April 22, 2025 • 17 mins
On this week's show, Tony explains his best strategy for turning up new hunting spots, and how anyone can eventually gain access to new ground if they are open to the right interactions with people.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
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.
Speaker 2 (00:20):
Hey everyone, welcome to the Wired to Hunt Foundation's podcast,
which is brought to you by first Light. I'm your host,
Tony Peterson, and today's episode is all about how you
can find yourself a new chunk of ground to hunt
and why that should always be a focus. It really
wasn't I don't know too long ago when the topic
of finding a new spot to hunt was prevalent in
outdoor media. You know, those were the cold call, knock
(00:41):
on doors days, which a lot of people think are
totally dead. Now it's, you know, generally about rounding up
enough scratch to buy your way into a spot, which
is just how things go. But there are ways to
go about this that can yield you a new white
tail spot that you might not have to pay for.
You just need to get a little creative, and that's
what this episode is all about. A couple of weeks ago,
(01:04):
I made my yearly call to a landowner in southeastern Minnesota.
He sounded rough, and considering he was no spring chicken
quite a few years ago, I shouldn't have been surprised.
He's an old dairy farmer, you know. He was always
tough as nails, as a lot of dairy farmers are,
or at least were or when I was growing up.
But he informed me that he was on the tail
end of a round of chemotherapy, which wasn't his first
(01:27):
go with cancer or the treatment that brings people to
their knees. It was a sobering reminder that age waits
for no one, and the only constant in the universe
that we can really sus out is that there is
creation and decay. And as the old Tracy Lawrence song
goes time marches on, that farm will go to his son,
who has been positioned to take over the whole business
(01:48):
since I was in grade school with him, and who
not coincidentally changed the arc of my entire life by
casually letting me know during study hall in eighth grade
that I could hunt his farm if I wanted to.
Now that wasn't just like a door opening for me.
It was like a paradigm shift. In my existence. And
I say that with the least amount of hyperbole I
(02:09):
can muster going from being a public land hunter to
having access to a couple hundred acres of private ground
not ten minutes from my parents' house was like going
from a hand me down skateboard to a fresh off
the lot Mercedes S Class as you're bumming around vehicle.
I don't know how many hours I spent on that farm,
hunting and scouting and just getting into nature and away
(02:29):
from people, but it would be definitely in the thousands,
for sure. So in other words, that permission has been
one of the greatest gifts of my entire life. And
I can assure you that you'd be listening to someone
else right now if I hadn't had that just land
in my lap when I was fourteen and had no
clue what the scope of that permission would really be.
(02:51):
Now you might think, well, if I could go back
in time to the mid nineties and luck into a
great opportunity, I would, But I can't, so what now?
And you know what, that's totally fair. You can't. But
the good old days of getting hands shake permission aren't
totally dead. They just don't look like they used to.
It wasn't that long ago, although it was long enough
(03:13):
now where I probably don't need to keep saying that.
Where you could pull into a farmyard and introduce yourself
and make the case that you are the kind of
person who doesn't leave gates open and who will always
pull far into the ditch to let the farm machinery through,
and who just wants to spend you know, some time
in the woods trying to kill a couple of crop
eating deer, and the landowner might just say, all right, now.
(03:35):
There would always be qualifiers, of course, because when you
break every interaction down where you want something from someone,
it's generally just a negotiation. Maybe you were going to get,
you know, bow hunting specific permission because the landowner's family
and some close friends gun hunt every year on it.
That's fine, don't push it. Maybe this is really common.
(03:59):
There is already somebody else out there hunting and he
really likes to hunt a certain part of the farm,
or he's an old college buddy who comes down to
bowhunt the pre rut, and so maybe you just need
to stay out of there during a certain timeframe. I've
started to look at this kind of thing like it's
just the tax we have to pay to do something cool.
(04:19):
I'd take hunting permission with many qualifiers over no hunting
permission almost every time. In fact, I recently took my
daughters to a property by my house that I recently
started hunting. I've mentioned it on here a few times.
