Ep. 859: Foundations - How to Trick Yourself Into Being a Better Deer Hunter

The more I go look for other things and other critters and find other reasons to be out there, the more I pick up on deer hunting movements and how they use the lance gape. That's the basis for this whole show, so buckle up. There are a lot of sayings about being books smart versus being street smart, and I love all of them mostly, and I'm not proud of this, but I'm gonna say it anyway, because my wife is very BookSmart. I, on the other hand, am not.

I doubt you'd say I'm very street smart either, But that's beside the point. The truth is there is a lot you can learn from books and from consuming content. I hope that's true anyway, because otherwise my professional career has mostly been a sham, which, come to think of it, might be true. The reality, though, is that there are academic pursuits and then there's experience. Academics are great for giving you facts and the processes upon which you might

learn some facts. It teaches your mind to work out problems, or at least parts of problems, and that's important. Still largely be about this, Maybe it still is. I don't know. I haven't been there in a while. It wasn't necessarily to directly prepare you for a career in a certain field, although that was and is a component of higher education. But the heart of it was to teach us, like how to think, how to think better. Maybe, and it works too, but using your brain can only take you

so far. You also have to engage with tasks and problems and sort them out in real time. And in person. Let me give you an example from a recent conversation I had with a woman who was trying real hard to kill a buck on public land. Her dilemma is this, she found a concentration of sign on a chunk of ground in Kansas, where she lives. The concentration is accessible

from two different parking areas. Both require a walk of about a mile, and one takes her low through a thick river bottom and the other takes her high up on a ridgetop. She maintains that both the ridgetop and the creek bottom have deer in them, so getting in is almost impossible without spooking deer. That to her is a major problem, a problem she was looking for an academic solution to which doesn't exist. You can't really outthink

a problem like that, You just can't. You kind of just got to go into the creek bottom hunt see what happens. Or you have to go on the ridgetop hunt, see what happens. Then you have to figure out what went wrong and experiment to see if you can solve for the problems or not. Does that sound a little too simple, Because hunting is simple, my friends, But simple doesn't always mean easy. In fact, it often doesn't, and that kind of sucks. Look at this another way. Do

you want to look better naked? Of course you do. And while I understand that was an extremely creepy way to frame this point up, I used it. And that's that if you want to look better naked, you need to exercise more and eat fewer bowls of ice cream, size a lot and eat kind of shitty, or you can exercise a little and eat really clean, or some version of both. But the truth is that putting on muscle and losing weight tends to solve the problem of

looking good in your birthday suit. But that's not easy. In fact, it's real hard. You won't suddenly find yourself looking fine by reading a book. You'll get there by exercising and eating a certain way and figuring out how to keep yourself moving in the right direction even when you don't want to. You want to kill a Kansas book on public land, it's simple, go find some sign

and hunt it. But of course you have the question of access, and the question of hunting pressure, and the question of your own time and how much of it you have, and the question of what direction the wind's going to be blowing on the morning you can hunt, and the temperature, and on and on and on and on. Academically, this stuff's pretty easy. But you won't know what those ridgetop deer are really going to do until you hunt it and figure it out in person. Do you know

where the real problem in all this lies? We love leaning towards the academic side of things. It's easier to watch a YouTube video on scouting than it is to go scout. It's easier to read an article on how to kill a mature buck in the cattails than it is to go find one living in the cattails and

then hunt him until you kill him. It's easier to write off a concentration of deer on a chunk of public land in Kansas because you just know you'll bust them going in than it is to go in on one of your precious hunting days for a trial and error morning or evening sit. But what's better for you as a hunter? We all know the answer, just like we know what too much ice cream and couch time does to us physically. Look, it sucks, but it's true. So how do you engage in this simple concept that

it's hard? To implement so that you can be a stone cold deer killer, whether you're trying to figure things out in Kansas or South Carolina or Pennsylvania or wherever we find the discipline to do it. Or you trick yourself. I mean that I trick myself all the time. I don't want to go too deep into this because I'm a squirrel writer and not a psychologist. But one of the things people ask me fairly often is how I

run so much without wanting to kill myself. The jokes on them, though, because running is actually what keeps the bad thoughts at bay, and it's amazing for that task. But it's also not about wanting to run. I don't want to do that. I dread it every time, just as I like it when I'm done every time. But I have to get myself to do it. So I set a goal and I tell anyone and everyone I

