Latest / Wired To Hunt Podcast / Ep. 859: Foundations - How to Trick Yourself Into Being a Better Deer Hunter
Transcript
- 0:01Speaker 1: Welcome to the Wired to Hunt Foundations podcast, your guide
- 0:05Speaker 1: to the fundamentals of better deer hunting, presented by first Light,
- 0:09Speaker 1: creating proven versatile hunting apparel for the stand, saddle or blind.
- 0:14Speaker 1: First Light, Go Farther, Stay Longer, and now your host
- 0:19Speaker 1: Tony Peterson.
- 0:20Speaker 2: Hey, everyone, welcome to the Wired un Foundation's podcast, which
- 0:23Speaker 2: is brought to you by first Light. I'm her host,
- 0:25Speaker 2: Tony Peterson, and this episode is all about going where
- 0:28Speaker 2: you really don't care about deer so that you can
- 0:31Speaker 2: learn all about deer. This is a weird one and
- 0:41Speaker 2: you might think it's I don't know, maybe not the
- 0:43Speaker 2: best advice for how to learn deer, but I think
- 0:45Speaker 2: it's pretty good. So what am I going to talk about, Well,
- 0:49Speaker 2: going into the woods and not looking for deer specifically.
- 0:52Speaker 2: The more I go look for other things and other
- 0:54Speaker 2: critters and find other reasons to be out there, the
- 0:57Speaker 2: more I pick up on deer hunting movements and how
- 0:59Speaker 2: they use the lance gape. That's the basis for this
- 1:01Speaker 2: whole show, so buckle up. There are a lot of
- 1:09Speaker 2: sayings about being books smart versus being street smart, and
- 1:12Speaker 2: I love all of them mostly, and I'm not proud
- 1:16Speaker 2: of this, but I'm gonna say it anyway, because my
- 1:18Speaker 2: wife is very BookSmart. I, on the other hand, am not.
- 1:23Speaker 2: I doubt you'd say I'm very street smart either, But
- 1:25Speaker 2: that's beside the point. The truth is there is a
- 1:29Speaker 2: lot you can learn from books and from consuming content.
- 1:32Speaker 2: I hope that's true anyway, because otherwise my professional career
- 1:35Speaker 2: has mostly been a sham, which, come to think of it,
- 1:38Speaker 2: might be true. The reality, though, is that there are
- 1:43Speaker 2: academic pursuits and then there's experience. Academics are great for
- 1:48Speaker 2: giving you facts and the processes upon which you might
- 1:52Speaker 2: learn some facts. It teaches your mind to work out problems,
- 1:56Speaker 2: or at least parts of problems, and that's important. Still
- 2:00Speaker 2: largely be about this, Maybe it still is. I don't know.
- 2:02Speaker 2: I haven't been there in a while. It wasn't necessarily
- 2:05Speaker 2: to directly prepare you for a career in a certain field,
- 2:09Speaker 2: although that was and is a component of higher education.
- 2:12Speaker 2: But the heart of it was to teach us, like
- 2:14Speaker 2: how to think, how to think better. Maybe, and it
- 2:17Speaker 2: works too, but using your brain can only take you
- 2:20Speaker 2: so far. You also have to engage with tasks and
- 2:24Speaker 2: problems and sort them out in real time. And in person.
- 2:27Speaker 2: Let me give you an example from a recent conversation
- 2:30Speaker 2: I had with a woman who was trying real hard
- 2:32Speaker 2: to kill a buck on public land. Her dilemma is this,
- 2:36Speaker 2: she found a concentration of sign on a chunk of
- 2:39Speaker 2: ground in Kansas, where she lives. The concentration is accessible
- 2:43Speaker 2: from two different parking areas. Both require a walk of
- 2:47Speaker 2: about a mile, and one takes her low through a
- 2:49Speaker 2: thick river bottom and the other takes her high up
- 2:52Speaker 2: on a ridgetop. She maintains that both the ridgetop and
- 2:56Speaker 2: the creek bottom have deer in them, so getting in
- 2:59Speaker 2: is almost impossible without spooking deer. That to her is
- 3:03Speaker 2: a major problem, a problem she was looking for an
- 3:06Speaker 2: academic solution to which doesn't exist. You can't really outthink
- 3:12Speaker 2: a problem like that, You just can't. You kind of
- 3:15Speaker 2: just got to go into the creek bottom hunt see
- 3:19Speaker 2: what happens. Or you have to go on the ridgetop hunt,
- 3:23Speaker 2: see what happens. Then you have to figure out what
- 3:25Speaker 2: went wrong and experiment to see if you can solve
- 3:28Speaker 2: for the problems or not. Does that sound a little
- 3:31Speaker 2: too simple, Because hunting is simple, my friends, But simple
- 3:35Speaker 2: doesn't always mean easy. In fact, it often doesn't, and
- 3:40Speaker 2: that kind of sucks. Look at this another way. Do
- 3:43Speaker 2: you want to look better naked? Of course you do.
