July 15, 2025 • 17 mins
This week, Tony explains why scouting right now can be so valuable to rut sits, even if it might not seem to make much sense on the surface.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to the Wired to Hunt Foundations podcast, your guide
to the fundamentals of better deer hunting, presented by first Light,
creating proven versatile hunting apparel for the stand, saddle or blind.
First Light, Go Farther, Stay Longer, and now your host
Tony Peterson.
Speaker 2 (00:20):
Hey, everybody, welcome to the Wired to Hunt Foundations podcast,
which is brought to you by First Light. I'm your host,
Tony Peterson, and today's episode is all about putting in
the work right now to kill a giant, mega, huge,
pretty good buck during the rut. As much as I
like to talk about hunting the early season or spending
my time in a saddle during the middle of October
(00:40):
when everyone else is running out the clock to get
to the rut, I know something about us as hunters,
well not all of us, but a hell of a
lot of us. Anyway, we are going to put in
most of our effort, most of our time during the rut.
We can't help it. And that's okay. If that sounds
like you or you just don't have as much faith
in the earlier part of the boast season as I do.
Consider this, you can do an awful out of work
now to prepare yourself for rut hunting success, which is
(01:03):
something I'm going to talk about right now. Sometime last December,
I found myself standing in a cattail slew with the
wind just whipping across the prairie, and I was thinking
that my limit bird was laying out there somewhere, and
not only could I not see it, obviously, but I
(01:23):
couldn't see my dog and I couldn't hear her. I
knew that Sadie was in the ballpark because the rooster
had gotten up while cackling his displeasure at being forced
to fly, which is almost always something that happens after
the dog gives them a really good chase and they
finally decide to use their wings instead of their legs,
and they honestly just kind of sound like they're pissed
(01:44):
off at the whole situation, which is understandable. That bird
had crumpled well enough, but anyone who hunts wild roosters
knows that it isn't always a sign that the game
bag is about to get a little heavier just because
you knocked one down. But Sadie did find that bird,
which meant it was time to unload the shotgun and
do the long hike back to the truck. Sometime during
(02:05):
that whole episode, I missed a phone call, which I
didn't care about because it was a Sunday afternoon and
I figured it was probably a scammer. It wasn't. It
was Steve Vanella, which might sound super exciting to you guys.
To me, I figured I was about to do some
extra work somewhere. When I called him back, he asked
me if I wanted to do a rut hunt with him, which,
in the interest of keeping my job and making Mark
(02:27):
Kenyon a little jealous that he didn't get the call,
I said yes. In typical Steve fashion. He'd lucked into
a ranch in Nebraska that has been real light on
hunting pressure for over a decade and should be real
heavy on deer yours truly was brought in to scout
it set it up, which is a process that began
in the end of June when I put four hundred
(02:47):
and some miles behind me to head down there and
take a look around. As you can imagine, I had
spent quite a bit of time on on X scouting
out the ranch as best I could, but I knew
a couple of things. You know. The first is that
east scouting for deer in the sand Hills cattle pastures
of that region is a far different thing than on
my home ground. And the other thing was that I
would have to constantly remind myself when I was down
(03:09):
there that all of the work that I was doing
should be designed for a payoff during the rut. This
is harder to do than a lot of us like
to admit, or maybe even really consider. With boots on
the ground, you can make some of those connections that
you might miss through east scouting alone. So when I
met up with a landowner to take a look around
and start dropping some moultries on the place, I expected
(03:31):
to be surprised by what I had gotten wrong through
looking at satellite imagery from seven hours away while sitting
at home. And that's the first disconnect. It's a big
one because as valuable as eastcouting is, there is still
a disconnect there. You got a ground truth, but then
you have to factor in the timing of the year
and the disconnect that exists there as well. This last
(03:51):
one is a big one, and it keeps a lot
of us from doing some of the work now we
should do so that when we get to the rut,
we aren't scrambling or left with too few options. This
was front and center on my brain as we hopped
into the side by sides and started cruising around. The
temperature felt like it was about one hundred and ten
degrees in the shade, but at least the mosquitoes were
pretty terrible. We started on an obvious location in the
(04:14):
ranch where a good sized but shallow river winds its
way through bands of giant cottonwoods and then some kind
of weirdly swampy patches of willows and pockets of brush
and cedars. In other words, it was the kind of
cover that hosts deer activity all year round but can
really hum with sign as October gives way to November. Now,
(04:34):
if you know anything else about rivers, you also know
that they are not surprisingly, or at least I hope
this isn't a surprise where river crossings happen, which is
a favorite setup of mine. They get even better when
you factor in the general pattern of cruising that happens
in parallel to flowing water and the pinch points that
come with the whole thing. Now, we stepped into a
(04:54):
pretty interesting patch of timber along that river, and I
instantly felt how much cooler it was than the surround.
