The Secret Sauce w/ Tony Peterson

Hey everyone, welcome to episode 193 of the Antler Up Podcast!

On this week's episode I was joined by Tony Peterson!  It is always a great time to catch up with Tony over an episode.  It is no secret that Tony is a BIG fan of hunting early season whitetail. There are many factors that come into play for Tony and we get into this discussion on what to key in on to have success during the early season timeframe! 

We begin this episode by hearing Tony share some fun upcoming hunts he has in store with his daughters and some specific goals that he hopes they can achieve together this season.  Speaking of goals, Tony has a specific goal for himself and that is killing a buck in some cattail slews with the muzzleloader.  Life lessons about hunting get discussed, separating the stress of producing and just enjoying the hunt and more! When the season begins to wear you down and beat you up, Tony shares some things that can get yourself right again and off the struggle bus.  The main meat and potatoes is hunting early October and the rules to finding success NOW! Be sure to check out Tony Peterson on the Wired to Hunt podcast and his great articles over at Meateater.com.  Enjoy this fun episode and see you next week! 

Thanks again for all the support and best of luck out there and Antler Up!

Check out the Sportsmen's Empire Podcast Network for more relevant outdoor content!

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Jeremy Dinsmore: [00:00:00] Welcome to the antler up podcast brought to you by tethered the world's best saddle hunting equipment, and we have a fun show for you all today.

What's up, everybody. Welcome back to this week's episode of the antler up podcast. We're on episode one 93 and this one we're calling the secret sauce with Tony Peterson. It's always great. Time to catch up with Tony over an episode. And it's no secret that Tony is a big fan of hunting early season, whitetail.

There are many factors that come into play for Tony. And we get into this discussion on what to key in on to have success during the early season [00:01:00] timeframe. And really to begin this episode. We hear Tony share some fun upcoming hunts he has in store with his daughters and really some specific goals that he hopes they can achieve together this season.

And speaking of goals, Tony has a specific goal for himself, and that is killing a buck and some cattail slews with the muzzle loser. So really cool, fun discussion regarding this. And really, we get into some life lessons about. Hunting and separating stress from producing and getting back to really enjoying the hunt and more Discussions about this when the season begins to wear you down and beat you up Tony shares some things that can get yourself right and off that struggle bus the main meat and potatoes though and of this episode is Hunting early October and the rules to finding success right now.

Be sure to check Tony out Over on the wire to hunt podcast and his great articles over on meateater. com. So enjoy this fun episode. We'll see you next week. We'll actually see you this Friday for the [00:02:00] antler up report. So be sure you are checking that out. We're going to have a fun one. What a fun discussion on that one.

So thanks again, everybody hope. You have a great start of the season. Finally for myself this week, finally, when this airs, I will finally have been able to get out at least one of these evenings after school this past weekend on opening day, I did not get a chance to get out. So wish you nothing but the best of luck.

Those of you that are listening to this and for all that support, if you like. What you hear, please go leave that five star review over on iTunes and write something that really helps me out. It helps continue to make this grow. And if there's something that you want to hear or someone you would like to hear from, please reach out to me.

I would be more than happy to reach out to an individual to get them on and have a specific discussion as well as if you want to come on and do just do a quick chat on the Antler Up report that will air every other Friday right now. So thanks again, everybody. Enjoy this episode with Tony. Antler up.[00:03:00]

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Jeremy Dinsmore: percent off your Spartan Forge membership at Spartan Forge. Last year was a wild year for censorship for hunters and anglers. We partnered with social media platform, go wild to combat mainstream social media censorship.

Go Wild was built by outdoorsmen and women by hunters and anglers just like you. Go Wild is a free, social community. Not only are your photos not censored, they're encouraged on Go Wild. And Go Wild gives you points for things like sharing your trophies, gear reviews, and inviting friends. As you earn points, you unlock awesome rewards too, such as gift cards.

Free swag, knives, huge discounts on brands like Garmin and Vortex, and so much more. And if you create a free account, you can unlock [00:05:00] 10 just for trying it out. Visit and download go wild. com to get started. What's up everybody. Welcome back to the show. I'm joined by none other than Tony Peterson, Tony, welcome back to the show, man.

Thanks for having me, bud. Oh, I appreciate it. And it's been an honor to. Share some text messages with you over the last like year and a half, two years that since the last time you've been on the podcast and seeing the things that you do really look up to what you do and as a father, as a hunter and just individual.

So it's always a pleasure to to have you on and get a chance to talk Tony. We just shared off air. Things are heating up for us as we're getting ready to go here on the whitetail thing, the season's right around the corner when the podcast requests and everything starts bumping up.

So it's that good sense though, because the season is here basically.

Tony Peterson: Yeah, man, the summer is so weird. You go into it and it's like time to fish and maybe shoot a little bit and you get, get some cameras out and start thinking about stuff. And then it's just bam, like [00:06:00] all of a sudden you're like, okay, it's.

Three weeks, two weeks, one week. And you have, it feels, I do this to myself every year, no matter how prepared I think I am. I get into panic mode a little bit, in the preseason. And then you get into it and you just figure it out. Yeah. You figure it out.

Jeremy Dinsmore: It's funny though, because the individuals that have those early season hunts, you're sitting there Oh, okay.

It's this. And then. You actually count out your days. You're like, Oh crap, I need to leave in 13 days or whatever. And you go through that mental checklist. Like I still need to do this. And then for individuals that put a lot of effort into your home state, you're like, Oh crap, I still got to do.

Mock scrapes, or I got to do, last minute camera checks before I don't want to go in there anymore, all that type of stuff. So it does come at you quick. And sometimes it's Oh, like a brick upside the head, basically.

Tony Peterson: Yeah it, every, and it seems every year it just happens faster.

I think, you know how this is man, all of a sudden you, when you have kids, you're like, life just flies by, [00:07:00] things change. It just goes faster and faster and it catches up to you, but. It also forces you a little bit to try to get some stuff done, not wait till the last minute and I feel like I'm slowly becoming a more responsible adult that way when it comes to haunting.

Jeremy Dinsmore: Oh man, it's so funny. So we're sharing some information with our, with the new students today at school and we're doing like a get to know you. And I had this worksheet and I was like, I better fill this out as well, just to maybe. Let some students talk, I'll give a couple of my answers and let more students talk.

So one of the things were, the questions was, your bucket list, like what are three things on your bucket list? And some students just had some really awesome ideas of things they want to do. And I just started laughing. I just said, what's so funny is I'm that individual that I really don't have that desire to travel outside the country.

Like people that want to travel Europe and do all that stuff. More power to you. That's fantastic. Go after it. I'm not a big ride seeker as far as roller coasters or [00:08:00] skydiving. No desire to do that. And I, one of my my bucket list was own a cabin in Montana. Own a like a limitless budget list.

Home gym. I have a nice home gym now and being a healthy phys ed teacher. So I'd, all that stuff. And then my third one was now I teach at the high school that's located outside of Penn state university. So it's very diverse. We, I got rural kids and a lot of kids that still are.

Our outdoors and hunters and all that stuff. And I go, dream of mine is to shoot a one 70 class buck with my bow in Iowa. When I finally pull that tag, as a bucket list. And one kid was like, yeah, . He's all, I was like, all right buddy, we're gonna get along this year. This is

Tony Peterson: gonna be great. Do you have kids in that class that have no idea what that meant?

