Ep. 806: Foundations - How to Build a Season-Opener Plan to Kill a Good Buck

maybe I'm wrong. I don't think I am, But honestly, it doesn't matter. It probably has a lot to do with how many more products there are to sell around rut hunts than hot September hunts. I don't know. What I do know is that there are a few days of any given season right at the beginning that are my best bet for killing a big one, and they could be yours. Too, So buckle up, because that's what

I'm going to talk about right now. In a past life, I worked for a fellow who worked for a fellow who was the biggest raging narcissist I've ever met in my life. If you've ever heard of the dark triad, which is a psychological theory about personality types that are well, not a whole lot of fun to be around, this

guy fit neatly into all three categories. While my interaction with him was pretty limited, it never surprised me when an email or a text would show up, often at like midnight or one in the morning, when he just had something shitty to say. Since I was a contractor, it didn't bother me too much because I could more or less walk away at any given point and tell the whole organization to go kick rocks in the street.

And that's eventually what I did, And that was in no small part due to the fact that I didn't want to help that guy make money or be associated with him in any real way or watch how he treated the coworkers I actually really liked and respected. One of the things that I'll never forget he liked to say, since we were in the hunting industry and creating content based around different categories. In the bow world was that

we had a first amongst equals policy. What he meant by that was, for example, if we were covering new bows, the biggest advertisers got the top spots, and whoever spent the most was going to get the lead image as well. Over the years that I worked there, it became pretty clear that first amongst equals was some well grade a bullshit, And I don't know why we even had to pretend it was a thing. It was like we were gaslighting

ourselves or something. The bow companies, they weren't equal because to get top billing you simply had to outspend everyone else in your category. And that was that. Now he'd label all companies equals, even the ones that spent far less than others and some that didn't spend at all. But that's not how it shook out, and we all

knew it. This is a side note here, but I think the reason people get so crabby and generally disgusted with the world as they settle firmly into middle age is because because you see so much of this stuff in society. There's so many ways to lie without lying, yet everyone knows it's happening, and after a while, you're tolerance for that kind of thing wears pretty thin. Anyway, First amongst equals isn't a real thing, because it's not true.

Being considered first in a review is just a matter of playing the game with a marketing budget that's bigger than your competitors, and being first matters a lot. You want that lead image because you get the brand recognition. You want your product shown in use in a way that stirs something in the audience. It makes them subconsciously connect your product to something they hold near and dear

to their hearts. You want the best write up, too, because the people who actually read those things are somewhat influenced by the words that come from some place of perceived authority. And while I'm kind of being totally negative here, I will say there were chances to provide a good service to the readers in that role. It wasn't all just smoke and mirrors, and it felt good to build and test a new bow that you generally believe was a good product. Things are, you know, often not so

black and white. What is, though, is that being first is often a very good thing. This is something I used to believe about white tails, but really started to figure out when I headed out west to hunt river bottom deer in public land. What that taught me was that if I can get eyes on a book or a bachelor group at least for a day or two of their travels, and if no one goes in and messes with those deer, I could kill them with a frequency that doesn't exist in any other part of the season.

Of course, that's just me. There might be people listening to this who have an unbelievable rot spot or a late season food source that's just banging, you know, where every other opportunity outshines the opening few days of the season. There are a lot of variables involved in white tail hunting. But here's the thing, though, no matter where you hunt, you probably still have a really good chance of patterning it a big deer and shooting him in the first

few days of the season. If you haven't been paying attention to this podcast, let me let you in on a little secret that I truly believe. And it's that way way way too many hunters think they can phone it in until the rut and then they'll be just fine. I think if there is a hint of self doubt in that idea, or if you just flat out no from enough experience that the rut is far from a sure thing when it comes to a taxidermy bill, you

should probably think about early season hunting. Now, there's something worth breaking down here before I get into how I develop a good pattern. It's opener timing. If you're in a state with an early September opener, your odds of identifying a pattern and capitalizing on it are just better than states with a mid September opener. And those folks have it better than anyone waiting until October one or

later for their opener. What everyone has in common, regardless of opening day specific, is that the first few days of the season are when you can catch a big one slippin'. Even though they might catch on to the program pretty quickly when the truck starts showing up in the dark before first light, it seems like it takes them a couple of days to start layering back into the cover and avoiding hunters in a way that they

are really good at. It's also true that individual hunting spots will lend themselves to better opening weekend hunting than others. When I'm an egg country, for example, or out west, like I mentioned earlier, I feel like finding good dear and at least starting to tease out their patterns is as easy as it gets out there. I'm sure it's easier on premier properties with food plots, but I'm not

talking to very many of those folks. And whether you're on private or public, if you have an opportunity to glass food sources, you should do that. It's the easiest way to kill a big buck. But it's still not that easy. Now. I know you wanted something a little sturdier to stand on here, but I can't give you that. What I can give you is how I develop an early season plan to try to fill tags right away.

