Speaker 1: Welcome to the Wired to Hunt Foundations podcast, your guide
Speaker 1: to the fundamentals of better deer hunting, presented by first Light,
Speaker 1: creating proven versatile hunting apparel for the stand, saddle or blind.
Speaker 1: First Light, Go Farther, Stay Longer, and now your host
Speaker 1: Tony Peterson.
Speaker 2: Everyone, welcome to the Wired to Hunt Foundation's podcast, which
Speaker 2: is brought to you by First Light. I'm your host,
Speaker 2: Tony Peterson, and today's episode is all about how to
Speaker 2: not regret your hunting decisions. The old window is closing
Speaker 2: for non resident hunting opportunities, which is no surprise to
Speaker 2: anyone who's been paying attention. There's a lot of reasons
Speaker 2: for this that I don't really need to get into,
Speaker 2: but what I do want to talk about is how
Speaker 2: this is affecting my decision making process around hunting opportunities
Speaker 2: and how regret in general containt our experiences. I know
Speaker 2: that's pretty vague, so you just have to bear with
Speaker 2: me and hear the rest of this talk just to
Speaker 2: kind of get it, you know, and hopefully I can
Speaker 2: put it in a way that will help you make
Speaker 2: some better decisions that will leave a positive mark on
Speaker 2: your psyche instead of a bunch of remoor, set of
Speaker 2: missed opportunity, the quality of the entire human experience for
Speaker 2: us as individuals hinges on so many things beyond our control,
Speaker 2: and so many things that are totally in our control.
Speaker 2: And of course the decisions we make that we think
Speaker 2: are in our best interest, and the decisions we make
Speaker 2: that we know aren't in our best interest, but we
Speaker 2: want to do them anyway, knowing full well we'll probably
Speaker 2: regret them later. Life is muddy and it's hard. I
Speaker 2: don't know if it's harder today generally than it was
Speaker 2: ten years ago, or it'll be ten years from now.
Speaker 2: My suspicion is that it's going to keep getting worse
Speaker 2: until we all collectively toss our smartphones into a bonfire
Speaker 2: and to touch a little grass, which I'm going to
Speaker 2: talk about in a few episodes. But since that's not
Speaker 2: likely to happen, our course almost feels set. Now, maybe
Speaker 2: that's a bad way to look at it, but reality
Speaker 2: rarely jives with our most positive hopes and dreams. That's
Speaker 2: just how it goes. And if there's one component of
Speaker 2: that which can really kind of haunt you, it's having
Speaker 2: some serious regrets. Now, regret is a negative emotional state
Speaker 2: that basically involves us blaming ourselves for bad decisions. If
Speaker 2: it's not handled correctly, and it's often not, regret can
Speaker 2: turn into rumination and cause chronic stress, the kind of
Speaker 2: stress that o't you know, not only messes with your
Speaker 2: mind but has physical implications for your body. You know,
Speaker 2: this is a no bueno. It's also a consequence of
Speaker 2: life that you'll make decisions that you regret, maybe for
Speaker 2: the rest of your life. That's a heavy toll to
Speaker 2: pay just because you want, you know, with heads instead
Speaker 2: of tails. But it doesn't matter. As my old podcast
Speaker 2: editor like to say, it do be like that sometimes,
Speaker 2: and he was right. Now, you can't go back in
Speaker 2: time and ask your crush out or talk to a
Speaker 2: struggling buddy who is thinking about hitting the eject button
Speaker 2: on life, or not drink the drinks or say the
Speaker 2: nasty things or whatever. No one makes it through life
Speaker 2: unscathed in this department, my friends. It's also true that
Speaker 2: some regrets are a little lighter mental lift than others.
Speaker 2: In the hunting realm. Regrets come in many forms. I
Speaker 2: want to start with one of the big ones to
Speaker 2: highlight this whole concept. The I didn't go when I
Speaker 2: should have. Regret. I'm dealing with this heavy right now,
Speaker 2: and I haven't even made a decision yet. You see,
Speaker 2: I want to go to Caller Rotto to elk hunt
Speaker 2: in September. You probably do too, if you're listening to this.
