October 21, 2025 • 16 mins
This week, Tony explains why all buck sign isn't the same, and how in-season scouting right now can put most hunters on a solid pre-rut 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 how to
find and more importantly interpret big Bucks Sign in the
days leading up to the pre run. The thing about
Bucks sign is that it seems pretty straightforward. Bucks go
out and they make some scrapes, and they make some rubs.
(00:40):
You go find them, you sit over them, and you
shoot the rightful creators of that sign, right and the lungs,
and then you celebrate simple right. Well, if it were,
finding sign would be the equivalent of snapping the last
piece of the puzzle in place, but it's often not.
It is a huge step in the right direction, but
you need to know what the sign really means and
how you can use it to make better decisions.
Speaker 3 (00:57):
That's what I'm going to talk about right now.
Speaker 2 (01:03):
There are a lot of memes out there about how
people aren't good at picking up the signals of other
people who might possibly become potential partners. If you get
my drift, I can speak on this from the side
of a clueless man, and it's not impossible for me
to relate to some dude who finds himself well, I
don't know, fishing or mowing the lawn or something, and
suddenly realizing that an old coworker who he had a
(01:23):
great relationship with was actually flirting super heavy, you know,
during his time at the company, maybe during a Christmas party,
and he missed every signal, like he was not only blind,
but deaf and possibly just a little bit slow. In
other cognitive ways, we often see what we expect to see,
and that helps us deal with life. If we figure
something is going to go wrong with the car at
(01:43):
some point because it has over one hundred thousand miles
on it, well, guess what something's going to go wrong
with it? And when it does, we can say to ourselves,
I knew it. I just knew it, and then we
can bitch about it and feel a little better about
living under this NonStop rain cloud that follows us around
everywhere like a duckling imprinted on us after hatching. In life,
it's not only about recognizing the signs, but reacting to
(02:05):
them in the right way. In the deer woods, the
sign literally is deer sign, and how we react to
it will poortend our big buck futures. Let me tell
you how this usually goes, or at least how it
goes for an awful lot of hunters. They start out
in the early season and there's very little sign, at
least when it comes to rubs and scrapes. As the
season progresses, they go back to the box blind on
(02:27):
the food plot, or they go to one of their
favorite ladder stands, and they start to see a few
more rubs show up, maybe a few more scrapes. The
field edge they like to sit gets picked and generally
has less food to offer them previously, but it also
has far more sign on the edge. So how do
they interpret that? Well, they think the bucks are getting
more active. And since they are getting more active and
clearly visiting this spot on this very food source or
(02:49):
this very logging road that I take to my favorite stand,
my comfort stand, if you will, then that is evidence
that I should one hundred percent keep hunting. Here because
now the bucks are coming to me. We advance that
line of thinking a little further by using it to
justify hunting areas that might be totally burned out, especially
during the rut.
Speaker 3 (03:08):
But what does that sign really mean?
Speaker 2 (03:10):
Well, it definitely means that some bucks are using that
area at some point, and some of those bucks, hell,
probably all of them, have been laying down some sign. Now,
if you are hunting a load deer density area, all
this might matter more than if you're hunting a spot
that has seventy five dear per square mile. But still,
what does it really mean to you? If deer laying
down a lot of sign around a destination food source,
(03:32):
we usually know what that means, and if not, we
can sit that food source in an evening or two
and see exactly what's going on. They are either there
in the daylight or not. And the more pressure in
your area, which includes the pressure you put on that
exact food source, the more likely it is that that
sign is appearing in the middle of the night. Pretty
simple stuff, right, and yet we often kind of look
(03:54):
past it so we can hunt in a way that
is really comfortable for us.
Speaker 3 (03:58):
But does that usually.
Speaker 2 (03:58):
Result in mature bucks dying from our actions. Not really,
and listen, I love seeing rubs and scrapes when I'm hunting,
no matter where I'm hunting. I wouldn't be much of
a deer hunter if I didn't. But it often doesn't
mean that much to me because I've learned that finding
deer sign isn't just a passive thing for me, because
when it was, it really didn't change the outcomes of
most of my seasons.
Speaker 3 (04:20):
Now let me frame this up a different way.
