Ep. 601: Foundations - A Little Rut Reflection Does A Hunter Good

You find folks are always getting lumped into the same deer categories as the Midwest and Eastern hunters. It's a bad habit us Yankees have, and I do honestly feel bad about it, but I'm probably too old to change, so it is what it is. Anyway. This episode is all about dissecting the very recently wrapped up rut. Even if you happen to live where alligators and swamps dominate

and your rut is just getting into full swing. You see what I did there, But it's pretty much over for a lot of us, and now is a good time to do a little the cropsy on your hunt. What revelations you discover now in your rut reflections could and probably should guide you next season. The old rut.

She's a cold hearted mistress, my friends. Sure, she can be a lot of fun, but probably will mostly leave you feeling cheated and on the verge of being in trouble with your family and dissatisfied with your life choices. I don't know, maybe that's too harsh, but it is often a letdown. I remember back in my high school days. I think I was a junior and had a new

girl move into our town and enrolling our school. Now, for those of you who grew up in bigger cities or the suburbs of bigger cities, this probably isn't gonna be too relatable. But in a little dairy farming community where you're graduating classes like seventy people and the whole population of your school probably wouldn't top a few hundred, it was a different thing. Now, this girl, we'll call

her Laura because that was her name. She happened to be in some class in a library, and I happened to have a study hall or something that put me in a position to sneak into the library during her class. Now, I don't remember the details all that well, because there are about seven thousand bottles of gym being between me

now and that moment. Then. Even though I haven't drinking like ten years, I do remember getting kicked out of her class one time, and I thought it was pretty wild to get booted from a class I wasn't even in anyway. I built her up in my head a lot. She was really pretty probably still is, and that clouded my vision quite a bit. I honestly never thought she'd go for me, and when she did, I really couldn't believe my luck. I felt things were really going the

right way for old Antonio. But then I got to spend some time alone with her, and man, was that a let down. I'm sure there's plenty of fault on my end, but the conversations with her made the average accounting class seem like a rave I don't know, chock full of industrial drugs and world renow and DJ's tossing cakes into the crowd or whatever they do these days. It was just pure torture and never really got any better.

It was a short romance, and one that shattered my illusion not only of her, but of expectations in general. And do you know what else is like? That Yep, you guessed it, rides at Disney World. Just kidding. It's the rut, that's right. That sweet sweet time that world class bullshitters like Mark Kenyon try to convince you is the best time ever, But only because he's hunting, you know,

the dumbest bucks ever, amazing private properties. Because he's a hunting one per center you could never relate to in the real world. It's not so rosy. Let me give you an example from my recent hunt. I've been daydreaming about some public ground in western Minnesota four years while pheasant hunting out there. I've seen plenty of decent books, and I just love the challenge of hunting new areas. Add in the fact that I knew I'd be sharing the woods with other bow hunters and plenty of my

fellow rooster chasers. I knew it was going to be a big challenge, but I wanted to do it anyway. Just like those big woods bucks that keep kicking me in the old apple bag. I can't resist the draw certain places in certain habitats, and the near certain reality that I will not kill a big one at any given time when I go out, but the possibility is there and playing the long game in spots like that

is so rewarding to me. So I set my sights on hunting a few days there while we filmed Season two of one Week in November, and my goal was pole. I just wanted to shoot a buck, literally, any buck from a spike on up to a three. I knew I only had three days to do it for the gun opener, so my standards were low, but my optimism

was high. Now. I scouted those spots last February and then again this October, and the trails were there, the sign was there, the deer, it seemed, were there, and as my cameraman and I got set up on November one, I felt pretty damn confident, despite the forecast which sucked so much. And even before first light on that first day, as we were just settling into our stands, I heard a deer running and then three doughs came in and

walked all around us and that gloaming. They got there before legal shooting light and left just as it probably would have been legal to shoot them. I thought, Hell, I haven't even been here for half an hour and the run is already delivering deer into my lap. Even though a buck didn't show up, and we sat all day and we eventually saw another don a fawn, but nothing else. No Biggie, I thought it was in the seventies. The bugs were terrible and it was just November one.

