Latest / Wired To Hunt Podcast / Ep. 949: Foundations - How to Avoid Common Early Season Mistakes

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Ep. 949: Foundations - How to Avoid Common Early Season Mistakes · Wired To Hunt Podcast

0:01
Speaker 1: Welcome to the Wired to Hunt Foundations podcast, your guide
0:05
Speaker 1: to the fundamentals of better deer hunting, presented by first Light,
0:09
Speaker 1: creating proven versatile hunting apparel for the stand, saddle or blind.
0:14
Speaker 1: First Light, Go Farther, Stay Longer, and now your host
0:19
Speaker 1: Tony Peterson.
0:20
Speaker 2: Hey, everyone, welcome to the Wired to Hunt Foundations podcast,
0:23
Speaker 2: which is brought to you by first Sight. I'm your host,
0:25
Speaker 2: Tony Peterson, and today's episode is all about the early
0:28
Speaker 2: season and the mistakes that a lot of us are
0:31
Speaker 2: going to make and we don't have to, and how
0:33
Speaker 2: those are going to cost us deer and how we
0:35
Speaker 2: can avoid them. It's on, and if it's not, it's
0:43
Speaker 2: staying close. Some lucky folks have already hunted, or if
0:46
Speaker 2: you're a diehard like Mark, have you know fly fished
0:49
Speaker 2: for five days while pretending you were hunting. The early
0:51
Speaker 2: season is on. It's fun, and it's a time that
0:55
Speaker 2: is often full of mistakes, and it's one hell of
0:58
Speaker 2: a good opportunity for a lot of to slide right
1:00
Speaker 2: back into our old habits that will stick with us
1:03
Speaker 2: all dear season. So let's make a pack not to
1:05
Speaker 2: do that and to help us get that right. I'm
1:07
Speaker 2: going to explain some of these big mistakes, how we
1:10
Speaker 2: make them, and how we can avoid them. The other night,
1:16
Speaker 2: I took one of my daughters to the high school
1:18
Speaker 2: to play in a three on three basketball league. It's
1:21
Speaker 2: basically like a throwaway Sunday night league that is mostly
1:24
Speaker 2: a way for the girls to get ready for their
1:25
Speaker 2: actual traveling leagues and their school teams. For my fellow
1:29
Speaker 2: math challenge people, that's three basketball teams that will be
1:32
Speaker 2: running concurrently at different points for one eighth grader who
1:36
Speaker 2: has a very very low chance of making it into
1:39
Speaker 2: the WNBA. Any honkers, all stupid suburb life stuff aside.
1:45
Speaker 2: She's pretty good down low, but she lacks confidence, and
1:48
Speaker 2: the minute she does something wrong, like missing an easy layup,
1:51
Speaker 2: is the minute she suddenly retreats and will try to
1:53
Speaker 2: hide from the ball. It's maddening as a parent because
1:56
Speaker 2: I know, after years of making giant mistakes in my life,
2:00
Speaker 2: that everyone is basically a walk in and talking screw
2:02
Speaker 2: up machine. We all are, And I know that missing
2:05
Speaker 2: one layup in a three on three league with other
2:07
Speaker 2: eighth grade girls who also miss a lot of shots
2:10
Speaker 2: isn't going to be all that important. Overall, So on
2:13
Speaker 2: the drive home, I told her that she can't play
2:15
Speaker 2: in fear of making mistakes, and I punctuated my point
2:18
Speaker 2: by saying that Michael Jordan missed something like nine thousand
2:21
Speaker 2: shots in his career, to which she responded, I don't
2:24
Speaker 2: really know who that is, So anyway, I guess I
2:27
Speaker 2: might want to look into nursing homes, because I'm probably
2:30
Speaker 2: headed there any day now because I'm getting so old. Anyway,
2:33
Speaker 2: I switched gears and I said, do you know how
2:36
Speaker 2: many deer I've missed in my life, to which she
2:38
Speaker 2: answered without hesitation, a lot, which stung a little but
2:43
Speaker 2: also wasn't really wrong. I said yes, And I said
2:46
Speaker 2: that we don't stop shooting at them just because we
2:48
Speaker 2: whif once in a while you just knock another arrow
2:51
Speaker 2: and wait for another opportunity, even if you do it
2:54
Speaker 2: on film, and a whole bunch of super excellent hunters
2:56
Speaker 2: who clearly never miss reach out to tell you how
2:58
Speaker 2: you don't belong in the same woods with them because
3:00
Speaker 2: of how skilled they are and how unskilled you are. Now,
3:03
Speaker 2: by the end of our conversation, I felt like I
3:06
Speaker 2: might have had a better chance getting my lab pop
3:08
Speaker 2: to understand quantum physics, but at least I tried, and
3:12
Speaker 2: I'm going to try to shoot some deer this week,
3:14
Speaker 2: and mostly I'm going to fail. Hunting white tails, at
3:18
Speaker 2: least for most of us, on a daily basis, is
3:21
Speaker 2: a sure way to make mistakes and not get everything right.
