Ep. 654: Foundations - Creating A Whitetail Thirst Trap

Did you also know that you don't really need a ton of land, or a bulldozer or a backo to create a watering hole? And did you know that this month, when turkey season is still going strong, is the perfect time to get outside and accomplish this little chore. Listen up, because I'm going to tell you why and of course how to make this happen. But before I get into it, I have to let you know about that meat eater giveaway that I talked about last week still going on.

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size so far is limited to Earth. Water is the medium upon which life is built. Without it, there ain't no life to positively charge hydrogen atoms that bind to one negatively charged oxygen atom form water here on Carl

Sagan's Pale Blue dot. Water is a polar molecule, meaning that opposite charges attract one another, which allows water to form strong bonds and as a result, gives us the oceans and rivers and lakes, and even the glass of the good stuff on your nightstand after you've had I don't know a few too many post Gulf beers with the buddies, and your head is pounding. The cohesion of the water molecule also makes it possible for plants to take up water via their roots and allow animals to

regulate their body temperature. Most biological molecules, including those that make us up as well as I don't know white tails, have some electrical asymmetry which allows water to weasel its way into every little nook and cranny, not unlike dissolving a spoonful of sugar in your Starbucks in the morning. This is a roundabout way of saying that water is a universal solvent. Life needs it to carry around all

the things that make us us. This is one of the reasons that scientists who are looking for possible life on other planets and moons and asteroids often start by looking for water, which they didn't think existed in great abundance in space, but we now know it's insanely common and comes in quantities that are going to blow your freaking minds. Take a couple of recent discoveries. One is that the moon seems to be chalk full of water, making a long term habitat project. They're much more viable.

Water's pretty heavy and getting weight out of Earth's gravity. Well, that's a big problem. If you don't have to shoot a bunch of H two O into space because your astronauts can find it right on the Moon. That's a big wind. Far crazier than that is a discovery that an international team of astronomers made recently, which is a cloud of water vapor that is located thirty billion miles from Earth. So a big deal, you think, right, after all,

isn't that what clouds are right here? Well, consider this. We don't quite know where our Earth's water came from, and there are a few competing theories, ranging from asteroids and commets hitting early Earth and delivering payloads of water to it being present when the material of the Earth is made of coalesced roughly four and a half billion years ago. Where our water came from is an important question to answer, and the researchers who found that water

vapor cloud they might be getting there. The thing is this cloud, which is located in a quasar, which is an insanely bright galactic nucleus. This cloud, it's no normal cloud, mind you. It is estimated to contain about one hundred and forty trillion times the water that's on Earth, all of the water on Earth. Think about that for a second. Water. It seems it's pretty damn common out there in the

observable universe. It's also pretty wild stuff. You've probably seen people walk outside in the dead of winter in places like Alaska with a pot of super hot water to throw in the air to show that it turns instantly into snow. But you can't do that with cold water.

Only hot water forms hanging icicles, which if you're not careful when shooting your brand new red Rider BB gun outside and might accidentally catch a ricochete of the eye, you can blame that icicle for falling on your face, so your mom doesn't know she was right about you being too young and irresponsible to own an air gun, right, Ralphie. But water also forms icicles that freeze up these ice spikes,

seemingly defy gravity. Water can also be cooled well below its freezing point and yet still remain liquid until you move it, then it freezes instantly. Water in a glass is clear, Water falling from the sky is clear. But water is actually blue, which you can see in some glaciers and icebergs. Unlike most substances. Water becomes less dense when you freeze it. You can bend water with static electricity. Water is weird in so many ways, but also one

hell of an important part of a deer's life. See, guys, I got there. It just took me a while. I have sort of a reputation for killing bucks, you know, around water for good reason. I can think back to quite a few of the deer that I've arrowed, many of which were public land bucks, and some type of wa water source played an important role in that hunt, usually the most important role. Deer need water, and if

you find limited water, then you're onto something. But you can also create a water hole, which is what this episode is all about. It's a hell of a lot easier than putting in a food plot, even a tiny kill plot. And provided you do it right, you can position deer for a shot in a way that is almost unreal. Now that may or may not be your thing. I learned this when I was a young bowhunter at the tender innocent age of twenty four. I don't know

why I said that, so creepy, so anyway, forgive me. Anyways, that was the year my dad and I decided to get back to our roots and hunt with traditional bows. It was also the year where I said, I'm going to buy one of those ornamental ponds and put it by our best stand. I figured we needed all the help we could get, because well we did. So I took a shovel in that little pond and I dug a spot for it eighteen yards from a stay, and we hung. Every year, it's just located in a hub