Speaker 2: I know that getting elk tags when you live nowhere
Speaker 2: near the Rockies is only going to get way more difficult.
Speaker 2: I also know that I'm not going to get any younger.
Speaker 2: I know that all it takes is one simple thing
Speaker 2: to ruin your health or at least keep you from
Speaker 2: the gym and working on elk hunting shape. I know
Speaker 2: that the amount of elk hunts I have in front
Speaker 2: of me isn't very many and might only be a
Speaker 2: couple at this point. Now that's a first world problem,
Speaker 2: I know, but it's also something I'm just kind of
Speaker 2: mine grinding over. If I go el hunting, I know
Speaker 2: what it'll take more months of workouts, which doesn't really
Speaker 2: bother me. But elk hunting is also expensive, even for
Speaker 2: an over the counter DIY hunt. There's that consideration in
Speaker 2: this world that seems to be getting more expensive by
Speaker 2: the hour, even though we're told everything's peachy. Then there
Speaker 2: is the time to give yourself a fighting chance, and
Speaker 2: elk hunt needs time. I found that if I don't
Speaker 2: have between at least ten to twelve days for travel
Speaker 2: and hunting, I feel like I don't have enough time. Now,
Speaker 2: that's a lot of days away from the family right
Speaker 2: at the onset of hunting season, which is not ideal
Speaker 2: to confound my personal situation. Further, one of my daughters
Speaker 2: has a bear tag this year. The opener is in
Speaker 2: early September, when I would be off in the mountains. Now,
Speaker 2: what will I regret more missing one of the few
Speaker 2: elk hunts I'll probably ever do, or missing the opportunity
Speaker 2: to hunt bears with my daughter, which is another opportunity
Speaker 2: that just might not come around too often. Again, first
Speaker 2: world problems, but they're my problems, so I'm going to
Speaker 2: talk about them. I know that if I do go
Speaker 2: el hunting, I'm not going to regret it. History has
Speaker 2: proven that for me every time I've gone, and I've
Speaker 2: been on some absolute clunkers of hunts, but I've never
Speaker 2: regretted a single one where it was me and a
Speaker 2: buddy or two doing our thing in the wild somewhere,
Speaker 2: especially in the mountains. It's always been worth it. Now
Speaker 2: you should pay attention to that last sentence, because I'll
Speaker 2: bet you probably feel the same way, knowing that I'm
Speaker 2: wondering if I'm being stupid for even considering not going.
Speaker 2: But it's just not so simple. The fear of regret
Speaker 2: is real, but the reality of life is too. I
Speaker 2: probably won't make a decision for months yet, but I
Speaker 2: probably will think about it ten thousand times a day
Speaker 2: between here and there. This is a weird example of
Speaker 2: how much we can fear regretting our decisions. When I
Speaker 2: think back on the four elkunts I've done, they were
Speaker 2: all incredible in their own way, the successful ones, of course,
Speaker 2: but even the unsuccessful ones too. So I just don't
Speaker 2: know what to do. And you might find yourself in
Speaker 2: a similar situation this year. Now, maybe instead of elk
Speaker 2: it involves buying your first preference point in Iowa to
Speaker 2: give yourself a chance at a once in a lifetime
Speaker 2: hunt and the promised land. I can almost guarantee that
Speaker 2: you won't regret drawing a tag down there, but most
Speaker 2: folks they're not even gonna try. The price for a
Speaker 2: non resident tag is high, and the juice just doesn't
Speaker 2: seem to be worse to squeeze for a lot of people,
Speaker 2: and that's okay, But also think about your best days
Speaker 2: on stand or your most enjoyable hunting seasons. I'll bet
Speaker 2: they involved a lot of action, probably with some good
Speaker 2: bucks mixed in there. Now, if there is a better
Speaker 2: place to go for that than Iowa, I'm all ears.