And even though it's only twenty five acres and I
can't run trail cameras there and the landowner sits, my
stands in my blinds a lot, and I have to
(04:40):
call every time I plan to go out there, it's
still one hundred percent worth it. I managed to arrow
a doe there on my first sit last year, which
I gave to him since he wanted venison. And I
also managed to arrow an eight pointer there during the rut,
which I gave to me because I wanted venison. And overall,
having that place to hunt has been pretty much a
(05:01):
net benefit to my daughters and myself, And they are
the reason I'm hunting there at all, because his daughter
and my daughters are friends, and that led us to
meeting each other, and you know the usual small talk
that led to hunting, which led to the invite. It
wasn't your classic go knock on a door situation, but
it ended up with me expanding my hunting options by
(05:22):
twenty five acres. Now, I know that might not sound
like a lot to a lot of you folks, depending
on where you live, but where I live, that is
a huge score. I've also been taking my girls to
another property here near my house that has treated me
very well turkey wise, since I got permission to hunt
it about seven years ago. And again, that started with
(05:43):
me just being a turkey guide for the landowner. Then
he softened up just a little bit and he let
me take my daughters out. Then he softened up more
and let me turkey hunt. I've guided his friends and
their kids many times, and my friends and their kids
many times. Quite a few kids have killed their first
turkey on that farm because of his generosity, and quite
(06:05):
a few adults too. Now, it was four hundred and
thirty five acres not very long ago, and it is
now eighty, which is definitely not a move in the
right direction, But eighty is better than forty and a
lot better than zero. The deer hunting permission on that
farm has been dozed mostly, but he did take pity
on me one year and let me shoot a buck
(06:26):
with my muzzleoder, and he has given my daughters the
green light to shoot whatever after the gun season is over.
There are hoops to jump through, for sure, but it's
a hell of a lot better than not hunting. And
that permission came from a conversation I had with the landowner,
who I didn't know was the landowner at the time.
And while it wasn't immediate, yes, it was the jumping
(06:48):
off point to a whole bunch of hunting and shed
hunting that has been really nice to have. So how
do you find that kind of permission? I don't know.
I don't know you or whether you were socialized enough
as a pup to actually approach people and engage in
a conversation, But I'd say that's a great way to
start think about your interactions with people in your daily
(07:09):
life that have nothing to do with hunting. Now, I
wouldn't say you should go to the DMV to get
your license renewed and ask the lady behind the plexiglass
if she happens to own a need good deer ground.
But one thing that I do, which kills me a
little but also comes kind of natural, is just try
to talk to a whole bunch of people. I once
got permission to hunt forty acres here in the Cities
(07:30):
by talking to the woman working the checkout counter at
the grocery store down the road from my house. Now
that doesn't happen every day, of course, and it all
went south when I realized that I'd be sharing the
spot with her nephew, who didn't really think any game
laws applied to him. But the point stands that the
permission came from a conversation with a stranger that turned
to the topic of bear hunting, of all things. I
(07:53):
kind of look at those interactions like long shots that
generally won't net me sweet places to hunt. But then
there are the people in your life who are just
a little bit closer than strangers. The next level in
you know, the basketball parents that we know, you know
whose daughters play with my daughters. They're like the next
layer closer, and those are a better bet. So if
(08:16):
approaching random strangers and engaging in conversation makes you want
to hit yourself in the face of the brick, maybe
a better option is to think about the folks who
you're forced to engage with because your wife is obsessed
with your daughters becoming WNBA superstars and they are in
basketball like eleven and a half months each year, and
you and the other dads who are in a similar
situation can commiserate on life, and maybe when you do,
(08:39):
the topic of deer hunting comes up. Most of the
people who I talk to in that level of interaction,
you know they're a lost cause too, But you never know.
