Ep. 715: Foundations - How to Build a Real Rut Hunting Plan

otherwise I don't know. This is the week of all weeks. You know, the great equalizer is upon us. The rut is here. Things are bust and loose. It's cold as hell in many places, and if you have time to sit, you better get out there and sit. But don't do it without at least a loose plant. That's what this episode is about. And while it might feel a little late to be talking about some of this stuff. It's not Listen up and you'll see what I mean. I'd say,

I don't know. About eight years ago, I figured i'd do something nice for Mother's Day, which also happens to fall right around my anniversary. As a two for gift to my bride. I thought I had to address the dismal landscaping situation in our front yard. So instead of going fishing or turkey hunting, I waited for my wife to load up the girls and head up to the lake. I stayed home and went to one of those giant landscaping businesses with all kinds of rocks and pavers and

decorative yard crap. Now our house isn't big, and it's you know, not exactly some kind of architect experiment to three bedrooms foot level, so it's basically a big rectangle. I thought I'd go buy some block to frame in two little rock beds in the front around our front steps, and then you know, spruce them up with some kind of flowers or shrubs or something. And since I did a little bit at a landscaping in my youth, I

figured that it would be a simple job. And a lot of things are simple For some people, I don't like using a ratchet strap correctly. For others, those tasks are anything but simple. When I returned home from the first trip to the big shop of blocks and rocks, I framed out the two sections and realized I was short by a lot. No biggie, I just made the round trip back to the shop and swiped the credit

card again. When I finally got the blocks truly framed out, I did some quick, terrible math and went back and bought a load of rock to fill the whole thing in. I undershot that by two trips worth, it started to become one of those projects that made me really miss drinking. I finally got blocks and rocks squared away and drove

to a giant greenhouse to buy some plants. Now what I know about decorative plants couldn't max out the character length of a tweet, So after seeking some help, I drove home with seven perennials that were destined to be

beautiful and produce flowers every year. And after planning them, I stood back to admire my work, which should have been a testosterone heavy moment where I should have been able to feel my manly chest hair growing After the ape task I had just completed became something else, mostly because it looked really bad. I didn't stake out the block so I could follow a truly straight line, and me eyeballing a line of block and getting it right would be about like Kenyon trying to shoot a booner

on Michigan public land with a homemade recurve. Not going to happen, my friends. So I basically kind of redid the whole thing and it looked passable but definitely not professional. Any tradesmen listening to this, you're right to smirk or directly talk about me. I deserve it, and I totally get it. I should have had a plan. I should have actually measured things out and figured out the materials I was going to need, and then I should have

followed that plan. What I did instead was assume I could do this thing that seems so simple on the surface but actually require some skill, and I dove headlong in without a plan. Now I'm pretty sure you know where I'm going with this. The rut is here, and yes, you should have a plan. Let me start with a part of the plan you should have taken care of a long time ago. But if you didn't. It's okay,

you can still address this. Most of the hunters I know, they just kind of set stands and blinds for general deer movement throughout the season and that's what they hunt from September to December or whatever their season framework is. And that can work, but it often doesn't. I think a better bet is to hang rut stands or set out rut blinds. Here's why. If you think that field edge stand you've set a bunch of times is going

to be flushed with cruising bucks, it probably won't. You've probably educated some of the bucks and many of the doe to that ambush spot. If the does are onto you, they're not going to drag a buck by. You could still catch a random cruiser because it is still the rut, but the odds are less than if you had different setups to work with. This is a common mistake that hunters make, and they often know it. This is why it's so common to dip into the old bag of tricks.

Start rattling or grunting or using a decoay or whatever. The stands they are hunting probably won't naturally funnel a bunch of rut crazy bucks by so they try to spruce them up with some get rich quick products. This is often one of those lipstick on a pig situations. Trust me on this. There are times when sitting a tried and true stand during the rut is plenty good enough. That's up for you to decide. But if you don't have other options, you won't have a choice. And that's

no bueno. And you know how I feel about not giving yourself options. It's a bad move and they'll bite you in the ass every time. The truth is, there are some spots that are just rut spots. The pinch points and funnels and terrain traps are the place is to be, the soft edges in the big woods, great places to be, the high spine that bisects a swamp and allows deer to stay mostly dry while cruising through. Great place to be, the place where the river bluff

