Ep. 595: Foundations - It's Not About How Many, But Who

distractions in the woods, especially during the rut. So I guess the idea for this episode came to me while going back and forth with a good buddy of mine. He was at a farm that we both hunt, and he wanted to move one of my cameras from one trail to another. The pictures at the crossing where I

had set up they just weren't that impressive. And last year, during a late season hunt, we stumbled on a different crossing down the ravine from that where a doll that I had shot crossed and we didn't really know it was there. So we're a blood trailing and we went through there. We're like, yeah, this is pretty cool. Now that newly discovered crossing. It looked pretty promising. So in this conversation he decided to grab my camera and head

on over there. But then he told me when he got there, He's like, yeah, the trail really isn't that beaten down, but there are quite a few rubs around it. So that's when I said to him, it's not about how many, Adam, But so there you go. That's what

this episode is all about. If you could go back in time, say, I don't know, like years to about four BC, you could witness an event that left an indelible mark on history, an event that is popularized to this day in modern culture, to the point where it's even being used to try to help people kill deer on a podcast written and produced by some random dude

from Minnesota. This event, which took place on soil now covered by nearly seventy feet a sediment that has been continually deposited by a river with a name that I absolutely cannot pronounce, involved an invading Persian force and those famous Spartans that have been featured in all kinds of films and literature. The Battle of Thermopoli, which derives its name from the local hot springs, involved the only land route large enough to allow real foot traffic through a

specific region of Greece. While it's often touted as a battle of like three hundred verses as many as a million. It wasn't quite that one sided. It was a battle, however, where the Spartans, along with some Thespians and Thebans, numbered somewhere near seven thousand at the start. The invading Persians, led by Xerxes, who was a bit too cocky for his own good, numbered somewhere between a hundred and twenty thousand to upwards of three hundred thousand soldiers. Of the

odds were pretty bad, but they were the invaders. And one thing we keep learning to this day is that if you're going to head into someone else's homeland and try to take them over, you better be ready to fight people who have real heart and real conviction and a general ferocity that isn't quite as ensconced in the invaders. For a week, the much smaller army defended its homeland and held off the invading army. They eventually fought to

their death because they were so vastly outnumbered. And the moral to the story, my friends, is that the small defending army had the heart, the training, and they used their home turf advantage as a force multiplier. Now, they still lost, but they put up a history altering fight. Those Spartans and their allies. They were the right ones. They were different from the invaders on multiple fronts, and the results showed that in that case, it wasn't necessarily

how many but who or I guess whom? If you're talking about people, Do you see what I did there? This is a stretch, But really the thing with white tails is that sometimes you have to look for concentrations of them, the big numbers, if you will, and sometimes you're just looking for the right one. If there's a more appropriate time to look for the right one, then right in the heat of the rut, I don't think so.

But before we get into this, I want to say that I actually am a big proponent of looking for deer concentrations in many, many different situations. Take bigwoods hunting, for example, it's almost a necessity to just have to find dear first before you can even start to think about a specific caliber dear. I also find this to be true on nearly all of my public land white tail hunts. Last month, in the beginning of October, I drove out to South Dakota to hunt public land with

Tyler Jones and Casey Smith. From the Element podcast. The goal first, even in that kind of relatively glass able and open country, was to just find concentrations the deer first. After that we try to drill down to some good bucks. That's the name of the game for public land, especially big chunks of public land that have experienced weeks of

pretty intense hunting pressure. But now, no matter where you hunt, do you really need to locate concentrations or should you start looking for the clues that will lead you to the buck that you really want. I think the ladder is important, and it's somewhat unconventional advice for the rut. Conventional advice would tell you to focus on the deer

concentrations because in those you'll find your local dos. And if you find the local doughs, like I talked about last week, the advice always says you'll find the bucks. I find this advice to be possibly true on any given random November day, but also not true on most any given random November day. I've been around a lot of doughs in November that didn't have a hundred and

forty interest trying to sniff their butts NonStop. I've also found spots where the big bucks just seemed to live during the rut, and where they are are more likely to give a hunter a chance to shoot them. This strategy is partially due to the fact that while we often view rut movement is random and totally unpredictable, it's not. It's probably some of the most predictable dear movement of

the season. Honestly, you just need to understand that it happens at certain spots in daylight in your neck of the woods, and not in a lot of the spots where you might think it should be happening. The rut insanity doesn't blank at the entire countryside and chasing bucks, even in states like Iowa. The bucks, especially bucks on pressure ground. Of course, they do get dumber, they make more mistakes, but they don't often get dumb. They have areas they like, and often those areas are home to

