And we're back with another episode of Cutting the Distance podcast. I'm Dirk Durham and though elk season is in full swing right here in the West, there are some folks in the Midwest, in the East and southern US sitting in trees right now in ground blinds looking to punch their deer tag. Today on the show, I have a
buddy of mine, whitetail expert Tony Peterson. You probably already know who Tony is, or his name might even sound familiar, because he's written umpteen articles about hunt and whitetail deer and a whole bunch of other stuff for many major publications over the years. He's even authored several books and developed multiple podcasts and currently writing articles and featured in Whitetail Edu films at Meat Eater. Welcome to the show.
Thanks for having me, buddy.
So what's your fall look like? You got anything cool going on? Is it just hunting your home state or what are you doing? Man?
You know you brought that up in the intro about all the Western hunters chasing elk and I really wrestled with an elk hunt this year. You know, Colorado's last year for you know, total over the counter, and I was like, I gotta go do it. Been working out all year, but my daughter drew a bear tag over in Wisconsin and the opener is first weekend in September, and so I was like, or you know, first week is September, I should say, And I thought, man, if I go out and hunt elk, I'm gonna I'm going
to miss that. And you know, you know how it is with our jobs, October and November pretty much spoken for, so I figured i'd better stay home. But you know, that'll be fun. I'll be hunting over there in Wisconsin with for the girls, try to get them a deer, you know, try to get her a bear. And you know, I've got Minnesota, I've got North Dakota. I'm head out
there in film some public land stuff. And then I did draw a an Iowa white tail tag this year, so I'm putting a little time into that to scouting, go down there and try to shoot one on public probably the end October. So I don't have a too wild and crazy of a schedule this year, but it'll be a pretty good fall.
Yeah, it sounds like you'll be busy enough and having some fun getting out there. How old are your daughters? They're twelve twelve, man, that's awesome taking down a big, old black bear. That's got to be a pretty cool experience for a kid.
Well, we'll see. I am not a very good bear hunter, and we you know, we have pretty low standards. I have a couple of bears that look like they're your typical kind of two year old bear that's, you know, not very big, but pretty easy to pack out and pretty easy to butcher and everything. And I'm kind of I'm kind of pinning my hopes on a couple of those. I do have one other bear that looks he's kind of a long, skinny bear, but he's he's definitely old
than some of the other ones. But it's I'm not I'm I'm just hoping for a loan bore to walk in. I don't care if he's one hundred and twenty five pounds or three hundred and fifty pounds at this point.
That's that's the great, that's the perfect expectation. You know, just go and just have a good hunt, and you know, maybe maybe she'll get a giant, maybe not, but it'll it'll be fun either way.
Yeah, I mean, you know where we're at in Wisconsin. Up until about two years ago, they just changed the quota and the tag system to allow people a lot more people to hunt each year. So it used to be like eight years you had to wait where we're at. So the trophy quality was incredible, but our fawn recruitment and just the crop damage and everything was just a lot of people were complaining. So now it's like two years and so there's a lot more bears getting killed
over there. So you can even see just in a little bit of time that I've I've baited them over there and run cameras. I can see that, you know, your odds of killing one that's like four hundred plus, which was not like totally out of the question a couple of years ago because there were old bears there. Now that's changing, and it's starting to to me it's kind of starting to look a lot more like Minnesota.
I don't know, I mean, that might not be a great reference for people, but you see a lot of bears in like the you know, one hundred and twenty five hundred and fifty pound range till like two point fifty. You know, three hundred is a really good one. But that's a pretty good bear anywhere, really.
Right, That's kind of like North Idaho your average bear, you know, you're looking at like one hundred and twenty five hundred and thirty pound bear to you know, to two hundred pounds, you know, that's pretty average. You get in that three hundred three fifty that's definitely an exceptional bear. And they're not under every under every log, you know, they're they're you may have to hunt a while before
you get one of those. Now, I will say some of the guys are able to get way deep into the back country some of the wilderness stuff that it's very difficult to get to away from baiting and hound hunt hunting. Then those guys can usually find some pretty old old bores. But if you're very close to a road, then those bears the age class is just not there.
So yeah, and we don't have I mean, I'm sure there's probably some national forest that you could get way back in on and maybe do that there too, but just the access out here in the Midwest is different. I mean, it's not like you can go eight miles deep in the back country, you know, and there and where we hunt there are people who are running hounds pretty heavy, and they're pretty good at it, you know. They they're they're local and they know what they're doing.
So but it's I don't care, Like I don't. I want her to have a good hunt, and we're you know, we're heading over there and doing a lot of work baiting, and I just want I just want a chance. You know, she doesn't care what size it is. I don't care what size it is. And I just think it would be really really cool to be sitting there and see a black bear coming in. So our goal is a bear, just like when we hunt, we're just hunting deer.
Yep, yep, that's awesome. I love it. So I kind of read off your all your accomplishments over the years, written lots and lots of articles, hundreds, i'm sure for major publications. When did you get into writing.
