Ep. 638: Foundations - Now Is The Time To Fine-Tune Your Ambush Sites

But there are certain things that separate the dear killers from like the deer watchers, and a big one is not settling for just any old stand sites. Now, this may sound kind of dumb, I guess when we talk all the time about mobile approaches and saddling up, But the truth is an awful lot of us hunt some spots where we can just put up and leave stands and blinds, and we're just kind of hoping the deer

will work with us, and often they kind of don't. Now, instead of getting complacent here, you should go out now and look at your best spots and if possible, make them better. I've talked about this a lot, but back in a past life. When I was eight, up with a tournament fishing scene but still a poor college student, I fished a tour in Minnesota for a few years. This was like a ProAm format, which meant that every pro would get paired up with an amateur and they'd

fish as a team for the day. It was an amazing circuit that it ended up going belly up due to some embezzlement issues. And don't quote me on this, but I think probably some fraud. But before the whole thing came crashing down, I fished at tour for three years on the amateur side, and what I learned was incredible. Arguably the biggest lesson I got was fishing with a guy named Brad Kleine during our Tournament of Champions on

Lake Minnetonka here in the Twin Cities. I drew Brad on Day two, and while I had an okay Day one with somebody else, I didn't think I was in the running to win. I did know that he was a hell of a good angler, and I was excited to fish with him. Plus I figured if we had a good day, I'd probably get paid. When we set out in a weird September Thunderstorm against thirty nine other teams. The first spot we hit was a sunken rock pile. The rockpile produced one monster muskie follow but that was it.

And it's always a little concerning when you don't put a single bass in then live well on your starting spot, which theoretically should be your best place to go. But Brad wasn't worried, so I tried not to be worried. He told me that we were going to leave that rock pile and go work some docks, and that can mean a lot of things, depending on the kind of

angler you are. Working docks could be as simple as burning a I don't know, a swim bait or a spinner bait, swimming jig something along the side, and then moving on to the next one. Or it could be about flipping jigs up to the posts and ladders and assorted parts of the dock that bass might like to hide under or next to. Or it could mean using something to skip way under the docks, which of course you can do with jigs, but some other lures too, and this is a real valuable skill if you fish

bass for money. The last one you know that's skipping under the docks thing is what Brad meant, and as the guy on the back of the boat, it meant I wasn't going to get a fish a whole lot of fresh water, you know. He was going to cast everything, and that's always kind of a bummer. But we're fishing as a team, and watching a guy like that set up and then work docks didn't make me feel too bad about being in the back of the boat. It

was worth it. And I'll tell you, I thought I knew how to fish that style, and I was pretty proficient at skipping with both spinning rods and bait casters. But he was a wizard. He also knew the exact fall rate of the soft plastics he used when paired with various sizes of wide gap hooks. He knew the exact fall rate of the tiny jigs we used, and he knew when a brown one would probably work better than a white one. It was a master class on how to catch big largemouth on docks, and I loved it.

I loved netting his fish and eventually catching one good one on my own to add to the live well, to see how he targeted every pole and tire and ladder and back corner and front corner and every other part of every dock we fished. Was like watching a surgeon work. He didn't leave much for the guy in the back of the boat, but it was incredible to see.

And I honestly didn't even know that level of fishing was possible, And believe me, it set me on a course to get way better, to understand what to use and when, and to realize that I was largely underworking the available structure on so many of the lakes I fished. And it was also pretty umbling. When you think you know something and then you learn that there are way better ways to do that thing. It's a little shot to the old ego, but that's okay. That's kind of

how we get better. And you know where most of us probably need to get better. That's right, Gulf. I'm so sorry. I swear I'm done with those jokes when you get better with our tree stands. While it seems like the whitetail world is full of only people using tree saddles to hunt public land, often for their YouTube channel, the truth is most white tail hunters are pretty heavily dependent on tree stands, hang ons, ladder stands, and I

guess in some situations still climbing stands. For this podcast, I kind of just want to focus on hang ons and ladder stands. Mostly. The reason for this is because right now is the time to just fine tune those spots so you really get them right now. Just like when I was fishing that tournament and thought I knew how to fish docks, most of you probably think you know how to hang stands. After all, how hard is it?

You know, you go to the field corner and you look around until you spy a straight tree without too many branches, get your stand up about sixteen feet and you call that shit good enough? And it certainly might be, but you have to ask yourself is it, or maybe more importantly, was it. A lot of us hunt the same stands or the same stand sites from year to year, but things change, cover changes, deer movement changes, and sometimes our rock solid stands start to be less fun to sit.