this season long deer activity. The first morning I climbed in there with my re curve in hand, I watched a dough in a fond brought their way through the woods. You know where they ended up right at that pond. And you know what, I didn't do. Shoot. It felt weird, It felt too contrived to me. I didn't want a killer at that point in my life. I wanted pretty much any deer pretty badly. But I also didn't feel great about creating an artificial situation that would put a

deer right into my lap like that. I don't really know how to explain it. I've obviously also changed my tune on some of this stuff, because I greatly enjoy putting in little water holes and making kill plots, although again, if I'm being brutally honest, I rarely hunt those things for myself. It just doesn't do it for me for some reason. But I have a hell of a lot of fun watching my daughters shoot deer on them and

letting my buddies go in there and shoot them. You know what, else doesn't really matter because I'm on my course and you're on your course. And if your course is one where you're like, hell, yes, I want an edge over the deer and I have the opportunity to put in some water, then I say donuts for donuts, my friend. Before you buy that plastic pond or tote or big tarp or however you're going to do this, though, stop pump those breaks, buddy. You need to figure out

where to put water. This is more important than how you get a water source out there. Trust me, And that example I just told you about, the little pond I put out is located in a valley. The deer stage in morning and evening, so at the beginning, right off the bat, I knew I was in a good spot. This isn't like putting an automatic deer feeder out in the mesquite flats of Texas and just creating a deer heavy spot simply because that's where the food ends up

on the ground every morning and evening. This is a strategy to play off existing deer concentrations and make one spot better. But it's not enough to think, well, deer here, so that's good enough. Having hunted a ton of water sources in my life, I'll say this in the cover is better than not in the cover. How's that for a dumb revelation. But the truth is you might think, well, shoot, the deer always come out to the field where I hunt, so I'm going to put a pond in right there.

That's great, But do the deer always come to the field? Do they come out after you've hunted there seven times in a row? Maybe a better bet would be to tuck that pond into the cover twenty yards deep, so that before they have to decide to go into the open or not, they can slake their thirst there in

the cover. Maybe you can get the best of both worlds with the right wind, so you can shoot them on the water where you know they're drinking in the woods, or shoot them when they get out to the beans in front of your stand, or maybe it's better to figure out one of those deer heavy spots you have back in the cover where you have dynamite access, and then consider where to put the water source. I think that's the best strategy, especially if you're the kind of

hunter who likes to shoot big bucks. A mature deer is so much more likely to water in the cover during shooting hours than to go anywhere near the open stuff to drink. It's simple, and it's true. Do you have a spot like that? If that's the case, can you dig in a small ornamental type pond or something else like a tote? It might be that simple, Or maybe you already have a seasonal ish type of water source that you can spruce up with a little pond or tarp. I have a spot like this on a

farm I hunt in southeastern Minnesota. That driftless region is known for a few things, one of which is the limestone, which isn't the hardest rock you're likely to find. It's soft at least for rock, which means that it erodes quickly. At least for rock. This leads to caves, and caves

lead to sinkholes. If you drive around that area, you'll see plenty of ag fields with little islands of trees out there which are just sinkholes, the kinds of spots you don't want to go over with a tractor that weighs like fifteen tons and costs as much as it would to put a couple kids through an Ivy League school for four years. This spot on the farm I hunt it has just a mini sinkhole in the woods.

That sinkhole, being a hole in all fills up with water and it's unbelievable for deer activity at certain points of the year. I recently looked at it after my buddy and I doubled up on a couple of unlucky longbeards, and not only was it pounded with tracks, it was also the most obvious spot in the world due to

the muddy, spoked out deer trails leading to it. Back when I found it, I thought my deer prayers had been answered, But when I hunted it, I realized that August often did a good number on the actual water that was there, and instead of hunting a drinking fountain, I was hunting a patch of dry dirt, which, in case you don't know, is a lot less appealing to thirsty deer. So I put a small pond in the bottom, one that would collect and hold the water a little better,

and it worked a little better. But it also showed me that if I wanted to keep the deer coming in there, I better haul some water in, which I did with a backpack a few times. It was mostly an exercise and futility, but it was a good workout when I had an olktag in my pocket. I have yet to kill a deer on that pond, but I will. Maybe you have a spot like that where you could use a pond or a tarp and help collect and