Oh

Jeremy Dinsmore: more maj, I would say about 89. 95% of them easily. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But Hey, it is what it is. They'll, when they get me for phys ed, they'll go through the, maybe if they get stuck with me, I guess you could say [00:09:00] when we do our selection, the archery unit. And I just, Tony, I nerd the heck out.

I'm just like, they're like, Oh my gosh. What are you saying? Mr. Dinsmore they're probably ready to jump out of the classroom, but then they enjoy it. Cause then they're shooting and they're shooting a lot. Like they didn't realize how good they could end up being. And they're learning the skill basically from ground up.

It takes a couple of classes. You got some arrow flyers going into the net and all that type of stuff. And then the, then it hits the big target, man. But Tony, you were talking about, being a better adult, that soul process, talking about family. What, what's going on for you and the girls this year?

Or do you have, do they have any goals for hunting for whitetail this year? Or, do you have goals for them? I guess you could even say.

Tony Peterson: Oh man, we have goals. This is, we're working real hard to have this be the first year where they both get bucks. They both, they've both killed bucks, but not in the same year.

So that's a big goal. And then my one daughter and I, we drew bear tags in Wisconsin. Oh, nice. And so that is a big project and that's why I'm not [00:10:00] going out hunting. That's why I'm not going out West this year. Cause that is a, if you have to bait them, which is what you're doing over there, it's such a commitment, like you're really, it's a couple hours to get over there, a couple hours to get back.

And, we have some big bears coming in and you can put 10 gallons of bait out and you might have one bear come in and it's pretty much cleaned out in one night. And so if there isn't that consistency there, they're not going to just keep coming back. They'll swing down wind and check it.

And so it's a weird hunt and I don't know if you've ever done it before, but it's it's just a, it's a heavy lift on the front end. And the hunting doesn't really do it for me that much. And I'm excited for my daughter and I have a tag. I might shoot when I might not, I don't know, but I just love that process of.

Of, doing the work on the front end. And so that's a big one for us is trying to get her a bear. That's pretty

Jeremy Dinsmore: cool. Then how about for yourself for this year? Any specific goal that you are really want to hammer home?

Tony Peterson: I, my, my schedule the last two years with meat eater has [00:11:00] been it screwed up my, a lot of my public land hunts.

And a lot of the stuff that I really like to do, cause I had to save some tags and, film and whatever. And so this year I'm I do still have to film quite a bit, but I'm like, I gotta go. I got to go get out on some public land and do this. And so I'm going to, it sounds like I'm going to do maybe a week in Oklahoma, I'm going to do probably a week in North Dakota.

I've got some stuff going on in Wisconsin that I'm working on for to shoot a deer on public. And then I'm going to, I, I try to knock out one thing a year that I just like, you know how it is where you have stuff in the back of your head. You're like, I always wanted to go try this, or I always want to go do this.

And where I like to pheasant hunt in Southern Minnesota, we jump deer all the time. And, it's a late season kind of deal. And, last year I hunted a couple days for a one week in November series down there. But it was, I was too early. I saw some deer, but it just, it wasn't right.

And so I told my buddy this year, I'm like, I'm going to go down there and I'm going to [00:12:00] try to shoot a good buck. On public land in one of those cat tail sleuths with a muzzleloader. And, maybe do that in the mornings and the evenings. Take the dogs out for a few hours in the middle of the day.

But just stuff like that. There's just things that I just wanna, I wanna do. And they might not be like the best chance to kill a big one. But. For whatever reason, they get their hooks in me and I got to go try it. So that's pretty, I have a weird year this year, and one of the things that I think about with this is, if you take a state like Minnesota the habitat is so diverse, depending on, Southeastern corner, it's bluffy deciduous forest where I live here in the central part of the state by the cities.

There's a billion people, it's cattail sleuths, there's no hills, they get up north and you're in the big woods out west, you're prairie ish pothole. And the more I look at the opportunities that are going away for non residents out there, some of those states that we thought you're just gonna be able to go to and buy an over the counter tag forever.

That stuff's going away. Yeah. And so now I'm looking at like, where can I find? Some kind of cool little adventure hunt to [00:13:00] do in my home state or you just find these opportunities that probably aren't going to go away because we're dealing with that reality. And so that's a motivator behind some of the stuff I'm going to do this year, too.

Yeah.

Jeremy Dinsmore: Speaking on that, I know some people that did not draw even like an Iowa tag with five. With five points, like that's crazy, and depending on what unit and, that's, so you think about it, you pull that maybe with five points and with individuals that trying to figure out and they're racking up points, man, it could be seven years, seven plus years till for individuals to get back to that one state for whitetail, which Man that's a long time.

Tony Peterson: Yeah. That's not going to get better. That's what I didn't draw Iowa this year either. I didn't have great odds where I applied and the point numbers I had, but it was in just a couple of years ago, I drew there with the amount of points I had. And there's creep going on all over.

And, some of those Southern units that are real popular, you draw now or next year or the year after you, you are looking at probably seven, eight, nine years before you're going to get back [00:14:00] to that unit.

Jeremy Dinsmore: Wow. That's crazy. Let me ask you this, Tony, let's go something a little bit different.

What's maybe like a one life lesson outside of hunting that maybe. Plays a role in the way you actually hunt or you maybe plan your hunts,

Tony Peterson: man. I don't want to sound, I don't want to sound like a total prick. Cause there's a lot of people out there pushing this message. But when I quit drinking and I started working out, I realized how important discipline is. Not, everybody thinks motivation is the thing. Like they look at somebody who runs marathons, whatever Oh, they're motivated.

It's Nope, they're disciplined. And in hunting, if you're disciplined, you will do well. If you're going to get up and you're going to go and you're going to get those stands set up and you're going to do that scouting and you're going to, winter scout and do whatever, all of that stuff.

There's always an excuse to not do it. And hunters love excuses to not go [00:15:00] into the woods and we're going to stay out. We're going to be conservative, whatever, man, for most people's positions, like their situations, you're better off doing the work. Like you're better off getting out there and figuring stuff out and spending more time there at the risk of maybe blowing some deer out or whatever, then you are to just be like, I'm going to play it safe.

Like somebody who's managing a sweet property somewhere. And so much of it is. It's just discipline, like a lot of the stuff we don't talk about this very much, all summer long, hanging stands and running cameras and scouting and setting blinds. It's work. Like it's not, it's a little bit of fun.

Like you feel good doing it like when you go for a long run, like it's not that much fun. Like I never, I'm going to go run right after this and it's 98 degrees outside. I'm not looking forward to it. Like it's going to suck, but I know when I get done, it'll make me feel better. And I feel the same way when I have the right blind set up for my daughters or I if a camera huh?

Positioning or something's [00:16:00] bothering me. I'm just like go do it. Or, if I have to shoot you don't have to shoot, but if you're sitting there thinking like, I should go shoot 15, 20, 30 arrows, the discipline to just go do that stuff. I just think it's really important.

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You have two arrows to choose from, one being the MMT arrow, which is a... Two four, six diameter shaft and the new NIS, which is a two Oh four diameter shaft arrow use code a U to save 15 percent off your tailored arrow order at exodusoutdoorgear. com. I couldn't agree more. And I think that falls in line with discipline with being [00:17:00] prepared for the season, as far as making sure you're shooting your bow, you're trying out whatever gear, like you, the last thing that a hunter or you as an individual want to do is half of your, if you're filming your hunts for the first time or this year, this is an exaggeration, but you don't want that camera. Set up to be the third time that you've done it, right?