I also watched a dome in a fond get up
out of their beds, and on each side of that
patch of timber, I found areas where the topography of
the river bank and the timber that framed it up
formed perfect funnels. While I figured i'd get some pictures
from the cameras, I dropped on both spots. I didn't
(05:17):
really care too much, because even if they didn't produce then,
I figured they would produce later. But when we loaded
up to add to a different part of the ranch,
I happened to catch a glimpse of a bucket out
of his bed and run away, And he was really,
really big, and he showed up on both cameras that
first night. That was as exciting as you can imagine,
but also the high point of the whole scouting trip.
(05:39):
The rest of the time we looked at field edges
and random water holes and areas of the ranch with
mostly pastured sand hills, but also some scattered patches of
light timber. You know, the kind of places that are
nearly devoid of here now but should host some activity.
In about three or four months. This is where some
are scouting for rut hunts. Gets really frustrating. We want
(06:00):
to see deer now, whether we are glassing or running cameras.
While glassing this time of year is a different thing,
because you know you're not glassing areas that you expect
to be hopping during the rut. You're looking at places
where deer should be now, which often doesn't translate very well.
Cameras are a different story. You can use cameras now
to figure out your rut plans, but you have to
(06:22):
accept something about these setups. They might not be very
productive for a couple of months. I'll give you an
example here on this ranch in Nebraska, there are a
couple of pivots in eggfields. If you know how those work,
you know that the field will be a perfect circle
that exists inside a square of land, and on each
corner of that square there will usually be some kind
of brush or trees are covered that isn't grown to
(06:44):
feed cows or people. I'm one of those corners on
that ranch. We walked up to a small water hole
that was absolutely teeming with life. I mean it was
covered in frogs and nakes, turtles and generally what you'd
expect on a water hole where water is generally pretty limited.
There were a handful of deer tracks on the edge, too,
but they were old and not all that promising. The
(07:05):
water hole looked deep enough to always hold something, and
it was about forty yards from a small patch of
cottonwoods on the edge of a hayfield. It doesn't look
like much and wouldn't draw a second glance if you
were hunting in most of the Midwest or East. But
on one gnarl pine sized willow tree, I cleared out
a section of the trunk to hang a camera, knowing
that I might not get a picture of a deer
there for quite a while. But I firmly believe that
(07:27):
some buck will claim that little corner as part of
his fall range. He'll drink from that frog pond, he'll
walk by those cottonwoods to head out to eat. If
you looked up the definition of a dead unproductive trail
camera in the dictionary, you'd see a picture of that
exact setup. It's just not right yet, but I believe
it's going to get there, and I honestly think that
(07:47):
one of us will kill a good buck right in
that spot sometime during the rut, although we might have
to throw a dough decoy out there to make it happen.
Now Here is where this scouting trip in your situation
probably varies quite a bit. Since that ranch is seven
hours from me, and I only plan to head down
there one time in August to hang stands and set blinds.
I'm not in a position to adjust my strategy on
(08:08):
anything other than an infrequent cadence, or really pretty much
not at all. I need cameras in those spots so
I can watch the progression of deer visitors as they
go hard antlered and start to spread out in the fall.
I want to see who shows up and where, and
if I can tie in any real patterns to the
overall intel. If you're gonna run cameras now for the rut,
(08:29):
you're working on your home ground. Probably you can go
in and move things around when you feel you need to.
But the catch with that is that we often write
off spots too early, or don't understand that the buck
that walks through once every three weeks now is telling
you something really important for your rut setups. Think about
(08:58):
it this way. Say you're a hit man and you
have an assignment to whack someone. Would you think that
monitoring that person's daily routine for a week would put
you in a good enough position to pull it off
without getting caught. Wouldn't two weeks be better? Or a
month or more? Could you have too much information on
where they buy their coffee when they go to the gym,
(09:18):
and what their favorite restaurants are, and what roads they
drive to and from work. Probably not. When it comes
to where a buck might travel in his home range,
can you have too much information? Probably not, even if
you believe that the rut is full of randomness. I'm
not one of those people. And the reason I say
that is because even the bonkers days, when they are
(09:39):
chasing and all hell is finally broken loose, it breaks
loose in a controlled manner, they still cruise the routes
that keep them safe while increasing the odds of running
into a hot dough. They still chase and corral doos
and the patches of cover that offer them some type
of advantage. When they move, they move through areas that
force their travel. When the dose they are running totally
(10:03):
ragged give into their thirst, they visit the water that's available.
