Speaker 1: Welcome to the Wired to Hunt Foundations podcast, your guide
Speaker 1: to the fundamentals better dear hunting, presented by First Light,
Speaker 1: creating proven versatile hunting apparel through the stand saddler blind,
Speaker 1: First Light, Go Farther, Stay Longer, and now your host,
Speaker 1: Tony Peterson. Welcome to the Wire to Hunt Foundations podcast,
Speaker 1: which has brought to you by First Flight. I'm your host,
Speaker 1: Tony Peterson, and today's episode is all about how distractions
Speaker 1: can really help us self, sabotage our gear hunks, and
Speaker 1: we should probably do something about it. Have you ever
Speaker 1: heard of the term neurotypical. If you're young, I'm sure
Speaker 1: you probably have. If you're my age or older, maybe
Speaker 1: you haven't. It's meant to describe someone who doesn't suffer
Speaker 1: from a litany of mental health conditions. In that list
Speaker 1: of conditions that would make someone neurodiverse, I guess instead
Speaker 1: of neurotypical, you'll see ADHD at the top of the list.
Speaker 1: ADHD is a topic that garners a lot of interesting opinions,
Speaker 1: mostly because it didn't exist as a common diagnosis until
Speaker 1: the nineties, even though it was around earlier, from like
Speaker 1: the nineteen sixties on. But it really didn't become mainstream
Speaker 1: for quite a while. It is now, and it's probably
Speaker 1: not getting any better with our widespread screen addictions and
Speaker 1: just the general content we consume. In fact, research shows
Speaker 1: that our attention spans are our shrinking at a pretty
Speaker 1: steady rate. That's not good, and while it affects all
Speaker 1: of our lives in a litany ways, it's also affecting
Speaker 1: whether we fill our deer tags or not, which is
Speaker 1: what this episode is really all about. Back when I
Speaker 1: was an assistant editor at Peterson's Bow Hunting, I worked
Speaker 1: in the end Fisherman office, which is a sweet building
Speaker 1: that overlooks the crow Wing River in north central Minnesota.
Speaker 1: It's surrounded by woods and water, and it didn't take
Speaker 1: me long to figure out that the smalley and muskie
Speaker 1: population within a hundred yards of my cubicle was way
Speaker 1: overlooked and well worth a little fishing effort. We also
Speaker 1: had a full archery range at the office, and since
Speaker 1: I worked as a bow Hunting editor, it was literally
Speaker 1: part of my job to step outside and shoot a
Speaker 1: couple of dozen arrows. I've had a few different office
Speaker 1: jobs in my life, but that one was the best.
Speaker 1: It's also the only one I've ever been fired from,
Speaker 1: which stings a little, even though forty percent of us
Speaker 1: got our pink slips at the same time thanks to
Speaker 1: the subprime mortgage disaster wiping out the markets for a
Speaker 1: few years. Anyway, one of the coolest things about that
Speaker 1: office gig, besides the fact that my boss was rarely there,
Speaker 1: was that we could bring our dogs into work with us.
Speaker 1: I was living alone five days a week in a
Speaker 1: shitty little apartment, so having my Golden Retriever coming to
Speaker 1: the office with me was pretty sweet. It was also
Speaker 1: amazingly distracting for just about everyone, and it wasn't just
Speaker 1: my dog that caused people to drop whatever they were
Speaker 1: doing and go love up a four legged office mate.