If you've practiced it once or twice and over the summer or whatever, and be like, oh, okay, I got it. Trust me. You don't want that. And that was the first thing for four years ago, when I got into saddle hunting, I practiced so much just so that way, like day one, when it came to game time decisions and when it really mattered, actually.

It was, okay, get in here quietly. Okay, sure. I could get up a tree and do all that stuff, but can you do it quietly? It's that discipline and it goes with when you were saying like those examples too, it was earlier in the late spring, early summer, certain individuals, when we would talk on the podcast, we [00:18:00] were talking about falling your gut for certain situations for the hunting season.

And he, you just had that. You just have that sixth sense, right? And you go in there and usually for the most part, either success happens or you're at least learn something to for more success down the line. And that is also that discipline goes into that because in order to do. X, Y, and Z to be successful.

You have to be disciplined enough to go and do it. And that's, I really liked that. I, that's a really good way to look at it as far as saying the motivation slash versus the, the whole discipline thing. And I, like you said, I know a lot of people that are extremely talented at whatever they do, hunting, non hunting things.

That word discipline is actually one I think is very speaks volumes and really blows up basically, but it's not very set. It's not set often. If that makes sense. Yeah,

Tony Peterson: it will. It's until you get into a position where you feel like you are pretty disciplined. It's just easy to look at it like this abstract [00:19:00] concept that doesn't.

It belongs to somebody else. So there has to be a different reason for somebody getting it done and you not getting it done. So people would look at a guy like Andy May and they'd be like he's just motivated to scout all the time. You hang, if you spend a little time with Andy, you're like, he's just one discipline, dude, man.

Yeah, he just is. And it's the secret sauce. And like you said, with the getting really comfortable with a saddle is a great example. People go into situations they're not very comfortable with. And now instead of making a decision around what are the deer doing, what's the sign showing me, like what's my best chance to make this happen right now, given those parameters, now you've got this cloudy thing in your head where you're like, can I get up there quietly?

Wouldn't it be easier to get into that tree? Should I just set up on the ground? That kind of stuff happens. All the time. And you see it. One of the dumbest, simplest examples is, I fish like crazy and I take a lot of people fishing and most people are comfortable ish with a spinning rod, [00:20:00] but if you get people who know how to throw a bait caster, they can cast better typically.

And so you see a fish blow up and there's not, there's no thought around getting your, your. Top water over it or whatever. It's just like it just happens because they've been there done that and they've worked on that and people who aren't that comfortable with it. They're going to miss that wide left left like too short, whatever.

And it's just a, it's just like a gotta have that been there done that thing. And the only way you can do it. It's by being there and doing it a

Jeremy Dinsmore: lot. Yep. Yeah. And the more you do it, the more efficient you get at no matter what you do, right? You get more efficient when you're shooting your bow, climbing the tree, setting it up in your platform.

I, listening to from a podcast with Steve Shirk and Mark Kenyon on the Wire to Hunt podcast, it was, Mark was giving Steve some scenario situations of what Steve would do. And Mark gave the question, you are, you're hunting and you're doing you're seeing deer, but somehow you're not in it.

What would you [00:21:00] do? Basically it was something along those lines. And Steve gave that example. Oh man, like three day rule was like, Steve talks about a three day window that he was saying, and he's man where he hunts and sees deer. It's usually not, there's not a lot, right? There might only be four doe within that X mile.

So if you see a buck early in the morning, 80 yards, 75 yards doing something and another little buck or something does the same thing, he said he would get down and go to that, right? We've talked about this on the podcast before. Man, you have a split window to do that. Steve even gave the example, man, you got to be ready to be there within a minute and a half, right?

So to get there quietly, be set up, not necessarily be ready for that situation, a minute and a half, cause that's damn near impossible, but to be able to do it. Efficiently, quietly, and you have to practice and you got to know what you're doing.

Tony Peterson: And his example there, man, I believe so much that if you're dealing with low density deer, [00:22:00] if you're a big woods hunter up north or way down south, and you don't have that kind of Iowa.

Quantity of deer on the landscape, I think it makes you so much of a better hunter because we, so many people, even though we talk a big game about mature bucks, really, a lot of what we're doing is just trying to get around here and see deer. And if you're in a place where there's a lot of deer, that's not that hard.

And so you it can be like a failure to launch situation. You're like I know I can go sit the edge of the beans and see deer. Like I know I can sit certain spots and I'm going to see something, but you might not be around the caliber of deer that you really Are looking for.

And when you hunt those big woods situations, like I feel this when I'm in Northern Wisconsin, I'm like, this is an education every time. Cause you, you don't have, and you have those little tiny concentrations and that real low density. So you. before you even start, you have to figure out where the few deer are, and then you have to work them.

And that's not that easy. It's a [00:23:00] great, it's a frustratingly great way to learn how to be a good owner. Yeah. Oh

Jeremy Dinsmore: man, that's crazy. So let's, the season's kicking off here, Tony. I would love for you to share some Tony Peterson wisdom here. How do you. And I think this is an aspect that I took into the turkey woods this past spring.

How do you separate the stress of quote unquote producing to just enjoy the hunt, enjoy the process that it all entails?

Tony Peterson: I guess you're assuming that I do separate it. Yeah, man, it is. It goes back to what we talked about right at the beginning with just being disciplined. So I'll give you an example.

I, kicking off the season, I have to film for five days in Minnesota and five days in Wisconsin back to back. One of them is just whitetails with me and a camera guy, and the other one is me taking my daughter deer hunting in Turkey, or deer hunting and bear hunting [00:24:00] with a camera guy. And I know...

I've never, I've met the guy who's going to be filming one time for about two minutes. It seems like a good guy comes from the duck hunting world, not comfortable in tree stands, like very little experience climbing up into trees, but we have to get into trees. And so I'm not going to ask him to saddle up.

Okay. It's going to be a disaster. That's a tough way to film anyway, unless you really know what you're doing. So I've spent way more time than you'd probably guess setting up. camera setups. So it's very comfortable, but I'm still in the places I want to be. And so that reduces your stress a little, if I'm going in here, there's a double hung set, there's a double lifeline that, the trails are tacked or however I gotta, I have to go about it, that works filming and not filming.

So it I have to do that for filming, but it feeds into just my fun hunts too. It's just if you have the opportunity to [00:25:00] get this stuff set up, get it set up. No question. And you think about this. I think about this all the time when I'm taking my little girls hunting, that those years they, those deer have to be 20 yards or less.

They have to be relaxed. We got to know they're coming like there's these, there's situations where I'm like, this is where they'll get a high odd shot and they'll probably make it. So I have to do certain things to facilitate that. And it just teaches you just to take care of that stuff overall.

Yeah but I would say you could ask my wife and I don't manage the stress of filming. I'm, I am not a natural filmer. Like I, I resisted it. When I was at bow hunter, I fought with them all the time. Like a lot of people can't wait to put themselves on camera. Yeah. Not that guy. And I don't, I come from a world where when that happened, it was almost always an outfitted hunt.

That you went on and I just didn't have the interest in it. And so I resisted it for a long time, but it's like just the [00:26:00] way of the world, man. Like you can't, you're not going to make a living just writing articles. And so now I just have to accept it and try to make it as the least stressful. I can make it.

