October 28, 2025 • 16 mins
This week, Tony breaks down why studying deer behavior can help you choose high-odds shot opportunities even when the bucks are cruising and chasing.
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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, everybody, 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 shot selection
in the field when the bucks are chasing and the
things have gotten a little hectic. It's the time of
year that should make your giblets quiver, my friends. And
if it doesn't, might I suggest nine holes of golf
(00:42):
instead of dark to dark sits seventeen feet up a tree.
The cool thing about this time of year is that
if you put in the time, you should get your chance.
But when you do, you don't get your chance. The
question of whether you can make good on it is
very real. There are some things you can do to
ensure a higher odd shot opportunity even when the bucks
seem held bent on covering ground.
Speaker 3 (01:03):
That's what I'm going to talk about right now.
Speaker 2 (01:07):
A couple of weeks ago, I dropped an episode of
this show about dealing with change in the deer woods,
you know how it's inevitable and all that jazz. Change
isn't limited to deer hunting, though, and I often think
about how lucky I was to hit the last real
window of pheasant hunting in southeastern Minnesota before the CRP
went away mostly and the birds kind of just disappeared
off the landscape. Now there are populations of pheasants down
(01:29):
there still, but they are the babysat kind of birds
that probably get pretty lonely at certain times of the year.
When I was in high school, it was a different story,
and we hunted those roosters pretty hard. My dad loved
a peasant hunt, so we often set out to pinch
ditches and walk waterways and small slews and whatever we
could do to see if we could get a rooster
to fly in front of our shotguns. We didn't have
(01:52):
a dog, if you're wondering, because my mom wouldn't allow it,
so I was basically the dog. One thing that I'll
never forget from those days was why my dad shoot.
He grew up in south central Minnesota, right close to
the Iowa border, so he has more pheasants under his
belt than most folks, and he can swing a shotgun
really well. Ingrained into my brain as a core memory
(02:15):
for some reason, probably because it highlighted a lesson I
really needed to learn. Was one time when I watched
a rooster get up right at his feet. Now, he
shouldered his little browning pump twenty gage, which was his
weapon of choice for anything that flew, as well as cottontails,
and then he waited. I had enough time to think
one thought, which was, why the hell isn't he shooting?
(02:39):
Then the report of that shotgun came, and the instant
crumpling of that rooster registered in my brain at the
exact same time, and I realized that he was simply
letting the bird get out far enough to not destroy
it with a load of sixes, and that trigger control
was absolutely amazing to me. I would have been three
shells deep on that rooster by the time that he
shot once, no question about that. So I'd have either
(03:01):
missed because my pattern would have been about baseball size
on the first shot or two, or I would have
a spaghetti fied that poor ring neck as if he'd
been sucked past the event horizon. Of a black hole.
I watched my dad shoot a lot of birds as
a youngster, but I remember that one the most. It
was a picture of confidence in knowing the situation and
understanding his capabilities. I think there are a lot of
(03:25):
lessons in there, most of which live in stark contrast
to bow hunting white tails, the average white tail hunter,
I would venture to guess, doesn't necessarily wait for the
right shot opportunity during certain encounters, and will instead try
to force something to happen, you know, as quickly as possible.
Those certain encounters, you know, they usually involve big bucks.
(03:47):
That forcing of a quick shot that is the result
of buck fever that none of us will admit to having.
But buck fever is just fight or flight panic mode,
which involves your brain letting you know that the thing
you really really really want is about to walk out
of your life forever and you had better shoot right
freaking now or he's going to get away. Buck fever
(04:10):
is a topic for another podcast, but if you're listening
to this, just assume that you might be afflicted by
some variation of it.
Speaker 3 (04:18):
This fall.
Speaker 2 (04:19):
If amature buck happens to walk in on you, and
when he does The best thing you can do is
try to identify your truly best shot opportunity, and you
should take that. But here's the thing. The general advice
on this is to take the first good shot you
can get. But what does that mean. Does it mean
that you should sneak one into his shoulder? Because the
(04:40):
first good shot he gives you is when he is
quartered hard in your direction and walking in Probably not.