The second we hunted a different spot, and while the view was incredible, the deer movement sucked there too. That's when I made the call to hunt a river bottom on a different piece of public Now, when it's seventy four degrees with forty mile prior winds, it's pretty easy to talk yourself into changing locations. And the location we

changed to is when I scouted on Halloween. It's my dream kind of rout spot a river system with clear pinch points along some of the bigger bends in the waterway in that part of the state, Just like in many parts of the country, it's really hard to find a better white tail cover than along rivers, especially cover that's connected to other cover that's connected to other cover.

So we slipped in for an afternoon hunt, and my optimism was sky high after seeing a bunch of fresh deer tracks in the mud, but it wanes some when we got to the tree I had picked out because I was standing there at the base when I looked over to my left and I saw antlers. They're lying Not fifteen yards from my tree was a dead eight pointer right in the middle of the trail that I expected all the ear to come along. The coyotes had barely gotten to him. I couldn't tell for sure, but

it looked like a gut shot and no recovery. I thought, what the hell are the odds of this? The spot was probably covered in coyote scent and probably had hunter's blood trailing through it at some point in the very recent past. Much of my optimism faded pretty hard then, but I saddled up anyway, and I saw two dos.

I came back the next morning for another round, and I blanked on November three, so I'm back to my first spot set up again and saw two dos and another hunter who decided that ten acres of timber was definitely big enough for two bow hunters. Listen, I get it, it's public, but there were many many options there. Anyway. The moral of the story is I couldn't even kill a forky there during the rut, but the Wisconsin property I was headed to for the back half of my

week would be a different story. And I knew it. It's ninety acres of beautiful bluff country, woods and fields and you can actually see Iowa from it, right across the river. How can you beat that? And even though the landowner had killed a really good buck on it a few days before we got there, I thought it was going to be easy, and it might have been, but that hot, windy weather we dealt with for the

first three days brought in a major front. It rained, no no scratch that, It freaking poured for forty eight hours, just poured. Now, I love hunting in the rain, and I would have been out there doing my thing. But when you've got another person who was toting thousands and thousands of dollars for the camera gear, it's just another story. So I spent two days in my rut hunt sitting in box blinds, which just are not my thing. Now, if you're keeping track, that's five days of dogshit weather

in a row. And when it broke, I thought it's gonna be on. Now. I went to a stand I hung the summer after some serious rout observation last year, and I would have bet you ten thousand dollars that I wouldn't blank on that set, and you know what, I'd have lost ten thousand dollars. It was humiliating. So I decided to go looking for the rut on the other side of the farm, and I had a dau fon come in bed buy me in a little patch of cover, which was pretty sweet because I hadn't seen

a deer all day. I also very briefly saw a stud of a buck for about four seconds as he ran out of the neighbor's property and out of my life. So that's six days of rut hunting and I had seen a total of two bucks. On day seven. As it happens every time you film, my cameraman and I got into a whisper shouting match as he made too much noise getting into his stand and apparently I needed to chill the f out. When the sun rose, we

made up, and then a beautiful thing happened. A six pointer walked in and sent checked that little patch of cover. It felt so good to see a buck do what bucks should do during the rut, even if he was about thirty. I almost shot him anyway, but I didn't want to deal with a barrage of assholes on YouTube. So he got a pass and I watched all of

that deliciousness walk away. Later, from the totally wrong direction and way too fast for my taste, a much better eight pointer came running in, and you know what he did. He walked right into that little patch of cover and stopped in a spot where I really really had to thread the needle. But it worked, and while he made it farther than any of your should with a broad head through both of its lungs, the ruts saved my ass after serving me a world class beat down for

six days. So you know what I'll do. I'll remember fondly on this rut as one that was great fun and such a blast froom start to finish. Now wasn't, of course, it was mostly pretty rough, but it taught me a few things. The first is something that we can all learn from, which is patience. When you're on a group chat with a random smattering of white tail hunters for a full week during the rut, some of whom don't have tons of experience, you get clued in real quick on how easy it is to keep looking

for the rut. But that's a bad way to go about it. It really is. The rut will mostly come to you if you give it time, and if it doesn't, you can go look for it, but allow yourself some time in each spot. You have to choose wisely, of course, but if you do, you owe it to yourself to settle in and give it at least a day. Now, I know this seems like hypocritical advice because I've talked about moving, and I killed that buck by moving. But I'm saying, fine, spots that you believe in, at least

give them a day. Let them show you what they're going to offer you. Now, this is hard to do because we've been conditioned to believe it's going to be bonkers everywhere in the woods, and when it's not, we think we're just in the place that it's not going bonkers, and it's going bonkers somewhere else. It might be, but the odds of you stumbling into it they're not all

