00:00:01
Speaker 1: 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.
00:00:20
Speaker 2: Hey everyone, welcome to the Wire to Hunt Foundation’s podcast, which is brought to you by First Light. I’m your house Tony Peterson, and today’s episode is all about the scouting and how you should approach it during the off season to have your best chance of killing a big deer this fall about I kind of believe that there are like two tactics in the way tail hunting space that sort of exist in a weird vacuum where they’re pretty well known and talked about quite a bit and then sort of not put into practice in.
00:00:44
Speaker 3: The real world by very many people.
00:00:46
Speaker 2: The first is dark to dark sits, which everyone knows is a great rut strategy, but most folks just can’t seem to quite pull them off.
00:00:53
Speaker 3: And the other is E scouting.
00:00:55
Speaker 2: Now I’m not talking about just like pulling up on X to look at it every once in a while, but intentionally East scouting and then putting that work to use in the field in order to actually make the most of it.
00:01:05
Speaker 3: Now, that might be the most overlooked.
00:01:06
Speaker 2: And underappreciated big buck strategy out there, and it’s something I’m going to break down right now.
00:01:16
Speaker 3: Here at meat Eater.
00:01:17
Speaker 2: We have a lot of folks who couldn’t make a piece of compelling and interesting content at gunpoint, but who also happen to be in charge of decisions around content. I’ve encountered this my whole career in the outdoors, and it’s one of the more frustrating aspects of doing what folks like me do. But it’s also true that the people who make interesting and compelling content that the audience wants to consume are also the kind of people who generally don’t understand how businesses work and what it takes to keep the lights on or in many cases, usher forth that unrelenting growth that’s now the standard of success in so many different companies. As much as it pains my creative heart to say this, without those folks, I’d be under a bridge giving white tail seminars to stray cats. Those two types of roles, you know, those two types of personalities, seemed like they’d clash, but they mostly live in a roughly harmonious world where both sides believe the other sucks and wouldn’t exist without their amazing contributions, and they are both right and in that vein, we recently got some insight into what you find folks think about us, and it didn’t surprise me at all.
00:02:18
Speaker 3: It was valuable because sometimes.
00:02:19
Speaker 2: The audience straight tells you what they want, which makes my job easier, even if it kills my hopes and dreams that I, too, someday will get sent to Hawaii to do one of those really challenging access deer hunts that are so common amongst hunting influencers now all vacation hunt jokes aside. One piece of intel we got was that a lot of old the whitetail hunters who follow our stuff want more tactical content, and one of the topics that came up pretty frequently was e scouting. And when I heard that, I wasn’t really surprised, but I also didn’t give it much thought, at least not until I was toting my little over under twenty gage around and looking for a cottontail while covering some miles on public land in Western and it occurred to me that e scouting is just one of those topics that doesn’t get a lot of love from the big names and white tails, and well, duh, why would it. E scouting or any scouting really is not only an attempt to find deer and often big bucks, but also figure out what those big bucks like to do so that we can use that information to our advantage and kill them. It’s simple stuff, really, but a lot of the platforms that cover deer hunting come from situations where it is already a given that not only will the big bucks already be there in a predictable location, but they’ll also do predictable stuff. That kind of negates most of the need to scout too hard, especially with the availability of cheap cell cameras these days. Now, you don’t need to find a rub line deep in the cover if on the edge of that cover is a series of perfectly groomed food blots, and the ground in which both that thick cover and that curated food source exists is a world where very few people have a legal option to set foot on the place. Now, if that place happens to be pretty good size, say at least I don’t know one hundred acres or so. Now, the variables that scouting tends to solve for are already sort of solved for. This isn’t meant to say that ES scouting isn’t something worth considering if you have private ground, or you dabble in the food plat game, or you just generally have a pretty sweet deer setup. But the real question is do you struggle to find big bucks? Now, if you listen to me talk a fair amount, you probably do. And in that case, understanding EAT scouting is a huge component to getting better at deer hunting, not only for your home ground but anywhere you might roam in search of a little white tail hunting adventure. So aside from the big mistake of not ES scouting at all, the real problem is looking at ES scouting as if it’s a means to understand deer behavior. First, it’s not. It’s a means to understand the ground. Think about it this way. Think about it this way. Picture a nice bluff over the Mississippi River or maybe the Missouri or some other great big river winding its way through a deep valley somewhere with any elevation change like that your primary travel routes should be on top where the walking is easy, or way on the bottom where things level out and the walking is easy. Now, if you’ve hunted bluffs at all, you know that both types of travel happen often. But side hilling isn’t something that bucks avoid. They go where they go for reasons that we can sort of learn. Now, imagine that same bluffy hillside, but there’s an old logging road carved into it, or maybe a series of benches where the hill just sort of flattens out in smaller areas, but all kind of in rough succession. The options for deer travel in one single spot like that are many, and what you need to do is understand not where all of the deer like to walk, but where a buck is likely to walk and when he’s most likely to do that. In daylight, you know the easiest access is on the top or the bottom, and instinctively want to check those routes for trails and for sign for everything else.