If that's some random frog pond on the edge of
a pivot field, so be it. I want to know
when they are there, where they approach from, and how
often they might get there. While I think trail cameras
are really valuable for this type of intel gathering, I
also think that getting out and just looking at the
(10:24):
land is probably the best way to prep for your
rut hunts right now. But before I get into that,
I'll say this, I know a lot of hunters don't
think they need to do this. When you hunt a
property for years, this mindset is easy to adopt, and
you might be right too. You might have some kind
of pinch point or funnel or dough betting area where
they always just go and you know it, so there
(10:47):
isn't much of a need to go out and sweat
your apple bag off to figure out what you already know.
But I also know that things change in the deer
woods all of the time, and they happen on a
fast scale and so slowly that we often don't realize it.
On the fast scale, that might be a tree falling
across a fence and a certain spot that affects movement
right now, or it might be the difference between the
(11:09):
neighboring farmer planting corn this year versus beans last year.
On a slow scale. This is stuff we really want
to understand. A good example of this is some of
the big woods hunting some of us too. If you
hunt where there is timber production still, you might focus
on this year's clear cut and the fresh growth that follows.
But that clear cut in three years is a vastly
(11:31):
different thing to hunt in five years. It's different still
after ten it might be a deer desert in there.
The bang and hunts you had on it in the
first few years will create memories that are hard to escape,
and that will draw you back to that spot, but
the hunt might be forever changed there. Another way to
look at this is the pressure on public land. I
(11:52):
honestly think other than during peak times when people are
just going to hit the woods like the rut, we're
seeing a decline in hunting pressure overall. Now. I know
that's highly variable and highly situational, but the fever that
burned around being a public land hunter seems to have
broken a little bit. You know, when a lot of
optimistic folks realize how hard it really is. Now, whether
(12:14):
that's true or not, the amount of people in the
woods over time fluctuates a lot. We don't really have
a way to understand this in the moment, but only
upon reflection and through a lot of scouting and hunting.
We just gather general experience out there. Now. I'm sure
it seems like I've veered way off course here and
should probably throw back some adderall but my point stands
(12:36):
about boots on the ground scouting for the rut right now,
in that if you do it, you'll learn something that
will factor into your hunts. It's not just about the
bucks and what they like to do, but the land
and how it changes and how it has changed, and
the amount of people crossing that land for whatever reason
on any given day or in any given season. So
(12:57):
what is the key to all of this? I'd say
that it's all about learning what you can now while
constantly considering what that means to your rut hunts. You
got to look into the crystal ball, my friends, which
is hard to do but important. The bachelor group on
camera in the woods once every three weeks now is
bound to break up long before the rut, and some
(13:18):
of those deer will stay and some will vanish into
the neighbor's property. So why monitor them? Now? Well, don't
you want to know where they cross the old fence
in the woods, or whether you're more likely to get
picks of them in the morning versus the evening. What
about the dos? Dough groups can be highly patternable over
a long enough time window. And while you might not
(13:39):
care at all about some ladies in their fawns hanging
out in some patch of timber, now what if your
camera shows them almost daily passing through a certain spot.
Will that hold up during the rut? Maybe? And if
it does, you know those doughs are going to draw
some attention, and you know where they are likely to
be and where they are likely to travel. And here's
another thing about this stuff. The total answer to your
(14:00):
rut hunting problems doesn't exist out there right now. But
the information that is necessary to putting the whole thing
together is allow me to explain that that spot where
I saw that big buck in Nebraska, where I got
him on two cameras, is bound to be covered in
buck signed by mid October when we show up to hunt.