Man, I think you could say it would be thousands at this point, to be honest with you, I mean I got into it. I always wanted to be a writer, you know, growing up. I just the way I grew up, you know, it was like never really felt like a possibility. I mean, everybody kind of went into the trades or you just got a job at where, you know, wherever, and you worked until you retired. You know, it wasn't
it wasn't like you were chasing your dreams. But I just kind of had the itch and I got a chance to write for a few deer organizations here in Minnesota. You know, when I was like nineteen twenty, I wrote for free, and then I approached the Minnesota Outdoor News about writing for them, and they bought a piece from me,
a trout fishing piece in two thousand and three. And that just getting that thirty five dollars check from that article changed how I looked at the whole thing, Like I just I was like, oh my god, like somebody will actually pay me, you know, And I mean it was it was like peanuts, right. I remember listening to Steve Ranella Tak and he said he got paid four
grand for his first article. You know, different worlds. But you know, I kind of that little little bit of a fire that didn't I didn't really get it going until I was like I had worked some jobs that I hated with a passion, and I was like, I don't see myself as the kind of person who can do something I hate for the rest of my life.
And so I started to just sort of try to backfill a little bit by writing as much as I could anybody who would who would say yes, And it sort of just spiraled into a couple jobs in the industry, and I just got I feel like, I just got really lucky, and I just, you know, because I was super passionate about fishing, and I was super passionate about bow hunting white tails, you know, and then the dog stuff came along and the Western stuff and just it's sort of it sort of forced me to do tons
of things in the outdoors because you get you know, you get bored righting about bass fishing, or you get bored about writing about tree stand whitetail hunting, and it's like, man, you know, I'm training a dog now, like where's where's
some angles I can write about? Or you know, I've never really been a hardcore duck hunter, so if I start duck hunting a little bit, when you're kind of learning those processes, like when you're you know, when you're like quote unquote an expert in something, it feels like there's an expectation for what you're supposed to say, but
there's a different process to just learning something new. So if you start, you know, at a pretty low level and you're like, I'm just out there figuring this stuff out like I've done with a lot of Western stuff, and just you know, the dog saying it was really beneficial to my writing because I was learning as I went and so even you know and white tails, that
happened to me big time too. It forced me to try to get good at it because I wasn't very good when I started writing, And so it's just been a it's it's fun for me, like I like writing, and it has just been a constant motivator to just go try new stuff and be out there as much as possible.
Yeah, that's awesome I feel like having, especially if you're just learning those things. If you've been doing a certain hunt or a certain activity for a long time, you kind of take for granted what new people the lens they see things through. So we kind of like glass over some things that have seemed very obvious to us that we've been doing a long time, But new folks who are are just learning about it, then they would
surely appreciate that that perspective. Like as you're learning and you're sharing like the things that you learned there, like, Oh yeah, that's that's great, that's good information. I can see that that'd be very valuable.
Oh yeah. I mean, you know how it is, like I listened to you a couple of weeks ago blowing on a bugle tube and I'll bet you could talk for hours on how to bugle and probably don't even you probably don't even understand to what level you could teach that because you're so it's so natural to you, you've worked on that so much, And I mean, you know how it is. You take your kids out, or you take somebody new out and you have to dial everything back and say, here's why I'm doing this. You know,
we haven't heard a bowl in four hours. Here's why I'm I'm bugling this way. Or we've got one who just lit up in the valley below us and it sounds like Jurassic Park down there, and you're throwing a
different vibe at them. That teaching somebody that helps you get better at it, and it just it's just a it's a cool thing to do that I think a lot of people don't really realize, especially when they get into our position, like for long enough, it's sort of easy to take it for granted that you you know, you say this and people follow it or whatever, but
it's really not not how it works. A lot of times, like you really have to think about it from the perspective of somebody who's new or you know, somebody on their first l coon, deer hunt, whatever, and really kind of reverse engineer this stuff that you you know so well to explain it in a you know, like an easily digestible way. There's there's like kind of an art to it that just it seems sort of like it's
easy to sort of gloss over it. Like you said, you just you don't realize what goes into this stuff until you really break it down and teach somebody and then you go, Okay, there's a lot of lessons here that I take for granted.
Yeah, absolutely, So how many articles do you typically write a here? I mean, you've probably got I know, you told me the other day, so I kind of I know, I know what what your workload is right now, But how many how many articles.
Do you write? Now? Well, when I was a freelancer, it was a couple hundred a year, you know, because you think about the weekly columns, and I mean when I got this Meet Eater gig, I was writing five different columns and so those alone got you into like the mid one fifties and then you know, just all the other stuff. But right now, you know, for Meat Eater, probably about I don't know, sixty to seventy a year.
But I also have to write the scripts for my Foundations podcast and my Foundations podcast, So I have seventy two of those a year that are three thousand words. So it starts to it starts to get up there. It just seems like, you know, the output's pretty high. But at the same time, it's literally my favorite part about this job. Like I love writing, Like I just
feel that feels the most natural to me. Like if somebody you know, said what would you give up, or like what would be the easiest thing to give up, it'd be filming first. Well, you know, like that's a different thing, and but the but the writing is it's fun. Man.
Yeah, that's awesome. So did you grow up in a hunting family or did you started later in life or who was your mentor as a as a new hunter?
