Ep. 724: Foundations - The Best Deer Season That Doesn't Involves Bows

pile of hunting gear on my floor. It's an embarrassment, honestly. But tucked into all of my stuff is a gun case with a muzzler in it. I'm heading out very soon to tote that gun around on some public land and a part of Minnesota I almost never deer hunt. I know it's going to be quite a learning experience, which I'm excited about. But I'm also going to have quite a bit of public land to myself, quite a bit of fire power, you know, in my hands, more

than I'm used to carrying anyway. Honestly, I think musclader hunting is probably one of the most underrated opportunities to have a good deer hunt around and to figure out a few things about yourself. So that's what I plan to talk about right now. I don't know why you would, but if you were to ask me what i'd do for a living, I'd answer that I'm a writer. Now, this isn't a lie. Really. For years, that's almost all I did for my job, you know, along with plenty

of photography to support it. In the last decade or so, our attention spans have shrunk to the point where we have less focus than the average meth addicted chihuahua, and that job that I miss every day morphed into something else, you know. Obviously, I still write articles, and of course I write podcasts, and there are a few more books in various stages of completion as well, so it's not like I'm not pounding on the keyboard. There's also a hell of a lot of hunt filming too, which is

not something I actively chased in my career. It just sort of came on a little more and a little more and a little more, like eating a couple of twinkies every night, not really exercising, and then suddenly one day you catch a glimpse of yourself in the mirror in just the right light, and you realize that you're not quite as sexy as you used to be. The thing about me personally when it comes to filming hunts is that I don't think of myself as a TV guy.

In fact, my first reaction when someone mentions a TV hunter is not a positive one. It gives me a little bit of the feeling I had recently while walking to a stand in northern Wisconsin in the dark and stepping in a giant pile of fresh bear shit, and just knowing that's what happened, even though I couldn't see it. If you're wondering if we finally have the answer to the old adage about whether Yogi drops a dou ski in the woods or not, the answer is embedded in

the tread of my knee high lacross boots. The problem with thinking this way is that well I am a TV guy. It's a bummer. I know no one is more upset about that than me, trust me, but I just don't think of myself this way. I also don't think of myself as a gun hunter. When it comes to big game. The odds of catching me out in the field with a high powered rifle are almost zero

in any given year. In fact, I haven't carried a rifle to hunt big game in like eight years, and in total have maybe done that like four seasons in my life. It's just not my jam. I'm, you know, a bow hunter through and through. Except that's just what I think about myself as I actually loved a muzzle or hunt, and even though I took a few years off to mostly chase pheasants, I've rediscovered my love of

muzzleloder hunting. Last year, on the last weekend of the season in Minnesota, I filled my buck tag with one.

And I'll tell you what, Bobby, it was freaking awesome to sit in a ladder stand overlooking a small cattail slough, an island of cedars in a corner of a pick beanfield while being able to reach out and shoot in any direction for quite a ways It was pretty dang fun to not have to pick the spot on the spot where a buck might go through the cattails or the trail he might use to get into the beans.

This is kind of a relief. I had the opportunity to stay back, observe, and still be actively in the game. When deer showed up a football field away, I enjoyed it. The thing about this is that style of hunting is like a hybrid hunt between a rifle hunt and a bow hunt. It's a happy medium, and it meant that I could get away with hunting some spots that I just wouldn't be able to hunt with a bow. But I didn't need to do it during a season when there were half a million peace out had the woods

mostly to myself. So by the time you're listening to this, I will have spent some time on that public land in Minnesota that I'm going to muzzloorder hunt. I haven't convinced myself to bowhunt there with any real effort yet, because I don't have a real strong grasp on how the deer used that type of terrain. Well, I kind of do, but I also know that bowhunting them and slews and in prairie grass is a different beast altogether,

one that I'm just not that confident in. Honestly, this is where my full on endorsement of muzzleloder hunting comes into play. Having a weapon that can reach out to my max which is one hundred and fifty yards, opens up a new world to me. Instead of going into an environment that will undoubtedly kick my ass if I carry a bow, I can go take the easier route and use a muzzleloader. The deer afresh out of a general gun season, so they aren't going to be easy,

