Latest / Wired To Hunt Podcast / Ep. 964: Foundations - Big Buck Sign and What it Means Right Now

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Ep. 964: Foundations - Big Buck Sign and What it Means Right Now · 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 Foundation's podcast,
0:23
Speaker 2: which is brought to you by first Light. I'm your host,
0:24
Speaker 2: Tony Peterson, and today's episode is all about how to
0:27
Speaker 2: find and more importantly interpret big Bucks Sign in the
0:30
Speaker 2: days leading up to the pre run. The thing about
0:35
Speaker 2: Bucks sign is that it seems pretty straightforward. Bucks go
0:38
Speaker 2: out and they make some scrapes, and they make some rubs.
0:40
Speaker 2: You go find them, you sit over them, and you
0:41
Speaker 2: shoot the rightful creators of that sign, right and the lungs,
0:44
Speaker 2: and then you celebrate simple right. Well, if it were,
0:46
Speaker 2: finding sign would be the equivalent of snapping the last
0:49
Speaker 2: piece of the puzzle in place, but it's often not.
0:52
Speaker 2: It is a huge step in the right direction, but
0:53
Speaker 2: you need to know what the sign really means and
0:55
Speaker 2: how you can use it to make better decisions.
0:57
Speaker 3: That's what I'm going to talk about right now.
1:03
Speaker 2: There are a lot of memes out there about how
1:05
Speaker 2: people aren't good at picking up the signals of other
1:07
Speaker 2: people who might possibly become potential partners. If you get
1:10
Speaker 2: my drift, I can speak on this from the side
1:13
Speaker 2: of a clueless man, and it's not impossible for me
1:15
Speaker 2: to relate to some dude who finds himself well, I
1:17
Speaker 2: don't know, fishing or mowing the lawn or something, and
1:20
Speaker 2: suddenly realizing that an old coworker who he had a
1:23
Speaker 2: great relationship with was actually flirting super heavy, you know,
1:26
Speaker 2: during his time at the company, maybe during a Christmas party,
1:29
Speaker 2: and he missed every signal, like he was not only blind,
1:33
Speaker 2: but deaf and possibly just a little bit slow. In
1:35
Speaker 2: other cognitive ways, we often see what we expect to see,
1:39
Speaker 2: and that helps us deal with life. If we figure
1:41
Speaker 2: something is going to go wrong with the car at
1:43
Speaker 2: some point because it has over one hundred thousand miles
1:45
Speaker 2: on it, well, guess what something's going to go wrong
1:48
Speaker 2: with it? And when it does, we can say to ourselves,
1:50
Speaker 2: I knew it. I just knew it, and then we
1:53
Speaker 2: can bitch about it and feel a little better about
1:55
Speaker 2: living under this NonStop rain cloud that follows us around
1:58
Speaker 2: everywhere like a duckling imprinted on us after hatching. In life,
2:02
Speaker 2: it's not only about recognizing the signs, but reacting to
2:05
Speaker 2: them in the right way. In the deer woods, the
2:08
Speaker 2: sign literally is deer sign, and how we react to
2:11
Speaker 2: it will poortend our big buck futures. Let me tell
2:14
Speaker 2: you how this usually goes, or at least how it
2:17
Speaker 2: goes for an awful lot of hunters. They start out
2:19
Speaker 2: in the early season and there's very little sign, at
2:22
Speaker 2: least when it comes to rubs and scrapes. As the
2:25
Speaker 2: season progresses, they go back to the box blind on
2:27
Speaker 2: the food plot, or they go to one of their
2:29
Speaker 2: favorite ladder stands, and they start to see a few
2:31
Speaker 2: more rubs show up, maybe a few more scrapes. The
2:34
Speaker 2: field edge they like to sit gets picked and generally
2:36
Speaker 2: has less food to offer them previously, but it also
2:39
Speaker 2: has far more sign on the edge. So how do
2:41
Speaker 2: they interpret that? Well, they think the bucks are getting
2:44
Speaker 2: more active. And since they are getting more active and
2:46
Speaker 2: clearly visiting this spot on this very food source or
2:49
Speaker 2: this very logging road that I take to my favorite stand,
2:52
Speaker 2: my comfort stand, if you will, then that is evidence
2:55
Speaker 2: that I should one hundred percent keep hunting. Here because
2:58
Speaker 2: now the bucks are coming to me. We advance that
3:01
Speaker 2: line of thinking a little further by using it to
3:03
Speaker 2: justify hunting areas that might be totally burned out, especially
3:07
Speaker 2: during the rut.
