Show Notes
Aaaahhhh, sweet November is upon us! The rut will soon cure our every woe, and whitetail bucks will throw caution to the wind and run circles around our stands just waiting for us to take a shot at them… right? While the rut can be the best of the year to arrow a mature buck, this is no time to take it easy. In fact, increased buck movement should motivate whitetail hunters to work even harder to make sure they’re in the right place at the right time.
In this episode of the How to Hunt Deer Podcast, Josh talks with Tony Peterson about how Tony approaches hunting the rut. For Tony, scouting is critical as he wants to put himself in a high odds spot that gives him the confidence that a buck he’s after will swing through. The guys discuss what kinds of things Tony focuses on during the rut, how much things like buck sign and hunting pressure play into his strategy, and why it’s crucial to keep moving if you’re not on the action. Enjoy!
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Show Transcript
Josh Raley: Welcome to the how to hunt deer podcast, It's brought to you by Tactican. This podcast aims to educate those who are interested in becoming deer hunters, brushing up on essential skills, or maybe just adding a few new tactics to the toolkit. We cover a variety of topics that are going to help you be more confident and successful in the field while you're hunting deer.
Thank you so much for tuning in with us this week. I'm your host, Josh Raley, and got a good episode for you. A little bit different though. I'm sitting [00:01:00] here looking out across my garage right now at just an absolute messy. of stuff. I've been recording podcasts all day long for different shows.
As some of you have commented or messaged me recently. And they're like, dude, how many podcasts are you doing? I'm doing a bunch of them. But what I did have happen was the episode that was supposed to launch today when this one's launching I got stood up. And which is fine, things happen, things come up.
I've had to do that to people before didn't get truly stood up. I got rescheduled on, which is, not a big deal. But what I decided to do rather than just rambling on about what my thoughts might be about how to kill a deer during the rutt, I thought I would run an episode that I did last season with none other than Mr.
Tony Peterson about how to capitalize on hunting the rut. I think I was just a tadd late when it came to airing that episode last year. And I just wanted to run it again, because man, when I look back at the episodes that I've done with different [00:02:00] individuals that have been super, super helpful, this is one that really stands out to me.
Tony's got a no nonsense approach when it comes to deer hunting. And, that, that shines best, I think, when it comes to the rut. Very simple, go somewhere, get a lot of stuff in your favor, and sit. tight and wait for the bucks to come through. Now we talk about, Hey, what are those things you want in your favor?
What does it look like for you to sit it out? How long until you're moving? What exactly are you looking for when it comes to buck sign? Are hunting the does? What are you doing? So we have a lot of good conversations all packed into this one episode. This one originally aired last year. So we're going to have a little bit of a rerun here, but guys, it's definitely worth sticking around for.
Now let's have a quick word from our sponsors and then we'll jump right into the show. The best part of the hunting season is finally here. We've waited for this all year long. Now let's make it count with some great gear from our partners. First up, Tacticam is our title sponsor and their point of view cameras are my [00:03:00] go to method for filming my hunts.
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Or my Saskatoon heavyweight top and bottom. Either way, I'm also going to be bringing my Saskatoon vest. And because the hunting often gets better when the weather turns nasty this time of year, the Winstead rain suit lives in my hickory pack all the time. And I can honestly say that this is the best rain suit that I have ever used.
You can learn more or grab your Huntworth gear today at huntworthgear. com. And finally, the Onyx Hunt app is an absolutely indispensable tool for me this time of year. If I'm not in the action, I'm going to be making a move to go find it, and the Onyx Hunt app helps me identify those terrain features that I want to key in on with their latest aerial imagery additions.
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[00:05:00] Now let's get into this week's show. All right, ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to another episode of the how to hunt deer podcast. And for this one, I've got Mr. Tony Peterson on what's up, buddy. Not much,
Tony Peterson: man. I'm just sitting at my computer getting ready to go scout some deer tomorrow and hunt a whole bunch of deer next week.
Yeah,
Josh Raley: man. What is your season looked like so far? I've had a weird
Tony Peterson: season. I, I started out in in Colorado. I had a great hunt out there. I killed a nice bull on public land. And that was like a sweet way to kick off the season. And then I came home and I took my daughters over to Wisconsin for three, I think three weekends in a row and they killed three bucks or three deer, I should say two does in a buck.
And so that was freaking sweet. And then I went to South Dakota. road. And on a public land and got my butt kicked for over and over again. Just couldn't. I couldn't get a big one to show up. And then when I did the first one was just out of range. Did [00:06:00] almost everything he was supposed to do, but he skirted us a little bit.
And then the second time I went back for a little short hunt there. I couldn't set up the way I wanted to on this pond. It was really hot, like upper seventies. So I had a set up on the ground and I had a really good one come over the ridge right on top of me. And it was one of those deals when I heard him coming, I was like, I'm just screwed.
There's no way he's not going to get me. And so that was a learning experience, but that's been it. Now I'm just, I'm scouting a bunch of stuff to get ready for the rut here.
Josh Raley: Yeah, man. Quick question about South Dakota. What was the pressure like out there? Were you there, you're there what, mid October?
I was
Tony Peterson: there the first six days that non residents can hunt. October 1 through the 6th or 7th or whatever. And then I went back like the 17th for a couple of days. Okay. And the pressure, the first trip, the pressure was pretty light unless you got somewhere where you might. I don't see one spot in stock.
If I got into the [00:07:00] timber, along the river and the brakes, I really didn't have any competition. I found some fans and cameras and stuff. But most of the people I saw hunting were out where they might maybe pick up a mule or pick up a white till they could stock. But the second time I went back to And that was different.
There were people really in a lot of places that made it a hell of a lot.
Josh Raley: Yeah. Yeah, man. I talked with a lot of guys that were out in they did North Dakota this year. Now, South Dakota kind of messed things up when they bumped non residents back to October instead of what they were September 1st opener, right?
Yep. But they said the North Dakota pressure this year was unlike anything that they've seen before. Yeah.
Tony Peterson: North Dakota is. It's pretty rough right now in a lot of places. And I actually had a trip planned out there and I called it off, last year we went out last year and hunted and we all killed deer, but it was a disaster of a, it wasn't enjoyable and they've had EHD out there.
And [00:08:00] it's just tough, man. There's a lot of traveling hunting going on and the public land thing is just burning so hot still. That it's, I'm, I, that's part of the reason why I don't mind adding out some of these states in mid October or a time when people might not be as keyed up to go.
But it almost feels like that doesn't, you used to be able to do that for a while and get away from the pressure now it's it's just a part of the deal.
Josh Raley: Yeah. Do you see that kind of running its course anytime soon? Or do you think this is just how hunting is going to be for the next five or 10 years?
Tony Peterson: I don't know, man. I think it's going to be that way. And we get into all these little arguments in the hunting community about, like recruiting hunters, or do we need more hunters out there? Or did we make it too easy to get information through on X and all these other platforms?
And I look at that and I go. It's all irrelevant. What we
I don't care what state you're in, it's a net [00:09:00] win for everyone if we open up more land for these walk in programs or however we have to do it. To get more land available to people and spread that pressure out. That's what we need. I think.
Josh Raley: Yeah. Yeah. So you're getting geared up now.
