Latest / Wired To Hunt Podcast / Ep. 459: Foundations - The Dying Gasp of Summertime Patterns
Transcript
- 0:01Speaker 1: Welcome to the Wired to Hunt Foundations podcast, your guide
- 0:05Speaker 1: to the fundamentals of better deer hunting, and now your host,
- 0:11Speaker 1: Tony Peterson. Hey, folks, welcome to the Wire to Hunt
- 0:14Speaker 1: Foundations podcast, brought to you by First Light. I'm your host,
- 0:17Speaker 1: Tony Peterson, and today's episode is all about late September
- 0:21Speaker 1: and how to avoid terrible hunting. Hey, if you're just
- 0:39Speaker 1: randomly finding this Foundation's podcast, or maybe listening to this
- 0:42Speaker 1: episode as your first one, I want to give you
- 0:44Speaker 1: a heads up. All of the episodes up until this
- 0:48Speaker 1: one and from here on out until next summer are
- 0:51Speaker 1: loosely chronological. That means they're bendworthy, and it's best to
- 0:55Speaker 1: do that in order, starting with Numero Uno, which we
- 0:59Speaker 1: dropped way back in June. Now about this episode, I
- 1:04Speaker 1: gotta love hate relationship with late September. It's one of
- 1:07Speaker 1: my favorite times to be in the woods, but it's
- 1:09Speaker 1: also the time when I waved goodbye to my chances
- 1:12Speaker 1: of killing a buck in the field from an easy
- 1:14Speaker 1: to get too set up. Of course, I know you
- 1:17Speaker 1: can kill a soybean muncher all day, anytime in the season,
- 1:21Speaker 1: depending on your hunting situation, but on pressured ground. This
- 1:24Speaker 1: is the time of year to accept reality and understand
- 1:26Speaker 1: that it's actually time to get back to work. Now,
- 1:30Speaker 1: you might be listening to this and thinking, well, my
- 1:31Speaker 1: season doesn't even open until October. Dude, that's okay. This
- 1:35Speaker 1: show is really about the second week of the season.
- 1:39Speaker 1: So even if your opener is the first or the
- 1:40Speaker 1: tenth of October, whatever, this is what you do after
- 1:46Speaker 1: you haven't filled your tag on opening weekend or opening week.
- 1:49Speaker 1: That's really what this show is all about. When I
- 2:03Speaker 1: don't kill a buck in my home state of Minnesota
- 2:06Speaker 1: or across the river in Wisconsin on opening weekend, or
- 2:08Speaker 1: at least during opening week, I start to feel this deep,
- 2:12Speaker 1: dark sense of just dread. I know things in my
- 2:16Speaker 1: life are about to get a hell of a lot
- 2:18Speaker 1: more difficult. It's the same feeling I get when my
- 2:21Speaker 1: wife casually starts talking about how our yard might look
- 2:23Speaker 1: a little better with some new landscaping, or maybe how
- 2:26Speaker 1: our garage would benefit from having just some new shelving
- 2:29Speaker 1: units in it. You've probably felt this too, at least
- 2:32Speaker 1: dear wise, if you've ever been super excited about your
- 2:35Speaker 1: home state's opener and for whatever reason, you didn't feel
- 2:38Speaker 1: your tag. Now, the question comes to most of us
- 2:42Speaker 1: whether we should back off through the slow part of
- 2:44Speaker 1: the season to wait out the run or keep at
- 2:47Speaker 1: it and risk putting the deer down further. The easy
- 2:50Speaker 1: answer is to back off if you have the option.
- 2:53Speaker 1: I don't, and I don't like not hunting now. If
- 2:56Speaker 1: you live in Iowa and you know the full month
- 2:58Speaker 1: of November is waiting for you, Even if you're a
- 3:00Speaker 1: public land hunter, then waiting might be an easy call,
- 3:03Speaker 1: and it might be the right call. Everyone's situation is different,
- 3:07Speaker 1: but remember this, A lot of experts telling you to
- 3:10Speaker 1: wait are hunting places where the deer won't get pressured.