can about that goal. That holds me a little accountable with my circle of friends and family who really don't want to hear about my running, just like my podcast audience. But the main reason is that a yearly mile goal is weirdly important to me. I hate not hitting it, so it keeps me honest with myself, even though I'm just playing a trick on myself. The minute that one goal ends for the year, which this year is running eight hundred miles, I'll set a new goal for the

new year. It gives me great pleasure to meet that goal, even though I know the task of running isn't going to end for me. It's not even really going to change when I meet it. I just have to have it otherwise I won't run as much as I should. When it comes to deer hunting, we all know we should scout more. We really should, but it's also very easy to not scout as much as we should because to most of us, scouting isn't as fun as hunting

or about ten thousand other things we could do. So we fill in the blanks with trail cameras and we consume content, or we hang out with our hunting buddies just to talk about deer hunting whatever. But we need experience out there, and that is a never ending journey. Just like getting in shape. You can have the goal of getting to your high school weight or benching two

hundred and fifty pounds or running a half marathon. That's all great, but the minute you hit your goal, you better figure out another one, or it's more likely that you're just borrowing that accomplishment. Yeah you did it, that's great, but if you go back to not doing anything, it's kind of a hollow victory. With hunting, the way that I trick myself into learning about deer is to find as many reasons as possible to be out there. Some

of them are easy. You all know that I absolutely love pheasant hunting, and as I record this podcast, I have a young lab sleeping next to me who has no skin left on her lips, or most of her nose, or parts of her cheeks and around her eyes. The cattails have literally worn her face off and she loves it, and so do I. I don't need an excuse to pheasant hunt, and many many times each season I'll drive seven hours round trip in a single day to hunt for a

couple of roosters. I love it for many reasons, but one side benefit to it is I learn a ton about deer when I follow a black lab around where the roosters like to hang out. Recently, I filmed a pheasant show on a few different parcels of public land in western Minnesota, and on one of those days it was very windy, like twenty to thirty mile per hour

winds all day long. That meant that the roosters were cagy as hell, and if they got up into that wind and I wasn't ready, they were also pretty safe because those are birds I will shoot behind, mostly, particularly if they make the good decision to swing to my right. But that wind did something else. When you're filming a show like that, you're always looking for moments to talk to the camera, to drop some sweet knowledge or just

explain what's going on. On a day when the wind is just ripping across the landscape, you don't want to just stop anywhere to talk because the sound of it will go right into your microphone and ruin your talking points. So as we followed Sadie through the cattails, I found myself naturally stopping when we would hit a spot that was out of the wind. The thing about this is in that country, which is super flat and doesn't have very many trees, there are a lot of spots that

are not out of the wind. It's rare to suddenly realize you're standing in a little zone that's very calm. I don't know how many times I stopped in a spot like that and started to talk to the camera, only to notice that Sadie was real birdie and that I better get ready, or that we jump deer bedded right next to us. It happened multiple times in one day. Now, of course they want to lay up in a spot that's calm, but why Well, for starters, it's more comfortable,

it's warmer, that's a no brainer. But what else, Well, if you betted down just about anywhere in a dry cattail slew that's getting pounded by the wind, the noise factor is going to be very high. Sure you have the wind to use to your advantage, but you lose the hearing advantage. Now, why would you do that when you could hole up somewhere that would keep you warm and you could not only smell approaching danger, but have

a better chance to hear it. If you were a prey animal like say, I don't know, a deer or a pheasant, hearing that danger and keeping track of it and the thick stuff is important, could literally save your life. With deer, that allows them the chance to know exactly where the danger is and whether they can sit tight and let it pass, or they need to get the hell out of dodge. That is a huge, huge advantage for them. Now what good does that do anyone as

a hunter? Well, if I lived around those cat tail sleus and was planning on deer hunting the next day, but the forecast called for ripping winds, I could do one of two things. I could not hunt because it's too windy and I think my chances are low. Or I could beat them to a spot I know they should be out of the wind, or at least where they should be going. Maybe this example is a bridge too far for your per It's all hunting specifics, that's

fair enough. I've talked about this before, but I think it's worth mentioning there are other reasons to be out there. Rabbit hunting puts me on more deer betting and staging areas than any kind of hunting I do, even sometimes deer hunting. The good thing about this is that rabbit hunting is fun to begin with. But where rabbits take you is to the spots deer like to go when