3:24
Speaker 2: The complexity of what we do and the variables that
3:27
Speaker 2: conspire against us just make it so. But then there
3:31
Speaker 2: is the US specter, where we do things that definitely
3:34
Speaker 2: hurt our cause these mistakes are often disguised as good
3:38
Speaker 2: hunting decisions, but they aren't. Now, I'm not going to
3:41
Speaker 2: dive into this because I've covered it a whole bunch,
3:44
Speaker 2: but the idea, the general idea of not ever hunting
3:48
Speaker 2: mornings in the early season is just a prime example
3:51
Speaker 2: of one of them. Just think about the idea that
3:54
Speaker 2: someone from Iowa who has four thousand acres of least
3:58
Speaker 2: ground telling some hunter from Georgia who hunts public land
4:03
Speaker 2: that it's never a good idea to hunt mornings until
4:05
Speaker 2: the preret kicks in. Now, if you think you're making
4:07
Speaker 2: a good decision by not hunting a whole bunch when
4:10
Speaker 2: you could be, I'd say right away that not hunting
4:12
Speaker 2: when you could be is probably not a good decision.
4:15
Speaker 2: Learn to solve the problems like how to find a
4:18
Speaker 2: good early season morning set up, instead of making the
4:21
Speaker 2: mistake of just deciding that it can't be done so
4:23
Speaker 2: it won't be worth it. Now, another big mistake that
4:25
Speaker 2: a lot of hunters make is not appreciating the blank
4:28
Speaker 2: slate reality of a new season. The cumulative effects of
4:32
Speaker 2: hunters entering the woods now does a generally good job
4:35
Speaker 2: of letting the deer know that another season is on
4:38
Speaker 2: and that they had better be careful. Even if you're
4:41
Speaker 2: on public land and know a lot of other hunters
4:43
Speaker 2: are out there, you still can control your impact on
4:47
Speaker 2: the woods to some extent. Sometimes I go down weird
4:51
Speaker 2: rabbit holes on different topics, and I recently went pretty
4:54
Speaker 2: deep on reading about fighter jets. I honestly don't remember
4:58
Speaker 2: what even spurred it, but I guess that doesn't matter
5:01
Speaker 2: what I found. What was pretty interesting in reading about
5:04
Speaker 2: the aircraft that the US has that might take to
5:06
Speaker 2: the skies if some country or terrorist group kicks the
5:09
Speaker 2: old hornet nest of freedom a little too hard was
5:13
Speaker 2: the radar signatures of certain fighter jets. So imagine standing
5:17
Speaker 2: on a runway. Looking at a parked F twenty two,
5:20
Speaker 2: for example, it definitely would look small, and it definitely
5:24
Speaker 2: would look badass. You wouldn't think that it would be
5:27
Speaker 2: all that hard to see, because well, you're literally looking
5:30
Speaker 2: at it right now. Now, you got to remember it's
5:34
Speaker 2: not flying at MOK two, which is about fifteen hundred
5:37
Speaker 2: miles per hour, a speed that an F twenty two
5:39
Speaker 2: can reach. The crazy part is that the actual design
5:42
Speaker 2: of the jet is meant to fool radar, which means
5:46
Speaker 2: that the actual radar signature of them is like point
5:49
Speaker 2: zero zero zero one square meters, or to put it in
5:53
Speaker 2: another way, about the size of a single marble. Why
5:57
Speaker 2: am I telling you this is I always think about
5:59
Speaker 2: what a white tail can detect and how they do it.