You're going to be out hunting next week doing a little bit of filming as well, which I know is your favorite thing to be carting along and cameraman with you, which makes everything twice as difficult, but and I know you like to hunt the early season. How does Tony Peterson feel when it comes to hunting the rut?
Tony Peterson: I love it, man. I love the early season just because I, living in Minnesota, you forced to hunt that early season, this year, I think our gun season opens on November 5th. And you really don't get the rut, but I love hunting the rut, and so this year.
And I love in a way, early season things change quick, right? Like it might be acorns today. It might be something tomorrow or today and something tomorrow. So you're always in that game. But when I look at the rut, I go. [00:10:00] I need to. I need to find some kind of terrain trap of a funnel or a pinch I'm comfortable with an all day sit there as long as the conditions don't push me out.
And I love that because it's simple, right? Like I, I don't mind sitting all day and I love if I find something where I'm like, man, if I put in my time here, somebody's coming through. I love that. I can, and it's really not overly complicated. So I dig that aspect
Josh Raley: of it.
Yeah. And I think there are a lot of guys right now who are planning that, you got the word ruckation gets thrown around a lot of sick days and vacation days are about to be burned as you're getting ready to head out and hunt the rut, you said, they're in Minnesota, correct?
So what are you thinking about, like what's running through your mind as you're prepping for this? Because I think I've seen a lot of guys and some folks that I know no offense if they're listening to this. But they put all this time into it and they've got all the gear and they've got the vacation days burned and they're burning The brownie points at home and they get there and they shoot themselves in the foot like day after day [00:11:00] And they end up wasting their time And I don't know if that's because of lack of preparation and thinking ahead but some of it I think is so what's going in what's going through your mind is you're like Prepping yourself and thinking about the next week and how you're going to spend it.
Tony Peterson: Those guys you're talking about, I think the problem a lot of people have during the rut is they're like, it's going to save me and get bucks moving, so I'm going to go to this spot and I'm going to sit all day. It's man, if I don't have a real high level of confidence in a spot, I don't want to be there.
And there's a difference, like we think, I'm going to go out and I see those off the stand every time I sat at all season long, I'm going to go there. And it's that's not really how buck movement in the rut works. A lot of times, like we, we think it's really random. It's not like they're, they have pretty specific routes they were on.
And, if you look at some radio collar studies, it's fascinating. It looks like a lot of times like a cloverleaf pattern they'll make and they run the same routes over and over again. And we look at it and go they're just covering the countryside [00:12:00] and they're going to, eventually they're going to come by me.
And it's that's not a given. And so a lot of people go and they're like, I'm going to sit this, field ed stand on a cut cornfield or something. Cause I see those here all the time. And it's yeah, but you're not going to sit there all day, right? Like you're probably not going to get there in the morning and then sit through the, the dead hours of the day.
You got to really do some scouting and find those spots that are like, there is a chance for this buck to stay on the cover and cruise through here at any point of the day. And that's to me, I cover a lot of ground leading up to the rut. So I have spots like that for different winds where I go, it's going to keep me in the cover.
There's some kind of terrain feature. That's going to keep them coming through here. And ideally what I really have started to like is, this is different if you're in the big woods or whatever, but if like that, that Western Minnesota stuff that I'm going to go haunt that public, you're talking like five acres of woods here, three acres of woods around this homestead, maybe a little Creek bottom connecting [00:13:00] stuff.
And so I'm just like, connect the dots, like what's in between where these deer are probably going to go. And you start getting into some of those places and looking at the sign, you go. All right. There's no beds here. There's no beds over there. This little patch of cover keeps them from getting spotted by anyone if they go from point A to B and you start putting stuff like that together.
And just to me, that gives me so much confidence to go and sit all day. Like I'm not going to sit there at 10 o'clock in the morning and start second guessing myself and being like, Oh, I guess I'll go get a burger in town or I guess I'll leave or I need to be in a different stand. I want to walk into that stand in the dark in the morning and go, I firmly believe it.
If I sit here till dark, somebody's going to come by and you know how it works. Like sometimes it doesn't happen, but most of the time, if you put in your work, you can find spots like that, where it's I'm good here. This is
Josh Raley: going to work. Yeah. Yeah, man. I'm glad you brought that up. So I'm, I had a spot that I've been hunting the last couple of years and not wanting to get hung up on, on last year's deer or whatever.
I put a [00:14:00] camera up in this area and it's in this really tight pinch that kind of leads up into some dough betting. And as things have gotten hotter over the last couple of days, I've noticed bucks coming real close to my camera right past this scrape as they head up into where these does are bedded.
And then this camera is close enough in where it's catching them on the way back out, too So it's really cool So they're heading up and looping around and they can't go any further or they hit a lot of I won't say too much some folks know close to where I hunt so they head up but they have to turn around and come back And i'm catching them on the way back through another 35 yards past where they came in the first time So it's like you're saying with that cloverleaf pattern almost of just and i'm sure it happens on a much larger scale but this is on the micro scale of like the head right up into this bedding and then circle through and then boom, right back down out of there.
Once they see no does of have come in just yet. And that's just started in the last. Four or five days or so. I'm curious if you're one of these guys that's got a really limited time, which I know you work on limited time quite a bit. Are you going to burn a day for scouting? If [00:15:00] you haven't had a chance to yet, if you're going to, you're going to hit that timber, are you going to burn that first day and say, I'm finding these spots that give me a high degree of confidence?
No,
Tony Peterson: I'm scouting enough ahead of time where I don't feel like I need to do that. But I should say, so just as an example this Western Minnesota public that I'm in a hunt, the spots I've found that I'm going to sneak in and set up in some of them are, I'm like, that's the spot on spot. I'm going to kill right there.
Some of them are like, maybe, but I'll probably see something. And I've got one set up that I'm going to go into and put up. I'm probably going to sit there the first morning. I can. Where the visibility should be really good. I'm going to be positioned between this little creek bottom and this patch of timber, I went in there and scouted it last weekend, jumped some does out of there.
There's a little bit of water in the bottom. And as I'm looking at the forecast, I'm like, okay, I want to be, I'm not on that water, but I'm probably 80 yards away [00:16:00] from it, and so I'm just like, this is working to be. One of those places where if I don't kill one right there, I'll probably get clued into something.
So it's like an observation stand where you might kill from. And then as the week progresses and it starts popping open a little bit more, I'll get into those spots where it's this is where you're going to kill. Okay. Like this is a place where you are set up right here. Cause he should come from there to there and you should kill him.
Josh Raley: Okay. Gotcha. If you were, so let's say you're a guy that, that hasn't been able to scout at all. Are you going to rely on your map scouting and that kind of thing and try to get in, like you're saying to a place where you can observe. Or would that kind of change the game for you as Oh I haven't been able to scout this at all.
So therefore I'm going to, I'm going to, I'm going to take a day. Or are you going to say, I want to observe where I might kill on some spots that are, that I've picked off the map,
Tony Peterson: You can find, I've killed bucks just pulling up on X or whatever and going out and being like, this looks like the spot, but even then.[00:17:00]
When you get in there, you're like, okay, maybe this is the little runway here, maybe this is the terrain trap or whatever, but usually when you get in there, you've got to fine tune it. So a lot of times what I look at in that situation, like when I travel, I do that a lot, I'm like, okay, here's the waypoint.