00:06:09
Speaker 3: But you also know that if you know the.
00:06:11
Speaker 2: Access is easiest in those two locations, the hunting pressure is likely to be higher on those routes, So maybe the bucks don’t take those easy trails, and they tend to traverse the middle of the bluff somewhere. You have no choice but to get out there and look for rubs, you know, look for that great, big lone bed tucked up on a deadfall on one of those benches, and just try to see for yourself what clues last year’s bucks left for you. Now you might be also wondering what the hell this has to do with EA scouting. Well, think about how many locations just like that are on the properties that you like to hunt. The variables are kind of endless, and the ways in which deer versus big bucks used the ground are almost endless. It’s not enough to just e scout generally, you know, decide that a certain bluff is the ticket for air a cruiser during the pre rut, because even on that one hillside in the Midwest somewhere, you might have five or six good trails to choose from, but only one that allows for you to get in and set up without getting winded if he does come through when you’re there. Understanding the nuance of individual spots is probably the thing that separates the big buck killers from the hunters just sitting out there crossing their fingers and their toes eat. Scouting doesn’t explain the nuance in a way that allows you to walk in and set up right on the X, mostly, but it does help you understand where the X might be and how you should approach it. Now, maybe that’s a little muddy, So let me give you an example of something that happened to me recently. While chasing those bunnies and Scout and some deer, I found a property I’d never set foot on that has far more timber than most of the properties in that region of western Minnesota. Timber where timber is scarce, is a deer magnet, but it’s also a people magnet because even the dull of us kind of understan stands that when a resource is limited generally, but found in abundance in one small location, it draws the critters who prefer that resource. Now, this spot, you know, it has a pretty good sized hill on it, which is another rarity in that region. I figured when I walked the biggest section of woods which contain that hill, I’d find plenty of hunter sign and deer sign.
00:08:21
Speaker 3: And I was right.
00:08:23
Speaker 2: But that’s not like a pat yourself on the back moment it’s just predictable deer stuff. That property also has a smallish lake in it which is ringed by cattails and smaller woodlots that are home to rabbits, pheasants, and a hell of a lot of tight deer travel and last season’s bucks sign At one point I waded through some of the thickest cover I found in three days to pop out in the open on an inside corner of a private eggfield. It was classic food to bed stuff standing there on the inside of the fence, looking out on a picked beanfield, and the kind of place where you almost always find a community scrape, which I did right inside the woods off of that field corner. Walking it out in both directions showed morning and evening buck travel according to the rubs. When I dropped a pin on that big scrape, I saw that on one side of the cover I could walk maybe two hundred and fifty yards to grass to a parking area though, which is an ideal, But the other way led me deeper into the cover and deeper into that property and into a spot where there was an island of high ground that was absolutely littered with rubs. It was also the kind of spot where when that slew isn’t frozen, anyone wanting to get from one side to the other had a chance to get only a little wet and muddy, versus getting a lot wet and muddy if they traveled anywhere else. The elevation lines on that big hill by where I parked got real tight on the far side of that slough spot, And when I walked over there, I realized that probably a quarter of a mile of the rough, gnarly rabbit cover, which was absolutely covered in cockle burrs, connected the most likely spot for a big one to bed and the most likely spot for a big one defeat. It kept them on the opposite side of the lake, far from where most hunters would approach, and allows them to bail out the backside onto private if they need to. Now I could see a rough outline of what that might look like from my truck before I had ever set foot on the property, But then by walking it out, I could see what I thought was going to be versus what actually exists out there.
00:10:38
Speaker 3: Now.
00:10:39
Speaker 2: This may be the biggest mistake I see hunters make with east scouting. They view it as a standalone process for finding big bucks, But you got to go in there at some point in ground truth your work, and when you do, that’s when you get better at east scouting and real scouting. This is because east scouting is a macro affair where you can look at thousands of acres from the comfort of your couch, but in just one of those acres might be five potential setups and only one that is worth a shit. I’ve started to think about this more and more in my life as a white tail hunter and have realized that I’m always looking for a line of travel first, and then for multiple ambush sites on that line of travel. It feels like enough to just find a banging crete crossing and call it good. But every spot I’ve ever found like that is only huntable in certain conditions, and might be the kind of spot where they come through so late or so early that it’s just too tight of a risk to get in there and hope they don’t do what they usually do. I’d rather know as much as I can about that crossing, and then as much as I can about how they get there and where they go once they go through. You know, both during mornings and evenings. E scouting helps you circumvent a lot of the headaches of scouting because when you’re looking down on that crossing and scrolling along, you can see patches of high ground and patches of low ground. You can see where the fields are in the distance, maybe on properties that you can’t go on, but you can still start to connect those dots. You can see where most folks would likely get in there, how they’d approach it, and you can see how you might get in there. Then you can drop pins on anything relevant and then go take a walk. When you hit a pin where you expected bedding or maybe evidence of staging, check your work. If the rubs are there, keep that waypoint. If not, get rid of it. You don’t need to muddy up your view of the whole thing. Just take the l and move on. Eventually you start to piece together travel routes and the spots along those travel routes that allow for a good setup. Et scouting provides base knowledge of a spot in a way that you cannot get from the ground, and the ground work fine tunes the whole thing in a way that you cannot get from eat scouting. One of the properties I scouted on that bunny hunt is one that i’ve deer hunted before. In fact, I sat it during our second season of one week in November for a couple of days. Now, on that property, there’s one creek bottom in there that I walked out when I scouted, but I just couldn’t find what I was looking for, so I almost wrote it off. But before I went out this time, I pulled up on X and just looked at it, and I saw a small offshoot of cover that I hadn’t walked a few years ago when I first got interested in that part sol of public. Now, the spot I was most interested in had a small creek arm eights heine cattail slew, and a couple of trees that looked like they were about five times too big to get a saddle or a stand in.
