00:00:01 Speaker 1: Welcome to the Wired to Hunt Foundations podcast, your guide to the fundamentals of better deer hunting, presented by first Light, creating proven versatile hunting apparel for the stand, saddle or blind. First Light, Go Farther, Stay Longer, and now your host Tony Peterson. 00:00:20 Speaker 2: Hey, everyone, welcome to the Wired to Hunt Foundation's podcast, which has brought to you by first Light. I'm your host, Tony Peterson, and this episode is all about trees, you know, learning how to read them and how that can help you become a better deer hunter because you have better setups. This one is one of those topics that sounds boring as hell, but I'll tell you something. 00:00:39 Speaker 3: It's important. 00:00:40 Speaker 2: I spend a stupid amount of time looking up at trees, eyeballing them, thinking about if I could get a stand in them, and if I do, where and how I'll set up. Now, this is relevant to summer stand hanging missions, of course, but also throughout the rest of the season, and it's absolutely necessary if you want to be a mobile hunter at all. Now, I promise to try to make this less boring than it sounds, and I promise you that if you give it a listen and you start to take it seriously, you will become a better whitetail hunter. 00:01:06 Speaker 3: So buckle up, because it's time to talk about trees. 00:01:16 Speaker 2: There are roughly about seventy thousand different species of trees on our planet. At least those are the ones that have been identified and cataloged anyway, They obviously vary by size and shape and a whole lot of other features by species, and can be small, little tiny guys like the Bonzai tree, or giants like those redwoods out on the West coast. Throughout our history, trees have played a significant role in our cultures and our religions, and it's not surprising why from a practical perspective, a hell of a lot of trees give us some sort of food, and to break that down further, a lot of those food sources like apples. We're probably one hell of a seasonal here today, gone tomorrow type of tree for us, just like they are for deer. Trees are also a great place to take refuge, you know, and when something big and toothy is considering you for breakfast, as long as that's something that's big and toothy, is an also adept at climbing trees. Trees are pretty good at showing you where there's water in the ground or water flowing above the ground too. It's not hard to imagine crossing the prairies, you know, a couple hundred years ago anyway, and being awfully parched, only to spot a sparse line of cottonwoods in the distance. To you and I, that might mean a good place to go look for some deer. To someone making a foray into new territory, that might mean the difference between life and death. This is practically true and also something that has been true for a long long time. Many mythologies contain trees to which people of that time attach sacred meaning. Deciduous trees, for example, seem to die in the winter along with most plants, but not some conifers. Greens, being well ever, green, don't show the same life and death cycle and have long been associated with the eternal or immortality, or is the case in many cultures fertility. We have a weird affinity toward trees, but maybe it's not that weird. 00:03:16 Speaker 3: As a species. 00:03:17 Speaker 2: We've used them for our benefit for a long time, and today, when you drive through a lot of places that are dominated by grassland and egg you'll still see carefully sculpted groves of trees around homesteads. We like the privacy trees offer, and the wind break benefits, and the shade, and well a lot of. 00:03:34 Speaker 3: Stuff about them. 00:03:36 Speaker 2: As whitetail hunters, we think about trees a lot, but often only in one specific direction. What kind of food will they produce for deer? And what does that mean to our hunting strategy? Where are the white oaks or the persimon trees? We plant trees for the deer specifically, and I'll tell you that one of the first things I did, oh I've done every time I've bought deer ground, I guess, is to go out and plant some apple trees. Have yet to kill a single deer from that effort, but I really like having apple trees around anyway. 00:04:05 Speaker 3: We think about trees as betting cover too. 00:04:07 Speaker 2: It's pretty hard to deny that old growth, big canopy trees don't really allow for much understory, which means that they might be passed through spots in most places, but aren't likely to host a bunch of sleepy bucks in any given day. But a four year old clearcut that's full of saplings, that's a different story, And there's food in there too, but the cover provides a huge advantage to pray animals looking to take a snooze in safety. When you think about deer hunting, at least scouting deer, you're almost always thinking about trees in a variety of ways. But what I really want to focus on here is the reality of setting up in trees and how to think about that, because that's a skill that seems pretty easy, but it's often not. And the reason it's not is because we usually default to a good stand tree and sacrifice something in the process. So what makes a good stand tree to most people, Well, it should be perfectly straight trunk wise and have almost no branches below the preferred stand height. With this kind of tree, you have to do minimum amount of work to set it up. It can accommodate a saddle or a hang on. It can work just fine with a double ladder stand doesn't matter. This type of tree is easy, and because of that, it's the kind we look for the most. 00:05:18 Speaker 3: But easy isn't always the best route. 00:05:20 Speaker 2: And while it's always nice to find a good tree in a spot you really want to hunt, that kind of tree can cause you problems. 00:05:27 Speaker 3: I deal with this a lot. 00:05:28 Speaker 2: In some of the public land I hunt in northern Wisconsin, there are some trees there, due mostly to the forestry practices that are just ideal for. 00:05:37 Speaker 3: Any type of setup. 