Here's the waypoint. Here's the waypoint. I walk in is, does the sign support a sit? And if it does. It's usually for me, like a sit one day, move, sit one day, move thing. It just, that's just how you have to do it, and I would say, anybody who says they probably haven't had time to scout find a little bit of time, he's Oh, really? Yeah. And this is something, we do this all the time where it's I'm going to go put a camera out and that's going to be good enough. And I just look at that. We. I have a little food plot on one of my properties in Wisconsin, where I usually take my little girls to hunt and we sat there this year and I had a camera out on it, cause you're gonna, and the one day I watched six deer feed in [00:18:00] front of that sucker and I got a picture of two of them and I'm talking like eight feet away browsing, like not running through, not way out on the, the end of the, maybe the trigger range or whatever.
And I just look at that and I go. I need to just, I need to see something. I need to see some sign, something more than that. And I think we rely on trail cameras so much. And really, when you look at the rut, you go, and don't get me wrong, there's situations where trail cameras are super valuable, but you're already working on old info, even, cell phones or cell cameras are a little different, but.
You're still like, Oh, I had a buck taste through here three days ago. It's who cares? You know what I mean? If you have 10 bucks in the last three days, that's different. And so I'd rather go in and to me, if I see, big running tracks or I get in there and. If you're around a ton of fresh sign, you're around where bucks want to be like, that's going to be a part of their loop somehow,[00:19:00] and so to me, I don't know getting in there even if it's just I'm going to sneak through with my mobile setup, my saddle or whatever, and I'm going to look and just like fine tune a spot when I get there it's so important to give a little bit of time to
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Now let's get back to the show. Tell me a little bit about, you've mentioned a couple of times, the. Having that confidence in your spot. Can you run me through what is it that [00:21:00] gives you that confidence? Is it a certain concentration of scrapes, a certain size of rubs, a certain kind of terrain feature?
What is it that, that kind of trips your trigger where you're like, yeah, I've got confidence in this place.
Tony Peterson: It's partially fine. And it's partially just the, what the spot has to offer. Like I like, I like a good pinpoint, right? Like I like a good funnel, whatever. But what else does the spot offer, right?
So if it's the only place the deer can travel and stay in the cover, that's a huge bonus. If it's a connecting point between, a big chunk of timber here and a big chunk of timber there, or, really brushy creek bottom here and, wood ridges here, whatever that has, like it has to have more, right?
Because I think about this, I grew up in southeastern Minnesota. In the bluff country there, and I look at it and I go, I could find a bang and pinch point. Every 10 or 20 acres, so there has to be something more, like it [00:22:00] has to offer me something more. It's the same thing. So like I hunt northern Wisconsin a lot where I don't have bluffy stuff, like it's monoculture timber for miles.
And so it's okay, now I need to find something subtle. That's a pinch point, but there has to be something else. There has to be like a, the right age clear cut by there, or maybe a little creek where they're going to cross in some spot and it's going to neck down or, like a community scrape or just give me something extra.
And when you start finding spots where it's like, now this offers, obviously this train travel route thing, it offers some real good bedding cover. They can not get spotted from the road. If they travel through this way, like when you start stacking that stuff up. Then you start getting confident.
Josh Raley: Yeah. Yeah. So when you're hunting during the rut and you're going in mobile, let's say you've got your stand on your back or your saddle on or whatever you're trying to do when you're going in and trying to figure out, okay, is this the spot or where's the spot within the spot?
Or do I have the confidence? Can I [00:23:00] find that extra thing? How concerned are you about your own disturbance? Let's say you run through some suspected betting and you don't find a ton of sign until the very end. You find good sign. Are you going right back in there the next day? Are you thinking ah, I really blew that up yesterday.
No,
Tony Peterson: I'll hunt it. I'm not, there's no mulligan now, and. And so this is one of the things we don't talk about a lot where the value of satellite imagery, as far as walking into a place and knowing how probably to get in there is really important to me. Cause I know, we used to walk into spots, you'd have a paper map and you're like I'm just walking around trying to see what I can see.
And, you might've had a destination in mind because of the top of the lines or something, but really. Now you can surgically strike this stuff. without, without ever having been there, and you know how it is. You get in there and things are different, but. You can look at this and go, man, if I think this spot on, aerial [00:24:00] photography is the spot I can plan my route to get in there where I think I'll disturb it.
The least you know as little as possible, and that's like mostly the name of the game, right? Like it's really about keeping your presence as low as possible. But, at the same time. If I walk in and I jump deer now, I'm like, whatever, I'm still going to hunt it. Like I've killed bucks.
I jumped that came back. I used to, when I was growing up, if we had a deer snort at us, we're like this is over. I might as well go home. And just as an example That buck I was talking about in South Dakota a couple weeks ago, I had a doe and a fawn come down the ridge behind me, bust me the same way he did, snort like crazy, run off, and it was like dead calm.
Everything, I'm thinking everything could probably hear it. And then the next deer that came down the trail was like a 130 inch buck on public land. And so I just go, it sucks. Like jumping deer, [00:25:00] getting blown at by deer sucks. It's not as big of a deal a lot of times as we think it
Josh Raley: is Yeah, and I think too this time of year, especially It's really not as big of a deal as you think it is Like i've heard deer snort at each other, especially during the rut You know You have a buck cruise through a smaller buck And all of a sudden all the does in the bedding area start blowing at it and all kinds of things because they're being pestered So who knows what?
And what they attribute that disturbance to do you, are you worried about your ground scent at all? Or just man, it is what it is this time of year is busy and they've got other things on their mind.
Tony Peterson: I try to I wear knee high rubber boots all the time, right? And I say that because, having trained a lot of bird dogs and messed around with them.
Like one of the ways that I can run better drills with my dogs on especially Chet antler training is knee high rubber boots, treat them with ozone if you want or spray them down. Certain sprays seem to work really well and I can see my dogs can't pick up that scent. If I wear leather boots or I wear my regular shoes, I can see them just follow my scent right to the antler.[00:26:00]
And so I do that and I just try not to touch stuff and that's, that's probably when you're filming that's one of the things that drives me the most nuts. Cause you might have somebody who doesn't really know how to hunt following you around and you're like, can you please not put your hand on that and not grab that tree and not, not set yourself down here and, it's just, it is what it is. They try to be really cognizant of it, but you're going to, you're going to leave, you're going to make some noise. Like it just happens.
Josh Raley: Yeah. Are there, you said there are some sprays that you've found that seemed to work pretty well with your bird dogs. Any particular kind I've written it off so I took the whole scent elimination thing way too far and Tried the whole like Johnny Eberhardt approach of like just being super hardcore about it And then I realized like this sucks a lot and it's making me hate hunting Like I don't even want to go hunting anymore because I feel like the whole Routine has ruined it for me.
So But any of those sprays that you're like, Hey this is worth throwing on.
Tony Peterson: So in all of my, testing, which is totally anecdotal with bird dogs pink vanish spray [00:27:00] was unreal. It worked. It worked the best for me. I don't even know if they make it anymore. I had a ton of it. I still have some of it.