Yeah,

Jeremy Dinsmore: I know. And then you throw in the. When things aren't going well when things aren't just, where the heck are the deer or we got to get on and, missed opportunities or whatever. Yeah. It, things can make a, for a stressful time.

Tony Peterson: Yeah. I don't know, we're veering way off course here, but one of the reasons that if you look at the hunting public, one of the reasons they've created so much good content, they've been so successful is they took good hunters and they handed them a camera and they work together, like they're all invested in the same goal. And man, that's so important for doing this stuff.

Jeremy Dinsmore: Yeah. I think to the whole having someone Share that pat like the way those hunting public guys do it.

Just having that Three man crew right like one person's going around scouting while two other guys are hunting One of them is obviously filming if you're doing it solo that suckers [00:27:00] tough, man. That is super tough You said like for yourself, you're trying to film for even your daughter with the bear hunt and stuff in Wisconsin Not only that, you have to make sure you're getting that content.

You got to be a dad. You got to make sure she's taking care of them first and foremost, and then to try to get her that position to kill that bear and then try to document it all. Man, that's tough for in all worlds that. I don't think a lot of people do.

Tony Peterson: Dude, you could do, we could probably do a series on just cameraman stories and I've heard some good ones.

Oh man. I'll tell you one I drew our. I got invited to go hunt this place down in Illinois. Probably it was one of the first hunts I ever filmed. Probably like 2011 or something. This is when I was at Bow Hunter Magazine and so I went down there for Bow Hunter TV and I picked up my cameraman on the way down and so I'm six two.

This dude's probably three inches taller than me and probably 300 pounds and [00:28:00] he's super nice guy. He's since got out of filming. He's I think he's a male nurse now actually but he was not wired to haunt. And so we get on this haunt and it's It's an outfitted deal.

It's during the rut and there's 14 people in camp and a few of us from like the industry side and then a bunch of these rich dudes from New York. Just a weird deal. But anyway, the first stand that we get into, this dude's sitting over my shoulder and he looks at me and he goes, I'm not going to look for deer.

I'm not going to see deer. I'm going to put my head down. And he's if you see a deer coming, you tell me and I'll start filming. And I thought he was just messing with me. That whole trip, I would look up at him and he would have his head down and he never saw a deer. He was not lying.

He's I am collecting a paycheck and you do all the hunting and wow. And it was the crappiest, rainiest, windiest, most [00:29:00] horrible, it was rough. We killed, we ended up killing a buck just by pure luck came into a scrape, but it was it was a rough week. Yeah,

Jeremy Dinsmore: man. So let me ask you this kind of outside of the filming thing and everything like that.

Can you maybe think of a time or scenario or even at a future scenario? Like when things are up, you're on that struggle bus. What makes you slow down? What do you do maybe to slow down to recalibrate basically and ultimately. Maybe put yourself in that right position to, to be successful.

Tony Peterson: I'm pretty used to riding that struggle bus, to be honest with you. It doesn't, it used to really bother me to eat a tag. If I went on a trip somewhere, I just, I wanted to fill it. And I had an experience last year I had a South Dakota white tail tag and I went out and filmed for, I filmed for, I think five days with the guys from the element didn't kill a buck, had a really good encounter with a good one right on the last night.[00:30:00]

And I had that tag sitting in my pocket and I was like, I got it. I just got to go back. There's there was stuff I couldn't do what I wanted to do. And so I went back and I think I hunted another four days by myself and I had. Really good encounter with a 130 he busted me And I left it in that, I was like, I feel like I did everything I could I felt just, I was content, and so I look at stuff like that now and it still gets to me sometimes if I'm struggling, but I try to get myself in a position where I don't, I like, I feel like I did everything I could.

So I didn't sleep in, I went and checked a new spot, if I'm out in public land, especially like scouting midday to figure something out. If I feel like I put the work in and it just doesn't happen for me, I don't really care. What bothers me is if I feel like I, I, took the easy way out somehow.

If I was just like, I sandbagged this day or I didn't go do [00:31:00] this thing I knew I should. That stuff

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So check out RidePWR. com and prepare for your next adventure. Do you do any type of... Instead of, if you're like, man, I just, I can't, I'm not, I don't know, if you start having that, I can't get into it right now. Do you take that mental day of I might just go walk the woods. I might go scouting a little bit and put boots on the ground and go somewhere totally new.

Do you do anything along those lines?

Tony Peterson: Yeah, I do, but I'm usually hunting. I will take some time and go hunt something else. If I'm whitetail hunting and it's for whatever reason, I'm just I'm starting to get a little bit frazzled. I'll go duck hunt for a morning or something sometimes, like just to reset and recalibrate a little bit.

But I'm I'm not at a place anymore where I have to do a lot of that stuff. Like I, I'm okay with not being very good. A lot of times I'm pretty used to just, it's a weird thing because people look at this and they go. It seems like some people have success all the time, right? It seems like it's just cause you're just getting a highlight reel from people.

[00:33:00] But if you look at us like on an individual basis, you're mostly failing most of the time. Correct. Andy May goes out there and he mostly fails most of the time. And so as long as you're just like putting in the effort, like what you don't want is that feeling of I'm sitting the same stand again and I have no faith they're going to come.

That you don't want that, like you want to at least be trying to figure something out and do something new and I, to your original point, going down to this, do this muzzleloader hunt that I'm going to do this year in December, that's part of that that's just to keep that fire going and just go try something that's probably going to Whoop my butt, like I'm probably not going to kill a big buck in those public land cattails right after the gun season ends.

I gotta try it. And I know it's, I feel the same way about the big woods in Northern Wisconsin. And I know I talk about this all the time, but I'm, I almost always get my butt kicked over there. But once in a while, like you have that hunt where you see a giant or you kill a good one and you're like, it [00:34:00] might be once every four seasons, but it's like just a, it's enough motivation to keep that discipline going and just keep getting out there and feeling like you're trying to accomplish something.

Jeremy Dinsmore: Yeah, I love that man. So let's do this early October. Think about where you plan on being as far as those first couple, maybe first week, second week, or end of September, where you'll be hunting. What is your process? To you can start at ground zero. You could just say, this is where a meteor wants me to be.

Where what's your process to get ready for this early October hunt?

Tony Peterson: Did I like early October. I know a lot of people don't, but I like it, especially on public land. Yeah, I like that time. It depends. Obviously, different states have different openers, but if you take a state like Minnesota or Wisconsin, that's a mid September opener, you get a little bit of a breather from hunting pressure in the beginning of October and, like [00:35:00] my best hunts in the northern, in the big woods of Wisconsin are always the first two weeks of October and it's, I firmly believe it's for this reason.

Like this year, I'm in a little bit different place this year. I just picked up a place to hunt by my house in the twin cities here. So I'm in the suburbs and I got 25 acres and I've got some stands up there and some cameras. And if I'm feeling pretty good about that, like I'm feeling like I really lucked into something pretty decent here.

And I'm just so excited to have a place to hunt where I can get there in a, seven, eight minute drive in the morning, come back. Cook breakfast for my kids, get them to school, whatever, and then go sit an afternoon and I'm gonna, I'm going to stack up some deer this timeframe. And it's going to be.

