Ep. 520: Foundations - Turkey Road Trips and the Whitetail Connection

This might seem like a pretty weak thread tying two things together, but hear me out, Turkey hunting, which we are finally almost able to do, can make you a better deer hunter. This is no more true than when you decide to head out on a little over the road adventure in search of gobblers. Not only does this get you into unfamiliar territory, which is good for us as hunter, but it helps smooth out all the wrinkles

of hunting, travel and camping, all that jazz. And even if you think there's no way in hell you travel for a stupid bird, give this episode of listen maybe I can change your mind. Back in January, I dropped a couple of episodes of this podcast that were dedicated to considering an over the road White Tailed Trip. If you haven't listened to them, I suggest you hop inside the way back machine and go give them some of

your time. If you have and you're all on board with hitting the road, this episode is definitely for you. If you're on the fence and just kicking the tires while mind grinding over taking a trip. This episode is definitely for you if you are in the no way in hell I'm staying home. No matter what category this episode is, uh maybe maybe not for you, but give it a listen. Anyway, Hunters often take trips. This is

no surprise. Traveling to hunt is so popular now and kind of appears like it's a simple thing to do, especially if you're just rolling through Instagram. And truly, we've we've never had more information than we do these days, so in some ways, putting together not a state trip really has never been easier. That doesn't make it easy, though. This is true for any trip, and it definitely is

true if you're a first timer. In that case, if the trip involves big game and the big expenses that go with it and a lot of expectations, the potential for the whole thing to go south is real. Bad weather, I don't know, a truck that decides it doesn't like shifting out of first gear anymore, unexpected hunters in the field, poor game, animal numbers, you name it. The traveling hunt is a lonely ship out there in the ocean, and there are a pile of torpedoes heading in his general

direction at any given moment. A great way to mitigate the risk of the whole thing blowing up and the ving you with a sour taste in your mouth is to travel for something a little less important to you than bucks, something like I don't know, a silly bird with a nutsack on his chin and a couple of knives on his ugly feet, a bird that makes a laughable call immediately turns on his fallen compadres and demonstrates less loyalty than a supervillain. And well, I don't know.

It's composed of the kind of meat that is perfect for making kid approved nuggets. The wild turkey. I could probably do an entire year's worth of podcast episodes just like these, but dedicated solely to hunting turkeys. I love them, I really do. I think turkey hunting is more fun than most hunting in general, except for maybe spotting and stocking meal deer, even if turkey success is a little

less rewarding than it is with bigger game. I think that we are damn lucky to have this goofy bird in so many different places where we can hunt it. I also think we are damn lucky that there are so many states that will sell us a license to hunt that no matter where we call home. Even better those states, in those places you might travel to hunt turkeys, they're also home to white tales, often many of them, and surprise, surprise, the turkeys live where the deer live,

or the deer live where the turkeys live. It doesn't really matter. They are all mixed up on the landscape, and that is a good thing for us. Now. I mentioned on this show about how my first out of state hunts involved turkey travel, and honestly quite a few of my current hunts due too. But I rarely had somewhere with the idea that the only thing I'm thinking about is how to arrow a gobbler or shoot one

in the face with a shotgun. I'm always factoring in whether I want to hunt turkeys on ground that I also might want to hunt deer on I'll give you an example of how this played out in my life recently. After drawing deer tags in Iowa in two thousand nine and two, I decided it was time to save up my points until I could find a good unit to hunt public land. I messed around for a few years, and then took a trip to the southwest corner of the state to hunt turkeys and deer scout. The turkey

hunting there was actually pretty sweet. The deer scouting was okay, but just not enough to convince me to cash in my points and buy that spending nonresident deer tag. So I kept looking and in en I decided to hunt turkeys in a different part of the state again with the idea that I had scout deer in the process. I picked a new area with a decent concentration of public land around, applied for a last season turkey tag, and made plans to go run and gun for a

few days. I also booked a site at a campground and did a lot of east scouting. After getting down there and setting up camp, I hiked into my first spot during an afternoon hunt. This spot has a dreamy meadow on top of a bluff. While a few gobblers responded that evening nothing came in, So that night in camp, I opened up my on X app and I picked out another spot that looked like a good place to hike into for a long beard, but it was also an area that I really wanted to scout deer in.