Speaker 2 (04:22):
Even an awesome concentration of sign around certain spots won't
convince me that I need to hunt there, while in
other areas, if I find even a little bit of
buck sign, I will hang and hunt almost instantly. Why
is this, Well, you have to sort of gauge the
value of the sign. Let me give you an easy one.
(04:42):
Up in the big woods, where I mostly get my
ass kicked, I don't usually find a lot of sign
because the deer density is low, so I really like
finding any rubs up there. And since it's well big woods,
the rubs are generally in the timber, so that's something
I have to parse out and decide whether it matters
or not. So take a random single rub on a
(05:03):
hillside in ten thousand acres of public land. That's a
great find. But does it mean anything to me? Maybe
that depends on which way it's facing, and if that
can tell me where he likely came from when he
made it. Again, pretty simple stuff, But you can decide
if rubs were made in the mornings or the evenings
a lot of times by the way they face.
Speaker 3 (05:23):
And that's a good start.
Speaker 2 (05:24):
But what if that rub also happens to be facing
a crossing, you know, one that I know exists between
two swamps. Now I have a direction of travel tied
to a spot that should further funnel deer travel. That's
kind of like hunting an early season spot that not
only has water but also acorns dropping. The more reasons
they have to be there, the better. Now, what if
(05:45):
that single rub leads me to scout that pinch point
and on the other end of that I find a
good sized scrape with a licking branch hanging over. Now
I have evidence of a buck crossing there, and evidence
that he's not the only one, because you don't usually
have a community scrape without a community of deer. If
you get my drift, the scrape is there because multiple
deer does and bucks are using that crossing, and now
(06:08):
they are getting serious about keeping tabs on one another.
That's not nothing, and that's worth hunting to me. But
I'm not likely to find that if I don't go
look for it. So let's take another example here. Let's
start with that single rub from before. It's cool, but
it's only on an inch thick sapling. That's great, but
anyone from a forky to a booner could have made it.
(06:29):
It's not the kind of sign that is likely to
get a whole lot of folks to carry us saddle
and some sticks in there and see who's hanging around.
But I view that slightly different because I've literally never
seen a buck make a giant rub, but I've seen
a few giants make small rubs. I take all sizes
of rubs seriously because I don't believe they are highly
correlated to the size a buck that made them. Now, granted,
(06:50):
that wooden fence post rub is probably not from a spike,
but most of the rubs aren't giant. They're small, and
overlooking them is a mistake if you just attribute them
to Now, with that rub, that's okay, it's nothing special,
but maybe you can walk it out and find some more,
all generally in the same direction. Then you have a
(07:10):
rub line. And rub lines are a totally different thing
because they generally exist in the woods, and to me,
they generally signal a direction that bucks travel in the cover,
often enough to leave a viable trail of breadcrumbs for
me to follow. Those rubs will exist between two general locations,
betting and food. There is nothing we want to find
(07:32):
more than the spots in the cover where bucks move
from point A to B, because when you find that,
you find your opportunity to kill those deer.
Speaker 3 (07:43):
That's it.
Speaker 2 (07:44):
And while we can try to solve this academically by
using our brains to decide where they sleep and where
they fill their bellies, hard undeniable evidence will always trump
what we think. Now you can predict to some degree
(08:07):
of certainty where they are going in the mornings or
the evenings, although I often find that it's not both.
I feel like deer in a lot of places have
routes that are more of a circuit than a straight line.
I actually think when you start to think about their
movement this way, you realize how much more important boots
on the ground scouting is especially in season boots on
(08:28):
the ground scouting, and that kills big Bucks. But to
further muddy the waters, I absolutely believe that they're not straight.
Line routes are heavily influenced by conditions, primarily the wind.
So what you read off a smoking fresh rub line
might be his travel route only when the wind is
blowing from the west or the north or whatever. But
(08:50):
it's still really valuable information. You can make your best
guess and then go there to sit, and what they
show you will tell you an awful lot about how
good you are at interpreting sign This is part of
the equation that we really under sell, but it's maybe
the most important thing you can do if you want
to get better at killing big Bucks. You have to
(09:10):
understand that the solution to your problems will be found
mostly internally and not externally. You can listen to me
Yam or On or Mark talk NonStop about a property
you'll never hunt and how we figured it out, and
that's great, But what you do on your ground is
what matters the most. How you scout and how you
hunt it, and how you interpret that data to make
(09:32):
future decisions.
