Ep. 498: Foundations - Last Chance For a Slow (Deer) Dance

are staring down the final chapter of the season. Throughout this podcast, I've pretty much gone week to week on how to try to stay on top of deer action throughout the season. This show will pretty much wrap up that style. But before we move on to shed antlers and winner scouting and all that good stuff, there are still opportunities to arrow deer right now. But you better bring your A game into the woods. YEA. One of the best things about having a ton of deer hunting

experience is that there aren't a lot of surprises. One of the worst things about having a ton of deer hunting experiences there aren't a lot of surprises. Now, I know, markets pissed at me when I speak in riddles because he's such a straight laced fella. So I'll explain this better by using a couple of examples of late season experiences I've had. A few years ago, I set out for a late December muzzle er hunt with the idea that it wouldn't be terribly difficult to put one more

dough in the freezer. Now. I don't know about you, folks, but when I get cocky like that, mother nature tends to knock me down a peg or two, usually pretty quickly. And even though I had a front stuff or dialed in and the deer scouted out, all it took was crunchy snow to absolutely ruin my chances. I couldn't get anywhere in the woods without spooking everything. I hunted anyway, And no, I didn't kill a deer. I almost saw one, though,

I think or maybe it was a squirrel. Another time, more recently, I had a loan dough feeding her way in right after Christmas. It was dead, calm out, and as soon as she made her way into range, I started to draw. I had put maybe three pounds of pressure on my bowstring when she acted as if I had blown an air horn in her ear, She swapped ends, took off, and snorted a jolly little tune to the rest of the deer herd that there was some prick

up in the tree trying to kill them all. My failures in both cases didn't surprise me, which brings me full circle to my opening statement. I knew, just through the conditions and the variables of each hunt that I probably didn't have enough to work with to make a successful late season hunt. Happened that crunchy snow it did me in those calm conditions on a super pressured old dough forget it. In those cases, it's like I can see into the future and I can watch myself screw up.

I'm sure a lot of you can relate. If you hunt the late season without a badass spot to sit over some groceries and shoot them where they feed. The late season is just tough, and it gets exponentially more difficult the more pressure the deer are. But here's the thing I've said many times before, and I'll probably say a whole bunch of times in the future. It's not impossible. You've got options, even if you're a public land hunter, even if you don't have a banging food source to

sit over now. Last week I talked about how I go about finding deer during this time of year. That's a good start, but if you find them and don't know how to hunt them, doesn't really matter. This brings me to my first and main point, proximity. I think the biggest criticism I have when I see others tree stands and blinds is that they're too close to where

the deer are expected to be. I see this when I hunt with my buddies, and I see it all of the time when I'm wandering public land or some of my private properties where other people have permission as well.

Just pictures this, Like, if there's a nice logging road it's all scraped up and leads from the timber to the fields, you can bet your ass there will be a stand on it, and you can also bet your ass that that stand will be about three ft from the trail, pointed right in the direction where the deer

will come from. Honestly, if you spend enough time hunting and scouting on public land, you start to get really familiar with how most hunters hang their stands, and from what I can tell, they aren't very good at it. It's not just deer hunters. I love to hunt late season pheasants, and the amount of hunter trails pounded into the snow that lead just around the edge of the

good cover it's astounding. It's so rare to see a set of bootprints wade right into the thick stuff where the birds actually are in the late season, and I know those hunters are thinking that their dogs will flush or point the birds out on the edge, but most of the time the roosters just run to the middle and let the danger pass. We often talk about how predictable game animals are or should be, but we rarely

acknowledge how predictable hunters are. You can see this and all most call your shots by looking at on X and then walking into public land For white tails, the stands will be exactly where you expect them, and there will be very little effort to conceal them. It seems like a lot of hunters think that as long as they are in a tree where dear travel, that's good enough. But it's not, and it leads to the problem of wanting an easy close shot but also not wanting to

get busted. In the early season, this is sometimes possible in December, it's usually not, and it gets worse because most of us haven't been shooting like we were in August. This tends to push us closer and closer with our anticipated shots, which spells trouble when you're working with jaded late season survivors and often very calm, very still, very very quiet conditions. One little scratch of fleece on tree bark or the slightest flexing of cold bow limbs, and

