Ep. 985: Foundations - A Different Take on Late-Season Whitetail Hunting

This week, Tony explains his approach for December deer this year, and how he's looking at his late-season hunts in a different light.

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Episode Transcript

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 Wire to Hunt Foundation's podcast,
which is brought to you by First Light.

Speaker 3 (00:24):
I'm your host, Tony Peterson.

Speaker 2 (00:25):
In today's episode is all about how I'm taking a
fresh look at my late season hunt and why you
might want to as well.

Speaker 3 (00:34):
Look, I know that a lot of people.

Speaker 2 (00:36):
Who listen to this show are about ready to hang
up their deer gear and think about something else. As
much as the late season gets a lot of love
from some folks, it's mostly just a slog for a
lot of us. The weather usually kind of sucks. The
hunting is as difficult as it will be all season,
and once the rut has come and gone, it's just
a little tougher to keep the fire lit and burning.
But there's still some season love, and that means it's

(00:59):
at least worth a shit filling a tag before it's
too late.

Speaker 3 (01:02):
That's what I'm going to talk about. Right now.

Speaker 2 (01:09):
There is a concept called learned helplessness in psychology that
can be applied pretty well to hunting deer in many
different situations, but really well when it comes to late
season hunting. You see, you've been fed mostly horseshit about
the late season from folks who have much much better
hunting than you. Back in my magazine editing and writing days,

(01:30):
we ran a lot of late season stories from folks
who would be so bold as to make the claim
that the late season is the best time to kill
a big buck. And look, we all know why. Those
old mature deer have run themselves right into a state
of disrepair and they need calories to get back on
track before real winter sets in. So they have no
choice but to hit the food sources well before dark,

(01:52):
and that's when you can kill them, easy peasy. But
anyone who has hunted the late season knows that the
mature bucks aren't always willing to go on, you know,
full suicidal mode with their movements just because they're pretty
hungry after the rut. It doesn't work that way. A
hungry deer is still a deer that doesn't want to
die from an arrow or a bullet, and they will
generally prioritize that over everything else. Maybe the good part

(02:14):
about getting bad deer hunting advice is that it can
talk us into huntingmore, and that's not so bad. But
if you do hunt December and January deer a lot,
you're likely to get your butt kicked. Mostly that can
lead to the earlier mentioned learned helplessness. This tends to
solidify in our dumb brains after we repeatedly face tough
situations that feel kind of like no matter what we do,

(02:36):
we can't change the outcome for the better. Does that
mean the situations are beyond hope and we truly can't do.

Speaker 3 (02:42):
Anything to affect our trajectory inside of them.

Speaker 2 (02:44):
Nope, No, it just means that we stop believing we
can do just that, so we stop trying. We might
still do that thing, but we will do it with
minimal effort, and then when the results show up as predicted,
we get that warm and fuzzy feeling of absolutely being right.
It's a nice blanket to wrap ourselves in, and it's
a great way to not achieve what are likely to

(03:04):
be achievable goals. For most of my deer hunting life,
I did this in the late season, and you know what,
it worked, which is not as cool as it sounds,
because the times that I did put in some real
effort in the last few weeks of the season are
the times where I usually ended up with some close
encounters or some actual, honest to God filled tags. Now
keep in mind those tags were not filled one hundred
and seventy inch deer, but I was never hunting them

(03:25):
to begin with. They were does in small box and
sometimes ok bucks and that was really good considering what
I expected. But mostly I had a little pity party
about the late season, went out, froze my ass off
and didn't shoot anything. But you know what, I knew
that I was phoning it in. Instead of hanging a
set over a fresh trail, I'd sit on the ground
and mostly get busted, just because sitting on the ground

(03:46):
was easier. Or instead of hanging a fresh stand, I'd
go sit some ladder, standard box, blind or whatever that
had been up all season, and the deer were very
wise to but it was easier than going in and
doing what I should have done in the last couple
years with my daughters having you know, buck tags in
Minnesota and Wisconsin and enough dough tags to keep us
in the woods pretty much anytime we wanted to go.

(04:07):
I've started to pay way more attention to the late season,
partially because they have big Christmas breaks where they could
usually hunt with me without conflicts.

Speaker 3 (04:15):
Of sports and other activities.

Speaker 2 (04:17):
So last year we did just that in Minnesota, and
I managed to put my daughter on one of the
biggest late season bucks I've ever seen, and it was
a total heartbreaker to watch her shoulder shooting. It was
a bit of a relief to bump into him later
in the season and see that, you know, while you
had a pronounced limp, he at least had a shot
of surviving. He looked like he was doing pretty well
that year, probably would have gone right around one hundred

(04:39):
and thirty inches, which to us at the time and
on that property, was like seeing a two hundred inchro
walk in in some places. This year, both my daughters
and I are tagged out in Minnesota hunt bucks. We
are almost all tagged out in Wisconsin on bucks too,
but one of my daughters is sitting on an archery
buck tag. Now keep in mind, we don't need a
buck tag to go hunt in December. It just helps

