Ep. 747: Foundations - French Bulldogs & Individual Bucks

Sometimes inspiration doesn't come from a likely source. Sometimes it just runs up to me and bites my hand and reminds me of an idea I had a while back to got lost in the sledge of my brain. Well, here is that idea as it's burst into the world. And while it might seem like a strange one, I think there's real merit here to thinking about deer as individuals. And now I'm gonna tell you why. Our history with

canines it's pretty incredible. Just like with the timeline for when modern humans made it all over the world, the timeline for us and our four legged pals keeps getting pushed back further and further through new discoveries. Not long ago, it was believed that we co evolved with dogs in the last fifteen thousand or so years, but that is

now more like twenty to forty thousand years. Much of the early years when we coaxed wolves or other wild canids from the darkness to trust us for some calories in exchange for a little protection from the big and scary stuff out there is thought that the relationship was purely transactional. In other words, we give you some food, little doggie, or we let you dig through the scraps and chomp on some charred bones and exchange you can stay with us as long as you growl or bark

when danger gets too close. Seems simple, right, Well, eventually we started to grow crops and learn a little about animal husbandry, and dogs worm their way into our lives through new roles. We selected certain dogs for certain traits, even tail wagging according to recent studies, and now we have a whole slew of different breeds to choose from. We tend to look at this coevolution as something that was mostly beneficial to us and that we were in control.

That wasn't until real relatively recently, that we had it so good as a society that we could call our dogs fur babies, which, if I'm being honest, is a term that makes me want to hit myself in the face with a brick, so I might forget that it exists.

But the fur baby movement has been around longer, or it's been in the making longer then we might think, at least according to a recent archaeological find in Sweden, which has been carbon dated to about eighty four hundred years ago, researchers working on deciphering all there is to know about a Mesolithic site containing fifty one structures, hearths, postholes, and at least one well preserved dog that was buried with what we called grave goods. It's kind of illuminating

what was going on back then. People have been sending other people to the afterlife with an assortment of goodies and valuables to aid them on their journey for a long time. But also we know now at least one dog, who I can only surmond must have been a very good boy, has been found with some grave goodies as well. In fact, quite a few of them have been found carefully placed in a grave with necklaces, spoons, and other

offerings that might have been dog toys. To frame this up, consider that someone in Sweden loved their dog enough to give it a proper burial, complete with gifts for the afterlife. This happened before the first stones were laid which would become the Great Pyramids of Giza. Ditto for Stonehenge, which has been standing for like fifty centuries. It happened way before Genghis Khan and his Mongolian horde murdered like one

out of every ten people on the planet. It happened way before the Fall Rome, before much of our recorded history, people, at least some people were infatuated with dogs. Now this is obviously still true to this day, which was evidence to me recently when I went and met my sister in law's new French bulld Bruno. Bruno has a one year old dog that looks like he was built from spare parts Pilford from the hound factory, and who has a face that I doubt even a mother could love.

He breathes like he's constantly on the verge of suffocating because he kind of is with his God's own prototype smashed face. He's stocky, bites everyone, but his mouth isn't very big or strong, so I guess it's cute to some people, and he barks a lot. He's also, and I say this as a true dog lover, one of the dumbest animals I've ever met. But my sister in law loves him, and like most dog people, she has her breed mostly because she likes how they look, and

she had one before who died way too young. Because French bulldogs, like a lot of breeds, aren't bred for health.

the time. My twin daughters could not be more different, but they are often treated as a single unit instead of two individuals. We do this with broader groups of people, whether it's in politics or sports, or religion or hell hunting influencers. We do this with deer too. If you want to know the easiest example of this, look at how many people are out there who definitively declare a buck is a certain age because of how it looks. You can't do that with dogs, you can't do that

with people. But here we are declaring every one hundred and thirty inch buck a three and a half year old and calling it a day. I think that is something that is really holding us back as hunters. That mentality, not that specific example, although that's certainly something that has changed the landscape at whitetail hunting, and I'd argue probably not for the better. But here's the thing about deer hunting. We talk in general behavior because we can't talk about

individuals very often. But just because that's how we view our world as it pertains to hunting doesn't mean it's the best way for us as individual hunters to approach our task. Let's take a simple example. In many places with a long deer hunting tradition, the deer will generally look up in trees for danger. The more pressure from tree stand hunters, the more likely they are to look up into the trees to see somebody bad up there. It's pretty simple if you hunt out east, pretty easy

to get busted. Even if you're twenty feet up out west in some of those river bottoms that snake their way through the prairies, you might not ever get picked off. Those deer just aren't as used to predators waiting in the cottonwoods to send sharp sticks through their lungs. Now, you smart listeners might be thinking, well, you're not really talking about individuals here, You're talking about generalities between deer of different regions. And you're right, you got me, So

I'll take it a step further. If you hunt good private land, you might not have to worry about deer looking up too much, no matter where it's located. Yet, if you drive down the road and hunt the same way on public land, you might have a vastly different experience. This is one of the reasons I have no problems shooting small bucks or does on public land.

my feet right now. Even though they are both black labs, both have awesome bloodlines, and both are female, They're vastly different in their personalities size, just like deer. So think about it this way. The current rage out there is to find a buck that is mature, name him, and then hunt that specific deer. And this is great if

that's what you're into. But what people don't get really good at is learned that just because a five and a half year old buck makes your hit list, it doesn't mean he's going to act like a five and a half year old buck is supposed to act.