Hopefully I'll have a hell of a lot more pictures
(14:20):
of him to work off of. But also what if
we had down there to hunt and we stumble across
the dished out scrape two hundred yards away from the
best pinch point. And what if the wind is out
of the south or east, and those pinch points I
had scouted so well or just out of play. That
scrape might not mean anything, or it might mean I
have an amazing plan B to hunt the same deer
when the conditions conspire to keep him alive and keep
(14:42):
me frustrated. I could walk into the woods and find
that scrape without the summertime intel to back it up,
but I'll have a better idea of whether I should
hunt it and when if I have five months of
recon to drop up on. This is the thing that
we often miss when it comes to deer hunting advice.
The whole thing hinges on a lit of information gathered
through as many means as possible, and put into practice
(15:04):
only after factoring in about a million variables on any
given day. It's an inexact science that gets a little
more precise with each data point we can plug in.
It's great to know that deer like to drink water,
and that you've found a small water hole somewhere, but
it's better to get in there and look at the
land and the cover and the potential ambush options for
(15:25):
different winds, and then to run a camera on it
for a few months to see who comes in and
from where and when. That way, if you get the
perfect conditions to hunt it during the first week of November,
it's a pretty simple equation. But if the wind isn't right,
or it isn't hot enough to make them too thirsty,
or there are three trucks parked there where you didn't
expect them, you will have a better backup plan than
(15:46):
you could have. And that's probably the biggest reason to
scout right now. For the rut, things will change and
go wrong, and the dear world we envision will be
nothing more than a nice thought when reality actually settles in.
And when it does, drying upon months of scouting will
be a difference maker, even if it's hard to make
that connection right now. So think about that and do
(16:06):
that and come back next week because I'm gonna talk
about the difference between challenges and problems and how understanding
them can help you kill more big bucks. That's it
for this episode. I'm Tony Peterson, and this has been
the wire to Hunt Foundation's podcast, which is brought to
you by First Light. Thank you so much for your support.
I know I say this every week, but I truly
mean it. If you need more hunting content, if you
(16:28):
need some more podcasts to listen to, maybe you're going
on a road trip with a family, whatever, the medeater
dot com has you covered. You can go check out
Clay Speed which just keeps growing. You know. They added
Brent Reeves in This Country Life first, which is an
incredible podcast. But now Lake Pickles got one on there
back was university. He's doing a great job. Lake's a
cool dude. Check it out, or just check out the
(16:50):
media dot com for some recipes for some articles, new
films drop and whatever. There's new content every single day.
Welcome to the Wired to Hunt Foundations podcast, your guide
to the fundamentals of better deer hunting, presented by first Light,
creating proven versatile hunting apparel for the stand, saddle or blind.
First Light, Go Farther, Stay Longer, and now your host
Tony Peterson.
Speaker 2 (00:20):
Hey, everybody, welcome to the Wired to Hunt Foundations podcast,
which is brought to you by First Light. I'm your host,
Tony Peterson, and today's episode is all about putting in
the work right now to kill a giant, mega, huge,
pretty good buck during the rut. As much as I
like to talk about hunting the early season or spending
my time in a saddle during the middle of October
(00:40):
when everyone else is running out the clock to get
to the rut, I know something about us as hunters,
well not all of us, but a hell of a
lot of us. Anyway, we are going to put in
most of our effort, most of our time during the rut.
We can't help it. And that's okay. If that sounds
like you or you just don't have as much faith
in the earlier part of the boast season as I do.
Consider this, you can do an awful out of work
now to prepare yourself for rut hunting success, which is
(01:03):
something I'm going to talk about right now. Sometime last December,
I found myself standing in a cattail slew with the
wind just whipping across the prairie, and I was thinking
that my limit bird was laying out there somewhere, and
not only could I not see it, obviously, but I
(01:23):
couldn't see my dog and I couldn't hear her. I
knew that Sadie was in the ballpark because the rooster
had gotten up while cackling his displeasure at being forced
to fly, which is almost always something that happens after
the dog gives them a really good chase and they
finally decide to use their wings instead of their legs,
and they honestly just kind of sound like they're pissed
(01:44):
off at the whole situation, which is understandable. That bird
had crumpled well enough, but anyone who hunts wild roosters
knows that it isn't always a sign that the game
bag is about to get a little heavier just because
you knocked one down. But Sadie did find that bird,
which meant it was time to unload the shotgun and
do the long hike back to the truck. Sometime during
(02:05):
that whole episode, I missed a phone call, which I
didn't care about because it was a Sunday afternoon and
I figured it was probably a scammer. It wasn't. It
was Steve Vanella, which might sound super exciting to you guys.
