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 has brought to you by first Light. I'm your host, Tony Peterson, and today's episode is all about thinking about dear and wealth and why it can change how you hunt them all. Right, before I get into this, I gotta do a couple things. I gotta apologize for having this voice of mine. I am fighting off a cold that someone delivered to me, probably somebody with kids at the Meat Eater store opening in Minneapolis, and I am waiting through this thing. But you gotta suffer through my voice. I'm sorry for that. The other thing I want to talk about quick here, I got to put in a little plug for a fishing show I put together called side Quests. It's a fun take on fishing that plays off my public land hunting style and episodes are dropping every Sunday on the Mediat YouTube channel. I know you're leaning into hunt mode right now, and I get it, I am too. But if you want to check out a unique fishing show that covers a whole ton of different species in different states on different water, go check out side Quest. And if you do check it out, I thank you in advance because that makes you pretty awesome in my opinion. All Right, I might be wrong on this, but I think a lot of the problems that hunters have with deer is they don't really think about what motivates deer. And I know that might sound kind of stupid, but what I mean is that they are survival machines who are highly driven to pass on their genes, you know, like pretty much all of life. But how they do it is what matters, though, And while we have an entire industry built around exploiting their weaknesses, the hunters who figure out what bucks have that are true strinths, but how they can work around that, those are the guys who usually fill their tags. Now, I know that might not make much sense, but I'm going to clear it all up right for you can. Now, unless you've been living under a rock, you've probably heard about how billionaires are bad and people who aren't billionaires by default are good. This refrain is the rallying cry of a lot of people these days, and it's interesting to watch it play out. The idea that no one should have that much money, and since they do, we should take more of it to do good things with it is very prevalent, and what a beautiful concept until you hit the part where the people taking it and deciding where it goes are the same folks who have us sitting at around forty trillion dollars in debt as a nation. They also mostly happen to be multimillionaires themselves, but they would rather we didn't pay too much attention to that part. This class war that's being waged on social media is at least partially the result of something called a K shaped economy. Maybe you heard it mentioned somewhere, but what it means is that essentially there's a midline for wealth where if you're on the top side of it, the current economy is going to reward you your wealth is increasing, but if you're not, you're going in the opposite direction and your wealth is decreasing. One person works from a home where they are paying a mortgage on They dump money into their four oh one K and their HSA every month, and they are generally viewed as valuable enough to get a raiz or a bonus you know, pretty much every year. Their house goes up in value while their principal O drops, their investments go up in value, and their trajectory is generally upward and favorable. Then you have someone else I don't know who doesn't work in it works in hospitality or something they rent, and their employer is actively trying to automate parts of their job to cut hours and save money. They can't pile money away to allow it to grow, and through all of that, the dollar becomes worthless and the prices of everyday goods and services steadily creep upward. Both people could be living in the same city but experiencing vastly different economies. One could be watching the real estate market and the stock market just blode and celebrate that rising tide, while the other slips further into debt by the day from the same economy that is rewarding the other folks. Essentially, if you're in a good position to start with, things will only get better for you, But if you're not, things will only get worse. Now, neither will last forever because it doesn't work that way. But it's pretty telling and pretty frustrating for a lot of folks. It makes sense. Now, let me put you in the minds of a couple of bucks. One is a six and a half year old ten pointer with an eighteen inch spread, plenty of mass, and he weighs two hundred and forty pounds on the hoof. The other is a two and a half year old ninety seven inch eight pointer who tips the scales at one hundred and fifty pounds when he's soaking wet. They live in the same section of land which has let's say two dozen other deer, and of those deer, five of them are bucks that are somewhere between our two example deer in both range and size. The ten pointer knows them all, and they all know him. Now the eight pointer knows them all and they all know him too. He just has a different experience with them, particularly in the fall. Every deer in the herd is wired to survive and pass on their genes, and how they do that is by muscling their way up into the best spot in the hierarchy and then making do with what that affords them. They literally gather wealth, but not in the way that you think, although it's closer to our experience than most of us would probably acknowledge. For starters, they need food and shelter. Basic stuff probably sounds pretty familiar. Without either, we as humans, we're in trouble. And the same goes for deer. Food is a tricky one because in times of plenty, it's not worth fighting over or wasting an extra calorie to protect. In the summer and early fall, in most of the whitetail habitat out there, food is pretty plentiful. But as food gets less plentiful, it becomes more important. This is only amplified you know when a certain food source is limited, which you know most of them are, and also, you know, chock full of the things that bucks need to be big and strong and pass on their genes high