Latest / Wired To Hunt Podcast / Ep. 818: Foundations - Hard and Soft Mast Patterns that Might Not be on Every Hunter's Radar

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Ep. 818: Foundations - Hard and Soft Mast Patterns that Might Not be on Every Hunter's Radar · 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 is brought to you by first Light. I'm your host,
0:24
Speaker 2: Tony Peterson, and today's episode is all about what hunters
0:27
Speaker 2: get wrong about hunting soft and hard mass. I spent
0:38
Speaker 2: some time in the woods last weekend bear hunting with
0:41
Speaker 2: my daughter and it just hit me how much food
0:43
Speaker 2: is out there in the woods right now, not just
0:45
Speaker 2: for the yogi is looking to get their paws on
0:47
Speaker 2: a picnic basket, but for the deer. There's no shortage
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Speaker 2: of food, and a lot of that exists in two forms,
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Speaker 2: soft mast and hard mast. We all know what fits
0:57
Speaker 2: into those two categories, but what we don't all knows
1:00
Speaker 2: how to hunt either pattern in the early season really well,
1:02
Speaker 2: which is what I'm going to talk about right now.
1:14
Speaker 2: I know this is a first world problem. I get it,
1:17
Speaker 2: I totally do, but I struggle more and more with
1:20
Speaker 2: the transition from fishing to hunting as I get older,
1:23
Speaker 2: the fall fishing is just so good. And while it
1:26
Speaker 2: might seem like a deer hunting sin to not go
1:28
Speaker 2: hunting on the bow opener, I'm seriously considering skipping the
1:32
Speaker 2: tree stand thing to go bang away on some schooled
1:35
Speaker 2: up smallmouth you see. For some reason this year, I
1:38
Speaker 2: just stumbled across some schools of fish that are out
1:40
Speaker 2: on structure, way off ashore, way far away from the
1:44
Speaker 2: easy to identify rock piles and rock points. You know.
1:48
Speaker 2: One of those schools I found is just full of giants.
1:51
Speaker 2: And when I say that, I mean we caught fish
1:53
Speaker 2: that actually measured twenty two inches, which is pretty good
1:56
Speaker 2: size for a small mouth anywhere. That school is BAUSI
2:00
Speaker 2: on an old river channel in a lake that I
2:02
Speaker 2: like a lot. There, maybe I don't know, one hundred
2:05
Speaker 2: and fifty yards from the nearest shore line, kind of
2:07
Speaker 2: out in the middle of nothing now down south. I'm
2:10
Speaker 2: sure I wouldn't be the only one on those fish,
2:12
Speaker 2: because in a lot of those reservoirs and big water
2:14
Speaker 2: down there, they're pretty good at finding fish off offshore
2:17
Speaker 2: on structure. But up here in near Canada Land, it
2:21
Speaker 2: feels like I'm kind of the only one who has
2:23
Speaker 2: found them. And when you get false small mouth all
2:25
Speaker 2: schooled up, and then you add in the cold nights
2:28
Speaker 2: and the bait fish concentrations, you get fishing that is Baananas.
2:33
Speaker 2: I threw a zara spook on those fish a couple
2:35
Speaker 2: of weeks ago and had a legit five pound dish
2:37
Speaker 2: type fish hit it, and I got him about halfway
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Speaker 2: to the boat before he tossed my lure and it
2:42
Speaker 2: went end over end who straight up and came back down.
2:46
Speaker 2: And the second it landed, a different five pounder hit it,
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Speaker 2: and I managed to keep him buttoned up and landed him.
2:52
Speaker 2: A few casts later, I had a three pounder hit
2:55
Speaker 2: and when I was fighting that fish, a different three
2:57
Speaker 2: pounder tried to steal the lure from his mouth. So
3:00
Speaker 2: briefly I had two three pounds small mouth with different
3:03
Speaker 2: ideas on how to get away, both attached to the
3:06
Speaker 2: same lure. There are so many fish there, you know,
3:09
Speaker 2: the competition for food is intense. There are a lot
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Speaker 2: of minos in that spot. And you know how I know, well,
3:16
Speaker 2: I saw them. I saw the smallies puke them up
3:18
Speaker 2: when we fought them, and I caught several walleyes chason
3:22
Speaker 2: minnows there on top waters. Now I've spent maybe I
3:27
Speaker 2: don't know, seven hundred and fifty thousand hours of my life,
3:30
Speaker 2: which is a rough estimate, throwing top waters around in
3:33
Speaker 2: the hope so that some big bass or big northern
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Speaker 2: or musky will hit. What has never, not once happened
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Speaker 2: to me is catching a walleye on a top water. Now,
3:44
Speaker 2: when it happened on that smallie school the first time,
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Speaker 2: I chalked it up to a confused walter who was
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Speaker 2: raised by a family a small mouth and didn't know
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Speaker 2: any better, kind of like the stories about kids who've
3:54
Speaker 2: been abandoned in the wild to only be taken in
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Speaker 2: by a friendly pack of wolves or a group of gorillas.