- 3:47Speaker 2: And while I understand that was an extremely creepy way
- 3:49Speaker 2: to frame this point up, I used it. And that's
- 3:52Speaker 2: that if you want to look better naked, you need
- 3:55Speaker 2: to exercise more and eat fewer bowls of ice cream,
- 4:00Speaker 2: size a lot and eat kind of shitty, or you
- 4:02Speaker 2: can exercise a little and eat really clean, or some
- 4:05Speaker 2: version of both. But the truth is that putting on
- 4:07Speaker 2: muscle and losing weight tends to solve the problem of
- 4:10Speaker 2: looking good in your birthday suit. But that's not easy.
- 4:13Speaker 2: In fact, it's real hard. You won't suddenly find yourself
- 4:17Speaker 2: looking fine by reading a book. You'll get there by
- 4:21Speaker 2: exercising and eating a certain way and figuring out how
- 4:24Speaker 2: to keep yourself moving in the right direction even when
- 4:26Speaker 2: you don't want to. You want to kill a Kansas
- 4:30Speaker 2: book on public land, it's simple, go find some sign
- 4:33Speaker 2: and hunt it. But of course you have the question
- 4:36Speaker 2: of access, and the question of hunting pressure, and the
- 4:38Speaker 2: question of your own time and how much of it
- 4:41Speaker 2: you have, and the question of what direction the wind's
- 4:44Speaker 2: going to be blowing on the morning you can hunt,
- 4:45Speaker 2: and the temperature, and on and on and on and on. Academically,
- 4:49Speaker 2: this stuff's pretty easy. But you won't know what those
- 4:52Speaker 2: ridgetop deer are really going to do until you hunt
- 4:56Speaker 2: it and figure it out in person. Do you know
- 4:59Speaker 2: where the real problem in all this lies? We love
- 5:03Speaker 2: leaning towards the academic side of things. It's easier to
- 5:06Speaker 2: watch a YouTube video on scouting than it is to
- 5:08Speaker 2: go scout. It's easier to read an article on how
- 5:12Speaker 2: to kill a mature buck in the cattails than it
- 5:14Speaker 2: is to go find one living in the cattails and
- 5:17Speaker 2: then hunt him until you kill him. It's easier to
- 5:20Speaker 2: write off a concentration of deer on a chunk of
- 5:23Speaker 2: public land in Kansas because you just know you'll bust
- 5:27Speaker 2: them going in than it is to go in on
- 5:30Speaker 2: one of your precious hunting days for a trial and
- 5:33Speaker 2: error morning or evening sit. But what's better for you
- 5:37Speaker 2: as a hunter? We all know the answer, just like
- 5:41Speaker 2: we know what too much ice cream and couch time
- 5:43Speaker 2: does to us physically. Look, it sucks, but it's true.
- 5:47Speaker 2: So how do you engage in this simple concept that
- 5:50Speaker 2: it's hard? To implement so that you can be a
- 5:52Speaker 2: stone cold deer killer, whether you're trying to figure things
- 5:55Speaker 2: out in Kansas or South Carolina or Pennsylvania or wherever
- 5:59Speaker 2: we find the discipline to do it. Or you trick yourself.
