EP262 – 4 Ways To Hunt Deer & When To Do Each

It is easy to get stuck in one approach to deer hunting and simply stick with the strategy that has worked for you in the past. Being a well-rounded whitetail hunter is a noble cause but there are practical benefits to being proficient in different strategies. On this episode I talk about how to make the most of every hunting opportunity by looking at four different ways to hunt deer and when to do each. 

Ambush Hunting

Many whitetail deer hunting strategies can be grouped under ambush hunting. Using one method or another, you are laying in wait, as inconspicuous as possible, ready for a deer to walk into a shooting lane for you to ambush it. This is done with rifle hunting, archery, shotgun, and just about everything else. Ambush hunting can be broken down into two main types, the prepared ambush and the improvised ambush.

Prepared Ambush

This involves scouting, land management, advanced planning, and everything that goes into selecting a hunting location in advance. Whether you spend a day or a year preparing to hunt from a particular spot, it is a preselected ambush location, possibly a tree stand, ground blind, or some other type of concealment strategy, if not just leaning up against a tree. This is sometimes done well on public land, but it is most often going to be private land where you can control hunting pressure and habitat to some degree.

Improvised Ambush

The improvised ambush involves going afield, looking for sign or a good location, and setting up to ambush deer that you believe will come through that spot. The location is not preplanned, and you are selecting it based on sign you find in the field right now. This is most often done on public land or large tracts of private land where you do not as much control over the habitat or hunting pressure.

Active Hunting

Active hunting is the other major category for hunting whitetails. This involves the hunter being on the move and trying to put yourself within firing range of a deer. There are two primary types of active hunting I discuss in this episode, still hunting and strategic location hunting. 

Still Hunting

Still hunting is a type of active hunting that involves walking through the woods slowly, trying to catch deer unaware. It takes a lot of skill to do well, and perfect conditions to do great. But this is still an effective strategy for people of all experience levels. It works particularly well when there are other hunters in the woods pushing deer around. It is most often done on public lands but may also be done on large pieces of private land.

Strategic Locations

This form of active hunting involves stealthily slipping from one high potential area or another, sneaking to a vantage point from which you hope to be able to get a shot at deer. These could be a series of locations with various draws for deer like feeding areas, water, bedding, browsing areas, etc. This is most often done on public land but it can be very effective on private land as well, if you do not overdo it and spook out the deer. 

Listen to the whole podcast episode for all the details and when to use each strategy. 

EP261 How To Scout For Black Bears – 4 Strategies

To hunt black bears you have to find them. This type of hunting is a little different than deer or turkey hunting, scouting matters ALOT more. Bears are not as prevalent as other game and just because an area looks good for bears does not mean that they live there or are anywhere close. You must put in the time to find them before the season starts to maximize you chances of success ,and on this podcast episode I am going to help you learn how to do just that! 

Scouting for black bears requires some time investment but strategy matters even more. Bears need to eat and they love to hide, so the first thing you want to do is identify potential food sources that are likely to attract bears. Keep in mind these change depending on the season and regions you are hunting. Good food today may not be good food next week.

Then you want to find these kinds of food sources within reasonable proximity to heavy dense cover that the bears can disappear in. If you can locate these two things then you have the key variables needed to justify some scouting, NOT HUNTING. These findings are not enough to warrant a hunt, they are only sufficient to justify scouting. Many of these types of areas will hold no bears. You need to go there and scout first, before you hunt.

4 Strategies for Black Bear Scouting

Bear tracks are the simplest and most straight forward sign you will find but they are not as prevalent as you might think. Bears are big heavy animals, but they have very large paws, with much more surface area than the points of a deer foot. They will only leave tracks if the ground is very soft, wet, or muddy. Bear tracks are only about 10% of the sign that you are likely to find. However, you can learn a lot about the size of a bear and how recently it was in the area based on the tracks.

Bear droppings are more prevalent. These are big animals that eat a lot and leave a lot of droppings. If bears are around, you should be able to find bear droppings for sure. With just a little bit of research you can also determine the approximate diet of the bears based on their droppings. And if you can learn what they are eating you can also determine what food sources to find and camp out around. This is a great strategic win that can really help you.

