Latest / Wired To Hunt Podcast / Ep. 684: Foundations - A Day in a Deer's Life

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Ep. 684: Foundations - A Day in a Deer's Life · 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,
0:23
Speaker 2: which is brought to you by first Light. I'm your host,
0:25
Speaker 2: Tony Peterson, and today's episode is all about thinking about
0:28
Speaker 2: deer and what they actually do throughout the entire day wildlife.
0:43
Speaker 2: If you don't live out there in the wild with
0:44
Speaker 2: all the critters, it's sort of an abstract concept. I mean,
0:49
Speaker 2: in some ways, we often only think of them in
0:51
Speaker 2: terms of what they could do for us, or, in
0:53
Speaker 2: the case of deer another big game, how we can
0:56
Speaker 2: cross paths with them during a certain part of the year,
1:00
Speaker 2: during certain parts of certain days. But the truth is
1:03
Speaker 2: they're out there every day and what they do we
1:06
Speaker 2: often have no clue about. That's what this episode is
1:10
Speaker 2: really meant to focus on, which is thinking about the
1:12
Speaker 2: animals we love to hunt as a permanent fixture on
1:15
Speaker 2: the landscape and not something that just exists when it's
1:19
Speaker 2: time for us to go climb into a tree and
1:21
Speaker 2: try to deflate their lungs. As a society, we have
1:31
Speaker 2: a weird fascination with serial killers. Criminals in general, actually,
1:36
Speaker 2: but serial killers specifically. Go turn on Netflix or Hulu
1:40
Speaker 2: or whatever seventeen different streaming services you pay for now
1:43
Speaker 2: that you don't pay for cable, and you can feast
1:46
Speaker 2: on the murder mysteries until you're full up. You can
1:50
Speaker 2: find documentaries on all the serial killers out there, gay Cy, Dahmer, BTK,
1:55
Speaker 2: on and on. You can watch dramas and series on
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Speaker 2: serial killers like Dexter. You can learn about the women
2:02
Speaker 2: who love serial killers and who send them letters and
2:05
Speaker 2: even agree to marry them. This says something about how
2:09
Speaker 2: dumb we are with celebrities and fame, probably or just
2:13
Speaker 2: how batshit crazy some people are. And I'm not talking
2:16
Speaker 2: about the dudes who racked up a crazy BodyCount while
2:18
Speaker 2: pretending to be normal members of society. It's wild. And
2:22
Speaker 2: what's weird is if you pay attention to serial killers
2:25
Speaker 2: at all, they nearly all got caught because they made
2:28
Speaker 2: a mistake. After following some kind of pattern for a
2:30
Speaker 2: long time, they became predictable. They also found a lot
2:36
Speaker 2: of their victims through either random opportunity or the patterns
2:40
Speaker 2: that were you guessed it predictable. I thought about this
2:44
Speaker 2: recently after appearing as a guest on The Nine Finger Chronicles,
2:47
Speaker 2: a podcast hosted by Dan Johnson, who might just be
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Speaker 2: my long lost twin brother. While his show is a
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Speaker 2: hunting podcast, we mostly talk about things that aren't related
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Speaker 2: to hunting, which is what we were doing recently. He
3:00
Speaker 2: and I were having a good old bitch session about
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Speaker 2: our wives and kids when I casually mentioned how often
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Speaker 2: my family members, who aren't two feet tall and black
3:09
Speaker 2: and super into retrieving pheasants, often leave stuff right at
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Speaker 2: the top of the stairs. Now this might not sound
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Speaker 2: like a big deal, but we live in a normal
3:18
Speaker 2: split level house, so when you walk through our front door,
3:21
Speaker 2: you either go upstairs right away or downstairs. Since most
3:25
Speaker 2: of the living we do is upstairs, the area right
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Speaker 2: at the top of my stairs is without doubt the
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Speaker 2: most high traffic spot in our house. It's also where
3:34
Speaker 2: my family likes to leave pretty much anything and everything
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Speaker 2: that they could carry into the house. Essentially, it's an
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Speaker 2: obstacle course twenty four to seven, and it doesn't have
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Speaker 2: to be, and it drives me absolutely freaking crazy. It's
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Speaker 2: also a location where if you plan to hunt my family,
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Speaker 2: you'd want to set up as an ambush spot. This
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Speaker 2: is what I've said to Dan, and I've thought about
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Speaker 2: it a lot since, because while it's more been kind
4:00
Speaker 2: of weird, it's just true. If you were to scout
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Speaker 2: us out and try to fill a tag on one
4:06
Speaker 2: of the Peterson's, you could do far worse than setting
4:09
Speaker 2: up shop right where we are all funneled into the
4:12
Speaker 2: second floor. This led me to think about how often
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Speaker 2: we ride bikes or walk through a park somewhere in
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Speaker 2: our neighborhood, and how often I think about hunting deer
4:20
Speaker 2: in some of those places. I'm sure you do this too,
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Speaker 2: but I spent a lot of time looking at trees
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Speaker 2: and thinking about how I'd set up along the mode
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Speaker 2: trails and edges that are all over the wooded parks.