6:03
Speaker 2: The easy way for them to detect us is to
6:05
Speaker 2: bed just inside the wood edge and watch us drive
6:08
Speaker 2: down the field road, get out of our trucks, sued up,
6:11
Speaker 2: spray down like good little hunters, and then walk past
6:14
Speaker 2: them to get to our field edge stands. The easiest
6:17
Speaker 2: way for us to avoid getting detected that way is
6:20
Speaker 2: to plan entrance and exit routes that keep us generally
6:23
Speaker 2: hidden in a visual sense. A lot of hunters don't
6:26
Speaker 2: really think about this, and it costs them. If you
6:29
Speaker 2: can walk through a standing cornfield or walk along an
6:33
Speaker 2: open two track, think long and hard about why you
6:35
Speaker 2: would choose one over the other. Just like if you
6:39
Speaker 2: can walk in through a dry creek bed that's six
6:42
Speaker 2: feet below the surrounding ground, or walk on that higher ground,
6:46
Speaker 2: think about it. Your radar signature there is big, and
6:50
Speaker 2: it's going to get you caught. Little things make a
6:53
Speaker 2: big difference there in getting sighted when you're going in.
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Speaker 1: Now.
6:56
Speaker 2: One final note on this is that while we tend
6:58
Speaker 2: to think about our entrance as high priority stealth missions,
7:02
Speaker 2: we might not value our exits the same way. Sneaking
7:05
Speaker 2: into a beanfield edge staying to sit opening night is
7:08
Speaker 2: going to give you an advantage that night, But if
7:11
Speaker 2: when you leave you walk right through the field, then
7:14
Speaker 2: you're going to hurt every chance you have at that
7:16
Speaker 2: stand for at least a couple of weeks. The way
7:19
Speaker 2: out matters, my friends, so be careful with that too.
7:23
Speaker 1: Now.
7:24
Speaker 2: While conditions vary a lot on this front, another way
7:26
Speaker 2: to think about detection is how noisy you might be.
7:30
Speaker 2: The early season has a lot of vegetation to soak
7:33
Speaker 2: up sound. It isn't full of dry leaves and sticks
7:36
Speaker 2: usually on the ground, and can be one of the
7:38
Speaker 2: easiest times of the year to be quiet on your
7:40
Speaker 2: way in and your way out. The easiest way to
7:43
Speaker 2: generally be quiet in the woods is to go slow,
7:45
Speaker 2: and that means you have to give yourself time. A
7:48
Speaker 2: huge mistake a lot of hunters make is not building
7:50
Speaker 2: in a decent cushion of time to go low and
7:52
Speaker 2: slow into an out of their setups. Then you have
8:06
Speaker 2: the scent aspect, which is where I think we do
8:09
Speaker 2: ourselves the most harm. I like to think about it
8:12
Speaker 2: this way. While I definitely don't want to get winded
8:15
Speaker 2: while sitting on stand or in a blind, that's only
8:18
Speaker 2: part of keeping your scent signature down. What we touch
8:22
Speaker 2: on the way in, while we are there and when
8:25
Speaker 2: we walk out all exists to tattle on us after
8:28
Speaker 2: we get back to the truck. Deer are curious, and
8:32
Speaker 2: you don't have to run trail cameras very long before
8:34
Speaker 2: you'll see them come up to your cams and give
8:36
Speaker 2: them a good sniff. They are interested in out of
8:39
Speaker 2: place items that smell like deadly predators. They are also
8:43
Speaker 2: just very interested in the comings and goings of those
8:46
Speaker 2: same predators. This is a tough one, but it's also
8:50
Speaker 2: just reality that the more that you try to reduce
8:52
Speaker 2: your scent any way possible in the woods, the longer
8:56
Speaker 2: you'll preserve that early season relaxed nature of deer. Just
9:00
Speaker 2: the difference between wearing leather boots and knee high rubber
9:03
Speaker 2: boots during your early season hunts can buy you a
9:05
Speaker 2: little leeway on this front, especially if you spray down
9:08
Speaker 2: your knee highs. Think about your overall radar signature, if
9:13
Speaker 2: you will, and try to consciously keep it down. I
9:16
Speaker 2: don't know if it's possible to keep the deer totally
9:19
Speaker 2: unaware of your presence, but you can reduce how much
9:21
Speaker 2: of an impact you have on any excursion into the woods,
9:24
Speaker 2: and that always helps. Another early season mistake that is
9:28
Speaker 2: really easy to make is the not paying attention thing.