My dad, my dad was a bow hunter, you know, back in kind of south central Minnesota, you know, probably from the time he got back from Vietnam. Uh you know, so back in the six late sixties, maybe early seventies, when it was like they were like five deer in the state, you know, and to see one was a huge deal. And he was always just into bow hunting, you know, he was like and I didn't realize this at the time. I realized this, now, my dad was. You know, my dad was into big bucks just like
everybody else. But he was just into hunting deer, you know, like he just he just liked to hunt deer. It was a big deal to get a dough, a big deal to get a little four ky or a little you know, scrap or eight point or whatever. And I think that was a I think that was way more important for my kind of formative years than I realized at the time, you know, because I was like everybody else, right, I started out and couldn't kill a deer, couldn't see
a big buck. Ever. I mean, it took me, it took me years and years and years of hard hunting to ever kill a big one. And I just remember being like, why can't we do this like you see other people do it, you read the magazines whatever. But I feel like now, you know, now I can appreciate it,
you know. And he took me. I mean we phezand hunted, grouse on it, squirrel hunted, rabbit hunted, when turkeys, you know, when we could start hunting turkeys, you know, because we started getting those I think in the sometime in the late eighties in Minnesota where you could start hunting them. And he he was applying right away, and then when I turned twelve, I could apply. And it was just it was just a good, a good thing. Like we hunted and fished pretty freaking hard, and we weren't really
very good at it, but we were like avid. I mean, we we got after it. And so that was that's kind of I mean, if there's one reason how I ended up the way I am, it's because of that. My dad just took me hunting and fishing a lot.
Yeah, that's awesome. I kind of grew up the same way my dad. He was quite a bit older though, he was like fifty whenever I was born, so he was he was kind of winding down on his hunting. He'd moved to Idaho back right after World War two, when there were hardly any people and tons of elk, and it was just a different kind of hunting versus whenever I was a kid. But he always made time to take me hunting and fishing, and it was the
same thing. It's like if if somebody got a doe or a buck of any kind, that was that was a big deal, like, wow, we got we got one, you know, and it was it was everybody was happy and excited in the house. And and I got pretty lucky and started getting some pretty decent bucks at a pretty early age, just because where we lived there was a lot of deer. That that was a very rich game game environment of a big of big white tail bucks.
It's kind of a sleeper state, you know. Back then nobody really knew Idaho had big bucks, but we had some really good ones and a lot of deer. Fast forward to these days, we don't have quite the hunting like that anymore in that area there. The deer numbers are down, the age glasses down. But anyhow, if I wouldn't have had, you know, all that that positive experiences back as a young person, you know, able to go out see deer, see lots of deer, able to get
a deer. You know, I might not have been so interested in it.
So was that all rifle hunting or were you both?
Yeah? I started out with rifle hunting and then bow hunting. My first taste of bow hunting was for elk I'd been I was sitting out by this old pond waiting for a bear, opening day of a bear season and elk season archery elk season. When I was sitting there with the rifle waiting for a bear, and these elk came up and splashed around the pawn, I was like, holy cow, they didn't even see me. They're like fifteen yards away. I'm like, man, I could just shoot that
bowl with a bow so easy. They laughed and my dad picked me up. About two hours later. I'm like, okay, we got to go to town. I have a bow, but I don't have any arrows or broadheads. But we got to go buy arrows and broad heads. I'm goname back. I'm gonna shoot that elk. He's like, no, you're not going to do that. That's that's that. You can't shoot an elk with a bow. I said, you can. I know people that have done it. He's like no, I said, well, I'm gonna save my money next year and buy all
the stuff and get into it. You know, I'm gonna I'm gonna shoot it up with a bow and then and learn how to call and everything. And the next year, as luck would have it, you know, I made enough money bucking bales for farmers, you know, hey bales and stuff, and made enough mind to buy a bow and all the gear, and I was able to call in a nice bowl and shoot it on the third day of season. So from then on I was just hooked on bow hunting. And but I've always been an opportunist, you know, whether
it's it's bow hunting or rifle hunting or muzzleoading. I just like to I'd just like to be out there. It's just so fun to get out there. I never played sports in high school or in school at all. I just I would go hunting all the time. While everybody else is having fun playing football, basketball, whatever, I was out in the woods run around. So that that's how I got into it.
I know all about that, buddy. I quit baseball to fish, and I quit football to hunt. So I played basketball, yeah, because it was it was right in the middle of winter. In Minnesota where there wasn't much to do.
Yeah, that's awesome. So I'm a longtime Western whitetail hunter, so like I told you, I was, I grew up hunting deer, but those are white tails. You know. People people think Idaho it's like mule deer, but where I lived there was there was a few meal dere but
not too many. But do you have any tips for guys like me who haven't spent a lot of time in a tree stand to become more comfortable in a tree stand Because I've been going to Kansas the last couple of years and I get in a tree stan and I feel like I'm going to fall out of this dang thing whenever I try to draw my bow. I'm I'm a little bit freaked out. So do you have anything any advice for guys like me?
Well, you know, I mean, you got to get your reps in, buddy. I mean, really, the thing about tree stands, the comfort level comes from safety. So if you you know, if you're using lifelines right now, and you have a safety harness, which you should should have both of those, it's a matter of just getting comfortable then. And I would guess I don't know this for sure, but on that on those Kansas hunts, are you putting up those stands or are you sitting somebody.
Else's I'm sitting somebody else's stands.
Yeah, man, that sucks. I don't know.
I know there's always that little doubt in your mind, like, ah, did he do it right? And they're solid? You know? Did he feel solid? It looks solid, But you always have that like when you do it yourself, I feel like there's that confidence. I feel like whenever I've set tree stands before in Idaho and I put them up, it wasn't so weirded out about about.