since they often kill giants that have names. But it's a different world for many of them. They have cell cameras, food plots, the acreage in the time to allow for a certain buck to start daylighting in a specific area. They aren't necessarily learning the particulars of that buck and killing him on high level hunts. They are playing the

weighted out and let him get comfortable game. I don't care what deer it is if he doesn't get pressured and he doesn't have any negative consequences for moving in daylight. He's eventually going to move more and more because well, why wouldn't he. Again, this isn't a knock on the strategy or whatever. It's just to point out that you probably should base your hunting strategies, not necessarily on that style,

because it's just highly unique to those hunters. Instead, you should be paying attention to the deer that you see, the deer that you can watch in the off season, the sign you might be able to attribute to certain bucks, and try to learn not only what the group traits are for the deer you hunt in any given spot, but anything you can learn about the individuals. Take calling, for example, if you're lucky, you've probably called in some bucks in your life, maybe a grunt of them in

I don't know, maybe you rattled them in whatever. Some bucks are callable and some just aren't. Why why Well, who knows? Some dogs fight other dogs on site, while other dogs couldn't muster aggressiveness if they were forced to. Why would deer be any different. This means that if you're out there on Halloween and you see a good buck walking on a range, you might call him in he might just be in the mood to check out a distant grunt, or he might be the kind of

deer who very much prefer the solo life. You can take this a step further by looking at dear buddies, which sounds like a sitcom idea Mark would pitch to Steve at our content summit. But the truth is some bucks prefer to hang with other bucks, often until the rut and sometimes through it. Why who knows, but I know that when you see a good buck and a smaller buck together often that a grunt call might be

all I need to kill that bigger one. I'm sure there is a survival component to pairing up when it comes to bucks, and that's something that can be used in your favor. It's a survival strength to them, but you can turn it into a survival weakness. Another way that we see this individuality highlighted is through nocturnal behavior. This might be the most obvious example. Some bucks seem to have no problem showing up randomly in the daylight hours,

while others are damn near vampires. If you target a buck that is in that vampire status, which I did for a few years here in Minnesota, prepare yourself for some disappointment. Unless you have a lot of time to sit during the rut, those bucks are extremely hard to kill.

I'm not saying you should use a few nighttime trail camera photos to declare a buck nocturnal and therefore unkillable, but to be honest about what you can learn about individual deer these days, if a buck leads me to believe he's mostly nocturnal, I almost won't even think about him because I know what it leads to. In fact, this happened to me last fall in Wisconsin. There were two hundred and fifty inch type bucks occasionally using a

small property I own. The neighbors well aware of them, and he was actually putting in some time for them. I'm being honest when I say I didn't even really care they were there. I knew I was probably not going to see them give him my limited time over there, and the fact that I'm mostly hunting with eleven year olds at the time, so I didn't let those deer

factor into my decisions a whole lot. Maybe that's defeatist, but I hunt for fun mostly, and it's not fun for me to target a deer that I consider to be generally a ghost. Bucks show their individuality in other ways too. Where they bed is often interesting, Although this is due partially to deer density, A lot of the big buck beds I find in swamps and big wood situations feel very isolated. Tiny islands of cover and big

swamps highlight this very well. Maybe it's because they don't have younger deer to bed with and act as centuries, but older bucks in the big woods seem to lean hard into the introvert lifestyle. When I've hunted high density areas like Iowa, it seems like they either don't seek that level of isolation or simply just can't find it. But it also often has the vibe of hunting early season meal deer in high country basins.

Every type of hunting situation has its own challenges, my friends, but it pays to try to learn individual traits of specific deer whenever you can. In fact, this reminds me of something that a fellow named Dan Evans, who started a trophy taker a long time ago. He told me years ago during a conversation. Now, if you don't know who Dan is, he's one of the best elk hunters

in the world. He targets huge old bulls and he's probably killed more four hundred class animals than anyone, especially considering he's often hunting units that you and I could draw. When I asked him what his secret was, he said that the monster bulls are often total loaners. He said, they often don't even participate in the rut in a meaningful way. The challenge is finding them first, of course, But then once he does, he watches them as much

as he can to figure out their daily lives. Then he sneaks in and tries to kill them, not call them. Usually just sneak in and ambush them. Now, this is a dumbed down version of a conversation we had a long time ago.

That's an advantage that I cannot overstate. If you can sneak in and watch a small family group or learn about a solo dough feeding or betting or traveling somewhere somewhat consistently, you have a really good trap set for

yourself for the rut. This is something that I'm trying to get better at in the big Woods because I think it's the key to killing a really good deer during the rut, and some of the spots I hunt it might not happen, but it might also just be that I'll figure out where a doe group or a single dough likes to hang out in the swamps, and then do my best to stay down win and wait out a buck that undoubtedly knows about her habits as well. Think about this as we trudge our way through winter

and have all of this time before next season. Maybe this will help you develop a better tree camera strategy or prompt you to finally buy a spotting scope so you can glass your happy ass off this summer. In fact, if you want a little bit of a hint here before I wrap this up, what I talked about earlier about the bucks that I've dealt with it are truly nocturnal.

A really good way to gauge that isn't necessarily from trail camera photos, although that helps a lot, but how easy they are to watch in the summer, because some bucks just don't seem to hardly ever shed that nocturnal bent no matter what. And if they're out there and you're getting nighttime trail camera photos of them in July and you can't get out there with your spotting scope and pick them up, those deer know what they're doing. Anyway,

that was a little diversion. I want to wrap this up by saying, you know, maybe you'll end up killing a specific buck this fall just because you learn something about him that doesn't jive with general deer knowledge, which is something that you have to be thinking about because not only are you trying to get better at learning all the deer, but those specific ones and when you

kill that specific one, it's pretty sweet. Come back next week and I'm going to talk about why why deer are where they are and why that's probably the most important question we should be asking ourselves as hunters. 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

your support. Everybody here at media truly appreciates it. If you have just not gotten enough white tail content, or maybe you're running out of podcast because it's the middle of the winter and you're driving around a lot or going to the gym a lot and you're burning through them, the meeteater dot com has all.