Speaker 1: Welcome to the Wired to Hunt Foundations podcast, your guide
Speaker 1: to the fundamentals of better deer hunting, and now your
Speaker 1: host Tony Peterson. Hey everyone, welcome to the Wire to
Speaker 1: Hunt Foundations podcast, which is brought to you by First Light.
Speaker 1: I'm your host, Tony Peterson. In today's episode is all
Speaker 1: about the image of hunting from hunting media versus the
Speaker 1: actual reality of it. Now, I've never had a job
Speaker 1: in the outdoor industry quite like this one at Meat Eater.
Speaker 1: I've never been so off leash with any company, And
Speaker 1: while it probably will get me fired at some point,
Speaker 1: it also allows me to speak my mind in a
Speaker 1: way that isn't quite as curated as some of the
Speaker 1: other platforms I've worked for. This is cool, but it
Speaker 1: also makes me hyper aware of the hunting industry and
Speaker 1: how it's presented to the audience. And it also reminds
Speaker 1: me of why I don't know a little peek behind
Speaker 1: the curtain can be good for all involved. And if
Speaker 1: that seems evasive or weird, bear with me, because it'll
Speaker 1: make sense eventually, or at least I hope it will
Speaker 1: by the time I get to the end of this episode.
Speaker 1: My first lesson that the hunting industry is not what
Speaker 1: it seems. Happened not long after I got an offer
Speaker 1: to be the associate editor for Peterson's Bow Hunting magazine
Speaker 1: for a guy who was piecing together a weird living,
Speaker 1: selling wine, pushing fishing tackle at Cabela's, and working for
Speaker 1: a financial company. It was a dream come true, and
Speaker 1: I mean that it really was. And one of my
Speaker 1: duties is the associate editor of that pub was to
Speaker 1: buy images for articles. This meant that I had to
Speaker 1: source out specific images like I don't know, I would
Speaker 1: need a hundred and forty inch high and tight buck
Speaker 1: eating an apple, or a super wide Texas looking deer
Speaker 1: nosing the butt of a dough in a swampy looking
Speaker 1: setting down south. I had to fit it with the
Speaker 1: content of the articles. And so I thought that's going
Speaker 1: to be a difficult task. Because those were pretty specific asks.
Speaker 1: It didn't take me long to realize that what I
Speaker 1: thought the outdoor photography market was was vastly different from
Speaker 1: what it actually is. Now. Let me say this because
Speaker 1: it's the right thing to do, and I mean it.
Speaker 1: I'm not shipping on wildlife photographers here. Some of them
Speaker 1: are my really, really good friends, and I respect the
Speaker 1: hell out of them. In fact, some of them are
Speaker 1: the most nature knowledgeable folks I've ever met. And that's
Speaker 1: the truth. But that market demands big bucks and big
Speaker 1: bowls and perfectly instruct turkeys and you name it. You
Speaker 1: can't really get there with wild animals all the time,
Speaker 1: at least well, I'll say that specifically in the white
Speaker 1: tail space. But this was news to me. I was naive,
Speaker 1: and as it was pointed out to me by a
Speaker 1: good friend who is a wildlife photographer who hangs his
Speaker 1: name and reputation on not photographing captive animals, it's just
Speaker 1: the way things are now. This distinction is interesting and
Speaker 1: very prevalent in the hunting market. You can see it
Speaker 1: in d I Y only hunters, or in the public
Speaker 1: land movement, or really the general market, where folks will
Speaker 1: say they only hunt free range animals. We all have
Speaker 1: our line in the sand, but those lines are pretty blurry.