more than one buck in his rut activities. Now, this is another thing. While I'm gonna go, I don't know full a d H D on you for a second, it's this is something that drives me a little crazy. I hear hunters say that bucks won't tolerate other bucks, especially when they are all hopped up on testosterone and

all that jazz. But they will, and they often do. Now, if that weren't true, you wouldn't be able to turn on the Sportsman's channel and watch some show based off of high fence hunting without the fences were seventeen different mature bucks and enter the same food plot looking for love. The biggest buck I ever arrowed was vying for the attention of a single dough who also had two other

potential boyfriends right around her. Those three bucks probably total about four of public land aislers, and they all seem to set aside their differences for the common goal of getting one sexy Nebraska dough super pregnant. So what does all this rambling mean. It means it's time to stop thinking about the randomness of the rut and try to

get specific find the right dear. You might hunt in a place where the bucks to door ratio is so perfectly balanced or hell skewed towards the fellas that you can just sit down window your best dough betting area and wait. But most folks can't, even if they think they can. Most of us need to find not necessarily where the best deer numbers are, but where the best

odds of a buck or multiple books should be. I found this a few years ago on public land in North Dakota, and in four days of hunting, I only saw one dough. She did draw a really nice buck into shooting range, which I greatly appreciated. But the reality of the spot was that it was where the bucks felt safe cruising from chunk of public land at chunk of public land. But now you're probably thinking enough humble

bragging about all the giant public land bucks you've killed. Dude, get to the point, And the point is, my friends, that there are a few ways to find these spots that could have the right deer in them. The first that many people will default to is trail cameras. Now, I love trail cameras for some stuff, but not for pinning down the right deer during the rut. A trail camera on a funnel or a pinch point can certainly clue you into something good, so I don't discount that.

I just think you're in a moment now where you don't have a lot of lag time when it comes to recon that way, a picture from a couple of days ago is great, but it's just not the same thing as being there and seeing them. It's also not as exciting to me as fine ending a spot that is covered and I mean covered in buck sign. Even then that's not as cool as just like I said, laying eyes on a buck or seven of them doing something during the rut. You know, here's the thing about observation.

You have to understand what you're observing. And I'll give you an example. A few years ago in my home state of Minnesota, I sat on a variety of terrain traps trying to pin down a decent buck. What happened is that I didn't pin down a decent buck. I saw some scrappers and I saw some dos, and I based my strategy around that by just looking at the terrain.

But it didn't work. Even when the chasing should have been intense, I found myself watching dough groups lazily work their way through the woods without a buck into and if I did see a buck, he was in like I don't know the four key to basket rack six pointer type range. I was hunting some deer concentrations, but I wasn't drilling down to the spots where the good bucks were. When I finally moved into an area that I suspect it might be the ticket. I started seeing

good bucks. Do you know what that are? It had that others didn't. A couple of things. I had water, and I guess I should say it had better water anyway. They had a trout stream to dip down to and drink after playing grab bass all night. They also had better cover, which is real important. It's often subtle in November, but the difference between open woods and less open woods

is I don't know. Sometimes the difference between that only gets more pronounced the more you hunt places with real pressure. In fact, that South Dakota hunt I mentioned that I did in October. The last night, I moved into a wood lot that is pretty good sized for South Dakota, but would you know almost be considered like an open prairie in northern Michigan that wood lot. Would you know I would even draw the attention of a big woods hunter. Probably, But it was immediately clear to me that it was

the thickest stuff around. I just found it a little too late, and when I got saddled up with my cameraman over my shoulder, the third deer we saw that night was a deer that came right out of that wood lot. He was like a hundred and thirty, but a really good deer for public land. Now it's all relative, my friends, But the truth is that deer like thick stuff. And this holds true even during the rut. In fact, in my experience, it often holds true most during the rut.

So I go about it this way. When I'm in the thick of it and I'm not seeing good deer, just like with over the counter ELK, I pull up my on X and I try to dissect the property I'm hunting. Where is the thickest cover, if not on the spot where I can hunt, how close is the thickest stuff on adjoining properties? And will that feed deer

into and out of my ground? When I find something interesting, it's either a mid day sneaky ninja scouting vest to check sign and tracks, or more likely time to grab the mobile, set up and get down wind on the edge.

