Latest / Wired To Hunt Podcast / Ep. 601: Foundations - A Little Rut Reflection Does A Hunter Good

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Ep. 601: Foundations - A Little Rut Reflection Does A Hunter Good · 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, and now your
0:10
Speaker 1: host Tony Peterson. Hey everyone, welcome to the Wire to
0:14
Speaker 1: Hunt Foundations podcast, which is brought to you by First Light.
0:17
Speaker 1: I'm your host, Tony Peterson, and today's episode is all
0:20
Speaker 1: about this recently past rut and what it did or
0:24
Speaker 1: didn't do for us. Listen, I want to apologize in
0:39
Speaker 1: advance to my Southern white tail hunting brothers and sisters.
0:44
Speaker 1: You find folks are always getting lumped into the same
0:47
Speaker 1: deer categories as the Midwest and Eastern hunters. It's a
0:51
Speaker 1: bad habit us Yankees have, and I do honestly feel
0:54
Speaker 1: bad about it, but I'm probably too old to change,
0:56
Speaker 1: so it is what it is. Anyway. This episode is
1:00
Speaker 1: all about dissecting the very recently wrapped up rut. Even
1:04
Speaker 1: if you happen to live where alligators and swamps dominate
1:07
Speaker 1: and your rut is just getting into full swing. You
1:09
Speaker 1: see what I did there, But it's pretty much over
1:11
Speaker 1: for a lot of us, and now is a good
1:14
Speaker 1: time to do a little the cropsy on your hunt.
1:17
Speaker 1: What revelations you discover now in your rut reflections could
1:22
Speaker 1: and probably should guide you next season. The old rut.
1:38
Speaker 1: She's a cold hearted mistress, my friends. Sure, she can
1:42
Speaker 1: be a lot of fun, but probably will mostly leave
1:45
Speaker 1: you feeling cheated and on the verge of being in
1:47
Speaker 1: trouble with your family and dissatisfied with your life choices.
1:51
Speaker 1: I don't know, maybe that's too harsh, but it is
1:54
Speaker 1: often a letdown. I remember back in my high school days.
1:58
Speaker 1: I think I was a junior and had a new
2:00
Speaker 1: girl move into our town and enrolling our school. Now,
2:03
Speaker 1: for those of you who grew up in bigger cities
2:05
Speaker 1: or the suburbs of bigger cities, this probably isn't gonna
2:08
Speaker 1: be too relatable. But in a little dairy farming community
2:11
Speaker 1: where you're graduating classes like seventy people and the whole
2:14
Speaker 1: population of your school probably wouldn't top a few hundred,
2:17
Speaker 1: it was a different thing. Now, this girl, we'll call
2:21
Speaker 1: her Laura because that was her name. She happened to
2:23
Speaker 1: be in some class in a library, and I happened
2:26
Speaker 1: to have a study hall or something that put me
2:28
Speaker 1: in a position to sneak into the library during her class. Now,
2:32
Speaker 1: I don't remember the details all that well, because there
2:34
Speaker 1: are about seven thousand bottles of gym being between me
2:37
Speaker 1: now and that moment. Then. Even though I haven't drinking
2:40
Speaker 1: like ten years, I do remember getting kicked out of
2:43
Speaker 1: her class one time, and I thought it was pretty
2:45
Speaker 1: wild to get booted from a class I wasn't even
2:47
Speaker 1: in anyway. I built her up in my head a lot.
2:53
Speaker 1: She was really pretty probably still is, and that clouded
2:56
Speaker 1: my vision quite a bit. I honestly never thought she'd
3:00
Speaker 1: go for me, and when she did, I really couldn't
3:03
Speaker 1: believe my luck. I felt things were really going the
3:06
Speaker 1: right way for old Antonio. But then I got to
3:08
Speaker 1: spend some time alone with her, and man, was that
3:12
Speaker 1: a let down. I'm sure there's plenty of fault on
3:15
Speaker 1: my end, but the conversations with her made the average
3:18
Speaker 1: accounting class seem like a rave I don't know, chock
3:21
Speaker 1: full of industrial drugs and world renow and DJ's tossing
3:24
Speaker 1: cakes into the crowd or whatever they do these days.