- 6:03Speaker 2: I mean that I trick myself all the time. I
- 6:07Speaker 2: don't want to go too deep into this because I'm
- 6:09Speaker 2: a squirrel writer and not a psychologist. But one of
- 6:12Speaker 2: the things people ask me fairly often is how I
- 6:15Speaker 2: run so much without wanting to kill myself. The jokes
- 6:18Speaker 2: on them, though, because running is actually what keeps the
- 6:21Speaker 2: bad thoughts at bay, and it's amazing for that task.
- 6:25Speaker 2: But it's also not about wanting to run. I don't
- 6:29Speaker 2: want to do that. I dread it every time, just
- 6:32Speaker 2: as I like it when I'm done every time. But
- 6:35Speaker 2: I have to get myself to do it. So I
- 6:38Speaker 2: set a goal and I tell anyone and everyone I
- 6:40Speaker 2: can about that goal. That holds me a little accountable
- 6:45Speaker 2: with my circle of friends and family who really don't
- 6:47Speaker 2: want to hear about my running, just like my podcast audience.
- 6:50Speaker 2: But the main reason is that a yearly mile goal
- 6:54Speaker 2: is weirdly important to me. I hate not hitting it,
- 6:59Speaker 2: so it keeps me honest with myself, even though I'm
- 7:02Speaker 2: just playing a trick on myself. The minute that one
- 7:05Speaker 2: goal ends for the year, which this year is running
- 7:08Speaker 2: eight hundred miles, I'll set a new goal for the
- 7:12Speaker 2: new year. It gives me great pleasure to meet that goal,
- 7:16Speaker 2: even though I know the task of running isn't going
- 7:18Speaker 2: to end for me. It's not even really going to
- 7:20Speaker 2: change when I meet it. I just have to have
- 7:23Speaker 2: it otherwise I won't run as much as I should.
- 7:26Speaker 2: When it comes to deer hunting, we all know we
- 7:29Speaker 2: should scout more. We really should, but it's also very
- 7:32Speaker 2: easy to not scout as much as we should because
- 7:35Speaker 2: to most of us, scouting isn't as fun as hunting
- 7:38Speaker 2: or about ten thousand other things we could do. So
- 7:41Speaker 2: we fill in the blanks with trail cameras and we
- 7:44Speaker 2: consume content, or we hang out with our hunting buddies
- 7:47Speaker 2: just to talk about deer hunting whatever. But we need
- 7:50Speaker 2: experience out there, and that is a never ending journey.
- 7:54Speaker 2: Just like getting in shape. You can have the goal
- 7:56Speaker 2: of getting to your high school weight or benching two
- 7:58Speaker 2: hundred and fifty pounds or running a half marathon. That's
- 8:01Speaker 2: all great, but the minute you hit your goal, you
- 8:05Speaker 2: better figure out another one, or it's more likely that
- 8:08Speaker 2: you're just borrowing that accomplishment. Yeah you did it, that's great,
- 8:12Speaker 2: but if you go back to not doing anything, it's
- 8:14Speaker 2: kind of a hollow victory. With hunting, the way that
- 8:28Speaker 2: I trick myself into learning about deer is to find
- 8:31Speaker 2: as many reasons as possible to be out there. Some
- 8:34Speaker 2: of them are easy. You all know that I absolutely
- 8:37Speaker 2: love pheasant hunting, and as I record this podcast, I
- 8:40Speaker 2: have a young lab sleeping next to me who has
- 8:42Speaker 2: no skin left on her lips, or most of her nose,
- 8:46Speaker 2: or parts of her cheeks and around her eyes. The
- 8:49Speaker 2: cattails have literally worn her face off and she loves it,
- 8:52Speaker 2: and so do I. I don't need an excuse to pheasant hunt,
- 8:56Speaker 2: and many many times each season I'll drive seven hours
- 9:00Speaker 2: round trip in a single day to hunt for a
- 9:02Speaker 2: couple of roosters. I love it for many reasons, but
- 9:05Speaker 2: one side benefit to it is I learn a ton
- 9:08Speaker 2: about deer when I follow a black lab around where
- 9:11Speaker 2: the roosters like to hang out. Recently, I filmed a
- 9:14Speaker 2: pheasant show on a few different parcels of public land
- 9:17Speaker 2: in western Minnesota, and on one of those days it
- 9:20Speaker 2: was very windy, like twenty to thirty mile per hour
- 9:23Speaker 2: winds all day long. That meant that the roosters were
- 9:27Speaker 2: cagy as hell, and if they got up into that
- 9:30Speaker 2: wind and I wasn't ready, they were also pretty safe
- 9:33Speaker 2: because those are birds I will shoot behind, mostly, particularly
- 9:37Speaker 2: if they make the good decision to swing to my right.