- 3:14Speaker 1: That's where the waiting advice comes from mostly, and at
- 3:18Speaker 1: least from some sources. Doesn't really make sense for the
- 3:21Speaker 1: average hunter. If the rut will bring loads of hunting pressure,
- 3:26Speaker 1: or you're in a state where you'll only get to
- 3:27Speaker 1: hunt maybe part of the rut before a general firearm
- 3:30Speaker 1: season opens, then waiting might be a really bad call. Plus,
- 3:34Speaker 1: as I've mentioned earlier, don't you want to hunt? I do,
- 3:37Speaker 1: so I do. This is also why I really like
- 3:41Speaker 1: having backup spots, and I always encourage hunters to keep
- 3:45Speaker 1: looking for more areas, private, public, whatever, the thing that
- 3:49Speaker 1: keeps us out of the woods. A lot of times
- 3:50Speaker 1: it's just limited options. So even if you think the
- 3:53Speaker 1: public land you know half an hour away won't be
- 3:55Speaker 1: as good as your private chunk closer to home, it's
- 3:58Speaker 1: something that you can hunt when you feel your best
- 4:01Speaker 1: stuff isn't right. That's important. Now, here's how you should
- 4:04Speaker 1: look at the back half of September or the second
- 4:07Speaker 1: week or your season, depending on where you hunt. It's
- 4:10Speaker 1: time to acknowledge what's happening and how the deer will react.
- 4:14Speaker 1: It's the first step. Once you do, you can react
- 4:17Speaker 1: to their reaction and all of a sudden, possibly beyond
- 4:19Speaker 1: them again. How's that for a weasel word salad tasty.
- 4:23Speaker 1: Let's look at the bad news first. There's a combination
- 4:27Speaker 1: of two things working against you buckwise right now. The
- 4:30Speaker 1: first is that they naturally start to go vampire in
- 4:32Speaker 1: their lives. As they go hard antlered, they break up
- 4:35Speaker 1: from their summertime bachelor groups, and the days start to
- 4:37Speaker 1: get shorter. That's reality for most deer in most places.
- 4:42Speaker 1: Couple that with the added pressure of bow hunters and
- 4:44Speaker 1: small game hunters in the woods, and the bucks are
- 4:46Speaker 1: even more likely to avoid moving in daylight in places
- 4:49Speaker 1: where they are likely to encounter hunters. This is simple stuff,
- 4:53Speaker 1: but it's important to understand and acknowledge. Hell, you can
- 4:57Speaker 1: also throw in the kicker the woods getting more open
- 4:59Speaker 1: by the day as the leaves fall. While late September
- 5:02Speaker 1: is usually pretty thick foliage wise, it might start to
- 5:05Speaker 1: open up, especially if you live in the northern part
- 5:07Speaker 1: of the deer's range. I can't prove this because I'm
- 5:09Speaker 1: a human and not a deer, but I don't think
- 5:11Speaker 1: bucks are super comfortable with that. I was going to
- 5:15Speaker 1: move on from the bad news here to all this
- 5:17Speaker 1: good news, but I'm not gonna yet. We might as
- 5:20Speaker 1: well take all of our medicine now aside from dear behavior.
- 5:24Speaker 1: We have to acknowledge our behavior up to this point.
- 5:27Speaker 1: When our optimism wanes, so too does our dedication to
- 5:30Speaker 1: hunting intelligently. It's easy to get sloppy when you think
- 5:34Speaker 1: your best patterns have died, and to sort of go
- 5:36Speaker 1: through the motions with fingers crossed, hoping a buck walks
- 5:39Speaker 1: into the alfa filfield in frontier stand where you've already
- 5:42Speaker 1: sat five or six times. After all, this is a
- 5:45Speaker 1: safer play than getting in too close to his bed
- 5:48Speaker 1: and pushing him onto the neighbors long before the whispers
- 5:50Speaker 1: of the rut get him on his feet again. Right wrong.