3:28
Speaker 1: It was just pure torture and never really got any better.
3:31
Speaker 1: It was a short romance, and one that shattered my
3:34
Speaker 1: illusion not only of her, but of expectations in general.
3:39
Speaker 1: And do you know what else is like? That Yep,
3:41
Speaker 1: you guessed it, rides at Disney World. Just kidding. It's
3:46
Speaker 1: the rut, that's right. That sweet sweet time that world
3:51
Speaker 1: class bullshitters like Mark Kenyon try to convince you is
3:54
Speaker 1: the best time ever, But only because he's hunting, you know,
3:58
Speaker 1: the dumbest bucks ever, amazing private properties. Because he's a
4:01
Speaker 1: hunting one per center you could never relate to in
4:04
Speaker 1: the real world. It's not so rosy. Let me give
4:09
Speaker 1: you an example from my recent hunt. I've been daydreaming
4:12
Speaker 1: about some public ground in western Minnesota four years while
4:17
Speaker 1: pheasant hunting out there. I've seen plenty of decent books,
4:20
Speaker 1: and I just love the challenge of hunting new areas.
4:23
Speaker 1: Add in the fact that I knew I'd be sharing
4:25
Speaker 1: the woods with other bow hunters and plenty of my
4:27
Speaker 1: fellow rooster chasers. I knew it was going to be
4:29
Speaker 1: a big challenge, but I wanted to do it anyway.
4:33
Speaker 1: Just like those big woods bucks that keep kicking me
4:35
Speaker 1: in the old apple bag. I can't resist the draw
4:38
Speaker 1: certain places in certain habitats, and the near certain reality
4:42
Speaker 1: that I will not kill a big one at any
4:44
Speaker 1: given time when I go out, but the possibility is
4:47
Speaker 1: there and playing the long game in spots like that
4:51
Speaker 1: is so rewarding to me. So I set my sights
4:54
Speaker 1: on hunting a few days there while we filmed Season
4:56
Speaker 1: two of one Week in November, and my goal was pole.
5:00
Speaker 1: I just wanted to shoot a buck, literally, any buck
5:03
Speaker 1: from a spike on up to a three. I knew
5:07
Speaker 1: I only had three days to do it for the
5:08
Speaker 1: gun opener, so my standards were low, but my optimism
5:12
Speaker 1: was high. Now. I scouted those spots last February and
5:17
Speaker 1: then again this October, and the trails were there, the
5:21
Speaker 1: sign was there, the deer, it seemed, were there, and
5:26
Speaker 1: as my cameraman and I got set up on November one,
5:29
Speaker 1: I felt pretty damn confident, despite the forecast which sucked
5:33
Speaker 1: so much. And even before first light on that first day,
5:37
Speaker 1: as we were just settling into our stands, I heard
5:40
Speaker 1: a deer running and then three doughs came in and
5:43
Speaker 1: walked all around us and that gloaming. They got there
5:46
Speaker 1: before legal shooting light and left just as it probably
5:49
Speaker 1: would have been legal to shoot them. I thought, Hell,
5:52
Speaker 1: I haven't even been here for half an hour and
5:54
Speaker 1: the run is already delivering deer into my lap. Even
5:56
Speaker 1: though a buck didn't show up, and we sat all
5:59
Speaker 1: day and we eventually saw another don a fawn, but
6:02
Speaker 1: nothing else. No Biggie, I thought it was in the seventies.
6:07
Speaker 1: The bugs were terrible and it was just November one.