9:33
Speaker 2: It's actually pretty scary how widespread our phone addictions are,
9:36
Speaker 2: and it certainly feels like things are only going to
9:38
Speaker 2: get worse. I also know that early season sits are
9:41
Speaker 2: often pretty boring until right before dark, and I'm definitely
9:45
Speaker 2: not immune to doom scrolling to kill time. But one
9:49
Speaker 2: thing I learn every single year during the early season
9:51
Speaker 2: is that my hunting senses just aren't as sharp. When
9:55
Speaker 2: I go out and I hear something three hours before
9:57
Speaker 2: I expect the deer to show up, I often miss
10:00
Speaker 2: it pretty quickly as a squirrel or something else. Sometimes
10:04
Speaker 2: I'm right and sometimes I'm wrong. And when I am wrong,
10:07
Speaker 2: it's usually not super fun to try to have to
10:09
Speaker 2: grab my bow when there's a deer right by me,
10:12
Speaker 2: or get caught facing the wrong way and I can't move.
10:16
Speaker 2: Try to remember that you might be a little dull
10:18
Speaker 2: from like nine months of off season, and that stick
10:21
Speaker 2: that snaps when it's three pm and not a half
10:23
Speaker 2: hour before dark could be a thirsty buck headed to
10:26
Speaker 2: the water, or an old dough making her way to
10:29
Speaker 2: the alfalf a nice and early to munch on some greenery.
10:33
Speaker 2: When you don't have the luxury of open woods in
10:35
Speaker 2: the ground covered with dry dead leaves, you have a
10:39
Speaker 2: situation in which they can move pretty quietly and get
10:42
Speaker 2: up on you in a surprising way. Pay attention to
10:45
Speaker 2: the sounds of the woods, Try to be diligent on
10:48
Speaker 2: taking a look around more often, you know, and maybe
10:51
Speaker 2: glassing when you can to pick up some movement before
10:53
Speaker 2: that movement is right beneath your stand. Now, another big
10:57
Speaker 2: mistake that is really really easy to make in the
10:59
Speaker 2: early season is trusting your trail cameras too much. This morning,
11:03
Speaker 2: before I dropped the girls off at school, I checked
11:05
Speaker 2: my Moultrie app to see who showed up last night.
11:08
Speaker 2: The answer was almost no one, which is always a
11:11
Speaker 2: little disappointing. But then when we got into my truck
11:14
Speaker 2: and we started driving to school, I realized how foggy
11:17
Speaker 2: it was out, which is a condition we get a
11:19
Speaker 2: lot up here in September. Now. Two things happen when
11:23
Speaker 2: it's foggy out. The first is that cameras don't seem
11:26
Speaker 2: to function very well. Neither do rangehinders, by the way,
11:29
Speaker 2: And the second is that the deer don't seem overly
11:32
Speaker 2: inspired to cover tons of ground, which only makes sense.
11:36
Speaker 2: Last night didn't tell me anything about deer other than
11:39
Speaker 2: if it's foggy when I go hunting, I might not
11:41
Speaker 2: be overrun with action. But it's also almost a guarantee
11:45
Speaker 2: that more deer walked by my cameras than the pictures
11:47
Speaker 2: would suggest. This isn't just a foggy condition thing either.