- 5:54Speaker 1: The only thing we do when we get complacent is
- 5:56Speaker 1: cement our behaviors so that the deer can pretty our
- 6:00Speaker 1: actions very well. If this seems like great a bowlshit,
- 6:04Speaker 1: go hunt high country mule deer if you ever have
- 6:06Speaker 1: the chance. Better yet, hunt them in an area with
- 6:09Speaker 1: a high concentration of mountain lions. You'll see through your
- 6:12Speaker 1: glassing efforts a level of neurotic dear behavior that highlights
- 6:17Speaker 1: how a buck has to behave to reach maturity when
- 6:20Speaker 1: he's been shadowed by one of the best deer killers
- 6:22Speaker 1: in the business his entire life. Those mule deer, they
- 6:26Speaker 1: don't let themselves get patterned, and you can bet neither
- 6:29Speaker 1: with alliance. Neither. Should you be honest about what stands
- 6:34Speaker 1: their spot, you've burned out and move on. Even if
- 6:37Speaker 1: you haven't totally burned out your spots, they might have
- 6:40Speaker 1: died anyway due to a litany of factors, which brings
- 6:43Speaker 1: us to the good news. First off, fully, nocturnal deer,
- 6:47Speaker 1: they probably don't exist. Let's acknowledge that right away. If
- 6:51Speaker 1: you don't believe that, do me a favor and go
- 6:53Speaker 1: pull your trail cameras from the woods and keep hunting.
- 6:57Speaker 1: Trail cameras will keep you out of the woods right now,
- 6:59Speaker 1: I promise, mostly because they'll show you a skewed view
- 7:03Speaker 1: of the deer's world. Those field edge and food block
- 7:06Speaker 1: cameras will start to show more nocturnal movement that plays
- 7:10Speaker 1: on our psyche. Fewer random bucks walking down trails does too.
- 7:15Speaker 1: But the deer is still out there, and you want
- 7:17Speaker 1: to keep hunting, don't you. I learned this lesson every
- 7:20Speaker 1: I don't know a few years at least, and I'll
- 7:23Speaker 1: never forget about I don't know. Six seven years ago,
- 7:26Speaker 1: I had a free night to hunt this little property
- 7:29Speaker 1: by my house in the Twin Cities. I knew from
- 7:31Speaker 1: recent trail camera polls that the odds of running into
- 7:34Speaker 1: a good buck were next to none, but there were
- 7:36Speaker 1: a few does frequently hitting a small kill plot. I
- 7:39Speaker 1: had planted. The one though, that did come in that night.
- 7:42Speaker 1: She busted me immediately. She was onto that stand and
- 7:45Speaker 1: it was obvious. But later I also heard something working
- 7:49Speaker 1: from the swamp to the woods behind me. Which is
- 7:51Speaker 1: a direction I did not expect a deer to approach
- 7:54Speaker 1: from the buck. A legit hunter and thirty class deer,
- 7:57Speaker 1: which was the biggest buck I ever saw in that
- 7:59Speaker 1: property and five years of hunting, it came into bow
- 8:02Speaker 1: range but never offered a shot. He also skirted that
- 8:05Speaker 1: plot like it was hot lava, and in that move
- 8:08Speaker 1: he also skirted my cameras. When you hunt when you're
- 8:12Speaker 1: not supposed to, you see dear do what they're not
- 8:15Speaker 1: supposed to do. The second week of the season, no
- 8:18Speaker 1: matter what state you bow hunt, is a reset moment
- 8:21Speaker 1: for most folks. Sitting on an unfilled tag, that means
- 8:24Speaker 1: the first plan didn't work. That's okay, most of our
- 8:27Speaker 1: hunting plans don't work. We fail a lot. It's just fine.