But what I look at and the other thing that works. really well as ozone. But if you put like your boots in an ozone in a tote and then you run ozone on it, eventually you're going to wear those suckers out. It's going to degrade the glue and stuff because ozone is a bleaching agent that works, but it works really well.
If you treat an antler with ozone. If you want to go out and treat some gloves, you can watch a really good bird dog not be able to smell it. And I could not do that with very many of the sprays. And so the way I look at it because I get asked about that control all the time. Is there certain situations where, like an ozonic works really well, like a 5 to 7 mile per hour wind, especially that kind of like variable wind.
Works pretty well. But I mostly play the wind. But what I look at is if I can treat some clothes. If I can treat my boots and that's going to keep down some of the scent from walking in, that's good enough. Cause you [00:28:00] know, I don't, I, we get into these debates all the time. Man, I don't think you can fully beat a deer's nose most of the time.
It seems like with an ozone machine, you can trick them into thinking, you're a lot farther away than you are. Just by some of their reactions and stuff. And out of a ground blind, they're pretty legit contained, but mostly when you look at, when I like I've interviewed people who are experts in dog, like olfactory capabilities, and when you start looking at them and comparing them to a deer, I know it's not like totally apples to apples.
It's like that dog is smelling in parts per trillion. And that deer probably is too. And so I had a guy who's an expert in this stuff from Texas tech explained it to me, and he said. If you took an Olympic sized swimming pool and you did three drops of something in there, that's what a dog can smell. And if a deer's anywhere near there, and I firmly believe they are, now you're sitting out there going, I did all this scent control and it's like your body is making [00:29:00] scent.
All the time and when you watch how they work out there, like you'll see deer smell one side of a leaf than the other side, or like a, a piece of grass. And you're like, I can't even imagine being like thinking that you're going to divine some information on this side of a blade of grass and you might get something different on the other side.
That's a level we can understand. And so I I'm the point where I'm like, I'm going to play the wind hard, and I'm going to try to leave as much. As little scent as possible going in
Josh Raley: and out. Yeah, man. I'm a big believer in ozone as well So that's pretty much the only thing I do anymore but I like you have kids and I got one of those scent crusher bags man and threw a dirty diaper into it and Ran a cycle and when I pulled it out and I couldn't smell the contents of the diaper I was like, okay i'm sold like I don't do much for my body But as far as like my clothes and treating that kind of stuff I'm going to do it.
It's just too easy, to treat it before you go out. And then, you feel like you've at least done what you can, as far as handling that. Yeah.
Tony Peterson: People [00:30:00] talk all the time about how it can't work. They don't really understand how it functions. We've been using ozone since the 1880s to purify water and air.
This is not. This is not new. They used it in Vietnam in like field tents to, do emergency surgeries out there in the field to disinfect the air and tropic environments. Like it's been a long road for ozone to end up in our little market, but it works. It's just what it does.
Like it's a bleaching agent. It's the reason when you're standing outside after a thunderstorm, the air smells clean. Yeah, that's ozone, right? Lightning creates the corona discharge and then ozone's heavier than the atmosphere. So it falls down. So we smell it and the air smells clean. It's the same thing when you put an ozone generator above your head, you can direct the stream of ozone because it's heavier than the atmosphere.
So people think it floats away and it doesn't. And so it's pretty sweet. It works,
Josh Raley: Man, I'm curious when it comes to, circling back to the rut, do you view [00:31:00] and this is 100 percent selfish. Like I'm getting out October 30th. I pull out of the driveway.
I'm hunting the morning of the 31st, hopefully maybe midday. Are you viewing October 31st a lot different maybe than you are November 10th? Do you break? That time period of the rut down into phases that kind of help you conceptualize what you should be looking for, or do you just lump it all into the same basket?
Tony Peterson: If you're talking like a Halloween type of hunt, I tend to focus more on a staging area. I don't count on a lot of chasing and cruising going on yet. I know some of it happens, but what I see, end October, first couple of days in November, a lot of times is like those big ones. They're not busting loose yet.
Like they're just, they're going to move, but they're going to move in the cover. And that's the time to me when if you're around a bunch of fresh rubs and you're in a place that's tore up with sign, that's where I want to be. Yeah. Like I don't, I'm not like, I got to be downwind of a dough bedding area.
I got to be on a crazy pinch point right now. I'm like, I want to be where the sign [00:32:00] says. Some big dude feels awful comfortable
Josh Raley: moving in daylight. Yeah. When is that for you? And I know it's situational depending on where you're hunting, but what's that breaking point for you where you're like, okay, now I'm shifting over to terrain features, trying to catch a buck cruising or shifting over to doe bedding and that kind of stuff.
Tony Peterson: It depends on the weather, depends how cold it gets, and it depends, I would say I'm probably going to make that switch by like the 4th or 5th of November. And it is, it's dependent. I keep looking at the 10 day forecast right now, and it's not making me that happy
Josh Raley: because it's like, it's garbage.
It's garbage. Yeah.
Tony Peterson: So then you're looking and going might be a little bit delayed when I'd make that move. Or it might just I might just spend more time where there's water nearby or something. So it just depends on the conditions, but I look at it like if I had to say just there's a hard date where it's like the cruising, the chasing.
It's going to buck loose for me. That's always November 7th. Like I, I look at that date and I go, that's the one where I want to be all [00:33:00] day on a pinch
Josh Raley: point. Okay. All right. When it comes to hunting during the rut and sign, as you get closer to that, November 4th, timeframe, how important is buck sign to you at that point?
When the, when, maybe they've stopped using scrapes quite as much and that kind of stuff. Are you still trying to get. In real close proximity to some good buck sign. Or are you saying like other things kind of Trump that now?
Tony Peterson: I'm not nearly as concerned with buck sign them. I'm more concerned with the terrain and how they're going to get from point A to B, but I will say this, I'm not like a huge scrape on her.
I like scrapes in the middle of October, but. If you find if you pay attention when you're in season scouting and you find what you'd call like a community scrape, like a great big one, maybe it has more than one licking branch on it. Like sometimes they do that usually indicates there's like a travel hub there, right?
That's usually a place where a lot of deer are going to be able to communicate a lot of [00:34:00] does filter through there. The bucks know it. And it might not matter that scrape is there to you during the rut hunt. But what it means is you're in the area. You should be, cause it's it's just like a signal, like a lot of deer come through here and we're communicating with each other.
And the reason a lot of deer come through there is. A, B, C, D, whatever doesn't really matter. You just know that they use that spot. And so there's times where I'll find a scrape like that and I don't care about hunting the scrape. I care that the scrape is there and what that means to the
Josh Raley: deer. Sure. So I've found that kind of a scrape over the last couple of years and it's been pretty, pretty regular every year opens back up this year for the first time, I hung a camera on it early.
Before it ever opened up and I got nothing for like the first three weeks, so I'm thinking like, Oh man, this is a bust, my camera's spooking everything out of there, thinking all the bad things. Then, last Saturday a really nice buck came through, opened the scrape up. And when he did, it was like the floodgates opened, does started coming through, hitting the scrape.
[00:35:00] I've now had five different mature bucks on this scrape. So I think it's like what you're talking about, it's just that travel hub. Where, everything wants to be, you're not setting up to try to shoot that scrape necessarily as you work your way into November. But what if you're, October 31st, November 1st and second, are you going to try to hug that a little bit to, to hopefully get a shot at that scrape?