11:52
Speaker 2: With the abundance of soft and hard mass out there,
11:54
Speaker 2: and the fact that this is the high water mark
11:56
Speaker 2: for foliage in the woods, which means they have a
11:59
Speaker 2: lot of easy places to hide and lots of security
12:01
Speaker 2: cover to work with. They aren't necessarily going to follow
12:05
Speaker 2: the best trails all the time. A few years ago
12:08
Speaker 2: I filmed a show in northern Wisconsin with one of
12:10
Speaker 2: my daughters, and since I knew we wouldn't see tons
12:12
Speaker 2: of deer or bears while we were actually hunting, I
12:14
Speaker 2: set up several cameras on my property to capture video footage.
12:19
Speaker 2: What blew my mind was how often one of my cameras,
12:21
Speaker 2: which was set up on a trail I cut that
12:23
Speaker 2: leads into a little kill plot of mine, showed deer
12:26
Speaker 2: not going down the trail, but cutting it crosswise where
12:29
Speaker 2: there's just no defined trail. Trust me on that, because
12:33
Speaker 2: I checked about six times. They were just browsing and
12:36
Speaker 2: feeding their way through in a way that didn't create
12:39
Speaker 2: a concentration of sign but they were pretty consistent, and
12:42
Speaker 2: that lesson has stuck with me now. While cameras in
12:45
Speaker 2: certain spots, like really good train traps will tell you
12:48
Speaker 2: a lot about who passes through on a daily basis,
12:51
Speaker 2: they're not going to show you everything. Again, just like
12:54
Speaker 2: the advice to not hunt mornings, if you aren't going
12:57
Speaker 2: out to sit right now because your cameras are slow,
13:00
Speaker 2: could be making a big mistake. The deer aren't all
13:04
Speaker 2: that likely to be nocturnal right now, but they do
13:07
Speaker 2: have a lot of food options, and in some places,
13:09
Speaker 2: a lot of water options, and in almost all places,
13:13
Speaker 2: the most betting options they'll have for the entire season.
13:16
Speaker 2: You might not have the camera intel that gets you
13:19
Speaker 2: stoked to go out, but sitting in spots where the
13:22
Speaker 2: food is good enough, or the water is good enough,
13:24
Speaker 2: or they might sneak back through to bed in the
13:26
Speaker 2: morning can be a hell of a lot better than
13:28
Speaker 2: staying out of the woods because your hit lister hasn't
13:30
Speaker 2: walked by one of your three cameras in the last
13:32
Speaker 2: two weeks. I think on that last point, which was
13:35
Speaker 2: also kind of my first point in this, I want
13:38
Speaker 2: to say something else to try to drive this home.
13:41
Speaker 2: It's easy to be hyped up and feel like you're
13:43
Speaker 2: on the verge of shooting a giant this season and
13:46
Speaker 2: you have your mission set and all of that, but
13:49
Speaker 2: be careful about going into the season that way. This
13:52
Speaker 2: stuff is supposed to be fun and a nice escape
13:55
Speaker 2: from the bullshit that has infested our lives and made
13:57
Speaker 2: our lives a lot less enjoyable by the day. This
14:00
Speaker 2: idea kind of walks hand in hand with the false
14:04
Speaker 2: reed we often give ourselves in the early season that
14:06
Speaker 2: we can play it safe because we have tons of time.
14:09
Speaker 2: Most of us actually don't, and if you factor in
14:12
Speaker 2: how many sits you actually get in a season, you
14:14
Speaker 2: might realize that skipping a day in September when you
14:17
Speaker 2: could hunt might be the equivalent of giving up three
14:20
Speaker 2: or five or even ten percent of your actual hunting
14:22
Speaker 2: time for the rut. That's a big gamble, and it's
14:25
Speaker 2: one of the reasons I preached the message of trying
14:27
Speaker 2: to find a reason to hunt. One of the things
14:30
Speaker 2: that really helped me on this front a long time
14:31
Speaker 2: ago was when I bought into the lull idea. I
14:34
Speaker 2: thought you wouldn't shoot a big buck in earlier mid October,
14:37
Speaker 2: But I really wanted to hunt, because being in the
14:39
Speaker 2: woods in October is better than being literally anywhere else.