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Speaker 2: That inevitably leads me to think about how many of
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Speaker 2: these clueless suburbanites would walk right by without looking up.
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Speaker 2: I bet most of them would have no idea that
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Speaker 2: someone was saddled up about twenty feet over their heads.
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Speaker 2: Of course, that line of thinking leads you to go
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Speaker 2: down the rabbit hole of what if you had to
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Speaker 2: hunt people for some reason, maybe during a full on
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Speaker 2: invasion of our country, which is deep in weird fantasyland.
4:52
Speaker 2: I get it, But you guys have those thoughts right right?
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Speaker 2: What habits of the enemy would you have to learn?
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Speaker 2: You'd probably try to figure out where they slept, where
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Speaker 2: they walked, where they ate, how they got supplies, and
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Speaker 2: where they were most vulnerable. You'd think about their twenty
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Speaker 2: four hour cycle of life and really try to understand
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Speaker 2: as many parts as possible. It wouldn't matter if it
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Speaker 2: was November or March or July or whenever. You'd want
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Speaker 2: as much information as you could get. Do you see
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Speaker 2: where I'm going with this? Deer are mostly a mystery
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Speaker 2: to us. And what's worse, we all think we know
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Speaker 2: what they do. We all think we know where they
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Speaker 2: bed and feed and travel to do their thing, and
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Speaker 2: we do at least maybe about seven percent of the time.
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Speaker 2: Those daily movements are predictable. We know they'll feed on
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Speaker 2: the soybeans because well duh, but why not on opening night?
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Speaker 2: And when you're hunting them, we all know they'll water
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Speaker 2: here and walk there in bed on that bench and
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Speaker 2: whatever else. But we are mostly wrong about that at
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Speaker 2: any given point when we try to hunt them them
6:00
Speaker 2: in those locations. Part of that is because we tip
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Speaker 2: our hand to them too much, and they just know
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Speaker 2: we are there. That's a given and it's never not
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Speaker 2: going to be a part of hunting. But a bigger
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Speaker 2: part of it is that we just don't understand deer
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Speaker 2: in their daily lives a whole lot. We try to
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Speaker 2: understand sign and what it means, but we narrow our
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Speaker 2: focus down so much that we are often only paying
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Speaker 2: attention to certain kinds of sign at certain times of
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Speaker 2: the season. We try to understand food sources, but really
6:29
Speaker 2: we often focus on the big picture buffets that are
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Speaker 2: easy to figure out. We often don't take too deep
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Speaker 2: of a dive into brows in many cases, and we
6:38
Speaker 2: mostly react to seasonal foods like masts, often after they
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Speaker 2: aren't that relevant and the deer have mostly moved on
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Speaker 2: to something else. We rarely rarely spend enough time figuring
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Speaker 2: out a deer's whole life to find that sweet spot
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Speaker 2: at the top of the stairs. While the bucks and
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Speaker 2: the does go through multiple times a day, and the does,
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Speaker 2: even the dough fawns leave all their gimba and shoes
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Speaker 2: and laundry baskets and books and random detritus laying right
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Speaker 2: there where the dominant buck has to walk, and sometimes
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Speaker 2: he trips, and sometimes he stubs his toe on something
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Speaker 2: like a case of bottled water, and when he does,
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Speaker 2: he invents new curse words that the neighboring deer can
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Speaker 2: hear him screaming after he bends his pinky toenail right
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Speaker 2: over on itself. The thing is, we can't know a
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Speaker 2: buck's whole life unless we put up a ten foot
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Speaker 2: fence around him and then radio color him. Even then
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Speaker 2: we probably wouldn't learn some of the subtle movements and
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Speaker 2: patterns about his day. I'll think about this with wild deer,
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Speaker 2: and there are a whole lot more gaps in our knowledge.