pinches up next to the bank. Well, you get it. You know this stuff. I know you know this. But do you do this? Do you have a setup or a plan to go into a spot like this for the rut? If not, you'd better consider it. I think that we view the rut as a situation where deer could show up anywhere, but mostly lots of deer show up in very specific spots, while few deers show up wherever you want to be on one of those high concentration spots where lots of deer should go. It is

that simple. Now, as I lay these words down on a digital tablet, I'm packing up for a trip to North Dakota to hunt for six days. My plan, after almost too much time on on X, is going to be that I'm going to spend some time in three spots. I have three really interesting pinch points marked that should

allow for all days sits if the wind cooperates. Now, I know that at least one of those spots will probably have other hunters around because it's public, so I'm not even counting on being able to utilize all three. But they are all three true rut spots. You probably wouldn't sit any of them in September or at least early October, but now you would. My plan is simple. There go hanging hunt where the wind is best and the sign is plentiful. And then comes phase two of

the plan. This involves something that we talk about a lot but we don't break down very much, which is just watching deer. I know I've talked about this before, but if you have a buck knows his way through the woods, pay attention to it. I mean, if you don't maybe go golfing or something, because I don't know if bow hunting is the right sport for you. I've said this a lot, but every deer you see during

the rut gives you an advantage. Obviously, the buck that crosses the down fence in the woods exactly where you expect him to is great. It's great affirmation for your strategy. But there's a benefit to watch and a buck cross one hundred yards farther down too. Or the dough that walked out into the alfalfa field at three in the afternoon all by herself. What she did today, she might do tomorrow, And you can bet your ass that eventually someone is going to want to give her a little

sniff to see if she might swipe right. If you get my drift, the forky that crosses an open field from one point of woods to another, or I don't know, the two year old it travels through the middle of a cat tail slew where you can see a small band of willows. All of that movement tells you something. Now, you might be thinking that these sightings tell you to move, but they don't, at least not always. This is where phase two the rut plan meets an old fork in

the road. Remember those get rich Quick products I just made fun of a little bit ago, Well you might need them now if you have a pretty good rut setup. But for some reason, the deer prefer to be seventy five yards away instead of twenty. You have two options. Move to them or try to move them to you. Sometimes it's easy. Sometimes it's nothing more than pulling your set and moving fifty yards to a good tree where

the action actually is. This is my go to strategy. First, if I can put myself where the deer like to move, I've damn near won the game. But what if you're on the edge of that cat tail slew and you see that two year old and some other deer using that willow band. But you don't really want to wade in there and try to arrow one from the ground because you're not going to make that happen. In that situation, moving to them just might not be a viable option. You might have to try to get them to come

to you. I ran into this I don't know, maybe a dozen years ago in Nebraska during a public land hunt. The bucks kept cruising and chasing through a small patch of pines in the CRP, but wouldn't come to where I could hang a stand. So I eventually used a feeding dough decoy one morning to see if I could get a deer's attention, and it worked. I had to call to him and I had to work him in. But the eight pointer I arrowed that morning he was

following the exact script of several other bucks. I saw he wasn't going to come my way, but then he saw a deer, or he thought he saw a deer. Then he heard a deer, or he thought he heard it here. Well, it wasn't much for him to make a little bit of a detour, and it was like November sixth, so he swung in there. If I could have moved to the best patch of seaters there to set up, I would have, but it wasn't an option. So it was time to get a little crafty. This

is important, my friends. If you're not right on the sweet spot, but you're close, read the situation. Read it really well, and make note of the wind in other conditions, Ask yourself why they're there and if they are likely to get to you. If you don't think so, ask yourself, what's my best move? Can you really locate to the action with a stand or a saddle, or maybe a natural ground line? If so, do that honestly, don't wait.

