Welcome to the Wired to Hunt Foundation's podcast, your guide to the fundamentals of better dear hunting. Present it by First Light, creating proven versatile hunting apparel for the stand, saddle or blind. First Light Go Farther, Stay Longer, and now your host Tony Peterson.
Hey everyone, welcome to the Wire to Hunt Foundations podcast, which is brought to you by First Light. I'm your host, Tony Peterson, and today I'm going to make the case for a while you can't really be a well rounded hunter until you learn how to spot and stock. This is the first episode of this kind of new direction for this podcast. Now I'm going to talk about white tails sum but this is going to be a broader podcast.
It's about something I've been thinking about a lot, and it's something that I love as a hunter, spotting and stalking. I know this is mostly a Western hunting style, but it also does have its place with white tails. If I'm being real honest with you guys, it's not much of a deer hunting strategy except for a few locations and specific kind of encounters.
It's also a skill though, that.
Will help you level up in your overall hunting game and something I think every hunter should at least try once. It doesn't seem like much in nature happens by accident. What we forget because we are sentient and as a species pretty convinced we're super special, is that we are
also natural. Humans are a part of nature. Although we don't participate in nature quite like most other animal species do, that doesn't change the fact that while we might not acknowledge it or often act like it, we are part of the natural world, some of us more than others.
Of course.
I recently had a conversation with a woman I know who lifts the same gym as me, and we somehow got on the topic of lemurs. She thought they lived in Colorado, and I said, I think you're thinking of prairie dogs, to which she responded, well, it's kind of the same thing, right. I didn't have the heart to tell her that there's a fair amount of distance between
the two animals, in my opinion. She then brought up raccoons, which just about everyone I know is at least remotely familiar with, and when I mentioned that our buddies, you know, the trash pandas, live in trees, she was astounded. You remind me of the time my wife first saw turkeys flying to trees to roost. Until that point, she didn't know they could fly, which is kind of embarrassing for
someone who holds a doctorate. So anyway, we are a part of nature, but also separated individually, sometimes by quite a bit. And where am I going with us? Well, right to the heart of this topic. And I'm so glad you asked. If you go out west and hunt, you'll meet hunters who, let's say, aren't generally known for their patients. I have really good buddies who live in Colorado and Montana who routinely fill tags on all kinds of Western critters, and by most measures they are good hunters.
But if you ask them to be patient, then you're going to see a big hole in their game. Their environment and the animals they pursue are highly conducive to walking down their quarry. They are highly conducive to using optics to find an animal and plant a route to sneak into bow or gun range. If that makes sense. I mean we are products of our environment. And if your environment is big and open and allows you to cover a lot of ground until you lock in on
something and that's what you're going to lean into. Now, let's say you live in Pennsylvania or maybe Missouri. Sure, you might find a chunk of public land at several thousand acres, and you might be able to sneak around until you land on top of a deer, But mostly you'll figure out it's better to scout until you find a high usage area and then go in to weight
them out mode. This is because the environment isn't all that conducive to picking up a deer half a mile away and then slipping in close to get a shot. Take that and add it to the reality that most whitetail hunters aren't on hundreds of thousands of acres, and the whole thing starts to turn into an ambush fest, a test of patients every day, if you will. Now, these two types of hunting styles couldn't be much different if they tried, And it's great to be a master
of either, it really is. But if you want to be a truly skilled hunter, you should engage in both for the sake of this podcast and the reality that most of the listeners are white tail hunters. Through and through, I'll just assume most of you are pretty familiar with the ambush game. Even mobile hunters are practically standing still compared to their average Western brethren. But here's the rub, my friends. If you don't ever spot in stock anything,
you're missing out on two things. The first is it's far more fun in general than sitting and waiting. It's active, it's exciting, and it's usually a total ass kicker. That's the first part. The second is that if you can go spot and stalk something, you'll have that in your back pocket as a hunting strategy and you'll be a better, more patient hunter overall. Here's why spotting and stalking is not as active as it sounds, at least if you're
going to do it well. The spotting part can take hours or days, and it might not turn up a single opportunity in the time your part of the year starts receiving a little of the good stuff from the sun to the point where the whole thing spins back to darkness again. It's worth it, though, because when the stalk is on, it's a freaking rush. It's fun, it's a lot of things, but it's also super duper hard to do well. The reasons for this are many, and I'm going to get into them, but I want to
say something else first. One of the ways say I don't know a spot in stock antelope hunt would help you be a better white tail hunter is that it involves constant problem solving. It gets you into the groove of reading conditions, reading the terrain, reading animal body language, and reading yourself physically and mentally. And then you have to filter all that shit through your decision making process
over and over and over. This is difficult, real difficult at first, but the more you do it, the better you become at making decisions on the fly. Think about it this way, why do you think someone who has a killer white tail property with food plots and ponds and a reliable year to year setups probably couldn't easily transition to being a successful public land hunter. Yet, a successful public land hunter probably wouldn't need more than a couple days to fill a tag on a good buck
on a property like that. You know, sure, part of it is learning to deal with difficult scenarios, but part of it is the necessity to constantly evaluate new information and then act on it accordingly. When you show up to your parking spot and there's four trucks there already you have to readjust when you know you can go sit over a clover plot, you know, in a box, blind and the deer going to be there.
