Ep. 686: Foundations - Bachelorette Groups

laugh at that because it's situational like olive hunting. In some places, killing does is as easy as picking an evening to go sit on the food and then shooting one. But in some places, killing a good buck is like that too. In others lots of others, killing a dough is as tough as any deer hunting challenge out there are pretty damn clothes, But it's more than that. The ladies of the deer herd can teach us a lot.

If we were willing to pay attention to them. And that's what I'm really going to dive into this week. I know you guys and gals think I'm super clever at coming up with all this stuff on my own, but sometimes someone around me will say something and that's all I need to come up with an article or a podcast. My kids do this to me fairly often. I'll give you a couple examples. When my girls were maybe six, I was cleaning out a wood duck house

in our backyard that hangs over our little pond. This task involves getting up on a ladder, sweeping out the old wood shavings, and refilling the box sometime in the early spring. Often there's evidence of other critters using the nesting box. At some point, a pair of gray squirrels had had some babies in the duck apartment, but it was clear that they had moved out. They had also abandoned one of their youngsters, who was really dead and

really fascinating to my daughter. So we talked about squirrels, all kinds of them, including pine squirrels and gray squirrels and fox squirrels and even flying squirrels, which really caught her attention. Later long after I had forgotten about the conversation, I heard my daughter excitedly telling my wife about her conversation, and at some point she said, there were flying dead squirrels in there. Now, flying dead squirrels will be the

name of the parenting book I'll eventually write. My other daughter, the one who casually blurted out that she could actually smell the blood inside of me when we were driving one time, said something else that I'll make into some kind of content. At some point, she, along with her sister and cousins, had been working hard on a ford up at the lake. They scrounged up a couple of tarps, some old chair cushions, and other sorted crap that just

seems to slowly accumulate in life. They're pretty into this whole fort building thing, so into it that they talked to my sister in law to taking them shopping for supplies recently. And when I asked my daughter what they bought, she quickly replied, hmmm, just fort snacks and fly traps. Fort snacks and fly traps will be the inspiration for something eventually, probably a podcast or an article, or maybe I don't know, I'll start a punk band who knows

the thing is when you do what I do. Inspiration is everywhere if you learn to look for it. Mark hasn't really figured that out yet, but he's young and we'll probably get there eventually as his slightly older and much much wiser mentor I've learned to keep my ears open for any such utterance that might light a spark of an idea. This is what happened earlier this month when I was packing up my spotting scope and my camera gear on the edge of a beanfield in southeastern Minnesota.

My hunting partner Eric and I had posted up on the edge to see if we could turn up a bachelor group of big bucks. What we saw instead was a few scrappers and a lot of does and fawns, which, to our sadness, is what our cameras on that property had been consistently showing us. As we walked out, we pondered where the big boys might be, and Eric casually said they definitely aren't hanging with a bachelorette group. There

you have it, a podcast is born. While he was making a joke, he was also making a true observation, which, if you really think about it, is the cornerstone of so many good jokes, kind of like one of my favorite lines in The Crossing, which is a book by

Cormack McCarthy that you should read because it's well pretty incredible. Anyway, one of the characters in the book says something like it would take one hell of a wife to beat no wife at all, which, while it's one of my favorite jokes, my wife actually doesn't think is very funny. But you guys can probably also tell that my wife never listens to any of my podcasts. The thing about the Bachelorette group comment is this, the doze and bucks

often don't hang together much. This is true in the world of white tails, it's true in the world of elk antalope, meal deer, and you see it all the time with turkeys. I wonder if it happens with fish. Now. I know that all the critters will mix at some point, otherwise we wouldn't have new little critters running around. But nature often segregates itself in such a way, and there's a lot to learn from that.

