Latest / Wired To Hunt Podcast / Ep. 802: Foundations - How to Use Summer Trail Cameras to Plan a Successful Rut Hunt

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Ep. 802: Foundations - How to Use Summer Trail Cameras to Plan a Successful Rut Hunt · 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,
0:22
Speaker 2: which is brought to you by First Light. I'm your host,
0:24
Speaker 2: Tony Peterson. In today's episode is all about using cameras
0:27
Speaker 2: now to figure out where to sit during November rut hunts.
0:32
Speaker 2: All right, before I get started here, I gotta talk
0:35
Speaker 2: about something. Today is the day that First Light drops
0:39
Speaker 2: the new white tail lineup. We have three different systems
0:41
Speaker 2: coming out, the early season Phase, the mid season Core,
0:45
Speaker 2: and for late season hunters or anyone who just spends
0:47
Speaker 2: time in Arctic like weatherwaight on white tails to thermic.
0:51
Speaker 2: As I said, these are all systems tailored to seasonality
0:54
Speaker 2: and likely conditions, so you'll need to check them out
0:57
Speaker 2: to see what's right for you. I spend a lot
0:59
Speaker 2: of time in the Phase and the Core offerings last fall,
1:02
Speaker 2: and I'll just say this, if you're in the market
1:04
Speaker 2: for new white tail hunting clothing, you're probably going to
1:06
Speaker 2: want to go check these twenty twenty four offerings out.
1:09
Speaker 2: Head on over to first light dot com. That's where
1:11
Speaker 2: we'll see them all Right, enough salesy stuff. I think
1:16
Speaker 2: the number one reason why I love white tail hunting
1:19
Speaker 2: so much is that it's just a pursuit that allows
1:21
Speaker 2: you to build in layers to your success. During the
1:25
Speaker 2: entire off season. Those nine months are your opportunity to
1:29
Speaker 2: do detective work on last year's buck movements and to
1:32
Speaker 2: try to figure out what this season's buck movements should
1:36
Speaker 2: look like. One of the best ways to do this
1:39
Speaker 2: is through trail camera usage, and that's what I'm going
1:42
Speaker 2: to talk about right now. Anybody who listens to this podcast,
1:48
Speaker 2: they know I love fishing. In fact, when I'm daydreaming
1:51
Speaker 2: about my future, I often conjure up a mental show
1:54
Speaker 2: that involves me living somewhere close to a beach where
1:58
Speaker 2: I can smell the salt water every day and head
2:01
Speaker 2: out in the flats to sitefish for whatever might be
2:03
Speaker 2: cruising along. Now. I'm not about to plaster my truck
2:07
Speaker 2: with salt Life stickers, although I did notice that my
2:09
Speaker 2: wife had a salt Life hat on the other day,
2:12
Speaker 2: and I thought, Hmm, I can't think of someone less
2:15
Speaker 2: comfortable in the ocean than the very pasty and very
2:17
Speaker 2: suburban soccer mom. I happen to be married to who
2:21
Speaker 2: has the most irrational fear of fish in anyone I've
2:24
Speaker 2: ever met, and who is far far more comfortable on
2:29
Speaker 2: land than she is even wading in water where it's
2:32
Speaker 2: highly unlikely to encounter anything more dangerous than a bluegill
2:37
Speaker 2: any huski. I just like the idea of figuring out
2:40
Speaker 2: how to fish for a pile of different species in
2:43
Speaker 2: an environment that speaks to me on a level I
2:46
Speaker 2: can't quite explain. Since I'm quite a ways away from
2:49
Speaker 2: buying an ocean front property and retiring early, I bide
2:52
Speaker 2: my time fishing the freshwater lakes and rivers here in
2:55
Speaker 2: the Upper Midwest. To do this, I need a boat.
3:00
Speaker 2: Technically I don't need a boat, but if you love fishing,
3:03
Speaker 2: you need a boat. It's kind of like, sure, you
3:07
Speaker 2: can love pheasant hunting, but if you don't have a dog,
3:10
Speaker 2: do you really love pheasant hunting? Now? I have a
3:14
Speaker 2: new boat now, but from nineteen ninety nine until last
3:18
Speaker 2: March I had the same boat. It was a great boat.