Speaker 1: Other folks brought their dogs in as well, so you
Speaker 1: never knew who you were going to get to pet
Speaker 1: on any given day. I was a nice perk until
Speaker 1: it became clear that the presence of dogs was just
Speaker 1: a little too much for us to handle. It also
Speaker 1: didn't help that I lost track of Luxe one time
Speaker 1: and she interrupted a studio shoot for one of the
Speaker 1: TV shows there. The overall lesson was that sometimes, despite
Speaker 1: how adorable they might be, distractions aren't so great. We
Speaker 1: give into them all the time. In fact, when I
Speaker 1: write these scripts, I have to shut my phone off
Speaker 1: because there's always something calling my attention, from the weather,
Speaker 1: to my cell cameras to my stupid curiosity to see
Speaker 1: just how many fly fishing selfies Mark has posted on
Speaker 1: Instagram before lunch on any given day. Distractions are real,
Speaker 1: They are everywhere, and they are robbing you of good
Speaker 1: deer hunting. If you don't believe that, think about the
Speaker 1: things you've missed in the woods. I'll give you a
Speaker 1: few examples from my personal life to not only make
Speaker 1: you feel better but also just kind of frame this
Speaker 1: whole thing up. But first, let me say that when
Speaker 1: you think about distractions, we think about an object, or
Speaker 1: a device, or a golden retriever in your office. About
Speaker 1: anything can be a distraction if you're wired to engage
Speaker 1: with whatever crosses your plane of attention. But the truth
Speaker 1: is being easily distracted might be part of our wiring,
Speaker 1: and it might be a part of how you are
Speaker 1: allowing yourself to be wired. We think of it as
Speaker 1: the physical act of paying attention to random stuff, but
Speaker 1: it's mostly mental, just like so many things in life,
Speaker 1: like what I talk about all the time, working out,
Speaker 1: you know, running, swimming, lifting weights, they're all, no doubt,
Speaker 1: physical activities, but really it's the mental side that matters most.
Speaker 1: Almost everyone can do some type of physical activity, and
Speaker 1: if you don't believe that, go spend some time in
Speaker 1: a gym. You'll see people of all ages, all weight classes,
Speaker 1: all abilities. The differentiator for almost everyone is not whether
Speaker 1: they are physically capable of doing something. It's often whether
Speaker 1: they are mentally disciplined enough to keep doing it. People
Speaker 1: who don't work out say things like I just can't
Speaker 1: find the motivation after a day or whatever, But the
Speaker 1: truth is the motivation isn't as important as the discipline.
Speaker 1: Or maybe diet is a better example, going full keto
Speaker 1: or akins or you name. It's a pretty simple proposition
Speaker 1: in today's world, and any one of those, if you
Speaker 1: do it right, will provide you with all the necessary
Speaker 1: calories to not die. Hell. Some of those diets actually
Speaker 1: do make you feel better, but are also largely unsustainable
Speaker 1: for almost everyone because it takes an insane amount of
Speaker 1: discipline and sacrifice to stick to a diet and ignore
Speaker 1: all of the delicious, sugary distractions. That are just about
Speaker 1: everywhere in deer hunting, those distractions are all over two.
Speaker 1: We know we should scout on foot, but it's easier
Speaker 1: to run some cameras. We know we should work on
Speaker 1: developing our skills for deciphering deer movement, but it's also
Speaker 1: easier to plant a little plot of clover and hope
Speaker 1: that it does the work for us. It's easier to
Speaker 1: bitch about non residents ruining our hunting than it is
Speaker 1: to accept the advantages we have over someone who lives
Speaker 1: five hundred miles away and oh, I don't know, working
Speaker 1: a little harder to find decent hunting by simply scouting
Speaker 1: more than the competition. There's so many different things in
Speaker 1: our life where we give into these distractions in hunting,
Speaker 1: and it hurts us. And I've done all of these
Speaker 1: so I know it. I'm not shitting on anyone here.