It, right, I mean, it's to me that it's just I hate it in other people's stands. I just hate it. It's just a different The setup is never the way I would do it, you know, And it's just that's I'm sure when I hang stands, it's the same thing when people sit in my stands too. But really, I mean, I think I think one of the best ways to do it. And I've started to do this at my house more, especially hunting out of saddles a lot is even even if you hang a stand like four feet
off the ground, and practice from it. You get pretty used to your how to maneuver around it and take those little baby steps and spin around and shoot and you know where where should you you know, tether from your safety harness be so it doesn't interfere with your arm all of that stuff, and you know, I mean the other thing you can do too, is is you know, pay attention to how tight your safety harnesses to the tree, like if there's way more play and you can lean
out like a lot of and this this happens a lot with lifelines, so I know, I'm going all over the place here, but if you can lean out on that safety harness and it's tight, which is not necessarily the best way to maneuver around when you're comfortable, but there's like a peace of mind thing there, you know. It's like it's the same thing when you when you start saddle hunting and you lean out for that first time,
it's just like a weird it's an uncomfortable feeling. But once you get used to it and you trust, you know your lineman's belt to go up, and then you trust your you know your tether, it's like, oh okay, like I I rely on this now, I'm not scared to lean out and feel that finally, but right away, and it's just it's just a numbers game and you just got to get in the time. But the easiest
way to get comfortable. I'm starting to do this with my daughters a little bit because I want them to get off the ground and start hunting out of trees. Get into it, even if you set it up two feet off the ground, just to get used to wearing that hardness and get used to the whole process of it,
because it is different. You're right, you know, and everybody talks about you know, if you have a deer like way below you and you have that steep angle where you know you're how to maintain your form and bend at the waist and all that stuff like, that's great. But eight steps before that is just being comfortable on that little tiny platform spinning around to shoot this way
or that way or whatever. If you if you get there, if you get comfortable with that, taking that steep angle shot is like taking the tough shots is a lot easier, Like you don't have to go through a bunch of mental gymnastics, but it's a it takes a while to just get used to it.
I was kind of wondering that, like about you know your tether, and like do you sometimes lean out there and just like let that thing catch and be like all right, you know, and make your shot off off off of that. I was thinking that would probably be pretty effective.
All the time. I mean, the last bull elk I killed two years ago in Colorado, I was over a water hole with a saddle, and I had that shot where you lean out shoot behind you kind of so you're you're leaned way out, but man, it's it's pretty steady, like if you're if you're used to it, like it feels like when you draw, you feel good. But I could see where if you weren't used to it, it would be a freaking nightmare. And you know how it is.
I mean, the danger of this stuff is if you take your your mind out of the shot sequence for half a second, if you have ten percent distraction in there because you're worried about falling or whatever, you make a bad shot. You or you or you don't make the shot. You could like you might not necessarily make a bad shot, but if you're if you want to put yourself in a position to make a bad shot.
Take your brain out of the game in those two, three, four, five, six seven seconds that it takes you to draw, aim and execute that release. And so little stuff like this, You know, even if it's just like a little niggling thing in the back of your head where you're like, I just don't feel that comfortable here, there's going to be some attrition on your accuracy because your brain isn't just dedicated to that little task you have to see through, and that can become a big deal in a hurry.
Oh yeah, I could definitely see that. Yeah, So early season white tails kind of want to talk to you about that a little bit. I know, they're super fun to hunt. It's a different time of year, you're not you're not as as cold typically, it's a little different. What do you do to mitigate insects? Are you fighting mosquitoes and ticks and.
All the time? You know, our tic situation. I mean, that's not like a huge deal tree stand hunting, but we do, we do get a fall hatch of ticks up here. That can be I mean, it's one of the reasons I stopped grouse hunting early season, like first week October, first two weeks of October if it's warm. The Arctic situation is bananas, but the mosquito thing is
the one. The mosquitoes and nats are what drive you nuts white tail hunting, and so I either use a thermicel and in fact, I hunted Florida a couple of years ago because they have a summertime deer season, because they don't run around the seasons, because they don't have any seasons down there, And so you're literally calling in running bucks in like the end of July, beginning of August in horrible condition. Yes, I mean, oh, it's just it was the worst hunt I've ever been on as
far as just like comfort. I ran two thermoicells down there because the mosquitoes were so bad it was almost unbearable. And you know, people will say, well, I don't want something that makes scent, and they can you can smell it. Right. I'm to the point now where I will I will use a thermo cell and I will spray around my head, maybe my hat with with bugs, spray for the for
the nats, and I just play the wind. And you know, people a lot of like die hard whitetail people would probably cringe at that, but I'm gonna play the wind guy through and through, Like I just believe in that strategy, Like if they're up wind to me, they're not gonna smell me if I have a thermoicell going. So I just got to figure out how to put myself in
that position. Because the one thing that I've started to do the last several years is if i have a day to hunt, I'm trying not to leave the woods very much. So even in the you know, I'm not saying I sit dark to dark in September fifteenth, because I don't. But I have found that if I try to sit till like eleven in the morning or noon versus leaving at nine thirty, sometimes those bucks come through late.