Those are where I want to start. This requires each of us to think about our favorite stand sites from last season, or hell, the last several seasons. So do that now, think how did your hunts go? And this is the part that requires real honesty. Did you see deer probably otherwise you suck at picking your favorite stand sites. But also, did any of the deer see you or did you experience a real quick site burnout when you hunt it there? Did you get winded? If so, how

often and in what conditions? What happened in September when you sat there? How about November during the rut? Did you have a great early season hunts but not so great hunts when it was closer to Halloween. Let's take the deer seeing you angle first. If you got spott at a fair amount or just by the wrong deer, what can you do to make that sight a little bit better? Can you move the stand to the far side of the tree, That's a simple solution that works

quite a bit. Instead of facing the deer face away from where you expect the deer to be, shoot around the tree. Or can you move it a bit higher and take advantage of different cover? Sometimes you move it lower to take advantage of cover. Were the deer too close sometimes or were they just barely arrange. One of the things that's a real pain in the ass about white tail hunting is how often we get close but not right on the X. This happens to me all the time, and I think it's just a part of

the whole thing. But how you react to it usually isn't It's pretty easy to hang a stand and call it good enough, especially if you use ladder stands. But in bow hunting, if you're off by I don't know, twenty yards, that's a lot. In gun hunting, you can get away with that, although you can just supersize that number and the same rules apply. You know, instead of being off by twenty yards, if you're off by one hundred yards or one hundred and fifty kind of the

same thing. It's time to move now. When I'm on the fence about something like this, I like to walk in there and just look at my stand sites right, I don't know. In the middle of March, when there isn't a whole hell of aladd else to do, and the woods are laid bare and you can see trails, usually you can see your stand if it's still up, or see the tree you usually use. Look around. Is there a better option closer to where that deer like

to travel? Is there a way to use your chosen tree but make the stand less obvious When you look up to where you usually have your setup. Are you skyline from the deer's perspective? What about when they are walking in or when they are leaving. The reason this is important now is because it won't feel important in the summer, when the leaves are out and it's as thick as it's going to be all season. It's pretty

easy to get overconfident in your setups. If you're in a red oak or a pine tree of some sort, you might have good season long cover. If you're not, you probably won't look at your go to spots now for a strip down view of things. It'll change your perspective. Now, addressing the visual aspect of getting busted, it's pretty easy. What if you consistently get winded from one of your favorites? This one means you might just have to be more

careful when you hunt it. Or again, maybe it has something to do with a microclimate at your exact spot, maybe thermals or the way of specific valley curls to the north or south or whatever. Maybe it's a matter of setting up a little farther uphill, or maybe it's a matter of looking for a secondary setup that is close but allows you to hunt different winds. Good spots are worth figuring out, my friends, and a lot of the mind grinding for figuring those spots out should happen

right now. Maybe when you think back to last season, you remember that when you walked in during October for an afternoon hunt, the climbing sticks on your stand almost glowed in the afternoon sunlight. You think the deer don't notice that they do. Or maybe you use ladder sections that creaked or squeaked or clunked or whatever. Perhaps just an upgrade to some other option will be all you need to make your favorite spot really hum. Now ask

yourself about shot opportunities from your spots too. Can you shoot all over? Do you have to wait for them to hit a specific lane or window? Is it worth trimming a little now to give yourself a few more options? Was a really good time to do that stuff? And the same goes for entrance and exit routes. Now, I've beaten this dead horse enough so I won't keep swinging the old baseball bat at the recently deceased pony too much.

But I'll say this, maybe the most valuable thing you can do right now, besides real winter scouting, is to work on your entrance and exit routes. With the woods laid bare, you can see where you need to cut, and by the time spring rolls around, all your work will start to become just another feature of the woods. I have a spot on a little property own in

Wisconsin where this is a huge priority of mine. I can get to the corner of that land right now, but it's kind of noisy and a little nerve racking in the dark. But I want to hunt it. Actually, I want to set it up for my daughters to hunt, because when there's a remotely decent buck on that property, he almost always cuts that corner and we rarely hunt it, which probably is why they're there. But as soon as the snow melts at least a little bit more, that's

priority number one for that property. It doesn't matter to me whether I slip in with a saddle to hunt it or I put up a blind for the girls in August, because what that spot needs first is a way to get in there super quietly, where I'll leave as little ground scent as possible. That won't be the end of the work for that spot, though. This is a point that I think is way underappreciated in the

white tail crowd. Things change. In fact, look at how much money is spent to make sure things don't change. For some hunters, you know, the food plots and the box blinds, the ponds whatever. It's all done to make the hunting easier by producing a higher level of consistent deer usage. But for most of us, things are just gonna change. It might be as simple as the neighbor planning alfalfa as set of corner beans, but that changes when or how the deer go by your favorite stand.

