September 2, 2025 • 16 mins
This week, Tony talks about the early-September transition that happens in the deer woods and what that means to your early season plans if you want to fill a bow tag on a summer pattern.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
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, everyone, welcome to the Wired to Hunt Foundation's podcast,
which is brought to you by First Light. I'm your host,
Tony Peterson, and today's episode is all about this time
of the year when white tails go hard antlered and
everything seems to get a little mixed up out there
in the woods. The thing I like about white tails
is that it's a year round game that involves a
hell of a lot of inexact science. Now you might
(00:41):
declare that deer always do this thing or never do that,
but you'd be wrong about that, just on the sheer
fact that predicting the behavior of wild animals is at
best and educated guests. This holds true for a lot
of deer behavior and has some implications for the time
period we are in right now, where bucks go from
velvet to hard antlered and the whole shift to fall
kicks in. It's one of the best times of the
(01:02):
year and I'm going to talk about it right freaking now.
Years ago, when I was in college, I had a canoe.
I know that some people love to fish out of canoes,
and I have to assume those people are also a
little off kilter in their brains where canoes are a
necessity and the best option for access right on. But
(01:24):
if you can get a real boat in there and
use that, it's always a better choice in my opinion. Well,
I had to hand me down canoe from my grandpa
at the time, who had a major chest grabber at
fifty six and left my mom's family without a patriarch.
It was a fine canoe, but I wanted a real boat,
so I found a fourteen foot lon with a twenty
five horse outboard on it. I went to my bank
(01:46):
and took out a personal loan. I recently found the
paperwork for that loan, and the interest rate was almost
ten percent. I don't know why I felt the need
to tell you that, any huski. I spent a lot
of time in that boat on Pool six of the
Mississippi River, and a ton of time I'm on small
backwater lakes around there. I hauled it to northern Minnesota
more than a few times, and generally caught a pile
(02:06):
of fish out of it. One of the places I
went to a lot was a small lake outside of Winona,
Minnesota that was private but opened up to the public wale.
I happened to be in school down there, and also
happened to live not very far away from it. Now.
The original landing was a sand ramp, and that really sucked.
But that old lawn had a trailer that pivoted in
the center, and I could launch that boat in almost
(02:28):
no water. I fished the living shit out of that lake,
and it was full of fish. Dumbfish too, because they
hadn't got hardly a pressure. I actually thought I had
a bead on the state record smallmouth in there, and
even had her on twice. That fish was one of
the reasons why it took me five years to get
a four year degree, if I'm being totally honest. One
thing that I learned about bass and other predatory fish
(02:50):
on that little lake was that during the summer I
caught them on deep weed lines around timber. No shock
her there. But as the nights grew longer and the
water temps started to cool, the big bass in northern shifted.
They'd moved to one of the few narrow points in
the lake that led to bays full of weeds and
just enough depth to host wintering panfish and other baitfish.
(03:11):
Imagine it like this, a mountain lion posting up on
a rocky outcropping while overlooking a hog's back ridge in
the mountains between two basins that just pinches down migratory
mule deer movement when the bad weather kicks in in
the high Country. It had never occurred to me that
fish would swim from one end of the lake the
other to post up in a killer ambush spot while
(03:32):
the seasons fed them an unlimited food source, right before
the lake locked up in ice and everyone started to
fin a little slower throughout the winter months. I don't
remember this happening, although I'm sure it did. But I'm
sure I went out and casted the same stuff that
had produced all summer and didn't catch much. I'm sure
I figured it was just an off bite due to
(03:52):
weather or something else, while not realizing that a fall
migration had kicked in underwater and that I was just
not clued into it. That sort of thing kind of
is happening right now with white tails. I dropped an
episode of this podcast a couple weeks ago about home
ranges and core ranges and what collared bucks out there
have shown researchers on the topic, So I'm not going
to get into that here. Instead, I want to talk
(04:14):
about personal experiences with a shift from velvet to hard
antlered and what that might mean to you. For starters,
if you've ever haunted a truly early season for white tails,
like one that starts right on the first of September
and gives you a chance to shoot a velvet buck,
you know that what a Bucker bachelor group does today,
you know might not be the case tomorrow, but certainly
(04:36):
could be. I want to give you two examples to
try to illustrate this point. Back in twenty twelve, I
had a couple of very young babies at home and
a North Dakota white tail tag in my pocket. I
got a five day leave of absence from the chief
of my household and I drove out there.