3:21
Speaker 2: I loved it. It was a great boat for up
3:24
Speaker 2: to two people and occasionally a couple of dogs for
3:27
Speaker 2: taking kids or a whole family. A seventeen foot bass
3:31
Speaker 2: boat gets awful cramped in a hurry, And as I
3:34
Speaker 2: learned when one of my daughters tried to grab a
3:36
Speaker 2: lily pad flower when she was like four, it's very
3:39
Speaker 2: easy for a young kid to fall out of and
3:41
Speaker 2: go headfirst into the drink. At least she had her
3:44
Speaker 2: dad there to grab her by the ankle and haul
3:46
Speaker 2: her back in, which is more than I can say
3:48
Speaker 2: for myself when I went headfirst into the drink out
3:50
Speaker 2: of that boat one time. Now, as the girls got
3:53
Speaker 2: older and wanted to cast more, and as their dog
3:56
Speaker 2: pack went from one to two, I realized I was
3:59
Speaker 2: going to need a new boat. The problem was that
4:02
Speaker 2: the old blonde Buzzkill wasn't stoked about me replacing what
4:06
Speaker 2: she deemed as a perfectly fine piece of watercraft for
4:09
Speaker 2: something that cost a quarter of what our house cost
4:11
Speaker 2: when we bought it. After we got married. Since I'm
4:15
Speaker 2: a savvy fella, I started talking a lot about how
4:18
Speaker 2: the boat was just too small and someone was going
4:21
Speaker 2: to get hooked in the face, and really a seventeen
4:23
Speaker 2: foot boat was way, way too dangerous to take a
4:26
Speaker 2: family fishing it, especially when there were nineteen foot bass
4:30
Speaker 2: boats that are so much safer out there. You know.
4:33
Speaker 2: I dropped subtle hints for months. I mentioned that a
4:37
Speaker 2: couple of power poles on the back of the boat
4:39
Speaker 2: could make it really nice to bobber fish with my family,
4:43
Speaker 2: which is kind of my bride's chosen fishing style. I
4:46
Speaker 2: mentioned how if we just had some new grafts that
4:49
Speaker 2: I don't know, communicated with my trolling motor to bring
4:52
Speaker 2: us into the high tech world of modern fishing, the
4:54
Speaker 2: girls would probably catch more fish. She didn't seem super
4:58
Speaker 2: sold on the idea. I pointed out how a new
5:01
Speaker 2: boat could have a built in ladder on it, just
5:03
Speaker 2: in case we decided to haul some twelve year olds
5:05
Speaker 2: on tubes or go swimming for an afternoon in the summer.
5:08
Speaker 2: I played the long game, and when the boat sails
5:11
Speaker 2: started popping up, I showed my wife what a good
5:14
Speaker 2: deal we could get, and she loves a good deal.
5:16
Speaker 2: So that was that done and done, And it only
5:20
Speaker 2: took me like a year and a half of subtle
5:22
Speaker 2: conditioning to get her on board with the whole deal.
5:25
Speaker 2: The thing about life is we all want instant gratification.
5:31
Speaker 2: We want what we want, and we want that shit
5:33
Speaker 2: right now. But that's not how life works. It's not
5:36
Speaker 2: how big purchases in a marriage work, and it's not
5:39
Speaker 2: how things work in the white Tail woods. This hit
5:41
Speaker 2: me last week when I sweated my way through a
5:44
Speaker 2: swamp in northern Wisconsin with a backpack full of moultrees.
