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 Wire to Hunt Foundations podcast, which is brought to you by first Light. I'm your host, Tony Peterson, and today's episode is all about starting to plan for your fall success right now. Look, I have to admit I actually really, really like the months of April, May and June. You know, April and May for all the time spent in Jason turkeys and trying to catch future out and June for the big smallies in large mouth and just good weather. But really those three months are a relief because I don't have to think about white tails too much. I know that sounds weird because I love deer and so do you, But deer are a lot of work and a lot of stress, and honestly a great source of anxiety. Sometimes a three month break from that isn't so bad. But it's over and it's time to start trying to figure them out. Before the new season is upon us. This generally requires a plan with about a million inputs, a lot of work, and a lot of hope. That plan will be a multi stage affair. But you have to start somewhere, which is what I'm going to talk about right now. Where do you even start? It might seem simple, I suppose if you're hunting the place you always hunt, the place you've hunted for years that always has, you know, one of two crop rotations going on, and the deer always bed wherever and feed wherever. You know, why stress about a known situation? Well, maybe you hunt a place where history repeats itself and things are pretty simple. You probably don't, though, or at the very least, don't always hunt a place where the deer is predictable as the phases of the moon. If you don't have that situation, you have something that probably requires more thought, more planning, and well more what ifs, more question marks. That's the case with most of us, and either way, it's time to start thinking about this stuff. How I start before I ever go into the woods, Although I say that without being too serious, because I've been in the woods plenty already, and you probably have two But for the sake of sounding wise and keeping this podcast pointed in the right direction. Let's say you're looking for a step one. No matter where or how you hunt, here's mine the regulations in the states I plan to hunt. Now. For me, this might look different from you. Between my work schedule, hunting with the girls, and getting in a few personal hunts, I have to think about you know, probably four or five states to start with, and every one of those states has different regulations, different timing for their youth seasons, different bag limits and tag allocations. And some of those will be the same as they've been for decades, but others aren't going to be so consistent. More than a few hunters get burned every year not brushing up on the regulations in their home state or wherever they hunt, you know, so they buy a license a day before the opener and realize they can't shot as many dos as they hope, or that there's now antler point restrictions in certain counties. Something. The easiest thing you can do to start planning your twenty six season is to give the regulations a good look. When it comes to home state hunting, there usually aren't too many big surprises But what if you decided this year is the year you're going to not always hunt Gramma's farm, but are going to try your hand at a hang and bang hunt on public land? Simple right, Well, what are the laws on trail camera usage on public screwing steps or bow hagers? Are there different limits or tag allocations for shooting antler list deer on the public The one thing I know after hunting lots of different states on private and public land, is that we often assume the rules are the same from one situation to the next, but we are often wrong. This is simple stuff, and you might not think it's all that important, but it is. How I hunt. Any given situation is highly dependent on what I can get tags for, what types of standard blinds I can use, whether I can use trail cameras, stuff like that. In the state, it's where big changes happen and you've been living under a rock and aren't aware of them. You're going to want to know, you know, crossbow legalization, earn a buck, new youth, or early gun seasons, whatever. You just want to know, And you definitely want to know if you plan to hunt some other state for the first time. Let's say you have the rules in the rags squared away, you're good to go. Well, what's next? Well, for me, the next step is to flesh out a loose plan for when I'll hunt. This isn't just when to plan my rut cation, although that's part of it, but it's also you know, when are the long weekends going to happen? When you can string together multiple sits. Is there a part of the season where you should be able to, you know, hunt every morning for a week, or where you could bail from work early to get into stand for every afternoon for a while. When will your hunt windows open up? For me, it's kind of all about when I am going to get a couple of weekends with the girls where they won't have five thousand activities that can actually hunt, because I want to prioritize those. So I want to know before we get too deep into summer, whether that's going to happen in mid September or early October whenever. Knowing when I can take them and we will have mornings and evenings to hunt for a few days is really important to me because my strategy in mid September is going to be a lot different from even earlier late October. When I know when the girls can hunt, I can also figure out a little bit more about my own schedule. Now I realize my whitetail life might be a little more complicated than a lot of folks. But the truth is that all of these inputs dictate where I hang stands and where I set blinds, and they should for you too, Which leads me to the next thing, which actually involves starting to figure out the deer. Most people this time of year will go about this task the easiest way possible, which is with trail cameras. But how you start