- 8:31Speaker 1: But what you do now is important, and that should
- 8:34Speaker 1: really involve thinking about the patterns that deer probably have
- 8:36Speaker 1: on you and other hunters they've dealt with. Think about
- 8:40Speaker 1: this too. From the perspective of this question, how could
- 8:44Speaker 1: the deer possibly pattern us after a week? Well, for
- 8:47Speaker 1: some deer it's only a week, but for others it's
- 8:51Speaker 1: the second or third, or fourth or eighth season of
- 8:54Speaker 1: the same stuff, And It's not just the same stuff
- 8:57Speaker 1: as far as the heightened activity around the opener, and
- 8:59Speaker 1: then the same mostly hairless apes climbing into trees to
- 9:02Speaker 1: send sharp sticks in their direction. It's the scent trails
- 9:05Speaker 1: that get investigated. After dark. It's the crunch of truck
- 9:08Speaker 1: tires on gravel and the pre dawn darkness and the
- 9:11Speaker 1: quiet but not all that quiet closing of truck doors
- 9:14Speaker 1: or tailgates. That last one is a doozy and it
- 9:18Speaker 1: factors into my hunting in a big way on some ground.
- 9:21Speaker 1: Now this might not seem like a huge deal, but
- 9:23Speaker 1: it is. I honestly think that on a lot of properties,
- 9:26Speaker 1: both public and private, where we park kills our hunts
- 9:31Speaker 1: faster than a bad wind. Our trucks make a lot
- 9:34Speaker 1: of noise. We make a lot of noise driving them,
- 9:37Speaker 1: getting out of them, getting into them, messing with our gear.
- 9:40Speaker 1: That's just what happens. Now. This is something that is
- 9:43Speaker 1: highly variable. But I'll give you a pro tip I've
- 9:46Speaker 1: learned from hunting public land over the years. Where there
- 9:49Speaker 1: are expected points of ingress by hunters, like public land
- 9:53Speaker 1: parking areas, the deer are totally aware of them. But
- 9:56Speaker 1: the good news is in most places you don't have
- 9:59Speaker 1: to park in the was rutted up parking areas. Last year,
- 10:02Speaker 1: when I drew a coveted Iowa tag and set out
- 10:04Speaker 1: to kill a good one on public land, I paid
- 10:06Speaker 1: close attention to this, mostly because every other hunter I
- 10:09Speaker 1: saw seemed to park exactly where you'd expect them to.
- 10:13Speaker 1: Some even seemed to go out of their way to
- 10:15Speaker 1: park right in the open on a field edge where
- 10:17Speaker 1: visibility was highest. I took a different approach, and the
- 10:20Speaker 1: best spot I found involved pulling off of a gravel
- 10:24Speaker 1: road and climbing straight up a bluff to get to
- 10:25Speaker 1: my hunting area. That piece of public has two parking areas,
- 10:29Speaker 1: one on each end, but the spot I parked at
- 10:32Speaker 1: which is not a common access point, and it was
- 10:34Speaker 1: positioned between two farms, which meant I had some cover noise.
- 10:39Speaker 1: I'm speculating here, but I think the deer were used
- 10:41Speaker 1: to hearing all kinds of clunks and thunks and driving
- 10:44Speaker 1: from that spot because of those farms, and I really
- 10:47Speaker 1: feel it worked in my favor after seeing how well
- 10:49Speaker 1: I could sneak right into a Big Bucks guard in
- 10:52Speaker 1: the morning. I've seen this on almost all public land
- 10:55Speaker 1: I've hunted over the years, including down in Oklahoma, where
- 10:58Speaker 1: the patchwork of public we hunted one year would have
- 11:01Speaker 1: only one parking area per section. Right there, you know
- 11:05Speaker 1: that probably the pressure is going to start it exactly
- 11:08Speaker 1: one spot. Now, that might not matter on opening day,
- 11:11Speaker 1: but by the second week of the season count on it. Now,
- 11:15Speaker 1: it's not enough just to be a sneaky bastard with
- 11:17Speaker 1: your parking strategy. Usually you've got to factor in what
- 11:21Speaker 1: else is going on so you can get on top
- 11:23Speaker 1: of current deer movement. Now. I tend to simplify this
- 11:27Speaker 1: by assuming I know the food sources they're probably hitting
- 11:29Speaker 1: at least if there's some egg ground around. This is
- 11:32Speaker 1: a safe bet usually and can help distill down some
- 11:35Speaker 1: of the mystery of current deer travel. Big woods hunts
- 11:39Speaker 1: are different, but they also don't allow for easy spot
- 11:41Speaker 1: burnout quite the same way, at least quite the same
- 11:45Speaker 1: way as that egg ground does. This is, in my opinion,
- 11:49Speaker 1: evidence that a lot of this hunting stuff balances out
- 11:51Speaker 1: in weird ways. Now, is that clear as mud? Probably right?