- 9:40Speaker 2: But that wind did something else. When you're filming a
- 9:43Speaker 2: show like that, you're always looking for moments to talk
- 9:45Speaker 2: to the camera, to drop some sweet knowledge or just
- 9:48Speaker 2: explain what's going on. On a day when the wind
- 9:51Speaker 2: is just ripping across the landscape, you don't want to
- 9:54Speaker 2: just stop anywhere to talk because the sound of it
- 9:57Speaker 2: will go right into your microphone and ruin your talking points.
- 10:00Speaker 2: So as we followed Sadie through the cattails, I found
- 10:03Speaker 2: myself naturally stopping when we would hit a spot that
- 10:06Speaker 2: was out of the wind. The thing about this is
- 10:09Speaker 2: in that country, which is super flat and doesn't have
- 10:12Speaker 2: very many trees, there are a lot of spots that
- 10:15Speaker 2: are not out of the wind. It's rare to suddenly
- 10:18Speaker 2: realize you're standing in a little zone that's very calm.
- 10:21Speaker 2: I don't know how many times I stopped in a
- 10:23Speaker 2: spot like that and started to talk to the camera,
- 10:25Speaker 2: only to notice that Sadie was real birdie and that
- 10:28Speaker 2: I better get ready, or that we jump deer bedded
- 10:32Speaker 2: right next to us. It happened multiple times in one day. Now,
- 10:38Speaker 2: of course they want to lay up in a spot
- 10:40Speaker 2: that's calm, but why Well, for starters, it's more comfortable,
- 10:45Speaker 2: it's warmer, that's a no brainer. But what else, Well,
- 10:49Speaker 2: if you betted down just about anywhere in a dry
- 10:51Speaker 2: cattail slew that's getting pounded by the wind, the noise
- 10:55Speaker 2: factor is going to be very high. Sure you have
- 10:58Speaker 2: the wind to use to your advantage, but you lose
- 11:00Speaker 2: the hearing advantage. Now, why would you do that when
- 11:03Speaker 2: you could hole up somewhere that would keep you warm
- 11:06Speaker 2: and you could not only smell approaching danger, but have
- 11:08Speaker 2: a better chance to hear it. If you were a
- 11:10Speaker 2: prey animal like say, I don't know, a deer or
- 11:13Speaker 2: a pheasant, hearing that danger and keeping track of it
- 11:16Speaker 2: and the thick stuff is important, could literally save your life.
- 11:21Speaker 2: With deer, that allows them the chance to know exactly
- 11:24Speaker 2: where the danger is and whether they can sit tight
- 11:27Speaker 2: and let it pass, or they need to get the
- 11:29Speaker 2: hell out of dodge. That is a huge, huge advantage
- 11:32Speaker 2: for them. Now what good does that do anyone as
- 11:35Speaker 2: a hunter? Well, if I lived around those cat tail
- 11:38Speaker 2: sleus and was planning on deer hunting the next day,
- 11:41Speaker 2: but the forecast called for ripping winds, I could do
- 11:44Speaker 2: one of two things. I could not hunt because it's
- 11:47Speaker 2: too windy and I think my chances are low. Or
- 11:49Speaker 2: I could beat them to a spot I know they
- 11:52Speaker 2: should be out of the wind, or at least where
- 11:54Speaker 2: they should be going. Maybe this example is a bridge
- 11:59Speaker 2: too far for your per It's all hunting specifics, that's
- 12:01Speaker 2: fair enough. I've talked about this before, but I think
- 12:04Speaker 2: it's worth mentioning there are other reasons to be out there.