it's over if you're too close. Having gone down this road a depressing amount of times, I've realized that my ideal shot distance on late season deer is like to thirty yards. Deer at that range have less chance of hearing me draw and less chance of their spiky senses sending their eyes skyward until they spot me and go on red alert. Now this goes for tree stands situations as well as when I'm on the ground, which is

a late season strategy I employ a lot. While I like hunting from an elevated position whenever I can, I like shooting from the ground more, and when the leaves are down and the woods are bare, I can often tuck into some cedars or a deadfall and disappear better than when I'm up in a tree. The views aren't as good, of course, but the shots are less complicated, and the cover is often the best you'll get. Plus you can play the wind really well when you're on

the ground. Now, infomercial guy here, But wait, there's more. Another thing that I like about being on the ground is that it means I'm not in the stands I've hunted all season long. Well, I don't want the deer to surprise me. I do want to surprise them, and it's not a big shocker for them to up into a tree you've sat fourteen times this season to see

the same asshole looking back. Now. I can't prove this, but I've heard some pretty compelling stories and seeing some pretty interesting things myself about how some deer seemed to almost check stands. This is especially true with old doze that don't tolerate a whole lot of bs. They often seem to know where your stands are and look up to confirm that you're they're not. This might lead them to bolt or just give you a wide berth, or they might truck right on by. But stay on super

KG full alert mode the entire time. All of those are bad, and to some extent can be avoided by throwing them for a loop, by getting on the ground and just hiding really well, you might be thinking, well, this is doable. This guy should gives simple, easy to follow advice that I appreciate greatly. And while all that may be true, I'm not done. Let me circle back again to my opening statement about not being surprised much.

That was only partially true. Deer can surprise the best of us any given time, and they are really good at this in the late season. They move like ninjas, and the best way to have one close that you

don't kill is to not be ready for it. If you're too busy trying to figure out I don't know what the next meme stock will be on Wall Street bets, or you're posting a six selfie to highlight the frost in your beard and your overall caveman badassery, you might not see the dear ghosting into range, which is bad. If your bow is hanging up and your phone is in your hand, you've got to make a lot of movement to get into any kind of position to shoot.

Movement that is silent will get you busted. Plenty, but movement is rarely silent. The goal is to see or hear the deer coming long before you want to shoot them, so you can get ready and possibly draw well ahead of their arrival. I've done this a few times on deer in Minnesota and Wisconsin that I heard or saw coming in, and it's always worked out better for me than waiting for them to get close and then drawing. I've still been picked off, but it's been too late

for the deer. The issue here is that if you haven't been shooting, you might not want to draw too early and try to hold steady for an extended period of time while a deer works in. Fatigue in your shoulders or your bow arm is an accuracy killer, and it's one of the things that tends to cause us to panic when we shoot again. This is no bueno. Watching the deer or hearing them as they approach will give you a chance to be ready for the shot.

Of course, watching them is better than hearing them, because you don't want to be drawn on a deer that you don't want to shoot, because then you've got to let down. But if you're out there with low standards, which you probably should be. If you're listening to this podcast, then it's a pretty safe bet that crunch, crunch, crunch, and the leaves of the snow is being made by

some kind of shooter, even if it's just a delicious youngster. Now, this close encounter should not be the first time you're at full draw during your sit I highly recommend taking a few minutes right when you settle in or right at first light if your morning hunting, to draw an aim a few times. This will cool you into the fact that your bow might have developed a little creek due to the cold weather, or it'll tell you that your binal harness is awful close to your string. Considering

you've layered up to stave off the arctic conditions. It's a great opportunity to learn that the hood on your winter hunting jacket is a bark scraper, or that the platform of your stand is prone to metal pops and clicks when you stand up and shift into position. Ask any hunter who has quite a few seasons under his or her belt if extra clothing it has ever saved a deer's life in their world, and you'll probably hear a few stories. The first time this happened to me.