What about if he shows up on a rainy late
October morning and surprises you and you realize he's at
thirty five yards and it looks like he's about to
keep going. It's not so simple that the first good
shot is the one we should take, because are we
(05:01):
so sure it's a good shot or are we talking
ourselves into a shot and then using that rule to
justify it. So let's back up. You know how, I'm
always telling you to watch more deer in real life,
you know, and glass them in the summer, Really pay
attention to the non target deer that show up around
your stands and blinds, you know that kind of thing.
Part of the reason for that is it because it
(05:21):
helps you see into the future.
Speaker 3 (05:23):
Sort of.
Speaker 2 (05:24):
Let's use an easy one here and talk about a
river crossing, for example. You know I love river crossings
because they are just awesome if you like to shoot deer,
and I do so. Imagine a twenty yard wide river
that's shallow and rocky. You could wade the whole thing
with you know, knee high boots. A deer can cross
that river just about anywhere. But you're on a spot
(05:45):
where they carved a nice trail on both banks, and
they use it a lot, So you post up over
it and a couple of dose approach the far bank.
They'll often mill around, take a good look, and then
drop down the bank. And once they do, they often
drink cross and then usually go up the far bank
fairly quickly. They don't like to not be able to
(06:05):
see what's in front of them. Now, as soon as
they get all four hoofs on flatter ground above the bank,
they usually take another good look around. In that behavior
is the behavior of all deer, even if they don't
all always do it one percent of the time. Now,
imagine the starts and stops of that dough group and
(06:26):
how they approach that crossing. Then you see a scrapper
six pointer coming. He stops on the far bank too,
to look around. But once he commits to crossing, he
drops down, wades the river, and climbs your bank in
one sequence of events where he doesn't really stop. He's
on the hunt for the ladies that just crossed, while
they were on the hunt for some water and some
(06:46):
food and mostly safe travels to get there. Those non
target deer might show you exactly when a big buck
would stop on his route through the same crossing. Now
that's simple enough, But now imagine a shit crossing with
two or three trails on your side of the river,
so that when they get to the bank they could
choose any one of them. Now things get a little
(07:07):
diceier because you're expecting a fifteen yard shot and it
all of a sudden becomes a thirty yard shot opportunity.
Will they climb the bank and stop for a few
seconds on one trail but not the other? How could
you predict that? Well by watching deer? What deer do
other deer do? My friends? I say that a lot
because I mean it. I think it's important. Now you
(07:28):
might be thinking, what does any of this matter since
I'm going to stop them anyway, Well, I'd say it
matters because if you don't have to stop them.
Speaker 3 (07:36):
You probably shouldn't.
Speaker 2 (07:38):
If you watch any of My Dear episodes, you'll see
me stop all of them pretty much every time. But
that's because I'm filming and I have to make sure
my cameraman can get on them. But it's not always
the best idea because stopping them can break bad in
a lot of different ways. You're giving them an intentional
sound to raise their nerves, and then most likely the
(08:00):
other sound of your bow going off that will change
the dynamic of the encounter. They'll tolerate one morp, maybe more,
but generally one is enough, but a merp followed by
a bow going off is definitely going to spook about
ninety nine point seven percent of the deer out there.