they don't want to be found. And even more than that is rabbit hunting takes you to the spots where bucks tend to go where they don't want to be found. A day spent pushing fence lines and homesteads and brush piles and whatever else is a day that is going to be fun but also teach you a lot about deer. Squirrel hunting does that too, but it won't take you to the betting areas and often the staging areas quite

like rabbit hunting will do. But it'll take you to the ridges where deer feet in october under oak trees. It'll take you into the valley you think you can't hunt because the wind will be swirling too much, and it'll show you all the rubs and deer sign in that unhuntable spot and maybe chuck. Maybe while you're toting a seventeen or a twenty two around there, you'll realize you're standing right in a spot where the wind is actually predictable and favorable, even in that valley you thought

you couldn't hunt. I know a lot of you are listening to this and going, yeah, I'm not going to go brush busting for bunnies on my deer leaves. I'm not going to push the deer out fair enough, go bunny hunting somewhere else then, or go in February if the season's still open. You don't want to shoot some squirrels for the crockpot right now in the place you deer hunt, then go somewhere else. Find a spot to go where you don't care about the deer. You'll see

how they use the landscape there too. If it's public, you might just find something in a spot you never intended a deer hunt, because you're out there looking around for something that is not a deer. People often ask me how I find so many random public land places to hunt, and the answer is often that I just like to do lots of stuff. I like to hunt a lot of different critters. I also just like to walk through the woods, and often I like to walk

through the woods and just look for deer. I grew up doing this, and I had a conversation with Zach Ferrenbau the hunting public about it not too long ago. I honestly don't remember if we had this conversation on a podcast or if it was just a personal phone call, but it doesn't matter. We got on this topic of finding deer and he said that he goes into the

woods just to look for them all year long. While I was growing up, that was one of my favorite things to do, and I still find myself going into some of the parks around my house and doing the exact same thing, even though I'll never hunt those deer. It's just fun to slip up to the edge of a CRP field half an hour before dark and try to spot one, just as it's fun to get off of the normal trails and see where the deer travel

and where the bucks leave their sign. This kind of thing fills your database with useful info, you information that stretches way beyond only the places we hunt, because, as I've said before, you might think you have the whole white world where you want it with your hunting ground, but ownership changes, permission can slip away. That secret honey hole of public land you've found might suddenly show up

on everyone's radar. Counting on a property to always be there is a bad idea, even if you own it, because the neighbors can turn over, or CWD can pop up, and the sharpshooters can suddenly knock down the herd or whatever. Things change. Going out and wandering around, whether you're looking for a rooster or a bunny, or just a little quiet time out of the house because you have a wife and two thirteen year old daughters. It's good for

the soul and it's good for your hunting skills. You get to find sign and analyze it in a low pressure situation, or really a no pressure situation. You get to jump deer and figure out why they were there. Maybe you get to watch a few filter through the woods or hop over a fence, or maybe you find a couple of dead heads in the overgrown creek bottom and four years down the road you shoot one in the guts and you're having an al of a time

finding him. So you pull up on X and you take a look around and you think, hmm, maybe he made it all the way to the river and I should go walk it, and you find him. The focus on hunting content is often about how you can develop your skills on a very specific piece of ground, But developing your skills so they transcend specific spots is so much better. Just as it's better to be book smart and street smart. To have the academic side of the hunting thing locked down is great, but you really want

to take it somewhere you need that experience. It's easy to do on paper, but hard to do in real life. So figure out a reason. Trick yourself into a bunny hunt with the buddies. Take a twenty two out for a long walk on a sunny Sunday afternoon. Try to sneak up on a few squirrels. Go to the park an hour before dark and see if you can lay eyes on any deer. Do the stuff that gets you

out there and you'll gain valuable deer hunting experience. Do that, you'll get better and come back next week because I'm going to talk about Christmas and how it relates to hunting gear. That's it for this week. I'm Tony Peterson. This has been the Wired to Hunt Foundation's podcast, which is brought to you by First Light. I want to

thank you so much for all your support. We're just about to wrap this year up and truly, honestly, without question, we wouldn't be able to do any of this without you, So thank you for that. Your support means the world to us. If you need some more hunting content, you know, and maybe you want to read a few articles, find a recipe to cook something up for Christmas dinner. Or New Year's Maybe a appetizer or something on New Year's Eve.

I don't know. Maybe you just need to listen to some new podcasts, or you want to watch a few hunting shows like the episode we just dropped where I hunted Bear and Dear with my daughter. You can go to them meat eater dot com and check it out. So much good content there. Go there, and again, thank you for everything.