So let me start with a simple one. You may have heard me mention that my daughters take after their old man and that they really like just shooting deer. They aren't trophy hunters yet. They want to get into a blind or a stand in September and have something walk by within twenty yards and that's about it. So for them, I don't need to glass a whole lot. I'm not developing a pattern for a specific buck, well

sort of. When it comes to the consistency of the kind of bucks they want to shoot, some trail cameras can pretty much tell me what I need to know. Young bucks are pretty dumb, and they often move early, and when they get on a soybean field or a kill plot or a little pond pattern, they tend to stay on that pattern. Now, while that sounds easy enough, it's just a start. I still need a setup for them that will put my daughters within like twenty yards

of that deer or those deer. And this has to have good access, and it has to take into account the likely south or west winds we will deal with. The Way to get around all of that is to find those spots now and set them up without worrying too much about gathering mountains of data. I know this sounds easy because it kind of is in a lot of places. It's also something that often doesn't require cameras, although they make it a hell of a lot more enjoyable.

You know, just tracks alone, or even a concentration of droppings can put you in a spot like that for opening weekend, as long as the weather doesn't go to haywire. This is a pretty good way to go about things. It's also how I find a hell of a lot of deer on public land, which is not a coincidence, because before I can find big ones, I just need to find deer. With my daughters, we are pretty much

just hunting deer. And if that's your mo o, the first few days of the season are your best bet for success if you put in the requisite groundwork now. But what if you don't want to end your season on a four ky when it's day one and you need to consider all of the ways you can find and keep tabs on a buck of the caliber that you're looking for. Trail cameras are pretty great for this, but honestly, I think the best bet for cameras in late summer patterning is to use them to figure out

travel roads. It's not that hard to figure out where they are usually going, although it can be if you spend a lot of time in the big woods. Then cameras are your primary option if you can use them. But cameras are just a reinforcement tool and a tool to get you to go hmm, that's interesting. Why is that buck on this trail at this time and suddenly

on this trail at this time. Since there isn't a lot of randomness involved in deer movement, trail cameras in the mediate weeks leading to the opener can help you make much better decisions on where to sit. They can also help you put together some options for hunting mornings, which is something that almost no one does in the

early season anymore. I do because the advantage I have on deer that haven't been hunted for nine months is definitely going to die in the first week of the season, whether I hunt only evenings or I hunt every morning as well, and I'd rather get out there with a chance to hunt mornings than not, even though I mostly kill September bucks in the evening. A better bet for building an early season pattern than just running trail cameras

is to glass every chance you can as well. Now I know I've talked about this a lot, but I firmly believe this is the best way to learn deer. Instead of a trail camera image of a buck and that beans. A few nights a week, maybe during day to light hours, maybe at midnight you're actually watching that book or multiple books, enter the field and start feeding. Since you're there, you can understand the conditions in which the deer did what they did. Bright sunshine, super windy, whatever.

That information is so valuable. I can't even really describe how valuable I think that is. And what makes things even more valuable is when you think you're onto consistent bachelor group and suddenly they pull a no show. You have to figure out what changed and why that mattered to them. If it's a big time weather shift, that's enough to work with, it's pretty easy. But what if the conditions are very similar to the other days when

the bucks showed up and suddenly they don't. Then maybe it's a food source thing, or they got messed up by someone going into their bedding areas or something. You will never know. The best way to figure this out is to keep looking, keep glassing. Maybe wait until there are some afternoon storms forecasted, so you can go out there before the thunder starts and you can just poke around on the field edges or off of the fields

a little bit where the deer come from. You know, maybe there's a soft mass thing going on, or something like a tree falling across their most consistent trail. The environment in which white tails live is subject to a hell of a lot of micro changes throughout the year, and one thing you never expect that could alter the habits of a bachelor group just enough to seemingly kill your pattern can happen in an instant. You might not even know about it. Now. If you have other places

