Ep. 607: Foundations - For the Love of Does, Part 2

really don't think we as hunters give them enough credit. Now, if you didn't listen to it, probably go back and do that before you dive into this one. Now. I think we need to understand how to hunt does, really understand it. And what better time to talk about that than when we were right on the cusp of the late season where it's kind of, you know, just easier

to drop your standards and shoot whatever comes down the trail. Anyway, this episode is all about that, and even if you're only a die hard big buck hunter, I think you'll still get something out of this episode. One of the reasons I like professional fishing, mostly professional bass fishing, is because it allows you to prove whether you're the best or not. Anyone who can pony up the entrance fees and has a tournament compatible boat and an adequate insurance

policy can compete. Now you know, this is obviously for lower level derbys and circuits, because you're not going to fish some of the bigger tours without a little more on your resume than I don't know. I just like to catch bass and I have some money in hunting. We don't have this great leveler for a few reasons. The first is that catching release hunting really isn't a thing.

It might be in the future when we lose most of our opportunities, but for now we don't really get to shoot, box, throw them in our alive well, and then release them back into the woods at the end of the day. Now hear me out, I'm absolutely against turning hunting into competition. I hate it. I don't like that idea at all, and I know there have been a few failed attempts to do just that, but luckily

they never really stuck. So I don't want that. And this is just purely a thought exercise, so treated as such. I would like to know how good some hunters really are. I think a lot of people would. I think it'd be fun to see some of the industry folks have to prove themselves against other industry folks. And I don't

mean candy land hunter versus candy land hunter here. I'd love to see some of these folks with a couple two inches under their belt compete against I don't know, like a Zach Farrenbauer or an Andy may On public Land and some state like Pennsylvania or Louisiana or somewhere else that is just not gonna offer too many easy deer. It's gonna be full of challenges and be pretty skimpy

with the buck sights. That's a pipe dream, and honestly, maybe just a projection of the pettiness I possessed deep in my heart over the hunting industry as a whole. Where I should have gone with this, and where I intended to before I got sidetracked by one of my many, many character flaws is that hunting is an easy thing to talk about in a way that makes us all look good. Where this drives me a little bit crazy is when people talk about all the deer that they

could have shot but didn't. You know, the people who take credit for not shooting the hunter and ten inch buck that just happened to walk by at fifty four yards and last light in the woods, and they couldn't have hit it, probably with two quivers full of arrows, but they claim it because, well, who's going to be able to prove them wrong. Who's going to call them

out on that? Nobody? And it really doesn't matter. It just grinds my gears a little like it does when people talk about shooting does as if it's like a don't know, a trip to the grocery store in the woods, and almost like a transactional thing. In reality, trying to shoot a dough in many, many situations isn't nearly as easy as we make it sound on a grand scale, mostly because a lot of the people who talk that way have really easy hunting or they aren't actually trying

to shoot dose. Now I know a lot of people who do have easy setups to shoot dose, and that's just fine. If you're in a high deer density area and have at least a few brain cells rattling around in your old skull, you should be able to eventually get a dough to pose up at twenty yards. If you have a remotely decent place to hunt, but even that's probably too harsh because it's often not that easy. When I first started deer hunting, we could only get

one tag in Minnesota for archery hunters. If I remember correctly, it was good for either a buck or a dough back then. But I spent my first few years as a bow hunter around a group of guys that did not shoot dose. And believe me, I wanted to shoot dose. I wanted to shoot them bad enough that I had occasionally try, and I'd always fail. Now, I watched those guys kill spikes and four keys and occasionally a good one, and my dad always encouraged me to just get some

deer under my belt. But that was a bad environment to start in. It really kind of set me back. I felt it when I had watched does go through while I was waiting on a buck. I felt it when I broke during my first year as a deer hunter and I shot not once, not twice, but three times at a dophon at like eight yards That fond made it away unscathed, and I carried a whole shipload of shame out of the woods with me that day.