Speaker 1 (04:50):
Now.
Speaker 2 (04:50):
While glassing the day before the season opened, I saw
a whole bunch of bucks, including a pair of velvet
racked kind of basket eight pointers. My standards were pretty
oh given my timeframe, and I hope those bucks would
stick around because they were in play along with some
other ones were bigger. Now I ended up hunting pretty hard,
coming up short and just going for a hail Mary
on those bucks the last evening of the hunt. Now,
(05:13):
the day before I had seen both of them and
they were both in velvet, so I figured I had
a shot, and with fifteen minutes of shooting light left,
one of the bucks showed up on a direct path
toward my stand. He was alone and hard antlered. At
some point overnight or throughout the day, he'd shed his
velvet and his buddy. It was one of the most
satisfying conclusions to and over the road hunt I've ever had,
(05:35):
and it's one of my favorite memories.
Speaker 1 (05:37):
Now.
Speaker 2 (05:37):
Two years later, I drove back out there for another
white tail hunt, and I watched a bachelor group of
four bucks bed in the brakes way up in Meal
Dear country. But when they came out that night, they
followed the script and I ended up shooting a velvet
eight pointer that was much bigger than the one from
two years earlier. But I was targeting a gnarly old
seven pointer that was in velvet in the morning and
hard antlered in the afternoon. It only took maybe a
(06:00):
couple hours for him to get rid of that velvet.
Both of them stuck to the travel script, the pattern script,
mostly because out west, where the cover and food is
often pretty limited, those deer might not veer off their
daily patterns by a whole lot. No matter what. They
really don't have a choice but to do what they
usually do in places with limited resources. That has not
(06:20):
been my experience here in the Midwest, at least not entirely. Now.
This is where that whole inexact science thing kicks in.
We are fed almost NonStop content from folks who are
in a race to create the perfect deer property. And
when they have food and water, cover, doze and no
pressure to leave, bucks oftentimes just don't. So we see
(06:42):
their summer bucks turn into fall bucks, you know, on
social media. But those deer are literally sort of living
in an artificial world. I don't really know how else
to say it, but I don't want it to sound
as petty as that does. They are just given every
reason to stick around, and nature likes easy, so that's
what they choose. Nature likes security. Two, which might be
a better way to put that. Now, you might think
(07:03):
that this means that it's highly likely that your summer
Bucks will stick around through September and beyond, and they
certainly might, but they also might not, and that's worth
trying to understand. But to do that, you have to
acknowledge all of the things that are changing in their
world by the day. For starters, the shift from Velvet
to hart Antler means many things, but one of them
is that it's time to figure out who is the
(07:23):
top dog and really establish their hierarchy. I've watched Bucks
spar while still in Velvet, and it's pretty cool to see.
In fact, I had a buddy send me a series
of trail camera photos in mid August of two Bucks
sparring under an apple tree. So as their summer coats
start to give away to fall coats and their weapons
on their heads finish up becoming real weapons, and their
(07:45):
hormones start to really kick in, they figure out who
is who in the hurt. This is a side note
here and maybe won't apply to a lot of you
find listeners, but I found that Bucks are often highly
callable in the early season, whether that's a contact grunt
or a snort. I've had some pretty good results talking
to bucks in the first couple weeks of the season
here in Minnesota, in Wisconsin and out west in earlier seasons.