Speaker 2: The thing is, we think we'll regret spending the money
Speaker 2: on the tag, and we're scared we won't fill that tag.
Speaker 2: That would be a regretful situation in our eyes, so
Speaker 2: it's easier to not even try. But there might come
Speaker 2: a point when you can't get a tag there at
Speaker 2: all if you don't live there, or something might happen
Speaker 2: in life. We're getting away for an over the road
Speaker 2: hunt just won't or can't happen. When opportunity goes away,
Speaker 2: regret comes calling. We've seen this time and time again
Speaker 2: in the outdoor space. Will you regret the trips you
Speaker 2: take more than the trips you don't take? Probably not,
Speaker 2: but it's easy to believe that might be the case.
Speaker 2: And regret comes in other forms too. I just had
Speaker 2: a conversation with a buddy of mine who wants to
Speaker 2: buy a hunting ground in the worst way. He loves
Speaker 2: to deer hunt, and he has a daughter who is
Speaker 2: likely to love deer hunting too. He knows that owning
Speaker 2: land is his ticket to a sure thing lifetime of
Speaker 2: both and you know, a lifetime of just not living
Speaker 2: under the threat of having no place to hunt. This
Speaker 2: is probably pretty relatable to most of you, fine listeners.
Speaker 2: The problem with him, and honestly a lot of us,
Speaker 2: is that he's waiting for land to get more affordable.
Speaker 2: We all know how that's going to go. He's also
Speaker 2: like a lot of us in that he wants a
Speaker 2: certain type of land, you know, a certain type of woods,
Speaker 2: which is great, but it's also the kind of woods
Speaker 2: that everyone wants, because no one wants shitty land, no
Speaker 2: one except me anyway. I don't care what the land
Speaker 2: looks like now, because I know what you can do
Speaker 2: with it, you know, with some elbow grease in some
Speaker 2: time at least most land. I also know that deer
Speaker 2: don't care that you own only a beautiful deciduous forest
Speaker 2: is a straight out of a Disney movie. Hell, they
Speaker 2: like the shitty land quite a bit in my experience.
Speaker 2: But here's the thing. If that's a goal of yours.
Speaker 2: It's generally not an easy one to achieve, but it
Speaker 2: is doable for some folks, even if that feels like
Speaker 2: a stretch. If you do your homework and you figure
Speaker 2: out how to make some level of that dream happen,
Speaker 2: usually a level that is far below but you know
Speaker 2: kind of what you really want, you're not going to
Speaker 2: regret it. In fact, you'll probably be real happy you
Speaker 2: ignored that internal warning and stuck to the plan. And
Speaker 2: even if you know, settled for something that you could
Speaker 2: just barely afford, that has some potential. Another way to
Speaker 2: look at this is that buddy of mine. Do you
Speaker 2: think he'll regret it more if ten years go by
Speaker 2: and he doesn't buy any land, or if he buys
Speaker 2: something small and in his price range that he can
Speaker 2: work on and take his daughter to. Sure it could
Speaker 2: break either way due to unforeseen circumstances, but if we're
Speaker 2: playing the odds game, I know where I'm placing my bet.
Speaker 2: So far, I've just talked about big regrets take the trip,
Speaker 2: or don't buy the land, or wait. But hunting is
Speaker 2: full of situations we can regret on so many levels.