(09:00):
Round here anyway, a lot of them already hunt and
have their own spots locked up, but you never know
when you're going to find someone who has some acreage
it wouldn't mind an ethical bow hunter thing out the
local herd, or maybe they wouldn't mind you taking your
kids out there for a turkey hunt, or maybe they
want to learn how to hunt and you could fill
(09:20):
that role. There are a lot of ways to skin
this cat, but they never happen without that initial conversation,
and you have to expect that it's never going to
be that cut and dry, you know, that thing where
they're just like, yep, here are the property lines, now
go nuts. It doesn't work that way generally, but as
(09:40):
I said before, that's okay. That's how the game goes
these days. Unless you figure out a way to pay
for access, which is another route you can take. Pay
to play is extremely prevalent out there, as I'm sure
you're well aware. But while we look at that as
you know, kind of a transactional reality, it's off not
most of the folks who lease their land don't really
(10:03):
need your money. They do it because they can make
extra money, set specific rules about land usage, and then
hopefully not deal with a bunch of bullshit. You can
use services like base camp leasing to find properties, which
isn't a bad route at all, or you can tap
your network. Now I know this varies a lot from
Texas to Florida, to the Upper Midwest and out east. Primarily,
(10:27):
you know, involves the culture of leasing in your local region,
but a lot of leasing opportunities come up through someone
being unhappy with their current land use situation. A lot
of people, a lot of hunters, don't like to follow
the rules, and they'll push it when it comes to
paying for access on someone's ground. That can lead to
(10:48):
predictable results, And if you have conversations with people enough,
you might find someone who leases their ground and is
sick of the current hunters. You know, somebody who could
put you at the front of the line for the
phone call when that leases up. That's a good place
to be if you want, you know, to find some
pay to playground, and if you need some acreage to
(11:08):
work with, you know, there you go. It's also almost
always a good idea to have some level of personal
relationship with whoever you're leasing from, although the opposite can
be true if it's pure business. The thing about that
personal relationship stuff is that the people who own good
deer ground often know people who own good deer ground.
(11:30):
If you are the kind of hunter who pays on time,
follows all the rules, and generally appreciates the opportunity, then
you might get offered something bigger and better down the road.
Or they might take sympathy on you and relax some
of their original rules. Or they might just offer up
something down the road that you can't take, but one
of your hunting buddies can. And I want to say
(11:51):
something on a point I made just now, do not
underestimate the power of appreciation. I truly mean that a
lot of landowners have a deep connection to their dirt,
and they want someone out there who feels, at least
some way like they do about it. When we go
into a conversation and all we can talk about is
(12:12):
the one hundred and eighty inch deer that we have
on camera and how good he will look on our walls,
we are selling the whole thing short, and someone might
look at that like the average non hunter looks at
someone going to Africa to shoot an elephant or a lion.
They most likely won't know anything about the actual hunt,
but that won't matter because they'll have their initial impression
(12:33):
and it probably won't be positive. This goes for leasing,
of course, but also for just handshake spots, which I
guess I should actually say especially for handshake spots. Someone
who is kind enough to give you free access wants
to know that you are thankful for that access and
that you truly appreciate it. It's often that simple. Being
(12:56):
genuinely grateful in life is not only the right thing
to do in an awful lot of situations, but it's
also a way to open up some doors to enjoyable hunting,
or to keep the doors open to enjoyable hunting. Now,
when it comes to leasing, you'll find ground through services
that offer it or word of mouth, but that green
light handshake hunting if you want to go. That route
(13:17):
can still happen. You can still knock on doors, but
you should think about what you're doing first. So let's
look at this an easy way. Imagine you own a
farm in the Black Hills of South Dakota, right on
the doorstep of all that national forest with those gobblers
that will sound off all day long. Now you have
a feed lot and the birds winter there. Now everyone
(13:40):
who hunts a certain part of the Black Hills drives
by and eyeballs the fourteen strutters in your yard, and
enough of them decide that it's a no harm, no
foul situation to pull into the driveway to ask for permission.
After a few springs, you'd probably be pretty sick of
looking out your window and seeing another decal covered truck
creeping in with some sheepish, campclad mustachio dude strolling up
(14:03):
to your front door. The likelihood of getting a yes
there pretty low, especially because anyone with that many birds
also likely has friends or relatives who like the turkey
hunt too, and they'll beat you to them every time.