00:05:39 Speaker 2: In fact, that's one of the places I still occasionally use a climber stand, just because the trees are so conducive to it. But I also get busted a lot over there. There's nothing to break up my outline. And I know this is crazy, but when there are scattered trees like that throughout the woods, I feel like the deer is just quicker to notice a two hundred pound blob hanging off the side. I almost always have to set up directly behind the trunk and actively have to hide myself from the deer. I almost always get busted anyway, at least in some of those trees. Now, you might hunt somewhere else that has less pressure or deer that just don't get hunted as much from stands, and you might get away with this type of setup all season long. 00:06:19 Speaker 3: I do. Out West. 00:06:21 Speaker 2: There are a lot of cotton woods out there that I've killed western white tails from that have very little cover for me, and it doesn't seem to matter. But the farther east I go, the rules seem to change. This is an issue in a lot of places and can be a real pain in the ass down south where the hunting pressure is high. So the ideal stand tree isn't always so ideal after all. But the less than ideal stand trees also come with a lot of problems. I like trees that have some branches and some cover to work with, but not so much that I have to spend more time sawing limbs than setting up. Now, of course that's a private land deal. On a lot of public land, that's a no go oh, So you have to write off multi limb trees right from the jump. This is tough in a lot of situations, but a real pain in the ass where you're primarily working with some types of pine trees. Now, some of the pine tree plantations will offer up a million pine trees that are all perfect for stands, but they usually offer the deer very little. But a lot of pines are different, and some of them are amazing for stands. Some will have a band of limbs at intervals, and in between those you'll have a nice section of bear trunk to work with, which is ideal, not only do you have some limbs to work with on your way up, but you also have cover above and below you that's going to stick around all season long, dream scenario stuff. The downside of this is if you set up in pine trees at all and have done any level of tripping, you know what the SAP situation can be. 00:07:48 Speaker 3: Like. 00:07:48 Speaker 2: I run into this a lot in my neck of the woods because pine trees often offer the best cover, and they often exist in places where there are like little grassland, meadows and general staging area type of habitat. But dealing with that SAP can really suck, and that's just the nature of the beast. 00:08:06 Speaker 3: I haven't figured out a good way to. 00:08:07 Speaker 2: Combat that yet, so sometimes I just resigned myself to it. Resigning yourself to certain trees is the name of the game. Honestly. If you watched the Rough Cuts episode I shot with Steve in Oklahoma a few years ago, you'll see me set up right in the beginning of the show on a pond that has a bunch of per Simon trees around it. Those trees were tiny, but it was the best we could do in that setup. In fact, those trees were so small I had to saddle up in one and put my cameramen in a saddle in a different one. Two people in any one of those trees, especially as wendy as it was, would have been a recipe for disaster. 00:08:54 Speaker 3: Sometimes you just have to. 00:08:55 Speaker 2: Make a small, not ideal tree work and then cross your fingers that the first tear to come in is the one you want to shoot, because it's a high odds proposition that you'll get caught. But you can also hunt areas bucks love if you're open to small trees, and some of the cattail bucks in prairie pothole bucks and bucks that just don't have big groves of trees as an option, can be killed in tiny trees while you're only slightly above their eye line. In fact, I think a setup, you know, whether you're talking a saddle or a small hang on, that is conducive to tiny trees is one of the best things you can own if you want to kill big bucks. The options for where you can hunt just expand exponentially with one setup like this, and you sure can learn a lot. Being eight feet up and overlooking a swamp or a slew where most hunters won't enter and certainly won't spend time observing from any level of an aerial position. The other side of the coin are the big trees that aren't all that easy to set up in either. If you check out the show that just dropped of my twenty twenty four North Dakota hunt, you'll see me with on a really good deer. The tree that I shot at that deer from was in the right spot, but it was way too big for the straps on my climbing sticks. My camera man who's a good hunter, and I had to get creative there because we did have extra straps and we didn't need all of the sticks I brought to get to stand height. So that perfect spot with the two big tree suddenly became huntable by doubling down on our straps. Look, it's not ideal, and I have to say this if you ever go this route or even consider it, think about your safety First. Gravity is undefeated, and if you're not one hundred percent sure you can pull it off safely, keep looking for a better tree. 00:10:40 Speaker 3: Now, there are a. 00:10:41 Speaker 2: Lot of other considerations when you're eyeballing trees to decide if you can set up in them. To me, the most important is having about four to six feet of straight trunk to work with at some height where I think I won't get busted. 