6:11
Speaker 1: The second we hunted a different spot, and while the
6:14
Speaker 1: view was incredible, the deer movement sucked there too. That's
6:18
Speaker 1: when I made the call to hunt a river bottom
6:20
Speaker 1: on a different piece of public Now, when it's seventy
6:23
Speaker 1: four degrees with forty mile prior winds, it's pretty easy
6:26
Speaker 1: to talk yourself into changing locations. And the location we
6:29
Speaker 1: changed to is when I scouted on Halloween. It's my
6:33
Speaker 1: dream kind of rout spot a river system with clear
6:36
Speaker 1: pinch points along some of the bigger bends in the
6:38
Speaker 1: waterway in that part of the state, Just like in
6:41
Speaker 1: many parts of the country, it's really hard to find
6:44
Speaker 1: a better white tail cover than along rivers, especially cover
6:48
Speaker 1: that's connected to other cover that's connected to other cover.
6:52
Speaker 1: So we slipped in for an afternoon hunt, and my
6:54
Speaker 1: optimism was sky high after seeing a bunch of fresh
6:56
Speaker 1: deer tracks in the mud, but it wanes some when
7:00
Speaker 1: we got to the tree I had picked out because
7:02
Speaker 1: I was standing there at the base when I looked
7:05
Speaker 1: over to my left and I saw antlers. They're lying
7:08
Speaker 1: Not fifteen yards from my tree was a dead eight
7:11
Speaker 1: pointer right in the middle of the trail that I
7:14
Speaker 1: expected all the ear to come along. The coyotes had
7:17
Speaker 1: barely gotten to him. I couldn't tell for sure, but
7:21
Speaker 1: it looked like a gut shot and no recovery. I thought,
7:24
Speaker 1: what the hell are the odds of this? The spot
7:26
Speaker 1: was probably covered in coyote scent and probably had hunter's
7:30
Speaker 1: blood trailing through it at some point in the very
7:32
Speaker 1: recent past. Much of my optimism faded pretty hard then,
7:37
Speaker 1: but I saddled up anyway, and I saw two dos.
7:40
Speaker 1: I came back the next morning for another round, and
7:43
Speaker 1: I blanked on November three, so I'm back to my
7:46
Speaker 1: first spot set up again and saw two dos and
7:49
Speaker 1: another hunter who decided that ten acres of timber was
7:52
Speaker 1: definitely big enough for two bow hunters. Listen, I get it,
7:56
Speaker 1: it's public, but there were many many options there. Anyway.
8:01
Speaker 1: The moral of the story is I couldn't even kill
8:03
Speaker 1: a forky there during the rut, but the Wisconsin property
8:07
Speaker 1: I was headed to for the back half of my
8:08
Speaker 1: week would be a different story. And I knew it.
8:12
Speaker 1: It's ninety acres of beautiful bluff country, woods and fields
8:16
Speaker 1: and you can actually see Iowa from it, right across
8:19
Speaker 1: the river. How can you beat that? And even though
8:23
Speaker 1: the landowner had killed a really good buck on it
8:25
Speaker 1: a few days before we got there, I thought it
8:27
Speaker 1: was going to be easy, and it might have been,
8:30
Speaker 1: but that hot, windy weather we dealt with for the
8:32
Speaker 1: first three days brought in a major front. It rained,
8:37
Speaker 1: no no scratch that, It freaking poured for forty eight hours,
8:43
Speaker 1: just poured. Now, I love hunting in the rain, and
8:47
Speaker 1: I would have been out there doing my thing. But
8:49
Speaker 1: when you've got another person who was toting thousands and
8:51
Speaker 1: thousands of dollars for the camera gear, it's just another story.