Sometimes it's better to look for the opportunities that might
not get a ton of attention. Use on X to
look around get to know the property a little before
(14:25):
you approach someone. Instead of being like, hey, I saw
some turkeys in that field there, and I figured you
might own it and you might let me go and
try to shoot them, introduce yourself and say that you know,
you noticed how beautiful their property was and looked up
who owned it and realized that it was one hundred
and twenty acres of just gorgeous creek bottom. And you're
(14:46):
wondering if there's any chance at some point if you
could take a couple of days to run back there
to hunt for some turkeys or deer. Now, if it's
a hard no, which it often is, thank them for
their time and leave them alone. If it's not, pay attention,
they'll give you everything you need to work with. If
they have someone out there already, Ask how you could
(15:06):
hunt and not bother them, What times, when, where any
of that stuff. If they have a dog, petit, if
they have a flower garden, compliment it. I know that
sounds kind of sleazy, but you're asking them for something
for free, and they don't want to give that to
a prick or someone who just seems laser focused on
killing a few of their deer and moving on, you
(15:29):
have to play the game. And I'll say this because
I believe it. Giving people compliments is never a bad
thing if they are at least genuine adjacent. I think
we have an obligation to compliment people in general, and
getting in you know that habit makes it more natural
and it will never hurt you in life. It's a
net benefit through and through, and it may make you
(15:50):
the kind of person who gets hunting permission more readily
than some of your competition. So what does all of
this really mean. Well, you won't get permit, you know,
to a lot of places without making the first move,
so to speak. You have to talk to people for real.
You have to engage with them. And if you find
an opening to talk about your love of being in
(16:12):
nature and trying to put a few deer in the freezer,
that's all the better. Present yourself as the kind of
hunter in person you really want to be, and then
see where the conversations take you. Most of them are
going to be dead ends, but that's okay. They don't
cost you anything and they can at least leave a
positive impression. But a few of them, you know, maybe
(16:32):
once every couple of years, might turn into something truly special.
That might just be access to a pond to shoot
a couple of woodies, or maybe a few days to
take your kids out turkey hunting somewhere. Or you might
get a chance to deer hunt a property right by
your house where you can shoot a dough and an
eight pointer and still be home ten minutes later for dinner.
(16:53):
Think about that and think about coming back next week,
because I'm going to talk about human behavior and how
understanding it always helps you kill more big bucks, even
if you're on private land, and of course if you're
on public or any pressure ground. That's it for this week.
I'm Tony Peterson. This has been the Wired to Hunt
Foundation's podcast, which is brought to you by First Light.
(17:15):
As always, thank you so much for all your support.
I can't tell you how much it means to us.
It's just truly special, so thank you for that. If
you need to see some more turkey hunting videos, maybe
read some articles, maybe you want to find a recipe,
listen to a podcast where you're driving out somewhere to
kill your first Miriams. Whatever thumb meat eater dot com
(17:37):
has you covered. Head on over there. New content every
day check it out
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.
Speaker 2 (00:20):
Hey everyone, welcome to the Wired to Hunt Foundation's podcast,
which is brought to you by first Light. I'm your host,
Tony Peterson, and today's episode is all about how you
can find yourself a new chunk of ground to hunt
and why that should always be a focus. It really
wasn't I don't know too long ago when the topic
of finding a new spot to hunt was prevalent in
outdoor media. You know, those were the cold call, knock
(00:41):
on doors days, which a lot of people think are
totally dead. Now it's, you know, generally about rounding up
enough scratch to buy your way into a spot, which
is just how things go. But there are ways to
go about this that can yield you a new white
tail spot that you might not have to pay for.
You just need to get a little creative, and that's
what this episode is all about. A couple of weeks ago,
(01:04):
I made my yearly call to a landowner in southeastern Minnesota.
He sounded rough, and considering he was no spring chicken
quite a few years ago, I shouldn't have been surprised.
He's an old dairy farmer, you know. He was always
tough as nails, as a lot of dairy farmers are,
or at least were or when I was growing up.
But he informed me that he was on the tail
end of a round of chemotherapy, which wasn't his first
(01:27):
go with cancer or the treatment that brings people to
their knees. It was a sobering reminder that age waits
for no one, and the only constant in the universe
that we can really sus out is that there is
creation and decay. And as the old Tracy Lawrence song
goes time marches on, that farm will go to his son,
who has been positioned to take over the whole business
(01:48):
since I was in grade school with him, and who
not coincidentally changed the arc of my entire life by
casually letting me know during study hall in eighth grade
that I could hunt his farm if I wanted to.
Now that wasn't just like a door opening for me.
It was like a paradigm shift. In my existence. And
I say that with the least amount of hyperbole I
(02:09):
can muster going from being a public land hunter to
having access to a couple hundred acres of private ground
not ten minutes from my parents' house was like going
from a hand me down skateboard to a fresh off
the lot Mercedes S Class as you're bumming around vehicle.