If you think back and this is so regional, but as we got into the end of August, there are so many acorns fallen. There's so much soft mast around so many apples, grapes, [00:36:00] plums, the food, it was everywhere. I saw this bear baiting. I saw this setting up for deer. And a lot of those natural food sources are so just here today, gone tomorrow, or, here this week, gone the next.

And that's another thing about the beginning of October. A lot of people don't think about is there was a plethora of food out there. At one point, not long ago, and a lot of that stuff's been cleaned up. So even though seasonally, it feels like it shouldn't be the easiest time to find a deer. And it's not, you're starting to get into that situation with a little bit more limited food.

You're starting to get into a situation where those scrapes really start to matter as you bump into the first, second week of October. So there's a good opportunity there. And that's what I'm going to be playing. That's the hand I'm going to be playing. What are

Jeremy Dinsmore: maybe some I like that.

And that's heck even for us that open like. The whole state of Pennsylvania opens up that September 30th, you have that was the two weeks prior or the week prior is when Philadelphia Pittsburgh [00:37:00] are able to open up. So that little bit of timeframe, when you look at the month of October, we hear, for how many plus years that October law we've heard about they go nocturnal and then.

Where are they betting everything, the rut shift and all the, all these key things that were told happen and don't hunt mornings, what are the Tony Peterson's like three to five rules for hunting October.

Tony Peterson: I always hunt. I always hunt. I always hunt mornings. If I have a chance to go, I'm going to go and this is one of those things, people we have been handed so much advice from, through, from the hunting industry that comes from places that are just not that relatable.

And one of them is don't hunt the first couple of weeks of October. Don't hunt the mornings in the early season. Yeah. Wait, save your deer. Don't go in there. And it's if you have a situation where you can save your deer, great. Most of us don't. And but that stuff trickles down. And I hear people say that all the time.

I'm not going to hunt now [00:38:00] and maybe spook my deer. I'm like, do you really think if you go hunt a morning on October 5th, you're affecting your rut chances a whole lot. It's just an easy way to not go and pretend like you're doing something. And, man I think that's really important to acknowledge.

I think it's really important to acknowledge that. It's not that hard to find morning spots in the early season to people just are conditioned to not try and I hear this mark and I had this conversation this morning. There's so many different variables that can come into play that can allow you to get somewhere in the morning.

So you have to be really honest about whether do you have setups? Could you have done the work to have those setups? Like it's so easy to find evening spots and it is more work to find morning spots, but it's worth it. Cause it I look at that and go, Oh, okay. I could either hunt or not. If I do this work now, I can hunt in the mornings and maybe kill a buck or see one or get clued into something.

I just think. I think you've got to be really [00:39:00] careful about like industry wide excuses for not hunting. And I know I've said that a million times the other thing, for early October is it's just such a net benefit as far as having everybody believe that it's not going to be good. It just is.

If you're a public land hunter, it is such a benefit to you that most people believe they're going to not go kill a deer. So they're not going to go just if you're a public land hunter and you're like, the rut is going to save me because all the bucks are going to be running around. Guess who's thinking that every single hunter out there.

And so now you take what should have been a crazy advantage, the rut, and you bring that sucker, you level that way down. because the pressure is out there and then you think, okay I have this seasonal timing thing that should suck. There should not be very many deer moving, whatever, but you level that advantage up because everybody believes that.

So if you're the one who's going to go, there's a big difference there.

Jeremy Dinsmore: Yeah. So my experience, I've had more [00:40:00] deer killed. On morning, early, I will early morning and late morning sits. Then I have in it for evening sits. Like you said earlier, I'm for me personally, I'm getting out whenever I could get out and if that means it's a Saturday morning or if it's only, here in Pennsylvania, if we're only given those three Sundays in November, man, if it's October, whatever, my only good day is to hunt that Saturday.

You better believe I'm spending that whole day in there. And I used to. One of the mistakes I would do is I'd be like, yep, okay. I'm only hunting until 9 30 a. m. And then I'm going to come home and hang out with my daughter, my wife for a little bit. And then I'm going to head back out. Where am I going to go hunt now?

They're totally with my daughter being the age that she's at my wife being as so supportive. She's just stay out there and go scout and or go to a new area where you plan on going in the evening and scout your way in Jer, like things you talk about with people and I'm like. Yeah, you're right.

I should do that. So it's just funny how you learn and grow and develop and[00:41:00] but for me personally, man, I just, nothing beats a morning hunt for me. I just frigging love it no matter when it is and all that.

Tony Peterson: Me too. And some, something you said there that I think is so important is just hunting longer.

I don't know why it is. I just wrote about this, but for my early season morning hunts, you think about it, if you do it early season evening Han on a field edge or whatever with the last one to come in is the one you want to shoot. You're gonna have the does and fawns come in first, scrappers, whatever, and then last light, you might have the big one.

I have the reverse situation a lot of times in the mornings in the early season, where it'll be does come through, or maybe that forky, and then like 9. 30, 10 o'clock, I'll see a really good one. Yep. And I just think there's a world happening out there in the cover that, they're getting off them fields early, but they're not just marching straight back to bed in the dark, like they're doing things there's, snarfing some acorns or whatever.

And what I started [00:42:00] to do, in the last, probably I don't know. I guess six, seven seasons is just sit as long as possible every time I can. And it started, if you travel to hunt, I started doing this out in North Dakota, because I'm like, okay, I can go back and I can sweat in my tent in the middle of the day, and sit around and kill time, or I can just sit out here on this water tank, an extra two hours.

Like I can eat my sandwich here or there. And what I started to realize is man, I'm. The more time you put in, as long as the wind isn't screwing you up, hasn't changed or something like that, there's always a chance out there. And I, this new place that I got permission on here, I found a big apple tree in there when I was walking through it with the landowner and underneath it looked like it had been rototilled.

It's Oh yeah. I was like. I walked up there and I saw this ring underneath this tree of dirt and I looked up and I'm like, Oh my God, like they're, this is wild. And so I hung a camera on it and the [00:43:00] amount of daylight pictures of all kinds of deer in there it was, it's painted such a clear picture that there was.

Such a value to those apples that those deer are sitting there in their beds, a couple hundred yards away and they're going, maybe some fell down and we better go look, they come in they make a little lap or two, and then they leave. And I had, 130 inch bucks at noon when it's 95 degrees under that tree.

And it just opened my eyes. I go, that's not that unique of a situation. I'll bet. I bet you can find that. Under certain oak trees, I bet there's, water sources, you can find that on at certain times and it's like, what if you put an extra two hours in on the end of a morning hunt?

What if you go out two hours earlier for your afternoon on it? Like you're not, you're going to spend more time in the woods and you might kill one. It's just, it's such a simple solution, but again, I've. Dude, I was, I pulled a camera[00:44:00] that I had over at a, one of my buddy's land in Wisconsin.

I think two years ago, I had it. Anyway, I was going through the photos and I left it up during October and then November, all the way through the gun season over there. And it died on me in December. Okay. So I was just going through. There's 4, 000 pictures on there and this buddy of mine is a, he's a really good spot and stock hunter.

Like he's just got the right pace. Like he's, you take him out West. He figures it out. Like he's wired for that. He is not patient when it comes to sitting in a stand. Like he gets bored quick and he just has no faith. And day after day, I'd get him going in, coming out at two hours into first light, or two hours after first light.