(08:08):
I have my theories on that, and maybe none of
them are right. I just know that it has worked
for me, and I think they are susceptible to calling
because they've spent all season bachelored up and they are
in the phase where they are sorting things out. Anyway,
(08:31):
you kind of have to factor that in. The deer
aren't as likely to hang together as the days progress,
although you can still find plenty of bucks paired up
and sometimes traveling in groups. Then you have a couple
of other things to think about, some of which I
consider more impactful to deer for starters. The food sources
are likely to change. In the last couple of weeks.
In my world, I've started noticing a hell of a
(08:54):
lot of acorns hitting the dirt. I've also spent some
time scouting, and the apple tree thing is definitely on
or around here. Hard masks and soft mast matter, and
after a summer of eating alfalfa and beans, it seems
like the deer prime to switch food sources right now.
So they do. This might be a more subtle shift
down south, but also might not be when you factor
(09:15):
in per Simmons or some other high value Here today,
gone tomorrow. Food source. Food is a primary driver of
deer behavior, and if you're not in a position to
create a food plot for them or curate a property
in some other way, this is probably the thing you
should pay attention to the most. If they suddenly aren't
popping out into the egg like they were a couple
weeks ago, what are they feeding on? Because they are
(09:36):
eating something. Now, that's all pretty elementary stuff, but then
you have to factor in the truth about whitetail hunters
and the impact they have on deer. While hunters like
Kenyon try hard to get their work finished well before
the season to give everything a chance to settle down,
it's not so simple for a lot of hunters. Some
folks just don't get out there in the midsummer to
sweat and hang stands and cameras and brush in blinds
(09:58):
and scout. Some folks just get the itch to get
into the woods or go glassing more. Now that it
might be cooling off ever so slightly, But most whitetail
hunters just don't put in much effort until the season
draws closer. This is something that it was absolutely driven
home to me in Minnesota while growing up and hunting
a farm that I shared with a lot of bow
hunters and a ton of gun hunters. Since our gun
(10:20):
season opens up on the first full weekend of November,
that means that the weekend before is almost always around Halloween,
which is pretty prime time to be on a stand
if you ask me and just about anyone who has
even a total dullard's understanding of deer hunting. But that
was also the weekend when random dudes would walk through
the woods, often with the dog at their side and
(10:40):
a heart of hearing buddy who needed to shout through
normal conversations. It was maddening but very consistent. So there's
also the weekend one I'd often hear gunshot after gunshot
after gunshot as guys check their zeros on their slugguns.
In other words, the people impact from that gun opener
on my general bow hunting success was real and didn't
do many favors. Now, think about being a public land
(11:03):
whitetail bow hunter or someone who shares ground with other people,
the highest likelihood for preseason intrusion in general is now
until you're opener. That's just the reality of most whitetail hunters,
and it has a big impact on deer or it can.
So while we might be looking for a lot of
scientific reasons why our summer pattern on known bucks suddenly
(11:26):
went to shit, it's very likely that's due to the
increased presence of hunters in the woods. This is something
that happens a lot where elk taggs are easy to get,
you know where. Hunters out west show up a week
before the season and hike into every meadow and along
every trail to find the hot sign and generally do
a great job of pushing the elk into the dark
timber hell holes right before the season opens. It's just
(11:47):
part of the game, my friends. What it means for
us whitetail hunters is that the field edge easy pattern
we thought we had might get killed right before we
can actually even hunt the deer. And it might be
our fault or might be the cumulative effect of other hunters,
but either way, the end result is the same. Now
the deer don't necessarily leave, but they might not be
(12:08):
so keen to pop out into the open at five
point thirty in the afternoon to feed with three of
their best friends. So the question is what it always is,
which is what does this mean? You should cross your
fingers and hope the deer you scouted and had on
trail camera this summer will stick to their patterns throughout
opening week. They certainly might, or they might seem to
shuffle off to parts unknown, leaving you with a couple
(12:29):
of four keys and some does to work with. This
is what I consider the best option for most of us.