that great. Most of the time, the action is going to be pretty similar no matter where you go, until it breaks due to the weather or the seasonal timing, or almost always both. Now, another big reminder I got this year is something I talked about last week, which was that cover still king when the rut is on. Watching how one two ak or patch of thicker than the rest cover save my hunt is something that's going

to stick with me. I've seen this a lot over the years, but it's such a good reminder of how the does are going to go where they feel safe, and the bucks damn well know it. There's also a major difference in how they check for dose when it's thick versus when it's pretty open. If they can see and hear a lot, there isn't much reason for a deep dive with their nose. They know there aren't dose around,

and they're gonna keep going. But if there is a thicket or some other patch of nastiness that they can't see deer in or hear them, they're gonna get close and work it down wind or go right through it. This is like if you're fishing walleyes and you know they are on a gravel flat schooled up and I don't know following following bait fish around, you might have to make pass after pass to keep intercepting a few

fish here and there. That's good, but what if on one of those passes you get bit and you realize that your graph had just showed you a boulder on the bottom, So you drop away point, you check your tracks, and you're swinging back through. You catch another fish and you realize there's several boulders in one little spot. Now, the gravel flat might hold fish randomly throughout, but that little spot with the bigger rocks, that's the place to be. It's the target for every drift, and it will make

the whole trip more efficient and more fun. The right patch of cover does the same thing to running bucks. And you know what else I learned this year that might be of some value to every person who listened to this podcast. It's never, and I mean never, a good idea to throw a pity party. I honestly felt like I could not kill a deer in a high fence pen. For most of my rut hunt. I really thought I was going to eat my Minnesota my Wisconsin buck tags, which does not happen very often to me.

I was frustrated, flabbergast, it flustered, gobsmacked, and just playing totally module less. It sucked. I hated it, and I don't ever want to feel it again. But you know what, I'll probably feel it. Oh, I don't know the first week of November next year, because the rut isn't the dream we believe it to be. But it's just a cool opportunity in the woods and hunt when the hunting

could be really special. Even when the weather conspires against you, or the other hunters mess up your plans, or the deer just seemed to disappear, hunting during the run is always worth it. So was the early season and the lull in the late season. Actually, pretty much anytime you can get out and hunt. You just have to understand that if you don't hunt a badass farm in southern Iowa, you might just not have easy hunting. Even during the rut. You might have to be patient and let the deer

trickle in on you. You might have to do that for a few days while your Western hunter heart tells you to keep looking and go find some action. To go find a new view and find the chase vest that you've been missing. You might also have to move. You might have to leave that pretty open deciduous forest or that nice clear cut or that meadow or that field edge. You might have to go to the cover to where the does are hiding out from the bucks

and the hunters. Honestly, you might have to do a lot of things, but what you should do now is take a real hard look at your efforts the last couple of weeks and the results. Did you kill a buck, well, that's great, I'm happy for you, but don't count on killing a deer just like that next year. That's a trap that many of us fall into, and it often leads us to hunt on memories, which isn't always ideal. Did you not kill a buck? Why did you not have the time or did you not use your time wisely?

Did you not see chasing or cruising or just genuinely experienced the rut like you hoped? Maybe you think it didn't happen, but I'll bet you that ten grand I mentioned earlier that you'll have fawns this spring, show up right when they're supposed to show up. Did you have fun? That's probably the most important question. If you can honestly answer yes, whether you killed one or not, then maybe

your work is done. Maybe you haven't figured out. But if you didn't, or you feel like it could have been more enjoyable, a little reflection on the whole thing can set you up for a better hunt. Next year, So think about it. You have the time now, Ask yourself, what would you do differently if you knew now which you didn't know on October thirty one this year. Then tell yourself that's what you'll do next year, and then

do it. That's it for this week. Next week, I'm going to talk about doze and how they don't get much love but they should, especially as we round the corner toward the late season and for most of us, the hardest hunting of the year. 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 for all your support. I truly, honestly, absolutely appreciate it. I

love it, Thank you so much. If you want some more white tail content, you can head over to our YouTube channel, the wire to Hunt YouTube channel that is, and see a bunch of how to stuff that Mark and I have put together. Or you can go to the mediator dot com slash wired and read a bunch of articles for Mark, myself and a whole slew of white tail killers