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Speaker 2: We fill these in because it's comforting. Humans do this
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Speaker 2: a lot. What we don't have answers for we often
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Speaker 2: make up, and then over time we just start to
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Speaker 2: believe them. We do this to the point where even
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Speaker 2: when we are shown that we are wrong, we don't
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Speaker 2: believe it. This has never been a great feature of mankind,
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Speaker 2: and it applies to so many aspects of our life.
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Speaker 2: Take one of my favorite topics, for example space. Go
8:16
Speaker 2: back about twenty four hundred years ago and you have
8:19
Speaker 2: a fellow named Aristotle who said a lot of profound
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Speaker 2: things and a lot of dumb things, but he was
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Speaker 2: a voice of authority and reason and intellect. So when
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Speaker 2: he said that the stars in the sky don't change,
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Speaker 2: people believed it than the Church, and that's with the
8:37
Speaker 2: Capital C believed it too. They were the authority at
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Speaker 2: the time. So we had a whole bunch of people
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Speaker 2: in Europe, specifically during several hundred years who believed that
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Speaker 2: the stars in the sky were an unmoving fixture, like
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Speaker 2: the light hanging over your kitchen table kind of. Now,
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Speaker 2: go back about seven thousand years earlier than Aristotle's time,
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Speaker 2: and you have a star that was ten times the
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Speaker 2: size of our sun in the Taurus constellation that went
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Speaker 2: super nova, which means that it spent several billion years
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Speaker 2: with an internal fight going on where gravity finally won.
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Speaker 2: You see, stars are kind of just like giant nuclear
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Speaker 2: reactors which get extremely hot. No shit, right. Stars are
9:25
Speaker 2: essentially big balls of fuel. They have an insane amount
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Speaker 2: of mass, which means they have an insane amount of gravity.
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Speaker 2: That gravity is trying hard to pull everything toward the center.
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Speaker 2: But the nuclear fusion that happens at levels we can't
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Speaker 2: fathom on the inside of it creates heat, which generates
9:41
Speaker 2: outward pressure, which balances the effect of gravity until the
9:46
Speaker 2: fuel starts to burn out. Then the stars cool just
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Speaker 2: enough where gravity gets a definitive edge and the stars collapse.
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Speaker 2: This happens so fast that something that is a million
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Speaker 2: times the size of Earth can collapse in a matter
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Speaker 2: of life like fifteen seconds, which, as you can imagine,
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Speaker 2: is quite the event. Now, the light from this explosion
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Speaker 2: travels at one hundred and eighty six thousand miles a
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Speaker 2: second in all directions. When this happened to that star
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Speaker 2: in the Tourist constellation I mentioned earlier, the light spent
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Speaker 2: seven thousand years shooting across the cosmos until it was
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Speaker 2: visible on Earth. Chinese astronomers wrote about this celestial event.