Speaker 3 (09:33):
That's how you level up.
Speaker 2 (09:35):
The easiest way to do this right now is through
scouting bucks sign, but only if you're going to take
action with it. Like I said before, it's not enough
to just get excited that you see sign popping up
in places where you usually already hunt, because that will
get you predictable results, which often aren't multiple seasons of
big taxidermy bills. Now, I realize this is counterintuitive to
(09:57):
most your hunting advice, which would just have you stay
out of the woods right now. I believe the opposite.
I believe the sign you find right now is the
ticket to hire odds hunts throughout the pre rut and
to a lesser extent, the rut. The reason I say
this is because the sign you find right now, if
it's the right stuff, can put you exactly where a
(10:19):
big one will move on October twenty seventh when a
cold front hits, but it might not matter when he's
chasing a hot dough on the neighbor's place a week
or two after that. The more years that go by,
the more I come to value the last week of
October the most. That's because where I live, that's the
pre rut, just through and through, you know, down south
(10:40):
and the southeast. The pre rut might be way later,
but the same rules apply. Now, let's take a little
different look at buck sign right now. You know what
other type of sign I really really like? A concentration
of sign in a small area in the cover. No shit,
you might say, and you'd be right. But here's why.
(11:01):
Where I generally hunt, there's a lot of hunting pressure.
By the middle of October. That pressure has influenced your
behavior more than the weather the moonface ever could. It's
the driving factor behind most daylight movement in my opinion.
So when I sneak through the woods with a stand
and sticks on my back and I see a whole
bunch of rubs or smaller scrapes in a not very
(11:22):
big area, say something less than an acre, I usually
don't go any farther because that's not from one buck.
It's usually a staging area, and it definitely signals to
me that the local bucks feel pretty confident being in
that area. I think bucks are going to make rubs
and scrapes when they're on their feet at certain times
of the season, regardless of where they are, and I
(11:43):
think when they view it as a not so safe
endeavor to head out to the pitcornfields an hour before
dark because there's always hunters there. They just kind of
sit tight but still do their thing. It honestly feels
a little like when you watch a UFC event and
they show some of the fighters backstage in their dressing room.
You know, obviously their nerves are on fire and they
are putting on a show for the cameras and all that,
(12:05):
but they're constantly moving, constantly shadow boxing. There's just this
air of pent up aggression, if you will. I think
bucks in mid October are sort of in a similar mindset.
And I also think a common mistake hunters make when
they find this kind of buck sign concentration is that
it's more of a betting area than a staging area.
I'm sure that's possible, but I tend to think the
(12:28):
more rubs and scrapes you find in one area, the
more likely it is that multiple Bucks are using this area.
You know, betting areas can also have multiple Bucks in them,
and you can definitely find them through sign, but it's
just a different vibe and I don't really even know
how to describe it very well. I just know that
when I find a spot that has a shitload of random,
you know, rubs and some scrapes, and I hunt it
(12:50):
well enough to not make my presence known going in.
I usually have really positive results. Again, this depends somewhat
on deer density, because the more deer you have, generally,
the more Buck signed there will be generally, But a
real concentration says something different because on properties that have
a lot of pressure, that means something. Now, it's also
(13:12):
no secret that when I usually find these types of areas,
it's after sneaking in to look at a few question
mark spots. It's not usually the kind of thing where
they appear in areas that I've already been hunting. Now,
maybe that's part psychological. You know, where I value new
to me sign over sign that gradually appears. You know,
like how you can't really tell how fat your dog is,
but someone who doesn't see your dog for long periods
(13:34):
of time can instantly see that it has chubbed way up.
So what does all this mean? It means that buck
sign is relative to a whole ton of variables. It's
up to you to not only find the sign, but
to decide what exactly it means To you now. While
it might mean that it just reinforces the plan you've
had for your season all along, be careful with.
Speaker 3 (13:54):
That line of thinking.
Speaker 2 (13:55):
It's easy to see what we want to see. What
you really want to find is the buck sign that
makes you ask a question, why is this rub here now?
Or why is this car hood size scrape here now?