3:08
Speaker 3: But what does that sign really mean?
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Speaker 2: Well, it definitely means that some bucks are using that
3:12
Speaker 2: area at some point, and some of those bucks, hell,
3:16
Speaker 2: probably all of them, have been laying down some sign. Now,
3:19
Speaker 2: if you are hunting a load deer density area, all
3:22
Speaker 2: this might matter more than if you're hunting a spot
3:24
Speaker 2: that has seventy five dear per square mile. But still,
3:27
Speaker 2: what does it really mean to you? If deer laying
3:30
Speaker 2: down a lot of sign around a destination food source,
3:32
Speaker 2: we usually know what that means, and if not, we
3:35
Speaker 2: can sit that food source in an evening or two
3:37
Speaker 2: and see exactly what's going on. They are either there
3:40
Speaker 2: in the daylight or not. And the more pressure in
3:42
Speaker 2: your area, which includes the pressure you put on that
3:45
Speaker 2: exact food source, the more likely it is that that
3:48
Speaker 2: sign is appearing in the middle of the night. Pretty
3:50
Speaker 2: simple stuff, right, and yet we often kind of look
3:54
Speaker 2: past it so we can hunt in a way that
3:56
Speaker 2: is really comfortable for us.
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Speaker 3: But does that usually.
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Speaker 2: Result in mature bucks dying from our actions. Not really,
4:02
Speaker 2: and listen, I love seeing rubs and scrapes when I'm hunting,
4:05
Speaker 2: no matter where I'm hunting. I wouldn't be much of
4:08
Speaker 2: a deer hunter if I didn't. But it often doesn't
4:10
Speaker 2: mean that much to me because I've learned that finding
4:13
Speaker 2: deer sign isn't just a passive thing for me, because
4:16
Speaker 2: when it was, it really didn't change the outcomes of
4:18
Speaker 2: most of my seasons.
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Speaker 3: Now let me frame this up a different way.
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Speaker 2: Even an awesome concentration of sign around certain spots won't
4:27
Speaker 2: convince me that I need to hunt there, while in
4:29
Speaker 2: other areas, if I find even a little bit of
4:32
Speaker 2: buck sign, I will hang and hunt almost instantly. Why
4:36
Speaker 2: is this, Well, you have to sort of gauge the
4:39
Speaker 2: value of the sign. Let me give you an easy one.
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Speaker 2: Up in the big woods, where I mostly get my
4:44
Speaker 2: ass kicked, I don't usually find a lot of sign
4:47
Speaker 2: because the deer density is low, so I really like
4:50
Speaker 2: finding any rubs up there. And since it's well big woods,
4:54
Speaker 2: the rubs are generally in the timber, so that's something
4:57
Speaker 2: I have to parse out and decide whether it matters
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Speaker 2: or not. So take a random single rub on a
5:03
Speaker 2: hillside in ten thousand acres of public land. That's a
5:06
Speaker 2: great find. But does it mean anything to me? Maybe
5:10
Speaker 2: that depends on which way it's facing, and if that
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Speaker 2: can tell me where he likely came from when he
5:15
Speaker 2: made it. Again, pretty simple stuff, But you can decide
5:19
Speaker 2: if rubs were made in the mornings or the evenings
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Speaker 2: a lot of times by the way they face.
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Speaker 3: And that's a good start.
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Speaker 2: But what if that rub also happens to be facing
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Speaker 2: a crossing, you know, one that I know exists between
5:29
Speaker 2: two swamps. Now I have a direction of travel tied
5:33
Speaker 2: to a spot that should further funnel deer travel. That's
5:36
Speaker 2: kind of like hunting an early season spot that not
5:38
Speaker 2: only has water but also acorns dropping. The more reasons
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Speaker 2: they have to be there, the better. Now, what if
5:45
Speaker 2: that single rub leads me to scout that pinch point
5:48
Speaker 2: and on the other end of that I find a
5:50
Speaker 2: good sized scrape with a licking branch hanging over. Now
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Speaker 2: I have evidence of a buck crossing there, and evidence
5:56
Speaker 2: that he's not the only one, because you don't usually
5:59
Speaker 2: have a community scrape without a community of deer. If
6:01
Speaker 2: you get my drift, the scrape is there because multiple
6:05
Speaker 2: deer does and bucks are using that crossing, and now
6:08
Speaker 2: they are getting serious about keeping tabs on one another.