(05:01):
We will definitely do some dough only sits, but for
now we're working on that last stubborn buck tag. So
I'm doing things differently. I know that the December year
where we hunt are not likely to should their hands
too much with extra movement. I also know that my
December is bonkers busy, and I can't really get out
and scout as much as I'd like, so I'm leaning
pretty heavy on trail cameras to start with. This is

(05:24):
the first year in a long time I went all
in on trail cameras, mostly because of how my hunt
schedules shook out. I just had two really good opportunities
this year to try to figure things out with cameras,
and to be honest, it's the first time that trail
cameras for sure help me kill a big buck, and
maybe even can be attributed pretty well to killing two
big ones. Now, we're not looking for big bucks over

(05:45):
there in or central Wisconsin. We're looking for bucks, any bucks,
and I'm hoping to dial in a few, even if
they are spikes, so that when we go over there
to hunt, we have an outside chance of running into one.
How I'm doing that is by running cameras in the cover. Now,
I know this isn't available for everyone, and it's not
the only thing I'm going to do, but this year

(06:06):
I ran a handful of cameras in the swamps over there,
you know swamps I've hunted quite a bit, and the
interesting thing about it was how often cruising bucks walked
by all of the cameras I had in one specific swamp,
while also noting that a lot of the does didn't
do that. And it was also interesting how after the
rut and the main gun season was over, nearly all

(06:26):
of the deer I got on camera walked by some
of the swamp cameras, but almost none of those deer
seemed to walk out in front of my cameras that
are anywhere near fields or openings. The movement just appeared
to tighten way up, and I doubt it'll loosen up
much in the next month or so. So the goal
is to draw a bead on a few bucks in
the thick stuff, try to make some connections on you know,

(06:48):
just when they should move, and then thread the needle
while hunting with a fourteen year old girl in late season,
cold ass conditions. It won't be easy, but the camera
data will help a lot with the confidence aspect, which
is important when you've gone pretty deep on the learned
helplessness side of these things. The thing about this is
that I'm going to have to make sure I stay

(07:09):
on top of the trail camera data for a few
weeks before we go. This is going to involve a
couple long drives over to Wolf Country to change batteries
and move cameras around. That already seems like a little
bit more effort than it'll probably be worth. But I
also really want to get my daughter out because she's
dying to go and the clock is ticking. I also
selfishly just want to see if we can get it done.

(07:31):
In the past, I've had a defeated attitude about this
late season stuff, and it's one of those deep rooted
beliefs about myself that isn't so easy to ferret out
and send on its way. I don't want my daughters
to learn this, because it's a lie, and they've already
had some really good late season success, including my daughter
who hit that big buck last year and lost it.
Toward the end of the season, she kept hunting and

(07:53):
she managed to shoot a big old loan dough in
late December, which is some kind of trophy for sure,
even if it doesn't have antlers. So that's the first
step towards trying to not really screw up the last

(08:13):
few weeks of this season. Now, keep in mind, I
have permission on a couple of properties where the girls
can shoot does and they are, by all accounts, candy
land hunts. It's really not a challenge at all on
either one most of the time, and that's great in
some ways. But I'm also terrified that my daughters will
learn only how to go where deer can easily be shot,

(08:33):
but not really ever learn how to hunt for deer,
if that makes any sense at all. I'm going to
take them on some dough missions where the chances of
success are very high, but I want them to also
understand that the deer hurdles we face can't all be
cleared by calling in a favor from someone who has
a really good property and is looking to thin the
hurt a little bit. I'm going to look at our

(08:54):
setups differently as well. Normally I leave some ground blinds
up all season, and if the snow doesn't crush them,
then that's kind of usually what we sit for our
late season hunts. Sometimes it works, but I've noticed that
if we have a blind up, we will almost always
hunt it, unless the cameras are the observations, or you know,
just the instinct says it's time to go somewhere else.

(09:15):
The girls are competent enough now with their crossbows and
their ability to sit pretty tight, that we are going
to hunt some ladder stands and some natural ground blinds.
I like natural ground blinds when we have a lot
of snow, because I can use some snow cameo, you know,
either with us wearing it or just draping it in
front of us and then brushing in, and it's pretty
dang effective. I have a few spots in mind for this,

(09:37):
but I'm waiting to see exactly where we need to
set up to get things really going. The good news
is they don't need to be within twenty yards anymore.
The girls are very comfortable with like thirty yard shots,
which with a crossbow and a good rest is so
doable for them. Now, that's an extra ten yard cushion
we might need because the late season is often so
dang quiet, and the deer are often very very cagy.