5:48
Speaker 2: While I do plan to hunt the early season over
5:50
Speaker 2: there in Packerland, it'll all be about my daughters at
5:54
Speaker 2: that time. I'm not going to go boat on over
5:57
Speaker 2: there myself until the rut. And you know, I even
5:59
Speaker 2: have a rifle hunt plan there this year, which is
6:02
Speaker 2: actually kind of one of the bigger reasons why I
6:04
Speaker 2: wanted to get cameras out now, even though that probably
6:06
Speaker 2: doesn't sound like it makes much sense. But you see,
6:10
Speaker 2: last year I spent some time scouting after I arrowed
6:12
Speaker 2: a buck over there in mid November. What I found
6:15
Speaker 2: was some bucks sign in some hell holes that felt
6:18
Speaker 2: like a tip of the old deer iceberg kind of thing.
6:22
Speaker 2: Felt like I was in a couple of places that
6:24
Speaker 2: bucks use to stay away from people in wolves and
6:27
Speaker 2: coyotes and whatever else. Now, I know that typical rut
6:30
Speaker 2: strategy is usually just to hang out on a terrain
6:32
Speaker 2: trap until something dumb and horny comes rolling along. My
6:36
Speaker 2: experience with that strategy is that it works very well
6:40
Speaker 2: in good places with high deer numbers. It isn't so
6:44
Speaker 2: simple in places with lots of hunting pressure, or where
6:46
Speaker 2: the deer density is low, or both. Instead of letting
6:51
Speaker 2: the rut put a deer in my lap, I decided
6:53
Speaker 2: I'd figure out where the big boys are likely to
6:55
Speaker 2: stick to and then cater a bow and rifle hunting
6:58
Speaker 2: strategy to those spots. Now, that seems simple enough, but
7:02
Speaker 2: hiking through the cattails and feeding roughly seventy five million
7:05
Speaker 2: mosquitoes and deer flies made it feel like something else. Oh.
7:09
Speaker 2: It's also hard to wrap my head around the reality
7:11
Speaker 2: of hanging cameras in July or August that might not
7:14
Speaker 2: show a deer on them until well into the bow season.
7:18
Speaker 2: It took me about five seconds of being in that
7:20
Speaker 2: swamp to realize that not a lot of deer would
7:22
Speaker 2: choose to be in there. Now, that's okay, I want
7:26
Speaker 2: those cameras soaking in there for a while and just
7:29
Speaker 2: waiting for when the nights get much cooler and the
7:32
Speaker 2: deer start realizing that it's hunting season once again. So far,
7:36
Speaker 2: my prediction of deer movement and those spots has been
7:38
Speaker 2: pretty much dead. On the sum total of deer pictures
7:42
Speaker 2: I've received has been a don of fawn that came
7:44
Speaker 2: in to sniff around after I left. I haven't had
7:48
Speaker 2: even a single spike on camera yet, no bucks, and
7:51
Speaker 2: I don't expect to anytime soon. I do expect that
7:55
Speaker 2: eventually the bucks will show up and they'll tip me
7:58
Speaker 2: off to something in their lives. The spots where I
8:01
Speaker 2: put those cameras are all pain to get to. They
8:04
Speaker 2: are also thick and just generally nasty, and they are
8:08
Speaker 2: all on trails where I have tree stand trees picked out,
8:11
Speaker 2: but I haven't hung any stands yet because I don't
8:14
Speaker 2: know if this strategy is going to work enough to
8:16
Speaker 2: convince me of the effort. I also know that since
8:19
Speaker 2: I have trees picked out, I can just slip in
8:21
Speaker 2: for a mobile hunt when the time is right, if
8:23
Speaker 2: that's the best or the easiest play. Now, is this
8:26
Speaker 2: a revolutionary trail camera strategy? Nope, not really. But if
8:31
Speaker 2: we dig into it a little, bit. I think it'll
8:33
Speaker 2: highlight why it's different, and different can be very good.