If you're running cameras, try to set a few of
them to show you where the deer have gone. I
know that's simple, but a lot of us won't do it.
Where are they most likely to stage or travel when
the human presence increases and the food sources change and
they just get a little less tolerant of antlered company.
(12:52):
That's an easy one, and it can be so valuable.
A lot of the early season deer I kill are
just off of the food in the cover, in a
situation that I just kind of think is like one
layer back. The window for that type of hunt is
often a short one, but man, it can be good.
The next thing I do is scout. I know we
(13:13):
all want to be super careful this time here because
we don't want to spook deer unnecessarily, But when the
great shuffle happens, I want to know where the bucks go.
I don't know how to put it any other way.
Every rub I can find is huge, Truly. There is
nothing I like better than finding September rubs because I
know I'm close to September bucks. A fresh scrape in
September that'll get my attention too. But we also often
(13:35):
have just the conditions that allow for track checking trails,
and that is something I do a lot. A field
edge with tracks is fine, but a trail in the
cover that is all tracked up with fresh sign yes
please two scoops, well, that might not put you on
an individual buck, but it'll put you on deer. And
getting on deer is off in the first step to
getting something going with a target buck or a buck
(13:57):
that is of the caliber that would make you happy,
because it's not just the giants that will respond to
all of the changes out there in the woods, and
the old doves that are raising the next generation of
boooners don't much like hunters either, but they do like
acorns and security and persimmons and apples and water that's
in the woods where they leave tracks in September, So
(14:18):
two will bucks leave tracks, and if some of those
trails have any actual buck sign, like even very small rubs,
pay attention. I've watched quite a few big bucks make
rubs in the woods throughout quite a few different states,
and honestly can't remember any one of them ever making
a thigh size rub. For some reason, it's always on
a sapling and the size of the rub is never
(14:38):
really correlated to the size of the buck. Now, I
know this sucks because you've heard all about building a
summer pattern and seeing it through, which is totally doable.
But the best white tail hunters out there always have
a backup plan because while they hunt with confidence, they
expect a certain level of failure. That's the nature of
deer hunting because it's just pretty damn hard in general.
(14:59):
But if you start to think think about where they'll
go when the conditions change, you'll start to think about
what you can do to meet them there, just like
the big smallies in Largemouth that somehow realize it's time
to go post up on a channel, leading to a
wintering hole. The summer bucks you counted on to be
there might just have other plans that keep them less
visible and as well fed as they've been all summer long.
(15:19):
So think about that. If you start to see a
change in your trail camera activity, or you just realize
that you're seeing fewer deer and out in the fields
on your way to work, whatever things are changing out there,
and if you work with those changes to get somewhere
the deer want to be, you'll have a good chance
of filling your tag. If you don't, you'll be swimming
upstream during one of the best times of year to
kill a big one. Think about that, my friends, and
(15:41):
think about coming back next week, because I'm going to
talk about the myth of quote unquote plenty of time
and how that has saved more than a few early
season bucks. That's it for this week. I'm Tony Peterson.
This has been the Foundation's podcast, which is brought to
you by First Light. As always, I just want to
thank you for your support, Mark and I here truly
appreciate it. The whole Mediator crew does without you, guys,
(16:02):
we don't have anything, so thank you for that. If
you need some more white tail content you can listen
to this feed. We've got three shows on here now
on the Wire to Hunt feed at least for a
little while with Jake series. We have a whole bunch
more podcasts that can educate you entertain you at the
mediator dot com. Maybe you know you want to listen
(16:22):
to Clay explore some crazy path and through history on
the Bear Grease podcast. Maybe you just want to hear
Brent Reeves's beautiful voice as he does this Country Life,
which is a great podcast. Or maybe you need a recipe,
maybe you need an article, maybe you just want to
watch some hunting films with the family. Whatever, we have
(16:43):
it at the mediator dot com. Go check it out.
