Ep. 782: Foundations - The Right Tools for the Deer Job

the hunting industry is getting to use new products. While a lot of the best of the best stuff really isn't much different from the rest of the best stuff, every once in a while something hits the market that just makes the process of scouting or hunting so much easier more enjoyable. That's sort of what this podcast is

all about. But I'm also going to touch on how to learn to really utilize the tools at your disposal and how to decide what products you really need versus the stuff we all think we need but we really don't. Loyal listeners to this podcast might recall that several months back, my wife volunteered me to install a new sink in our kitchen. It was a fun half year marital spat that culminated in a new sink that actually works, which is incredible. As a home improvement challenged type of fella,

I hate stuff like that. I don't have the skills for it, and I'm probably not ever going to have them when I do attempt something that just isn't in my wheelhouse. I also find that I tend to have a real hole in my game when it comes to owning and understand how to use the right tools. I look at tools like something that I begrudgingly buy sometimes and that mostly gets lost in the void of my

house or my truck after a little usage. Once in a while, I buy something that actually works for a specific task I have, and I put it somewhere like a responsible adult, so that I can find it every year. There are a few specific tools I use on my boat that are like this, and after about twenty seven years of losing them and buying new ones, I started keeping them in a very obvious spot. You guessed it, my golf cart. Just kidding. I keep them in my

boat now when I need them. I root around under dozens of tackle boxes and loose bags of jig trailers and swim baits until I find what I'm looking for, which is usually rusted to hell and barely functional. Then I head to YouTube to find myself a video of a real man who effortlessly just fixes things and replaces stuff and explains it in a way you might teach a toddler to tie his shoelaces. You know, first the rabbit goes around the tree and then down the hole.

You know what I mean. I used to be terrible about cobbling together a toolbox full of randomness that might come in handy when life throws you some stupid task that takes up the time you'd use for something fun. I am getting better at it. I'm getting more responsible. This is bled into my hunting world too. While I used to buy a new pruner every year about the beginning of April, when I was scramming to get my turkey hunting stuff together, I now have a big plastic

tote dedicated to spring turkey stuff. Call shotgun shells, broadheads, black shirts for the blind, gilly suits for putting my back to a tree, cushions, you name it. If I might need it to chase spring gobblers, it mostly has a spot in that tote. Of course, keeping track of the right tools for the job is the bare minimum. You need to know what tools you need and really how to use them in a variety of situations. This hit home to me recently when I was talking to

a guy at the gym about elk hunting. We got on the topic of east scouting, and I realized we have different ideas about the best way to use apps like on X. While a base level benefit of a scouting app is to see the ground the way a bird might see it, that's selling the whole thing pretty short, naturally. The other obvious benefits are seeing who owns what land, where access points might be, where food is located, hills, rivers, meadows,

the obvious stuff. That's all great, but that might be like utilizing I don't know twenty percent of the features, many of which can benefit you greatly. Take the tracker feature on on X. This is one that has become kind of a staple in my life. I've used it for white tails a lot, to get to stands and to get out of them. I make notes on how long the tracks take me to walk in daylight, so I have a good idea how long they'll take me

to walk in the dark. In the Elk Mountains, I use the tracker feature to find my way to secluded water holes that thirsty bowls might slip into. I've used it to mark the best route to dead deer and other critters once I recover them and realize I need to head to my truck to get my killed, or just to take a more direct route that saves me time when I'm packing something out. It's also awesome for sharing with hunting buddies so they can get stands or

dead bowls or whatever. That's just one feature of a multifaceted tool that offers real world benefits. In that instance, I'm also probably being a huge hypocrite too, because there's probably a lot of stuff packed into most mapping apps that I have yet to discover or truly learn how to use. Some people just kind of naturally dig pretty deep into how to use correctly, but a lot of people just don't. And I kind of fall into that

ladder category. So here's another thing to think about. Trail cameras. Great example here, modern cameras can shoot still images video time labs, you name it, each has its place in the woods for certain setups. Simply setting a camera to send you one picture per triggering event is about like using on X to look at property boundaries and nothing else. Sure there's benefit there, but you're missing a whole lot of other options. The thing here is not that you

need to go all out with anything. It's just that if you use these kinds of tools or are interested in them, not using them to their potential is costing you. Dear, I don't know how to put it more simply than that it might not matter to a lot of folks, but to some that probably does. To look at it another way is to forget that it's costing you deer and instead might just be degrading the quality of your hunt.

