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, 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 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.
00:01:03
Speaker 3: That’s what I’m going to talk about right now.
00:01:07
Speaker 2: 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 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 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 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? 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 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 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. 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 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.
00:04:18
Speaker 3: This fall.
00:04:19
Speaker 2: 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 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 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 helps you see into the future.
00:05:23
Speaker 3: Sort of.
00:05:24
Speaker 2: 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 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 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 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 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 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 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.
00:07:36
Speaker 3: You probably shouldn’t.
00:07:38
Speaker 2: 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 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. 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 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 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 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.
00:09:46
Speaker 3: Then again, you just have to pay attention.
00:09:48
Speaker 2: 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, 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, 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.
00:10:49
Speaker 3: To list is when you should draw.
00:10:52
Speaker 2: 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 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.
00:11:25
Speaker 3: It happens.
00:11:26
Speaker 2: 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 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 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.
00:12:29
Speaker 3: What deer do other deer do, guys? And if you.
00:12:33
Speaker 2: 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 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.
00:13:05
Speaker 3: Now.
00:13:05
Speaker 2: 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 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 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.
00:13:57
Speaker 3: When I’m seated.
00:13:59
Speaker 2: 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.
00:14:10
Speaker 3: Why you might ask.
00:14:12
Speaker 2: 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 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 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 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.
00:15:35
Speaker 3: Figure out how to.
00:15:36
Speaker 2: 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.
00:15:50
Speaker 3: Do that.
00:15:51
Speaker 2: 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.
00:16:03
Speaker 3: That’s it for this episode. I’m Tony Peterson.
00:16:05
Speaker 2: 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, 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
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