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Speaker 2: Middle Eastern astronomers wrote about it. Native Americans down there
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Speaker 2: in the southwest corner of the United States made rock
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Speaker 2: engravings about it. Europe collectively look the other way, and
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Speaker 2: it was kind of all crickets from them, which is
10:39
Speaker 2: some serious denial considering the supernova was so bright that
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Speaker 2: for a while it was visible in broad daylight. The
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Speaker 2: people there during that time of our history believe that
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Speaker 2: the stars don't move and they don't change, and therefore
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Speaker 2: they just didn't accept what they were seeing. Humans do
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Speaker 2: this with so many things, like you guessed it, golf
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Speaker 2: and hunting. How many of you find listeners believe that
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Speaker 2: deer mostly don't move during the hottest part of the day,
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Speaker 2: that they mostly lay up in the shade and wait
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Speaker 2: out the long late summer hours until the cooler part
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Speaker 2: of the day shows up. How many of you walked
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Speaker 2: out to hang stands like I did a couple of
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Speaker 2: weeks ago and saw several deer out feeding in a
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Speaker 2: bean field in the blazing sunlight when the mercury was
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Speaker 2: touched in the mid nineties. Or how often have you
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Speaker 2: gotten random pictures on your trail camera of a buck
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Speaker 2: walking along a trail at noon in the end of August,
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Speaker 2: or maybe feeding in the alfalfa field at ten in
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Speaker 2: the morning on October first? Do you look the other
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Speaker 2: way when this stuff happens? You shouldn't, even though I
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Speaker 2: know that is easier said than done. Think about this
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Speaker 2: another way. How often have you glassed during the summer
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Speaker 2: or sat on a field edge during the season and
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Speaker 2: watched deer go back and forth between the cover and
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Speaker 2: the groceries instead of just walking into the field and
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Speaker 2: feeding NonStop. You know, they spend ten minutes in the
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Speaker 2: food source and then they head into the woods for
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Speaker 2: a while. Then they bounce back out on a different trail.
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Speaker 2: What are they doing? Well, they're probably like you when
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Speaker 2: you're at a summer cookout. Grab a burger to put
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Speaker 2: on your plate, maybe some fruit, scoop of coleslaw, whatever.
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Speaker 2: When you finish that, you think I could eat a
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Speaker 2: little more, so you go back for round two, and
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Speaker 2: then someone puts out dessert. You think, deer don't think
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Speaker 2: like that during the summer and the early season, when
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Speaker 2: food sources are most variable and abundant, they do. Now
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Speaker 2: does it matter? Maybe maybe you can't hunt the main
12:42
Speaker 2: food source because you don't have permission. Now you have
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Speaker 2: to hunt in the woods. Now, how does that back
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Speaker 2: and forth pattern play out? Maybe you assume that bucks
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Speaker 2: are nocturnal and they mostly bed all day long and
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Speaker 2: don't move during the hours when you can legally shoot them.
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Speaker 2: Do your cameras in the woods all summer long support
13:01
Speaker 2: that notion? Does your early to mid season hunting support
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Speaker 2: that notion. Do you really think that a buck is
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Speaker 2: so cautious that he's going to lay down in a
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Speaker 2: secluded bed and not get up one time to take
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Speaker 2: a dump or stretch his legs or nibble on some
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Speaker 2: brows or snarf up some acorns. Probably not, But he
13:21
Speaker 2: might not travel half of a mile to do those things.
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Speaker 2: His movements might only take him one hundred or two
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Speaker 2: hundred yards from his bed, maybe no more. But he's
13:30
Speaker 2: gonna get up and he's gonna move. He's going to
13:33
Speaker 2: do these things every single day, even if we don't
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Speaker 2: believe it or don't expect it. Now, there is a
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Speaker 2: component to recognizing this and trying to learn more about
13:43
Speaker 2: their daily lives that is so important. And it's not
13:47
Speaker 2: just about always being in the game. It's not just
13:50
Speaker 2: about finding the exact right tree to play some high
13:53
Speaker 2: level pattern of deer hunting with to kill a buck
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Speaker 2: when most folks think it's not quite possible. It's much
14:00
Speaker 2: more simple than that. It's confidence in yourself to try
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Speaker 2: new things and hunt when you previously thought it wasn't
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Speaker 2: worth it. That's so huge, my friends, and it's something
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Speaker 2: we don't face very often because it's easier to fill
14:12
Speaker 2: in the blanks and just pat ourselves on the back
14:14
Speaker 2: for not hunting at certain times in certain conditions, while
14:18
Speaker 2: thinking all along that we are being good hunters by
14:21
Speaker 2: playing it safe. Instead, you want to learn about their
14:24
Speaker 2: daily lives. Spend some more time watching them, run your
14:28
Speaker 2: cameras closer together to see how often they use one
14:31
Speaker 2: trail and not another. That'll blow your minds over time,
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Speaker 2: I promise you. Instead of looking to confirm what you
14:37
Speaker 2: think you know, look to see what you're missing in
14:40
Speaker 2: their daily lives. Try to understand what they do why
14:45
Speaker 2: they do it, instead of buying into the idea that
14:48
Speaker 2: we have them all figured out and there are huge
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Speaker 2: sections of the day where they just aren't killable, or
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Speaker 2: where there are sizeable sections of any given season where
14:57
Speaker 2: they just aren't killable. Personally, don't believe any of that stuff,
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Speaker 2: mostly because there is evidence all over that it's pure bunk.