I was bow hunting during the last days of Minnesota's muzzle older season when I was still in high school. It was a weird afternoon with snow on the ground and pouring rain coming down. While I expected to be miserable, I didn't expect to see any deer, so I was really surprised when a basket racked eight pointer started walking down the trail right at my stand. At that time in my life, that was a big deer and a big deal, and I wanted him in the worst way.

When he got to like ten yards, I drew, aimed at him and I missed him by about four ft. Since it was muzzle oder season, cold and rainy, I was wearing everything I could, and I had on a cheap orange vest that didn't fully button. But what it did do, besides theoretically keeping me from getting shot, was getting the way of my string during the shot cycle and throw my arrow way off. It was a bummer and something I could have easily gotten ahead of had I drawn and aimed a few times when I got

into stand. As a side note here, I ran into conditions with snow on the ground on New Year's Eve, maybe I don't know, eight or ten years ago, and I had a great hunt then as well. Dear move during the rain throughout there early in the mid season like crazy, Maybe they do just as consistently in the

late season as well. That's not much of a thing to rely on in the northern reaches where I live, but I'll bet it has some validity for all you listeners who live farther south or just happen to run into one of these weird, you know, late December rainstorms. And another thing to consider is your gloves. Grippy gloves on your bow hand will cause you to torqu your bow, which is bad. A glove that interferes with your release in any way that's also bad. This is where I

go full Michael Jackson mode. When I late season bow hunt. I use a slippy cloth type of glove on my bow hand and no glove on my release hand. Instead, I keep handwarmers in both pockets or in a muff, and I only bring my hands into play when it's time to get ready. Sometimes I get really really cold hands when the deer don't follow the script and they're in close proximity. But I'll take that over making a bad shot because I'm using the wrong gloves. It's just

something to consider now. All side notes, while aside details matter. If you're not in the sweet spot to get a shot at the right least likely to be detected range, then you're in trouble. That's the reality of the stuff. And it's also something that leads me back to a point I've danced around quite a bit on this podcast, which is that you need to set up to kill. A lot of hunters, bow hunters and gun hunters they

set up to see. This strategy isn't great during any time of the season unless you're truly doing it from an observational standpoint, sort of like a stepping stone to the next set up. In a late season, setting up to see is a great way to be seen. Set up instead to kill. This is a lot harder for folks to do than it seems. And when you're sitting at work pretending to make important spreadsheets or whatever it is that you actually do while you're listening to hunting

podcasts in your cubicle, you'll think that's no problem. But we are creatures of habit and there are patterns to our behavior. One of those is to default to hunting spots that allow us to see a lot fight that and think about how hard it is to earn a late season shot. Think about how you'd want that shot to unfold. You'd want to be undetected, of course, so that you can avoid the panic of aiming at a just about to bolt deer, relaxed, unsuspecting deer at doable

but not super close range. Those are the goal. This means you've got to be opened hunting from the air or the ground, and truly cognizant of your hiding spots in the conditions in which you hunt. I know this sounds like a lot, but I really recommend you hunt out the final days of your season, even if you've only got an analyst tag left. This is because deer season, first and foremost, is a gift, which I'll cover in greater detail next week. It's also because difficult hunting makes

you better. Easy hunting doesn't. Just like when you're single. Easy can be fun, but it's not all that rewarding. A challenge is something that sticks with you and makes you feel better about life, and in the realm of deer hunting, there are a few greater challenges than killing a late season dear of any shape or size with archie tackle. While it might seem like a stretch, putting in real late season effort before the clock runs out

will make you better at all of this stuff. I know that's not as exciting as buying a new call or loading up on trail cameras to saturate the woods with seven surveillors, but it is one of the long game ways in which you learn not only how to understand dear better, but how better to deal with them when they're at their peak predator avoiding performance. Plus what else do you have to do right now? Ice fish?

Come on, there's time for that, But until then, get into the woods because it's almost time to put the bowl away and start scouting again, which means it's almost time for like nine months of not deer hunting, So get out there. That's it for this week, my late season hunting friends. I'm Tony Peterson and this has been

the Wired to Hunt Foundations podcast. Be sure to visit the metator dot com slash wired to check out more whitetail content, and visit the Wired to Hunt YouTube channel as well to see the videos we drop every single week.