3:59
Speaker 2: So they aren't acting like wolves or gorillas. But when
4:02
Speaker 2: the second wall I surfaced and ate my top water,
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Speaker 2: I realized I was dealing with something different. There were
4:08
Speaker 2: so many predatory fish in that one little spot that's
4:11
Speaker 2: really only about the size of a pickup truck, that
4:14
Speaker 2: they are all just going full send on any potential
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Speaker 2: meal they can get. It was wild, and it happened
4:20
Speaker 2: during two different weekends, and I can only imagine how
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Speaker 2: much more they are going right now. But I'm going
4:26
Speaker 2: to go sit in a tree stand instead, I think.
4:28
Speaker 2: But that school of fish and some of the others
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Speaker 2: I found, they can teach us some lessons on deer
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Speaker 2: in a few simple forms. And the first, it's just
4:38
Speaker 2: resource scarcity. The hunters who get good at finding high
4:43
Speaker 2: value resources in limited quantities are the hunters who can
4:46
Speaker 2: fill their tags any damn where they please. The second
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Speaker 2: is that that kind of action will happen when the
4:53
Speaker 2: time is right, and not before and not after. It's
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Speaker 2: a moment thing, and if you can get on it
5:00
Speaker 2: when it's going, you're in for the type of fishing
5:03
Speaker 2: or hunting that generates stories you'll tell for a long
5:06
Speaker 2: long time. It's just special. The third thing that school
5:10
Speaker 2: of big old bronze backs and walters can teach us
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Speaker 2: about hunting is that old adage and selling real estate. Location, location, location.
5:20
Speaker 2: Those fish are positioned in a place that just isn't
5:23
Speaker 2: obvious to a lot of fishermen. They get left alone
5:25
Speaker 2: to work schools as shiners and do their fall feeding thing,
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Speaker 2: while fishermen cast to empty rock piles and sand drops
5:31
Speaker 2: that aren't even all that close to them. For some reason,
5:34
Speaker 2: we like to rank things in the order of importance,
5:37
Speaker 2: perhaps because we have a long evolutionary history of hierarchy arrangement.
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Speaker 2: I don't know. What I do know is that if
5:44
Speaker 2: you were to try to think about white tails the
5:47
Speaker 2: way you might think about finding an unbelievable small mouth
5:50
Speaker 2: or walleye spot, you'd probably want to decide what is
5:55
Speaker 2: the most important, what criteria matters the most. Now, obviously,
6:00
Speaker 2: without the oak tree dropping acorns, or the apple tree
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Speaker 2: throwing down some apples, or the persimmon tree littering the
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Speaker 2: ground with fruity goodness, you don't have much of a
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Speaker 2: masked pattern. There has to be some mask to get
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Speaker 2: a masked pattern, which is the most obvious thing you
6:13
Speaker 2: could probably say, even though that doesn't make it less true.
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Speaker 2: But we know there is masked out there where you hunt,
6:20
Speaker 2: where I hunt, just about anywhere the white tail lives,
6:22
Speaker 2: and honestly, probably everywhere the white tail lives, there is
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Speaker 2: some kind of mast, and a hell of a lot
6:28
Speaker 2: of it gets ripe during September and early October. A
6:32
Speaker 2: lot of the white tail hunting advice out there will
6:34
Speaker 2: tell you to go find that white oak, and basically
6:37
Speaker 2: your job is done. The thing is when one white
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Speaker 2: oak is dropping, often many many white oaks are dropping.
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Speaker 2: When the percimons are ripe in your region, they are
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Speaker 2: ripe everywhere. It's not enough to know that some mass
6:51
Speaker 2: type event is happening because that's the lowest hanging fruit here.
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Speaker 2: Get it. But we like to rank that as maybe
6:58
Speaker 2: the number one factor in arrowing a bit buck on
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Speaker 2: a mass pattern. But the best mass pattern is the
7:03
Speaker 2: one that plays off a resource scarcity in real cover.