Or if I get out there at one or two o'clock in the afternoon, then you're dealing with the hottest part of the day in a lot of bugs. But I hunt water a lot, you know, I'll hunt food sources where the shade's going to hit this corner first, and sometimes you kill a bucket like two o'clock. You know, sometimes when the bugs are really bad, a lot of our deer, and I've seen this in multiple places, we'll bed right in a soybean field or right in a place where that wind's going to keep the bugs off
of them. They'll stand up, eat for a while, and go bed back down. And so those conditions, like the worst conditions for hunters to me are like the conditions I want to be out there, and so, I bugs are just a part of it. Heat is just a part of it. But if you if you do a lot of public land hunting, especially early season, if it's something that will keep people away, I'm going to go
hunt it. And I know people don't like to hear that because they want to wait for the rut and it's going to be you know, twenty degrees in the morning and thirty five at midday or whatever. But one of the best ways I've found to just kill big deer on public land has been to just go hunt when the conditions just absolutely suck, Like they're just not
good fun conditions to hunt in. But you're you can take out a crazy amount of your competition if it's you know, the bugs are bad and it's warm, and so those deer out there living with that stuff every day, you know, they figured out how to how to mitigate some of that that discomfort. So your job is just go out and go Okay, I'm going to figure out a way to manage this and then be there when most people won't.
Right on, Well, you mentioned you like to hunt water and you like to hunt food plots. You're just probably depends on the property. I guess what you're going to focus on for early season tactics. I feel like in Idaho, you know, we have some agriculture where I grew up, and you know, the deer could come out just about anywhere. You know, they come out in this corner, they come
out in that corner. They weren't real consistent. But where they were pretty consistent is around water, especially you know, hot, dry summer conditions. Do you do you like to hunt travel corridors as well, or you can hunt right on the water, or you can hut right on the you said field edge like the shadowy field edge. Just depends.
It just depends, man. I mean I like water for the same reason you just said there. I don't think there's anything more consistent. And you know, I've I have one little property that I have a food plot on that I put the girls on. I don't I don't really hunt it because it doesn't it It's just not my thing. But I do really like scouting agg fields and glass and deer and trying to figure out when and where they're going to show up, because it because
you're right, you know it, it's on paper. It's like, well, those Bachelor that Bachelor group's going to come out in the same corner every night, and on opening night you go in there and you shoot them, and it's like when you start watching them, you're like, well they came out there last night. Tonight, they didn't come to the field at all. You know tomorrow they might come in some other different spot, and your job is to figure out why, right, Like was the wind coming out of
the west today and the south tomorrow? Like what is it? You know, was the sun super bright overhead or was it a little cooler and overcast? Like did that change their approach? And I love that stuff for early season. But if I'm looking for some situation with consistency, like a high level of consistency, and I'm talking white tails, elk meal deer, like you said earlier, bears, water is like limited water is your best friend. You know, you might get into a situation like where we hunt Wisconsin.
There's water everywhere, so it's just unless there's a water source real close to some apple trees or acorns or something that's like, you know, an extra kind of bonus thing that they're going to, and they just swing by to that water because it's it's secure and it's close that you know, you're kind of in trouble if there's
a lot of water. But you go out we I go out west to some places and there might be one cattle tank in a couple of sections or that little meandering stream, and I'm like, here's this is where you kill because they're gonna drink every day and it's gonna be super consistent.
Yeah. Do you ever like try to call deer early season, like rattling or grunning or anything.
You know, I don't. I don't rattle very much. I've just I've killed a few deer that way. I just have never I've never had a lot of confidence in it. So even it kind of hurts me because even like when I go to Iowa or I draw a good tag somewhere, I'm just I don't rely on it like I like to call. I just don't rattle very much.
And so early season. If you if I see a bachelor group of bucks, like if I'm working a group of deer, I will use contact grunts a lot, like if there's a couple of bucks in the same general area, Like I killed a buck in Minnesota, probably, I don't know, twenty fifteen, twenty sixteen. Some point I knew there was a He was just a really nice eight poin where he wasn't a giant, but he was hanging with a couple of young bucks and he was coming out in
the soybean field. And I got in there second night of the season, and he came out with two other little bucks, and they were just feeding, doing bachelor group stuff, hundred and twenty five yards away, and I started to contact grown at him, just like a sharp just one grunt, and you know, they picked their heads up, drop their heads back down, start feeding, Throw another one at him, and eventually they started going after each other a little bit.