8:36
Speaker 2: So think about your summertime trail camera strategies. I bet
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Speaker 2: most year hunters who deploy a few digital scouters each
8:43
Speaker 2: summer lean super heavily toward food sources or water sources,
8:48
Speaker 2: or in a hell of a lot of places over
8:50
Speaker 2: some kind of attractant that has been placed specifically to
8:54
Speaker 2: draw a deer in. That's great, do whatever, But the
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Speaker 2: extent of the potential knowledge you can glean from this
9:01
Speaker 2: strategy doesn't favor a great rot hunt. What it does
9:05
Speaker 2: is offer you information for early season hunting potentially and
9:09
Speaker 2: definitely information on inventory. That's not nothing. But a lot
9:14
Speaker 2: of folks also happen to not hunt very hard in
9:16
Speaker 2: the early season, and so what they do is gather
9:19
Speaker 2: from this type of camera a strategy that you know
9:23
Speaker 2: tends to be less useful than it seems because they're
9:26
Speaker 2: probably not going to put the effort in right away
9:29
Speaker 2: to take advantage of that intel. And I've been guilty
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Speaker 2: of this many many years, which is why I'm taking
9:34
Speaker 2: a different approach this year. My thought is that if
9:37
Speaker 2: I can start to see when the big DearS show up,
9:40
Speaker 2: in the hell holes where they leave a lot of
9:42
Speaker 2: sign throughout the season, I can probably figure out a
9:45
Speaker 2: little better about how they will react to hunting pressure overall,
9:49
Speaker 2: you know, both from me and the girls and from
9:51
Speaker 2: the general pressure in the areas I hunt. I should
9:54
Speaker 2: be able to get a look into what happens when
9:56
Speaker 2: the bachelor groups break up and the deer go to
9:58
Speaker 2: the spots there's so advantageous to them. This is something
10:02
Speaker 2: I've been thinking about a lot, and was reminded of
10:05
Speaker 2: when I found a clear buckbed while scouting last week.
10:09
Speaker 2: Deer are prey animals, so their best offense is a
10:12
Speaker 2: great defense. The buckbed was right next to a dead fall,
10:17
Speaker 2: with thick brush behind him and some open meadow in front.
10:20
Speaker 2: It was ideal for a south wind, pretty dang good
10:24
Speaker 2: for a west wind, both of which we get a
10:26
Speaker 2: lot in the summer. Now. I don't know who made
10:29
Speaker 2: that bed, but I know that he understands what to
10:32
Speaker 2: do to survive. That's what I want to learn more
10:35
Speaker 2: about with this trail camera strategy. If it shows sporadic
10:47
Speaker 2: movement by something mature in any one of these spots,
10:50
Speaker 2: I should be able to dial down the most likely
10:53
Speaker 2: places that deer will cruise or lay down, sign or
10:56
Speaker 2: start to chase when the rut gets closer. And when
10:59
Speaker 2: I'm over there with a rifle in my hand and
11:01
Speaker 2: the rut is winding down, I should have a good
11:03
Speaker 2: idea of where the deer should go, you know, to
11:06
Speaker 2: get to those hell holes to evade the Orange army.
11:09
Speaker 2: I think this is possible to learn with this trail
11:13
Speaker 2: camera strategy. I think this strategy will actually go beyond
11:17
Speaker 2: just identifying some little sanctuaries too. The biggest thing that
11:22
Speaker 2: you know, us deer hunters get wrong about the rut
11:24
Speaker 2: is that it'll just put a buck in our laps
11:27
Speaker 2: no matter where we sit. So many hunters go to
11:30
Speaker 2: burned out stands in November thinking that the rut will
11:33
Speaker 2: erase six or eight weeks of overhunting. And in some
11:36
Speaker 2: cases they are right, but in a lot of cases
11:39
Speaker 2: they aren't. If you burn the doze out in an area,
11:43
Speaker 2: you're in trouble. If you burn the bucks out in
11:45
Speaker 2: an area, well, you're in trouble. Will the rut put
11:49
Speaker 2: some deer back in play, absolutely, but it often doesn't
11:53
Speaker 2: make hunting as easy as we'd like to believe. The
11:56
Speaker 2: rut is harder to hunt successfully than we've been told.