(08:26):
Not having to stop them buys you a slight cushion
on them, not quite wigging out if for some reason
you don't get a shot off, or you do and
you whiff. The other thing that makes murping them something
a little more dangerous is that the second you make
that sound, the clock starts ticking. Between your ears. You
know that buck stops, he looks around, and in your
(08:46):
brain you realize that it's t minus. Not too many
seconds until he's going to walk again. What can make
this far worse is when you murp them and they
instantly look at you with eyes the size of dinner plates,
and you know that he's like, look at that ass
in the tree. Now I need to run away, and
I'm going to very very soon. What do you think
that does to your brain when those precious seconds tick
(09:08):
away and he tenses up and your whole experience boils
down to trying to get that right pin to float
across the right spot on his body. The more you
can anticipate exactly what a buck should do and then
shoot him when he does it, the less likely you
are to put yourself in a situation where you have
to rush it to make something happen. This is easiest
(09:28):
to do in a spot where the deer have to
go through, which is often the best spot to be
this time of year when they start cruising. But what
if you're not in one of those sweet pinch points
or funnels. What if you're not posted up over a
perfect fence crossing where they'll all walk up, stop for
a few seconds, jump it, and then trot on.
Speaker 3 (09:46):
Then again, you just have to pay attention.
Speaker 2 (09:48):
A couple of weeks ago, I slipped into a chunk
of public land in northern Wisconsin that I'm bound and
determined to shoot a good deer in, And I saddled
up over a spot where an old logging road tees
up to two more logging roads. The main logging road
runs perfectly through a maybe fifty or sixty yard wide
swath of higher ground between two marshes. It's a great funnel,
but it's wide enough that depending on how they approach it,
(10:10):
they don't have to follow the logging road, especially through
the tee. They just come off the bluff and cut
corners to get through. And this hadn't really occurred to
me until I watched a dough do exactly that. Where
I had hung my set was where they were most
likely to cut the corner on either side, and I
should have been on the far side of the funnel,
where the whole thing actually next down. Now that dough
wasn't a one hundred and thirty five inch swamp bruiser,
(10:32):
but she showed me what a buck might like to
do there. The next time I'm there, pay attention to
the deer at all times, and believe them when they
show you something. It'll help you select better shot opportunities. Now,
another aspect of this that really relies on way too
many variables.
Speaker 3 (10:49):
To list is when you should draw.
Speaker 2 (10:52):
A lot of people will tell you stories about, you know,
drawing their bow and holding it for like three minutes
before shooting, but those people probably have no idea how
long their encounter really lasted. They also probably could not
draw their bow in their backyard and hold it at
full draw for three minutes, even if you put a
million dollars down and told them they you know, they
can have it all if they can hit one hundred
(11:13):
and eighty second mark. Drawing too early happens because sometimes,
you know, the deer just stop shy of your shooting lane,
or sometimes they just decide to zig when they were
supposed to zeg.
Speaker 3 (11:25):
It happens.
Speaker 2 (11:26):
But drawing too early also happens because we get paranoid
that they'll bust us, so we see them coming and
get that string back to our faces and wait. Over
the last several years, I've started to actually go the
other way with getting drawn. I tend to wait now
until they are right where I can kill them, at
least if I think there is a chance they'll hear
me or see me draw, and they hear and see
(11:47):
me draw a lot if it's calm and they are close. Essentially,
whatever light sound I have to make to get that
bow drawn is my surrogate merp. Now this brings me
back to rushing the whole thing. When they look you
dead in the eyes and signal that they know you
we're there. Almost every single deer out there will give
you more than enough time to aim and shoot in
that situation, but it's really hard to believe that until
(12:08):
you've done it a lot. This is one of the
reasons I try to preach the reality of learning to
hunt deer first before you focus solely on booners. A dead,
calm night where you draw on a dough at twelve
yards knowing full well she's going to bust you is
a different thing than hunting for three years to finally
get that same shot opportunity at one hundred and forty
inch buck on a Halloween.
Speaker 3 (12:29):
What deer do other deer do, guys? And if you.
Speaker 2 (12:33):
Learn when to draw on deer in general during very
specific conditions, you'll be better prepared in the future for
drawing on those different deer in those same specific conditions. Now,
there's one more thing I want to touch on with
this episode, and that is a follow up shot, your
second shot. I can look around my basement right now
and see a few shoulder mounts of good bucks that
(12:55):
I missed with the first shot and killed with my second.