Speaker 1: That photographer I mentioned, for example, he's got a crab
Speaker 1: apple tree in the front yard next to a well
Speaker 1: stocked bird feeder. He gets amazing images of songbirds and
Speaker 1: grouse and other animals munching away on his little buffet
Speaker 1: there and he shoots photos of them from the comfort
Speaker 1: of his house. They aren't captive, that's for sure, but
Speaker 1: the images don't tell the story of how they came
Speaker 1: to be. When I first got to know him, he
Speaker 1: told me stories about many of the photos I had
Speaker 1: seen in my life that graced the covers of various
Speaker 1: hunting magazines or ended up in those eighties and nineties
Speaker 1: style prints of frame pictures of enormous bucks jumping barbed
Speaker 1: wire fences are standing perfectly next to multicolored maple leaves,
Speaker 1: and they were all staged with pen raise deer. If
Speaker 1: not that they were taken in parks or other refuges
Speaker 1: where huge animals live a no hunting lifestyle. It seems
Speaker 1: dumb now, but then it kind of shattered my worldview.
Speaker 1: That was nothing compared to what I learned about the
Speaker 1: hunting industry as a whole. However, I naively thought that
Speaker 1: anyone who ended up writing articles or hosting a hunting
Speaker 1: show got there sheerly due to a love of the game.
Speaker 1: I figured it would be a pretty weird situation where
Speaker 1: you could end up in either position without absolutely loving
Speaker 1: hunting and the wilds and the animals and the whole thing.
Speaker 1: Boy was I wrong. I started to meet people who
Speaker 1: looked at it like it was a pure business. And again,
Speaker 1: to be fair, that's not necessarily a bad thing in
Speaker 1: and of itself. The hunting industry is full of businesses,
Speaker 1: and it's held to a weird standard when it comes
Speaker 1: to capitalism, because if you're a part of it, you're
Speaker 1: under scrutiny from a personal and a business perspective. The
Speaker 1: person who ships on mediator for making money off of
Speaker 1: the industry may very well work in I don't know, insurance,
Speaker 1: or be a lawyer, or operate in their professional life
Speaker 1: in some way that boils down to peer acquisition of
Speaker 1: the Benjamin's. In that way, we are often blind to
Speaker 1: our own greed while lamenting the horrors of others and
Speaker 1: their similar desires. But I get it. Hunting is different.
Speaker 1: It's a passion for most of us, and that falls
Speaker 1: into a weird space beyond just a career, just a business,
Speaker 1: the resources owned by all of us. I always felt
Speaker 1: it was a career that demanded some concessions to be made.
Speaker 1: You gotta make money, and you've got to feed the machine.
Speaker 1: Otherwise the jobs don't exist. That's a simple one. But
Speaker 1: because of that, there's an imperative to try to create
Speaker 1: compelling content, to try to show that deer aren't just
Speaker 1: dollar signs to us, and that everything about it isn't
Speaker 1: solely important due to the fact that it might generate revenue. Well,
Speaker 1: that's not always the case. And the horror stories I've
Speaker 1: heard in the industry, they're not great. We've seen some
Speaker 1: of them go public with, you know, poaching convictions, but
Speaker 1: others that didn't result in broken laws were still pretty
Speaker 1: shitty and they're out there. But there's a third category
Speaker 1: that I really wanted to address I think is most important,
Speaker 1: the curated, cultivated imagery and content. The picture of the picture,
Speaker 1: if you will, the slight of hand, the thing that
Speaker 1: we all actually do. But it's different if someone does
Speaker 1: it and a hundred thousand people see it versus a
Speaker 1: few of your closest hunting buddies. This brings up this
Speaker 1: obligatory quote comparison is the thief of joy. This is
Speaker 1: often attributed to Teddy Roosevelt, but it's actually more likely
Speaker 1: an amalgamation of several quotes that might have come from
Speaker 1: Roosevelt and Mark Twain, and the author C. S. Lewis
Speaker 1: and even the Bible. It doesn't really matter who originally
Speaker 1: said it, I guess, partially because it just doesn't, partially
Speaker 1: because anyone who might deserve the credit is well past
Speaker 1: the worm food stage of existence. Anyway, the quote still
Speaker 1: stands and it's still relevant. However, it's just a bad
Speaker 1: idea to compare yourself to anyone else. And I've talked
Speaker 1: about this before, but it's especially stupid when it comes
Speaker 1: to something like hunting. Now, I'm not saying hunting and stupid.
Speaker 1: It's one of the favorite things in the whole world,
Speaker 1: but it's stupid to think it matters to anyone else.