And then deer moving. Yeah. And I told him that and he doesn't really even believe it, but I'm just looking at that and I go, if you would have just stayed an extra two hours every day, your [00:45:00] entire rifle season over there would have looked vastly different. Correct. Yeah. And it's just such a, it's such a dumb lesson, but it's poignant.

Jeremy Dinsmore: It's crazy when you think about that. One of what is the one thing that you look forward to in that early October as far as like weather that first cold front, anything that really jumps out where you're like, Hey I know where you said this, but I'm going to go in the woods this evening or this morning or anything that really, that you love

Tony Peterson: the thing I don't.

I don't wait for a cold front. I know a lot of people do. I try to have enough setups around water where I don't care. I'm going to hunt either way. The thing that I love, aside from just that's my time to hunt with my daughters a lot, is, I just, that's my time to shoot some does. Like I, I get You know, you start out the season and you're like, okay, I got some bucks scuttled out.

I don't really want to shoot a doe yet. And I get to that point, especially in the morning. If I have some time I hunt hungry. If there's a doe coming down the field, she's in [00:46:00] trouble and I love that because then I, that sets the tone for how I'm going to treat, cause I'll shoot those during the rut too, or the late season or whatever.

I don't really care that much, but if I can start filling up the freezer then and start getting toward my goal or whatever it is. I love going out like in a morning somewhere. If I'm on acorns or I'm on some kind of travel road or something where I'm like, yeah, if a nice buck comes in, I'm going to shoot him.

But also if a, if the doe gives me a right shot, I'm going to take it. Cause it's, it's a different thing than hunting. When we hunt for bucks, a lot of that's not that much fun because if let's say you're like, I want a three and a half or better. I want a 120 inch buck or better, whatever caliber it is, 130.

Every deer that you see coming down the trail is almost always a little bit of a disappointment, it's it's the same thing. Like why I don't do the hit list stuff. I don't, I'm not really a one buck hunter. Cause I, it just bothers me. And I, people do whatever you want, but I don't like that feeling of when a deer steps out, it's Oh, it's not that buck, and I know that people would argue that when that buck [00:47:00] does step out, it makes it all worthwhile. It just doesn't work for me. And so I like to hunt when I want to shoot. Things and I, the more op, the more options I give myself, the better. That's why I like hunting in Oklahoma, like give me some, a target rich environment when I'm hungry and I've got some space in my freezer, and man, it's time to have some fun

Jeremy Dinsmore: So I love that. How does pressure affect your strategy when it comes to hunter pressure or for myself, like I was saying earlier we'll be starting, that. First weekend of October, and then from there, it always seemed like those first two weekends I've encountered some pretty cool encounters.

And then that, that first teen one, like 16th through the 18th, Tony, I've had some killer hunts over the last seven years with some really cool buck encounters. About four years ago, I had a dandy to come in and it was around that 17th timeframe. And, but as far as like pressure goes in those first two, two weekends or that first week, how [00:48:00] does that dictate what you're going to maybe change?

Tony Peterson: First off that timeframe of October is way underrated. I think if you wanted to take a time to have a lot of fun and have a chance to kill a big one, like the 15th through the 25th of October is way underrated. So much fun as far as pressure

Jeremy Dinsmore: and so here's the other thing like to build upon because we hear that we hear the pressure, but how the hell do you know unless you got like a trail camera at the trailhead or wherever you're parking, like that's the one thing.

Cause the spot that I, that's down the road for me, public land, there's times where if I would have gotten off early from work or I'm flying home from work, I, when I come in really no, no trucks. And then by the time I'm leaving, I have a couple other trucks driving by me or whatever like that.

I'm like, okay, it was a little bit heavy tonight or whatever. So like, how are you gauging that? How do you know, or, [00:49:00] and then again, going back to that original question, what are you doing?

Tony Peterson: Let me say this. When I hunt public land pressure is. 93 percent of what I'm thinking about. And we, again, this comes comes from the hunting industry, right?

We think what's the, what's the barometric pressure doing? What's the cold front warm front. What's the weather like what's the moon phase. What's the wind, should the deer be doing this or that most of what I'm thinking about is where are the people not going to be. Because that's there's nothing that overrides hunting pressure.

It's it's your number one enemy out there. And so I'm always like, I, and I think about this with grouse hunting. I think about it with pheasants, turkeys, everything I hunt out west, where are the people not going to be? What are the people not going to do, you think about it and so it's always for me the first nine decisions I make at any point are based around who's [00:50:00] probably coming in where like where the access is like where are the people going to be concentrated?

What are they gonna be doing if it's you know, that's there's a difference between it being like the beginning of October versus You know a rut hunt Because a rut hunt is going to actually be worse because there's going to be people out there and every one of them is going to be banging the antlers together and trying every trick in the book, in October, things are going to be a little bit different.

People are going to go in. They're probably still going to be riding the field edge type stand where it's like where can I see, get me on some kind of food source I can see or some open Oak Ridge or something that I can look way down. So for me, yeah. It just tends to be like, where's the thick cover that I can slip into that for some reason is hard to get to, I climbed some hills.

I got to hike back in there. I got to cross a river. What do I have to do? This is just like a little bit different. It's the same thing. I do a lot of gross hunting. I don't know what percentage of people stay on logging roads and, like National Forest Trails, but I'll bet you it's probably [00:51:00] like 85 percent of the grouse hunters.

Yeah. Because it's easy walking, you send your dogs into the cover on either side and you might get a flush over the road. You're not going to sweat too hard, but there's... Tons of limits of grouse out there on all those soft edges and the edges of the clear cuts and those edges of the swamps if it's warm out.

There's so many places the people really aren't gonna go. So the first thing you gotta do is like, where are those places for the whitetails? Then you work the deer. It's not like you don't work the deer first. You work that pressure first and go, how can I get away from them? And then when I find that concentration of deer now, how do I work them?

Do I get right in there with them? Do I hang back and observe them? The same thing happens with elk. A lot of times, like most of the job you have as an elk hunter is just like, where the hell are they? Like, where are they? And then once you find them, it's now we need to make a plan now. And that's a little different because it's more of an in the moment thing typically than a white tail.

But yeah. It's not that far off and it's just you got to be around them [00:52:00] first and you got and you're not going to be around a lot of them or a concentration of them until you get away from people. If you're in the

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That heck that even applies to those early season whitetail hunts, especially for out of state, right? If you're going to like here in Northeast, like there's a couple of states nearby that. Our open, open up early that if you don't have a chance to go down there and scout, man, you get down there with your binos or spotting scope, whatever, you might be able to catch something in late in the evening.

And then you're like, you got to come

up with a quick and dissect it. And you're not going trampling through the field as they're eating that night. So it's not like you could go walk in the woods and be like, okay, this is where I'm going to be tomorrow. So you got to look on a map and you got to. Make those tough decisions pretty quickly.

Tony Peterson: Yeah. And you have to think too, even talking early season like that, [00:54:00] people will go, I'm going to, I am going to go sit that power line or I'm going to go sit that field edge, the clear cut, like a place I can see, because I know I probably should see some deer, even though that's what everybody's doing and it's but it's an easy, it's an easy decision to make.

But I look at that and go, if you're hunting public land, One of the ways that you can make this decision making process easier is if you do a lot of winter scouting, pay attention to those funnels and pinch points, like what pay attention to those funnels, those little train traps that are in the cover, because we're like, Oh, those are the rut.