I don't know how many hours I spent on that farm,
hunting and scouting and just getting into nature and away
(02:29):
from people, but it would be definitely in the thousands,
for sure. So in other words, that permission has been
one of the greatest gifts of my entire life. And
I can assure you that you'd be listening to someone
else right now if I hadn't had that just land
in my lap when I was fourteen and had no
clue what the scope of that permission would really be.
(02:51):
Now you might think, well, if I could go back
in time to the mid nineties and luck into a
great opportunity, I would, But I can't, so what now?
And you know what, that's totally fair. You can't. But
the good old days of getting hands shake permission aren't
totally dead. They just don't look like they used to.
It wasn't that long ago, although it was long enough
(03:13):
now where I probably don't need to keep saying that.
Where you could pull into a farmyard and introduce yourself
and make the case that you are the kind of
person who doesn't leave gates open and who will always
pull far into the ditch to let the farm machinery through,
and who just wants to spend you know, some time
in the woods trying to kill a couple of crop
eating deer, and the landowner might just say, all right, now.
(03:35):
There would always be qualifiers, of course, because when you
break every interaction down where you want something from someone,
it's generally just a negotiation. Maybe you were going to get,
you know, bow hunting specific permission because the landowner's family
and some close friends gun hunt every year on it.
That's fine, don't push it. Maybe this is really common.
(03:59):
There is already somebody else out there hunting and he
really likes to hunt a certain part of the farm,
or he's an old college buddy who comes down to
bowhunt the pre rut, and so maybe you just need
to stay out of there during a certain timeframe. I've
started to look at this kind of thing like it's
just the tax we have to pay to do something cool.
(04:19):
I'd take hunting permission with many qualifiers over no hunting
permission almost every time. In fact, I recently took my
daughters to a property by my house that I recently
started hunting. I've mentioned it on here a few times.
And even though it's only twenty five acres and I
can't run trail cameras there and the landowner sits, my
stands in my blinds a lot, and I have to
(04:40):
call every time I plan to go out there, it's
still one hundred percent worth it. I managed to arrow
a doe there on my first sit last year, which
I gave to him since he wanted venison. And I
also managed to arrow an eight pointer there during the rut,
which I gave to me because I wanted venison. And overall,
having that place to hunt has been pretty much a
(05:01):
net benefit to my daughters and myself, And they are
the reason I'm hunting there at all, because his daughter
and my daughters are friends, and that led us to
meeting each other, and you know the usual small talk
that led to hunting, which led to the invite. It
wasn't your classic go knock on a door situation, but
it ended up with me expanding my hunting options by
(05:22):
twenty five acres. Now, I know that might not sound
like a lot to a lot of you folks, depending
on where you live, but where I live, that is
a huge score. I've also been taking my girls to
another property here near my house that has treated me
very well turkey wise, since I got permission to hunt
it about seven years ago. And again, that started with
(05:43):
me just being a turkey guide for the landowner. Then
he softened up just a little bit and he let
me take my daughters out. Then he softened up more
and let me turkey hunt. I've guided his friends and
their kids many times, and my friends and their kids
many times. Quite a few kids have killed their first
turkey on that farm because of his generosity, and quite
(06:05):
a few adults too. Now, it was four hundred and
thirty five acres not very long ago, and it is
now eighty, which is definitely not a move in the
right direction, But eighty is better than forty and a
lot better than zero. The deer hunting permission on that
farm has been dozed mostly, but he did take pity
on me one year and let me shoot a buck
(06:26):
with my muzzleoder, and he has given my daughters the
green light to shoot whatever after the gun season is over.
There are hoops to jump through, for sure, but it's
a hell of a lot better than not hunting. And
that permission came from a conversation I had with the landowner,
who I didn't know was the landowner at the time.
And while it wasn't immediate, yes, it was the jumping
(06:48):
off point to a whole bunch of hunting and shed
hunting that has been really nice to have. So how
do you find that kind of permission? I don't know.
I don't know you or whether you were socialized enough
as a pup to actually approach people and engage in
a conversation, But I'd say that's a great way to
start think about your interactions with people in your daily
(07:09):
life that have nothing to do with hunting. Now, I
wouldn't say you should go to the DMV to get
your license renewed and ask the lady behind the plexiglass
if she happens to own a need good deer ground.