(10:00):
So far, I'm guessing my strategy sounds a hell of
a lot like any old deer hunting strategy, where you
have to put in the effort and try to find
the reward, which I guess is totally true. But I
also know something else about the late season. It's just
like early season hunting that no one will tell you
to go hunt in the mornings. The usual advice is
that it's just a lost cause and you'll do more

(10:20):
harm than good. You guys know how I feel about that.
I have quite a few early season bucks on the
wall that were killed during morning sits, but for some reason,
I've mostly not hunted mornings in the late season. My
goal this year is to find a few spots where
I can make that happen with the girls, so that
when we do have time to hunt, we can wring
the most out of each and every day. The wild

(10:42):
card is just getting to those spots without getting busted.
But the truth is, as long as the snow isn't
overly crunchy, it's usually doable, and even if it is,
there are some ways to get around it with access.
Either way, I'm going to push away the notion that
hunting mornings is just universally dumb this time year, and
try to fit figure out a way to hunt them
when they head back to bed without screwing up our

(11:03):
evening chances. This is going to be mostly a travel
route thing in the cover, and it's not going to
be easy. But again, cameras can really help with this,
and so can just looking at trails, tracks and just
general deer sign The good news about late season dear
is that they are usually pretty predictable, even if the
movement we can accurately predict isn't all that likely to

(11:24):
happen in daylight. Nature isn't all about wasting calories when
it doesn't have to, and at least here in Canada South,
they aren't going to burn precious energy for no reason.
I would guess that's a different thing for a lot
of Southern hunters, but maybe there is some truth to
it down there too. Up here and in a lot
of the white Tail range, they're just not going to
do a lot of movement that doesn't directly put calories

(11:46):
in their bellies. This is a long winded way of
saying that I'm working on a couple of different private
and public properties so that i have options for both
morning and evening hunts, no matter what direction the wind
will be blowing.

Speaker 3 (11:58):
From when we get to go.

Speaker 2 (12:00):
This is something that has plagued me in the past
and has gotten me into trouble. Instead of working different
pockets of deer, I'd find a food source that was
good enough, backtrack it, and burn it right to the
ground because that was all I had going on. You know,
there's like sort of a gopher broke mentality that comes
into play when you think your odds are very low,
and that's what I have mostly done with my late

(12:21):
season hunts. This is bad for a lot of reasons,
but being too cavalier with your setups on deer that
have clearly had enough of Hunter's bullshit for a couple
of months is such a great way to take a
spot that could deliver some good hunts and totally set
fire to it as quickly as possible. I'm going to
try to take the same care with these last ditch
efforts as I do with the rest of my season

(12:43):
on public Land, which is where I just try to
hammer down on the little details to see if everything
will work in my favor. I don't know if it will,
but I know a couple of things. When we put
in some real time and effort into something something I
don't know, like hunting jaded late season deer, we usually
learn something valuable about the deer, and we almost always

(13:03):
learn something valuable about ourselves. I'm sure that sounds like
woo woo stuff, but I believe it. I've hunted a
lot of different ways, in a lot of different states,
and with a lot of different expectations, and the hardest
haunts just generally provide the best opportunity to level up
and really learn. They are often not as successful in
the measurement of dead critters as some other hunts, but

(13:25):
you can kill a lot of deer, even big mature deer,
and never really learn a whole lot. I don't think
that's how this will go, and I like the thought
of putting in some real effort in a way that
has generally been totally unappealing to me in the past.
I also know, at the very least then, I have
one daughter who's really itching to get back in the woods,
and if I do the work I plan on, it'll

(13:47):
be a far better experience for both of us, not
only because we have a better chance to actually have
a fork.

Speaker 3 (13:52):
You walk in.

Speaker 2 (13:53):
But also because she and I can talk through what's
going on, we can look at the trail camera images
every morning and then decide on what setups we should
have in place, how we are going to hunt them
all that Jazz, I think that will be important for her,
and I know it'll be important for me. I don't
know why it is, but just workshopping ideas with your
hunting partner, even if you do ninety three percent of

(14:14):
the work, is a good way to visualize what needs
to happen and how things should go, and to just
bond over the process.

Speaker 3 (14:21):
I like the thought of that because.

Speaker 2 (14:23):
In some ways my daughters live vicariously through me as
a hunting guide, and in some ways I live vicariously
through them as young hunter is looking to get better
at something that's truly difficult. So the upshot of all
this is this, think about how you approach the late season.
What's your effort level like and would it be beneficial
to put in some more effort, even if you're only

(14:44):
working on filling an antalylyst tag. What could you do
to put yourself in a better late season position. The
answer might go way beyond just finding a good destination
food source and posting up on it. When the temperatures
begin to truly dip, there might be more you can do,
and if so, oh you should consider it. The worst
thing that happens is that you eat a tiger.

Speaker 3 (15:03):
Two.

Speaker 2 (15:04):
The best thing that happens is well you don't, or
if you do, you learn a hell of a lot
about how to approach things next season. It could be worse,
even if it definitely won't be all that easy. That's
it for this week. I'm Tony Peterson and this has
been the Wired to Hunt Foundation's podcast, which is brought
to you by first Light. Thank you, thank you, thank
you so much for all your support. Mark and I

(15:26):
here at Wired to Hunt truly appreciated. All of us
at meat Eater really appreciate it. Without you, guys, we're nothing,
So thank you for that support. If you're bored, maybe
on Christmas break and you're sick of listening to your
family argue about politics or whatever, you can go to
the medeater dot com and find a hell of a
lot of content to educate yourself a little bit and
entertain yourself a lot and just have some fun podcasts, films, articles, recipes,

(15:52):
You name it, Go to the medeater dot com check
it out.

Speaker 3 (15:54):
Thanks again,