And they need to ask yourself what should you do
about it? How do you use that discovery to actually
(14:15):
kill a buck in the next couple of days or
next week when a cold front hits and you could
go sit on the field edge on a setup that's
been there since August and you probably will see some deer,
maybe even a few bucks. Or you could slip into
that area with a new sign when the temperature drops
and the north wind blows, and you can try to
answer the question of just who made that sign? I
(14:36):
guess that leads me to my final point on all this.
You won't learn what that rub line means, or that
community scrape, or that real concentration of sign, know what
it signifies until you put something into action around it.
This isn't just time to drop a camera and cross
your fingers. It's time to go looking because what you
find this week is where you might kill a big
one next week. A lot of hunters will say that
(14:58):
it's not worth it to trump around in the woods
right now to find that sign, but I absolutely disagree
with that. I think to set up for killing a
big one doesn't get much better than finding the right
buck clues right now to get on them before the
rut really breaks loose. In fact, other than patterning one
for an early opener, I think consistency wise, this is
(15:19):
the highest likelihood setup for most hunters. I think it's
more reliable than a rut hunt on a pinch point, honestly,
and I don't say that lightly. Soak it out there,
look around. If you find some sign worth hunting, figure
out how to hunt it, or take a look at
the next ten day forecast or whatever, and make a
plan to hunt it when the conditions coalesce into something favorable.
(15:41):
Good luck, and don't forget to come back next week
because I'm going to talk about shot opportunities, when to
take them, whether you should stop a buck, and all
that jazz.
Speaker 3 (15:51):
That's it for this week. I'm Tony Peterson.
Speaker 2 (15:53):
This has been the Wire to Hunt Foundation's podcast, which
is brought to you by first Light. I know you
guys are in the thicket it right now. You're thinking
about dear NonStop. Maybe you just got back from an
l cont. Maybe you're heading out west for a rifle
hunt something like that. If you need more content to
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you want to read a new recipe on how to
(16:14):
cook something you whack last week.
Speaker 3 (16:16):
I don't know whatever.
Speaker 2 (16:17):
The medeater dot com has new content going up every
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network now, a lot of great articles going up with
news stories from the outdoors as well as just how
to recipes whatever.
Speaker 3 (16:35):
It's all there at the mediator.
Speaker 2 (16:36):
Dot com and as always, thank you so much for
your support. We truly appreciate it here, so thank you
for that
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 how to
find and more importantly interpret big Bucks Sign in the
days leading up to the pre run. The thing about
Bucks sign is that it seems pretty straightforward. Bucks go
out and they make some scrapes, and they make some rubs.
(00:40):
You go find them, you sit over them, and you
shoot the rightful creators of that sign, right and the lungs,
and then you celebrate simple right. Well, if it were,
finding sign would be the equivalent of snapping the last
piece of the puzzle in place, but it's often not.
It is a huge step in the right direction, but
you need to know what the sign really means and
how you can use it to make better decisions.
Speaker 3 (00:57):
That's what I'm going to talk about right now.
Speaker 2 (01:03):
There are a lot of memes out there about how
people aren't good at picking up the signals of other
people who might possibly become potential partners. If you get
my drift, I can speak on this from the side
of a clueless man, and it's not impossible for me
to relate to some dude who finds himself well, I
don't know, fishing or mowing the lawn or something, and
suddenly realizing that an old coworker who he had a
(01:23):
great relationship with was actually flirting super heavy, you know,
during his time at the company, maybe during a Christmas party,
and he missed every signal, like he was not only blind,
but deaf and possibly just a little bit slow. In
other cognitive ways, we often see what we expect to see,
and that helps us deal with life. If we figure
something is going to go wrong with the car at
(01:43):
some point because it has over one hundred thousand miles
on it, well, guess what something's going to go wrong
with it? And when it does, we can say to ourselves,
I knew it. I just knew it, and then we
can bitch about it and feel a little better about
living under this NonStop rain cloud that follows us around
everywhere like a duckling imprinted on us after hatching. In life,
it's not only about recognizing the signs, but reacting to
(02:05):
them in the right way. In the deer woods, the
sign literally is deer sign, and how we react to
it will poortend our big buck futures. Let me tell
you how this usually goes, or at least how it
goes for an awful lot of hunters. They start out
in the early season and there's very little sign, at
least when it comes to rubs and scrapes. As the
season progresses, they go back to the box blind on
(02:27):
the food plot, or they go to one of their
favorite ladder stands, and they start to see a few
more rubs show up, maybe a few more scrapes. The
field edge they like to sit gets picked and generally
has less food to offer them previously, but it also
has far more sign on the edge. So how do
they interpret that? Well, they think the bucks are getting
more active. And since they are getting more active and
clearly visiting this spot on this very food source or
(02:49):
this very logging road that I take to my favorite stand,
my comfort stand, if you will, then that is evidence
that I should one hundred percent keep hunting. Here because
now the bucks are coming to me. We advance that
line of thinking a little further by using it to
justify hunting areas that might be totally burned out, especially
during the rut.