And I saw that big deer kind of swing his antlers and sort of like posture up a little bit, and I was like, he's toast because he's gonna You could see the body language change right. Eventually he came in. They all came in but he came in first and
I shot him. And it's like there's a situation with those early season bucks where they're used to being around other bucks, but they're also getting a little sick of them and they get a little testy, and so they will hang together, but there's still even when they're hanging together, there's that hierarchy, and people kind of don't think about this. We think about dominant bucks, but we don't think about, like,
what does that mean? Like that three year old one hundred and twenty inchure that you would look at, go, there's no way this is the dominant buck here. There's a one fifteen in the neighborhood that'll kick his ass all day long. But that deer is dominant to all those two year olds and one and a half year olds and all the does. Just like the doz. If you start paying attention to individual dos, there's a whole
hierarchy of dominance there too. It all matters. And so when you get that buck who's like I can whoop him, I can whoop him. And now I hear this dude down there somewhere that I can't see, but he's grunning at me like I'm gonna I'm gonna go check this out. I love that situation and the other thing that I like. And people think this is nuts, but it's worked for me a lot. I shouldn't say a lot. It's worked
for me enough where I believe in it wholeheartedly. Is a it's a snort wheeze, and people just I don't know where this came from. I think it's because we never hear deer snortwheeze, right, Like in my entire life of hunting out there, I heard one buck snortweeze and he was in Texas and there was one hundred and seventeen thousand deer around me, and he was just chasing nuts and snort wheezing and they were fighting, and it was like not a realistic scenario, you know what I mean,
Like it's not I saw. I remember sitting there thinking, I'm like, it's an hour into the morning, and I've seen more like shooter class bucks today than I'll see in an entire season hunting Minnesota, Wisconsin, you know. So it's like that's sort of like an artificially curated environment. So I think we don't hear dear snortwed like we don't witness this behavior hardly ever, but just because I I don't know, I'm kind of just like a I'll
just try stuff. I started snort wheezing at deer all season long because I killed a big one in Iowa the first time I drew down there, came out on a dough right at last light, and I he wouldn't respond to a grunt, so I snort wheeze at him and it took me about five snort wheezes and he got to seven yards and I killed him, and I was like, oh, okay, like this can work, right, this call can work. And so after that, if i'd see a loan buck I did. It doesn't seem to work
very well with deer that are together. I don't know why. Maybe that's just like my experience, but i'd see a loan buck and if you look like he just had nothing to do, not that like on a bee line to go somewhere, but kind of just like staging through the woods, or you know, early in the evening he's not going to go out to the field yet, or once in a while you'll see him just you know, walking that edge between the beans and the corn, and
they really you know, they're living pretty good. Some of those deer are so susceptible to a snort wheeze, even in September, even in early October. And it's weird because the reaction out of them, you know, usually pretty quick, like you snort wieze and they'll stop and look at you, and you can almost tell whether you're going to have to use a second snort wheeze or not, or they're like, I don't I don't like this, you know. And I went out the year after I killed that buck in
Iowa and I was just sitting on a stand. It was early in the evening. I was on an alfalfa field and there was a cornfield strip a corn above me and then some woods and had a little four ky walk out and it was like not even close to primetime. So I was like, I'm gonna snort weeze at him, just just to see what he does. And I snort weezed at that deer and he came right in in front of me and looked around, and I went,
this goes against everything I've ever heard about this. Yeah, And so my buddy and I were filming, we were going to film the next like I don't know the next week or something. It's still September. And we had antler point restrictions in Minnesota then, so I had to
be four points on one side. And I saw this buck going through the woods and it was early in the evening again, and it looked like a decent deer and I snored wheezed at it, and that buck stopped and I was like, man, he looks like he might I might be able to talk him in. And it took like six of them, but he got all the way in and circled down Win and he just happened to be a big six point. He didn't have any
brow times he couldn't shoot in and he left. Actually he got down Win and he winded us, but he can't. I could have killed him all day long before that. And I just remember thinking, man, what I thought I knew about this call is just wrong. And I hear people constantly say, like, only dominant buck snortweeze, It's only a rut call, and I've just found that to totally not be true, and in fact, and the weird thing about it is, I shot a buck in Kansas one
time during the rut. I bet I snort weezed at that deer like thirty times, because every time I'd snort weeze at him, he'd come like five yards closer than he'd hold up. But every time I would do it, he'd get a little closer. And that was like one hundred and forty in eight pointer. And I had another time in Wisconsin hunting public land, and like it was like October tenth or something. I was in this big woods, you know, overgrown clearcut situation with a creek running through it,
and I had a buck get past me. It was super windy, and I didn't realize he had made his way through there, and he was already like fifty yards past me, and so I snort weezed at that dear and he stopped and he didn't do anything, and then he kind of started walking in. I snort weezed again, and like the third time I did it, I saw him like tip his head back like fine, like you could see him just be like all right, I'm coming over. And he bristled up and turned around and came in
right to me, and I shot him. And I just like I've had experiences like that where I go there's way more going on with this call than we think. And I think all it does is play off the fact that these bucks all know who they can beat and who they can't, and they almost all have somebody who they can beat and who they can't. And I mean that's just me filling in the blanks. But it's like it's like that's a dominant deer to some of the other deer, you know, like the little basket four
kis and sixes or whatever, he's dominant to them. Or that one forty who you know, you've got that one seventy on camera, Like, okay, so the one forty is not dominant to him, probably right, but think how many deer are below him in the hierarchy. And so but it's it's really all early season calling. Maybe all deer calling is like if you can lay eyes on them and work through some of these calls, you know how
to proceed. They're going to tell you, you know, like I would never go out there early season and throw contact grunts out there blindly, Like I would never go out there and just snort, wheeze blindly hoping there's a buck around, you know, Like that's that's a different thing. But when you can see them and you can work through some of those, like it can work so much better than people think.
