer I call to. That doesn't stop me from calling
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Speaker 2: all the time, but it stops me from calling every
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Speaker 2: time I get the urge. If I see a deer
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Speaker 2: do something today and he's not giving me great calling vibes,
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Speaker 2: I'd rather watch him do his thing, and then move
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Speaker 2: closer tomorrow or the next time I can hunt. This
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Speaker 2: is a thing that's hard to resist, but it can
8:58
Speaker 2: be a good idea, beecially, if you hunt on pressure ground. Now,
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Speaker 2: let's look at another way that human behavior is predictable
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Speaker 2: and detrimental to our success in the deer woods, the
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Speaker 2: good looking spot conundrum. We are conditioned to look for
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Speaker 2: food sources and generally openings, oftentimes openings in the cover.
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Speaker 2: We like to be able to see. We like to
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Speaker 2: hunt where the deer could come in and grab a
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Speaker 2: bite to eat. We see dozens and dozens of giant
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Speaker 2: bucks every fall that are posed up in cornfields and
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Speaker 2: food plots after they get shot. All those trophy photos.
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Speaker 2: Now we might not know where they bed or stage,
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Speaker 2: but we can figure out where they might feed easily enough.
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Speaker 2: And again, there might also be plenty of sign in
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Speaker 2: the food. The trouble is, even the dullest white tail
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Speaker 2: hunter out there knows that foods sources are good spots
10:01
Speaker 2: to hunt. If you hunt public land at all, where
10:04
Speaker 2: there's some sort of agg on it, you'll find blinds
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Speaker 2: and stands. Cameras too. Probably you'll find evidence of hunting pressure,
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Speaker 2: you'll find the same spot that everyone else can find
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Speaker 2: because everyone else, uh can find it. The spot that
10:20
Speaker 2: looks like it would be amazing on private ground is
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Speaker 2: often a lost cause on public land or pressure ground.
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Speaker 2: It's the prevalence of sign and the type of sign
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Speaker 2: that really matters. On that turkey hunt I just went on,
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Speaker 2: I didn't find hardly any droppings or roos, trees or
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Speaker 2: flipped over cow pois or random feathers in almost every
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Speaker 2: spot I looked at. But I still wasted my first
10:44
Speaker 2: day and a half hunting a good looking spot that
10:48
Speaker 2: really wasn't worth a shit. It wasn't until I started
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Speaker 2: finding some fresh turkey sign, and then a whole bunch
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Speaker 2: of fresh turkey sign on the two track leading to
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Speaker 2: the water tank that I felt like I was actually
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Speaker 2: in a spot that the birds were using. Currently. Deer
11:03
Speaker 2: hunting is like that, but the waters get a little
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Speaker 2: muddier there because deer leave a lot of sign. A
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Speaker 2: spot that looks good, that's great, but without the fresh
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Speaker 2: droppings and the tracks and hopefully rubs and scrapes, you
11:16
Speaker 2: might be looking at a spot that is just kind
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Speaker 2: of cooled off considerably, or a spot that is only
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Speaker 2: hot at night, which is often the case with pressured
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Speaker 2: food sources, and those spots, because they look so dang tasty,
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Speaker 2: will soak up a lot of the hunting pressure because
11:31
Speaker 2: human behavior makes it so. Human behavior is generally kind
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Speaker 2: of lazy, and understanding that is huge for figuring out
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Speaker 2: where deer go to avoid us. This applies to something
11:46
Speaker 2: that I think matters a lot to being a good hunter,
11:49
Speaker 2: which is just figuring out a different way to get
11:51
Speaker 2: into spots. If you only ever park in the parking
11:54
Speaker 2: areas of a WMA, you're only ever going in the
11:58
Speaker 2: way most hunters go in. If you only ever park
12:01
Speaker 2: one hundred yards into the field road on your lease
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Speaker 2: because it's easiest, you're conditioning the deer to your behavior,
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Speaker 2: and that can be just as damaging as someone else's
12:10
Speaker 2: predictable behavior. This is really a simple lesson to understand,
12:15
Speaker 2: but a hard one to put into practice. That jakester
12:18
Speaker 2: I shot Nebraska. Him and his buddies came in at
12:21
Speaker 2: three in the afternoon. It was at least eighty degrees
12:24
Speaker 2: with the sun beating down. You know who was the
12:27
Speaker 2: only one stupid enough to be out there trying to
12:29
Speaker 2: call a bird in during those conditions yours truly, at
12:33
Speaker 2: least it seemed to be in that spot, and it
12:35
Speaker 2: was a big, big spot. I had a lot of
12:39
Speaker 2: land in myself, and I found a place that had
12:41
Speaker 2: a big time draw in it, which was the water.