But one thing that I do, which kills me a
little but also comes kind of natural, is just try
to talk to a whole bunch of people. I once
got permission to hunt forty acres here in the Cities
(07:30):
by talking to the woman working the checkout counter at
the grocery store down the road from my house. Now
that doesn't happen every day, of course, and it all
went south when I realized that I'd be sharing the
spot with her nephew, who didn't really think any game
laws applied to him. But the point stands that the
permission came from a conversation with a stranger that turned
to the topic of bear hunting, of all things. I
(07:53):
kind of look at those interactions like long shots that
generally won't net me sweet places to hunt. But then
there are the people in your life who are just
a little bit closer than strangers. The next level in
you know, the basketball parents that we know, you know
whose daughters play with my daughters. They're like the next
layer closer, and those are a better bet. So if
(08:16):
approaching random strangers and engaging in conversation makes you want
to hit yourself in the face of the brick, maybe
a better option is to think about the folks who
you're forced to engage with because your wife is obsessed
with your daughters becoming WNBA superstars and they are in
basketball like eleven and a half months each year, and
you and the other dads who are in a similar
situation can commiserate on life, and maybe when you do,
(08:39):
the topic of deer hunting comes up. Most of the
people who I talk to in that level of interaction,
you know they're a lost cause too, But you never know.
(09:00):
Round here anyway, a lot of them already hunt and
have their own spots locked up, but you never know
when you're going to find someone who has some acreage
it wouldn't mind an ethical bow hunter thing out the
local herd, or maybe they wouldn't mind you taking your
kids out there for a turkey hunt, or maybe they
want to learn how to hunt and you could fill
(09:20):
that role. There are a lot of ways to skin
this cat, but they never happen without that initial conversation,
and you have to expect that it's never going to
be that cut and dry, you know, that thing where
they're just like, yep, here are the property lines, now
go nuts. It doesn't work that way generally, but as
(09:40):
I said before, that's okay. That's how the game goes
these days. Unless you figure out a way to pay
for access, which is another route you can take. Pay
to play is extremely prevalent out there, as I'm sure
you're well aware. But while we look at that as
you know, kind of a transactional reality, it's off not
most of the folks who lease their land don't really
(10:03):
need your money. They do it because they can make
extra money, set specific rules about land usage, and then
hopefully not deal with a bunch of bullshit. You can
use services like base camp leasing to find properties, which
isn't a bad route at all, or you can tap
your network. Now I know this varies a lot from
Texas to Florida, to the Upper Midwest and out east. Primarily,
(10:27):
you know, involves the culture of leasing in your local region,
but a lot of leasing opportunities come up through someone
being unhappy with their current land use situation. A lot
of people, a lot of hunters, don't like to follow
the rules, and they'll push it when it comes to
paying for access on someone's ground. That can lead to
(10:48):
predictable results, And if you have conversations with people enough,
you might find someone who leases their ground and is
sick of the current hunters. You know, somebody who could
put you at the front of the line for the
phone call when that leases up. That's a good place
to be if you want, you know, to find some
pay to playground, and if you need some acreage to
(11:08):
work with, you know, there you go. It's also almost
always a good idea to have some level of personal
relationship with whoever you're leasing from, although the opposite can
be true if it's pure business. The thing about that
personal relationship stuff is that the people who own good
deer ground often know people who own good deer ground.
(11:30):
If you are the kind of hunter who pays on time,
follows all the rules, and generally appreciates the opportunity, then
you might get offered something bigger and better down the road.
Or they might take sympathy on you and relax some
of their original rules. Or they might just offer up
something down the road that you can't take, but one
of your hunting buddies can. And I want to say
(11:51):
something on a point I made just now, do not
underestimate the power of appreciation. I truly mean that a
lot of landowners have a deep connection to their dirt,
and they want someone out there who feels, at least
some way like they do about it. When we go
into a conversation and all we can talk about is
(12:12):
the one hundred and eighty inch deer that we have
on camera and how good he will look on our walls,
we are selling the whole thing short, and someone might
look at that like the average non hunter looks at
someone going to Africa to shoot an elephant or a lion.