That's where I'm going to sit during the rut. And that's a great that's a great strategy, right? Like you go sit in a high odd spot where they're going to come through. If you start hanging cameras on those spots, those are year round. Typically year round usage on them, and so if you're like, I don't know what to do, if I get into the cover, like maybe I find some sign and I set up here or there, if you don't know what to do in it, at least you go have that little creek crossing that they always go through in that [00:55:00] big tract of timber company land or have that just whatever kind of pinch point funnel type deal you're working with, Yeah.

At the very least, if you can play the wind on something like that, you always have a chance and your chances get better when the pressure is on the outside edges and there's a higher presence of people around. If that terrain trap is in the cover. It's tight. That's those, the more of those that you can build up and you're like, you got those in the toolkit, man, the better off you'd be.

Yeah.

Jeremy Dinsmore: So funny story. If a good friend Tim is listening he'll get a kick out of this story, Tony. So a couple of years ago, I went in, flew in after work for a late evening hunt. And he had access to this one piece of property and he's Hey, it's butt up against public. We can access the private side.

Cause my friend allows us to, and we'll get, we'll hop on that public. We're like, okay, sweet. So we get in there, we look at it. He had some camera Intel and I was hunting the [00:56:00] next day where I usually go hunt back at home. And we just wanted to hang out together. We wanted to just get an evening sit.

So we both climb up in our saddles. We're about. 70 yards away. So we had Hey, if a deer comes from this way, I got the shot. If a deer comes from the other way, he'll have that opportunity. And we're set up and I'm watching, I could actually see him as he's climbing. Cause he got up a little bit higher than I did.

And all of a sudden he gets settled and you hear something walking. I'm like, Holy crap. We might see a deer and I, we see the brush, like the thick stuff, like moving a little bit. Then all you hear is brrt, brrt. And then you hear, I don't even know what the doe bleat can't going.

And then, of course, then all of a sudden you hear. Like already blown a can of tinks. And Tony, this is the second weekend, like the second Friday of October of our season here in Pennsylvania. [00:57:00] And he calls me actually my good friend. He's I said, 70, he goes, do you hear this and see this guy right now?

I was like, yeah, I do. He goes, let's get down and get out of here. Like the guy literally, Tony was. Already doing his grunt calls already doing his dough bleeds and letting that dough estrous hit that, hit the wind, man. Crazy.

Tony Peterson: He was he was all out. He jumped the

Jeremy Dinsmore: gun a little bit. Yep. Yep.

Tony Peterson: But yeah, that's rough. Yeah. What do you do there? I remember I did a hunt in Texas one time. And, everybody's hunting over automatic feeders down there, and so they're all time to go off. Goes off for a half a minute in the morning and a half a minute at night.

It only throws out like a cup of corn. So they got to fight over it deal, but it's loud. It spins it's automatic, whatever. I didn't, I've never seen one, but they said they have a, there's like a handheld call it's a digital call that sounds like a feeder spinning. And so I was talking to the, this outfitter one time and I was like, I cannot believe that's real.

And he said, we will have guys [00:58:00] show up. Who will have fresh batteries in those suckers and they will wear them out in a sit . And imagine, and you know this isn't public Pennsylvania hunting, right? This is high density deer coming in there and deer come in there and check it all the time anyway.

'cause that's their food source, right? It's not right. This isn't rocket science deer hunting down there, but probably that guy's cousin is doing that.

Jeremy Dinsmore: Yeah. Oh my gosh. I figured that'd be a good one when we were just talking pressure. So here's something that I did last year and I want to see if you've ever done it.

And it's picking up a little bit in the social media world over the last couple months and everything. Have you done a camera Left out all year to see that fawn drop and correlate that to dating it back to the days like maybe when that dough was bread or anything along those lines to maybe when that dough would be in heat for that upcoming fall.

Have you done anything like that? Nope. Nope.

Tony Peterson: So I [00:59:00] don't, if you gave me the chance to do that, I couldn't get the math right anyway. Yeah. So

Jeremy Dinsmore: I don't know if it was dumb luck and to be completely honest, I think it was dumb luck. I did it. So it would have been the so two springs ago, I left the camera out there, not for that specific reason, just because it's back at home two and a half hours away.

I still had a pretty good amount of battery on there. And I was like, Nope. Let me just let it run. Like it was my only one I still had as far as the cell camera goes. So it was only like a 6 charge a month. So it wasn't like breaking the bank. And I was like, Oh, wow. Like dad, look at this first fawn drop.

And, Oh, you should probably date it back just to see. And I was like, okay. So I did and I messaged them and it's usually like back in Northeast PA for whatever reason, Halloween is just on fire between he and I and a couple other good friends that hunt that area. Halloween, Tony, if you're in a spot, man, like you're, it's like better than the rut.

So that year. I [01:00:00] was able to Friday, I we had off from school. So it like worked out perfect. Like when it was going to be around that weekend, basically. And that, that Friday was bogus. And then the next day though, Tony, it was last year. It's now this past year that ended for me. It's when I dated and hunted it, it was bananas.

First light until that I saw about. Counting those four bucks, five, six, seven. I saw eight bucks total that day.

Tony Peterson: So let me ask you this. Would you have not hunted if you didn't have that info? No,

Jeremy Dinsmore: I would have hunted it a hundred percent. It's just it worked out. Cause I was like, but now let me say this though.

Here's what I noticed. That Friday, I was down a little bit two, two ridges, two ridge systems down. And as we were walking out that, that night, my dad and I, when we met on the two track trail, as we were walking up, in my headlamp there was a doe. Man, these deer love being only [01:01:00] 20, 25 yards off of this two track.

They'll just bed down in the thick laurel, just thick, nasty stuff. But this doe gets up and she crosses ahead of us. And then I look, I'm like, Oh dad, look, there's a buck, a decent, like a really good buck. I would have shot him every day of the week. And he just, he stayed with her and it wasn't like doing that young harassing or, and I said to him, he, cause I had a whole different plan for that next day.

And I said to him, cause he wasn't hunting with me the next day. And I go, I'm going to hunt here tomorrow. And he goes, okay. And then that's what I did, Tony. And that's, like I said, it was so much fun. So many opportunities that I, like one that I regret not taking the chance that I should have taken on a piebald cool looking buck, but man, it was just such a fun day in there and just going off of, Hey, Kay, that was the weekend.

It correlated to that scene, that dough running for a life from four bucks. And it was just so funny how that worked as far as when they're running after her and just on a straight line after man, it was something I've [01:02:00] never seen before, especially that early in October.

Tony Peterson: Yeah, you don't see that very often when you get a dough around you like that.

That's not very common. No, yeah, it's you can go most ruts and not get that right. And I

Jeremy Dinsmore: didn't like November. It was extremely quiet then.

Tony Peterson: Yeah, what? What's interesting about that strategy is, cause when you say that new people are trying to get newborn fawns and then backdate it.

If you don't get like some kind of outlier, like October 7th type date or something, all it's really doing for you is just giving you more confidence. Yeah. Cause it's not, is it actionable but you were going to hunt octo or you're going to hunt Halloween anyway, maybe where you were going to hunt would be different or something, but that kind of stuff is just like a nice trick to get you to keep going or to get you to, you're going to be in the game in a little bit different way.