12:44
Speaker 2: I promised you that most folks would have said that
12:46
Speaker 2: the birds weren't going to be overly active or callable
12:49
Speaker 2: in those conditions, and in a lot of places that
12:52
Speaker 2: would have been true. But when you go where the
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Speaker 2: turkeys want to be, they get a hell of a
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Speaker 2: lot more callable because they are not only more concentrated,
13:00
Speaker 2: but I believe this anyway, they're just more likely to
13:02
Speaker 2: respond positively when they hear birds where they expect to
13:06
Speaker 2: hear birds, kind of like how I believe that calling
13:09
Speaker 2: deer gets a hell of a lot easier when you
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Speaker 2: find them in the thick cover where they feel safe
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Speaker 2: and probably wouldn't be surprised to bump into a few
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Speaker 2: other deer. We think we have this stuff figured out
13:20
Speaker 2: because there is a template for good hunting on good
13:23
Speaker 2: ground that has leaked through to all of us, but
13:27
Speaker 2: that template doesn't really apply to most of us. I
13:31
Speaker 2: see this in one big way that I think holds
13:33
Speaker 2: a lot of folks back, and that's our behavior around
13:36
Speaker 2: trail cameras. Now, look, I love trail cameras, but I
13:40
Speaker 2: don't let them tell me when bucks are daylighting, because
13:43
Speaker 2: if I did, I'd haunt a lot less than I should.
13:46
Speaker 2: This idea that we can single out our target buck
13:49
Speaker 2: and then wait for him to start slipping during daylight
13:52
Speaker 2: is great if you have the right setup. We believe
13:56
Speaker 2: that is the move because it makes sense, and for
13:59
Speaker 2: some folks it works. But even if you are on
14:03
Speaker 2: good private ground, you have to ask yourself, what are
14:06
Speaker 2: the odds that the buck you want only moves in
14:10
Speaker 2: daylight past your cameras showing you that he is in
14:13
Speaker 2: fact moving in daylight. He takes one other trail, or
14:17
Speaker 2: shows up in the food plot at the opposite end,
14:20
Speaker 2: or whatever, and your cameras will show you that he
14:23
Speaker 2: is definitely not moving in daylight. But that's not true
14:27
Speaker 2: and is mostly not true for most bucks on any
14:29
Speaker 2: given day. I believe that in my heart, just as
14:33
Speaker 2: I believe that a lot of hunters follow that program,
14:36
Speaker 2: and not necessarily with individual deer, but deer in general
14:40
Speaker 2: or bucks in general anyway, and it keeps them from
14:43
Speaker 2: hunting that's predictable human behavior that we do to ourselves
14:48
Speaker 2: in a way, and it's a great way to often
14:50
Speaker 2: not fill your buck tag under the idea that you're
14:53
Speaker 2: actually being a really smart, calculated deer hunter. Now, if
14:57
Speaker 2: you have the right spot, sure, but if you don't,
15:00
Speaker 2: then you're only setting yourself up for failure with that behavior.
15:04
Speaker 2: But we can't help ourselves. We look for the answers
15:06
Speaker 2: to our dear problems and others, and we should probably
15:09
Speaker 2: look mostly inward. Now, there's another type of human behavior
15:14
Speaker 2: that we should try to understand too, one that isn't
15:17
Speaker 2: just general hunter behavior, and one that isn't our own
15:20
Speaker 2: set of behaviors. It's the behavior of anyone who hunts
15:24
Speaker 2: on or near where we hunt. I have a farm.