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, everyone, welcome to the Wired to Hunt Foundation's podcast,
which is brought to you by First Light. I'm your host,
Tony Peterson, and today's episode is all about this time
of the year when white tails go hard antlered and
everything seems to get a little mixed up out there
in the woods. The thing I like about white tails
is that it's a year round game that involves a
hell of a lot of inexact science. Now you might
(00:41):
declare that deer always do this thing or never do that,
but you'd be wrong about that, just on the sheer
fact that predicting the behavior of wild animals is at
best and educated guests. This holds true for a lot
of deer behavior and has some implications for the time
period we are in right now, where bucks go from
velvet to hard antlered and the whole shift to fall
kicks in. It's one of the best times of the
(01:02):
year and I'm going to talk about it right freaking now.
Years ago, when I was in college, I had a canoe.
I know that some people love to fish out of canoes,
and I have to assume those people are also a
little off kilter in their brains where canoes are a
necessity and the best option for access right on. But
(01:24):
if you can get a real boat in there and
use that, it's always a better choice in my opinion. Well,
I had to hand me down canoe from my grandpa
at the time, who had a major chest grabber at
fifty six and left my mom's family without a patriarch.
It was a fine canoe, but I wanted a real boat,
so I found a fourteen foot lon with a twenty
five horse outboard on it. I went to my bank
(01:46):
and took out a personal loan. I recently found the
paperwork for that loan, and the interest rate was almost
ten percent. I don't know why I felt the need
to tell you that, any huski. I spent a lot
of time in that boat on Pool six of the
Mississippi River, and a ton of time I'm on small
backwater lakes around there. I hauled it to northern Minnesota
more than a few times, and generally caught a pile
(02:06):
of fish out of it. One of the places I
went to a lot was a small lake outside of Winona,
Minnesota that was private but opened up to the public wale.
I happened to be in school down there, and also
happened to live not very far away from it. Now.
The original landing was a sand ramp, and that really sucked.
But that old lawn had a trailer that pivoted in
the center, and I could launch that boat in almost
(02:28):
no water. I fished the living shit out of that lake,
and it was full of fish. Dumbfish too, because they
hadn't got hardly a pressure. I actually thought I had
a bead on the state record smallmouth in there, and
even had her on twice. That fish was one of
the reasons why it took me five years to get
a four year degree, if I'm being totally honest. One
thing that I learned about bass and other predatory fish
(02:50):
on that little lake was that during the summer I
caught them on deep weed lines around timber. No shock
her there. But as the nights grew longer and the
water temps started to cool, the big bass in northern shifted.
They'd moved to one of the few narrow points in
the lake that led to bays full of weeds and
just enough depth to host wintering panfish and other baitfish.
(03:11):
Imagine it like this, a mountain lion posting up on
a rocky outcropping while overlooking a hog's back ridge in
the mountains between two basins that just pinches down migratory
mule deer movement when the bad weather kicks in in
the high Country. It had never occurred to me that
fish would swim from one end of the lake the
other to post up in a killer ambush spot while
(03:32):
the seasons fed them an unlimited food source, right before
the lake locked up in ice and everyone started to
fin a little slower throughout the winter months. I don't
remember this happening, although I'm sure it did. But I'm
sure I went out and casted the same stuff that
had produced all summer and didn't catch much. I'm sure
I figured it was just an off bite due to
(03:52):
weather or something else, while not realizing that a fall
migration had kicked in underwater and that I was just
not clued into it. That sort of thing kind of
is happening right now with white tails. I dropped an
episode of this podcast a couple weeks ago about home
ranges and core ranges and what collared bucks out there
have shown researchers on the topic, So I'm not going
to get into that here. Instead, I want to talk
(04:14):
about personal experiences with a shift from velvet to hard
antlered and what that might mean to you. For starters,
if you've ever haunted a truly early season for white tails,
like one that starts right on the first of September
and gives you a chance to shoot a velvet buck,
you know that what a Bucker bachelor group does today,
you know might not be the case tomorrow, but certainly
(04:36):
could be. I want to give you two examples to
try to illustrate this point. Back in twenty twelve, I
had a couple of very young babies at home and
a North Dakota white tail tag in my pocket. I
got a five day leave of absence from the chief
of my household and I drove out there.