Like I, I've done this a couple of years over in Wisconsin on this little property I own, there's a corner of it that I just I haven't figured it out [01:03:00] yet. It's just. I know they go through there. It's connected to a giant swamp. It's just a really random. It's always felt very random, right?

But I've two years I've left cameras out there and It is pretty random, but not big picture random. So on any given day, the amount of deer that go through there could be zero, could be two bucks. It's a low density place, so it's never a lot. But if you break it down into three day chunks, there's always somebody going through there.

Yeah. In the daylight, and a lot of times in the middle of the day, and it's not maybe directionally actionable to me tomorrow to go in there, but when you do stuff like that, you go, okay, there is a window here where I better get my butt in a tree and be there. As much as I can, because today might not be the day, tomorrow and it might not be the day, but if I give it three full days or four full days [01:04:00] here, it's probably going to happen.

And man, it is so much easier to tolerate those dead days when you have that faith, that stuff matters.

Jeremy Dinsmore: And, to backtrack one last thing story with regarding that hunt that morning where I was the night prior the big nine that I've been after the last two years, and he's one of those bucks that are like, if I was given the chance, yeah, no doubt about it.

I'm shooting him. But if another good eight, seven point steps out, I'm also shooting that buck, right? So it's not like I'm holding out for that one buck that neck that morning of all that chaos was going on exactly where I was. I didn't get the camera cause it's not my camera. My dad sends me the photo.

Cause again, he wasn't hunting that day. He was up here tailgating with my sister for her last year for Penn state football. He goes, look, what just walked by where you were yesterday. And it was that big night at eight 40 something in the morning. And I was just like. Dude, he was only 300 yards away, just on that other side.

It's just you could look at that so many [01:05:00] different ways. Like in the heat of the moment. I was like, wow, I can't believe that. But then the other heat of the moment, I was thinking today's a good day. Like I had all this action already. And then this bucks on his feet. It could happen, he, I'm in the right spot.

So just something else. I wanted to toss in there of that. Before we wrap things up, Tony what's been your most successful timeframe of killing bucks?

Tony Peterson: I probably the first week of any season I'm better at the early season stuff than the rut once, and I think that's just growing up in Minnesota and not hunting the rut.

We have a gun season this year that opens on November 4th, and so we will have a huge influx of people the weekend before, which is that last week in October when it should be just banging, but you'll get so many people in the woods looking around and, setting stands and whatever.

And then you have a massive influx of people in that Friday. And on November 3rd, so my thing, growing up having to give up the woods to the gun hunters. It was just like, you [01:06:00] better figure out the September, October thing. And I just love, I like the rut a lot.

Like I just enjoy being in a tree and I like sitting all day. Like I like when I have a day where I'm like, all I'm going to do is go sit in a tree, and I have this stand or that stand or whatever. Like I love it, but the scouting thing in the summer and immediate preseason and seeing how things shake out when they go hard antlered, or, if you're out West and you can still work them in velvet, I just love, you can lay eyes on them and try to get in there on them or, figure out something in the morning that people aren't going to do and come in the back way and just catch them coming back to bed.

It's just, it just does. It does something for me, man. I just, I love it, and I've really gotten to the point where I've learned to love that, that October timeframe. We were talking about two in early October, just cause I don't. I'm getting old, man. I don't want to be around people. I told my wife, I'm like I can feel my tolerance for just [01:07:00] like stupidity.

People going down, it's just the being in like proximity to people in any way, shape or form I don't want it. I want to be, there's eight people in the world. I like, two of them were my kids, whatever, but when I'm hunting, I just don't. You know how it is like you hear that four wheeler putter and down the trail or like that guy that walks in on you That's got every trick in the book.

He has no clue how to hunt I just want to be away from that if I can I want to go into the woods and just experience Whatever nature is gonna give me maybe I kill a big buck. Maybe I blank. I don't whatever I just don't want to have a ton of influence of people right there in that moment And so I've really come to like you're going to deal with crowds in the early season, the opener type stuff, but you get into the season just a little bit.

And you still have that opening or not opening, but early season kind of hunt, but fewer people to contend with a lot of times, man, I like that a lot.

Jeremy Dinsmore: Yeah. So [01:08:00] last question we, you, we talked to earlier, we mentioned the whole October 15th through the 25th things, it's a very underrated timeframe.

Very good. What do you think makes that? a very underrated time frame or why

Tony Peterson: or theories. Yeah. I have a theory. So this is probably going to sound super dumb. I never, I didn't figure out scrapes very well. I'm not a big scrape hunter. I like rubs a lot, but I ended up killing a buck here on some public land in the twin cities in 2000 and.

I think it was 2011 and I killed that buck on like October 13th on a scrape and I saw I had gone in and done some observation The night before I saw this buck make this scrape. I saw him spar with another little buck and this is in the suburbs man Like this is a place that gets hunted, and so I went in the next day set up over that scrape and I killed that buck on that scrape and [01:09:00] I was just a door opened for me, where it was like, you've been missing this, you've been hunting scrapes during November, when they're not the same thing I felt like that hunt and killing that buck, just it made something like cohesive happen in my brain, where I was like, okay, you've got to pay more attention to this, because then I started thinking back, and I had a hunt one time.

I was probably mid twenties and I was up in northern Minnesota and I had two bucks coming through the woods and one was a little guy and one was a pretty decent buck for there and they're working toward me and those bucks are just making scrapes and this was october 20th They ended up coming and I missed that buck, fell apart, buck fever, but I remember thinking like, I, I can hunt a whole season and not see a buck make a scrape, and I just watched two make several, and it wasn't like they were coming back to visit them, it wasn't like it was like good licking branches and like a community scrape, it was just like, I gotta scrape, I gotta pee in this, and so I started thinking back to my encounters on scrapes and that, that time frame, I think there's a [01:10:00] real something going on with the hierarchy of deer then, or there's a real communication aspect that's happening then that we don't give it enough credit for, and I think it gets deer on their feet and looking, and it gets new deer coming in. And there's something going on way like pre rut, right?

That's not Halloween. That's not the 29th, but there's a communication thing. There's a dominance hierarchy thing going on where they're saying something to each other and it matters, right? And that's getting them moving. And I think. I think there's a, that's like a big component of it that we don't really understand and it just coincides with a lot of people taking a break from being in the woods.

So you get two things working for you there. Yeah. And I just, it's on man. They're, they get risks. They like, they take risks then. Oh man. I'm

Jeremy Dinsmore: excited. That's awesome. Me too. Tony, I appreciate your time, your wisdom. Like I said I was, I look forward to this one and I [01:11:00] always enjoy listening to you and just hearing the you and your friends the seven, eight people that you do like that out of the, besides your daughters, I love hearing that.

Best of luck to you this year. Everybody, please go follow Tony. If you're already not doing so just say. Awesome down to earth guy knows what he's doing, knows what he's talking about. And just just an all around great guy. So thanks again, everybody for tuning in. We'll see you next week, Tony.

Thank you.

Tony Peterson: Thank you, man. Antler

Jeremy Dinsmore: Up. Thanks for

Tony Peterson: listening to this episode of the Antler Up podcast. We hope you enjoyed it. Please go check us out on our Instagram, YouTube, Facebook, and go wild. And at

Jeremy Dinsmore: antlerupoutdoors.

Tony Peterson: com. If you enjoyed this episode, go leave a review and subscribe for next week's episode.

Until then, Aylor out.

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