value food. But think about this. I took the dogs to the park the other day. That park has a row of twelve burrokes in it. Nothing unusual about that in my part of the world. But one of those, and I mean just one, was dropping acorns like matt. Now, if those trees were on a ridge in the home range of our two example bucks, who do you think could show up at any time and eat as many acorns as he wanted. Not the two year old, because in that case he might be within a few feet of a buck who can kick his butt and will definitely posture him right off of that hard masked gold mine. He still wants to eat those acorns, so he has to figure out when he can get there when other bigger and more dominant bucks won't be there. This puts him at a disadvantage because he's most likely to find that oak without competition in daylight. The big ten pointer can show up just after dark, claim his spot and load up. The two year old eight pointer has to be far more careful, and in doing that he gives up an advantage. Now, look at that tech worker making two one hundred and fifty thousand dollars a year, and you know has plenty of cash to invest at the end of every month. He isn't at a disadvantage going to whole foods and buying healthy groceries. The extra cost of organic avocados isn't even a consideration. It's just a healthy choice, and that doesn't add extra stress to his daily life, but makes him do a little bit better, and that other person you know who's working in hospitality for forty five grand a year just can't afford to eat as healthy. There's a disadvantage there resource wise that could play out in a variety of negative ways, and likely will over a long enough timeline. It doesn't seem fair when it comes to humans, but we don't think about that with deer. We just accept it as natural. We can take this a little bit deeper too. The dominant buck never has to move when he doesn't want to. I know, a wolf or a coyote or a small game hunter or something could get him moving at any time, but that's different. What I mean here is that dominant buck doesn't have to think about getting to the food early or getting into the field to sniff some doze before everyone else gets there. He can not only eat better than his competition, he can keep himself safer by going to eat and drink and check doze on a schedule he's learned will keep him from getting shot. He can wait until dark to travel when his biggest concern is already headed back to the truck and then back to the house. After a night of not shooting big bucks. The tech worker can work from home, which means no commute in rush hour traffic, no stress from driving around and other folks, no extra time commitment, no worry that his vehicle might break down, no realizing that he forgot to fuel up the night before. No making a lunch or planning to grab some fast food for breakfast or lunch. The other worker not so much. They deal with all that stuff at least five days a week. It puts them in danger of experiencing more stress and being forced into more unhealthy choices. Then at the end of the day, they have to return to an apartment complex where the neighbors are always noisy, the hallways are always cluttered with other people's crap, and half the appliances work half the time. Their sleep suffers, their mental well being suffers, and the spiral just continues. While that tech worker living in the suburbs is going to go home or stay home, I guess, grill out, go to sleep in a comfortable bed with no outside noise creeping in, and their spiral goes the other way. Our young buck, he's living that apartment life. He beds close to the access where most of the hunters walk in. He does have as good of an option to win them before they get there. That stress has got to be real for him. It's also true that since more people start where he spends more time, he gets bumped around more often. There are times to lay low and let danger pass, but other times where he just has to run. This is a move that protects him in the short term, but leaves him more exposed when he's escaped you know the original threat. Now he has to get back to his preferred bedding area or hole up somewhere else. He's left more scent for the coyotes and wolves and whatever else, and he's given up a strategic advantage by having to leave his bed more stress, more danger. That dominant buck, on the other hand, spends his days in the high spot in the swamp if the wind is out of the north or the west, or he beds next to a dead fall on the highest bench on the ridge when the winds come in the other way, you know where he can smell anything coming over the top and see and hear anything approaching from below. If a hunter does enter his world, he knows it well before he has to totally panic. He can slip out to a backup spot if necessary, or decide if he just needs to stay put and monitor the situation. He just has better options and less stress because he can afford the best real estate. He's at the end of the cul de sac, you know, with a gated yard and a security system that allows him to sleep well at night or I guess sleep well in the day. Who has the higher odds of survival or who is the harder buck to kill? We all know the answer, but it's not because the old buck is just super cagy and the young buck is super dumb. You know. Granted, six years in the woods teaches you better survival than two years in the woods, but it's not so simple as peer experience levels dictating survival. The advantages a deer has for being more wealthy than all the other deer are no joke, and if you want to kill them, you have to think about that, and we do. But what we think about is how to exploit a weakness in their game and take advantage of it somehow. And this works sometimes, but it doesn't generally make us well rounded hunters. Waiting on the rut to get that big deer moving does work, but that's a short window. Whell you'll have tons of competition trying to call him in or decoy him in or whatever. They're all fleeting opportunities that when done blind, rank very low in the success category, and when done with him in sight, you know, if you're lucky