Ep. 718: Foundations - How to be Your Orange-Clad Self During Gun Season

Right now, the archery season is giving way to gun season. Now, that might be bad news for a lot of you hardcore you know, rider die bow hunters, but it also might be a hell of a relief for many of you. Gun hunting is just a different beast and it comes with a different set of rules, at least that's what many of us think. I kind of think the rules stay the same, but the game is just a little different.

Here in the good old USA, or just a little bit north of here, in the land of hockey and maple syrup. Most of our traditions are pretty laid back and not really all that shocking little thing. It's like saying, you know, how are you instead of what we mean, which is hey, bro. That's one. Smiling as strangers is another. Try that in some countries and you might get kicked

right in the old sock puppet. Try that with a wrong monkey or other primate and you might see that old sock puppet get removed from your body and tossed into the trees. Traditions you might not know about include drinking coffee on the go. There are a lot of cultures where coffee is a communal thing and not just a baseline drug we use every day. So do murder someone for I don't know, weirdly smiling at us Mark

Kenyan style. We also have a weird tradition of requesting changes to the menu at restaurants, or I guess you know, changes to a certain type of dish at a restaurant. As someone who cooked his way through college, this one drives me bah nanas, especially when my mother in law does it every single time she goes out to eat.

During the process of explaining how she wants something totally changed in a dish that doesn't make sense, I can see the servers just die a little inside, and I feel for the lime cook who has to make something totally different after having made it exactly one way five thousand times. Other than sort of ruining a restaurant worker's day, most of those traditions are pretty harmless. Head to the other parts of the world and you'll see that this

isn't always the case. In parts of Indonesia, there are tribes where women are expected to show their grief by chopping off part of their finger. This is done to satisfy ancestral ghosts and can result in older ladies missing a lot of the parts of their fingers that most of us wouldn't want to lose involuntarily, let alone voluntarily. Although that's the thing about tradition, it's often not that voluntary.

Take the vegetarian festival in Thailand, for example. This culture abstains from eating meat in October in an attempt to invite good fortune into their lives. To further appeal to the gods that they'd like some seriously good luck, many of these people penetrate their own bodies withs needles and knives, then they walk around town. Google this. If you're not squeamish, then google foot binding in China and bullet ant gloves for some particularly unlucky tribes people of the Amazon. I

guess I shouldn't say that. They probably feel more gratitude for their lives than a lot of US Western folks, and they are testing themselves in a way that probably feels pretty satisfying to get through. So I guess who knows. What I do know is that we view tradition through many lenses, and we often don't realize how much it has an influence over our lives. When it comes to hunting, there's no more evidence of this than on a typical opening weekend a gun season, when you're heading to the

cabin to meet up with your relatives. If you could see a time lap shot of the typical gun hunting party that has a the traditional cabin somewhere, you could probably relay opening weekend every year over opening weekend from every other year, and I bet it would look very similar at least the start of the whole thing. Would You'd probably see the same orange clad hunters walking the

same trails to the same stands. You'd see the same four wheelers and side by sides puttering along the same routes. You'd probably see the reverse of that moment at about the same time every day, maybe a few hours into the morning, maybe sometime at midday. Then you might see a whole bunch of orange clad hunters set up the same deer drive in the same spots year after year. By afternoon, you're likely to see the same movement that

you saw in the morning, lather, rinse, repeat. I bet if you could survey a random group from the up of Michigan, and a random group from Pennsylvania, and then a random group from North Carolina and wherever, year after year, you'd probably hear about the same relative amount of success at any given opening weekend. There's a consistency to the success side of things because there is a consistency to

the effort. One hot dough can change that, of course, but so can twenty degree weather versus seventy degree weather. But these things have a way of finding a path of least resistance, so to speak, and the results, well, they're typical. We don't really think about how much of a tradition it is for grandpa to go to a certain stand, for the young hunters to always be the

drivers and the deer draggers. We don't think too hard on the fact that even though we might complain about not killing much or not really even seeing much, we've also locked ourselves into a pattern of behavior that produces expected results. It's weird, but you know, absolutely ensconced in the human condition. It's gene deep to embrace tradition, and it happens across all cultures. But it doesn't have to happen. We mostly choose it. We mostly lean into it, at least,

you know, most of us. For the traditional gun hunting party, not doing what you always do might be viewed as greedy or an attempt to flip over the old apple cart, so to speak. You might not hunt the way you want because your uncles seem real resistant to change, and you don't want to get loads of shit tossed your way for changing their natural order. But this is just deer hunting. Deer camp peer pressure is prevalent, but it's not that big of a deal. It's also kind of dumb.