I want to be where I believe I can kill a deer, but also where I believe I'll see a deer, or more specifically, the right dear, the spartan warrior, Dear, if you will see what he did there Now I'm going to get into a really important component of this next week when I talk about how dear stick to cover in a true deep dive fashion. But the thing is, even during the rut, the right spot is as important to find as the right deer, and usually you find one and you find the other. This is where I'm

going to diverge once again from traditional rut advice. Sure you should be aware of funnels and pinch points and train traps, but honestly, they are everywhere in a lot of places we deer hunt. If you're in bluff country, you could probably find a good funnel and every ten acres. If you're an open country, you could probably just play connect the dots between patches of cover and pin down some likely travel routes in swamps, the dry spines and land.

Connecting timber is the ticket. It's not rocket science, at least on the surface, but just finding a decent pinch point. It's kind of like finding one scraper a rub. What good does it do you? Maybe something, maybe nothing. There has to be more to the story otherwise it's kind of a hollow victory. Now, there are some rut based studies out there on radio collared box that show they

have pretty specific cruising roads. These studies and the results are pretty fascinating and often show Bucks making almost a clover leaf type of route over and over and over and over again. They don't cover every inch of their territory, but they cover some of the inches of their territory

multiple times a week. This means that you could be in the neighborhood a whole bunch of Bucks, but for whatever reason, they don't spend hardly any time crossing through certain pinch points when they're on the hunt for the ladies. In this case, you might have the right deer on camera, but could easily be in the wrong spot. So how do you find the right spot? Again? Observation and a willingness to shake up the plan. If you have a train trap with a bunch of sign around it and

a pounded trail going through, by all means hundred. If the wind and the approach work in your favor, give it an all day sit or at least a morning and an evening. What if it's all scrappers and does? What if the deer movement is just not happening? This happens a lot, and we often make excuses for it.

There must be a hot dose somewhere else to pull all the bucks away, or the rut must not be really going yet because the moon is full, or mercury is in retrograde, or my sister's crystals that bring forth good energy of Mother Earth or dirty or whatever. The truth is, the rut is happening if it's November, it's happening for most folks outside of some truly southern locales. So we make excuses to keep hunting a dead spot, or we don't put the effort in to hunt after

a few sits because it's just not going. A better bet when you're riding a dead horse is just a dismount and climb up on a live one. Keep looking again. I know you're sick of hearing this, but this is why I always say you should have as many spots to hunt as possible. If you limit yourself to only acres of private land because you believe the huge chunks of public land half an hour away aren't worth it, you're setting yourself up to keep riding that dead pony

in a non existent gallop to nowhere. My little buck a ruse, understand this. No, no, no, believe this in your heart of deer hunting hearts. The right deer and the right spot to kill that deer are out there waiting for you. The deer will show you not only when you've found that winding combo, but also when you haven't. That lesson is one we don't listen to nearly enough, and it leads to a lot of unfilled tags during

the rut. Channel your inner Spartan warrior and think about how the odds are stacked up against you as a hunter. Most of us on any given year won't kill a deer, and even smaller amount of hunters will kill a good buck on any given year. That's some rarefied air to breathe. Even if by Instagram standards it seems like everyone's killing giants,

they aren't, and it doesn't matter. What matters is that you take the time during the rut to keep hunting smart while looking for the terrain trap that the right caliber of bucks will use. To find those, you might have to file through us spot or three or seven or ten. You might have to go mobile when you'd rather just sit in an old stand by spot. But if you want to separate yourself from the average hunter, and believe me, you do, then there isn't much choice here.

So keep looking, keep letting the deer tell you where they want to be and show you what they want to do. Eventually they'll give you everything you need to know to be in the right spot at the right time. Now, like I said, next week, I'm going to talk about how important cover is to deer travel. I think this seems obvious, but I don't think a lot of hunters understand how much this dictates buck movement. That's it for

this week. I'm Tony Peterson. This has been the Wire to Hunt Foundations podcast, which has brought to you by First Light. As always, thank you so much for listening, and if you want more white tail content, feel free to visit them eat eater dot com, slash Wired, or visit our Wire to Hunt YouTube channel. And if you're feeling a little crazy and you want to see some deer hunting, go to the Mediator YouTube channel and check

out Mark's new show, Dear Country All. I think all six episodes are out now check it out, binge it, get yourself pumped up, but watch it. M m hm