I can also think of quite a few that I'm
missed that I tried to get a second shot on
but didn't, and those sting a lot.
Speaker 3 (13:05):
Now.
Speaker 2 (13:05):
It's not very common, but sometimes you get a redemption chance,
and sometimes you even get two of them if you
need them. In my experience, if I'm three arrows deep
in my quiver, i might as well throw my bow
at them and hope it knocks them out, because I'm
not likely to suddenly get my shit together and make
a good shot. But it happens, I'd rather have the
chance than not anyway. This is a situation that reminds
(13:26):
me of a common sentiment around owning a self defense
gun of some sort, where the idea is that you
probably won't ever need it, but if you do, it
had better be handy and you had better know how
to use it. I'm a pretty big fan of the
old Second Amendment and a big fan of that general advice.
So with a follow up bow shot, your second arrow
(13:47):
had better be handy or you might not get to
use it. Let's look at this from something that has
happened to me a few times, which is that I
get into stand and I hang my packup so it's accessible.
Speaker 3 (13:57):
When I'm seated.
Speaker 2 (13:59):
I take my quick off every time, and I strap
it to my pack so that it's easy to reach.
That's all smart and great and all that shit, but
I almost always prefer to stand up when a buck
walks in that I want to shoot.
Speaker 3 (14:10):
Why you might ask.
Speaker 2 (14:12):
Well, because as much as I'd like to be able
to predict dear behavior, they often don't do what I expect.
If I'm seated and anticipating a perfect shot on my
left side because I'm a right handed shooter, and suddenly
the buck walks behind my tree to my off side,
now I need to stand up to spin around. That's
big movement stuff when they are close, and I don't
like that. So I generally stand ahead of time. But
(14:35):
if I'm all stood up and I miss for some reason,
I now have to bend over and wrestle out an
arrow from the height of my knees. And that's a
big movement after a noisy miss. Not ideal. Now, you
could hunt for five seasons and never have that happen,
but when it does, it's really not ideal. You want
easy access to your arrows in the moment of truth
because you know that if you do miss a good
(14:57):
one but he sticks around, you're going to be in
panic mode. Sure it helps if it's super windy or
there is something else to distract them, like a hot dough,
but in your brain you're going to be redlining real hard,
and anything that keeps you from easily grabbing a follow
up arrow and getting it knocked quickly will only exacerbate
that panic. Now, you probably won't need a second arrow
(15:18):
on any given encounter with a toad, but on one
eventually you will. One of my favorite mounts is a
one hundred and fifty inch velvet buck that I whiffed
on at twenty yards only to double lung at thirty five.
And I can tell you that it wasn't a relaxing
situation to go through, even if it really worked out
for me.
Speaker 3 (15:35):
Figure out how to.
Speaker 2 (15:36):
Anticipate what the buck should do around your stands. Get
yourself in a position to shoot them naturally if at
all possible, and then understand how to grab another arrow
quickly and redeem yourself if the opportunity arises.
Speaker 3 (15:50):
Do that.
Speaker 2 (15:51):
Come back next week because I'm going to talk about
volume hunts in the rut and why if this might
be the hardest strategy to implement but also the best
strategy if you want to kill a really big one
in the next couple of weeks.
Speaker 3 (16:03):
That's it for this episode. I'm Tony Peterson.
Speaker 2 (16:05):
This has been the Wired to Hunt Foundation's podcast, which
has brought to you by First Light. I want to
thank you so much for your support for listening to
this podcast, for listening to our new back forty series
with Jake, for listening to Mark's episodes every week, or
maybe checking out Clay's Bear, Grease Sprents, This Country Life, whatever.