12:01
Speaker 2: It is an awesome time to be in the woods,
12:03
Speaker 2: for sure, but it's also true that if you're not
12:06
Speaker 2: hunting someplace unbelievably good, you're still hunting deer that know
12:10
Speaker 2: you and everyone else is after them. They do take
12:13
Speaker 2: more risks, but not as many as we want them
12:16
Speaker 2: to know. They do move in daylight, but not randomly.
12:21
Speaker 2: Their desire to pass on their jeans is no joke,
12:24
Speaker 2: but it doesn't compare to their desire to be around
12:27
Speaker 2: for another sunrise. In fact, there might be only a
12:30
Speaker 2: couple of days a year where a mature buck is
12:34
Speaker 2: really that vulnerable at all, and if he spends most
12:37
Speaker 2: of his time hold up with an astisk dough, you're
12:40
Speaker 2: mostly out of luck. The way to hedge your bets
12:44
Speaker 2: in favor of killing a deer like that is to
12:45
Speaker 2: get close to where he feels safe, to post up
12:48
Speaker 2: twenty five yards downwind of a trail that he uses
12:51
Speaker 2: because it offers him a lot of survival advantages to
12:55
Speaker 2: play off of his strategy to survive, and not just
12:58
Speaker 2: his desire to meet a receptively. He has lots of
13:02
Speaker 2: nighttime hours to go that way and not too many
13:05
Speaker 2: daylight hours in November where he has to be super
13:08
Speaker 2: concerned with his safety, so he really only has to
13:11
Speaker 2: get things right about eleven hours a day then, and
13:13
Speaker 2: that matters. So I guess my question for you, find
13:17
Speaker 2: folks would be how often do you have amazing rut hunts?
13:21
Speaker 2: How often do you have clunkers on the years where
13:24
Speaker 2: you wait for the rut to save you? How often
13:27
Speaker 2: does that work out? Or let's look at it another way,
13:30
Speaker 2: how many days would you need for your planned rut
13:33
Speaker 2: cation where you'd make a big bet that you definitely
13:37
Speaker 2: are going to kill a deer that qualifies as big
13:39
Speaker 2: to you? Is it two days or twenty? Maybe you
13:43
Speaker 2: don't need to sweat it out now to try to
13:45
Speaker 2: figure out where your local bucks feel most safe, because
13:48
Speaker 2: the rut usually delivers something amazing to you. That's great. Now,
13:52
Speaker 2: if you're listening to this and thinking that you've had
13:55
Speaker 2: more than your share of clunker hunts during November, you
13:58
Speaker 2: might want to ask yourself why, what is your typical
14:01
Speaker 2: strategy for hunting the rut. Does it involve going mobile
14:05
Speaker 2: on the edge of a known bedding area, or does
14:07
Speaker 2: it involve hauling a couple of bottles of dope and
14:10
Speaker 2: some rattling antlers out to the field edge stand. You've
14:12
Speaker 2: been hunting every week since mid September. Maybe to put
14:17
Speaker 2: a little finer point on this, I think a good
14:20
Speaker 2: way to look at rut strategies is to ask ourselves
14:23
Speaker 2: how confident we generally are in our November hunts. Are
14:27
Speaker 2: you confident because it's the rut and hey, anything can happen,
14:31
Speaker 2: or are you confident because you feel you put yourself
14:33
Speaker 2: in a really good situation to kill a cruiser. There's
14:37
Speaker 2: a huge difference there, and it's often the thing that
14:40
Speaker 2: divides the really successful hunters from folks who post up
14:43
Speaker 2: average results on any given season. Now, I'm not much
14:46
Speaker 2: interested in average, although I find myself there a lot.