00:13:38
Speaker 3: And I was right on all of that.
00:13:40
Speaker 2: But I also found an amazing little island of trees and brush twenty yards from an absolutely pounded creek crossing that would allow for any wind set up except east, which is an absolute gift.
00:13:52
Speaker 3: Now. I found that.
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Speaker 2: Spot while east scouting, but I couldn’t understand it until I walked in and looked around.
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Speaker 3: I know what’s there and can make a plan to get in there.
00:14:03
Speaker 2: And haunt if I choose, and if I do, I think there’s a good chance a buck we’ll walk through there. If the seasonal timing is on my side, that’s a huge win. But brings me to another mistake we often make with east scouting, which is not really using it to raise the kinds of questions we need answers to. This might be more of a private land thing, but some folks view east scouting like they view trail camera usage. It’s just a means to prove what they already believe to be true. If you put a cell camera on the edge of the beans and are like I knew it deer eat soybeans, you know you still might learn something, but not a ton.
00:14:40
Speaker 3: Now.
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Speaker 2: If you get bored and EA scout your lease but look at it like you already know how the deer use it, it probably won’t learn anything and you probably won’t care. But just for the hell of it, pull up your on X and toggle on something like the slope layer. Look at your ground with that layer on and try to see the shading you know, the and see if it gives you any reason to question where bucks might travel during the rut or when they bail off the neighbor’s egg feels that first light and head back to bed, and if you see anything interesting, go check it out in person and go in with an open mind. This allows for sort of a positive feedback loop to develop, and it’s the best way I know to learn how to scout better all around. The more you look at old ground with fresh eyes or new ground with I guess fresh eyes, the more you learn to look past the big obvious stuff while e scouting, and you’ll start to be able to see where those little pinch points are and those funnels and those little things that really matter to a deer hunter. You know, or where they’re most likely to cross a river here but not there, And why there are always a ton of rubs in the sumac on top of the hill, but you never actually see them go there and make rubs. The thing that holds a lot of us back is what we think we know about deer, But the truth is we have the tools to figure out what they actually do. One of the best tools for that job is just e scouting. And the best way to really figure this stuff out is to scout ground you know and you don’t know, and then slip in and check your work in both types of places. This is also a great way to address the last big mistake folks make with eaest scouting, which is they do it, they learn some stuff, and then they kind of forget everything as turkey season kicks in and then summer takes over. But e scouting and then ground truthing that work is a way to stay connected to the process. I’d say that my primary method for finding spots to hang trail cameras comes from winter scouting, and my best finds during winter scouting are almost always tied to eat scouting. There isn’t some world where you have one part without the other, and it works as good as having all of these parts working together. Even if the trail camera work comes in months after the east scouting and winter scouting, they all work together. It’s all part of the same thing. And the hunters who understand that and foster that type of scouting are the hunter who often can show up just about anywhere and fill of tag, even on ground that a lot of locals believe is a total lost cause. So use this time, my friends, Maybe go hunt some rabbits. If you need a reason to go way through the sick stuff, or maybe just keep an eye out for an antler who cares do something, but go and hike to those waypoints. They’re just you know, question marks in your mind without real answers yet. But we’ll have real answers for you out there in the real world, and then come back next week for more talk about America’s favorite big game animal. That’s it for this episode. I’m Tony Peterson and this has been the Wired to Hunt Foundations podcast, which is brought to you by First Light. Thank you so much for all of your support. I can’t tell you how much it means to us. Just trust me on that. Without you, guys, we are nothing. We have nothing, So thank you for showing up for us. If you’re bored out of your minds fighting a little cabin fever right now, you need to be entertained. You want to learn a little bit in this offseason, go to the mediater dot com.
00:17:56
Speaker 3: Check it out. So much good stuff there.
00:17:58
Speaker 2: We drop new articles, lot of news coverage on the issues facing the outdoors right now, a lot of new podcasts, a lot of new films, things like Jordan Siller’s Blood Trails podcast, which is a newer podcast. We dropped not too long ago, crime series like really, really well done and fascinating Ties to the Outdoors. Jordan’s crushing it on that podcast. If you don’t check anything else out, check that out because you will love it. Your wife probably will too, if she’s anything like mine and she watches CSI and all these murder mysteries all the time. Go check it out, check out the mediater dot com, and thank you once again.
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