Tony Peterson: Sometimes, if there's a, if there's another reason to be there. If I don't set up down when it scrapes, like specifically to shoot a scrape very often. I do sometimes October 10th through the 20th and in the right situation, especially in the pre rut, I might. If there, if the spot offers me something else,
Josh Raley: gotcha.
Gotcha. So I want to circle around to, the big rage these days when it comes to especially mobile hunting is that first set best set? You get in, you hunt something, then boom, you're out. Cause you just assume the spot's burned and you move on [00:36:00] when it comes to the rut.
Though. How are you thinking about like volume hunting certain spots? Are you ever going to say, man, this is a spot I'm going to give three days to this. Or are you like, ah, I'm going to give it a day and then I'm out.
Tony Peterson: It depends what the deer show me. Okay. So I'll give you an example. There's times where I, I might have a four day stretch during the rut where I'll sit eight different spots.
If I'm just not feeling it or I'm not seeing what I need to see, like this happened to me in Minnesota, I think two years ago. I just couldn't get on. I just, like maybe this is it, sit there, not see anything or see scrappers or something and just keep moving, but there's other times where I have so much faith in a spot.
I don't care. I know if you give me four days on certain spots, like I've got a spot I set up for a one week in November this year, that's on a ridge and it's, last year I killed a buck below it on a pond set up. It's got some terrain working for you, but every freaking [00:37:00] buck I saw was started there, ended there.
It was just like, it was like, that was the spot. So I went in there this summer and set up to get in there to sneak in the whole thing. And that spot, just knowing what I know, probably as long as the wind stays good for it. I wouldn't need to leave there. You know what I mean? So it's but I have some experience with that and then you never know.
Like I might go sit there. And see something that I'm like, actually, that's the spot like this is this I thought was. Nope. And so it just depends. And the other thing I'll say, you it depends on your options, right? Like how much land do you have to work with? What's, are you on public?
Are you on private? I think it was 2019. I went and hunted some public in North Dakota. I'd never been to before. And I had a couple of spots marked on my map, went out there, walked into the first spot. And I think I had, I think I had four or five days to hunt. And when I walked in there to look at it with a, stand on my back.
I was like, I'm not leaving. This is it. This is all I need. And I [00:38:00] sat there every day. I moved one time like 100 yards to get into a little better position. But the third day I was there, I sat all day and I had one 40 come through it last light. So that's all I saw. But I had seen other bucks the previous days and then the fourth morning I'm sitting there and the only dough I saw that entire set brought in.
Nice open young eight pointer and I shot him at 20 yards and it was like, just, it was just set up right. Like when you read the terrain, it's public land. So he wasn't, they weren't going to go run across the open stuff and it just connected a couple of bigger, bigger chunks of timber and I just.
The sign was right. The trails were right. The terrain was right. And you just go, it's good enough. Like I don't, you're not going to need to leave here to kill a buck. And so it just depends. It's situational.
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Let's say you get into one of those spots and I'll give you the situation I found myself in last year created a lot of like inner turmoil for me. I was on what I thought was really good action. Lots of does running around, lots of small bucks running around especially before daylight, both mornings I hunted this spot, heard a ton of chasing going on in the bedding area, a lot of grunting and that kind of thing never saw a shooter.
I never saw a, let's say a mature buck or something like that. The two year old or older, you had three year old or older, whatever your standards are, never saw a really good one in that spot. And I was beginning to think about moving on and that kind of thing. I just threw up some cameras and walked off.
They showed me later on that, that some bigger bucks started showing up around that fourth, fifth, sixth timeframe. And then it was like, okay, then it was really on. If you're getting into that kind of [00:40:00] action and it doesn't look like your presence is slowing down, the. Heat of the area.
Are you going to stick with that? Even if you're just seeing dinks running around?
Tony Peterson: It depends. Okay. Totally depends. It depends what the activity is right? Are there are, am I just seeing dinks cruising or are they chasing does all over and harassing them? Did somebody big going to show up?
And the other thing too. So what I do is I kill quite a few bucks by seeing just one buck cruise through a spot and a lot of times, that's a scrapper, but they'll show you how they use the terrain. You know what I mean? So we go out a lot of times that we say. It's no good unless I see a big one do something and I go man, this happens to me a lot in the big woods where I'll see a deer, not even maybe a buck.
Do something, and I go, that's what the deer do here. Whether you're looking at 140 inch or a year and a half old dough, that doesn't even have any fawns. Like you're like, that's [00:41:00] how they come off this ridge and cross that creek. That's super valuable. So it just depends.
Josh Raley: Yeah.
So Tony, I'm curious. I was talking with a buddy the other day and I said, Hey, I'm gonna have Tony Peterson on the podcast. He's man, that's awesome. We started talking about. Different things to ask you and one of the things we mentioned or he mentioned was, dude, you need to get Tony to give you Tony Peterson's five rules for the rut.
Like what are five things that like a guy needs to live and die by. So do you think you could rattle those off, just off the top of your head, your, five things that you're like, Hey, if you're getting out for your rutcation, these are the five things that you have to do or have to not do to make your hunt not suck.
Tony Peterson: I'll say a couple, and then there's one I want to get into. So sit all day, figure out a way to do it. Cause you know, people, I just wrote an article for the, for me to hear about this, where people are like, everybody talks about it. So few people actually do it. And man, it's not just [00:42:00] to kill that buck at noon, which might happen.
It's to be out there and maximize your time. And if you don't kill it, you might get clued into something like you might see that deer do something where you're like, I need to be there, like it just, it's so you have 11 hours of daylight, use it, especially if you're hunting pressured ground, right?
If you're hunting public land. Most of your competition is going to leave the woods for lunch. They just are, and if you think that the deer aren't pretty tuned in to when people are there and when they're not. That's crazy. They know that stuff. So figure out a way to sit all day.
We talked earlier about just you got to have the confidence in your spot. Don't, and this is what I want to get into is we tend to use the rut as default mode. Like now I'm going to sit the stand. I always want to sit cause it's easy to get to and I can see a lot, but the rut's going to save me, even though I haven't seen a big one on here all season, or maybe since opening night, I'm going to go there.
And now. A buck's going to bring it. And I think a better [00:43:00] strategy is to get in and take some risks, do a little bit of gambling and get into a spot that you're curious about. I think the thing that holds a lot of hunters back are way too high standards for their experience level.
And not taking those risks, like scout out those terrain traps and go in and sit them, give them a day, like instead of, and we, we do this all the time. And I think about this quite a bit, cause I have some buddies who have like big redneck stands on, the food plot with the pond bill right there.
And like this little Mecca for deer and they just sit it all the time. And I think we're raising a generation of deer in some places that look at those things and they go. I'm not going by that sucker anymore, like we're already seeing bucks, like kind of skirt them and I just look at that and I go, this might be the difference of if you don't climb into that box blind, but you get into the woods, a hundred yards away, you might be on a completely different hunt.
Yeah. And so I always tell people, like [00:44:00] we go into the rut a lot of times with, and whatever, set your standards to whatever you want, but a lot of people go in with too high standards thinking the rut's going to deliver a big buck to them. When they probably should just be hunting, like a decent representation like that two and a half year old deer you're talking about whatever, go figure out how to do that.