14:50
Speaker 2: One of the ways that I'm trying to do better
14:52
Speaker 2: this season is to learn about the bucks in some
14:55
Speaker 2: of the spots I hunt in a way that I've
14:57
Speaker 2: never really tried before. Those cameras right now out there
15:01
Speaker 2: might show me something valuable, or they might not show
15:04
Speaker 2: me anything at all, But I think they will show
15:07
Speaker 2: me something I can work with. I'm curious if they
15:09
Speaker 2: show me height and travel around the bow opener or
15:12
Speaker 2: just around weekends in general, when there should be more
15:14
Speaker 2: people out in the woods. I'm curious what they'll show
15:17
Speaker 2: me when the youth gun season or whatever happens, will
15:21
Speaker 2: there be more activity in those spots, Let's say when
15:24
Speaker 2: the duck hunters hit the water, because that might actually
15:27
Speaker 2: play into some of the spots I hung cameras. What
15:31
Speaker 2: I'm looking for with this strategy is that if I
15:33
Speaker 2: can connect the likelihood of a buck using a little
15:36
Speaker 2: sanctuary around any human intrusion, or any other variable like
15:40
Speaker 2: certain wind directions or some kind of weather, the prevalence
15:44
Speaker 2: of coyotes or wolves. I'm also curious to see if
15:47
Speaker 2: there's any connection between deer movement in one part of
15:49
Speaker 2: a particular swamp versus another. Because I have cameras positioned
15:54
Speaker 2: on trails in two different spots. It might be all
15:58
Speaker 2: a bust, or it might not. The cool thing about
16:01
Speaker 2: whitetails is that we have this off season to work with,
16:03
Speaker 2: and we have plenty of days throughout the actual deer
16:06
Speaker 2: season to gather up a few nuggets of the good
16:08
Speaker 2: stuff that could point us in the right direction by
16:10
Speaker 2: early November. So while you're out there hanging a camera
16:14
Speaker 2: on the edge of the soybeans, or maybe your clover
16:16
Speaker 2: plot or hew over a mineral block where it's legal,
16:20
Speaker 2: or as I see from people who send me trail
16:22
Speaker 2: camera photos, or in real estate land listings in a
16:24
Speaker 2: hell of a lot of places where they aren't legal.
16:28
Speaker 2: Think about what you're going to learn. Think about your
16:31
Speaker 2: plan for the season. Is the goal to get on
16:33
Speaker 2: a bachelor group for the bow opener and try to
16:35
Speaker 2: tag out just hours into the season, or are you
16:39
Speaker 2: just doing something deer wise because you feel like you
16:42
Speaker 2: should and it's fun to get picks of bucks doing
16:44
Speaker 2: what they do in the summer. Maybe there is a
16:46
Speaker 2: way for you to divide up your cameras to serve
16:49
Speaker 2: vastly different services for you. In fact, I think old
16:53
Speaker 2: school non cell cameras are ideal for this strategy, if
16:56
Speaker 2: that makes it more palatable to put some of them
16:59
Speaker 2: in spots where you expect pretty dismal results for weeks
17:02
Speaker 2: on end. You know, obviously this whole thing is highly individualistic,
17:07
Speaker 2: but I want you to think about your camera usage.
17:09
Speaker 2: Maybe a single camera and a question mark spot can
17:12
Speaker 2: clue you into something really important for your rough hunts,
17:15
Speaker 2: something that the other hunters are never going to figure out.
17:18
Speaker 2: Because they are going to do exactly what they always do.
17:22
Speaker 2: Think about that and think about listening next week, because
17:25
Speaker 2: I'm going to talk about understanding dominance in the deer
17:28
Speaker 2: herd and why it can help your summer scouting. That's it.
17:35
Speaker 2: I'm Tony Peterson. This has been the Wire to Hunt
17:36
Speaker 2: Foundation's podcast, which has brought to you by first Light.
17:39
Speaker 2: As I mentioned in the intro, First Light has a
17:42
Speaker 2: whole pile of new white tail stuff coming out that
17:44
Speaker 2: you're going to want to check out at first light
17:46
Speaker 2: dot com. And if you want more hunting content videos,
17:51
Speaker 2: maybe a big game or recipe. Maybe you're heading on
17:54
Speaker 2: your first Antelope Houn or elkont here soon, whatever it is,
17:57
Speaker 2: whatever it you want to scratch in the outdoor, as
18:00
Speaker 2: we probably have you covered with some kind of content
18:02
Speaker 2: over at the media here dot com. Go check it out.