Yeah, well, I think people kind of experiment a little bit with it and then maybe get a negative reaction and they're like, oh, man, I'm never going to do that again. For instance, here a couple of years ago, I had the snort Wheeze prototype call we've been working on and had this. I had a couple bucks there and then this pretty good sized buck. He didn't have a big react, but he was just a big, bully,
bullish looking thing, just big, heavy, mature body. He looked pretty old, and he come in all bristled up to these younger bucks, and I'm like, oh, yeah, I want to see what happens with this snort wheeze because he's obviously the fat cat in the field right now. You know, he's the dominant buck. So I snort wheezed at him, and he about turned inside out, like took him off guard, jumped like ran over and stood there and stared at
me for a little bit and then split. But I'm like, man, that didn't work work out like i'd hoped or but I didn't know what I'd really hoped. I just like I thought maybe he would probably come over and and want to check me out, but I just wanted to experiment, to see what would happen and exactly. And then last fall I did it again. But this buck was a couple hundred yards across his field and he'd kind of worked his way through this this crp field and he got to the edge of the timber there and he
was kind of stopped there making a scrape. But I thought, man, I'm gonna snort wheeze that sucker, and maybe I'll come over here. And I snort weezed did him two or three times, and he'd stop and he'd stare at me, and then he'd go back to work, so I'd hit him again, and then he finally just kind of wandered off. So I feel like he probably had other things on his mind, like he's checking scrapes and not trying to fight fight guys right now right.
But I'll tell you what, I think a lot of people quit too early, Like I think he doesn't come in and so you go, well, I don't want to spook him. But a lot of the deer that I've killed snort wheezing have taken way more calls than you would think. But on that first buck he talked about
there this is. This might be totally freaking, it might be totally whacky, it might not be true at all, But I kind of think because I've had bucks do this, I've had bucks do that too, where you're like, man, he looks like he's primed for this, and they take off or their reaction is like super negative, and I kind of think, you know, you talk about a Kansas buck that's four or five six years old, that deer's probably visited or went down wind of a million bait
sites in his life. He lives in a generally more visible environment, that deer's probably been called to a ton, So you know, I know, I mean, maybe that's crazy, but I really think there's something to that where if you think about the average hunter out there and he sees a buck that's one hundred and twenty five inches and it's not coming in, he's calling to it right like I mean, grunt, snortwheeze, is rattling whatever those deer, And you know, if you're around enough pressure, those deer
might get called to every freaking time a hunter sees them in daylight. And so their reaction to that stuff. They could just be way more prone to a negative reaction in a heartbeat. And I always think, like, personally, my better responses to snort wheezing especially have been in cover. And I just think, you know, a they can't see that there's no deer there, right or not not as easily. But also I kind of wonder if they're less used to getting called to in the cover just because more
people will hunt openings than anything. And you know, I mean, this might be totally it might be total bs. I don't know, but I kind of think that. And I do know without question, you know, you go, I don't care what state it is, if it's October twentieth on, almost every hunter you meet is going to have a grunt to for sure, and a hell of a lot of them are going to have a rattle bag or antlers. And if they're not blind calling, you can bet they're
calling to the bucks they see. And a lot of them are not factoring anything in other than that deer's not going to come in. So I'm going to try what I can to see if I can talk him in. And so those deer get an education at a level that I don't. I don't think we can appreciate by a one off encounter, you know what I mean?
Yeah, that aligns it perfectly with elk hunting. Calling elk, especially in open country right people sit there, they'll see an elk across the claer cut or something and be like, oh, man, I need to cow call that thing in and they'll start cal calling the bowl kind of perk up and start. We'll look in and like they're not seeing any elk over there. Pretty soon they get kind of nervous and they just bolt and they get that, you know, a
couple of times they get pretty wise pretty quick. And I feel like, especially in that kind of country where there's a lot of clear cut, it's a lot of logging, a lot of a lot of access roads, they're getting called that all the time. Anytime someone seats season, they jump out of their pickup and start blowing blowing calls at them, just like, oh, what will happen if I blow my call at this elk? And when I'm standing by my pickup and he can visibly see me, I
wonder what his reaction is going to be. Well, he's gonna run away, of course, But people do that of.
Course, I'm sure well they do. And I mean I think, you know, elk are a little different because an elk bugle is meant to be heard from a long ways away, and so I don't think I think it's a little different with deer, but I think proximity to pressured animals and calling is huge. So you see that buck, you know, crossing that Kansas prairie, and he's three hundred yards away,
and you snore it wheeze at him. When you hear a buck snort, wieze, it's quiet, and so already you've done even though you're making the right call, maybe you're already changing it to something that he can hear that he just does not expect. Like he's like, I don't have a buck anywhere near me, and now I can hear one challenging me. Like even even if they can't reason that out or a super loud grunt, it's not
that natural. They know that, you know, they know that, right, Like they're like, I can look around me, and I'm perfectly safe. There's nobody around here. I could smell, there's nobody been here, and now I'm hearing this super loud
call coming from somewhere it's just a weird thing. And so it feels like there's a you know, you don't want them too close, right, you don't want them forty yards away and snort ways out of blue because they're going to take off, you know, kind of like with Elk, Like you you hunt Elk that last seat last week of bow season and they've been pushed around and called
to and everything. It's all about proximity. They're still super callable, but you got to be in like the dark timber with them, right, Like they got to be one ridge over or they got to be down below you, but like one hundred yards away or you know what I mean. Like there's just a range where it just works because they're like, okay, I can't see it there. That's a natural sounding call close to me where I'm I'm where Elk are?
You know.