- 11:55Speaker 1: What I mean is that hunting egg ground is orders
- 11:59Speaker 1: of magnitude easier than hunting bigwood stuff. But egg ground
- 12:03Speaker 1: also allows us to hunt easy patterns and get patterned easily.
- 12:07Speaker 1: Big woods without the cushy bean field edge type of
- 12:10Speaker 1: stands aren't as easy to hunt and are obviously not
- 12:14Speaker 1: as easy to find destination food source, and that by
- 12:18Speaker 1: itself is enough to often keep the burnout factor lower
- 12:21Speaker 1: and leveled off. So now that you're thoroughly confused, I'll
- 12:24Speaker 1: get back on track if you've got the easy food
- 12:27Speaker 1: factor it in. But think about the snacks they can
- 12:29Speaker 1: eat along the way to and from that food. If
- 12:32Speaker 1: you don't have that, think about the brows. Think about
- 12:35Speaker 1: the hard and soft mass that might play into their
- 12:36Speaker 1: daily lives. Way back in the summer, you built a
- 12:39Speaker 1: grocery list, Now is the time to revisit it. You're
- 12:43Speaker 1: working with deer that are wise to lazy hunters, but
- 12:46Speaker 1: not so jaded they won't move in daylight. They are
- 12:48Speaker 1: also listening to their stomachs, but not usually laying down
- 12:52Speaker 1: enough sign to really clue you into the hot spot
- 12:54Speaker 1: of the week. In the areas I tend to hunt,
- 12:56Speaker 1: I find a strong gravity toward oak trees if they're
- 12:59Speaker 1: avail bowl. We all know white oaks are the best,
- 13:02Speaker 1: and they are, but in places where lower quality food
- 13:05Speaker 1: is the rule. Red Oaks and other varieties will do
- 13:07Speaker 1: in a pinch. Where are they and are they dropping?
- 13:11Speaker 1: Do you have a deep woods meadow to watch that
- 13:13Speaker 1: might have some tasty stuff growing in it or around
- 13:16Speaker 1: the edge? How about some apples. One thing I find
- 13:19Speaker 1: in the big woods in northern Wisconsin, where I consistently
- 13:21Speaker 1: get my ass kicked by the deer is that there
- 13:24Speaker 1: are random, old, long abandoned homesteads tucked into the forest,
- 13:28Speaker 1: usually deep into the forest. I tend to find these
- 13:32Speaker 1: while grouse hunting, after stumbling across a random pile of
- 13:34Speaker 1: rocks where there definitely shouldn't be. A random pile of
- 13:37Speaker 1: rocks that, along with a thicker vegetation and usually some
- 13:40Speaker 1: baily visible remains of the remnants of a homestead, make
- 13:45Speaker 1: everything click. That's when I start looking for apples and
- 13:47Speaker 1: I forget about the rough grouse for a second. But
- 13:49Speaker 1: it really doesn't matter how you find these spots. What
- 13:52Speaker 1: matters is those long ago folks planted fruit trees, usually
- 13:56Speaker 1: apple trees. The grouse know it, The deer know it too.
