Ep. 577: Foundations - Hunt To Kill, Not To Hunt

smacks me upside the head like a tether ball. Does anybody actually play tether ball anymore? While hunting elk earlier this month, I had a realization as I watched some meal deear spook from their beds that I can very easily switch between hunting to kill and hunting to hunt, but only one, you know, really serves me most of the time. So how's that, my friends? Clear as the average southern river that can barely hold a population a catfish. If so, keep listening and I'll try to make this

a hell of a lot easier to understand. The forecast was actually pretty great. If you're an ambush guy and I am, and you are not a great caller, which I also am a high pressure system, had rolled over a never to be named over the counter unit in Colorado, and I had pointed my truck down into the left for solo road time. My elk hunting partner, who by the way, is a savage in the mountains, had been

scouting elk hard for us. He had also been keeping tabs on some meal deer and a few bears, since we both had tags for just about everything that might walk by on one of our calling setups, or more likely into a and or a small water hole to grab a drink. Tyler knows mountain animals better than anyone. And if there is a sidebar to this podcast, it's that hunting with someone who is really, really good is such a benefit. I know that sounds simple, but I'm

not joking here. This is something you see and I don't know just probably just about every facet of life. If you play guitar, find someone who is better than you. They can teach you something or at the very very least, motivate you to get better. If you have a bird dog, spend some time around a good trainer. If you are a dipship white tail hunter trying to level up on your high country Western game. Do what you can to buddy up with someone who knows what they're doing. It's

a true game changer. So anyway, even though I had sworn to never, ever, ever, ever hunt the first week of elk season in Colorado again after a few earlier season not so great hunts, life and you know, just the hectic schedule of it all got in a way this year and it was first week or nothing for me. The plan, instead of being a straight up call fest like a dreamy elk hunt, was going to involve a mix of ambush sits and some rolling around calling, but

it would be soft cow calling. We knew the bugling wasn't likely to cut it, so we knew that we had to do some other stuff to be successful. Here's a thing, though, you can know what you need to do to be successful and still not do it. In fact, that's the point of this whole podcast. And let me tell you something. If you do just that, you're not alone. We all do it. It's kind of our default mode and it's something we should, at the very least all

think about. Now. This didn't hit me until the second day of my hunt with Tyler the first day, after packing in the previous afternoon before the opener and setting up our bivy camps, I greeted the elk world while person a stand over a pretty damn good looking pond. As the sun rose, which was not readily visible to me for hours, considering I was tucked eight down in a bowl, the thermal stayed pretty consistent, which is always nice in the mountains. An hour into the morning, I

saw a lone dough sneak off to go bed. I thought, it's cool, at least I'm around some mealie's. An hour after that, I heard a cow call in the dark timber above me, and then a lone bull bugle. It felt like it was a matter of time. An hour after that, I heard the unmistakable sound of elk crashing through the brush, and I watched his two young but legal bulls circle around behind me at maybe eighty yards.

It felt like I was in the epicenter of elk activity and that the heat of the midday would bring down a thirsty bull or some cows. It really didn't even bother me too much when two crusted the ridge above me, gave me a dejected wave and then bugled with all their might as they worked out of my life. But then it went dead, and I had songbirds to watch and those annoying dwarf mountain chipmunks, but that was about it as I sat there baking away while the

sun melted my snacks. Now, eventually the old spun enough to get the sun out of my life, and the evening set in. All felt right, but no bowl showed up. I spent a shade over fourteen hours on stand that day, and while it was physically the easiest day of my elk hunting career, mentally it was one of the toughest. Next morning, I settled back in there and I thought, there's no way a bull won't get thirsty today and come in at some point. But by eleven am I

had had enough. I climbed down throughout my pack and I hiked up to the nearest ridge to make some coffee and hunt like you're supposed to when you're in the mountains. While sipping some expired Starbucks instant coffee and looking at on X, I decided to sneak through a long band at dark timber just to see what I could find. And what I found was dead, calm, steep

timber that was not really ideal for stalking. The only animals I encountered were two meal deear does that let me get to like ten yards before they busted out, which not only scared to live and shite out of me, but also reminding me of something. When I was sitting on stand, I was hunting to kill. The conditions favored that setup, and the odds were that if I spent enough time, something should visit and offer me a high

odd shot. Instead, I was not very skillfully sneaking around the mountains, which was basically just hunting to hunt, and even though it was what my heart wanted, I knew it was a bad idea. Well. I eventually overrode my instincts and I climbed into that stand for the rest of the day. At one point in the mid afternoon, I had a nice five point bull come running in randomly, but he ran right into my scent stream, where he pulled a one eight so fast it was almost like