- 12:08Speaker 2: Rabbit hunting puts me on more deer betting and staging
- 12:10Speaker 2: areas than any kind of hunting I do, even sometimes
- 12:13Speaker 2: deer hunting. The good thing about this is that rabbit
- 12:16Speaker 2: hunting is fun to begin with. But where rabbits take
- 12:19Speaker 2: you is to the spots deer like to go when
- 12:21Speaker 2: they don't want to be found. And even more than
- 12:23Speaker 2: that is rabbit hunting takes you to the spots where
- 12:26Speaker 2: bucks tend to go where they don't want to be found.
- 12:29Speaker 2: A day spent pushing fence lines and homesteads and brush
- 12:32Speaker 2: piles and whatever else is a day that is going
- 12:35Speaker 2: to be fun but also teach you a lot about deer.
- 12:39Speaker 2: Squirrel hunting does that too, but it won't take you
- 12:41Speaker 2: to the betting areas and often the staging areas quite
- 12:44Speaker 2: like rabbit hunting will do. But it'll take you to
- 12:47Speaker 2: the ridges where deer feet in october under oak trees.
- 12:50Speaker 2: It'll take you into the valley you think you can't
- 12:52Speaker 2: hunt because the wind will be swirling too much, and
- 12:54Speaker 2: it'll show you all the rubs and deer sign in
- 12:56Speaker 2: that unhuntable spot and maybe chuck. Maybe while you're toting
- 13:01Speaker 2: a seventeen or a twenty two around there, you'll realize
- 13:04Speaker 2: you're standing right in a spot where the wind is
- 13:06Speaker 2: actually predictable and favorable, even in that valley you thought
- 13:10Speaker 2: you couldn't hunt. I know a lot of you are
- 13:13Speaker 2: listening to this and going, yeah, I'm not going to
- 13:15Speaker 2: go brush busting for bunnies on my deer leaves. I'm
- 13:18Speaker 2: not going to push the deer out fair enough, go
- 13:21Speaker 2: bunny hunting somewhere else then, or go in February if
- 13:25Speaker 2: the season's still open. You don't want to shoot some
- 13:27Speaker 2: squirrels for the crockpot right now in the place you
- 13:30Speaker 2: deer hunt, then go somewhere else. Find a spot to
- 13:34Speaker 2: go where you don't care about the deer. You'll see
- 13:36Speaker 2: how they use the landscape there too. If it's public,
- 13:40Speaker 2: you might just find something in a spot you never
- 13:42Speaker 2: intended a deer hunt, because you're out there looking around
- 13:45Speaker 2: for something that is not a deer. People often ask
- 13:49Speaker 2: me how I find so many random public land places
- 13:53Speaker 2: to hunt, and the answer is often that I just
- 13:55Speaker 2: like to do lots of stuff. I like to hunt
- 13:57Speaker 2: a lot of different critters. I also just like to
- 14:00Speaker 2: walk through the woods, and often I like to walk
- 14:03Speaker 2: through the woods and just look for deer. I grew
- 14:05Speaker 2: up doing this, and I had a conversation with Zach
- 14:07Speaker 2: Ferrenbau the hunting public about it not too long ago.
- 14:10Speaker 2: I honestly don't remember if we had this conversation on
- 14:13Speaker 2: a podcast or if it was just a personal phone call,
- 14:15Speaker 2: but it doesn't matter. We got on this topic of
- 14:18Speaker 2: finding deer and he said that he goes into the
- 14:19Speaker 2: woods just to look for them all year long. While
- 14:23Speaker 2: I was growing up, that was one of my favorite
- 14:25Speaker 2: things to do, and I still find myself going into
- 14:28Speaker 2: some of the parks around my house and doing the
- 14:30Speaker 2: exact same thing, even though I'll never hunt those deer.
- 14:35Speaker 2: It's just fun to slip up to the edge of
- 14:36Speaker 2: a CRP field half an hour before dark and try
- 14:39Speaker 2: to spot one, just as it's fun to get off
- 14:41Speaker 2: of the normal trails and see where the deer travel
- 14:43Speaker 2: and where the bucks leave their sign. This kind of
- 14:47Speaker 2: thing fills your database with useful info, you information that
- 14:52Speaker 2: stretches way beyond only the places we hunt, because, as
- 14:56Speaker 2: I've said before, you might think you have the whole
- 14:59Speaker 2: white world where you want it with your hunting ground,
- 15:03Speaker 2: but ownership changes, permission can slip away. That secret honey
- 15:08Speaker 2: hole of public land you've found might suddenly show up
- 15:12Speaker 2: on everyone's radar. Counting on a property to always be
- 15:15Speaker 2: there is a bad idea, even if you own it,
- 15:19Speaker 2: because the neighbors can turn over, or CWD can pop up,
- 15:23Speaker 2: and the sharpshooters can suddenly knock down the herd or whatever.