Don't, it's like the rut comes along and it's now it's big bucks or nothing. And it's look at the success rates. Most people don't kill one. Like most people don't kill one in Iowa, which it, which literally has the easiest rut hunting that you're going to get out there. It's it's still not easy, so I look at that and go. The rut is actually should be a motivator to do more work and be more disciplined and we look at it like an excuse to half ass it. Yeah, that's good. It doesn't work for most people. So I don't know. There's three things in there. I don't know.
Josh Raley: No that's great.
That's great. I'm going to have a guy on my other show here in the next couple of weeks. He took he has an app that he put together that just recorded like Hunter reported sightings, [00:45:00] and when you look at Hunter reported sightings as opposed to like their effort obviously most sightings are, in the morning and then in the evening.
But when you take in into consideration the amount of hours spent on stand that middle of the day Was actually the highest bump on public land in October and November of guys who were out hunting like those if you I guess make all things equal as far as like amount of hours spent that middle of the day part Actually saw more deer those hunters who were staying on stand.
So I thought that was really interesting So yeah for sure sit all day and I don't know, for me, man, that middle of the day part is really nice. Cause it's now it's warm. The sun's out. It's a nice gentle breeze. It's what else am I going to do? Go sit in my truck, go sit at the diner in town.
That sounds lame.
Tony Peterson: And you got to think about it too, is, if you get in there and you have the confidence, you've made one disturbance going in, that's it. Now you go in, you come out, you go back. It's a different, it's a different thing. You're making more noise. You're leaving more sense. And, like you said[00:46:00] I love sitting all day now, as long as I have a ton of confidence.
And if you do it enough, you're going to have one of those encounters. So one of those sightings where you're like, this is worth, like last year when we were filming one week in November, I killed a buck at one in the afternoon. In Wisconsin. And I knew when we went out that morning, I even called it on this early in the morning, I was like, this is the day to do this.
Like it just, it was right. And I didn't even, we pack in sandwiches and the whole thing to make it through the day. And I didn't even want to sit down and eat a sandwich at like noon, because I'm like, this is at any second. Now this is going to happen. It was November 6th. It just was right. And one o'clock in the afternoon, I look up and here comes a safe pointer down the Hill.
And you're just like, it just. It was the day and, if you weren't there, you don't kill them. Like it's so simple. And so it just takes so much of this stuff that we talk about is people are like, what's your strategy? What's, what's the style? What's the secret to this?
Should I call? Should I do this? I'm like, [00:47:00] just confidence in your setup is huge. If you have confidence to sit out there all day or. Even an extra hour or two in the morning and come out a little bit earlier in the afternoon That confidence kills the deer. Yeah, like it just does.
Josh Raley: Yeah, and man you hunt so much different, too Like I have not used my cameras well in the last couple of years especially around this time frame because I just Getting in there.
When you have a family You know when you have a family have small kids like just getting out to the woods to check cameras and move cameras around That's a day I don't have, or that's a half a day that I don't have where I'd rather be doing something else. This year, I got it right.
And it's given me a ton of confidence in a couple of the spots that I have scouted last year. Now spots, I mean like a 10 acre area where I hop around inside of that. Now I noticed though, my approach going into this year, I'm so much more dialed because of that confidence. Because of my confidence in the spot, like.
You better believe i'm not [00:48:00] breaking a stick on the way in if I can help it, you know Whereas otherwise i'm just let's just hurry up and get to my tree and make whatever noise I need to getting up, That will not be the case this year because i'm pretty convinced that there's a big one close by You know could be any time of day
Tony Peterson: what that matters and that kind of self doubt you're talking about that can creep in That is a success killer, man.
And you see this, to me, it's never more obvious than if you're on like an elk hunt and it's like day four and you haven't heard or seen an elk in three days, you just start like bumbling around, like you're just like, whether you like consciously acknowledge it or not.
You're navigating through that world differently and not in a better way, and that's one of the things I will say about trail cameras like, man, you get a picture of a big one in your spot, and it changes how you look at that I don't know. I'm going to go in earlier. And that's another thing, too, is, man, I'm to the point now [00:49:00] where I'm going in earlier and earlier to get in there in the dark, let things settle down.
And just trying to really maximize those opportunities. And if you need a trail camera picture of a big one to do that's great. But use it. Use it as a motivator, like you said, and understand. If you've got to pick, even, this is a really common complaint with a lot of people is like the hunting industry doesn't address the small property home hunter very much.
And it's cause well, I only have 20 acres to hunt or whatever. And it's yeah, that buck comes through three times a season, but he doesn't live there. I'm like, yeah, but he comes through there. That's part of his range. And so it's even in some of those situations, it's even more important to be like, I have the confidence that this deer.
Could come through instead of thinking he's probably not because like you said, when you walk in different, you'll sit different, you'll pay attention different. Like it all that
Josh Raley: stuff matters. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I've put myself on a very strict, no cell phone policy in the stand this year because of that exact factor, you sit [00:50:00] on staying different when you're confident.
And I've over the last couple of years, I'm ashamed to say like my phone has cost me dear, and it's a work email that I'm sending, or it's a text message back to my wife that I'm sending and it's nope, not this year. That's gotta be put away. I've gotta be, I've gotta be all there.
So I'm curious, Tony, you get into a lot of hunts and you've you've said, you've had your butt kicked your fair share of times going out into these public land hunts. What do you do when you get into day three, four, five, and that confidence really starts to sink and That if you let that creep in, it's really going to impact everything else about the rest of your hunt.
And like you said, not in a good way. So what do you do to pick yourself up out of that?
Tony Peterson: It's always reset moments. Like I'm, this is going to be a weird transition here, but I look at life. Like we just need reset moments, right? Like you're pissed off with work or your family or whatever.
Like it's time to go to the gym or it's time to go for a little run or. Like I, I need a fresh view or something, like we need, you need something. And when I'm [00:51:00] in that position and it happens to me all the time, it's I just go, okay, you're not on it, but it's out there. So where is it?
Like, where are you riding a dead program? Or is it just something where it's this spot won't do it for you. This property is not it. And I know that. And so it's one of the reasons I push this message all the time. Get as many spots to hunt as you can. And people were like duh.
But I'm like, no, if you have 40 acres of private land to hunt and that's all you hunt, but there's 5, 000 acres of public land on the road, you're selling yourself short, yeah. We do this all the time. And this is one of the things that drives me nuts about hunters. It's we want the hunt to happen where and how we want it to happen.
And it's that's not how mother nature works. And so you hear guys complain constantly, like in Minnesota. I hear these complaints all the time about how the DNR mismanages the deer. They get every state you hear that. And every time anything comes up where it's Hey, [00:52:00] should we bump the gun season back?
So it's not right at the beginning of the rut. He's no, like I don't want to change or should we do this or should we do that? It's no, I don't want to change. I want to have a good hunt, but I don't want to change anything. And it's that's not how it's obviously if you say the system's broken.
Then something has to give, and instead you just want to sit there and bitch about the people managing the deer and not give up a thing for yourself because you want it to happen a certain way. We do that with the run a lot, like on a personal level where it's this is my spot. I know it's going to happen here.