14:42
Speaker 2: So I went out and hunted, mostly for doz. I
14:45
Speaker 2: like to shoot deer, I like to eat deer, and
14:47
Speaker 2: I don't like not hunting deer when I can, so
14:50
Speaker 2: it just made sense. I'm sure you know where this
14:53
Speaker 2: is going. But it wasn't just the dose that showed
14:55
Speaker 2: up to eat acorns. When I started doing that, I
14:58
Speaker 2: had inadvertently taken most to the pressure off of myself
15:01
Speaker 2: to kill a buck, and it just gone out more
15:03
Speaker 2: relaxed to hang and hunt on fresh sign, which was
15:06
Speaker 2: often tied to mast or some other mid season food source,
15:10
Speaker 2: and I ended up finding a hell of a lot
15:12
Speaker 2: of bucks that way. In fact, it was one of
15:14
Speaker 2: the biggest revelations I had as a public land bow hunter,
15:18
Speaker 2: because it not only gave me a reason to go,
15:20
Speaker 2: I figured out that most other hunters weren't going, and
15:22
Speaker 2: because of that, the bucks seemed far more likely to move.
15:26
Speaker 2: So that was two times or two conditions where they
15:28
Speaker 2: shouldn't move, and they were moving more. In so many
15:31
Speaker 2: cases to this day, I'd rather hunt public on October
15:34
Speaker 2: tenth than on November seventh, which probably sounds nuts, but
15:37
Speaker 2: it really isn't a joke. So let's tie a bow
15:40
Speaker 2: on this thing. It's Christmas morning for us whitetail junkies,
15:43
Speaker 2: and it's time to finally hunt again. The thing we've
15:46
Speaker 2: waited for for about nine months is here, and the
15:48
Speaker 2: deer as dumb as they are going to be all season.
15:51
Speaker 2: Try your best to keep them that way, and try
15:53
Speaker 2: your best to find a good reason to go as
15:55
Speaker 2: much as you can, because it won't be that long,
15:57
Speaker 2: and the rut will come and go, and the late
15:59
Speaker 2: season will show up with all of its challenges, and
16:01
Speaker 2: then suddenly we will all be sadly mourning the loss
16:04
Speaker 2: of another deer season. Don't let this get away from you,
16:08
Speaker 2: at least without a fight, which starts right now. So
16:10
Speaker 2: good luck, and don't forget to come back next week
16:13
Speaker 2: because I'm going to talk about Judgment Light and how
16:15
Speaker 2: we should just watch our own bobbers this dear season
16:18
Speaker 2: and we will all be much happier. That's it for
16:21
Speaker 2: this week. I'm Tony Peterson. This has been the Wired
16:23
Speaker 2: to Hunt Foundation's podcast, which is brought to you by
16:25
Speaker 2: First Light. I just want to say thank you so
16:28
Speaker 2: much for your support. You guys show up for us
16:30
Speaker 2: in a major way. We really really appreciate it, all
16:33
Speaker 2: of us on the med Eater crew, everybody here at
16:35
Speaker 2: Meat Eater. We'd be nothing without the audience. That's you. Guys,
16:38
Speaker 2: so thank you so much for that. I know you're
16:41
Speaker 2: consuming podcasts because you're listening to this. You know where
16:43
Speaker 2: to find our podcast We have a whole bunch of
16:46
Speaker 2: them at the medeater dot com. But when you're there,
16:48
Speaker 2: you might also see that there's a bunch of articles
16:51
Speaker 2: by a whole bunch of really good hunters and a
16:54
Speaker 2: whole bunch of really good outdoor journalists, a lot of
16:57
Speaker 2: really good news stories going up on the site right now,
17:00
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