They most likely won't know anything about the actual hunt,
but that won't matter because they'll have their initial impression
(12:33):
and it probably won't be positive. This goes for leasing,
of course, but also for just handshake spots, which I
guess I should actually say especially for handshake spots. Someone
who is kind enough to give you free access wants
to know that you are thankful for that access and
that you truly appreciate it. It's often that simple. Being
(12:56):
genuinely grateful in life is not only the right thing
to do in an awful lot of situations, but it's
also a way to open up some doors to enjoyable hunting,
or to keep the doors open to enjoyable hunting. Now,
when it comes to leasing, you'll find ground through services
that offer it or word of mouth, but that green
light handshake hunting if you want to go. That route
(13:17):
can still happen. You can still knock on doors, but
you should think about what you're doing first. So let's
look at this an easy way. Imagine you own a
farm in the Black Hills of South Dakota, right on
the doorstep of all that national forest with those gobblers
that will sound off all day long. Now you have
a feed lot and the birds winter there. Now everyone
(13:40):
who hunts a certain part of the Black Hills drives
by and eyeballs the fourteen strutters in your yard, and
enough of them decide that it's a no harm, no
foul situation to pull into the driveway to ask for permission.
After a few springs, you'd probably be pretty sick of
looking out your window and seeing another decal covered truck
creeping in with some sheepish, campclad mustachio dude strolling up
(14:03):
to your front door. The likelihood of getting a yes
there pretty low, especially because anyone with that many birds
also likely has friends or relatives who like the turkey
hunt too, and they'll beat you to them every time.
Sometimes it's better to look for the opportunities that might
not get a ton of attention. Use on X to
look around get to know the property a little before
(14:25):
you approach someone. Instead of being like, hey, I saw
some turkeys in that field there, and I figured you
might own it and you might let me go and
try to shoot them, introduce yourself and say that you know,
you noticed how beautiful their property was and looked up
who owned it and realized that it was one hundred
and twenty acres of just gorgeous creek bottom. And you're
(14:46):
wondering if there's any chance at some point if you
could take a couple of days to run back there
to hunt for some turkeys or deer. Now, if it's
a hard no, which it often is, thank them for
their time and leave them alone. If it's not, pay attention,
they'll give you everything you need to work with. If
they have someone out there already, Ask how you could
(15:06):
hunt and not bother them, What times, when, where any
of that stuff. If they have a dog, petit, if
they have a flower garden, compliment it. I know that
sounds kind of sleazy, but you're asking them for something
for free, and they don't want to give that to
a prick or someone who just seems laser focused on
killing a few of their deer and moving on, you
(15:29):
have to play the game. And I'll say this because
I believe it. Giving people compliments is never a bad
thing if they are at least genuine adjacent. I think
we have an obligation to compliment people in general, and
getting in you know that habit makes it more natural
and it will never hurt you in life. It's a
net benefit through and through, and it may make you
(15:50):
the kind of person who gets hunting permission more readily
than some of your competition. So what does all of
this really mean. Well, you won't get permit, you know,
to a lot of places without making the first move,
so to speak. You have to talk to people for real.
You have to engage with them. And if you find
an opening to talk about your love of being in
(16:12):
nature and trying to put a few deer in the freezer,
that's all the better. Present yourself as the kind of
hunter in person you really want to be, and then
see where the conversations take you. Most of them are
going to be dead ends, but that's okay. They don't
cost you anything and they can at least leave a
positive impression. But a few of them, you know, maybe
(16:32):
once every couple of years, might turn into something truly special.
That might just be access to a pond to shoot
a couple of woodies, or maybe a few days to
take your kids out turkey hunting somewhere. Or you might
get a chance to deer hunt a property right by
your house where you can shoot a dough and an
eight pointer and still be home ten minutes later for dinner.
(16:53):
Think about that and think about coming back next week,
because I'm going to talk about human behavior and how
understanding it always helps you kill more big bucks, even
if you're on private land, and of course if you're
on public or any pressure ground. That's it for this week.
I'm Tony Peterson. This has been the Wired to Hunt
Foundation's podcast, which is brought to you by First Light.
(17:15):
As always, thank you so much for all your support.
I can't tell you how much it means to us.
It's just truly special, so thank you for that. If
you need to see some more turkey hunting videos, maybe
read some articles, maybe you want to find a recipe,
listen to a podcast where you're driving out somewhere to
kill your first Miriams. Whatever thumb meat eater dot com
(17:37):
has you covered. Head on over there. New content every
day check it out
Host
Mark Kenyon
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