it didn't happen. That two second encounter. That was my action for the day, other than those meal here that I blew out. Now. The following morning brought more of the same Tyler and I decided we weren't around the concentration of elk. He hoped we would be in that spot, So we pulled our camp and hiked into a different pond to sit. And while they're just waiting on a bowl to come in, we noticed a brand new trail

camera on a tree. And then we looked over to our left and saw that there was a tree over the pond that had been trimmed very recently by a chainsaw, and it was even outfitted with a brand new climbing stand on the bottom. You could call that strike two. I suppose the third spot, we packed for five days of bivvy life and hiked in. This time I brought a saddle and three climbing sticks because the water was six miles deep. Now, I mean the water that I

was gonna hunt was six miles into the mountains. I wasn't hunting a mountain pond that was six miles deep. It was also surrounded by elk and meal, deer, rubs, fresh tracks, and is beautiful of a location to hang off of a tree as I've ever seen in my life. When I saw it, I told myself, I'm gonna sit here as long as the wind works for me for

as many hours as I have to. I mean, it was only going to get drier, was only going to get hotter, and the elk should have only been getting pushed up to us by the day as more and more people hunted lower and pushed him up. The first evening, I saw nothing except a turkey, which was kind of a surprise. At ten thot the next morning, I didn't even see a turkey. But that afternoon I climbed in just as the thermal started a suck down the mountain, and ten minutes later I heard the sound of a

stick crack. Then another three bowls were on their way in, and while the lead bowl didn't like what he smelled, he didn't spook too hard, and he eventually gave me a shot. The shot didn't go as well as I hoped, mostly because it was pretty much the point where I was melting down to nothing from elk fever. But it went well enough that he only went two d yards, so I'm not going to complain about it. The bowl, you know, probably a squeaker into pope and young and

way better than I could have hoped for. He came from a few different things. The first that I have to give credit to is Tyler scouting. That was huge. The next was that the conditions were just right for sitting water. The third was that I was hunting there to kill, not wandering around hunting for the sake of hunting. That one is important. Think about how often we do

this to ourselves in the white tail world. The easiest to understand, and probably the best way to really frame this up is the field edge stand, or hell, any stand with a lot of visibility. Now you know, if you hunt western white tails on a river bottom, every stand option might fit into this category. But even then, especially if say I don't know the hunting public, guys shoot a big buck in your spot and then the masses show up to repeat Zach success, those open country

deer will suddenly become small pockets of cover. Type of deer pressure pushes deer into the cover period. It just does. And the reason the dear behaves so differently on those sportsmen's channel shows is because you're literally watching deer that received little to no hunting pressure. The bucks that stroll into a food plot and broad daylight are bucks that have done so for years without neg of repercussions. If you're hunting those deer, then you don't need this podcast

if you're not think about it this way. How often do you think those soldiers over in Ukraine walk straight across the field on their way to the front lines. Probably not often, because even if it might be a poor comparison, danger is danger. Expose yourself to it unnecessarily. That's a dumb idea, My friends, Deer aren't soldiers, and either are we. But we are the worst thing to happen to dear since wolves. Hell, We're worse in some ways.

They know it, and the more we remind them of it, the more they say, I think I'm just going to hang out in this thicket to avoid all those elm or fud sitting on the edges of fields and staring down cleared power lines. We know this, yet we go sit where we want to sit. Why. First off, we just have our favorite setups. We all have a spot or two that is just a confident spot, and seeing a few deer almost every time we hunt is often

good enough. But what if that spot is the same spot where you never ever ever see a good buck. I have a spot like that on a farm in southern Minnesota. I love hunting it it's good morning or evening, it doesn't matter. Early in the year, late in December. It's one of the most consistent stand sites for seeing deer that I've ever found in my life. But I've only ever seen a handful of good ones in there,

and I've only ever killed one. The man hours on stand there versus the tags filled on good bucks, it's not so great. We just can't help ourselves, though, So instead of going to where the deer like to go to avoid us, we ride out these dead programs and try to spruce them up with calls or sense or whatever. But that's a lost cause mostly as well. Deer, just like elkin turkeys, are most collable where they are most comfortable. I've talked about this a lot, and they are most

comfortable where they feel the least amount of danger. I actually think, and this might sound Captain Coco Puffs crazy the pressure, deer just generally grow suspicious of open areas in daylight. They use them, and boy will they leave plenty of deceptive sign in these areas as they rub, scrape, and throw deer level raves at midnight in these spots, but daylight moving in these areas that's a different story even during the rut. And I know you're sad to