Bear activity can include tearing up berry bushes, ripping up tree bark, breaking open fallen logs, flipping over rocks, and much more, all in search of soft plants, tree bark, honey, ants, or other forms of nutrients. Bears are not subtle, and can leave a wake of disruption and destruction. If you keep your eyes open, you should easily be able to tell the relative size and recency of such activity if you come across it.

Bear bedding areas are hard to find and search because they are so dense and thick. Rather than try to get into the bedding areas, likely leaving scent that spooks the bears out of them, you should focus on identifying areas with ideal bedding spots. This are very dense, cool, dark places that the bears can retreat to and disappear. If you do stumble into a bedding area, one of the clearest signs will usually be some bear fur left behind on the ground. 

Listen to this podcast episode for much more detail and information on how to scout for black bears!

EP260 What To Do If All Lead Hunting Ammo Is Banned

If lead hunting ammunition is banned how big of an issue will it be in the hunting world? Are there viable non-toxic ammo options available? How can you keep hunting turkeys, pheasants, doves, deer, and everything else without lead ammo? What do you need to do in order to weather the storm? On this episode I talk about what is likely to happen if the ban occurs and what you can do to prepare so you are able to keep hunting without disruption. 

Will lead ammo be banned? I think so, at some point. I do not know if that is a month away, a year, or 10 years off, but I think at some point it will happen. The subject of whether or not lead ammo should be banned and all the politics and environmental concerns behind it is not something I am addressing in this podcast episode. I am focused on the simple practical things hunters need to know and do to transition from lead to non-toxic shot options to keep hunting.  

The solutions are different for every game species. For waterfowl hunting, we have been lead free for over 30 years, and finally the market has innovated some good alternatives. All other game ammo will benefit from this innovation, and waterfowl ammo can easily be adapted to hunt all game birds. The obstacle here is cost, since nontoxic loads are more expensive than lead hunting ammo. But I think eventually we’ll get used to the additional cost. 

The biggest issue with a lead ban will be the transition period. Reasonable and even good options exist with steel shot, bismuth shot, tungsten super shot, and copper bullets, among others. But if every hunter in America, or even just a handful of states has to drop their lead and pick up non toxic ammo, it is going to be very difficult and expensive to find legal ammo, probably for a few years as supply, demand, and manufacturing capabilities struggle to keep up and adjust. If you want to avoid this difficult eventuality, you need to make preparations in advance. 

Performance decrease for alternative ammo is a lesser concern, and in time I think it will not be a concern at all. For shotguns, TSS ammo is superior to lead already, for just about everything, it just costs a lot more. Bismuth ammo is very similar to lead’s performance capabilities and costs more, but not as dramatically more as tungsten.

When it comes to rifles, the copper bullets of today offer comparable performance to lead at regular hunting ranges for a little more cost. Where they lack performance is at extended range but this will not impact most hunters at all. And chances are, before long, new long range non-toxic bullets will be developed that have no performance deficit. 

I do not think it is a matter of if lead ammo is going to be banned, it is just a matter of when, and how suddenly it will occur. Ideally there will be a large period of time, maybe a five-year window given to transition over to alternative materials. This will give manufactures and hunters time to get geared up. But more than likely it will be more abrupt and there will be great supply chain issues as everyone tries to make the shift all at once. 

This is why all hunters should secure some non-toxic ammo now. Not cases and cases of it, but enough to last a couple of hunting seasons so you can weather any storm or shortage and be able to hunt without hindrance no matter what occurs in the hunting ammunition marketplace.

Listen to the whole podcast episode to hear all of the details.

EP259 When Is It Time To Upgrade Your Hunting Gear?

People rarely ask this question at the right time and for the right reason. Hunting gear decisions are driven by marketing and wishful thinking instead of honest objective strategy. On this episode I am going to help you assess when you should upgrade each piece of gear you have, why you should do it, in what order, and how to maximize your budget and even improve your health! 

When it comes to hunting gear, I like to work to plug the lowest hole in the bucket. This means you look for the piece of gear that is the weakest link in the chain, causing you the most problems, discomfort, or hindrance. Then you strategically work to replace that piece of gear for something better. If something is holding you back, forcing you to end hunts early, causing you pain over the days that follow, or keeping you from being able to go out into the conditions you need to, that is what you focus on.