7:07
Speaker 2: Let me give you a real world example. I have
7:09
Speaker 2: a little spot over there in Wisconsin that has about
7:12
Speaker 2: six acres of oak trees and what you could describe
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Speaker 2: as just a beautiful little chunk of woods. It looks perfect,
7:18
Speaker 2: and there are several giant oak trees in there. When
7:22
Speaker 2: the oak trees are dropping heavy like they were last year,
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Speaker 2: the deer in there pretty thick. But you know what
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Speaker 2: they weren't in there in daylight, a whole lot because
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Speaker 2: that patch of oaks is within a long arrow shot
7:33
Speaker 2: distance of a neighbor's destination food plot. As far as
7:36
Speaker 2: I can tell, those neighbors only hunt that food plot,
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Speaker 2: and they hunt it a lot. It's too busy in there,
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Speaker 2: and so those giant oaks that rain down those acorns,
7:47
Speaker 2: you know, they also shade out the understory, and they
7:50
Speaker 2: look like they should be the draw. It should be easy,
7:54
Speaker 2: and you might make the mistake of walking through there
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Speaker 2: and seeing all those giant acorns on the ground and
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Speaker 2: tons of deer poop scared ed it around and assume
8:01
Speaker 2: that it's done, it's all figured out. But when you
8:04
Speaker 2: sit there on stand you might very well blank. It's
8:08
Speaker 2: almost the right setup, but it's missing the good cover.
8:12
Speaker 2: This is mistake hunters make a lot, and it has
8:14
Speaker 2: plenty to do with the fact that we just like
8:16
Speaker 2: setting up where we can see far and wide. Even
8:19
Speaker 2: though you could hunt those oaks that still very much
8:21
Speaker 2: be in the woods, you're not really in the kind
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Speaker 2: of woods that a lot of pressure deer are going
8:26
Speaker 2: to use during daylight. And it would be a big
8:29
Speaker 2: ask to the deer gods to see a really good
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Speaker 2: buck there during the hours when you can legally shoot him.
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Speaker 2: What I figured out last year, way too late, i
8:38
Speaker 2: might add, is that some of the oak trees in
8:41
Speaker 2: that spot grow right next to the swamp. In fact,
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Speaker 2: it was a group of tom turkeys that clued me
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Speaker 2: into this pattern, if I'm being totally honest, they were
8:49
Speaker 2: scratching away in there when I went in to figure
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Speaker 2: out what I was missing, and I realized that where
8:54
Speaker 2: the swamp edge butts up to the high ground, you
8:56
Speaker 2: know where the oaks are, you kind of have a
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Speaker 2: special situation. You have a soft edge that deer naturally love.
9:04
Speaker 2: But that soft edge is also a buffer between woods
9:07
Speaker 2: that is awful open and an alder and willow choke
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Speaker 2: swamp that is a nightmare to get through. It's perfect
9:12
Speaker 2: bedding cover, security cover, ideal escape cover. So the deer
9:17
Speaker 2: they want to eat acorns in daylight, but don't want
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Speaker 2: to put themselves in a position to get killed by
9:21
Speaker 2: the very predictable hunters in the area. They feed those
9:24
Speaker 2: edges a lot. Now I have to say this. I
9:33
Speaker 2: set up some cameras this summer to try to dial
9:36
Speaker 2: in this pattern and just get a better idea when
9:38
Speaker 2: the big boys will start using those spots, and I
9:42
Speaker 2: literally cannot buy a deer picture in there. Once in
9:45
Speaker 2: a while, when a storm rolls through, I'll get some
9:47
Speaker 2: doze munching along there, But the bucks are nowhere to
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Speaker 2: be found. But neither are most of the acorns. That
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Speaker 2: I was counting on those trees dropped heavy, heavy last year,
9:57
Speaker 2: and they are being awful, stingy this year. This is
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Speaker 2: a point that matters a lot, and I want to
10:02
Speaker 2: talk about it. Masked patterns, they're like a moving target.
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Speaker 2: They might be amazing this year in a certain spot
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Speaker 2: and terrible the next, and the tree you killed on
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Speaker 2: a year ago might not draw a single visitor this fall.
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Speaker 2: There's a little bit of hunting on memories that can
10:20
Speaker 2: happen with masts, but mostly you better forget that and
10:24
Speaker 2: figure out what's going on now. Now. There are two
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Speaker 2: ways to looking at how to find the right mass
10:30
Speaker 2: pattern and how to hunt it. The first is if
10:33
Speaker 2: it's an individual tree thing. This seems to happen more
10:36
Speaker 2: with soft mass in my experience, but certainly can with
10:39
Speaker 2: hard masks too. It's just that most of us aren't
10:41
Speaker 2: hunting an apple orchard or a whole section of percymon trees.