We truly appreciate your support. If you want more content,
(16:26):
and I know you do, you can go to the
mediater dot com, where we drop new films, new podcasts,
new articles every single day of the year. Just about
There's always new content going up there, a lot of
great stuff. Go check it out at the mediator dot
com and thank you once again
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 Foundation's podcast,
which is brought to you by First Light. I'm your host,
Tony Peterson, and today's episode is all about shot selection
in the field when the bucks are chasing and the
things have gotten a little hectic. It's the time of
year that should make your giblets quiver, my friends. And
if it doesn't, might I suggest nine holes of golf
(00:42):
instead of dark to dark sits seventeen feet up a tree.
The cool thing about this time of year is that
if you put in the time, you should get your chance.
But when you do, you don't get your chance. The
question of whether you can make good on it is
very real. There are some things you can do to
ensure a higher odd shot opportunity even when the bucks
seem held bent on covering ground.
Speaker 3 (01:03):
That's what I'm going to talk about right now.
Speaker 2 (01:07):
A couple of weeks ago, I dropped an episode of
this show about dealing with change in the deer woods,
you know how it's inevitable and all that jazz. Change
isn't limited to deer hunting, though, and I often think
about how lucky I was to hit the last real
window of pheasant hunting in southeastern Minnesota before the CRP
went away mostly and the birds kind of just disappeared
off the landscape. Now there are populations of pheasants down
(01:29):
there still, but they are the babysat kind of birds
that probably get pretty lonely at certain times of the year.
When I was in high school, it was a different story,
and we hunted those roosters pretty hard. My dad loved
a peasant hunt, so we often set out to pinch
ditches and walk waterways and small slews and whatever we
could do to see if we could get a rooster
to fly in front of our shotguns. We didn't have
(01:52):
a dog, if you're wondering, because my mom wouldn't allow it,
so I was basically the dog. One thing that I'll
never forget from those days was why my dad shoot.
He grew up in south central Minnesota, right close to
the Iowa border, so he has more pheasants under his
belt than most folks, and he can swing a shotgun
really well. Ingrained into my brain as a core memory
(02:15):
for some reason, probably because it highlighted a lesson I
really needed to learn. Was one time when I watched
a rooster get up right at his feet. Now, he
shouldered his little browning pump twenty gage, which was his
weapon of choice for anything that flew, as well as cottontails,
and then he waited. I had enough time to think
one thought, which was, why the hell isn't he shooting?
(02:39):
Then the report of that shotgun came, and the instant
crumpling of that rooster registered in my brain at the
exact same time, and I realized that he was simply
letting the bird get out far enough to not destroy
it with a load of sixes, and that trigger control
was absolutely amazing to me. I would have been three
shells deep on that rooster by the time that he
shot once, no question about that. So I'd have either
(03:01):
missed because my pattern would have been about baseball size
on the first shot or two, or I would have
a spaghetti fied that poor ring neck as if he'd
been sucked past the event horizon. Of a black hole.
I watched my dad shoot a lot of birds as
a youngster, but I remember that one the most. It
was a picture of confidence in knowing the situation and
understanding his capabilities. I think there are a lot of
(03:25):
lessons in there, most of which live in stark contrast
to bow hunting white tails, the average white tail hunter,
I would venture to guess, doesn't necessarily wait for the
right shot opportunity during certain encounters, and will instead try
to force something to happen, you know, as quickly as possible.
Those certain encounters, you know, they usually involve big bucks.
(03:47):
That forcing of a quick shot that is the result
of buck fever that none of us will admit to having.
But buck fever is just fight or flight panic mode,
which involves your brain letting you know that the thing
you really really really want is about to walk out
of your life forever and you had better shoot right
freaking now or he's going to get away. Buck fever
(04:10):
is a topic for another podcast, but if you're listening
to this, just assume that you might be afflicted by
some variation of it.
Speaker 3 (04:18):
This fall.
Speaker 2 (04:19):
If amature buck happens to walk in on you, and
when he does The best thing you can do is
try to identify your truly best shot opportunity, and you
should take that. But here's the thing. The general advice
on this is to take the first good shot you
can get. But what does that mean. Does it mean
that you should sneak one into his shoulder? Because the
(04:40):
first good shot he gives you is when he is
quartered hard in your direction and walking in Probably not.