There's not much problem solving going on. Now.
I'm not saying that kind of hunting is a bad thing. I don't think it is, but I also don't think it'll help you sharpen your sword to become better as a hunter overall. Now I'm generalizing quite a bit, but my point still stands, learning to make multiple good decisions on any hunt is the key to getting one of them, or better yet, a series of them.
Right.
Spotting and stocking will give you a crash course on this, and it'll force you to think about factors that might be secondary on a white tail hunt but would absolutely blow up any stock. Let's take antelope again, which I'm going to talk about next week some because I think they are the most underrated opportunity out there for people who want adventure but don't have impressive bank accounts. I'm
also going to talk about glassing and some other stuff too. Anyway, if you want to go spot in stock, analope, anywhere the antelope or own, you'll realize they offer you one great, big advantage.
They are highly visible.
That's a plus because a lot of the critters we hunt don't have bright white diaper butts and live out on a putting green with fourteen of their girlfriends just staring off into the distance. Finding antelope usually isn't the problem, which you'll soon realize is something they are very comfortable with if they don't believe you'll get close to them, probably because you won't. They're real confident standing out there in the wide open. But maybe you find a good
one bedded on the lip of a hill. Now you have to read the surrounding terrain, you have to mark his location, and you have to get after it because eventually he's going to get up and move around. Then all of a sudden you're like, ah, I can't remember if they can smell as well as a deer, they don't seem to be able to. But they can see better than any white tail I've ever met, So maybe
I should give them a wide berth. So you head out, you know, with a route in mind, but soon realize that the fold and terrain that you wanted to take is just a bit too shallow, so you back out, go farther away, and you use whatever cover you can find. But this takes you away from that spinly fence post that was your landmark. And now forty minutes have passed in your sweating, and who knows if he's still there.
But you carry on in that blazing sun when suddenly you pop over your eyes and there's a different group antelope. They don't see you because they aren't close. But now you have to decide how can I hide from them while sneaking up on the beded buck. Will it matter if they spook away? Maybe it's pretty flat after all, and an antelope running at moc ten is going to get the attention of all antelope that see them.
What to do? What to do?
This is where it gets fun. It's on you to make the right call. So you flip a mental coin and decide to keep on your original trajectory, knowing that you're going to blow out this new herd. And as you near that spinlely fence post, you start to look for the black tips of his horns. He's on the far side of the ridge. That is a hell of a lot flatter and more subtle than you expected. Should you range some sage just to get your bearings in case you find him. Is he gone? He probably is?
Should you stand up to see better or keep crawling? Keep the faith that he hasn't gone anywhere? How long has it been?
Now? What to do? What to do?
Eventually you stand up slowly and look downhill, knowing right where he was, except he's not there, and you're not where you thought you were. And then he stands up seventy five yards still left and runs off like he shot out of a cannon. And you become a very typical antelope punter. But man, was it fun? And man, you made some good decisions, not all of them, but you got closer.
Now.
The decision making during whitetail hunting doesn't happen in the moment like that anelope hunt. Well, I mean some of it does, but a lot of it happens before we go out. We choose our spots based on the conditions in the time of year, then we go. The heavy mental lifting is done before we even get out of the truck. Spotting and stalking is different. The decisions need to be made in the moment, and they need to be good ones. In fact, you need quite a few good ones in a row to even earn a shot,
and then you're in for a special treat. Because if you think you don't get buck fever because you can lazer white tails at twenty yards from a tree stand, just wait till you have one hundred and fifty inch meal deer bedded with a few of his buddies at fifty three yards. Welcome to whift City, my friends. It's
so worth it, though. I think if I had one week to live and I was forced to hunt anything for that week, and I could wave a magic wand and have my dream scenario play out, and the caveat was that I have to have the most fun possible, I'd spot in stock meal deer and broken train. Not high country basin bucks, but bad lands type of bucks. I don't need two hundred inch velvet here at eleven
thousand feet to keep me smiling. I need a bunch of eighty seven inch two year olds in abundance, in broken terrain, where I can want under around glass and peek into drainages and stalk around until I'm just.
Sick of it.
It's so damn fun, even when it feels like a lost cause. Now I know that I made an amazing case for trying a spot in stock hunt to become a better hunter overall. But that's just a satellite benefit. The true benefit is what I just said. It's really fun when you're used to staring at your phone all day while sitting on a tiny platform waiting for a deer to come by. The freedom to roam big country
looking for animals so liberating. It's just so fun. It's also a good reminder of how many opportunities are out there just waiting for you.