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Speaker 2: Those types of trees often exist as a solo option
10:49
Speaker 2: or in a small cluster. Oak trees and other hard
10:52
Speaker 2: mass trees are often different, not always, but often When
10:55
Speaker 2: you're looking to get on a single tree, particularly one
10:58
Speaker 2: deep in the cover where the deer will visit in daylight.
11:01
Speaker 2: You're pretty much going to have to go in and scout.
11:03
Speaker 2: There's no way around it. If you don't see it
11:06
Speaker 2: in person, and by that I mean the sign under
11:09
Speaker 2: the tree, then you probably won't find it unless you
11:11
Speaker 2: get lucky. Now, before I talk about this other style,
11:14
Speaker 2: I'll say this, it's not just enough to find that
11:17
Speaker 2: perfect apple tree that's back in the cover and littered
11:19
Speaker 2: with deer droppings underneath it. You have to look and
11:22
Speaker 2: see how much food is left. Most of the apples
11:25
Speaker 2: are on the ground or have already been carried away
11:27
Speaker 2: into digestive tracks of deer. You might catch the tail
11:30
Speaker 2: end of the activity on that tree, or it might
11:32
Speaker 2: already be over. Now, if it's absolutely loaded with fruit,
11:36
Speaker 2: that's a different story. It's probably time to call it
11:39
Speaker 2: and stick to work and make it happen. There. A
11:41
Speaker 2: good way to understand this is to drop a camera
11:43
Speaker 2: in a spot with a single, soft mass producing tree.
11:47
Speaker 2: When I do this, I'm often amazed at how predictable
11:50
Speaker 2: some of the deer are. They'll swing through in the
11:52
Speaker 2: morning or the evening and try to see if anything
11:54
Speaker 2: has fallen overnight or throughout the day, and they can
11:57
Speaker 2: be like clockwork, and I'll tell you something else here.
12:01
Speaker 2: If you are the kind of hunter who likes shooting
12:03
Speaker 2: does or little bucks, this is a tough situation to beat.
12:07
Speaker 2: But ture box are a different story because they just
12:09
Speaker 2: don't seem to be as predictable on situations where you
12:12
Speaker 2: might have one soft mass tree somewhere, but some of
12:16
Speaker 2: the other deer can be real predictable on that and
12:18
Speaker 2: that could be pretty dang fun. But what if you're
12:21
Speaker 2: not in a position to throw a camera up and
12:23
Speaker 2: pattern some soft mass munchers, and instead you have ridges
12:27
Speaker 2: and ridges of oak trees to work with, any of
12:30
Speaker 2: which could be the right tree for the week. Scouting
12:33
Speaker 2: sign is good, but not as good as hunting and watching.
12:36
Speaker 2: Here's what I like to do. Sneak in, set up
12:40
Speaker 2: on the fringe of the mass trees with the wind
12:42
Speaker 2: in my favor, even if there are ten or fifteen
12:45
Speaker 2: acres or more stretched out along the same ridge. I'll
12:48
Speaker 2: start out cautious on the outside where the access is easier.
12:53
Speaker 2: This is generally an evening situation first, but I really
12:57
Speaker 2: really like to hunt mast in the morning, especially in
13:00
Speaker 2: the first couple weeks of the season. I feel like
13:02
Speaker 2: this is just something that gets ignored over easier to
13:05
Speaker 2: identify food sources, and the reality is that fewer hunters
13:08
Speaker 2: go into the woods for morning sits in the early
13:10
Speaker 2: season than they do in the evenings. Some of my
13:13
Speaker 2: better bucks in the last ten years that I've killed
13:16
Speaker 2: and more that I've just seen, have been really late
13:18
Speaker 2: in the morning on a mass pattern in the woods.