What about if he shows up on a rainy late
October morning and surprises you and you realize he's at
thirty five yards and it looks like he's about to
keep going. It's not so simple that the first good
shot is the one we should take, because are we
(05:01):
so sure it's a good shot or are we talking
ourselves into a shot and then using that rule to
justify it. So let's back up. You know how, I'm
always telling you to watch more deer in real life,
you know, and glass them in the summer, Really pay
attention to the non target deer that show up around
your stands and blinds, you know that kind of thing.
Part of the reason for that is it because it
(05:21):
helps you see into the future.
Speaker 3 (05:23):
Sort of.
Speaker 2 (05:24):
Let's use an easy one here and talk about a
river crossing, for example. You know I love river crossings
because they are just awesome if you like to shoot deer,
and I do so. Imagine a twenty yard wide river
that's shallow and rocky. You could wade the whole thing
with you know, knee high boots. A deer can cross
that river just about anywhere. But you're on a spot
(05:45):
where they carved a nice trail on both banks, and
they use it a lot, So you post up over
it and a couple of dose approach the far bank.
They'll often mill around, take a good look, and then
drop down the bank. And once they do, they often
drink cross and then usually go up the far bank
fairly quickly. They don't like to not be able to
(06:05):
see what's in front of them. Now, as soon as
they get all four hoofs on flatter ground above the bank,
they usually take another good look around. In that behavior
is the behavior of all deer, even if they don't
all always do it one percent of the time. Now,
imagine the starts and stops of that dough group and
(06:26):
how they approach that crossing. Then you see a scrapper
six pointer coming. He stops on the far bank too,
to look around. But once he commits to crossing, he
drops down, wades the river, and climbs your bank in
one sequence of events where he doesn't really stop. He's
on the hunt for the ladies that just crossed, while
they were on the hunt for some water and some
(06:46):
food and mostly safe travels to get there. Those non
target deer might show you exactly when a big buck
would stop on his route through the same crossing. Now
that's simple enough, But now imagine a shit crossing with
two or three trails on your side of the river,
so that when they get to the bank they could
choose any one of them. Now things get a little
(07:07):
diceier because you're expecting a fifteen yard shot and it
all of a sudden becomes a thirty yard shot opportunity.
Will they climb the bank and stop for a few
seconds on one trail but not the other? How could
you predict that? Well by watching deer? What deer do
other deer do? My friends? I say that a lot
because I mean it. I think it's important. Now you
(07:28):
might be thinking, what does any of this matter since
I'm going to stop them anyway, Well, I'd say it
matters because if you don't have to stop them.
Speaker 3 (07:36):
You probably shouldn't.
Speaker 2 (07:38):
If you watch any of My Dear episodes, you'll see
me stop all of them pretty much every time. But
that's because I'm filming and I have to make sure
my cameraman can get on them. But it's not always
the best idea because stopping them can break bad in
a lot of different ways. You're giving them an intentional
sound to raise their nerves, and then most likely the
(08:00):
other sound of your bow going off that will change
the dynamic of the encounter. They'll tolerate one morp, maybe more,
but generally one is enough, but a merp followed by
a bow going off is definitely going to spook about
ninety nine point seven percent of the deer out there.