Marketing Is Not A Reason

Most people are led by marketing and gotta-have-it syndrome. They think they are being strategic; they talk themselves into it, rationalizing how great a shiny new piece of equipment is and how it will make them a better hunter and change their lives, but their expectations are unrealistic. They aren’t thinking clearly and end up buying things that don’t make much difference, do not enable them to do anything more, or maybe it really is a great purchase, but it is something they will just rarely use.

Strategic upgrades are done keeping the big picture in mind. They are not impulse buys and are not things you charge up on credit cards. They are items you plan for, save for, and wait for the right moment to buy. You may wait nine months for the right sale to come along, you may save up for the entire off season and then wait for the pre-season sale to that you have a hunch will come before you purchase. You may use these and many more strategies to get the right pieces of gear at the right time.

Take The Right Size Steps

Also, you do not need to upgrade straight from hodge podge improvised gear directly to expensive top-level equipment. Maybe you decide to upgrade you $5 bargain base layers to $50 Cabela’s base layers, instead of going straight for $150 merino wool First Lite base layers or Sitka Gear. It is not about brands; it’s about improving your setup and enabling you to hunt more and more comfortably.  

You always want to look for the weakest link in the chain, whether it’s your parka, pants, boots, gloves, hat, base layers, or any of the other many things used to hunt. Think about which piece should be upgraded next, why, and how often will you use that new piece.  Focus on items you use frequently and make the biggest difference. 

Here all the details by listening to this podcast episode. 

EP258 What You Need To Do RIGHT NOW To Hunt Better This Fall

Do you want to take more game home? On this episode I am going to cover the single most important thing you can do to improve your hunting success rate. In short, I am talking about practice, specifically sporting clays practice, thought trap shooting and skeet can be helpful as well. This is mainly for shotgun hunters but there is also some application for rifle hunters as well. No gear you can buy will help you more than realistic practice. Skills will always trump equipment. 

In my experience, the average wing shooter takes home about 30% of the birds they shoot at. Some are better, some are worse. A better shotgun will not do much to improve this. Better ammo will only do so much. Better base layers, camouflage, gloves, calls, etc, will do almost nothing to help this average. The single biggest thing that will help is practice. And that just so happens to be the single most overlooked thing that hunters do and spend money on…

If you want to take more game, you need to practice more. That involves trap shooting, skeet shooting, and most importantly sporting clays shooting. All center around shooting at a clay disc out of the air, often referred to as a clay pigeon. These clay targets can be easily purchased at many big box stores for somewhere around $10 per 100. 

  • Trap Shooting involves clay targets that are launched away from the shooter at various angles to simulate a bird flushing and flying away. It gets its name from historical practice that was once done when the shooter would call “pull” and someone would pull the pin holding the trap door shut on a cage and thus allowing real birds to flush away from the cage as target practice.
  • Skeet Shooting essentially involves firing at clay targets passing or crossing in front of the shooter, similar to real birds passing by or being flushed by a dog or another party. The name “skeet” is believed to come from the Norwegian word “skyte” which means “shoot.”
  • Sporting Clays has some similarities to golf as it is a multi-position or hole course. No two courses are identical and often contain 20 positions with a total of 100 clay targets on a full course. Each position features multiple clays launched from various angles, and directions, all unique, simulating a wide range of real-world hunting situations from ducks to pheasants, grouse, doves, and many more.

Each sport is great fun and has great value. But I do believe that sporting clays provides the best hunting practice out there. And the variety of courses adds great realism and infinite shooting possibilities to simulate real hunting conditions.

Typically sporting clays courses cost between $40-$75 for a full 20 position course with 100 clay targets, plus the cost of ammunition. So realistically, you are looking at around $100 per outing. This is not cheap, but neither are the many highly marketed products that hunters pour money into every year for minimal benefit. 

I would recommend you toss $10 a paycheck into your sporting clays jar and go practice 2-3 times a year to start. The skills you gain will be valuable for a lifetime, and even if they dull some over time, picking it back up is a lot like riding a bicycle. This will do more to improve your percentage of shots fired to birds taken home than anything else you can spend money on. 

Get out there and get some practice. Listen to the full podcast episode for more!

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