8:55
Speaker 1: So I spent two days in my rut hunt sitting
8:57
Speaker 1: in box blinds, which just are not my thing. Now,
9:01
Speaker 1: if you're keeping track, that's five days of dogshit weather
9:05
Speaker 1: in a row. And when it broke, I thought it's
9:08
Speaker 1: gonna be on. Now. I went to a stand I
9:10
Speaker 1: hung the summer after some serious rout observation last year,
9:14
Speaker 1: and I would have bet you ten thousand dollars that
9:16
Speaker 1: I wouldn't blank on that set, and you know what,
9:20
Speaker 1: I'd have lost ten thousand dollars. It was humiliating. So
9:25
Speaker 1: I decided to go looking for the rut on the
9:27
Speaker 1: other side of the farm, and I had a dau
9:29
Speaker 1: fon come in bed buy me in a little patch
9:31
Speaker 1: of cover, which was pretty sweet because I hadn't seen
9:33
Speaker 1: a deer all day. I also very briefly saw a
9:37
Speaker 1: stud of a buck for about four seconds as he
9:39
Speaker 1: ran out of the neighbor's property and out of my life.
9:43
Speaker 1: So that's six days of rut hunting and I had
9:46
Speaker 1: seen a total of two bucks. On day seven. As
9:50
Speaker 1: it happens every time you film, my cameraman and I
9:54
Speaker 1: got into a whisper shouting match as he made too
9:56
Speaker 1: much noise getting into his stand and apparently I needed
9:59
Speaker 1: to chill the f out. When the sun rose, we
10:02
Speaker 1: made up, and then a beautiful thing happened. A six
10:05
Speaker 1: pointer walked in and sent checked that little patch of cover.
10:09
Speaker 1: It felt so good to see a buck do what
10:11
Speaker 1: bucks should do during the rut, even if he was
10:14
Speaker 1: about thirty. I almost shot him anyway, but I didn't
10:18
Speaker 1: want to deal with a barrage of assholes on YouTube.
10:20
Speaker 1: So he got a pass and I watched all of
10:23
Speaker 1: that deliciousness walk away. Later, from the totally wrong direction
10:28
Speaker 1: and way too fast for my taste, a much better
10:31
Speaker 1: eight pointer came running in, and you know what he did.
10:34
Speaker 1: He walked right into that little patch of cover and
10:36
Speaker 1: stopped in a spot where I really really had to
10:39
Speaker 1: thread the needle. But it worked, and while he made
10:42
Speaker 1: it farther than any of your should with a broad
10:44
Speaker 1: head through both of its lungs, the ruts saved my
10:48
Speaker 1: ass after serving me a world class beat down for
10:51
Speaker 1: six days. So you know what I'll do. I'll remember
10:55
Speaker 1: fondly on this rut as one that was great fun
10:58
Speaker 1: and such a blast froom start to finish. Now wasn't,
11:01
Speaker 1: of course, it was mostly pretty rough, but it taught
11:05
Speaker 1: me a few things. The first is something that we
11:08
Speaker 1: can all learn from, which is patience. When you're on
11:11
Speaker 1: a group chat with a random smattering of white tail
11:13
Speaker 1: hunters for a full week during the rut, some of
11:16
Speaker 1: whom don't have tons of experience, you get clued in
11:19
Speaker 1: real quick on how easy it is to keep looking
11:21
Speaker 1: for the rut. But that's a bad way to go
11:23
Speaker 1: about it. It really is. The rut will mostly come
11:27
Speaker 1: to you if you give it time, and if it doesn't,
11:30
Speaker 1: you can go look for it, but allow yourself some
11:35
Speaker 1: time in each spot. You have to choose wisely, of course,
11:38
Speaker 1: but if you do, you owe it to yourself to
11:41
Speaker 1: settle in and give it at least a day. Now,
11:44
Speaker 1: I know this seems like hypocritical advice because I've talked
11:46
Speaker 1: about moving, and I killed that buck by moving. But
11:49
Speaker 1: I'm saying, fine, spots that you believe in, at least
11:52
Speaker 1: give them a day. Let them show you what they're
11:54
Speaker 1: going to offer you. Now, this is hard to do
11:57
Speaker 1: because we've been conditioned to believe it's going to be
12:00
Speaker 1: bonkers everywhere in the woods, and when it's not, we
12:03
Speaker 1: think we're just in the place that it's not going bonkers,
12:05
Speaker 1: and it's going bonkers somewhere else. It might be, but
12:09
Speaker 1: the odds of you stumbling into it they're not all
12:11
Speaker 1: that great. Most of the time, the action is going
12:14
Speaker 1: to be pretty similar no matter where you go, until
12:16
Speaker 1: it breaks due to the weather or the seasonal timing,
12:19
Speaker 1: or almost always both. Now, another big reminder I got
12:23
Speaker 1: this year is something I talked about last week, which
12:26
Speaker 1: was that cover still king when the rut is on.