(08:26):
Not having to stop them buys you a slight cushion
on them, not quite wigging out if for some reason
you don't get a shot off, or you do and
you whiff. The other thing that makes murping them something
a little more dangerous is that the second you make
that sound, the clock starts ticking. Between your ears. You
know that buck stops, he looks around, and in your
(08:46):
brain you realize that it's t minus. Not too many
seconds until he's going to walk again. What can make
this far worse is when you murp them and they
instantly look at you with eyes the size of dinner plates,
and you know that he's like, look at that ass
in the tree. Now I need to run away, and
I'm going to very very soon. What do you think
that does to your brain when those precious seconds tick
(09:08):
away and he tenses up and your whole experience boils
down to trying to get that right pin to float
across the right spot on his body. The more you
can anticipate exactly what a buck should do and then
shoot him when he does it, the less likely you
are to put yourself in a situation where you have
to rush it to make something happen. This is easiest
(09:28):
to do in a spot where the deer have to
go through, which is often the best spot to be
this time of year when they start cruising. But what
if you're not in one of those sweet pinch points
or funnels. What if you're not posted up over a
perfect fence crossing where they'll all walk up, stop for
a few seconds, jump it, and then trot on.
Speaker 3 (09:46):
Then again, you just have to pay attention.
Speaker 2 (09:48):
A couple of weeks ago, I slipped into a chunk
of public land in northern Wisconsin that I'm bound and
determined to shoot a good deer in, And I saddled
up over a spot where an old logging road tees
up to two more logging roads. The main logging road
runs perfectly through a maybe fifty or sixty yard wide
swath of higher ground between two marshes. It's a great funnel,
but it's wide enough that depending on how they approach it,
(10:10):
they don't have to follow the logging road, especially through
the tee. They just come off the bluff and cut
corners to get through. And this hadn't really occurred to
me until I watched a dough do exactly that. Where
I had hung my set was where they were most
likely to cut the corner on either side, and I
should have been on the far side of the funnel,
where the whole thing actually next down. Now that dough
wasn't a one hundred and thirty five inch swamp bruiser,
(10:32):
but she showed me what a buck might like to
do there. The next time I'm there, pay attention to
the deer at all times, and believe them when they
show you something. It'll help you select better shot opportunities. Now,
another aspect of this that really relies on way too
many variables.
Speaker 3 (10:49):
To list is when you should draw.
Speaker 2 (10:52):
A lot of people will tell you stories about, you know,
drawing their bow and holding it for like three minutes
before shooting, but those people probably have no idea how
long their encounter really lasted. They also probably could not
draw their bow in their backyard and hold it at
full draw for three minutes, even if you put a
million dollars down and told them they you know, they
can have it all if they can hit one hundred
(11:13):
and eighty second mark. Drawing too early happens because sometimes,
you know, the deer just stop shy of your shooting lane,
or sometimes they just decide to zig when they were
supposed to zeg.
Speaker 3 (11:25):
It happens.
Speaker 2 (11:26):
But drawing too early also happens because we get paranoid
that they'll bust us, so we see them coming and
get that string back to our faces and wait. Over
the last several years, I've started to actually go the
other way with getting drawn. I tend to wait now
until they are right where I can kill them, at
least if I think there is a chance they'll hear
me or see me draw, and they hear and see
(11:47):
me draw a lot if it's calm and they are close. Essentially,
whatever light sound I have to make to get that
bow drawn is my surrogate merp. Now this brings me
back to rushing the whole thing. When they look you
dead in the eyes and signal that they know you
we're there. Almost every single deer out there will give
you more than enough time to aim and shoot in
that situation, but it's really hard to believe that until
(12:08):
you've done it a lot. This is one of the
reasons I try to preach the reality of learning to
hunt deer first before you focus solely on booners. A dead,
calm night where you draw on a dough at twelve
yards knowing full well she's going to bust you is
a different thing than hunting for three years to finally
get that same shot opportunity at one hundred and forty
inch buck on a Halloween.
Speaker 3 (12:29):
What deer do other deer do, guys? And if you.
Speaker 2 (12:33):
Learn when to draw on deer in general during very
specific conditions, you'll be better prepared in the future for
drawing on those different deer in those same specific conditions. Now,
there's one more thing I want to touch on with
this episode, and that is a follow up shot, your
second shot. I can look around my basement right now
and see a few shoulder mounts of good bucks that
(12:55):
I missed with the first shot and killed with my second.