To try them. Now.
I realize that most of us aren't going to travel all over hunting whatever until we find something that really scratches the itch. But there are good spot in stock hunts available, especially on archery tags, and they will change your worldview on hunting. They won't be top tier units with monster bucks or bulls, but they will offer an
opportunity to try this exciting style of hunting. And I'll say this, whatever your motivations are, whether you want to get better as a hunter overall, or have just always dreamed about hunting the West but can't stomach an elk hunt for whatever reason, if you do decide to go spot and stalk something, keep your standards low. I say this for a few reasons. One is that western critters are just as delicious as corn fed white tails, and in fact, I'd take antelope over any of them, including elk.
But more importantly, the fun part of spotting and stalking isn't the spotting, it's the stalking. If you go hunt I don't know, let's say western Nebraska for meal deer, You're not likely to see a ton of booners or one, but you will see deer and you will get a chance to stalk them if you're open to stoking whatever offers you up a chance. Now, I know a lot of hunters won't do this, they won't experience spotting and stocking the way they want to. Again, this is up
to you as an individual. But me, when I go somewhere and I can stalk something, I want as many stalks as possible. It's an absolute rush crawling in on an animal that doesn't know you're there. And when you get close to taking a shot, oh man, that's why we do this stuff, that whole adrenaline dump.
It's it.
And if your standards don't jive with your skill or the availability, a certain classic game, when you're hunting, you'll spend a lot of your time with your eye glue to your spotter while not getting overly excited about anything. That's a hard pass for me. Now you might be thinking, well, hell man, I don't have those giant meat eater checks that you have since your damn here as popular as Steve Arnello these days, so I can't afford to go
out west. Listen, I hear you clucking. And the truth is, the lowly whitetail is pretty damn stockable in certain situations as well. Again, it certainly helps to drop your standards and accept whatever white tail will give you the chance to stalk it, versus saying it's one forties or bust and then waiting for a deer of that caliber to bet on an open hillside and let you try to sneak into his guard. I've successfully stalked a handful of bucks and does in my life with both bows and guns,
and I've unsuccessfully stalked quite a few more. The white tail will give you a shot if you're open to it. The thing is, it might just be the deer that comes out into the corner of the beans during thirty mile per hour winds where you could quietly slip down from your stand and work in the woods until you're in range. It might be the deer that's in the alfalf on the edge of the standing cornfield, the one that lets you crawl into thirty yards and narrow him.
One of my favorite mounts on my walls is an old nine pointer with a gray face who gave me just such an opportunity where I went from ambush hunter sitting over a pond to spot and stock hunter crawling through a cornfield pretty damn quick. One of my favorite things to do with a muzzleloader is to sneak around in the snow until I spot a deer. I can stalk. The chances are out there, but you got to be opened to them, and if you are, you'll realize something else.
The whitetail is highly stokable. They aren't that used to us trying to creep up on them, and they are pretty good at putting their head down to feed. They're kind of like wild pigs in that way. In fact, i'd rank antelope is I don't know, maybe like ten times is difficult to stalk and meal deer probably at like three times is difficult.
To stalk.
Now, I'm pulling those numbers out of my ass, but I'm confident in saying this. If you can consistently stock antelope with a bow and kill them, you'll find the deer species to be a hell of a lot easier.
ELK two.
Now, whatever the reasons, whatever your motivations, whatever your bank account looks like, or the amount of PTO you have, there are chances to spot and stock something every fall. You might have to explore some new ground down the road from your favorite deer spot, you might have to drive halfway across the country with a couple of buddies, or you might just have to rethink how you do
some things. But that's good because thinking about how to get close to a critter instead of ambushing them a good skill to have, and it's a hell of a lot more fun than sitting on your butt hitting the
the like button. When Kenyan posts another picture of himself with some Western trout somewhere, I think, because there's a lot of stuff I haven't said on this topic, I'm going to keep it going next week, but I'm going to talk about glassing as a skill, because you won't want to head out Wes without understanding how to pick up a long distance lead any more than you'd want to scout white tails all summer along without a good spotting scope, or hell saddle up this fall without binos
snug tight to your chest. So next week's going to be about glassing and about optics and how to make the most of them. That's it for this week, my friends. I'm Tony Peterson. This has been the Wired to Hunt Foundations podcast. As always, thank you so much for your support. I truly appreciate it. If you want more hunting content, I'm talking articles, podcasts, videos, whatever, head on over to them meat eater dot com. You'll find all kinds of
that stuff. Whether you're the die hard whitetail guy or you're some girl out there who got her first boat and you're like, I'm killing a bull out before I die.
I don't care. We have you cover.
Go check it out themeadeater dot com m