Speaker 1: These are real, and acknowledging them just kind of frames
Speaker 1: this thing up and makes you say, Okay, I know
Speaker 1: I'm doing this to kind of take a shortcut, or
Speaker 1: I know when I should be doing this, I'm kind
Speaker 1: of looking at doing something else that I like a
Speaker 1: little better. All of those things add up to kind
Speaker 1: of a less than stellar deer hunting plan. We really
Speaker 1: sabotage our hunting in so many different ways. Part of
Speaker 1: it is that it's just damn hard to focus. Think
Speaker 1: about it this way. Most of us use on X
Speaker 1: or some sort of mapping app for our hunting. They're
Speaker 1: amazing tools, but they're also ripe for distraction because you
Speaker 1: can sit down and look at hundreds of thousands of
Speaker 1: acres aground in a matter of minutes, and it takes
Speaker 1: literally seconds to drop a waypoint on some spot and
Speaker 1: just move on. Pretty soon, you've scoured a chunk of
Speaker 1: ground via satellite imagery that covers seven sections of land,
Speaker 1: and you have thirty seven different waypoints on ponds and
Speaker 1: pinch points and other dear friendly looking features, and you
Speaker 1: slap your hands together, old guy style and you proclaim
Speaker 1: a job well done. But is it? Does that translate
Speaker 1: to a deer come fall? Maybe, but it's easy to
Speaker 1: get lost in second guessing and the paralysis by analysis
Speaker 1: when you have that much real ground to work with
Speaker 1: and to scout, it's too much. Which probably need to
Speaker 1: do instead is pick one section or even half a section,
Speaker 1: dig into it on a granular level to focus on
Speaker 1: what that has to offer you. Because here's the secret
Speaker 1: about not focusing on this white tail game. You'll talk
Speaker 1: yourself into false realities that support your inability to focus. Now,
Speaker 1: not to go all Freud on you here, because I'm
Speaker 1: definitely not qualified for that, but look at it this
Speaker 1: Way's just an example of how to frame this thing up.
Speaker 1: What kind of buck would make you happy this fall?
Speaker 1: If you have reasonable standards for your hunting situation, then
Speaker 1: you'll have bucks to work with that would make you
Speaker 1: happy on any given half section. Hell, in a lot
Speaker 1: of places, you'll have bucks to work with. It'll make
Speaker 1: you happy on any given forty acre parcels, even if
Speaker 1: the bucks you want to shoot don't live there full time.
Speaker 1: So is it better to focus on three thousand acres
Speaker 1: when three hundred is more than enough for you to
Speaker 1: try to figure out? Probably? Not breaking down properties into
Speaker 1: manageable chunks does an awful lot for helping us focus
Speaker 1: on the real task at hand, which is what I
Speaker 1: talked about last week's figuring out where bucks live and
Speaker 1: like to walk. We are also always kind of looking
Speaker 1: for this magic bullet, but it really doesn't exist in
Speaker 1: white till hunting outside of putting up a ten foot
Speaker 1: fence and maybe some automatic feeders. If you want to
Speaker 1: figure out while deer in their chosen environment, a micro
Speaker 1: look instead of a macro look is often the way
Speaker 1: to go. Another way to look at this is something
Speaker 1: I learned in my old tournament fishing days. No matter
Speaker 1: where you fish a bass tournament, there will always be
Speaker 1: some locals in the mix. Now, if it's like a
Speaker 1: small derby on a Sunday, it might be all locals,
Speaker 1: but if it's a bigger tournament, it might only be
Speaker 1: a handful of locals out of a one hundred or
Speaker 1: more competitors. Everyone fears the locals. Well, scratch that, almost
Speaker 1: everyone fears the local advantage. But it's not uncommon for
Speaker 1: the locals to get totally smoked by fishermen who live
Speaker 1: a thousand miles away or more. There are a lot
Speaker 1: of reasons for this, but one of the biggest is
Speaker 1: that you can have too many spots, too many options,
Speaker 1: too many memories of big fish that bid on the
Speaker 1: docks one day and others that were suspended under schools
Speaker 1: of shad and thirty feet of water the next. Too
Speaker 1: much information. If you're not great at processing, it is
Speaker 1: a disaster. If you can ignore most of the distractions
Speaker 1: and make a nice plan based around relatively current information
Speaker 1: and up to the minute conditions, you can do pretty
Speaker 1: well in fishing and deer hunting. And now I know
Speaker 1: what you're thinking, so I'll say it. I know. I
Speaker 1: often preach about options as the best hedge against staled
Speaker 1: deer hunting. Having five stands up is better than two
Speaker 1: almost always. Having more than one spot to hunt is
Speaker 1: always better, unless you have one hell of a spot
Speaker 1: to hunt, Even then it might go away. So options
Speaker 1: are good, but they need to be managed. They need
Speaker 1: to exist in a way where they promote the right
Speaker 1: kind of scouting and the right setups, all of which
Speaker 1: will work with your personal style. And this is maybe
Speaker 1: the most important part here, personal style, because if you
Speaker 1: cater to this, you're going to just naturally push away
Speaker 1: some of those distractions and have better focus. Like I'm
Speaker 1: a mobile guy at heart, I do better just trusting
Speaker 1: my gut on any given day and setting up for
Speaker 1: the moment. Then I do setting stands and blinds up
Speaker 1: way earlier and then picking and choosing them based on
Speaker 1: my availability in the seasonal timing. This is because I
Speaker 1: have a long pedigree as a mobile hunter goes way
Speaker 1: back to my team years when I started bow hunting,
Speaker 1: and for whatever reason, I'm just kind of wired to
Speaker 1: see new ground. I don't like sitting the same spots
Speaker 1: over and over, so I know to run a good
Speaker 1: strategy in any given state on any given year, I
Speaker 1: might set up some stands ahead of time if I can,
Speaker 1: you know, I usually do, and they'll be placed around
Speaker 1: some specific timing and conditions that I plan to encounter
Speaker 1: in the season. Maybe that's an opening night sit over
Speaker 1: a soybean field, or maybe it's a November first sit
Speaker 1: in a staging area or on a funnel. Having some
Speaker 1: of those as backups or just built into my plan
Speaker 1: it helps me a lot, helps me focus, take some
Speaker 1: of the guesswork out when those conditions do show up.