I can also think of quite a few that I'm
missed that I tried to get a second shot on
but didn't, and those sting a lot.
Speaker 3 (13:05):
Now.
Speaker 2 (13:05):
It's not very common, but sometimes you get a redemption chance,
and sometimes you even get two of them if you
need them. In my experience, if I'm three arrows deep
in my quiver, i might as well throw my bow
at them and hope it knocks them out, because I'm
not likely to suddenly get my shit together and make
a good shot. But it happens, I'd rather have the
chance than not anyway. This is a situation that reminds
(13:26):
me of a common sentiment around owning a self defense
gun of some sort, where the idea is that you
probably won't ever need it, but if you do, it
had better be handy and you had better know how
to use it. I'm a pretty big fan of the
old Second Amendment and a big fan of that general advice.
So with a follow up bow shot, your second arrow
(13:47):
had better be handy or you might not get to
use it. Let's look at this from something that has
happened to me a few times, which is that I
get into stand and I hang my packup so it's accessible.
Speaker 3 (13:57):
When I'm seated.
Speaker 2 (13:59):
I take my quick off every time, and I strap
it to my pack so that it's easy to reach.
That's all smart and great and all that shit, but
I almost always prefer to stand up when a buck
walks in that I want to shoot.
Speaker 3 (14:10):
Why you might ask.
Speaker 2 (14:12):
Well, because as much as I'd like to be able
to predict dear behavior, they often don't do what I expect.
If I'm seated and anticipating a perfect shot on my
left side because I'm a right handed shooter, and suddenly
the buck walks behind my tree to my off side,
now I need to stand up to spin around. That's
big movement stuff when they are close, and I don't
like that. So I generally stand ahead of time. But
(14:35):
if I'm all stood up and I miss for some reason,
I now have to bend over and wrestle out an
arrow from the height of my knees. And that's a
big movement after a noisy miss. Not ideal. Now, you
could hunt for five seasons and never have that happen,
but when it does, it's really not ideal. You want
easy access to your arrows in the moment of truth
because you know that if you do miss a good
(14:57):
one but he sticks around, you're going to be in
panic mode. Sure it helps if it's super windy or
there is something else to distract them, like a hot dough,
but in your brain you're going to be redlining real hard,
and anything that keeps you from easily grabbing a follow
up arrow and getting it knocked quickly will only exacerbate
that panic. Now, you probably won't need a second arrow
(15:18):
on any given encounter with a toad, but on one
eventually you will. One of my favorite mounts is a
one hundred and fifty inch velvet buck that I whiffed
on at twenty yards only to double lung at thirty five.
And I can tell you that it wasn't a relaxing
situation to go through, even if it really worked out
for me.
Speaker 3 (15:35):
Figure out how to.
Speaker 2 (15:36):
Anticipate what the buck should do around your stands. Get
yourself in a position to shoot them naturally if at
all possible, and then understand how to grab another arrow
quickly and redeem yourself if the opportunity arises.
Speaker 3 (15:50):
Do that.
Speaker 2 (15:51):
Come back next week because I'm going to talk about
volume hunts in the rut and why if this might
be the hardest strategy to implement but also the best
strategy if you want to kill a really big one
in the next couple of weeks.
Speaker 3 (16:03):
That's it for this episode. I'm Tony Peterson.
Speaker 2 (16:05):
This has been the Wired to Hunt Foundation's podcast, which
has brought to you by First Light. I want to
thank you so much for your support for listening to
this podcast, for listening to our new back forty series
with Jake, for listening to Mark's episodes every week, or
maybe checking out Clay's Bear, Grease Sprents, This Country Life, whatever.
We truly appreciate your support. If you want more content,
(16:26):
and I know you do, you can go to the
mediater dot com, where we drop new films, new podcasts,
new articles every single day of the year. Just about
There's always new content going up there, a lot of
great stuff. Go check it out at the mediator dot
com and thank you once again
Host
Mark Kenyon
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