This is an I-Heart podcast.

Guaranteed Human.

First Lights fieldwear collection is made for the work that happens long before opening day and continues when the season ends.

Products built for early mornings, full days in real use.

Hard wearing where they need to be versatile where it matters.

No shortcuts.

Just gear designed for the work that earns the season. Built to perform, built to last. Check out. First Light's new

fieldwear gear at firstlight.com. Welcome to the Wired to Hunt Foundation's 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.

Hey, everyone, welcome to this 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 we often think of deer in a way that doesn't give them enough credit for just their day-to-day lives and what they do. You know why most hunters don't kill big bucks? Well, there's a lot of reasons, actually.

But one that stands out is that they just don't really think about how deer lived their lives.

They think about how the seasonal timing or the weather should get deer moving, but that's about as deep as it goes.

And honestly, most of the time that's just not deep enough.

I'm going to tell you exactly what I mean right now.

This turkey season started off with an absolute whimper for me.

I've had this happen before, especially when it starts out with colder than average weather. You know, when those temps are low, the hens like to go eat for most of the day. And where they eat for most of the day, most of the tombs will be. You just don't get a lot of the flocks busting up. You don't get a lot of that two-year-old cruising type stuff. But when it breaks, you tend to have a lot of good hunting real quickly.

That's what happened to the girls and I this year.

For the first days of the season, we put in a lot of blind time and saw exactly one hen.

I didn't have a bird gobble within 300 yards of me during those early days, and it was rough.

Then we went out for an after-school

sit while the wind was coming in hard from the south, and the birds just started gobbling.

...