Speaker 1: I know I've said this a lot, but I believe it.
Speaker 1: Hunting is a personal thing, and it's best to try
Speaker 1: to keep it that way if you can. If you
Speaker 1: look at the hunting industry, you will see people just
Speaker 1: like me who can't keep it that way. It's our
Speaker 1: jobs and maybe a bigger testament to our egos and
Speaker 1: hubrist than simply being a requirement of a punch in
Speaker 1: punch out lifestyle. But with all of us, and I
Speaker 1: mean all of us, you're only going to get a
Speaker 1: sliver the story. You might, for example, see one of
Speaker 1: your favorite celeb power hunting couples double up on as
Speaker 1: on the same show in the same week. You might think, oh, man,
Speaker 1: with the right land in the right area, you and
Speaker 1: your sweetheart could do the same thing. You might even
Speaker 1: argue that the slebs are doing it without high fences,
Speaker 1: which you think is pretty incredible, And it is, maybe,
Speaker 1: but you can't deny the backstory or the parts of
Speaker 1: the story you're not hearing. So maybe I'll say the
Speaker 1: quiet part out loud, that hunt on the Outdoor Channel
Speaker 1: is high fence hunting, just without the fence. It's the
Speaker 1: result of a lot of hard work, don't get me wrong,
Speaker 1: but also the ability to pour millions of dollars into
Speaker 1: developing big deer. And I'm not being facetious there. And also,
Speaker 1: let's be honest here, if you have that kind of money,
Speaker 1: you can make big big deer happen every single year.
Speaker 1: I heard a story recently about one of those big
Speaker 1: deer on a show that was killed by a young lady.
Speaker 1: Apparently they had the bucks so dialed that they hung
Speaker 1: two separate camera stands, one on each side of the
Speaker 1: food plot so they could get unique angles of the
Speaker 1: buck getting shot. Then it got shot and they did
Speaker 1: get those angles. Does that sound like something you could
Speaker 1: do with, say, I don't know a H eight class, Dear,
Speaker 1: have you ever even seen a real hunter deer? Now again,
Speaker 1: I'm all for anyone who wants to do that, I
Speaker 1: really am. I don't care if that's how people choose
Speaker 1: to create content or how to live their lives. But
Speaker 1: I think the audience should know to some extent that
Speaker 1: this is purely for entertainment on one end, and purely
Speaker 1: to make money on the other end. This isn't really
Speaker 1: about hunting all the time. It also goes without saying,
Speaker 1: but ha ha ha, I will anyway that the guided
Speaker 1: outfitted stuff you see in the hunting space is not
Speaker 1: really representative of what most of us do. I think
Speaker 1: for the most part, outfit are serving amazing purpose and
Speaker 1: can be a conduit to unique outdoor experiences. That's important
Speaker 1: for a lot of people. When outfitters or organizations representing
Speaker 1: them lobby to siphon tags away from nonresidents by their
Speaker 1: clout and connections, that's a different story for a different podcast.
Speaker 1: But the benefits of their services to some hunters they're undeniable.
Speaker 1: They also happen to be way overrepresented in the hunting
Speaker 1: industry for obvious reasons. If you need to get something
Speaker 1: killed for a show, why not go on a hunt
Speaker 1: that's free, to a place where someone is going to
Speaker 1: scout the animals for you and put you right on
Speaker 1: top of them. Hell, they'll even cook your meals and
Speaker 1: gut your kill. That sounds about like most of your
Speaker 1: hunting right now. I know it doesn't. I'm joking. It
Speaker 1: is what it is, and the only thing that really
Speaker 1: bugs me about it is if someone is disingenuous about
Speaker 1: representing those opportunities when that type of hunt has passed
Speaker 1: off as a real struggle. Always feel my bullshit meter redlining.
Speaker 1: Maybe for mountain goats, but for why tales come on.
Speaker 1: The hardest guided white tail hunt is easier than a
Speaker 1: single shopping trip with my wife. Probably. And before you
Speaker 1: think that I'm just a bitter loser who is still
Speaker 1: writing squirrel hunting articles while my competition is off yacht
Speaker 1: shopping in Barbados, I'll let you in on a secret.