15:29
Speaker 2: I've hunted in southern Minnesota for a long long time,
15:32
Speaker 2: and I've gotten to know what some of the other
15:34
Speaker 2: hunters will do out there. Some of them hunt field
15:38
Speaker 2: edges in the mornings, which means certain fields will mostly
15:41
Speaker 2: be a lost cause after the first week of the season.
15:45
Speaker 2: Some or at least one who I wish would move
15:48
Speaker 2: far far away, only stalks around while trying to shoot one,
15:53
Speaker 2: which is very hard for good hunters let alone. This
15:56
Speaker 2: particular fella, where he goes to do that is where
16:00
Speaker 2: I mostly won't go to hunt much, especially on the
16:04
Speaker 2: weekends when he's most likely to be out. Is what
16:07
Speaker 2: he's doing is walking around and spooking a lot of
16:09
Speaker 2: deer while killing very very few of them. Now, what
16:14
Speaker 2: can you learn about the other hunters on the ground
16:17
Speaker 2: you're hunting? Well? Where they park, where they hunt, how
16:21
Speaker 2: long they sit when they're likely to be out there,
16:24
Speaker 2: all of the above. All of that matters and can
16:27
Speaker 2: inform some of your decisions. Now, what about your neighbors.
16:31
Speaker 2: Do they take it pretty easy until you season and
16:33
Speaker 2: then go hard in the paint with a bunch of kids.
16:36
Speaker 2: That's valuable intel. Do they sit fence lines or walk
16:39
Speaker 2: out early because they're scared of the dark. Do they
16:42
Speaker 2: cruise around on four wheelers at peak hours during daylight hours?
16:46
Speaker 2: I don't think most dear think about coyotes or wolves
16:49
Speaker 2: or anything else that might kill them quite as much
16:51
Speaker 2: as they think about us. We are the threat on
16:55
Speaker 2: a large scale, and what we do is convince them
16:58
Speaker 2: to engage in certain behaviors to avoid us. That's not
17:01
Speaker 2: the whole game, but is a huge part of it.
17:06
Speaker 2: Our behavior directly influences their behavior, and that's why hunting
17:10
Speaker 2: public land is more difficult than hunting primo lease in
17:13
Speaker 2: Iowa with only one name on it. It's simple, but
17:17
Speaker 2: isn't It is worth thinking about, though, because you have
17:20
Speaker 2: to ask yourself how others will influence the deer you're
17:24
Speaker 2: hunting and just what you can do about that. And
17:27
Speaker 2: then you have to ask yourself what behaviors you engage
17:29
Speaker 2: in that seem to work and the ones we believe
17:32
Speaker 2: should work but mostly don't. There are so many lessons
17:37
Speaker 2: in that last point, but self awareness kind of sucks.
17:41
Speaker 2: It is important for a lot of things in life,
17:43
Speaker 2: including being a better deer hunter, but it just isn't
17:46
Speaker 2: much fun. Getting better at deer hunting is, though, and
17:49
Speaker 2: so is shooting a nice buck in his big old lungs.
17:53
Speaker 2: So think about that and think about coming back next
17:55
Speaker 2: week because I'm going to talk about botany, which is
17:58
Speaker 2: a boring ass topic, but I plan to make it
18:01
Speaker 2: exciting and promise you that it might help you kill
18:04
Speaker 2: more giant bucks or at least some fourkies. That's it
18:09
Speaker 2: for this week. I'm Tony Peterson. This has been the
18:11
Speaker 2: Wired to Hunt Foundation's podcast, which is brought to you
18:13
Speaker 2: by First Flight. As always, thank you so much for listening.
18:17
Speaker 2: Your support means the world to us. You guys show
18:19
Speaker 2: up every week, every month.
18:21
Speaker 1: Huge.
18:21
Speaker 2: Without you, guys, we are nothing, so thank you for that. Now,
18:25
Speaker 2: if you want to listen to some other podcasts, maybe
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Speaker 2: you want to hear some good storytelling and head over
18:28
Speaker 2: to Clay's Bear Grease or Brent's This Country Life. Check
18:32
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Speaker 2: you can read all kinds of articles. I'm putting out
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Speaker 2: a bunch of dog training articles right now. Maybe you
18:41
Speaker 2: need a recipe for that bird you're going to kill
18:43
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