this process will inform a lot of your hunting decisions, so you want to choose wisely. Let's start with a simple question here. Do you plan to hang cameras for mostly inventory or are you trying to learn something about deer travel at a specific spot. There's a big difference, and it seems like a lot of hunters don't really differentiate much, probably because it feels like we have a hell of a lot of time left before we can actually hunt them. Inventory gathering's fine, everyone wants to build that hit list, But are you gathering this intel by putting on a mineral block for the summer bucks. Maybe you put new batteries in the camera on your kill plot, and that's good enough. If what you want to learn is who is in the area now and how bigg he might be, then that's easy enough. Just don't expect to learn much more than that. And if you do use something to draw them in, expect even less because that mineral block or whatever you use is going to give you kind of a false read on fall movement. You've already influenced their summer movement to see who's there, But that doesn't mean that's going to hold up by fall. Understand that, because it matters now. If you want to start figuring out where deer move naturally and begin to build a pattern on them, you have a different task ahead of you. For me, because I like to hunt early and I like to hunt often, especially with a girls, I focus my camera work this time of year on a couple of different things. You know, first off or the easy ones, soybean's alfalfa. You know, if either is available where I can hunt. Both are prime early season food sources, and the bucks hitting the alfalfa today are likely to be there, and hitting the alfalfa in September. This isn't always the case, but it's consistent enough where I'm comfortable betting on those odds. What are the most popular early season food sources where you hunt, because if they'll still be out there in the early bo season, then you have the opportunity to build a pattern on it. Right now, it's simple stuff, but not that simple, and it does take some effort. Think of it, not like taking inventory on that growing beanfield out there, but actually developing a strategy for figuring out when the deer will hit those beans and where they are most likely to hit them. This is a big problem with a lot of hunters where they know a food source will draw a deer, they put a camera up on the edge, and then they get enough buck picks all summer to start their chickens before they hatch. We all know the early food sources and that bus will hit them. So it's much better to try to figure out the real specifics on that pattern, not just confirm basic knowledge. But you can take this a step further too. What if you don't have one of those early season food sources on your ground, then it's time to figure out where the closest ones are what's in them, and how you can gather as much intel as possible with the land you have to work with. This is where cameras really shine because now you're monitoring individual trails mostly and you're playing a game where you have to figure out when and why the travel happens, what wind or weather is it tied to, and why are there stretches of time with lots of activity on other times where it's dead. Take that alfalfa example. That might be as simple as the farmer coming in and cutting and raking and baling as crop. There might be three days or maybe a week there of extended activity by humans which can slow down the deer visits. Sell Cameras can tell you a lot about this kind of thing, and this knowledge will play into your strategy come fall, or at least it should. Again, I'll reiterate this because it matters. Ask yourself what you're trying to learn with your summer camera work, what's your intention with each and are you doing what you need to in order to really learn what you want? And also remember that it's not always about food. In the early season, you know, I love to hunt water and there is no time I love to hunt water more than when I know it'll be hot and there will be fewer hunters out in the woods summer. Camera work on water is a no brainer. And if there's one thing that can talk any hunter into heading out when it's ninety degrees on the opener, it's when they've been running a camera on a water hole all summer. I know this is simple stuff, but the goal, well for me and what it maybe should be for you, is to not have to count on the rut to have a chance at a buck. I want to hunt all parts of the season with my daughters or when I'm solo or with my buddies or whatever, and I want to hunt with the belief that I'm onto something. When I rely on the rut, it relieves me of my responsibilities in the early season. But those four or six weeks or whatever provide one hell of an opportunity to not only kill a buck, but also just spend some much needed time in the woods doing what I love to do. Now again, what if you don't have any water where you hunt, or maybe you have water now that will be all dried up by September. Where is the nearest water source they're drinking out there somewhere, but where you can pull up on X and toggle through a couple layers to see this. If you don't know, and even if you think you do know, you should probably do this anyway. Most of us look at the ground around us on satellite imagery, but the Toppo layer will very clearly show you water. That little pond on your neighbor's land that you've never seen in person will pop instantly in this layer. If there is a way for you to play off of that movement, you know that to and from of the pond, you should know that is there something that shows up on your ground where you didn't even know there was water. I think we all think we know what is going on in the places we hunt, but every once in a while, you just find something you didn't even know was there. On a farm I hunt in southern Minnesota, this happens to me occasionally, and it always throws me for a loop. One time, it was a seep on a hillside, just a tiny