- 15:26Speaker 2: Things change. Going out and wandering around, whether you're looking
- 15:31Speaker 2: for a rooster or a bunny, or just a little
- 15:33Speaker 2: quiet time out of the house because you have a
- 15:35Speaker 2: wife and two thirteen year old daughters. It's good for
- 15:38Speaker 2: the soul and it's good for your hunting skills. You
- 15:42Speaker 2: get to find sign and analyze it in a low
- 15:45Speaker 2: pressure situation, or really a no pressure situation. You get
- 15:49Speaker 2: to jump deer and figure out why they were there.
- 15:52Speaker 2: Maybe you get to watch a few filter through the
- 15:54Speaker 2: woods or hop over a fence, or maybe you find
- 15:56Speaker 2: a couple of dead heads in the overgrown creek bottom
- 16:00Speaker 2: and four years down the road you shoot one in
- 16:02Speaker 2: the guts and you're having an al of a time
- 16:04Speaker 2: finding him. So you pull up on X and you
- 16:06Speaker 2: take a look around and you think, hmm, maybe he
- 16:08Speaker 2: made it all the way to the river and I
- 16:10Speaker 2: should go walk it, and you find him. The focus
- 16:14Speaker 2: on hunting content is often about how you can develop
- 16:17Speaker 2: your skills on a very specific piece of ground, But
- 16:20Speaker 2: developing your skills so they transcend specific spots is so
- 16:25Speaker 2: much better. Just as it's better to be book smart
- 16:28Speaker 2: and street smart. To have the academic side of the
- 16:32Speaker 2: hunting thing locked down is great, but you really want
- 16:35Speaker 2: to take it somewhere you need that experience. It's easy
- 16:39Speaker 2: to do on paper, but hard to do in real life.
- 16:41Speaker 2: So figure out a reason. Trick yourself into a bunny
- 16:44Speaker 2: hunt with the buddies. Take a twenty two out for
- 16:46Speaker 2: a long walk on a sunny Sunday afternoon. Try to
- 16:49Speaker 2: sneak up on a few squirrels. Go to the park
- 16:52Speaker 2: an hour before dark and see if you can lay
- 16:54Speaker 2: eyes on any deer. Do the stuff that gets you
- 16:57Speaker 2: out there and you'll gain valuable deer hunting experience. Do that,
- 17:01Speaker 2: you'll get better and come back next week because I'm
- 17:04Speaker 2: going to talk about Christmas and how it relates to
- 17:06Speaker 2: hunting gear. That's it for this week. I'm Tony Peterson.
- 17:11Speaker 2: This has been the Wired to Hunt Foundation's podcast, which
- 17:13Speaker 2: is brought to you by First Light. I want to
- 17:15Speaker 2: thank you so much for all your support. We're just
- 17:17Speaker 2: about to wrap this year up and truly, honestly, without question,
- 17:23Speaker 2: we wouldn't be able to do any of this without you,
- 17:25Speaker 2: So thank you for that. Your support means the world
- 17:28Speaker 2: to us. If you need some more hunting content, you know,
- 17:31Speaker 2: and maybe you want to read a few articles, find
- 17:33Speaker 2: a recipe to cook something up for Christmas dinner. Or
- 17:35Speaker 2: New Year's Maybe a appetizer or something on New Year's Eve.
- 17:39Speaker 2: I don't know. Maybe you just need to listen to
- 17:41Speaker 2: some new podcasts, or you want to watch a few
- 17:43Speaker 2: hunting shows like the episode we just dropped where I
- 17:47Speaker 2: hunted Bear and Dear with my daughter. You can go
- 17:50Speaker 2: to them meat eater dot com and check it out.
- 17:53Speaker 2: So much good content there. Go there, and again, thank
- 17:56Speaker 2: you for everything.