difference is that the elderly boyfriends aren't very common. It's kind of like this. A lot of hunters with some Western experience and a lot of hunters with no Western experience would rank elk as the toughest critter to get an arrow in on public land now in Colorado or Idaho and an over the countertype unit. You can make a pretty strong case for that. But what about on a twelve thousand dollars landowner tag in New Mexico that

you're using on public land? Different story there. The variables are endless, so generalizing is often a good way to be wrong. But I'll say this in my somewhat not so limited experience, if you're good enough to crawl across the prairie and arrow an analope of any size somewhat consistently, you can kill just about anything that might make its way into the Super Slam list. It's just to test

of good hunting skills. Arrowing elk is too, or spotting and stocking meal deer, and so is being able to figure out white till doze on a regular basis, at least if you're in a place where they get hunted fairly hard. But those ladies and these early season groups of them also do something else for us as hunters. They tell us where the bucks often aren't. You see,

nature does a wonderful job of creating hierarchies. The biggest and toughest in any group tends to own the spots with the best advantages security, cover, water, food sources, you name it. The entire deer herd on your property is organized this way, kind of like that org chart at work that shows who works under who and what department. It's also not a perfect pyramid shape either, because some does are dominant over other doughs, while some bucks are

dominant over other bucks. In general, what you see as you scout the last days of velvet living in the first couple weeks of hard antlered life is that the deer tend to split up into groups divided by gender. The dose will be in the beanfield of multiple spots, but the bucks, at least the bigger deer will usually be in very specific locations. They'll be in the back corner that is invisible from the road and is close to the trout stream where they can drink some delicious

cold water any damn well time they please. When they are feeding together, you often won't see groups of dozen fawns get too close to the bucks or mix it up with them. When you watch groups of dozen fawns feeding in a spot, they often won't mix it up with other dozen fawns either, and if they do, you often see ears, pin back and hoof's flying. They do this even when they have two hundred acres of the

same food source right at their disposal. It's the proximity to one another that matters most, and they often aren't that tolerant. So what does this mean? Well for starters, what if you're getting a whole bunch of pictures of dozen fawns but not a whole bunch of pictures of one hundred and fifty inch bucks. Well, either the bucks aren't around, or your camera is on a spot that is great for the ladies but not so great for

the dominant bucks. You might think, well, I do get some buck pictures, so they are around, and aren't I supposed to be around does for my rut hunts. Sure, buddy, that's all true, but the run is a long ways off and a lot is going to change between then and now. Don't you want to fill your deer tag earlier in the season so you can go to another state and have some more deer fun. Here's the thing. The does are often not exactly where the bucks are.

That matters for your scouting, for your camera placement, for your stand sites, for all of it. It's not a hard and fast rule, of course, but it is something to consider when you're trying to make a hunting plan that results in you getting a big buck, which is what we're talking about here. So the ladies teach us a lot of things. They teach us where the secondary feeding areas probably are, which is what that bachelorette group

that Eric so aptly named showed us. But we didn't learn their full message until we pulled a camera in one spot on that giant beanfield that has just tucked away sort of no man's land and close to a water source. That camera had more big buck pictures on it than the other four or five on the field combined. It also has a really interesting stand set up on it now that you'll probably get to see next year

on the media or YouTube channel. At some point, I'm guessing the other cameras we have on that field, the spotting scope work we've done on that field, it all came together to show us where a lot of dough family groups were, and you know, where a couple of year and a half old bucks were. Two it also showed us where the bachelor group of older bucks wasn't And they weren't nocturnal, they weren't on somebody else's property. They just weren't in the spots we monitored. This happens

a lot. It happens when you're scouting and running cameras. That happens when you're hunting. Now, I know I'm contradicting myself here on some level, because I do believe trying to get in close proximity to all kinds of deer is good for your hunting overall. But for early season hunts where your target is a decent buck, sometimes you want to get away from most of the rest of the deer. You also don't want to write does off as interesting things to watch while you're waiting for another

chance to rack up a taxidermy bill. This is because the dough groups, when they do overlap with good buck movement, often show up first. I see this in the evenings a lot, and almost always in the mornings. I don't know why this is, but when I hunt early season mornings, you know, when every white tail expert out there says that you shouldn't, I often see does and youngsters come

through first. Then, like eight thirty or nine in the morning, when I start thinking about pancakes and a midday nap or maybe going to troutfish for a few hours, the bigger deer will cruise through. If I get busted by the does first, the big guy is going to show up.