To me, I figured I was about to do some
extra work somewhere. When I called him back, he asked
me if I wanted to do a rut hunt with him, which,
in the interest of keeping my job and making Mark
(02:27):
Kenyon a little jealous that he didn't get the call,
I said yes. In typical Steve fashion. He'd lucked into
a ranch in Nebraska that has been real light on
hunting pressure for over a decade and should be real
heavy on deer yours truly was brought in to scout
it set it up, which is a process that began
in the end of June when I put four hundred
(02:47):
and some miles behind me to head down there and
take a look around. As you can imagine, I had
spent quite a bit of time on on X scouting
out the ranch as best I could, but I knew
a couple of things. You know. The first is that
east scouting for deer in the sand Hills cattle pastures
of that region is a far different thing than on
my home ground. And the other thing was that I
would have to constantly remind myself when I was down
(03:09):
there that all of the work that I was doing
should be designed for a payoff during the rut. This
is harder to do than a lot of us like
to admit, or maybe even really consider. With boots on
the ground, you can make some of those connections that
you might miss through east scouting alone. So when I
met up with a landowner to take a look around
and start dropping some moultries on the place, I expected
(03:31):
to be surprised by what I had gotten wrong through
looking at satellite imagery from seven hours away while sitting
at home. And that's the first disconnect. It's a big
one because as valuable as eastcouting is, there is still
a disconnect there. You got a ground truth, but then
you have to factor in the timing of the year
and the disconnect that exists there as well. This last
(03:51):
one is a big one, and it keeps a lot
of us from doing some of the work now we
should do so that when we get to the rut,
we aren't scrambling or left with too few options. This
was front and center on my brain as we hopped
into the side by sides and started cruising around. The
temperature felt like it was about one hundred and ten
degrees in the shade, but at least the mosquitoes were
pretty terrible. We started on an obvious location in the
(04:14):
ranch where a good sized but shallow river winds its
way through bands of giant cottonwoods and then some kind
of weirdly swampy patches of willows and pockets of brush
and cedars. In other words, it was the kind of
cover that hosts deer activity all year round but can
really hum with sign as October gives way to November. Now,
(04:34):
if you know anything else about rivers, you also know
that they are not surprisingly, or at least I hope
this isn't a surprise where river crossings happen, which is
a favorite setup of mine. They get even better when
you factor in the general pattern of cruising that happens
in parallel to flowing water and the pinch points that
come with the whole thing. Now, we stepped into a
(04:54):
pretty interesting patch of timber along that river, and I
instantly felt how much cooler it was than the surround.
I also watched a dome in a fond get up
out of their beds, and on each side of that
patch of timber, I found areas where the topography of
the river bank and the timber that framed it up
formed perfect funnels. While I figured i'd get some pictures
from the cameras, I dropped on both spots. I didn't
(05:17):
really care too much, because even if they didn't produce then,
I figured they would produce later. But when we loaded
up to add to a different part of the ranch,
I happened to catch a glimpse of a bucket out
of his bed and run away, And he was really,
really big, and he showed up on both cameras that
first night. That was as exciting as you can imagine,
but also the high point of the whole scouting trip.
(05:39):
The rest of the time we looked at field edges
and random water holes and areas of the ranch with
mostly pastured sand hills, but also some scattered patches of
light timber. You know, the kind of places that are
nearly devoid of here now but should host some activity.
In about three or four months. This is where some
are scouting for rut hunts. Gets really frustrating. We want
(06:00):
to see deer now, whether we are glassing or running cameras.
While glassing this time of year is a different thing,
because you know you're not glassing areas that you expect
to be hopping during the rut. You're looking at places
where deer should be now, which often doesn't translate very well.
Cameras are a different story. You can use cameras now
to figure out your rut plans, but you have to
(06:22):
accept something about these setups. They might not be very
productive for a couple of months. I'll give you an
example here on this ranch in Nebraska, there are a
couple of pivots in eggfields. If you know how those work,
you know that the field will be a perfect circle
that exists inside a square of land, and on each
corner of that square there will usually be some kind
of brush or trees are covered that isn't grown to
(06:44):
feed cows or people. I'm one of those corners on
that ranch. We walked up to a small water hole
that was absolutely teeming with life. I mean it was
covered in frogs and nakes, turtles and generally what you'd
expect on a water hole where water is generally pretty limited.