but they should be somewhat visible. Because I have a weapon that allows me to shoot farther, I can use that to learn how they get into the slus and out of them, how they travel the land at first and last light, and hopefully run into a decent bucket some point. And I can't wait. It's not just because it feels good to carry a scope gun around after

a whole season of toting about. It's because muzzle ar season is an opportunity to try some new things and learn a little bit about the deer and still have a chance to kill one. Now why is that important? Well, every season I come to a few separate realizations a little bit more. The first stems from how many people send me emails about how they can't kill big bucks

on a specific property. It's often accompanied by a very long paragraph free email and a screenshot of a piece of ground that is covered in waypoints, and their hope is that I'll magically be able to point them to the tree where the big guy is going to walk. It doesn't work that way, unfortunately. The truth is that you either need an unbelievable property so your chances will just happen and eventually you'll get it right, or more likely, you just have to get better at deer hunting in

a significant way. Honestly, most of the folks I hear from would benefit greatly from just lowering their standards and learning how to deer hunt from A to Z. But most people don't want to hear that they want big bucks. They just don't understand what that actually entails. The other realization is that we have been spoon fed a whole bunch of bullshit from the hunting industry that has trickled down into the general deer hunting population and made a mess of this whole thing. If you look at most

of the voices in the whitetail space. They have worked their way into a situation where they have relatively easy hunting, even for really big deer. White tails are not hard to hack if you have the means to control even a marginally sized chunk of ground. The blueprint is pretty much always the same. Put in some food, work on the cover, and leave it alone till the deer think they are safe. I have a couple of good buddies

who now have properties like this. They have food plots and box blinds and bulldozer dug ponds, and there is really about timing more than anything. They don't need to actually scout these properties. They can just run a few cameras and wait until the movement is right. They also don't seem to be having as much fun as you'd expect. When you walk out to the Redneck over and over to sit over a beautiful patch of clover that you know the deer going to come to. That's great donuts

for donuts, but over time, that's not that exciting. For a lot of people, easy doesn't make you good, and often isn't that rewarding. For some that doesn't matter, and that's great, but for a lot of us, it's a goal we actually don't want to achieve. Well, let me put this another way. Would you rather have really easy hunting for the rest of your life or would you rather get really good at hunting? There is no wrong answer, But if you're listening to this podcast, I have a

sneaking suspicion what you probably want. The thing is, we don't know how to get better. We don't know how to weather several seasons in a row where it feels like we aren't getting better. The whole thing can get real frustrating in a hurry. This is why I'm such an advocate for hunting with lower standards until you get a hell of a lot of experience under your belt. It's why I think learning all parts of the hunt,

from scouting to killing the butchering is important. It's why I think you should find new ways to hunt, new places and get outside of your comfort zone. I honestly think the worst thing to happen to most of us is to decide that we have one place to hunt and that's it. As soon as you commit yourself to just one property, then you're limiting your growth as a hunter. Now you might get really good at that property, but eventually that might not be enough to keep your cup full.

So where am I going with this? Right? Muzzleloader hunting. When I first started muzzloader hunting, I realized it was, you know, bow hunting adjacent, but definitely easier. It gave me the chance to try new things like tracking deer in the fresh snow. I'd have never ever done that with a bow, at least not successfully, but I did it with an open sighted muzzle dround a monster dough

and it's one of my favorite hunting memories. Even on properties I think I know really well the difference between bow hunting before the general gun season and muzzle order hunting after it's pretty big. I have to start fresh, and there's no way around that. It's all about fresh sign, understanding where the deer hold up, and observation. It's a blank slate every season, and it's a low participation hunt

in most places. That means you have the advantage of the gun while mostly just working against the deer and not a lot of other hunters. There's a whole lot of education that can be packed into that scenario. There's an opportunity to break away from your comfort zone. You know the stands you always sit or the access routes you always take, and you need to try something different. This is your chance. You can still hunt or stalk or just set up to observe while having a real

chance to kill. You don't have to be an tree and can work on your natural ground blind game. Now we should do this with bows too, but we mostly don't. We need an excuse to do something we wouldn't normally do. This is why I like to travel the New States and hunt public land that I've never seen before. I like the feeling of just going to hunt deer and

not being worried about a certain size of buck. It helps me enjoy the process because it's a low stress way to learn about deer and how to hunt them. A lot of us are missing that opportunity. I know you might be thinking that you can't travel all over and hunt every week in a new state, which is totally valid. But I'll bet you could hunt your home turf in a new way. I'll bet if you burn yourself out bow hunting, you could find a way to have a hell of a lot of fun with a muzzleloader.