It might just be that the deer and your property get hunted more from tree stands now than they ever have in your neighborhood, and that makes them look up more. It doesn't matter what causes the changes, as long as you're trying to adapt to them. This is one of the reasons why I have a love hate relationship with ladder stands. I love them for the obvious reasons, and in some situations they are such a good choice, but they are also big, heavy, and a royal pain in

the old arts to move. This means one thing, we tend to put them up, and we tend to leave them up. This in and of itself isn't really good or bad, it's just an acknowledgement of reality. Now, if this sounds like you do the same mental exercise I mentioned earlier with a hang on stands, How did your sits go in your ladder stands last year or the last couple years? If the deer wise to them, it's time for a plan B. Maybe you just need to zip tie some cover around the stand platform to break

up your outline. Maybe you need to move the ladder stand to a better clump of trees ten yards away. Maybe you just need to face the platform mostly away from where the deer usually walk and then shoot around the tree, if that's possible with your ladder stand. But what you don't want to do is settle just because it's a lot easier. Now, what if you don't have stands up or aren't married to any specific spots, but are winner scouting and doing the work you should be

doing right now? If you find a spot you want to hunt, now, it's a pretty good time to figure out how to hunt it. Think about it. Think about it just like you would with a go to spot that has produced on a private property for a few seasons. Where is your absolute best tree to set up in. Don't just stand there and quickly glance at it call it good enough either, really look, is there a stretch of its trunk at your desired height that will allow

you to hang a stand or saddle up. This is a mistake I make a lot, and it always makes me feel like a total dumbass. I winter scout and I find the motherload of sweet rubs. Then I look at a tree twenty yards away and I go, that's the one. And then I walk out of the woods and I feel all good about myself. But then you fast forward seven months and I walk up to that tree during hunting season, and I look at it, and it's almost instantly a realization that it won't work for

some reason. And that reason is because I was too lazy way back in March to really figure the whole thing out. How and where will you set up exactly? How will you get in there? During which conditions will you be calling in sick to work so you can hunt it? During what conditions should you just avoid it? Once you get up there, will you be able to shoot where the deer should be? Will it hunt just

as well in September as it does in December? Or should that specific tree and that specific spot be only like a late October setup. And also, even though I've said this a lot, I'm going to say it again. If you do this work, don't forget about setting up on the ground. Natural ground blinds are a great backup when your best spots aren't worth hunting for some reason. You know, slipping back seventy five yards and tucking into

a deadfall can just be the ticket. But it's a hell of a lot easier if that deadfall has been carved out and made somewhat ready to hunt well before the season, which is something you can do now. This stuff matters, my friends, even though I know it seems like a low priority now it's not. This is sort of like what I tell my eleven year olds about basketball practice when they complain that they don't want to run killers or do a box out drill. You won't get good if you only play games, or if every

practice is just an hour and a half scrimmage. The wins are built when the games aren't being played, because they hinge upon foundational skills. In our world, this world of white tails, we focus on some of those aspects, like I don't know, offseason target practice, but because less on these abstract concepts like fine tuning ambush sites to a level that offers the highest odds of avoiding detection and getting off a quality shot. So I guess that's

my call to action here. At the very least, go into the woods and look at your setups, think about how they could be better, and then make them better. If you find spots you want to hunt but you haven't yet, think about how you'll set up there and what could go wrong if the wind is from the east, or the thermals are rising at a good clip or whatever.

Envision the scenarios that could cost you a deer instead of focusing solely on finding good spots and fantasizing about how fun they'll be to hunt, then do something about it. And of course listening next week because I'm going to talk about some aspects of planning hunts that I haven't already covered, because it's time to start thinking about those over the road trips that we all want to take. That's it for this week, folks, I'm Tony Peterson. This

has been the Wired to Hunt Foundations podcast. As always, thank you so much for tuning in. Really appreciate it. If you want some more white tail advice, or you just haven't quite scratched the itch with these podcasts, feel free to head to the meat eater dot com slash wired and you'll see articles about deer hunting by myself, mark guys like Andy May, Alex Gillstroum Beaumartonic, Dylan Tramp, whole bunch of white tail killers. Great information there, but again, thank you so much