Speaker 1: But the mobile option has to be there for me too,
Speaker 1: even on small properties. Yet I know, with my own
Speaker 1: inability to focus sometimes and my propensity for second guessing,
Speaker 1: I also need as much data about specific spots as
Speaker 1: possible to make those decisions about my mobile hunting. This
Speaker 1: is a tricky one because we often talk about in
Speaker 1: season scouting and setting up right on specific sign This
Speaker 1: works and it can work real well, but it's also
Speaker 1: often like an incomplete picture because you have to know
Speaker 1: how to find that sign or what spots to check
Speaker 1: for that sign before you go in. Now, you can
Speaker 1: just stumble across something during the season that is definitely
Speaker 1: worth hunting, but it usually isn't quite as accidental as
Speaker 1: we make it sound. A little focus now on scouting
Speaker 1: to your strengths will lay the groundwork later for you
Speaker 1: to go properly mobile on October seventh when you stumble
Speaker 1: across four fresh scrapes and one small travel hub. So
Speaker 1: what is keeping you from doing this now? Is it
Speaker 1: taking the kids to twelve thousand activities a week, I
Speaker 1: get that, trust me. Or is it just there isn't
Speaker 1: a real pressing concern now since it's almost Turkey season
Speaker 1: and the deer hunting is so far off. Are gobblers
Speaker 1: or maybe the spawning croppies distracting you while the deer
Speaker 1: are a distant memory. It's worth taking a look at
Speaker 1: things right now and focusing a little on the mission.
Speaker 1: That's what I'm doing. As our snow finally and I
Speaker 1: mean finally starts to melt away, the window for real
Speaker 1: scouting is here. It's going to be a short one,
Speaker 1: but that's the way it goes when you live a
Speaker 1: few hours from Canada. What I plan on doing is
Speaker 1: walking several properties. I'll take the dogs out and try
Speaker 1: not to get too distracted by looking for sheds or
Speaker 1: whatever else. I want to focus on a few parcels
Speaker 1: of land, some public, some private, and I want to
Speaker 1: really understand a few areas on all of them. I'm
Speaker 1: not looking to master any one property because that's kind
Speaker 1: of a fool's errand, but there are spots I think
Speaker 1: the bucks will be and I want to learn them better.