Speaker 3 (03:08):
But what does that sign really mean?
Speaker 2 (03:10):
Well, it definitely means that some bucks are using that
area at some point, and some of those bucks, hell,
probably all of them, have been laying down some sign. Now,
if you are hunting a load deer density area, all
this might matter more than if you're hunting a spot
that has seventy five dear per square mile. But still,
what does it really mean to you? If deer laying
down a lot of sign around a destination food source,
(03:32):
we usually know what that means, and if not, we
can sit that food source in an evening or two
and see exactly what's going on. They are either there
in the daylight or not. And the more pressure in
your area, which includes the pressure you put on that
exact food source, the more likely it is that that
sign is appearing in the middle of the night. Pretty
simple stuff, right, and yet we often kind of look
(03:54):
past it so we can hunt in a way that
is really comfortable for us.
Speaker 3 (03:58):
But does that usually.
Speaker 2 (03:58):
Result in mature bucks dying from our actions. Not really,
and listen, I love seeing rubs and scrapes when I'm hunting,
no matter where I'm hunting. I wouldn't be much of
a deer hunter if I didn't. But it often doesn't
mean that much to me because I've learned that finding
deer sign isn't just a passive thing for me, because
when it was, it really didn't change the outcomes of
most of my seasons.
Speaker 3 (04:20):
Now let me frame this up a different way.
Speaker 2 (04:22):
Even an awesome concentration of sign around certain spots won't
convince me that I need to hunt there, while in
other areas, if I find even a little bit of
buck sign, I will hang and hunt almost instantly. Why
is this, Well, you have to sort of gauge the
value of the sign. Let me give you an easy one.
(04:42):
Up in the big woods, where I mostly get my
ass kicked, I don't usually find a lot of sign
because the deer density is low, so I really like
finding any rubs up there. And since it's well big woods,
the rubs are generally in the timber, so that's something
I have to parse out and decide whether it matters
or not. So take a random single rub on a
(05:03):
hillside in ten thousand acres of public land. That's a
great find. But does it mean anything to me? Maybe
that depends on which way it's facing, and if that
can tell me where he likely came from when he
made it. Again, pretty simple stuff, But you can decide
if rubs were made in the mornings or the evenings
a lot of times by the way they face.
Speaker 3 (05:23):
And that's a good start.
Speaker 2 (05:24):
But what if that rub also happens to be facing
a crossing, you know, one that I know exists between
two swamps. Now I have a direction of travel tied
to a spot that should further funnel deer travel. That's
kind of like hunting an early season spot that not
only has water but also acorns dropping. The more reasons
they have to be there, the better. Now, what if
(05:45):
that single rub leads me to scout that pinch point
and on the other end of that I find a
good sized scrape with a licking branch hanging over. Now
I have evidence of a buck crossing there, and evidence
that he's not the only one, because you don't usually
have a community scrape without a community of deer. If
you get my drift, the scrape is there because multiple
deer does and bucks are using that crossing, and now
(06:08):
they are getting serious about keeping tabs on one another.
That's not nothing, and that's worth hunting to me. But
I'm not likely to find that if I don't go
look for it. So let's take another example here. Let's
start with that single rub from before. It's cool, but
it's only on an inch thick sapling. That's great, but
anyone from a forky to a booner could have made it.
(06:29):
It's not the kind of sign that is likely to
get a whole lot of folks to carry us saddle
and some sticks in there and see who's hanging around.