12:30
Speaker 1: Watching how one two ak or patch of thicker than
12:33
Speaker 1: the rest cover save my hunt is something that's going
12:36
Speaker 1: to stick with me. I've seen this a lot over
12:38
Speaker 1: the years, but it's such a good reminder of how
12:41
Speaker 1: the does are going to go where they feel safe,
12:43
Speaker 1: and the bucks damn well know it. There's also a
12:48
Speaker 1: major difference in how they check for dose when it's
12:50
Speaker 1: thick versus when it's pretty open. If they can see
12:54
Speaker 1: and hear a lot, there isn't much reason for a
12:57
Speaker 1: deep dive with their nose. They know there aren't dose around,
13:00
Speaker 1: and they're gonna keep going. But if there is a
13:03
Speaker 1: thicket or some other patch of nastiness that they can't
13:06
Speaker 1: see deer in or hear them, they're gonna get close
13:09
Speaker 1: and work it down wind or go right through it.
13:14
Speaker 1: This is like if you're fishing walleyes and you know
13:16
Speaker 1: they are on a gravel flat schooled up and I
13:18
Speaker 1: don't know following following bait fish around, you might have
13:22
Speaker 1: to make pass after pass to keep intercepting a few
13:25
Speaker 1: fish here and there. That's good, but what if on
13:29
Speaker 1: one of those passes you get bit and you realize
13:31
Speaker 1: that your graph had just showed you a boulder on
13:33
Speaker 1: the bottom, So you drop away point, you check your tracks,
13:37
Speaker 1: and you're swinging back through. You catch another fish and
13:40
Speaker 1: you realize there's several boulders in one little spot. Now,
13:44
Speaker 1: the gravel flat might hold fish randomly throughout, but that
13:48
Speaker 1: little spot with the bigger rocks, that's the place to be.
13:51
Speaker 1: It's the target for every drift, and it will make
13:54
Speaker 1: the whole trip more efficient and more fun. The right
13:58
Speaker 1: patch of cover does the same thing to running bucks.
14:00
Speaker 1: And you know what else I learned this year that
14:02
Speaker 1: might be of some value to every person who listened
14:04
Speaker 1: to this podcast. It's never, and I mean never, a
14:10
Speaker 1: good idea to throw a pity party. I honestly felt
14:14
Speaker 1: like I could not kill a deer in a high
14:16
Speaker 1: fence pen. For most of my rut hunt. I really
14:19
Speaker 1: thought I was going to eat my Minnesota my Wisconsin
14:21
Speaker 1: buck tags, which does not happen very often to me.
14:24
Speaker 1: I was frustrated, flabbergast, it flustered, gobsmacked, and just playing
14:29
Speaker 1: totally module less. It sucked. I hated it, and I
14:33
Speaker 1: don't ever want to feel it again. But you know what,
14:37
Speaker 1: I'll probably feel it. Oh, I don't know the first
14:40
Speaker 1: week of November next year, because the rut isn't the
14:44
Speaker 1: dream we believe it to be. But it's just a
14:46
Speaker 1: cool opportunity in the woods and hunt when the hunting
14:49
Speaker 1: could be really special. Even when the weather conspires against you,
14:54
Speaker 1: or the other hunters mess up your plans, or the
14:56
Speaker 1: deer just seemed to disappear, hunting during the run is
14:59
Speaker 1: always worth it. So was the early season and the
15:02
Speaker 1: lull in the late season. Actually, pretty much anytime you
15:05
Speaker 1: can get out and hunt. You just have to understand
15:07
Speaker 1: that if you don't hunt a badass farm in southern Iowa,
15:10
Speaker 1: you might just not have easy hunting. Even during the rut.