15:06
Speaker 2: But just like those Dark Age early Europeans who saw
15:09
Speaker 2: a bright star appear in the sky even during the daytime,
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Speaker 2: we just like to stick to what we know. This
15:17
Speaker 2: might save more deer and elk and antelope and turkeys
15:20
Speaker 2: every year than all of the shifting winds and rush
15:23
Speaker 2: shots and sloppy setups, ever will and it all starts
15:27
Speaker 2: with the idea that we don't know what we don't know,
15:30
Speaker 2: but we sure as hell can learn some stuff we
15:32
Speaker 2: don't know. This, like going on a fad diet or
15:36
Speaker 2: starting a workout regimen, is easy to embrace in a
15:39
Speaker 2: big way, but is better adopted in small, manageable chunks.
15:44
Speaker 2: I like to do this by thinking about where Buck's
15:48
Speaker 2: going to feed tonight and how he'll leave the food
15:51
Speaker 2: in the morning. Where is he likely headed? Is he
15:54
Speaker 2: going to go munch on some brows or soft mass
15:57
Speaker 2: like grapes? Where's the water is to be thirsty? Probably?
16:02
Speaker 2: Where are the betting options? Is he more likely to
16:04
Speaker 2: tuck into a shaded bench on a wooded hillside or
16:07
Speaker 2: go layout in a grassy waterway in a field where
16:10
Speaker 2: the wind keeps him cool and keeps some of the
16:12
Speaker 2: bugs off his nose and his ears? How often does
16:16
Speaker 2: he leave the property your scouting and hunting? Why would
16:20
Speaker 2: he leave? What would make him come back and spend
16:23
Speaker 2: more time there? How about the ladies in the scrapper bucks?
16:27
Speaker 2: If you laser focus your potential deer knowledge solely on
16:30
Speaker 2: mature bucks and what they like to do in a day.
16:33
Speaker 2: You are missing a huge window of opportunity. The other
16:37
Speaker 2: deer in the herd can teach us plenty if we're
16:39
Speaker 2: willing to pay attention to them. In fact, that's what
16:42
Speaker 2: I'm going to talk about next week. I've been scouting
16:45
Speaker 2: quite a bit the last few weeks, and it has
16:48
Speaker 2: just become so much more obvious to me how important
16:50
Speaker 2: it is to pay attention to Doze as well as
16:53
Speaker 2: the big Bucks, not only what they do in their
16:55
Speaker 2: daily lives, but how they react to situations where they
16:58
Speaker 2: travel at any given moment, and a whole host to
17:01
Speaker 2: other factors. There's much to learn, my friends, and we're
17:05
Speaker 2: just getting started. So think about those bucks, think about
17:09
Speaker 2: what you think you know, get out there and prove
17:12
Speaker 2: yourself wrong, and then listen in next week because I'm
17:15
Speaker 2: going to cover that topic that gets no love but
17:18
Speaker 2: will make you a better hunter. That's it for this week,
17:22
Speaker 2: my friends. I'm Tony Peterson and this is the Wire
17:24
Speaker 2: to Hunt Foundation's podcast, which is brought to you by
17:27
Speaker 2: First Light. As always, thank you so much for listening
17:29
Speaker 2: in for your support all of us at meat Eater
17:32
Speaker 2: here we really really appreciate it. If you'll want some
17:35
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