Speaker 2: I'll give you a couple of examples from my life
Speaker 2: which highlight the dynamic nature of regret. Sometimes you feel
Speaker 2: dumb for what you do, but sometimes you feel dumb
Speaker 2: for what you don't do. For me, some of my
Speaker 2: most shameful moments in the woods are from things that
Speaker 2: I did but shouldn't have, Like the time in high
Speaker 2: school when my buddies and I got hammered, which wasn't unusual,
Speaker 2: so it wasn't unusual when I woke up to go
Speaker 2: hunting and felt super hungover and like a total turred
Speaker 2: sandwich of a human. I went out to still hunt
Speaker 2: around in the early season with that hangover, which is
Speaker 2: something I just kind of did then. It's also one
Speaker 2: of the many, many reasons why I rarely killed a
Speaker 2: deer back then. Well, anyway, as I was sneaking around
Speaker 2: with a throbbing headache and the vague threat that I
Speaker 2: might ruin my underwear if I try to suppress a
Speaker 2: sneeze because that pressure is going to go somewhere, I
Speaker 2: ended up at a small pond, tucked into a standing cornfield,
Speaker 2: the spot you know, it's always a good place to
Speaker 2: run into a deer, So I tucked into the first
Speaker 2: row of corn to try to catch a deer coming
Speaker 2: back to bed. After a while, I laid right down
Speaker 2: in the dirt of that cornfield and fell asleep. And
Speaker 2: when I woke up, two does were standing at the
Speaker 2: far side of that little pond, probably wondering what kind
Speaker 2: of animal makes the kind of noise a hungover idiot
Speaker 2: with a crooked nose does when he's snoring away. I
Speaker 2: clearly wasn't dealing with the deer's top brass then, because
Speaker 2: they both watched me pick up my bow, take poor
Speaker 2: aim at that lead dough, and then shoot. And when
Speaker 2: that arrow hit I knew immediately that I'd never see
Speaker 2: her again because I had backstrapped her. The number of
Speaker 2: regrets in that sixteen seventeen hour period of my life
Speaker 2: were many, and I regret it to this day, even
Speaker 2: though it's been like thirty years since then. Another time
Speaker 2: I climbed into a tree stand in December to try
Speaker 2: to fill an antler list tag when I was in
Speaker 2: my early twenties, you know, hunting after the gun season
Speaker 2: then on the farm I was on. You know, it
Speaker 2: was almost always a lost cause, but I went anyway,
Speaker 2: and as the sun started to set, I heard deer
Speaker 2: walking in the leaves and saw some does headed in
Speaker 2: my direction. I stood up, picked up my bow and
Speaker 2: got ready. When one of the doughs offered me a shot,
Speaker 2: I took it and I hit her way too low.
Speaker 2: It was entirely my fault, and I just screwed up
Speaker 2: the shot. Now that happens. But what happened next is
Speaker 2: what I really regret. I knew I probably wasn't going
Speaker 2: to find that dough, but I also knew that I
Speaker 2: had hit her, so I was going to have to
Speaker 2: try real hard, and since I had multiple tags, I
Speaker 2: knocked another arrow and shot at one of the other
Speaker 2: doughs that stuck around. It was a shot I didn't
Speaker 2: need to take, but I was frustrated after totally botching
Speaker 2: the first shot. Well, when you get greedy and the outdoors,
Speaker 2: it rarely works out well, and this time was no exception.
Speaker 2: I made almost the exact shot on that second dough,
Speaker 2: and I can tell you that I felt pretty small
Speaker 2: when the sun fully set and I climbed down. The
Speaker 2: regret of taking that shot stuck with me bad, and
Speaker 2: I felt it the whole next day when I followed
Speaker 2: one blood trail and then another to absolutely zero dead
Speaker 2: deer grid searching put up a big old goose egg too.
Speaker 2: I honestly don't know if I've ever regretted not taking
Speaker 2: a shot, but I sure regret taking quite a few
Speaker 2: of them in my career, especially when I was starting out.
Speaker 2: There's a good lesson in there. In fact, I think
Speaker 2: it's why I try to only shoot now where I
Speaker 2: feel like I have one hundred percent confidence that it's
Speaker 2: going to be all over. I don't like the feeling
Speaker 2: of crossing my fingers when I draw my bow because
Speaker 2: I know where that goes and it almost always sucks.