I didn't kill a deer that season and the next year on Opening Day, when I was thirteen years old, I had two button bucks come up to my tree on Opening night. Now, I knew I'd be crucified if I shot one, so I let them walk. My dad told me that was crazy, and you know, I know now he was right, but I didn't want to deal with the negativity then. In a way, it reminds me of how so many hunters treat other hunters today. Of course,

back then it was much more personal. You knew the people who were going to buck shame you versus a bunch of strangers on social media. But the sentiment was the same, I'm going to bring something shitty into this world that has no bearing on anything actually important, just because I am human nature. Guys, it's rough sometimes Anyway. If I had grown up with antler list tags available right from the jump, I think my whole deer hunting

evolution would have been fast tracked. In fact, I think when I finally got a chance to shoot some deer, when I had, you know, an either sex tag and a dough tag, I almost always filled both. I also started hunting deer in a different way. It wasn't solely about getting around buck sign and hoping one would walk by. It started to become a matter of hunting spots and not burning them out, and thinking about how all of the deer used the terrain, not just the ones that

have antlers. This clicked for me when I was probably about twenty and I went out opening morning to a stand that I had hung that summer on the top of a ridge. The woods there by that stand was only about twenty yards thick before it dropped off into a valley, and there was a prominent wash out on the hillside right there that forced all the traveling deer lower high. Now I bet on high because of the

wind advantage. I also had a suspicion that deer would use the trail, based on it being kind of position between an alfalfa field and a thicker patch of woods where I often jumped bedded deer when I went through there. Now, that morning alone dough came down the trail and I shot her. Well, that probably doesn't seem like much, but it made me realize I had been mostly counting on randomness to deliver a deer to me, and this dough had done what I had hoped deer would do. I

know it doesn't seem like much, but it was. I had other experiences like one on public land in the Twin Cities here probably I don't know, eight or ten years ago did again kind of reminding me of that lesson. Now in the summer scouting, I had found this this kind of cool crossing in a swamp and that every day it seemed like a few deer would use it. Not wasn't a major trail or a major travel route, but it made sense if deer wanted to go from one high ground spot to another without getting too wet

or working too hard. I shot a dough they're opening morning too. Now why is this valuable? Because you might not always get to hunt your grandma's farm where you know the bucks hit the food plot on Halloween every year to check scrapes, or the bachelor up on the beans and you can kill one. Early land changes hands, deer populations ebb and flow, New neighbors move in and

they shoot everything. Or you might decide to buy a nonresident license somewhere and realize that just because you can consistently kill good bucks on your lease at home, it doesn't mean you can kill a deer on public land in Oklahoma, even with a week's worth of time to hunt. I think being open to shooting dos in the right situation is a huge benefit for all of us as hunters,

provided we have the option. I also think even if you believe it's easy to kill those, it's worth setting up some rules around when you will, and that changes the game. I'll give you an example. I try really hard not to shoot dose with fawns. I like the challenge of hunting loan does and waiting them out, because where I hunt, they'll show up. In northern Wisconsin with the predator densities there, it's pretty much a given. Then

I'll see a fair amount of dose without fawns. And the last time, I said screw it, and I shot a dough with twin fawns, which is double bad, super bad, really bad if you have twins yourself. I promptly nearly lost my nutsack to a fence post. I got greedy down there on that public land in Oklahoma, and I wanted to fill some tags. So when that dough came in and posed up by my natural ground blind, I threw caution to the wind, and I broke one of my rules. Now I know you think it's just a quincid.

But when I was laying on the ground there with blood coming out of quite a few spots in my body and pain in my apple bag, that felt like going I don't know, nine rounds with a fence post. It was just radiating through my body. I thought that maybe maybe I shouldn't have broken one of my rules. I love hunting when I green light myself for does, and my favorite time is when I'm hunting on a September October morning and then I see that loan dough

walking in. Then it's all systems go for me. I also love it when I'm on the road on public land somewhere and I have a dough tag changes the entire hunt. And I'll tell you something, I kind of even secretly like it a little now when I go to my banker and I asked for a personal loan every few years so I can draw an Iowa tag and they make me buy a dough tag for like five bucks. The mature dough I shot down there in while she was drinking at a river crossing was kind

of really my goal for that sit, kinda. I also wanted to see how Dear used the cross, and even though I had low hopes of killing a buck there I don't know, I still felt like I had a chance. Plus it was just fun to hunt, knowing that any loan do that came past was in real trouble. No, there's a little nugget hidden in that story that I want to tell you about. It was fun. I know, we like to sit in the woods and see the sunrise and eat junk food and wait out a buck.

But I don't enjoy hunting anymore than when I go into the mode where I intend to shoot. I don't know why, but it changes everything. I just love the feeling of my heart pounding between my ears and living in that moment where time slows down and you know you're going to try to draw soon, and once you do draw, you have to be ready to read the deer and aim and execute. Then there's the post shot adrenaline dump and the instant feeling of while you've either

done things really well or not so much. I guess put another way and really dumbed down and simplified. It's pretty fun to shoot deer. So what does this mean for you? M Do you have your mind made up on what hunting doz is like, and you're not interested? Okay,

are you having fun hunting? Are you going to have fun hunting this month when it's super cold in the deer kg and your odds of seeing a good buck are less likely than the odds of Kenyan catching an eighteen inch trout and not immediately plastering it all over a social media Are you struggling to kill good bucks? Probably if you're listening to me yammer on week after week.