When I woke up that morning well before first light, it was crazy windy, and I never heard of gobble the entire time I hiked to the back of that property to set up, But as it got light and the morning progressed, I finally got to drive by from a hen who came into my calling, and a little bit later after that, I was kind of leaning back and I thought I heard a bird drumming against the

NonStop hollow thirty mile pro winds. It was enough to get me to look at my decoy, and then it all made sense, because there was a monster tom chest bumping it. How he got into my spread without my knowledge probably says a little too much about my ability to pay attention. But the good news was that he never even hardly flopped after I lined up my bead on the base of his neck. Killing that old Tom was pretty sweet. But what was equally sweet it was

after I killed him, I spent some time scouting. I found pounded deer trils, I found rub lines, and the general dear sign in the area was impressive. In fact, it was enough to get me to apply for a deer license the following season, which led to a great hunt. In fact, that first meadow I set up in for turkeys, that's the place I spent the second morning of the season, and I saw seven bucks in there, including one of the biggest bucks I've ever seen anywhere, let alone on

public land. And later in that hunt, I came back down and I killed a great book in a spot that I had also scouted while turkey hunting. That same type of progression of events that's happened to me in Nebraska, it's happened to me in South Dakota. It's happened to me in Wisconsin. And the key to all of this is to realize that a turkey trip can really function

as a trial run or a deer hunting trip. Whether you're camping or setting up in a motel or staying with a family friend or a relative, you get to figure out the logistics of a trip. How far is your campground from your best hunting spot. How much of a pain is it to get back to the hotel every night? How many hunters do you see during turkey season? How are they accessing the properties you're hunting as you're engaged in your over the road Turkey trip. Pay attention

to these questions. You should be able to answer some of them, like I don't know that thirty five minute drive from the motel to the management area you want to hunt. That might not sound like much while you're sitting at home in January, but after three days of getting up two hours before dark and then hunting all day, that drive might feel like something a little different. You'll pretty much be the same thing during deer season. So

pay attention. In fact, let me illustrate this by summarizing a conversation I recently had with Casey Smith from the Element podcast. Casey is a white tail killing stud who spends a lot of his time on public land chasing deer from Texas all the way up to the Midwest and the East. Suffice it to say, when he is in the deer woods, he has a good idea what

he needs to do to be successful. He has enough experience to draw from that if something goes wrong, which is ways does he can reset and keep himself in the game. It's a little tiny speed bump. I feel the same way when it comes to white tilS for the most part. But Casey and I also got on the topic of elk and how neither one of us would claim to be anything but an eager novice when

it comes to elk hunting. We talked about the difference in confidence from heading out on a mountain versus heading out on a management area in the Midwest, about how different it is to just find some dear versus finding elk, how different it feels to go from pretty confident to truly baffled. This feeling of not knowing what you're doing. That's a good thing for guys like us to be

reminded of because we have a wide audience. Some folks who consume our stuff they're stone cold killers and they listen in or watch mostly just for entertainment or it seems to probably judge us on the things that we do wrong in their eyes. But others are trying to learn and really trying to glean any tips or strategies they can to try to get better at something. Some

think they're not all that confident in now. There are plenty of ways to highlight this lack of confidence in ourselves, but one sure way is to take that first trip over the road. That's when you're gonna learn a lot about yourself, and you learn a lot about your ability to handle a little adversity while keeping a positive attitude. The thing about that is it's a hell of a lot easier to stomach when you've got a hundred dollar tag for a bird in your pocket versus a four

or five tag for a white tail. Now, if you think that won't matter to you, it might not. But mixing deer tags with ego, which we all have in the deer world, can do weird things to us. It sucks going on a deer trip only to start to believe you're going to eat tag soup. And then I have to tell your wife, or your buddies or your co workers. They drove all the way out there, and you burned your vacation. You spend a ton of money only to kill the same amount of deer you'd have

killed if you had never left at all. One of the best parts about this reality is that you can begin to develop that over the road confidence on a Turkey trip less at stake. That's going to feed your white tailed trips and possibly, I don't know, feed your desire to go travel for pronghorn or elk or meal deer or moose or whatever. It will help you really start to be comfortable with your plan of travel in all of your digital scouting efforts, the thoroughness of your packing,

your gear setups, all of that stuff. When you do this enough, setting up a tent in the dark and forty mile pur winds becomes not such a big deal. Or I don't know, making coffee an oatmeal for yourself an hour before you hike into unfamiliar territory that becomes easy and just part of the routine. Staying away from home for four or five days and keeping yourself on task that kind of just suddenly becomes part of the trip and not something you really have to work on.