But I view that slightly different because I've literally never
seen a buck make a giant rub, but I've seen
a few giants make small rubs. I take all sizes
of rubs seriously because I don't believe they are highly
correlated to the size a buck that made them. Now, granted,
(06:50):
that wooden fence post rub is probably not from a spike,
but most of the rubs aren't giant. They're small, and
overlooking them is a mistake if you just attribute them
to Now, with that rub, that's okay, it's nothing special,
but maybe you can walk it out and find some more,
all generally in the same direction. Then you have a
(07:10):
rub line. And rub lines are a totally different thing
because they generally exist in the woods, and to me,
they generally signal a direction that bucks travel in the cover,
often enough to leave a viable trail of breadcrumbs for
me to follow. Those rubs will exist between two general locations,
betting and food. There is nothing we want to find
(07:32):
more than the spots in the cover where bucks move
from point A to B, because when you find that,
you find your opportunity to kill those deer.
Speaker 3 (07:43):
That's it.
Speaker 2 (07:44):
And while we can try to solve this academically by
using our brains to decide where they sleep and where
they fill their bellies, hard undeniable evidence will always trump
what we think. Now you can predict to some degree
(08:07):
of certainty where they are going in the mornings or
the evenings, although I often find that it's not both.
I feel like deer in a lot of places have
routes that are more of a circuit than a straight line.
I actually think when you start to think about their
movement this way, you realize how much more important boots
on the ground scouting is especially in season boots on
(08:28):
the ground scouting, and that kills big Bucks. But to
further muddy the waters, I absolutely believe that they're not straight.
Line routes are heavily influenced by conditions, primarily the wind.
So what you read off a smoking fresh rub line
might be his travel route only when the wind is
blowing from the west or the north or whatever. But
(08:50):
it's still really valuable information. You can make your best
guess and then go there to sit, and what they
show you will tell you an awful lot about how
good you are at interpreting sign This is part of
the equation that we really under sell, but it's maybe
the most important thing you can do if you want
to get better at killing big Bucks. You have to
(09:10):
understand that the solution to your problems will be found
mostly internally and not externally. You can listen to me
Yam or On or Mark talk NonStop about a property
you'll never hunt and how we figured it out, and
that's great, But what you do on your ground is
what matters the most. How you scout and how you
hunt it, and how you interpret that data to make
(09:32):
future decisions.
Speaker 3 (09:33):
That's how you level up.
Speaker 2 (09:35):
The easiest way to do this right now is through
scouting bucks sign, but only if you're going to take
action with it. Like I said before, it's not enough
to just get excited that you see sign popping up
in places where you usually already hunt, because that will
get you predictable results, which often aren't multiple seasons of
big taxidermy bills. Now, I realize this is counterintuitive to
(09:57):
most your hunting advice, which would just have you stay
out of the woods right now. I believe the opposite.
I believe the sign you find right now is the
ticket to hire odds hunts throughout the pre rut and
to a lesser extent, the rut. The reason I say
this is because the sign you find right now, if
it's the right stuff, can put you exactly where a
(10:19):
big one will move on October twenty seventh when a
cold front hits, but it might not matter when he's
chasing a hot dough on the neighbor's place a week
or two after that. The more years that go by,
the more I come to value the last week of
October the most. That's because where I live, that's the
pre rut, just through and through, you know, down south
(10:40):
and the southeast. The pre rut might be way later,
but the same rules apply. Now, let's take a little
different look at buck sign right now. You know what
other type of sign I really really like? A concentration
of sign in a small area in the cover. No shit,
you might say, and you'd be right. But here's why.
(11:01):
Where I generally hunt, there's a lot of hunting pressure.
By the middle of October. That pressure has influenced your
behavior more than the weather the moonface ever could. It's
the driving factor behind most daylight movement in my opinion.
So when I sneak through the woods with a stand
and sticks on my back and I see a whole
bunch of rubs or smaller scrapes in a not very
(11:22):
big area, say something less than an acre, I usually
don't go any farther because that's not from one buck.
It's usually a staging area, and it definitely signals to
me that the local bucks feel pretty confident being in
that area. I think bucks are going to make rubs
and scrapes when they're on their feet at certain times
of the season, regardless of where they are, and I
(11:43):
think when they view it as a not so safe
endeavor to head out to the pitcornfields an hour before
dark because there's always hunters there. They just kind of
sit tight but still do their thing. It honestly feels
a little like when you watch a UFC event and
they show some of the fighters backstage in their dressing room.
You know, obviously their nerves are on fire and they
are putting on a show for the cameras and all that,
(12:05):
but they're constantly moving, constantly shadow boxing. There's just this
air of pent up aggression, if you will. I think
bucks in mid October are sort of in a similar mindset.