There were a handful of deer tracks on the edge, too,
but they were old and not all that promising. The
(07:05):
water hole looked deep enough to always hold something, and
it was about forty yards from a small patch of
cottonwoods on the edge of a hayfield. It doesn't look
like much and wouldn't draw a second glance if you
were hunting in most of the Midwest or East. But
on one gnarl pine sized willow tree, I cleared out
a section of the trunk to hang a camera, knowing
that I might not get a picture of a deer
there for quite a while. But I firmly believe that
(07:27):
some buck will claim that little corner as part of
his fall range. He'll drink from that frog pond, he'll
walk by those cottonwoods to head out to eat. If
you looked up the definition of a dead unproductive trail
camera in the dictionary, you'd see a picture of that
exact setup. It's just not right yet, but I believe
it's going to get there, and I honestly think that
(07:47):
one of us will kill a good buck right in
that spot sometime during the rut, although we might have
to throw a dough decoy out there to make it happen.
Now Here is where this scouting trip in your situation
probably varies quite a bit. Since that ranch is seven
hours from me, and I only plan to head down
there one time in August to hang stands and set blinds.
I'm not in a position to adjust my strategy on
(08:08):
anything other than an infrequent cadence, or really pretty much
not at all. I need cameras in those spots so
I can watch the progression of deer visitors as they
go hard antlered and start to spread out in the fall.
I want to see who shows up and where, and
if I can tie in any real patterns to the
overall intel. If you're gonna run cameras now for the rut,
(08:29):
you're working on your home ground. Probably you can go
in and move things around when you feel you need to.
But the catch with that is that we often write
off spots too early, or don't understand that the buck
that walks through once every three weeks now is telling
you something really important for your rut setups. Think about
(08:58):
it this way. Say you're a hit man and you
have an assignment to whack someone. Would you think that
monitoring that person's daily routine for a week would put
you in a good enough position to pull it off
without getting caught. Wouldn't two weeks be better? Or a
month or more? Could you have too much information on
where they buy their coffee when they go to the gym,
(09:18):
and what their favorite restaurants are, and what roads they
drive to and from work. Probably not. When it comes
to where a buck might travel in his home range,
can you have too much information? Probably not, even if
you believe that the rut is full of randomness. I'm
not one of those people. And the reason I say
that is because even the bonkers days, when they are
(09:39):
chasing and all hell is finally broken loose, it breaks
loose in a controlled manner, they still cruise the routes
that keep them safe while increasing the odds of running
into a hot dough. They still chase and corral doos
and the patches of cover that offer them some type
of advantage. When they move, they move through areas that
force their travel. When the dose they are running totally
(10:03):
ragged give into their thirst, they visit the water that's available.
If that's some random frog pond on the edge of
a pivot field, so be it. I want to know
when they are there, where they approach from, and how
often they might get there. While I think trail cameras
are really valuable for this type of intel gathering, I
also think that getting out and just looking at the
(10:24):
land is probably the best way to prep for your
rut hunts right now. But before I get into that,
I'll say this, I know a lot of hunters don't
think they need to do this. When you hunt a
property for years, this mindset is easy to adopt, and
you might be right too. You might have some kind
of pinch point or funnel or dough betting area where
they always just go and you know it, so there
(10:47):
isn't much of a need to go out and sweat
your apple bag off to figure out what you already know.
But I also know that things change in the deer
woods all of the time, and they happen on a
fast scale and so slowly that we often don't realize it.
On the fast scale, that might be a tree falling
across a fence and a certain spot that affects movement
right now, or it might be the difference between the
(11:09):
neighboring farmer planting corn this year versus beans last year.
On a slow scale. This is stuff we really want
to understand. A good example of this is some of
the big woods hunting some of us too. If you
hunt where there is timber production still, you might focus
on this year's clear cut and the fresh growth that follows.
But that clear cut in three years is a vastly
(11:31):
different thing to hunt in five years. It's different still
after ten it might be a deer desert in there.
The bang and hunts you had on it in the
first few years will create memories that are hard to escape,
and that will draw you back to that spot, but
the hunt might be forever changed there. Another way to
look at this is the pressure on public land. I
(11:52):
honestly think other than during peak times when people are
just going to hit the woods like the rut, we're
seeing a decline in hunting pressure overall. Now. I know
that's highly variable and highly situational, but the fever that
burned around being a public land hunter seems to have
broken a little bit. You know, when a lot of
optimistic folks realize how hard it really is. Now, whether
(12:14):
that's true or not, the amount of people in the
woods over time fluctuates a lot. We don't really have
a way to understand this in the moment, but only
upon reflection and through a lot of scouting and hunting.