Speaker 2: Now there are other regrets too. I think cell cameras
Speaker 2: contribute to a fair amount of them. I mean, how
Speaker 2: often have you decided you'd stay home and clean the garage,
Speaker 2: or maybe just watch TV because you don't want to
Speaker 2: sit in a stand during a rainstorm, when suddenly a
Speaker 2: notification pops up on your phone and mister big and
Speaker 2: antleery decided he was going to walk by your stand
Speaker 2: with two hours of daylight left. It happens when you
Speaker 2: pick one stand and have a camera by a different
Speaker 2: one too. Those don't really bother me much, because you know,
Speaker 2: what are you going to do? You know, the deer
Speaker 2: out there and they're going to walk somewhere. You also
Speaker 2: know that they might not have showed up had you
Speaker 2: been there, So the regret on that situation can be
Speaker 2: pretty minimal. I guess the one thing that would change
Speaker 2: it is if it was a real giant, But then again,
Speaker 2: who cares. You weren't there and he was. So how
Speaker 2: do you live a regret free hunting life? Well you can't.
Speaker 2: You're gonna make bad decisions for a variety of reasons
Speaker 2: and you're gonna have to live with them. But you
Speaker 2: can also take a deep dive into the not so
Speaker 2: great decisions you've made around hunting and ask yourself which
Speaker 2: once do you regret the most. This is a not
Speaker 2: so fun exercise that can put you in a spot
Speaker 2: where you're going to make better decisions. Like I mentioned,
Speaker 2: I try to be super picky now in my shot
Speaker 2: selection at this point in my life, because I always
Speaker 2: regret taking a shot that I'm not super confident. That's
Speaker 2: way worse than letting one walk and then not filling
Speaker 2: a tag or killing something smaller later. Maybe you need
Speaker 2: to think about what you want out of hunting. What's
Speaker 2: something you wish you could do just once, instead of
Speaker 2: living with that dark cloud hanging over your head. Can
Speaker 2: you do something to change your future and make it happen, then,
Speaker 2: I'd suggest that. Or do you find yourself with low
Speaker 2: grade regret for not hunting in September or October when
Speaker 2: you could, just so you can battle it out during
Speaker 2: the rut with every other hunter. There's a pretty simple
Speaker 2: lesson in that one, my friends, and you know how
Speaker 2: I feel about that. Even when I blank, Hell, even
Speaker 2: when I blank for a week or two or three
Speaker 2: in a row, I never regret just going hunting, But
Speaker 2: I often regret not going. Sometimes I regret not churming
Speaker 2: a branch, or not getting a good range reading on
Speaker 2: a deer, or not looking up for my stupid phone
Speaker 2: in time to see something walking in, or not doing
Speaker 2: the extra work to set up where the wind is
Speaker 2: damn good instead of you damn questionable. The way to
Speaker 2: do this is to think about the things that bother
Speaker 2: you about yourself as a hunter and work on them.
Speaker 2: I know. The way we often look at this stuff
Speaker 2: is to find someone else to blame for our failures,
Speaker 2: and if we can't find them, we sometimes even make
Speaker 2: them up. But the truth is we are responsible for
Speaker 2: a hell of a lot of what happens to us
Speaker 2: in the white Tail. Would are responsible for making the
Speaker 2: decisions that can make us heroes or zeros. Think about
Speaker 2: this in the off season. It might change how you
Speaker 2: approach your shooting sessions, or your scouting missions, or the
Speaker 2: times you head to the woods to hang a camera,
Speaker 2: set a stand. The more you get ahead of this stuff,
Speaker 2: the less likely you are to call an audible during
Speaker 2: the hunt and find out you're about to get your
Speaker 2: head torn off by a blitzing linebacker. Do this come
Speaker 2: back next week because I'm going to talk about how
Speaker 2: thinking like a deer can help you sort of kind
Speaker 2: of become like a deer, or at least maybe you'll
Speaker 2: become a better deer hunter for it. Anyway, that's it
Speaker 2: for this week. I'm Tony Peterson. It's been the Wired
Speaker 2: to Hunt Foundation's podcast, which has brought to you by
Speaker 2: First Light. As always, thank you so much for your support.
Speaker 2: You know, Mark and I here at Wired to Hunt,
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Speaker 2: appreciate it. We genuinely mean this. Thank you for all
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