6:11
Speaker 2: That's not nothing, and that's worth hunting to me. But
6:14
Speaker 2: I'm not likely to find that if I don't go
6:16
Speaker 2: look for it. So let's take another example here. Let's
6:20
Speaker 2: start with that single rub from before. It's cool, but
6:23
Speaker 2: it's only on an inch thick sapling. That's great, but
6:26
Speaker 2: anyone from a forky to a booner could have made it.
6:29
Speaker 2: It's not the kind of sign that is likely to
6:30
Speaker 2: get a whole lot of folks to carry us saddle
6:32
Speaker 2: and some sticks in there and see who's hanging around.
6:35
Speaker 2: But I view that slightly different because I've literally never
6:38
Speaker 2: seen a buck make a giant rub, but I've seen
6:40
Speaker 2: a few giants make small rubs. I take all sizes
6:44
Speaker 2: of rubs seriously because I don't believe they are highly
6:46
Speaker 2: correlated to the size a buck that made them. Now, granted,
6:50
Speaker 2: that wooden fence post rub is probably not from a spike,
6:53
Speaker 2: but most of the rubs aren't giant. They're small, and
6:56
Speaker 2: overlooking them is a mistake if you just attribute them
6:59
Speaker 2: to Now, with that rub, that's okay, it's nothing special,
7:03
Speaker 2: but maybe you can walk it out and find some more,
7:07
Speaker 2: all generally in the same direction. Then you have a
7:10
Speaker 2: rub line. And rub lines are a totally different thing
7:12
Speaker 2: because they generally exist in the woods, and to me,
7:15
Speaker 2: they generally signal a direction that bucks travel in the cover,
7:20
Speaker 2: often enough to leave a viable trail of breadcrumbs for
7:24
Speaker 2: me to follow. Those rubs will exist between two general locations,
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Speaker 2: betting and food. There is nothing we want to find
7:32
Speaker 2: more than the spots in the cover where bucks move
7:36
Speaker 2: from point A to B, because when you find that,
7:39
Speaker 2: you find your opportunity to kill those deer.
7:43
Speaker 3: That's it.
7:44
Speaker 2: And while we can try to solve this academically by
7:46
Speaker 2: using our brains to decide where they sleep and where
7:49
Speaker 2: they fill their bellies, hard undeniable evidence will always trump
7:53
Speaker 2: what we think. Now you can predict to some degree
8:07
Speaker 2: of certainty where they are going in the mornings or
8:10
Speaker 2: the evenings, although I often find that it's not both.
8:14
Speaker 2: I feel like deer in a lot of places have
8:15
Speaker 2: routes that are more of a circuit than a straight line.
8:19
Speaker 2: I actually think when you start to think about their
8:21
Speaker 2: movement this way, you realize how much more important boots
8:24
Speaker 2: on the ground scouting is especially in season boots on
8:28
Speaker 2: the ground scouting, and that kills big Bucks. But to
8:31
Speaker 2: further muddy the waters, I absolutely believe that they're not straight.
8:36
Speaker 2: Line routes are heavily influenced by conditions, primarily the wind.
8:41
Speaker 2: So what you read off a smoking fresh rub line
8:44
Speaker 2: might be his travel route only when the wind is
8:46
Speaker 2: blowing from the west or the north or whatever. But
8:50
Speaker 2: it's still really valuable information. You can make your best
8:53
Speaker 2: guess and then go there to sit, and what they
8:56
Speaker 2: show you will tell you an awful lot about how
8:59
Speaker 2: good you are at interpreting sign This is part of
9:02
Speaker 2: the equation that we really under sell, but it's maybe
9:06
Speaker 2: the most important thing you can do if you want
9:08
Speaker 2: to get better at killing big Bucks. You have to
9:10
Speaker 2: understand that the solution to your problems will be found
9:13
Speaker 2: mostly internally and not externally. You can listen to me
9:18
Speaker 2: Yam or On or Mark talk NonStop about a property
9:20
Speaker 2: you'll never hunt and how we figured it out, and
9:23
Speaker 2: that's great, But what you do on your ground is
9:25
Speaker 2: what matters the most. How you scout and how you
9:29
Speaker 2: hunt it, and how you interpret that data to make
9:32
Speaker 2: future decisions.
9:33
Speaker 3: That's how you level up.