We just gather general experience out there. Now. I'm sure
it seems like I've veered way off course here and
should probably throw back some adderall but my point stands
(12:36):
about boots on the ground scouting for the rut right now,
in that if you do it, you'll learn something that
will factor into your hunts. It's not just about the
bucks and what they like to do, but the land
and how it changes and how it has changed, and
the amount of people crossing that land for whatever reason
on any given day or in any given season. So
(12:57):
what is the key to all of this? I'd say
that it's all about learning what you can now while
constantly considering what that means to your rut hunts. You
got to look into the crystal ball, my friends, which
is hard to do but important. The bachelor group on
camera in the woods once every three weeks now is
bound to break up long before the rut, and some
(13:18):
of those deer will stay and some will vanish into
the neighbor's property. So why monitor them? Now? Well, don't
you want to know where they cross the old fence
in the woods, or whether you're more likely to get
picks of them in the morning versus the evening. What
about the dos? Dough groups can be highly patternable over
a long enough time window. And while you might not
(13:39):
care at all about some ladies in their fawns hanging
out in some patch of timber, now what if your
camera shows them almost daily passing through a certain spot.
Will that hold up during the rut? Maybe? And if
it does, you know those doughs are going to draw
some attention, and you know where they are likely to
be and where they are likely to travel. And here's
another thing about this stuff. The total answer to your
(14:00):
rut hunting problems doesn't exist out there right now. But
the information that is necessary to putting the whole thing
together is allow me to explain that that spot where
I saw that big buck in Nebraska, where I got
him on two cameras, is bound to be covered in
buck signed by mid October when we show up to hunt.
Hopefully I'll have a hell of a lot more pictures
(14:20):
of him to work off of. But also what if
we had down there to hunt and we stumble across
the dished out scrape two hundred yards away from the
best pinch point. And what if the wind is out
of the south or east, and those pinch points I
had scouted so well or just out of play. That
scrape might not mean anything, or it might mean I
have an amazing plan B to hunt the same deer
when the conditions conspire to keep him alive and keep
(14:42):
me frustrated. I could walk into the woods and find
that scrape without the summertime intel to back it up,
but I'll have a better idea of whether I should
hunt it and when if I have five months of
recon to drop up on. This is the thing that
we often miss when it comes to deer hunting advice.
The whole thing hinges on a lit of information gathered
through as many means as possible, and put into practice
(15:04):
only after factoring in about a million variables on any
given day. It's an inexact science that gets a little
more precise with each data point we can plug in.
It's great to know that deer like to drink water,
and that you've found a small water hole somewhere, but
it's better to get in there and look at the
land and the cover and the potential ambush options for
(15:25):
different winds, and then to run a camera on it
for a few months to see who comes in and
from where and when. That way, if you get the
perfect conditions to hunt it during the first week of November,
it's a pretty simple equation. But if the wind isn't right,
or it isn't hot enough to make them too thirsty,
or there are three trucks parked there where you didn't
expect them, you will have a better backup plan than
(15:46):
you could have. And that's probably the biggest reason to
scout right now. For the rut, things will change and
go wrong, and the dear world we envision will be
nothing more than a nice thought when reality actually settles in.
And when it does, drying upon months of scouting will
be a difference maker, even if it's hard to make
that connection right now. So think about that and do
(16:06):
that and come back next week because I'm gonna talk
about the difference between challenges and problems and how understanding
them can help you kill more big bucks. That's it
for this episode. I'm Tony Peterson, and this has been
the wire to Hunt Foundation's podcast, which is brought to
you by First Light. Thank you so much for your support.
I know I say this every week, but I truly
mean it. If you need more hunting content, if you
(16:28):
need some more podcasts to listen to, maybe you're going
on a road trip with a family, whatever, the medeater
dot com has you covered. You can go check out
Clay Speed which just keeps growing. You know. They added
Brent Reeves in This Country Life first, which is an
incredible podcast. But now Lake Pickles got one on there
back was university. He's doing a great job. Lake's a
cool dude. Check it out, or just check out the
(16:50):
media dot com for some recipes for some articles, new
films drop and whatever. There's new content every single day.
Host
Mark Kenyon
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