00:10:54 Speaker 3: That's it. 00:10:55 Speaker 2: That's my criteria most of the time, and it's often very difficult to find. But if you set up enough stands or spend enough time mobile hunting, you start to develop an eye for this sort of thing, and when you do, you'll kill more big bucks. This is because it'll allow you to work more spots better instead of finding the right tree and then hoping the spot is good enough. That was the downfall of the climbing stand thing. For the most part, in my opinion. Aside from very specific situations, you mostly spent time looking for a tree that would work instead of scouting sign and set up where the deer want to be. But even the best mobile setups won't always work, which is why you have to look at a tree and decide how to get in it where your stand or saddle platform will go, and then keep an open mind. I generally try to climb up the backside of the tree, or to put it a different way, decide I don't expect a deer to come from when I get to the spot where I intend to actually set up. I try to face my stand almost entirely away from the likeliest approach position, but still give myself like maybe twenty five degree ease in their direction, so that as a right handed shooter, I can either stay seated and shoot around the trunk, or I can stand up and shoot around it, all while keeping that tree trunk in between me and the deer. I do this almost as a rule no matter where I'm hunting, even on field edges where the poll to set up facing right out toward the groceries is high. This is something that provides an advantage in the moment of truth when you have deer close, which seems obvious, but it's also a hedge for future hunts. The less I get busted in a tree, the better. So if a bunch of dos come out and they are cagy, I have a better chance of not blowing out the field. If they have to look through the tree trunk to see most of me, they can't do it, and that helps preserve natural movement in my spots. This is almost the opposite of the typical ladder stand strategy. I also like having some cover to break up my outline, which again is a no brainer but what does that really mean. Well, any cover around your setup that can break up your line is good cover, but a lot of it doesn't really matter. What I really like is cover at my exact level that extends behind me if possible. We tend to think that leafy limbs in front of us are the answer, and they can help for sure, but having some good stuff behind you is huge. It'll break up your outline and allow you to get away with more movement, especially if you're dealing with a little bit of wind. You want the deer to be able to look up at you and just not recognize a human shape. 00:13:28 Speaker 3: Honestly, it's that simple. 00:13:31 Speaker 2: A good way to think about this is that forty years ago you could just get into a tree and that was enough. 00:13:36 Speaker 3: Most of the time. 00:13:37 Speaker 2: The deer just weren't as conditioned to look up for danger, But in so many places that we hunt them at, they just are. Now you still have to hide from them somehow, even if you're seventeen or eighteen feet up. 00:13:49 Speaker 3: Well, you don't have to, but you'll be better off if you do. 00:13:53 Speaker 2: The caveat here is that sometimes you just have to hunt what the land will give you, and at least when you do, you generally have the element of surprise. I can't prove this, but it sure feels like in some types of cover deer ore prone to looking up, while in other areas they just aren't. It makes sense in my head anyway, because when they're in the woods, they're in an area where if they encounter a human hunter, he's very likely to be in a tree. But in that marshland or swamp land, it's a different story. It's also true that being in an elevated position just gives you enough advantages that it's worth trying, even if the setup is really rough and it feels like you're not going to get away with it. You only need them to slip up once. And I'm a huge believer that trying stuff that has low odds but is in a high odd spot that's almost always worth it. We often don't, though, and that's why we default to our favorite ladder stands and box blinds and the usual suspects. But learning to make the available trees work is a huge advantage, and you can do it on your home farm where you really feel like you already have very little reason to color outside the lines in this way. In fact, I think some of these situations where we have our go to year over year setups, they're some of the best ones for us to try to read some new trees in new spots and see what we can do with them to show the deer we are in as one dimensional. 00:15:12 Speaker 3: As they think. 00:15:14 Speaker 2: I know it's not as exciting as talking about snort wheezing in pre rut bucks, but learning how to look at the trees in your region and figure out how to hunt them where you want to hunt is a skill that is so useful, and since it is a skill, it takes practice. Think about this when you're starting to get the itch this summer to scout or to go out and hang some stands. Do you have a random pond that you always wanted to hunt on your lease, but you think the trees around it are too small. Maybe you got a fence lign with some scrubby trees that the bucks always run. Maybe you have one of those monster trees that survive the axes and chainsaws for whatever reason, just sits in the middle of the field, but every time you hunt on the other edge, the deer just walk by it and feed under it and generally mill around it. Take a closer life, consider what options you might have to set up there. You know, maybe it's not an easy ladderstand type of setup, but maybe you could get a hang on in there with a little ingenuity. And if you do, you can almost always bet the bucks won't have a clue you're there the first time they show up when you're hunting them. At least give it some thought and come back next week because I'm going to talk about summer ranges and fall ranges and buck excursions and all the movement they do and what it means to you as you're scouting this time of year. That's it for this week. I'm Tony Peterson. This has been the Wire to Hunt Foundations podcast, which is brought to you by First Light. As always, thank you so much for listening for all your support. Truly truly appreciate it. You might notice we have a new show here running a limited series with Jake Hoffer about the land and habitat and all that cool stuff that Mark and I try to cover, but we maybe don't get into as much detail as Jake's going to really good show. 00:17:01 Speaker 3: Check it out. 00:17:02 Speaker 2: It's going to drop on this feed if you need some more hunting content, you know where to go the medeater dot com. 00:17:08 Speaker 3: New articles, new recipes. 00:17:10 Speaker 2: There's a couple of uh, you know, word games on there. Maybe you just want to listen to a new podcast. Maybe it's Lake's Backwoods University podcast on clays Feed. Whatever new content dropping there every single day. Go check it out at the mediater dot com.