And then you go in and after two days you're like, it's not going to happen here, but I want it to. So what do you do? And this is one of the things that when you travel a lot to hunt and you go hunt public land, all these different states. Mostly it goes wrong, and so you just get into the idea of I probably didn't get this right, but I'm gonna try and and that's sometimes I've been on hunts where I'm like, I did all my research.
I'll give you an example. I hunted Oklahoma like four years ago. And there's [00:53:00] a chunk of public land down there. That's 4, 000 acres. I was like, that's all I need. My buddy and I drove down there 14 hours. We had all of our waypoints down there. And in three days, I think I saw three deer and 712 hunters.
Like it was just, beyond I couldn't overcome it. And so I've got hours and hours of e scouting and I've driven 14 freaking hours to get down there. You set up camp, the whole deal, and it's just no way. So what do you do? So we pulled up the maps. We look at it. We'll go. Let's just go try something.
But we need this reset moment. We pulled everything. We drove four hours north to the north part of the state and got into, An area of public land where I walked in to the spot I picked out, set up my stand and I went to grab a candy bar out of my pack and heard something behind me and a doe ran in and I shot her and I said, okay, this was a thousand times better than the spot we just left.
The next morning, my buddy shot a doe and then the next night I shot a buck and it was like, it just [00:54:00] took that reset moment. Now, that was a pain in the ass, right? We had to pull camp, we had to drive four hours, we had to walk in blind. To a spot, but sometimes you just need to go the idea of this spot that I had isn't reality.
I fell in love with the idea of killing one right here on my food plot or on this little, this pinch point or this stretch of timber between these two spots. And it's showing me that this was not right. So it's now I need something up. I just need something else.
Josh Raley: Yeah, that's really good.
That's really good. So I want to circle around to something you just mentioned there in Oklahoma. But something that's going to play into pretty much everyone's hunting who's out on public land this For the rut this year and that is human pressure. Like how much do you take that into account?
When you're starting to get into some of these places, let's say you find a good spot that you're like, man, this is it This is a an excellent pinch point the sign is here But you also can tell like you're not the only genius that figured that spot out [00:55:00] Are you going to pull out and let them have it?
Are you going to do the battle thing where it's i'm going to be here in the parking lot first What are you going to do?
Tony Peterson: Just depends, I like being the first one in the parking lot I really do. Oh, yeah, but It's not. This is not just a strict public land thing either. So I'll give you an example.
So this property I'm hunting in southwestern Wisconsin for one week in November this year. Is a, it's an awesome property. I guess 90 acres of private land is killer bluff country, big deer. It's a, it's probably the best spot I've ever gotten permission to hunt in my life. Wow. But I Turkey hunted at this spring.
And so there's a ridge at least to this food plot that my buddy put in there where on paper, you're like, every deer should come out there. And I never, I hunted at one time, he hunted as a whole bunch and they didn't come out there. And we're like, why what did we get wrong about this?
And I couldn't figure it out. And then I was turkey hunting there this spring. And I got to that [00:56:00] corner and I'm just glassing and I look and I'm like, okay, a hundred yards down the trail. I can see this glint of metal. Michael, there's a ladder stand cutting every deer off from where we expected them to come.
So I don't know when that guy was hunting in there. And he lives, he's totally legal. He's on his land. We're on ours. That's just the name of the game, but that kind of stuff happens all the time and that kind of stuff happens in the rut all the time, everybody's out. So if there's a, if there's a situation like that, or if it's not happening for some reason, a lot of times that's why it might be you, it might be somebody else, but it's like, it doesn't matter.
If something's got to give, something's got to change. And so my thing. My thing almost always is I want to figure out how to hunt where or how other people aren't, and so that might be the all day sit when people are leaving. Or it just might be that guerrilla warfare thing where you get in deeper than everybody else, or you climb [00:57:00] like a lot of times for me, it's going up, it's climbing like it's something that takes a little bit of work to get in there or crossing a river.
And now it's now I feel better about people not being there, or like I said about the Oklahoma thing. Sometimes we settle for a spot because we want to hunt it and the saturation level of pressure so high, you can't overcome it. So you either got to, you got to settle and go. Now, my standards are a deer, which is fine, or you got to go, I got it.
I have to do something else. Maybe it's, I only hunt Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday morning when there's fewer people than Saturday, Sunday, or, I'm going to take that kayak in, or I'm going to do something different to get away from them. Cause man, I'm sure you've seen this and I'm sure a lot of listeners have.
There's no shortage of pressure out there during the rut on private and public land, it's freaking
Josh Raley: everywhere. Yeah. One, one thing I got to throw this in there because you mentioned, when you like to hunt where and how other people aren't, one of the things that [00:58:00] I have started to do over the last couple of years.
Just the way I think about the properties that I hunt and how they lay out and how they're multi use, right? So there's a lot of other people on there other than just bow hunters. I have found a lot of success hunting close to either the duck hunters or the pheasant hunters, and it's like the deer seem to behave differently.
Around that pheasant pressure or that duck pressure than they do to bow hunting pressure And i've found that if I do get close if I get close enough where I can hear those guys and they're duck blind high fiving and hooping and hollering after a flock of birds comes in Those deer, I don't know, they just, they're just different, and other bow hunters don't want to be there.
They're like, I want to be so far away from that, that, it's not even funny. The deer have just, I don't know, acclimated to it or yeah, I don't know. Have you seen the same thing?
Tony Peterson: Yeah, I'm literally counting on that next week. I know I'm going to have. I'm gonna see a ton of pheasant hunters off stand next week for sure, but [00:59:00] the one thing so I, I stopped into this spot last week when I was coming back from South Dakota, I had about four hours to go peek at a few different areas and there were bow hunters and there were pheasant hunters all over.
When I walked into my first spot that I want to check out five acres of timber and then a little creep bottom below it. And I jumped two bedded does right away in there. Cause nobody's going to pheasant hunt in there. Cause woods, right? You've got all these cattails blues, and you got all this grassland.
That's where they're going to pheasant hunt. And then I went, so I, I checked that spot out. Oh, there's deer bedded there. Even though there was pressure all over around there, I went to the next spot and I walked into the, where I had my pin dropped. I walked into the woods there and it, this is a little strip of woods, right?
Like it's the whole thing is maybe a half a mile long and it might be 20 acres of cover total, like it's real thin. I walked in there to that pinch point and there was a buck standing there. And there's pheasant hunters, he's in [01:00:00] the cover and they hear that, like you said, they hear that every day, like there's their trucks pull in there, they drop the dogs off, they get out, they're yelling at each other.
There's gunshots going off and these deer just work around it. And they go, they're not going to bed out there in that grassland nearly as much, because they're going to get bumped around, but those patches of cover that the roosters aren't in, or the ducks aren't in. That's where the deer are going to be.
It's crazy. It's crazy what you're talking about. Cause it's it defies what we think about for deer and they just
Josh Raley: do it. Yeah, man. I'm so glad to hear you say that. Cause I've talked to a handful of other people about it and they're like, dude, you're nuts.
And I'm like, no I've sat on stand on the opening day of pheasant season and watched how the deer move around those pheasant hunters. And how, there was one really good example last year in October a small six point came in bedded, probably 35 yards from me, pheasant hunters come in, they're blowing up the woods, as they would go down to one side, he would get up and circle around the backside of the bush and lay back down.