Speaker 1 (04:50):
Now.
Speaker 2 (04:50):
While glassing the day before the season opened, I saw
a whole bunch of bucks, including a pair of velvet
racked kind of basket eight pointers. My standards were pretty
oh given my timeframe, and I hope those bucks would
stick around because they were in play along with some
other ones were bigger. Now I ended up hunting pretty hard,
coming up short and just going for a hail Mary
on those bucks the last evening of the hunt. Now,
(05:13):
the day before I had seen both of them and
they were both in velvet, so I figured I had
a shot, and with fifteen minutes of shooting light left,
one of the bucks showed up on a direct path
toward my stand. He was alone and hard antlered. At
some point overnight or throughout the day, he'd shed his
velvet and his buddy. It was one of the most
satisfying conclusions to and over the road hunt I've ever had,
(05:35):
and it's one of my favorite memories.
Speaker 1 (05:37):
Now.
Speaker 2 (05:37):
Two years later, I drove back out there for another
white tail hunt, and I watched a bachelor group of
four bucks bed in the brakes way up in Meal
Dear country. But when they came out that night, they
followed the script and I ended up shooting a velvet
eight pointer that was much bigger than the one from
two years earlier. But I was targeting a gnarly old
seven pointer that was in velvet in the morning and
hard antlered in the afternoon. It only took maybe a
(06:00):
couple hours for him to get rid of that velvet.
Both of them stuck to the travel script, the pattern script,
mostly because out west, where the cover and food is
often pretty limited, those deer might not veer off their
daily patterns by a whole lot. No matter what. They
really don't have a choice but to do what they
usually do in places with limited resources. That has not
(06:20):
been my experience here in the Midwest, at least not entirely. Now.
This is where that whole inexact science thing kicks in.
We are fed almost NonStop content from folks who are
in a race to create the perfect deer property. And
when they have food and water, cover, doze and no
pressure to leave, bucks oftentimes just don't. So we see
(06:42):
their summer bucks turn into fall bucks, you know, on
social media. But those deer are literally sort of living
in an artificial world. I don't really know how else
to say it, but I don't want it to sound
as petty as that does. They are just given every
reason to stick around, and nature likes easy, so that's
what they choose. Nature likes security. Two, which might be
a better way to put that. Now, you might think
(07:03):
that this means that it's highly likely that your summer
Bucks will stick around through September and beyond, and they
certainly might, but they also might not, and that's worth
trying to understand. But to do that, you have to
acknowledge all of the things that are changing in their
world by the day. For starters, the shift from Velvet
to hart Antler means many things, but one of them
is that it's time to figure out who is the
(07:23):
top dog and really establish their hierarchy. I've watched Bucks
spar while still in Velvet, and it's pretty cool to see.
In fact, I had a buddy send me a series
of trail camera photos in mid August of two Bucks
sparring under an apple tree. So as their summer coats
start to give away to fall coats and their weapons
on their heads finish up becoming real weapons, and their
(07:45):
hormones start to really kick in, they figure out who
is who in the hurt. This is a side note
here and maybe won't apply to a lot of you
find listeners, but I found that Bucks are often highly
callable in the early season, whether that's a contact grunt
or a snort. I've had some pretty good results talking
to bucks in the first couple weeks of the season
here in Minnesota, in Wisconsin and out west in earlier seasons.