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Speaker 2: The easiest way to do this right now is through
9:38
Speaker 2: scouting bucks sign, but only if you're going to take
9:41
Speaker 2: action with it. Like I said before, it's not enough
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Speaker 2: to just get excited that you see sign popping up
9:46
Speaker 2: in places where you usually already hunt, because that will
9:49
Speaker 2: get you predictable results, which often aren't multiple seasons of
9:53
Speaker 2: big taxidermy bills. Now, I realize this is counterintuitive to
9:57
Speaker 2: most your hunting advice, which would just have you stay
10:00
Speaker 2: out of the woods right now. I believe the opposite.
10:04
Speaker 2: I believe the sign you find right now is the
10:06
Speaker 2: ticket to hire odds hunts throughout the pre rut and
10:10
Speaker 2: to a lesser extent, the rut. The reason I say
10:13
Speaker 2: this is because the sign you find right now, if
10:15
Speaker 2: it's the right stuff, can put you exactly where a
10:19
Speaker 2: big one will move on October twenty seventh when a
10:22
Speaker 2: cold front hits, but it might not matter when he's
10:25
Speaker 2: chasing a hot dough on the neighbor's place a week
10:27
Speaker 2: or two after that. The more years that go by,
10:31
Speaker 2: the more I come to value the last week of
10:33
Speaker 2: October the most. That's because where I live, that's the
10:37
Speaker 2: pre rut, just through and through, you know, down south
10:40
Speaker 2: and the southeast. The pre rut might be way later,
10:43
Speaker 2: but the same rules apply. Now, let's take a little
10:46
Speaker 2: different look at buck sign right now. You know what
10:49
Speaker 2: other type of sign I really really like? A concentration
10:53
Speaker 2: of sign in a small area in the cover. No shit,
10:57
Speaker 2: you might say, and you'd be right. But here's why.
11:01
Speaker 2: Where I generally hunt, there's a lot of hunting pressure.
11:04
Speaker 2: By the middle of October. That pressure has influenced your
11:07
Speaker 2: behavior more than the weather the moonface ever could. It's
11:10
Speaker 2: the driving factor behind most daylight movement in my opinion.
11:15
Speaker 2: So when I sneak through the woods with a stand
11:17
Speaker 2: and sticks on my back and I see a whole
11:19
Speaker 2: bunch of rubs or smaller scrapes in a not very
11:22
Speaker 2: big area, say something less than an acre, I usually
11:25
Speaker 2: don't go any farther because that's not from one buck.
11:29
Speaker 2: It's usually a staging area, and it definitely signals to
11:32
Speaker 2: me that the local bucks feel pretty confident being in
11:34
Speaker 2: that area. I think bucks are going to make rubs
11:37
Speaker 2: and scrapes when they're on their feet at certain times
11:40
Speaker 2: of the season, regardless of where they are, and I
11:43
Speaker 2: think when they view it as a not so safe
11:46
Speaker 2: endeavor to head out to the pitcornfields an hour before
11:49
Speaker 2: dark because there's always hunters there. They just kind of
11:51
Speaker 2: sit tight but still do their thing. It honestly feels
11:55
Speaker 2: a little like when you watch a UFC event and
11:58
Speaker 2: they show some of the fighters backstage in their dressing room.
12:01
Speaker 2: You know, obviously their nerves are on fire and they
12:03
Speaker 2: are putting on a show for the cameras and all that,
12:05
Speaker 2: but they're constantly moving, constantly shadow boxing. There's just this
12:10
Speaker 2: air of pent up aggression, if you will. I think
12:13
Speaker 2: bucks in mid October are sort of in a similar mindset.
12:16
Speaker 2: And I also think a common mistake hunters make when
12:19
Speaker 2: they find this kind of buck sign concentration is that
12:22
Speaker 2: it's more of a betting area than a staging area.
12:25
Speaker 2: I'm sure that's possible, but I tend to think the
12:28
Speaker 2: more rubs and scrapes you find in one area, the
12:30
Speaker 2: more likely it is that multiple Bucks are using this area.
12:34
Speaker 2: You know, betting areas can also have multiple Bucks in them,
12:36
Speaker 2: and you can definitely find them through sign, but it's
12:40
Speaker 2: just a different vibe and I don't really even know
12:42
Speaker 2: how to describe it very well. I just know that
12:44
Speaker 2: when I find a spot that has a shitload of random,
12:47
Speaker 2: you know, rubs and some scrapes, and I hunt it
12:50
Speaker 2: well enough to not make my presence known going in.