- 14:00Speaker 1: As a kicker, they also tend to get some solid
- 14:02Speaker 1: betting areas out of the deal, provided they don't fall
- 14:04Speaker 1: into an old root seller. I know finding these areas
- 14:07Speaker 1: sounds easy when some random dude talks about it on
- 14:09Speaker 1: a podcast, but it's not, at least not always. These
- 14:13Speaker 1: spots would be easiest to find through extensive scouting, but
- 14:15Speaker 1: that's not all that appealing right now. So there is
- 14:18Speaker 1: another way to keep at it and keep your way
- 14:19Speaker 1: to hunting knowledge base expanding hunt for meat. If you
- 14:24Speaker 1: don't have this strategy where you can go in and
- 14:26Speaker 1: quickly find some cool spot to sit in the big
- 14:28Speaker 1: woods or the staging area, type of thing that you
- 14:32Speaker 1: don't think you can rely on, just hunt for meat,
- 14:35Speaker 1: go look for dose, and forget about the buck quest
- 14:37Speaker 1: for now. This is one of my favorite strategies for
- 14:40Speaker 1: finding deer concentrations once the easy hunts have died away.
- 14:45Speaker 1: Not only does this keep me hunting even if the
- 14:47Speaker 1: plan doesn't involve a lot of big buck strategies, it's
- 14:50Speaker 1: more enjoyable. Low standard hunts are fun and often put
- 14:54Speaker 1: you on deer that don't necessitate a low bar. The
- 14:58Speaker 1: very first buck I ever arrowed that I put on
- 15:00Speaker 1: the wall ended up dying from this exact approach. It
- 15:03Speaker 1: was the second week of the season in Minnesota, and
- 15:05Speaker 1: my goal was simply to find some acorns that some
- 15:08Speaker 1: doughs might be eating. I slipped into a flat situated
- 15:11Speaker 1: a couple hundred yards from the field edge and picked
- 15:13Speaker 1: my tree. Three quarters of the way up. A dough
- 15:16Speaker 1: feder way passed as I did my best fright and
- 15:17Speaker 1: squirrel impression while hugging the trunk. Later that evening I
- 15:21Speaker 1: saw other dos but never got a shot, and well
- 15:23Speaker 1: before last light, a good buck walked in and bedded
- 15:26Speaker 1: down at thirty yards. I fed the gnats and the
- 15:28Speaker 1: mosquitoes whilst white knuckle gripping my bow like it was
- 15:32Speaker 1: a rubber chicken neck. He stood up. I shot him
- 15:35Speaker 1: square in the liver, and the next morning prayed to
- 15:38Speaker 1: whatever gods would give me some blood to work with,
- 15:40Speaker 1: and I actually found him. It was revelatory for me
- 15:43Speaker 1: on so many levels. But what is stuck all these
- 15:46Speaker 1: years later is that I went out to find the
- 15:48Speaker 1: hot food so I could just have a chance at
- 15:50Speaker 1: a doll and I killed my biggest buck ever. Happy
- 15:53Speaker 1: accidents happened in the woods. My friends. Don't let the
- 15:57Speaker 1: doubt creep in because opening week didn't account keep hunting,
- 16:01Speaker 1: but work off a new strategy. If you're not seeing
- 16:04Speaker 1: deer like you were just a few days ago, think
- 16:06Speaker 1: about where they've probably relocated to and what they're eating.
- 16:11Speaker 1: Think about who is hunting them besides you, and where
- 16:13Speaker 1: that pressure is coming from. How can you do things differently.
- 16:17Speaker 1: The more ways you can answer that, the more ways
- 16:19Speaker 1: you can stay in the game, and the worst case
- 16:21Speaker 1: scenario is to keep hunting, which isn't a bad thing now.
- 16:25Speaker 1: Next week we'll start to fine tune this whole thing
- 16:28Speaker 1: and dive a little deeper into why staging areas matters
- 16:32Speaker 1: so much right now and how good hunting can be
- 16:34Speaker 1: had when most hunters think it should be bad out there.
- 16:40Speaker 1: That's it for this week, my dear loving friends. I'm
- 16:42Speaker 1: Tony Peterson and this has been the Wired Hunt Foundations podcast.
- 16:46Speaker 1: Visit the meat Eater dot com slash wired to check
- 16:49Speaker 1: out our latest deer articles, or head on over to
- 16:52Speaker 1: the wire to Hunt YouTube channel to subscribe to all
- 16:54Speaker 1: of our videos, and, as always, thank you so much
- 16:57Speaker 1: for your support.