If your state has a decent season, it's worth a shot because most states have a general muzzloder season after their rifle or shotgun season. What that means is that you're going to go out after deer that have been hunted real hard and they have moved into places where

the general gun probably didn't go. There's a lesson on how deer react to real pressure built into most muzzlar seasons, and if you want to get better at it being a deer hunter, no matter what weapon you choose to carry, learning how white tails react to pressure is like half of the battle. We often think it's about figuring out the food they are on, or they like to bed to catch the thermals, but for most of us, the really important thing is to understand how deer do the

things they do to avoid us. Hunting pressure from a huge shotgun hunting party or just yourself as you sneak into the woods over and over is going to be a major factor in everything the local deer do. There is no motivating force quite like staying alive. Hunger and thirst are a distant second, because they're going to find a way to take care of those, and while making new deer can top the survival instincts from time to time,

it mostly doesn't. There's another thing to consider when it comes to whether you want to go through the hassle of buying a muzzleloader and then sighting in and trust me on this, learning how to clean it properly. It's that how serious do you take bow hunting after the general gun season. I know that my drive to get

out there diminishes in a major way. Knowing that maybe twenty percent of the deer are now dead and that the rest are going to be super cagy doesn't make me as excited to get out there as I am before the gun season. I mostly wouldn't hunt right after the gun season, if I'm being honest. The advantage of a muzzleloader and the freedom it offers when compared to archery tackle, provides a convincing enough argument to keep going.

It is just persuasive enough to get me out there in the woods when I'd mostly rather be pheasant hunting or doing something else. It makes the effort seem worth it because it's just enough an advantage to make the whole thing seem possible. Again, this gets even sweeter if you have a dough tag and a little corner of your chest freezer still empty enough to fit some packages of venison in it. I guess this is a good

place to tie a bow on the whole thing. I know, on average most of you probably aren't interested in muzzle or hunting. That's fine, you don't have to go. What the real lesson here is is find a way to go hunting. Find a way to keep motivated to hunt when it seems mostly like a lost cause. Give yourself a reason to be out there. Try to understand why you don't want to go right now, or why you won't want to go in the near future, and mitigate

those feelings by giving yourself a reason. It might just be as simple as wanting one more deer to eat, Or it might be that you want to hunt a side of your home state you never really hunted deer at, and you're excited at the prospect of leaving the confines of the woods to be in a place with huge views and more visible deer. Maybe you're sick of getting busted drawing your bow, or in a slump where you

made a bad shot or seven in a row. Oh, and it would be nice to just lay the crosshairs on a deer's shoulder as he feeds seventy five yards away and dump him. Maybe just need to shake off a rough bow season and spend some time slipping through the woods with a real advantage in your hands. You know, I thought i'd end this here, but I just realized something. I think maybe the biggest problem most of us have

is we think about hunting in the wrong way. We think, I hunt here, I do this, I don't do this, And we think about a whole bunch of stuff that we're sure will happen one way or another. But you don't have to hunt there or do that or not do that. And you know, a bunch of stuff that you're sure always happens is probably absolutely not true. If you break a few of those habits, you might find a world of white tails you've shut yourself out of just by thinking things go a certain way when they

don't have to. We don't only have to hunt differently from our competition. We have to try to hunt differently from ourselves, at least if we want to get better at this stuff. So for me, that means taking a muzzle order out and trying to find a deer in an unfamiliar environment. But what does it mean for you? Ask yourself that answer it, and then go do it, my friends, and come back next week because I'm going to talk about deer densities and how they should shape

our strategies and hunting styles. That's it for this week. I'm Tony Peterson. It's 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. Everybody here at Mediator truly appreciates it, so thank you

for that. If you want some more white tail content, some more podcasts, some more articles, some more video series, whatever, head on over to the meadeater dot com and you will find so much stuff to keep you entertained while you're sitting at work or sitting at home wishing it was I don't know, spring fishing season or something. Anyway, if you're bored and you want to get a little bit better at hunting and retain yourself and educate yourself, the medior dot com is the place to go. M HM