(08:08):
I have my theories on that, and maybe none of
them are right. I just know that it has worked
for me, and I think they are susceptible to calling
because they've spent all season bachelored up and they are
in the phase where they are sorting things out. Anyway,
(08:31):
you kind of have to factor that in. The deer
aren't as likely to hang together as the days progress,
although you can still find plenty of bucks paired up
and sometimes traveling in groups. Then you have a couple
of other things to think about, some of which I
consider more impactful to deer for starters. The food sources
are likely to change. In the last couple of weeks.
In my world, I've started noticing a hell of a
(08:54):
lot of acorns hitting the dirt. I've also spent some
time scouting, and the apple tree thing is definitely on
or around here. Hard masks and soft mast matter, and
after a summer of eating alfalfa and beans, it seems
like the deer prime to switch food sources right now.
So they do. This might be a more subtle shift
down south, but also might not be when you factor
(09:15):
in per Simmons or some other high value Here today,
gone tomorrow. Food source. Food is a primary driver of
deer behavior, and if you're not in a position to
create a food plot for them or curate a property
in some other way, this is probably the thing you
should pay attention to the most. If they suddenly aren't
popping out into the egg like they were a couple
weeks ago, what are they feeding on? Because they are
(09:36):
eating something. Now, that's all pretty elementary stuff, but then
you have to factor in the truth about whitetail hunters
and the impact they have on deer. While hunters like
Kenyon try hard to get their work finished well before
the season to give everything a chance to settle down,
it's not so simple for a lot of hunters. Some
folks just don't get out there in the midsummer to
sweat and hang stands and cameras and brush in blinds
(09:58):
and scout. Some folks just get the itch to get
into the woods or go glassing more. Now that it
might be cooling off ever so slightly, But most whitetail
hunters just don't put in much effort until the season
draws closer. This is something that it was absolutely driven
home to me in Minnesota while growing up and hunting
a farm that I shared with a lot of bow
hunters and a ton of gun hunters. Since our gun
(10:20):
season opens up on the first full weekend of November,
that means that the weekend before is almost always around Halloween,
which is pretty prime time to be on a stand
if you ask me and just about anyone who has
even a total dullard's understanding of deer hunting. But that
was also the weekend when random dudes would walk through
the woods, often with the dog at their side and
(10:40):
a heart of hearing buddy who needed to shout through
normal conversations. It was maddening but very consistent. So there's
also the weekend one I'd often hear gunshot after gunshot
after gunshot as guys check their zeros on their slugguns.
In other words, the people impact from that gun opener
on my general bow hunting success was real and didn't
do many favors. Now, think about being a public land
(11:03):
whitetail bow hunter or someone who shares ground with other people,
the highest likelihood for preseason intrusion in general is now
until you're opener. That's just the reality of most whitetail hunters,
and it has a big impact on deer or it can.
So while we might be looking for a lot of
scientific reasons why our summer pattern on known bucks suddenly
(11:26):
went to shit, it's very likely that's due to the
increased presence of hunters in the woods. This is something
that happens a lot where elk taggs are easy to get,
you know where. Hunters out west show up a week
before the season and hike into every meadow and along
every trail to find the hot sign and generally do
a great job of pushing the elk into the dark
timber hell holes right before the season opens. It's just
(11:47):
part of the game, my friends. What it means for
us whitetail hunters is that the field edge easy pattern
we thought we had might get killed right before we
can actually even hunt the deer. And it might be
our fault or might be the cumulative effect of other hunters,
but either way, the end result is the same. Now
the deer don't necessarily leave, but they might not be
(12:08):
so keen to pop out into the open at five
point thirty in the afternoon to feed with three of
their best friends. So the question is what it always is,
which is what does this mean? You should cross your
fingers and hope the deer you scouted and had on
trail camera this summer will stick to their patterns throughout
opening week. They certainly might, or they might seem to
shuffle off to parts unknown, leaving you with a couple
(12:29):
of four keys and some does to work with. This
is what I consider the best option for most of us.