12:52
Speaker 2: I usually have really positive results. Again, this depends somewhat
12:58
Speaker 2: on deer density, because the more deer you have, generally,
13:01
Speaker 2: the more Buck signed there will be generally, But a
13:04
Speaker 2: real concentration says something different because on properties that have
13:08
Speaker 2: a lot of pressure, that means something. Now, it's also
13:12
Speaker 2: no secret that when I usually find these types of areas,
13:14
Speaker 2: it's after sneaking in to look at a few question
13:17
Speaker 2: mark spots. It's not usually the kind of thing where
13:19
Speaker 2: they appear in areas that I've already been hunting. Now,
13:22
Speaker 2: maybe that's part psychological. You know, where I value new
13:26
Speaker 2: to me sign over sign that gradually appears. You know,
13:28
Speaker 2: like how you can't really tell how fat your dog is,
13:31
Speaker 2: but someone who doesn't see your dog for long periods
13:34
Speaker 2: of time can instantly see that it has chubbed way up.
13:37
Speaker 2: So what does all this mean? It means that buck
13:40
Speaker 2: sign is relative to a whole ton of variables. It's
13:44
Speaker 2: up to you to not only find the sign, but
13:45
Speaker 2: to decide what exactly it means To you now. While
13:48
Speaker 2: it might mean that it just reinforces the plan you've
13:51
Speaker 2: had for your season all along, be careful with.
13:54
Speaker 3: That line of thinking.
13:55
Speaker 2: It's easy to see what we want to see. What
13:59
Speaker 2: you really want to find is the buck sign that
14:01
Speaker 2: makes you ask a question, why is this rub here now?
14:06
Speaker 2: Or why is this car hood size scrape here now?
14:09
Speaker 2: And they need to ask yourself what should you do
14:12
Speaker 2: about it? How do you use that discovery to actually
14:15
Speaker 2: kill a buck in the next couple of days or
14:17
Speaker 2: next week when a cold front hits and you could
14:19
Speaker 2: go sit on the field edge on a setup that's
14:21
Speaker 2: been there since August and you probably will see some deer,
14:24
Speaker 2: maybe even a few bucks. Or you could slip into
14:27
Speaker 2: that area with a new sign when the temperature drops
14:30
Speaker 2: and the north wind blows, and you can try to
14:32
Speaker 2: answer the question of just who made that sign? I
14:36
Speaker 2: guess that leads me to my final point on all this.
14:38
Speaker 2: You won't learn what that rub line means, or that
14:41
Speaker 2: community scrape, or that real concentration of sign, know what
14:45
Speaker 2: it signifies until you put something into action around it.
14:49
Speaker 2: This isn't just time to drop a camera and cross
14:51
Speaker 2: your fingers. It's time to go looking because what you
14:54
Speaker 2: find this week is where you might kill a big
14:56
Speaker 2: one next week. A lot of hunters will say that
14:58
Speaker 2: it's not worth it to trump around in the woods
15:00
Speaker 2: right now to find that sign, but I absolutely disagree
15:03
Speaker 2: with that. I think to set up for killing a
15:06
Speaker 2: big one doesn't get much better than finding the right
15:08
Speaker 2: buck clues right now to get on them before the
15:11
Speaker 2: rut really breaks loose. In fact, other than patterning one
15:15
Speaker 2: for an early opener, I think consistency wise, this is
15:19
Speaker 2: the highest likelihood setup for most hunters. I think it's
15:22
Speaker 2: more reliable than a rut hunt on a pinch point, honestly,
15:25
Speaker 2: and I don't say that lightly. Soak it out there,
15:28
Speaker 2: look around. If you find some sign worth hunting, figure
15:32
Speaker 2: out how to hunt it, or take a look at
15:33
Speaker 2: the next ten day forecast or whatever, and make a
15:37
Speaker 2: plan to hunt it when the conditions coalesce into something favorable.
15:41
Speaker 2: Good luck, and don't forget to come back next week
15:43
Speaker 2: because I'm going to talk about shot opportunities, when to
15:46
Speaker 2: take them, whether you should stop a buck, and all
15:48
Speaker 2: that jazz.
15:51
Speaker 3: That's it for this week. I'm Tony Peterson.
15:53
Speaker 2: This has been the Wire to Hunt Foundation's podcast, which
15:56
Speaker 2: is brought to you by first Light. I know you
15:58
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