They would [01:01:00] work their way back the other side of the field. He would get up circle around the other side of the bush where he couldn't be seen and bed back down. Eventually they got close enough. He got up. Walked up inside of this like gnarly clump of bushes and laid down and that dude held tight Even as they hunted around it I'm like if that little one knows well enough How to skirt that pressure and how to deal with that and not just bust out of there and be seen and show himself to Everybody then I bet you a couple of big ones do too.
Tony Peterson: They all do part of the reason I'm hunting that this spot that I'm hunting is All of my pheasant hunting time there, all the deer I've joked, and
That's literally why I'm going out there to hunt. I've never deer hunted it before, but I pheasant hunted it a lot, all this public land.
And I don't typically start pheasant hunting until after the Minnesota gun season is over, which is always mid November. And I had a experience like three years ago, took my dog down, went into this spot. It was the day after gun season ended. So here [01:02:00] in Minnesota, we have almost 500, 000 gun hunters spread out through, it's a big state, whatever, but there's a lot of pressure during gun season, just like in a lot of states, right?
And this is public land, and this is the day after gun season ended, and we went to this spot, and there was a little lake in there with cattails around it. And in those cattails mixed on three corners of that little lake are patches of willows. And you're talking like, a tenth of an acre, maybe a fifteenth of an acre patch, right?
And I took my dog in there and hunted through three of those and I jumped 120 to 140 bucks out of every patch and not until we got, and I go, and so you go, this is not a fluke, right? This is these deer, this is the little sanctuary and for whatever reason, people aren't pushing that. They're not going in there.
And so those bucks, even though there's private land around there, they're like, this is the safest spot to be this little willow patch because nobody comes in there. And then when you go in there with a dog, they don't get up until you are on top of them. They don't get up until [01:03:00] you're really. Like you make them get up the dog.
It's usually the dogs that do it. But we see that over and over again. And so I think, you think about like how easy it is for them to keep track of us, especially if you're a pheasant hunter, you're not trying to hide. Like you're not being sneaky and it's just so they're so ahead of us in that little game that they don't, they're not in danger from us there.
You know what I mean? Like they figured out how to just like the dangers over there. I'm over here and they figured out how to work it so well that it's not they don't panic. Like you said, you see a little buck do that. He knows the drill. He's done that 50 times this season. He did that when he was a fawn and his mom showed him what to do.
So you get a three and a half or a four and a half year old doing that and they're like I got this Those guys out
Josh Raley: there. They're not a threat. Yeah. Yeah. Tony man. I appreciate you coming on i've got one more question for you. Actually. I've got two more questions first one What about calling do you do any calling or messing around with [01:04:00] grunt calls or anything like that during the?
During the rut, or are you just going to put those up? Cause man, the deer just hear it all the time.
Tony Peterson: I call very rarely. I don't blind call ever. Like I just, I don't have that much confidence in it and I'm not hunting places where I feel like this is the move, right? I do. I always have a grunt call with me because if I see a buck in a, in the right situation that looks callable, I'll try to call him.
But it's always like the work to make calling happen and be effective for most of us involves all the scouting and the confidence building to get to a spot where that buck's comfortable. You know what I mean? Like we, people go out and they're like, I'm just going to rattle, I'm going to call.
And it's it's not going to work. Like it's almost never going to work unless you're in a spot where they feel super comfortable and then they get real cold. Like when you hunt [01:05:00] elk on public land, you hunt turkeys on public land and you're getting towards the end of the season. Those two animals, which are super vocal, super callable if you get within like a certain distance of them, and you're not going to get within a certain distance of them standing in the middle of a meadow, right?
Like you're going to be in the dark timber and that bull is going to be batted down the ridge or he's going to be coming back up to go bed. And now you're 100 yards away or 150 yards away. Same thing with those turkeys. Like you go out and set up on the field edge on public land after six weeks of season.
He's not callable, but he might be following a head around. It's eating bugs in the woods, and if you get 75 yards away from him, he's highly callable. And so white tails are the same way, right? Like I see a buck cruising way across. An open grassland or something, I've just, I waved goodbye. I'm like, see ya, but if he's checking scrapes or cruising around in a little wood lot and it's full of sign and I'm like, man, he's comfortable, he looks comfortable here and confident [01:06:00] that deer is one you can grow on at and he'll come in.
Josh Raley: Yeah, that's good. All right. Final question. Now. Give me Tony Peterson's space fact of the day
Tony Peterson: Can you imagine the audacity of Mark Canyon accusing anybody of being a dork right,
Josh Raley: right
Tony Peterson: Did you see, so this is my current obsession. I am actually writing about a foundation script about the big bang right now and relating it to white tails. Did you see the NASA dart mission that they just did? No. So NASA sent a 250 pound spaceship, little probe into space to hit a moon. So there's an asteroid out there that has a little asteroid orbiting around it.
And they can measure the, I think it's 11 days. It takes the orbit or something like that. NASA sent out a it's called the dark mission to hit that little [01:07:00] moon and see how far off of orbit they could knock it. And so this thing is 7 million miles away. And this little probe is moving 14, 000 miles an hour and they hit it.
Dead. Wow. They hit it like. The projected impact site, they were off by 20 meters or something at 7 million miles at 14, 000 miles an hour. And the reason they did that is they want to measure how far off of its orbit they got, because eventually there's going to be an asteroid coming. A little too close to us that could cause an extinction event and they want to figure out how to knock it off course
Josh Raley: Holy cow.
Yeah, that is amazing. Isn't that wild that is wild and I have trouble hitting a whitetail at 20 yards with a bow
Tony Peterson: When you look at that I just and what's crazy So that thing is moving 14, 000 miles an hour to impact it, and it [01:08:00] took a picture two seconds before it hit and sent back a partial image.
So not only is moving 14, 000 miles an hour, it took a picture and had enough, whatever technology they're using to send a partial image back in that two seconds before it hit.
Josh Raley: That is crazy. Yeah, that is crazy. Wow, man. All right. So that's not really a safe fact. No, but that's pretty incredible.
All right. I'm gonna have to go look that up and check it out more. Tony, thank you so much for coming on the show today, man. Where can folks find everything that you're doing these days and keep up with you? Maybe especially when will the one week in November air? Is that going to be semi live?
So last year when
Tony Peterson: we filmed it every show dropped within a week or a couple of weeks. This year, we're not doing that. Okay. So we're going to film it this fall. It's going to drop in 2023, so we'll have more time to build the episodes and everything. That turnaround was real tight. Yep. Everything I'm doing now I'm full time with meat eater.
So all my writing is the [01:09:00] meat eater. com, my foundation podcast under the wire to hunt. Everything I'm doing is there. So
Josh Raley: awesome. Awesome. Tony, good luck to you next week, man. I hope you hope you have a good rut hunt and thanks for coming on. Awesome. Thanks. Good luck to you too, buddy.
That's all for this week's episode. As always, thank you so much for tuning in. If you dig this show, be sure to subscribe to this podcast, wherever it is that you get your podcasts. If you can leave us a five star review, I would very much appreciate that. While you're at it, you can follow along with my outdoor adventures on Instagram at how to hunt deer.
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