So I think a lot of that stuff factors together, and I think the same thing with white tails. There seems to be just this sweet spot of like, I don't know, fifty sixty yards out to you know, one hundred and twenty one hundred and fifty yards maybe depending on the conditions, but it's so dependent on them being very confident where they're at. And you know, you talked about that when you get an elk out in the open, they might be super comfortable out there, But during hunting season,
the pressure is going to be concentrated around that meadow. Right, people are going to go a lot of different places, but a lot of people are going to go there, and so they might not just be as confident as they are in that dark timber where they they smell two hundreds a week versus twenty, you know, And I think white tails are the same way, where if you catch them where they're like, this is my spot, this is my staging area. Nobody hardly ever comes in here,
you know. I know where the people come in, I know where the predators come in from. When they're in that spot, there's so much more callable.
Yeah, yeah, that makes perfect sense to me. I'm gonna I'm gonna change my tactics, my calling tactics a little bit.
I don't think you need to change your calling tactics.
Dude, for deer, Yeah for deer. Yeah. Cool. Well, I was gonna ask you if you could hunt one period of the white tail rut, which is your.
Favorite the rut? Man if you'd asked me five years ago, I would have said the first week of November. And I'm really starting to lean hard on that last week October. Now, I just think I don't know what it is. I just think they're they get into a state where they'll they're a little more careless, but still kind of predictable,
you know. When I when I get into November, you know, first week in November, first ten days in November, it's it's like often a reality check for me because in my head, I'm like, I'm going to go write out this funnel, this pinch point, some kind of train trap, and I'm I'm patient, Like I'll put in all day there, for multiple days, and I'm like, that's all I need to do to kill one. Except a lot of times
I do that and I don't kill one. And it's just different when you get that late October thing where if you've done some scouting and there's a lot of sign out there then so you have a you kind of have a blueprint to follow, you get those deer
staging or you get the right conditions. I think those big deer are super killable then, and it's just like not quite when everybody's going to be out there, you know, by November first, second, third, every person who's gonna hunt is going to be out there in the woods with you. And that changes things in a lot of places. Not you know, if you have five hundred acres to yourself, it's a different story. But where a lot of people hunt.
You know, if you're on a small property and you're like, I got forty acres or twenty five acres to work, well, you might have fifteen twenty hunters in that section with you on Saturday morning in the first weeks of November. Sorry, and that even though you're like, I did everything right, I've my access is air tight. I got in early.
My setup's great. Wins great, Well, those deer are they're encountering people all over every day just because you're doing everything right, yeah, you know, like and so I just I'm I'm constantly playing the people angle kind of in parallel with the deer, and I think way too many people. I think this is like the best way to learn this is to hunt over the counter elk, because you might know everything that elk naturally do, and you might be able to make every sound that elk naturally make.
And be a wizard at it. But if you don't understand people, you don't kill all very often because because that's you can't divorce your pursuit from the fact that the woods are saturated with these predators that the elk are very scared of, and I think white tails are the same way. And so any any kind of timing where I can be like I have an advantage over the people, then I just have to work the animals more.
When I go November seventh somewhere and I'm hunting public land, I have to consider the people in a major way, and that's that's just harder, you know, So I would say the last week October. The other thing I would say is I'm starting to really kind of get fond of like or November, you know, like fifteenth through twentieth, you know, the kind of traditional lockdown period that a
lot of people talk about. I, you know, just this is just from running cameras the last few years, and I kind of got a plan for northern Wisconsin built around this this year. But I really think that people get in hot and heavy the beginning of November and they really start to peel out, and I'm getting pictures in some of these places, like these swamps where it's like once every two or three days, a big one will go through there in daylight. And it's not the
chase fest. It's not like it's not just bonkers like you want it. But it's like he's out there with his route and he's like, there's fewer people out here. So I'm gonna take this risk, and I'm gonna stay in the cover and I'm gonna go scent and check
these betting areas or whatever. And I think a patient hunter who figures that stuff out can have a really really good chance of killing big deer kind of when the rut should already sort of be tailing off a little bit for in a lot of regions anyway, obviously be a little different down south. So I'm kind of kind of going contrary and again and I'm getting out of like what most people consider the prime time, largely because most people consider it the prime time.
Yeah, that makes sense. Man, this has been a great, great conversation. We've given me some pretty good insight here. I have to I'm gonna have to listen to this back and kind of digest it all really well. But I think I think we covered some really good stuff. Where can people find you? You got social media or are you just on the meat eater dot com or what I mean? Sounds like they probably find you all over the place.
That all the above, you know, everything we do now is for meat Eater obviously, so the mediatter dot com, the articles of podcasts, the videos, you know, primarily Instagram at Tony J. Peterson, they can find me. But if they want to read anything or listen to, you know, the Foundation's podcast I put out every week is on the wire to hunt feed at our site, you know, and also probably every single place that they you can find podcasts too. But there's there's plenty of my stuff
out there. If anybody wants to just go deep and get to the point where they're sick of me, they can go find it because it's it's out there.
Awesome. Well, I appreciate you coming on and uh yeah, let's uh let's connect again. I got some more questions on a on another podcast. We'll dive down some deep holes and and cover some other stuff here later in deer.
Season, so anytime, brother, Kay.
Well thanks a lot, Tony, Thanks man M