15:15
Speaker 1: You might have to be patient and let the deer
15:17
Speaker 1: trickle in on you. You might have to do that
15:20
Speaker 1: for a few days while your Western hunter heart tells
15:23
Speaker 1: you to keep looking and go find some action. To
15:26
Speaker 1: go find a new view and find the chase vest
15:28
Speaker 1: that you've been missing. You might also have to move.
15:32
Speaker 1: You might have to leave that pretty open deciduous forest
15:34
Speaker 1: or that nice clear cut or that meadow or that
15:36
Speaker 1: field edge. You might have to go to the cover
15:39
Speaker 1: to where the does are hiding out from the bucks
15:41
Speaker 1: and the hunters. Honestly, you might have to do a
15:45
Speaker 1: lot of things, but what you should do now is
15:49
Speaker 1: take a real hard look at your efforts the last
15:52
Speaker 1: couple of weeks and the results. Did you kill a buck, well,
15:58
Speaker 1: that's great, I'm happy for you, but don't count on
16:01
Speaker 1: killing a deer just like that next year. That's a
16:04
Speaker 1: trap that many of us fall into, and it often
16:06
Speaker 1: leads us to hunt on memories, which isn't always ideal.
16:09
Speaker 1: Did you not kill a buck? Why did you not
16:13
Speaker 1: have the time or did you not use your time wisely?
16:17
Speaker 1: Did you not see chasing or cruising or just genuinely
16:19
Speaker 1: experienced the rut like you hoped? Maybe you think it
16:23
Speaker 1: didn't happen, but I'll bet you that ten grand I
16:26
Speaker 1: mentioned earlier that you'll have fawns this spring, show up
16:30
Speaker 1: right when they're supposed to show up. Did you have fun?
16:35
Speaker 1: That's probably the most important question. If you can honestly
16:38
Speaker 1: answer yes, whether you killed one or not, then maybe
16:42
Speaker 1: your work is done. Maybe you haven't figured out. But
16:45
Speaker 1: if you didn't, or you feel like it could have
16:47
Speaker 1: been more enjoyable, a little reflection on the whole thing
16:52
Speaker 1: can set you up for a better hunt. Next year,
16:55
Speaker 1: So think about it. You have the time now, Ask yourself,
17:00
Speaker 1: what would you do differently if you knew now which
17:03
Speaker 1: you didn't know on October thirty one this year. Then
17:06
Speaker 1: tell yourself that's what you'll do next year, and then
17:10
Speaker 1: do it. That's it for this week. Next week, I'm
17:13
Speaker 1: going to talk about doze and how they don't get
17:15
Speaker 1: much love but they should, especially as we round the
17:19
Speaker 1: corner toward the late season and for most of us,
17:23
Speaker 1: the hardest hunting of the year. That's it for this week.
17:28
Speaker 1: I'm Tony Peterson. This has been the Wire to Hunt
17:30
Speaker 1: Foundations podcast, which has brought to you by First Light.
17:32
Speaker 1: As always, thank you so much for listening and for
17:34
Speaker 1: all your support. I truly, honestly, absolutely appreciate it. I
17:38
Speaker 1: love it, Thank you so much. If you want some
17:40
Speaker 1: more white tail content, you can head over to our
17:42
Speaker 1: YouTube channel, the wire to Hunt YouTube channel that is,
17:45
Speaker 1: and see a bunch of how to stuff that Mark
17:47
Speaker 1: and I have put together. Or you can go to
17:49
Speaker 1: the mediator dot com slash wired and read a bunch
17:52
Speaker 1: of articles for Mark, myself and a whole slew of
17:55
Speaker 1: white tail killers