If you're running cameras, try to set a few of
them to show you where the deer have gone. I
know that's simple, but a lot of us won't do it.
Where are they most likely to stage or travel when
the human presence increases and the food sources change and
they just get a little less tolerant of antlered company.
(12:52):
That's an easy one, and it can be so valuable.
A lot of the early season deer I kill are
just off of the food in the cover, in a
situation that I just kind of think is like one
layer back. The window for that type of hunt is
often a short one, but man, it can be good.
The next thing I do is scout. I know we
(13:13):
all want to be super careful this time here because
we don't want to spook deer unnecessarily, But when the
great shuffle happens, I want to know where the bucks go.
I don't know how to put it any other way.
Every rub I can find is huge, Truly. There is
nothing I like better than finding September rubs because I
know I'm close to September bucks. A fresh scrape in
September that'll get my attention too. But we also often
(13:35):
have just the conditions that allow for track checking trails,
and that is something I do a lot. A field
edge with tracks is fine, but a trail in the
cover that is all tracked up with fresh sign yes
please two scoops, well, that might not put you on
an individual buck, but it'll put you on deer. And
getting on deer is off in the first step to
getting something going with a target buck or a buck
(13:57):
that is of the caliber that would make you happy,
because it's not just the giants that will respond to
all of the changes out there in the woods, and
the old doves that are raising the next generation of
boooners don't much like hunters either, but they do like
acorns and security and persimmons and apples and water that's
in the woods where they leave tracks in September, So
(14:18):
two will bucks leave tracks, and if some of those
trails have any actual buck sign, like even very small rubs,
pay attention. I've watched quite a few big bucks make
rubs in the woods throughout quite a few different states,
and honestly can't remember any one of them ever making
a thigh size rub. For some reason, it's always on
a sapling and the size of the rub is never
(14:38):
really correlated to the size of the buck. Now, I
know this sucks because you've heard all about building a
summer pattern and seeing it through, which is totally doable.
But the best white tail hunters out there always have
a backup plan because while they hunt with confidence, they
expect a certain level of failure. That's the nature of
deer hunting because it's just pretty damn hard in general.
(14:59):
But if you start to think think about where they'll
go when the conditions change, you'll start to think about
what you can do to meet them there, just like
the big smallies in Largemouth that somehow realize it's time
to go post up on a channel, leading to a
wintering hole. The summer bucks you counted on to be
there might just have other plans that keep them less
visible and as well fed as they've been all summer long.
(15:19):
So think about that. If you start to see a
change in your trail camera activity, or you just realize
that you're seeing fewer deer and out in the fields
on your way to work, whatever things are changing out there,
and if you work with those changes to get somewhere
the deer want to be, you'll have a good chance
of filling your tag. If you don't, you'll be swimming
upstream during one of the best times of year to
kill a big one. Think about that, my friends, and
(15:41):
think about coming back next week, because I'm going to
talk about the myth of quote unquote plenty of time
and how that has saved more than a few early
season bucks. That's it for this week. I'm Tony Peterson.
This has been the Foundation's podcast, which is brought to
you by First Light. As always, I just want to
thank you for your support, Mark and I here truly
appreciate it. The whole Mediator crew does without you, guys,
(16:02):
we don't have anything, so thank you for that. If
you need some more white tail content you can listen
to this feed. We've got three shows on here now
on the Wire to Hunt feed at least for a
little while with Jake series. We have a whole bunch
more podcasts that can educate you entertain you at the
mediator dot com. Maybe you know you want to listen
(16:22):
to Clay explore some crazy path and through history on
the Bear Grease podcast. Maybe you just want to hear
Brent Reeves's beautiful voice as he does this Country Life,
which is a great podcast. Or maybe you need a recipe,
maybe you need an article, maybe you just want to
watch some hunting films with the family. Whatever, we have
(16:43):
it at the mediator dot com. Go check it out.
Host
Mark Kenyon
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