little gusher of cold spring fed water that was covered in buck tracks and almost got me a shot at one hundred and forty inch year the first time I sat there. Another time, after quite a bit of years of hunting there at least two decades. I found a small sinkhole in a bedding area while I was shed hunting, and that sinkhole sometimes holds water, and it draws every deer in the freaking county to it because of where it's located, although it is a real pain in theame has to hunt this spring. While shed hunting and scouting, I found another small sinkhole in a spot that is going to have a blind on it for the girls come September, because it's going to be an amazing morning spot that should allow for really solid access. I guess the lesson here is that it's easy to believe we know everything we need to about the spots we hunt, but it's really easy to miss something small and important in the woods that the deer will definitely not miss. So let's take stocks so far. You know the rules in the rigs, you have a plan to figure out the local crops and the water sources, and you have some fresh batteries plugged into your cameras. It's time to hit the woods. But here is where a lot of folks make their first real big mistake of the year. They just hike in or drive their side by sides in turn the cameras on and head out. Their primary thoughts here are conscious and unconscious. The conscious thought is that you're going to go put up a camera in a good spot and then get out so you can let the woods get back to normal and intel to start rolling in. The unconscious thoughts are the woods are you know a jungle? The heat sucks, the bugs are terrible, and we all want to be kind of lazy about this stuff, especially when it's the early innings of a long game. But what do you miss when you walk or drive in, drop a camera or a couple off, and then get the hell out? Potentially a lot. If the camera work well works, then you're going to want to hunt those spots. How will you access them? Probably not the way you do right now when you go in to drop the camera off or check it. How long will that new access route take you to get in and out? And well, where will it take you? Where will you hang a stand or put up a groundbline to play off that trail camera data? There's no harm in walking in now, looking for tracks, making notes of other trails, maybe food sources like hard or soft masks that might come in you know, three months and really just getting a feel for where you're going to hunt. I think one of the biggest problems a lot of us have is that we focus our scouting and preseason work on finding the spots we should hunt, but not putting in a lot into how we will actually hunt them and how they will actually hunt as a spot. I do this to myself all the time, and it's a sure fire away to get me to hate myself some I'm convinced that the best mindset of way till a hunter can have is to always be looking for stand in blind setups, and to always be thinking about how to get in and out in all of the logistics around them. You know, always think about the conditions in which a spot would be huntable or when it would be a bad idea. This is a big one. And if you're going to head out and hang some cameras and take a look around and you know, start to formulate a hunting plan, you have to think about this stuff. You might put a camera on a little water hole and start getting tons of picks, but then ask yourself, where am I going to hang a stand? Where am I going to sit? What wind directions would allow you to hunt there and which ones would get you busted. Do the event ailable stand trees and the best wind directions work together or not. Something that saves a lot of bucks every year is the disconnect between hunters finding really good spots and those same hunters not really thinking about how to hunt those spots, you know, before it's time to suit up and head out. I know this doesn't seem that important now, but it is. I think one of the biggest things I've learned about hunting all white tails, and definitely when focusing on big bucks, is that the spots they frequent rarely come with airtight access and perfect stand trees. The thing you're solving for now with this early season work is a multi layered problem that doesn't just get solved simply by identifying the best spots. That's a good start, but it's just the start of it. And the more time you have to suss things out, the better off you'll be because you'll be less likely to settle, you know, for a stand setup where you might get busted, or hunt when you know you probably shouldn't because you don't have better options. Figuring them out seems you know too risky and too daunting because you're already in the season. This is really the stuff that separates people who fill a lot of tags versus the people who just don't. So get out there and start building your own plan for this fall and come back next week because I'm going to talk more about these critters we love and how to go about getting close to them when it's finally fall. That's it for this episode. I am Tony Peterson. This has been the Wire to Hunt Foundation's podcast, which is brought to you by First Light. I want to thank you so much for all of your support. I've never ever worked at a place like this where we have such an amazing audience. If you want more of our content, I know you know where to find it. I know you see the Instagram posts and stuff all the time, but I gotta say this, if you don't every once in a while pop into the mediater dot com, you're probably missing out on something. We drop new podcasts, new films, new articles, you know how to stuff, conservation minded stuff, the latest news on who's trying to take away public land, whatever. It's all at the medeater dot com. Tons of hunting content, tons of education, tons of information, a lot of entertainment. Go check it out at the media dot com, and thank you once again for all of your support.

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