13:21
Speaker 2: So what I like to do is slip in and
13:23
Speaker 2: play it relatively safe. First, I set up maybe fifty
13:27
Speaker 2: percent to kill and fifty percent to watch. A spot
13:31
Speaker 2: really gets my attention if I think I can get
13:33
Speaker 2: back in there for a morning sit the following morning
13:36
Speaker 2: after I do my evening sit. I use the tracker
13:38
Speaker 2: feature on on X a lot for this, and it's
13:40
Speaker 2: kind of been a game changer for me because it
13:42
Speaker 2: allows me to walk right back to whatever tree I
13:45
Speaker 2: picked in the daylight the day before. A lot of
13:48
Speaker 2: hunters won't do that because they think they'll make too
13:50
Speaker 2: much noise or too much disturbance to that. I say,
13:54
Speaker 2: try to find a way to go in slow, make
13:56
Speaker 2: yourself sound like a deer, and give yourself a lot
13:59
Speaker 2: of time to get the way early. Then pay attention.
14:03
Speaker 2: One thing that I've come to realize about watching deer
14:05
Speaker 2: is that if I see some dose or little bucks
14:07
Speaker 2: enter in alfalfa field or some other destination food source,
14:11
Speaker 2: it doesn't really give me much confidence that a much
14:14
Speaker 2: bigger deer will do that the following night or sometime
14:16
Speaker 2: within the week. That's different than observing a mass pattern
14:20
Speaker 2: where there are plenty of options for the deer. Every
14:23
Speaker 2: sighting is important, and I mean that I glass a
14:27
Speaker 2: lot in these situations and try to see exactly what
14:30
Speaker 2: the deer are doing. Are they swinging through quickly and
14:33
Speaker 2: moving off? Do they circle the tree a few times?
14:37
Speaker 2: Do they bounce around the ridge multiple times? Or just
14:39
Speaker 2: hone in on one spot below one tree and sit there.
14:43
Speaker 2: Is there maybe a gully or something below the ridge
14:46
Speaker 2: that might funnel tons of dropped acorns to the same spot.
14:50
Speaker 2: It's not enough to just see deer visit a tree,
14:53
Speaker 2: watch them, even the spikes you don't care to shoot,
14:57
Speaker 2: because they'll tell you how other deer will use that
14:59
Speaker 2: exactly situation. My general rule, if I think I have
15:03
Speaker 2: enough info from an evening and morning sit is to
15:06
Speaker 2: move in and go for broke. I don't know why
15:08
Speaker 2: this is, but I just often enough will observe some
15:12
Speaker 2: deer feeding on a mass pattern, and when I hunt it,
15:15
Speaker 2: I'll encounter a variety of deer feeding the same way,
15:18
Speaker 2: and sometimes they are just good bucks. The inclination here
15:22
Speaker 2: for a lot of hunters might be to drop a
15:24
Speaker 2: camera to find the big ones and pattern them, but
15:26
Speaker 2: you really don't have that much time. In at least
15:30
Speaker 2: many of these situations. You also might be off by
15:33
Speaker 2: a single tree, and that might change the entire direction
15:36
Speaker 2: of your recon and usually not for the better. Now,
15:39
Speaker 2: I'm not saying a camera or three can't help you
15:41
Speaker 2: get dialed in here, especially if you're a weekend hunter
15:44
Speaker 2: who has to leave the woods for five days to
15:45
Speaker 2: do stupid work stuff. That's better than not using a
15:49
Speaker 2: camera by far. But don't not hunt because of what
15:52
Speaker 2: your camera shows. If that makes sense. If it shows
15:55
Speaker 2: good movement, you're onto them. If it doesn't, assume they
15:58
Speaker 2: are close and you just aren't getting the full picture
16:00
Speaker 2: of what's going on there. Scout and hunt and observe.
16:05
Speaker 2: If you have no faith this will produce a big buck.
16:07
Speaker 2: Because you're not confident of this style, go try to
16:09
Speaker 2: kill a dough. While you're doing it. You'll learn a
16:12
Speaker 2: lot and might put some meat in the freezer, or
16:14
Speaker 2: you might just see a good one on the move
16:16
Speaker 2: well into daylight when he's supposed to be tucked deep
16:18
Speaker 2: in a swamp, betting away the hours when the sun
16:20
Speaker 2: is shining. The key is just to be cautious, but
16:23
Speaker 2: get on it now and actively try to figure out
16:26
Speaker 2: how to make masts work for you within the next
16:28
Speaker 2: week or two or three, because if you miss the window,
16:31
Speaker 2: it'll close for good and it'll be time to start over.
16:35
Speaker 2: Think about that as we get into the season here,
16:37
Speaker 2: and think about coming back next week because I'm going
16:39
Speaker 2: to talk about the shots we should take and the
16:42
Speaker 2: ones we probably shouldn't. That's it for this episode. I'm
16:48
Speaker 2: Tony Peterson. This has been the Wirre to Hunt Foundations podcast,
16:51
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