You might simply not be enjoying scouting or hunting as much because you're not fully utilizing the right tools for the right job. Let me give you another example. I live off my binoculars if I'm scouting or hunting, or hell even shed hunting. I always have binoculars on my chest, and I've always kind of thought that when it comes to white tails, a pair of eight by thirty twos or ten by forties were pretty much similar to other pairs at eight by thirty twos or ten by forties.

Even in a past job when I tested optics quite a bit, the differences between two pairs might barely be noticeable. Now, if you took a one hundred dollars pair of binos from wally World and stack them up against something premiere with a premiere price tag, you'd notice obvious differences. Lens quality, image sharpness, particularly in low light, how much they fog up, and build quality all become pretty obvious in this case. But I don't know a five hundred dollars pair against

a three hundred or a seven hundred dollars pair. There just wasn't a ton of benefit either way when it came to glassing white tails. So in other words, I've been pretty brand agnostic when it comes to whitetail binos, although I'll admit that I'm a little more devout when it comes to my Western kit. That's pretty much how I've lived for a long time until I got my hands on a pair of image stabilizing binos from SIG's

Hour this spring. Listen. They look like a prop out of a Star Wars film, which is a little hard to get used to. They also use a battery, which is a weird concept. But let me tell you something, I've never experienced quite the way I did with those image stabilizers. It's just hard to describe. And I know that people will think I'm saying this because SIG pays me huge checks under the table, which if anyone from the company is listening, I'm definitely all four. The truth

is it was just a revelatory experience. The tool that I took for granted, is good enough for the job, has just gotten a hell of a lot better. It's honestly wild how clear of an image you can see with them. And I'm being totally honest when I say I cannot wait to carry them into the tree stands fall. My kids love them too, because they aren't very good at glassing, but the image stabilization tech and the SIGs makes it easy for them. Now, there are other tools

that I don't ever want to live without. I know myself well enough to make some rules for myself that I follow in a hard line way. You all know I don't allow myself to drink for many many reasons. I also don't allow myself to own a chainsaw, but I lay at night thinking about it. I desperately want to be a chainsaw owner, and someday I might allow myself the chance to try it. But I'm also kind of careless, and for some reason, probably because I'm kind

of careless, relatively prone to cuts that require stitches. There is something in me that wants to cut down trees and exmell the exhaust of a chainsaw, but also something in me that believes I'll hurt myself badly with one. This might come from childhood stories about a few of my uncles who spent time logging in northern Minnesota and who also nearly killed themselves several times with chain saws.

One of them missed his femoral artery with a wayward blade by a margin small enough to get him to briefly find God, while another nearly cut his foot off. I feel like I have bad bloodlines when it comes to chainsaws, so I avoid them instead. I bought this steel brushcutter super weed wack tool thing to make up for it. When I first bought it, I used it

only as a saw to cut down brush. And let me tell you if you're interested in clearing out small entrance paths and kill plots and shooting lanes of whatever else,

it's the right tool for the job. After a few years, I started to buy accessories to mount on it, and soon realized that it serves real well for weed whipping my plots and doing a hell of a lot of yard work that I'm reminded of by my better half on a frequent basis that one tool and the ways that it can be used have changed how I work on my land and has without doubt helped me have

way better hunts with my daughters. It makes me think of how much work we did with machetes when I was growing up, and also makes me realize, at least partially, why my dad and I didn't exactly set any deer killing records when I was younger. Of course, how we think about tools often travels in lockstep with what we

can afford to spend on hunting equipment. This is probably more of a concern these days than it has been for a while for a lot of us, considering that if you want to take a family afford to Applebee's these days, your bill is going to end up in the neighborhood of about what it would take to tip all of your arrows in your quiver with new rage broadheads. Choices, choices, choices. Some tools are worth the money, some aren't. Some don't cost much, but we'll cover your ass in a variety

of ways. Take flagging tape, for example, for a couple of bucks, you have something to mark trails with. You can use it to keep track of blood trails. You can hang a strip of it on a tree in front of your trail camera so you know which way