And I also think a common mistake hunters make when
they find this kind of buck sign concentration is that
it's more of a betting area than a staging area.
I'm sure that's possible, but I tend to think the
(12:28):
more rubs and scrapes you find in one area, the
more likely it is that multiple Bucks are using this area.
You know, betting areas can also have multiple Bucks in them,
and you can definitely find them through sign, but it's
just a different vibe and I don't really even know
how to describe it very well. I just know that
when I find a spot that has a shitload of random,
you know, rubs and some scrapes, and I hunt it
(12:50):
well enough to not make my presence known going in.
I usually have really positive results. Again, this depends somewhat
on deer density, because the more deer you have, generally,
the more Buck signed there will be generally, But a
real concentration says something different because on properties that have
a lot of pressure, that means something. Now, it's also
(13:12):
no secret that when I usually find these types of areas,
it's after sneaking in to look at a few question
mark spots. It's not usually the kind of thing where
they appear in areas that I've already been hunting. Now,
maybe that's part psychological. You know, where I value new
to me sign over sign that gradually appears. You know,
like how you can't really tell how fat your dog is,
but someone who doesn't see your dog for long periods
(13:34):
of time can instantly see that it has chubbed way up.
So what does all this mean? It means that buck
sign is relative to a whole ton of variables. It's
up to you to not only find the sign, but
to decide what exactly it means To you now. While
it might mean that it just reinforces the plan you've
had for your season all along, be careful with.
Speaker 3 (13:54):
That line of thinking.
Speaker 2 (13:55):
It's easy to see what we want to see. What
you really want to find is the buck sign that
makes you ask a question, why is this rub here now?
Or why is this car hood size scrape here now?
And they need to ask yourself what should you do
about it? How do you use that discovery to actually
(14:15):
kill a buck in the next couple of days or
next week when a cold front hits and you could
go sit on the field edge on a setup that's
been there since August and you probably will see some deer,
maybe even a few bucks. Or you could slip into
that area with a new sign when the temperature drops
and the north wind blows, and you can try to
answer the question of just who made that sign? I
(14:36):
guess that leads me to my final point on all this.
You won't learn what that rub line means, or that
community scrape, or that real concentration of sign, know what
it signifies until you put something into action around it.
This isn't just time to drop a camera and cross
your fingers. It's time to go looking because what you
find this week is where you might kill a big
one next week. A lot of hunters will say that
(14:58):
it's not worth it to trump around in the woods
right now to find that sign, but I absolutely disagree
with that. I think to set up for killing a
big one doesn't get much better than finding the right
buck clues right now to get on them before the
rut really breaks loose. In fact, other than patterning one
for an early opener, I think consistency wise, this is
(15:19):
the highest likelihood setup for most hunters. I think it's
more reliable than a rut hunt on a pinch point, honestly,
and I don't say that lightly. Soak it out there,
look around. If you find some sign worth hunting, figure
out how to hunt it, or take a look at
the next ten day forecast or whatever, and make a
plan to hunt it when the conditions coalesce into something favorable.
(15:41):
Good luck, and don't forget to come back next week
because I'm going to talk about shot opportunities, when to
take them, whether you should stop a buck, and all
that jazz.
Speaker 3 (15:51):
That's it for this week. I'm Tony Peterson.
Speaker 2 (15:53):
This has been the Wire to Hunt Foundation's podcast, which
is brought to you by first Light. I know you
guys are in the thicket it right now. You're thinking
about dear NonStop. Maybe you just got back from an
l cont. Maybe you're heading out west for a rifle
hunt something like that. If you need more content to
just fill up the hours of that drive, or maybe
you want to read a new recipe on how to
(16:14):
cook something you whack last week.
Speaker 3 (16:16):
I don't know whatever.
Speaker 2 (16:17):
The medeater dot com has new content going up every
single day, hunting films, tons of different podcasts on our
network now, a lot of great articles going up with
news stories from the outdoors as well as just how
to recipes whatever.
Speaker 3 (16:35):
It's all there at the mediator.
Speaker 2 (16:36):
Dot com and as always, thank you so much for
your support. We truly appreciate it here, so thank you
for that
Host
Mark Kenyon
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