Just get there and make it happen. But if you can't, which is pretty common, it might be time for a little calling or a decoy or some sense or whatever. Now I need to move on to phase three here of the plan, And it's one that I kind of wish didn't exist, but it just does. It's what to do when you're just not on deer, even though you believe you should be. Just one. Happens to me a lot, and I think it happens to a lot of us,

more than we'd care to admit. I'm a firm believer that if I give a spot a full day's sit or one afternoon and then a morning sit and it doesn't produce, I'm probably gonna move. Scratch that, I'm at least going to consider moving. This is just a gut feeling type of thing. But if you believe the terrain is going to feed dear to you, at some point two days of sitting or even three, it just might be necessary, especially if you're in a low deer density area.

It's all up to your confidence and faith in the spot, and you have to be real honest with yourself because this is when laziness can weigh in on the decision making process. It's far more work to go looking and try to find deer and the next best setup. In that case, it's much easier to keep sitting the same spot and trying to convince yourself that it's just a matter of time. This is a common mindset and it

leaves a lot of tags unfilled. When I hit that moment where I'm just like, it is not happening here for some reason, my first instinct is to move. Unless my options are really limited, you know, like I'm hunting a small property, or the conditions for whatever reason won't allow for a fresh setup. I'm going to go to my next spot. This is kind of where we go back to phase one. If you did your homework, you should have a few other rut spots you believe in.

They might not be your number one choice, but you should have faith in them. If the first setup doesn't produce and you have other options, it is just a matter of sitting somewhere else. If you don't have another site prepped and ready to go, don't fret. You can sneak in and scout around for some fresh sign. I like lots of RUPs, and if I can find it, big running tracks on trails in the woods. A spot with both of those that allows me to set up with a good wind. That's pretty much all I need

when I don't have other options. Now, before I wrap this up, I just want to say a few things. The first is develop some kind of plan for yourself if you can. I mean that. The second is to understand when you're sabotaging yourself for some reason. This is most common when we decide not to hunt. I know I've said this before, but how many times have you heard someone saying it's just not worth sitting during the rut because it's too hot or too windy or whatever.

There's no such thing. Don't make excuses to not hunt. The only thing you'll do is pretend that you're being a wise deer hunter while dumber deer hunters are out enjoying the woods and killing deer. This is maybe the most important part of the whole thing. Get your head ready for a real rut hunt. That's what a plan

does for you. You know that that hunt where you're gonna blank and have the wrong wind and wash Hunters walk through the best betting areas, the one where you don't want to wake up and sit all day for another whole day when your bed is warm and cozy and you're a sleepy little bear, get up and go hunt.

A plan. Having a good plan, you know that's going to help you with this, Like keep going, keep doing your thing, tell yourself that you're going to find a way to maximize all available time you have, because you know what, for most of us, at least who don't live too far south, it's already damn near over. In a couple weeks, the whole thing will fizzle down into that time of the season when it's just about impossible

to see a deer bigger than a four ky. When we hit that point, will you look back on the rut and think about it in a positive way or will it mostly be a reminder of unmet expectations. You don't want that, do you? I know I don't, and I've lived it. Enough to try really hard to make sure it doesn't happen to me. Listen, I still have bad days and bad sits and bad weeks during the rut. I don't think you can get away from that if you hunt anywhere with a decent amount of pressure anyways.

But I think you can always grind it out on the promise that a good one will eventually come down the trail, or that you might have one of those magical once per decade mornings where a hot dough brings the whole crew to your feet and the action you witness is so awesome it can erase tons of difficult sits and other bad deer hunts. Make a loose plan based around your existing setups and whatever potential setups you could have in the moment, pay attention to the deer.

They'll tell you damn near everything you need to know. And lastly, put in the time. Don't be like your competition and phone it in, but really get out there and log in those hours. You won't regret it, I promise you that. And finally, come back next week because

I'm going to talk about gun hunting for deer. Know I've covered this topic a few times, but I got a few things I want to talk about that I haven't covered before, so we can get into given our orange clad brothers and sisters a little bit of love. That's it for this week. I'm Tony Peterson. This has been the Wired to Hunt Foundation's podcast, which is brought to you by First Light. As always, thank you so

much for listening and for all of your support. All of us here at meat Eater really really appreciate it. If you want some more deer hunting content, you can head on over to the meat eater dot com and you will see tons of articles, tons of podcasts, videos, series, you name it, and it's not just whitetail content over there. If you want to scratch that elkitch and plan for a hunt next year or whatever, it's all there at themeatheater dot com. Thank you again so much