enough to see him in daylight, rank pretty low in the success category as well. This is mostly because you were asking him to do something he wasn't planning on doing, and if you've ever hung around old guys, you know that's just not their favorite pastime. A better bet is to try to learn what he chooses to do and then exploit that. This puts you in the running all season long, so that if you do strike out in the earlier the midseason, you can still get out there during the run and wait him out on some terrain trap. But before that, think about what he will choose to do in the early season, which is coming up on us real fast. Here, he will bed someplace where the bugs aren't bad, but he also isn't getting messed with by hunters. He will generally have a death Nation food source he's going to end up in. He will also have other food sources, often tied to mast that he will hit on a daily basis, he will have water to think about as well. The movement tied to almost all of this stuff will happen at night. This means that you need to be close to where he beds or close to where he feels comfortable moving in daylight, which is usually the same thing. This means you need to not only think about where he's going to start his day in the evening, but how he's going to end it in the morning. It means that the two year old eight pointer you don't want to shoot, but who came into the apple tree in the meadow that's two hundred yards off the neighbor's alfalfa field is telling you something really important and you should listen. Maybe the big boy won't come into that apple tree in daylight, but you drop a camera there and realize that he will definitely come in after dark. Do you just hunt that tree over and over and over until the mass dries up and the program dies, hoping he slips up and comes in during daylight, or do you try to catch him on his way to the apple tree. This is one of the hardest things to do because we really like ambushing critters at their destination, but not necessarily along their travel routes, but that big buck doesn't need to get there super early. He might be excited to get there ten minutes after dark, which will put him on the move in the cover while there is still some shooting light. This idea speaks to something that plags hunters without them ever knowing, which is that we've been conditioned to hunt in ways where we've pen our hopes on them screwing up, on them moving when it's dangerous, or responding to a call when they should probably ignore it. Think about it differently, though, and try to acknowledge the advantages those target bucks have and how that can be used to predict the movements when they'll be vulnerable. This is the crux of good woodsmanship and the cornerstone of most successful big buck hunters, who have to hunt where the pressure is high and the land isn't in their control. They have to learn the animals and then work with what the animals give them in the context of their hunting situations. They don't just hope the bucks show up on the f field edge. They try to figure out not only why he doesn't, but where he is likely to show up before he hits the field edge or where he waters in the cover on his way back to bed, where he feels safe and comfortable moving because he can do what he wants, and what he wants is to have his needs met in a safe way where he's confident nothing will mess with him. This is also why it's a little insane to me that folks who hunt public land or pressure private ground subscribe to the idea that they have sanctuaries they will leave alone and you know, total no go time periods throughout the season where they won't hunt. That's the best way to give the deer a pass. And it's like admitting that you really need to hunt only when the deer are most likely to screw up, and not when you can most likely figure out how to get close to them when they're just doing their daily thing with a head full of confidence. I'll be deep into this process in Nebraska by the time the next episode drops, and the whole plan there is going to be to speed scout water tanks until I find fresh buck sign and then figure out how to pin down a bachelor group either at the water or somewhere in relation to how they get there or leave. I'll be thinking about big Bucks, white tails and meal deer, and I'll be thinking about what the terrain offers them as an advantage and how they'll use that to avoid me and a whole bunch of other hunters who are likely to be out there looking for the same deer as me. I hope that I can find a cozy, nice, just little buck filled suburb back off the road a mile or two with cold water, fresh greenery, and well just nice enough digs for a couple of lazy bucks to hang around in. I have some pins dropped on on X already, with tanks close to some serious up and down terrain that should be conducive to buck betting, and all in all, I'm just looking for those gated communities that only the richest of deer can live in, and then I'm going to get in there and see if I'm right. You should do the same as you're gearing up for the fall. Don't just think about big Bucks out there and what you think you know about them. Try to figure out where they are likely to be and why you know based off the fact that they can choose any bedding area, any food source, any travel route that they feel is best for their survival because they can do that and come back next week because I drop some more dear knowledge right here on the Wired to Hunt Network. That's it for this episode. I'm Tony Peterson. I just want to thank you guys for your support. Man. I worked this meat Eater store grand opening in Minneapolis recently. In the amount of people who showed up kind of renewed my faith in the hunting community for real. It was incredible to talk to so many people who just love the same thing that I do. So thank you for showing up for that. Thank you for listening. If you need more content, you know where to get it. The meadeater dot com. New articles, new podcasts, new films, all kinds of stuff showing up there every day. Go check it out and thank you once again for all of your support.