It also helps you with the main component of a hunting trip, which isn't just killing something, but it's actual enjoyment. If you want to have a great experience, and I know you do, some level of been there, done that mixed with new adventure is the secret recipe for having a great hunt. Regardless of whether you fill a tag or not. A Turkey trip can give you the chance to learn about that type of hunting while you're simultaneously settling into the rhythm of the hunt, which I can

tell you without question helps you find more success. And if you think finding more success on the road doesn't feed the desire to travel more, you're off your rocker there, Betty Crocker. There's nothing sweeter than traveling to a new state, to new ground, living in a tent for a few days, and filling a tag, even if that tag is only on a turkey, even if it's a jake, which, by the way, is as much of a trophy turkey as a six year old thirty pounder with two inch hooks

and five beards. Well, okay, maybe maybe a jake isn't as good as that bird, but I can tell you I've been really happy, many many times to look up and see a group of short beards running into my spread. If I haven't convinced you yet, here's another benefit to a spring Turkey road trip. You really get to test out your gear instead of buying a new pack or maybe a new pair of boots and then waiting until some are scouting or the actual deer season to give

them a real test run. You can actually hunt with that stuff this spring. This goes for hunting gear of course, you know, bows, accessories, whatever, but also for camping equipment. If you choose to camp, and believe me, getting to know your tent, cot, sleeping pads, sleeping bag, lanterns, cooking setup, and whatever else during Turkey season, that'll make your dear trips a lot easier to plan for and a lot

more enjoyable. And on this note, which I fully admit I'm biased towards, I think you should consider camping if at all possible. You always have the backup of finding a motel somewhere if the camping thing doesn't work out. We don't always have the benefit of finding a motel with vacancy near where you want to hunt. You can often find campgrounds close by, or depending on the state and type of land you're gonna hunt, camp right where

you're gonna be Jason those birds. This might be the case on public land and it might be the case on private land. If you tap your network and you're like, I'm gonna go out to South Dakota and hunt my long lost uncle's farm. He might let you pitch a ten in his backyard. Who knows. It's a great way to go about a traveling hunt because you're in control of your little home base. That's a huge win in my book, and it has absolutely changed the game for me as far as how I plan all of my

over the road hunts. If I can't camp in close proximity to the ground I plan to hunt, I'm probably gonna look elsewhere. That's how important this is to me. Now, on a later episode of this podcast, I'll break down my whole white tail camping set up, but for now, suffice it to say camp if he can't for turkeys,

and for dear, just do it. But now, to get back on the topic a little more, a turkey trip will not only help you familiarize yourself with your gear, but also tell you what you don't like about your gear. It's a better scenario to figure that stuff out in the end of April while your turkey hunting than during

the second week in November when you're deer hunting. You'll also get an idea how much food to bring on a trip, how many of those little green propane tanks you might need to, I don't know, fuel your lanterns and your blind heater or whatever. You'll get to figure out what blind chairs squeak, which ones don't. How tolerant you are of temperature swings while sleeping in a tent. How likely you are to enjoy a trip with a hunting buddy who's snoring kind of sounds just like a

wilderbies experiencing an especially painful birth of its calf. You'll learn how the locals might treat you, how well the roads are maintained, which is really important. It's places, what the tick numbers are, like, whether you can actually cross that river in knee high boots to hunt the promised land beyond the far bank, or if it's way too deep and it only looks like it's crossable when you look at it on satellite imagery. You'll learn a lot.

You'll learn how much a trip like this really costs. How prone you are to ignoring the lunch meet in your cooler to drive to the nearest Arby's for some delicious curly fries and a roast beef sandwich. This is kind of like pitching in a minor league game to see if you really got the arm and the stamina and the mental pieces in place to jump up to the big show. Okay, maybe that's a stretch, but you

get my drift. All I'm saying is consider this. Consider it because taking a turkey hunting trip is just fun and it's a beneficial move if you intend to become more of a traveling hunter in general, and tune in next week. I plan to keep talking turkeys and white tails, but in a new way that will be relatable to you, whether you're going to drive ten thousand miles to Spring in search of your turkey slam, or you just want to stay at home in gobbler hunt a few days

on your grandpa's farm. That's it for this week, my white tail obsessed friends. This has been the Wire to Hunt Foundations podcast, and I'm your host, Tony Peterson. As always, thank you so much for listening, and if you haven't got enough of your white tail fixed this week, head on over to the mediator dot com slash wired to check out deer hunting articles, or go look at our Wire to Hunt YouTube channel, where we dropped new videos every single week.