Speaker 1: I also want to see what's out there for other
Speaker 1: hunters signed too, But mostly I'm just going to try
Speaker 1: to get my bearings on a few pieces of ground,
Speaker 1: or more specifically, a few spots on a few pieces
Speaker 1: of ground. I need this because it's easy for me
Speaker 1: to get distracted. I know if you look at my
Speaker 1: way points on on X have them dropped all over
Speaker 1: the country, and they're in places that I'd love to
Speaker 1: visit hunt but I just can't. I can instead pick
Speaker 1: some spots that will fit into my schedule and try
Speaker 1: to learn them really well, because that's going to eliminate
Speaker 1: some of the distractions all face later. Look at it
Speaker 1: this way. If you scout ten new areas this winner,
Speaker 1: but give each one a quick walkthrough, you're going to
Speaker 1: benefit from it. But there's six months or more until
Speaker 1: the season, and when the season opens, how much confidence
Speaker 1: will you have in those ten areas. Maybe two or
Speaker 1: three struck you as good or even better. But that's
Speaker 1: a lot of surface level information to filter through into
Speaker 1: a good plan, and it gets real easy to second guess,
Speaker 1: and second guessing saves a lot of bucks. What if
Speaker 1: you scouted three spots instead and spent way more time
Speaker 1: in each one, Maybe that would be better because you
Speaker 1: know what they contain, how to approach them, what trees
Speaker 1: are best for a setup, and when you should actually
Speaker 1: get in there to hunt. Maybe that approach means you
Speaker 1: can run a camera in each spot all summer long
Speaker 1: and further increase your knowledge. Then come season, the second
Speaker 1: guessing and the distractions will be nullified. You'll make better decisions.
Speaker 1: You have fewer places to think about. That will help
Speaker 1: you drown out the white noise and go man, there
Speaker 1: should be bucks betted by that spot because it's this
Speaker 1: time of the season and the wind is doing this
Speaker 1: and it just feels right with the weather. It's kind
Speaker 1: of a quality over quantity thing, but it also plays
Speaker 1: on the reality that we know. We will see social
Speaker 1: media posts during the season about someone who killed a
Speaker 1: giant by rattling, and someone else who killed a giant
Speaker 1: by still hunting an island on some river, and on
Speaker 1: and on. We will talk to our buddies who will
Speaker 1: tell us stuff about deer that don't really matter to
Speaker 1: our situation, and we will absorb a lot of not
Speaker 1: so relevant information that's distracting and it's dangerous, but it's
Speaker 1: also going to happen. How much that affects us is
Speaker 1: up to us. There's a wonderful tune by the band
Speaker 1: Bring Me the Horizon called Happy Song, where the lead
Speaker 1: singer sings in the chorus, I really wish that you
Speaker 1: could help, but my head is like a carousel and
Speaker 1: I'm going round in circles, going round in circles. The
Speaker 1: general sentiment to that song, which you should not listen
Speaker 1: to if you have little kids around, is that he's
Speaker 1: accepted that things are all messed up and he'll never
Speaker 1: get better because of how he's wired. But maybe he'll
Speaker 1: feel a little better if he listens to a happy song,
Speaker 1: it's tongue in cheek because that's not actually going to
Speaker 1: fix his problems, which would take more work than just
Speaker 1: going to Apple Music and picking a happy, go lucky
Speaker 1: tune to listen to. So, just like rattling on Halloween
Speaker 1: because somebody like Lee Lakowski or someone else killed a toad,
Speaker 1: doing that isn't going to help you fix your own
Speaker 1: deer hunting problems, problems some of which can actually be
Speaker 1: fixed by figuring out how to focus a little more
Speaker 1: on the task at hand at all points of the year,
Speaker 1: and by limiting some of the distractions that weasel their
Speaker 1: way into our minds when we should be thinking simply
Speaker 1: about where bucks live and how we can go there
Speaker 1: to kill them. Avoiding this as much as possible is
Speaker 1: avoiding self sabotage, and that's such a good skill to
Speaker 1: learn for so many facets of life. Work on that
Speaker 1: in the whitetail woods right now, and listen in next
Speaker 1: week when I plan to talk about how you can
Speaker 1: actively become a better deer hunter when you're out in
Speaker 1: the spring woods looking to rearrange at Gobbler's face with
Speaker 1: a twelve gage. That's it. I'm Tony Peterson. This has
Speaker 1: been the Wire to Hunt Foundations podcast, which has brought
Speaker 1: to you by First Light. As I always, thank you
Speaker 1: so much for listening, and if you need some more
Speaker 1: white tail content, head on over to them editor dot
Speaker 1: com slash wired and you'll see a ton of articles
Speaker 1: by myself, Mark, guys like Alex Gilstrom and Andy May
Speaker 1: and Dylan Tramp and a whole bunch of white tail killers.
Speaker 1: So much good information there. Please go check it out.