If you're on a field edge in the evening and that dough with two fawns decides she doesn't like the first light specter covered blob in the tree filming her with an iPhone ten or worse taking selfies for the gram good luck, She's going to send out the bat signal and the bucks aren't going to show, or if they do, it's going to be real late. The point I'm trying to make here is this, There is no

just hunting big bucks. You might focus solely on that as your goal, but you're never gonna do that without dealing with other deer in the herd. They're always a consideration. It's kind of like throwing frogs for large mouth in the lily pads. When you're in the north country, your goal might be an amphibian's chomping five pounder that is living in two feet of water and just waiting to

smash something slimy on the surface. But along the way you'll also do with northern pike biting you off and ripping holes in your twelve dollars spro frogs so often that you might need to take out a heelock just to pay for your next shields order. They are just a part of the whole thing, just like the groups of doze out there. I know this one has been kind of all over the place, so let me try to stick this landing here without breaking in an ankle.

Pay attention to the doze on your cameras, the doze you see while glassing, and the doze you see while hunting. What they do bucks will do the trails they walk. Bucks will eventually walk the way they drop down to the pond for a little drink, so too will some bucks at some point. But they'll also show you, particularly in the early season, where the bucks often aren't that beautiful open woods you like to sit in because there are a bunch of white oaks in there, that's great.

But if it's just dough after dough during daylight, it's not because the bucks are nocturnal. It's because they either have a better spot to feed where you aren't, or they're just taking their sweet ass time moving in better cover until you leave and the lights go out. If your camera on your kill plot shows tons of daylight activity from does but not much daylight activity from good bucks,

pay attention. Are they in there after dark? Then you might have to hunt them a little ways off of the groceries, all while avoiding detection from the ladies as they pass through. First, I think you have to learn how to hunt the does before you can learn how to hunt the big dudes. But you also have to work with them throughout the season because they are going to be a part of the whole thing, whether you

like it or not. They sometimes show you exactly where you should hunt, like if they are using a river crossing or traveling along a soft edge while browsing in the big woods. But they also sometimes show you where you shouldn't hunt if you want a big buck. That is, if the part of the field you love to watch is dominated by does. Take note if your favorite stand that is easy to get to and sits over a power line with nice views in two directions is always

full of ladies and youngsters, take note. The bucks are likely around, but they are using some part of the terrain that offers them something better. This lesson is often most easily understood by betting. You see this with Western critters a lot, too, because they often show themselves in their beds, so you can see exactly where they are and make a good guess as to why white tails

aren't as generous that way. But you can fill in the blanks pretty well with when and where you jump deer and when and where you see them on your hunts. At least if you're hunting in the cover, the does will often be betted in the most obvious spots, and the bucks won't. They will show you this by either actually showing themselves or not. How is that confusing. Look at it this way. If you walk into the woods and you see some does running away at say noon,

you know they were probably betted there. You might find proof of that by well finding their beds. But if you hike up a bluff onto a nice little bench where the view is solid and the wind is just right, you probably won't see any deer. You might find a great big loan bed and think, dang, at some point, he's here. But the truth is he's always going to be gone when you get there, because he knows you're coming. Because his bed is positioned in such a way you're

just not going to sneak up on him. His spot is better than where those does bed up on the ridge or in the open valley below. The deer all have something to teach us, just like every elk encounter is a lesson in elk behavior, just like every turkey that feeds through the meadow is giving you a first hand lesson on turkey behavior. These things matter, and they are the secret sauce that takes average hunters to the next level. So my friends, don't write off the ladies.

Use their presence, use your pictures of them, your sightings to inform your decisions on how to hunt whatever deer trips your trigger, and come back next week because I'm going to break down one of our biggest allies in one of our biggest enemies as hunters, an unseen force that influences our hunting decisions more than just about anything else.

It's an invisible element of each and every second we spend in the outdoors that can make or break your experience in a matter of seconds, and there ain't a damn thing we can do about it. You guessed it. I'm going to talk about squirrels. Just kidding. It's wind. That's it for this week. I'm Tony Peterson. This has been the Wire to Hunt Foundation's podcast, which is brought to you by First Light. As always, thank you so much for listening and for all your support. Every one

of us here at meat Eater truly appreciates it. We can't thank you enough. If you want some more hunting content, and I'm talking other podcasts, videos, articles, whatever, you want to do a little shop and head on over to the medeater dot com and you'll see all of that more