keep the water in a specific spot. It's a great option if you have it, But the downside is you then have to hunt it the best way it allows. It's not like putting in a little pond on a tried and true spot that you know already produces will just always provide good hunts. You instead have to adapt to the location. This has been my biggest problem with my sinkhole spot, because it's terrible to hunt in a west or south wind, which is kind of the wind

you get when the weather's pretty warm. You know that has some quality trees right on top of the pond, but nothing that allows you to get like twenty yards away and have some cover and still use the wind correctly. In fact, I'm thinking after my little scouting session back in April that it might be a better ground blind spot. I don't know. Ask yourself what you're working with in this capacity. Do you have a place where you could bring a little sweat equity into the equation and have

some water it on over? Do you have a way to get some water in there if it dries out. That's a big problem with small water sources, but it's solvable in most situations. It's also important to note that you should provide a way for little critters who happen to fall in to be able to climb out. A dead mouse floating around in your deer's water is a bad scenario, so I usually just lay a log or something in it in such a way that it allows for an easy climb out. This is simple, but it's

pretty important. It's also worth mentioning. Like I said in the beginning, this might not be for everyone, but if it doesn't bother you, and it's legal as far as I know, this is legal just about everywhere you can find deer provided you have the private ground to do it on, it's worth a shot. It's also something that can really to liven up a small property. This is one of the things that I learned when I started

having to find places in the suburbs to hunt. I don't need to create food plots and tiny ponds on properties where I have half of a section or maybe more to roam. A big enough property will give you pretty much everything you need, so it's kind of unnecessary. But if you're stuck on a ten or twenty or even forty acre parcel, it might be a different story. You might only have a handful of deer a week to pass through, and the odds of you being there

when they are super low. Increasing the odds of an encounter going your way is not a bad idea if this is the world you live in. It's also worth mentioning that this will be a waste of time and money if you hunt in an area where water is abundant. I learned this in northern Wisconsin after my little girls started hunting deer. I had a kill plot in one of my properties that was pretty good, but also fairly inconsistent,

largely due to the low deer density. I figured it's not going to hurt to sink upon into that plot and refill it if I need to. After all, even if the deer weren't hungry enough to come in, maybe the promise of some room temperature water there's full of bugs and frog poop might convince them. But it really didn't. As you can imagine, I run cameras over that plot, and after I sunk that little pond in, I started running my cameras so I could see how many deer

drank out of it. The answer was almost none of them. It was truly rare to get images of deer feeding in the plot, even in July and August, and then drinking in the pond. A few did, but it wasn't the deer magnet I assumed it would be. Do you know why, because there's water everywhere up there. Even on the driest years I've hunted there, it's not a problem

to find standing water. It's everywhere. And you have to imagine that if a deer lives on I don't know, six or seven hundred acres, they might have hundreds of spots to drink in, and just that amount of land in that region a little pond in one spot isn't

going to be a game changer there. It's kind of like buying land in parts of egg dominated, you know, Iowa or Kansas or whoever, and then thinking all I need is a food plot and it'll be booner city, except that the deer there have food everywhere, literally just about everywhere. What they don't have is cover, So planning some trees would probably be a better bet than planning a food plot. Now, limited water is always good, but there's another benefit to water that we don't talk about much,

hunting when it's hot. I've written about this, and I talked about it a lot, because I like hunting when other people won't. If you're the kind of hunter who won't hunt because it's hot, maybe putting in a little pond would change your opinion. After all, if it's eighty degrees in September and you think it's not worth it to go, you might change your mind knowing you have a little water source by one of your best stands, and if the bucks are going to go anywhere in

that beechy weather, it's probably going to be there. So think about it and think about listening next week because I'm going to talk about how to figure out if you're a pioneer or a settler when it comes to deer hunting. That's it. That's it for this week. I'm your host, Tony Peterson, and this has been the Wired to Hunt Foundations podcast, which is brought to you by First Light. As always, thank you so much for tuning in.

If you want more white tail wisdom, you can head on over to the mediat dot com slash wired and see all kinds of articles by me, Mark, Alex Gilstrombomartonic, a whole bunch of killer white tail hunters. Tons of good information there, and while you're there, you can register for that Mediator giveaway that I told you about in the beginning of this podcast, so you can have three thousand dollars more worth of hunting gear to go hunting this ball with. So go do both of those things.