I promise you if that's the case, opening yourself up to the possibility of shooting a door or two and then actually doing that, it's going to help your cause. This is especially undeniably true if you hunt pressure deer. Now, if you hunt candy land deer, then these rules really don't apply. But pressure dear, the does and the bucks

are pretty good at the survival game. If you can somewhat consistently kill mature does where lots of people hunt them, then you will evidently be a better big buck hunter for it. Take that to the bank, my friends, because it's as good as gold. This stuff is not easy, and it won't get any easier for most of us if we aren't making moves to get better at being

good deer hunters. Now, not mature buck hunters, mind you, which is a nice satellite benefit to becoming better deer hunters, but just learning deer and becoming better at the whole thing. This is a skill that will help you far more than obsessing over the best times to grunt to rattle or buying a six dollar decoy that looks so good the other hunters and your party will occasionally take a poke at it. The key to being better is to recognize which challenges are available to you, and then meeting

them head on and listen. The mature buck challenge is always going to be there, but it's honestly a bridge too far for a lot of hunters. It's a worthy consideration, but a great way also for a lot of hunters to eat a lot of tags and real sick of those early alarms in those cold, unproductive sits. I don't know, all stick and no carrot is no fun for something that is supposed to be fun. Think about this as we go into what are definitely the final innings of season.

There might be a month left for some or two for others, but the best parts for most of us, they're in the rear view mirror. Now it's up to us to figure out how to use our time for the rest of the season. For me, that will involve some dough hunts that will feel an awful lot like

I'm hunting for big bucks. I'm not gonna be able to make too many mistakes, because once the gun season is over, the deer that are left really don't enjoy sharing the woods with people still bent on deflating their lungs. It'll be a staging area thing mostly, which is a skill that has paid off well in my buck hunts. If you can figure out how to kill dose staging, you can figure out how to kill bucks. Trust me. It might be a betting area thing too, which is

something I just want to get better at. In I'm not going to go out and kill mature bucks out of their bed as easily as I'm going to figure out how to kill some goes around a bedding area. Huge benefit there, you know. And I planned to run a few cameras, do some observations and just see how I can put together a plan here in Minnesota and maybe in Wisconsin that will end up with an easy blood trail in the snow. I highly recommend many of

my listeners they do the same. Now. It's an easy choice for me because I love the meat, but maybe you don't. I bet you can find a way to donate it, or find someone in your life who would love some venisine. I've never had a problem finding somebody who would take some veniicine. And I think the key takeaway here is, I don't know to maybe just keep hunting off the does on your place are too easy. Go still hunt the public land down the road. Easy.

We'll go out the window then, but you know what, you'll still be hunting, and that's better than sitting at home not hunting, or sitting somewhere where you know it's a foregone conclusion and it's not that exciting. Or maybe you could kill dose all day long out of your box blind on the food plot. Great. If that's the case and you want to do that, go ahead. But if that doesn't really do it for you, go try

to kill one from the ground in the woods. If that's too easy, find someone who sucks that hunting and take them out. They'll be tickled to have a chance to shoot a dough and you'll watch someone have a hard time doing something you think is easy, and that's an important thing to be reminded of. And however you do it, consider this. Just don't sell does short just because they don't have antlers. Consider them what they are, were the adversaries in the woods, which they often are.

They are also fun to hunt, full of delicious meat, and far more available on a general scale than big, old mature bucks. That's enough reasons to hunt them. Right there, I'd say, all right, I'm done talking about dose. Done, done done. Next week I'm going to talk about weapon choice and why you should consider hunting deer with something different than you're chosen weapon. And I know that sounds weird, but I'll explain it in detail when that show drops.

Until then, shoot straight and stay safe, my friends. That's all I've got for you this week. I'm Tony Peterson and this has been the Wire to Hunt Foundations podcast,

which has brought to you by First Light. As always, thank you so much for your support, and if you want some more white tail wisdom, head on over to the meat eater dot com slash wired to read my latest articles and articles from a whole host of white tail killers, and you can also check out the weekly how to videos that Mark and I produce for the wire to Hunt YouTube channel.