Doing the same thing year after year after year is a great way to not have a very successful hunt year after year after year. You're playing a game with animals that do have a memory, and they do have some pretty typical reactions to typical hunter movements. We often make it so easy for them to avoid us. This is especially true if you just blissfully ignore the difference in conditions from year to year and day to day and instead just go always sit that one ladder stand

you like which has a nice view. I think a lot of hunters over in the land of cheese and thinly veiled functional alcoholism where I hunt are going to be in for a rude awakening this year. A lot of those die hard Packers fans are going to go out to their guns stands for the first time all year and realize that their shooting lanes are gone, and that the old logging road they used to walk to get to their stand is now nearly fully blocked by

down trees. Add in the further reality that a CWD positive deer in a nearby game farm has baiting on the no fly list and their hunt is about to change. But will they change with it. I don't know. They probably should. It would be inconceivable for most of us bow hunters to not obsess over the wind direction and the weather conditions before we go sit for a lot

of gun hunting, it's not even really considered. Now. I'm generalizing here, of course, but if you have one stand you always sit, then it's highly likely you'll sit there whether there's an east wind or a west wind, or whether it's freezing cold or sweltering hot. So here's the thing. You don't need to hold court with all of your fellow rifle hunting buddies the night before the opener and tell them you're calling a camp wide audible and that

everything is going to change. You can do little things to be different, and you should take shot opportunities. For example, if you're going to rifle or shotgun hunt or muzzlod or hunt, I guess what are your lanes like, what's the average shot distance? A lot of people look at gun hunting in their effective range so much differently than bow hunters. Most bow hunters tend to practice at some distance and then they peel off a certain percentage of

that distance. In respect to the reality of shooting wild deer and wild situations. Gun hunters often don't do that. They shoot their rifles or whatever at certain distances and then kind of figure they can push it by fifty or one hundred yards by holding a little high That's great for good shooters, but often not so great for people who don't shoot a whole lot, which is probably

most of the whitetail hunters. And it's a different thing sitting on a bench punching paper at three hundred yards than it is to try to shoot a live buck as he walks along a clear cut three football fields away. It's hard not to put a little lead in the air when you can, but sometimes it's best to understand

what your real effective range is. This is one of the reasons that when I gun hunt, whether it's a general season or a muzzleloader hunt, I'm often in places that don't allow for a long shot because I know I'm only an okay shot with a gun. I'm really only an okay shot with a bow, too, which is why I'm a super huge fan of twenty yard broadside shots, and I work pretty hard to try to set those up with guns. You know that distance is mostly too close, but it also doesn't take me too long to get

into a little bit too far a territory. Either, know this about yourself and understand what it means for your stand or blind setup. Think about your shots, and if you're thinking about how far you should really shoot, consider something else house your rest. One of the things I've learned here at meat Eater, where we are overrun by Western rifle hunters who probably would hold a bow upside down if you handed them one, is that they don't

shoot without a good rest. When they have a chance to shoot, their focus goes on getting a good range and establishing a rest, a really good rest. Quickly, you might think, well, hell, Peterson, I have that covered since I hunt out of a ladder stand with a shooting rail, And I'd say, well, hell, random listener, how tall are you? How comfortable is your shot off that shooting rail? It might be a different deal for someone who is five

to three versus someone who is six ' five. Now I don't hunt out a ladder stands much, but I've noticed that shooting rails are perfect for some shot angles and kind of a struggle for others. Can you get a better rest? Can you maybe wrap the rail on something soft and malleable. Can you use some hockey tape or a bungee cord and a fix a bipod to your stand? Maybe set it up for the highest odd shot anyway, Now, what if a deer comes behind you?