the wind was blowing when a buck walked by. You can flag some small apple trees so that when you're running your sweet brushcutter like a real man, you don't accidentally cut down those apple trees like a total idiot might do twice before he figured out to flag them. The thing is, we use a pile of different tools throughout our journey as hunters. Some of them are actually tools like limbsaws, while some of them don't feel like

tools but function as very useful products. A good example there is the right pack for your kind of hunting. This category, which Western hunters obsess over, is almost an afterthought for a lot of white tail hunters. That to me is a mistake, because a pack holds the tools I need to scout correctly and hunt the way I want to, and often trail wounded deer the way I really need to, and then piece them out if I'm lucky enough to find them. Maybe I go overboard on

this stuff, but I don't think so. I do recognize that not everyone gets obsessed over gear, or has the means to buy a bunch of stuff, or even really cares a whole lot to try and improve in this way,

that's great. But if you do, and honestly, almost all of us do to at least some degree, since we use products in the outdoors all the time, it's a good idea to analyze the situations you find yourself in and ask yourself if there is a feasible way to buy something to help or use something you already own

in a different way. Maybe it's as simple as you using the same set of steel climbing sticks for all of your mobile hunts, but every single time you strap them to your pack or try to strap them to a tree, you make a lot of noise that makes you cringe. What are your options there? Well, if you like the sticks and don't mind the weight, A roll of hockey tape to dead them down might be the

right tool for the job. If you do mind the weight and you don't want to wrap them with seven hundred and ninety feet of hockey tape, maybe it's time to pony up for a lightweight set of carbon sticks. Now, aside from the resurgence of good tree saddles in recent years, I don't think there is a better improvement in a product category than the change in materials used to build carbon climbing sticks. Now they are far from cheap, trust

me on that. But when your whole setup is whisper quiet, and four or five sticks weighs the same as one set of metal sticks, the game changes again. You'll pay like you would if you were getting billed by a high end attorney, but in the end you'll have a product that will improve your hunting and your enjoyment of hunting, and it would last long enough that you might be

able to pass them on to the kids. Just in that category alone, you have so many options that range so much in price and weight and ease of use that finding the right tool is a matter of deciding what you want to spend and how important it is to get a specific type of this tool for the job. I guess the gist of this podcast is a thinly veiled attempt to argue against settling for something when you

don't have to. I'm honestly a huge hypocrite there, because I will struggle with some aspect of gear for years before I finally just get fed up enough to make some kind of change. And it's often something that I could afford or I could easily do, and still the old procrastination bug digs in under my skin and convinces me to suffer for years and years. Maybe we are all gluttons for punishment. Maybe not, It doesn't matter. What does matter is that this is the perfect time of

year to take stock in your gear. You don't organize your trail cameras. You go through the stands you have piled up in the garage and the climbing sticks you've been using since you've found them for sale at wally World seventeen years ago. And maybe it's time to make a change. Or maybe not. Maybe you're happy with where you're at and you have the stuff you think you need. In that case, ask yourself, are you using your tools to the full potential. Think back to the on X

example at the beginning of this show. If you're dead certain you have the whole thing dialed, it's likely you don't, and a little time spent researching the tools you already use and the creative ways other hunters have used them to level up might be just what you need to find a new spark and scouting and a few new reasons to get out in the woods and try some stuff out. That's what I've been doing all Turkey season

and it's been an eye opener. It's also my plan for this summer as I get heavy into the white tailed scouting season, consider this route yourself before you get into the season and figure out that you're still sabotaging yourself somehow when you don't really have to do that. Come back next week because I'm going to just kind of talk randomly about salt blocks and mineral licks and food plots and baiting and all the stuff we do that we think helps the deer, at least food wise.

That's it for this episode. I'm Tony Peterson. This has been the Wire to Hunt Foundation's podcast. As always, thank you so much for your support. I can't tell you how much it means to all of us at meat Eater. Just trust us on this. We really appreciate that you guys all show up and listen to the podcast and watch the videos, read the articles, and if you want more of that stuff, you can head over to the medeater dot com and you will find more content based

around hunting, fishing, foraging, you name it. Then you could get through in a lot of boring days at work, So go check that out at the medeater dot com.