hear that, but it's true. The rut can make those spots better, but they won't be as good as some staging area back in the thick stuff, or a banging crossing on a ridge top located deep in the timber. Knowing that, how do you fight that immense gravity of hunting where you want to hunt instead of hunting some spot to kill. Well, this is what's cool about hunting, and a lot of non theoretical science. You can test

this ship out. You want to sit a meadow on some public land in Nebraska, because it's absolutely ringed by scrapes, go ahead, do it. Sneak in there and set up, then pay attention to what you see. The deer will show you all you need to see to know if it's worth hunting. And man, you should listen to them. If it's just does and fawns and scrappers, and then

just does and faons and then just random deer. The spot was okay to begin with, but is burned out now and you're hunting a spot just to hunt it. You know, the same goes for just about any spot. If you hunt it because you like hunting it, but not because of what the deer do there. You're hunting to hunt. Scouting in season scouting is probably the best key, the most important thing to break out of that mindset,

but it's also worth considering the odds. Again, this is just head game stuff, but it helps me because when I'm hunting to kill, I'm often not seeing that many deer, but I do get a boost from my confidence in a spot. I think, Well, it's mid October, the rut is too far off to save me. The pressure from a month of the season has been pretty intense, and the weather is mild. What are the odds of a big buck coming into a bean field and shooting light

right now where I hunt in most places? Not so great? So what would give me better odds? A buck browsing his way along an old clear cut? Yep, those are better. What if that edge of a clear cut offers him a pretty safe travel route, given prevailing I don't know, westerly winds. Well, now that's even better. Now what if that route also takes him across a little stream where he can grab a drink while staying deep in the cover.

Now we're talking but the downside is that I have to go in extra early because the hike is far and I want to be quiet. I also noticed that since it's thick in there, my visibility is gonna be pretty limited. Couple that with the reality that I only have a couple of good shooting lanes to the best trail, and now I know that my sip might be boring and full of anxiety if a good one does show. But what are the odds if I hunt that way?

I'm hunting to kill. It's a spot where a good one should be, and if the sign supports it, I have every reason to believe that's true. So while it's easier and less stressful to hunt to hunt, I have a better chance of having a good encounter if I do some extra work and I hunt to kill. But you want to know what's worse than that? Though this almost never works, I mean it does, but it's hunting, so it mostly doesn't. That might mean that you have to hunt to kill through several spots in a season

just to get one chance. But I would rather have one good close encounter with a buck who thinks he has won the game than some long distance sightings from an easier set up with better visibility. Do you know why, Because my odds are outsmarting him and killing him in a spot like that are higher. They still aren't great, but they are much better than if I phone it in and I sat a standard. I just like to

sit because the hike is easy. It takes me three yards from the truck and will almost guarantee a sighting of some kind of ear the there's a difference to this stuff, my friends. I bet if you could follow around some of the best public land white tail hunters out there, you'd spend far more time in the thick stuff than you would in the open. In fact, I know you would if you were so lucky to be

guided on a hunt by some of those folks. You'd also start to develop a little bit of claustrophobia over the spots you sat in because they'd be tight, but the first crack of a stick or the first sighting of a big brown body coming your way would change things in a hurry. You'd feel it like that tether ball swinging tightly around a pole and slapping you straight in the dome. You'd realize that you're not hunting the

spot just for the sake of hunting. But you're sitting somewhere on the belief that you will kill there right now. To me, there is no better feeling. Now, maybe you're different and deer hunting is just purely an excuse to escape the suckiness of normal life. That's perfectly okay, and I'm real happy for you to have that outlet. But if you want more out of hunting, and it means something to you to come out of the woods heavier

than you went in, then ask yourself off. Ask yourself all season long when you go to sit, am I hunting to hunt today? Or am I hunting to kill? Do that and tune in next week because I'm gonna break down confidence and how important it is to not only be a successful hunter, but also to level up your enjoyment of hunting. That is it for this week, my friends. I'm Tony Peterson. This has been the Wire to Hunt Foundations Podcasts, which has brought to you by

First Light. As always, I want to thank you from the bottom of my heart for your support for this podcast and for all of our Meat Eat content. I really appreciate it. If you want to support us more while leveling up your white tail game. Further, check out our how to videos on the Wire to Hunt YouTube channel, and visit the meat eater dot com slash wire to read weekly articles by Mark myself and a whole bunch of deer killers