This is a little thing that makes a big difference, and it's something that most of your competition isn't doing. Take it a step further though. A typical bow hunter who watches deer do something, but those deer don't get into range will do one thing, try to call the deer in. A good bow hunter will usually just move

closer to the action and kill one. A gun hunter who watches deer goes through the cedars but never offer a shot is very likely to follow a typical bow hunter's plan and turn that can call over a few hundred times or grunt to his heart's content. He might also try to slip a shot through the brush, But what would be a better bet you know it move. This is something that the general gun hunting crowd does

not seem to grasp very well. Sure they'll move, but they'll move with the confidence of someone who can make an offhand shot at two hundred yards. You know they can't, and neither can you. Probably the ability to close the distance and leave behind your traditional stand is huge. You can probably still stay in the zone of your stand or your spot so you don't piss off the rest of the people and your party. But it might be a move of you know, fifty yards that changes everything.

You might have to set up on the ground. That's great, grab a tripod do that. The distances that gun hunting allows for make it ideal for a little chess move where you put your back to a tree somewhere without too much of a risk of getting busted before you get a shot. If you have the means to go mobile with a stand or a saddle, that's usually better. This is something very very few gun hunters do, although

it's getting more popular again. All you're doing is breaking tradition just a little bit, and another way to break the tradition that might be the best way to kill deer during a general gun season. Is something I've talked about a lot. Just hunt more, hunt longer hours, take a couple of vacation days to stick around camp on Monday and Tuesday, when most hunters make a mass exodus out of the woods and head back to their daily lives. The reality is that most hunters don't want to sit

that long. They put in a couple hours in the morning and a couple in the afternoon. Those windows get even shorter as the season goes on and the hangovers kick in and the action dries up and the futility of it all starts to settle across the land. That's an opportunity for you to do the opposite. Spend all day out there. I know I've talked about this a lot, but you just want to be there when others aren't.

If you go to your same old ladderstand with the plan to get back by eleven to watch the game and eat some chili, that's great, but that's the move for almost everyone, and the deer know that, or they figure it out real quickly. A better bet is to stick it out and even though you won't see tons of deer. You might see the one you want, and he might either just be moving through because of the lull and hunter presence, or he might be sneaking out through the side door as the neighbors set up for

another midday drive through the betting cover. There are other ways to break tradition too. Depending on how much seniority you have, you might be able to suggest some slight variations and the deer drives. Instead of parking exactly where you always park and sending one hunter to cover the waterway and two to post up at the end of the woods, take a look at the satellite imagery of

your ground. Think about how often the drive has worked, or how often someone has watched a deer squored out in a random spot which is probably not as random as it seems. Maybe it's a matter of talking to everyone about slowing way way down and trying to be quiet, or maybe it's a matter of putting someone in a spot to watch a new area as long as it's safe. Breaking the mold a little on deer drives can be a wildly educational experience. Here's the thing. Not to toot

my own horn a little too much. But I'm kind of a contrarian at heart. I don't like doing things just because you're supposed to. I also don't like hunting when I feel like I'm just crossing my fingers and praying to the deer gods for a pity buck. I think most of us lean into this a little too much. You know, it's easier to follow tradition and do the same thing over and over. It's even easier when there's an element of peer pressure involved. So here's the deal.

If you planned a gun hunt this season, ask yourself why you're doing what you're doing, are you sitting where you are? And if there's a chance to shake things up, at least consider it. Maybe not on day one, but by day two or three. Ask yourself what the results are of your effort and the efforts of anyone else you may be hunting with. Are they not so great? Would it be possible to suggest a few new things?

If not, that's okay, watch your own bobber and try to make the best adjustments you can to the situation you're in. It often doesn't take much to go from finger crossing kind of hunt to someone who is actually in the game. That feeling usually feeds further adjustments and not only makes it more likely you'll fill your tag, but it makes the whole thing a hell of a lot more enjoyable. And when you enjoy it, more kill

more deer. Trust me on that. So stay safe out there, shoot straight, change things up a little bit if you're not happy with how it's going, and come back next week because I'm going to talk about a concept in engineering that also applies to deer hunting, one that can really help you eliminate some of the things that can totally derail a hunt. That's it for this week. I'm Tony Peterson. This has been the Wire to Hunt Foundations podcast.

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