to watch, go watch them. Figure out where those deer went. But if you don't, just keep watching your best spot or your only spot. But remember the reason they might have stopped coming there could be you tread lately. Stay as far away as you can. The goal is to find a spot where bucks are consistent enough in like August, where you have a decent chance to keep tabs on them until the first few days of the season. That's so simple, I know. But here's where a lot of

people screw this up. They see their target bucks coming into a field, they go, well done and done, I got it, got to figure it out. Those big boys they enter the corner there and they feed out there in the grassy swale for a while. So I'm just going to go in there and hang a stand in that corner. But when they carry that stand in there, they realize that corner that looks small from six hundred

yards away is much bigger. When they're standing in it, they realize that the train folds a little differently than it looks from far away. They realize that there are several trails to choose from and not too many good trees. But they hang a stand call it good then, no matter what they hunt it on opening night. This is something I've done enough to know how much you shouldn't do it. It's not enough to see some deer in

a field or a fresh clearcut or whatever. You want to know what trails they're likely to use, and you need to acknowledge the old shot clock that's ticking away, because if you don't get in there quick, that pattern could very easily die. But if you go in there and hunt it wrong, you'll kill it prematurely. What I like to do in this situation is to track check trails if I can, run cameras if I have to,

but also figure out a couple of options. Sometimes the best way to do this is just to acknowledge that you can't figure it out completely with observing from a stand, So I'll hang a stand to hunt from. That allows me to get in and out pretty safely, but also allows me to watch the best spot on opening night.

I often see something that allows me to go in the next day and either hang a new set or sit on the ground somehow, which is actually a really good early season option because you have so much cover and there's so many more ways you can work a spot. If you're willing to sit on the ground. The key is to strike the very first time you can, but in a way where you're not totally like overly reckless. Now, I say that I also lean more into controlled recklessness

than a lot of folks. If I have an early season pattern that I believe is dialed, I will go after it if the cit is a high odds deal, even if that means I'm going to blow the whole field out when I leave. There's a very common theme in deer hunting now where you have to try to be as cautious as possible, but cautious keep a lot of people from killing deer, especially on pressured ground when

someone's gonna mess with them eventually. In that situation, I'd rather try to take a controlled risk and go into a situation that I feel I have figured out. Just roll the dice. Sometimes it works, actually, like quite often it does. But it's also heavily dependent on the amount of scouting I do. So think about it this way. The more you put into getting out there, the more you'll be tuned into the subtle changes and the deer behavior, or the conditions, or the neighbor's field getting cut for

silace or whatever. You're keeping tabs on the deer in person, and that is something you just can't do any other way. It's a lesson in how to be a good hunter that you just can't buy except through calculated sweat equity. Now, I know what a lot of people will say, and that's that they don't want to hunt when it's hot or buggy, or when all the small game hunters might be out if that season opens the same week as your deer season. To that, I say, good, stay home.

I like it when the opening weekend is hot and not full of awesome deer weather because the deer don't care. They're just coming out of the hottest part of the year and they're pretty used to it. The people care, and the fewer people that are out there, the better. Plus I said this before and I'll say it again. To wrap this whole thing up, you probably won't have

a better chance to kill a big one. You really won't, not even during the rut, not during any other time of the season, although that is predicated on your willingness to set yourself up for success. And the first week of the season isn't the rut. It won't magically deliver a buck to your feet. It can, through calculated scouting, absolutely allow you the chance to truly understand a situation where the odds are, you know, maybe as good as they're ever going to be for you to get close

to a big one, so that I absolutely believe. So. If you're sitting here now thinking about November days and the toads that should be out looking for ladies, consider that those same deer are probably out there right now doing pretty much the same thing every day, and they'll keep doing mostly that right through onto the bow opener, and then suddenly that opportunity will be gone. So do yourself a favor if it's an option, and don't let

that opportunity slip away. Go try to find them now and they'll learn about them as much as you can. And come back next week because I'm going to talk about how you should dare to be different in the white tail woods because it's often the key to killing big bucks. That's for this week, Tony Peterson has been the Wire to Hunt Foundations podcast, which is brought to you by First Light. I know you've heard this, but I'm gonna say it again. First Light has three new

white tail systems out there. The Phase, the Core, the Thermic, designed for various parts of the season, early season hot hunting, the middle of the season, rut hunting, cold weather, late Arctic type hunting. You're covered with those three systems. You can mix and match, but you should just check them out because it's the best stuff that First Light's ever put out in the white tail category. I truly believe that.

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