Speaker 1: I do this stuff too, Maybe not to the extent
Speaker 1: of some of the other folks, but it is inevitable.
Speaker 1: Let me give you an example on this. When I
Speaker 1: decided to really focus on public land hunting for white tails.
Speaker 1: I had two thoughts in my mind. The first was
Speaker 1: that it was going to help me make money, plain
Speaker 1: and simple. I was a struggling outdoor writer and I
Speaker 1: wanted more money. The second was that I felt like
Speaker 1: we owed it to the audience to hunt difficult places
Speaker 1: for difficult dear so I was really only like half
Speaker 1: of a greedy asshole there. I put my mind to
Speaker 1: public land white tales and I started arrowing them pretty frequently,
Speaker 1: and I told everyone who would listen what I was doing.
Speaker 1: I didn't shy away from anyone who wanted to tell
Speaker 1: me that that was impressive. But I also had some
Speaker 1: insane advantages that I didn't really talk about as much,
Speaker 1: kind of pushed them to the back burner, like for starters.
Speaker 1: Even as far down on the totem pole as I
Speaker 1: was then, I wasn't buying hunting gear was showing up
Speaker 1: on my doorstep, which is pretty nice, and it wasn't
Speaker 1: like bargain basement stuff either, so having that advantage was real. Obviously,
Speaker 1: I also had time and the motivation to hunt that
Speaker 1: way for my job before we had the girls. I
Speaker 1: could just go on long hunts and stick around until
Speaker 1: a dumb buck made a bad mistake. That is an
Speaker 1: advantage that can't be overstated. Time is so important to
Speaker 1: this stuff, and maybe that's the message that is most
Speaker 1: lost in hunting content these days. The folks creating it
Speaker 1: tend to have a fair amount of time, amongst some
Speaker 1: other very real advantages. They might also have more local
Speaker 1: intel on hotspots than the average hunter could imagine, or
Speaker 1: they might buy their way into an opportunity that can
Speaker 1: still be present It as d I Y even though
Speaker 1: it's d I Y with a big asterisk. There's a
Speaker 1: lot of gray area here and maybe it doesn't really matter,
Speaker 1: but I think it does. I think it's worth acknowledging,
Speaker 1: especially with this new digital reality where we can all
Speaker 1: share our highlight real lives every second of every day.
Speaker 1: We not only get to choose what we show people,
Speaker 1: but we can edit photos to look even more amazing.
Speaker 1: We can add supersweet hashtags, We can use filters. We
Speaker 1: can be a way better version of ourselves without having
Speaker 1: to actually be way better versions of ourselves. We can
Speaker 1: drop an awesome scouting photo that shows how hardcore we
Speaker 1: are even when we are in the dentist office waiting
Speaker 1: to get called in for an annual cleaning. We can
Speaker 1: all cultivate our images and sell whatever audience we have
Speaker 1: on the notion that things are pretty damn good in
Speaker 1: our world. In some ways, I don't know, maybe this
Speaker 1: is harmless. In other ways, it's probably pretty damaging. I
Speaker 1: know it doesn't do any favors to enter into the
Speaker 1: hunting season and just start to have a clunker go
Speaker 1: of it while seeing pictures of big dead early season
Speaker 1: bucks every five seconds on social media that were killed
Speaker 1: by people who are obviously way less skilled than I am.
Speaker 1: Yet somehow they got it done and I can't, and
Speaker 1: that really sucks. But that's dumb, right. What good does
Speaker 1: it do me to fret about what someone else killed,
Speaker 1: no matter how they killed it? Does that change what
Speaker 1: I need to do to get on the board. No,
Speaker 1: it does not. Someone else's success or hell, their failures
Speaker 1: doesn't really mean a thing to my journey as a hunter.
Speaker 1: And that applies to you find folks as well. Now,
Speaker 1: I know there's an argument for inspiration, and I'm not
Speaker 1: going to deny that. I think the best way to
Speaker 1: get better at something is to be around people who
Speaker 1: are better than you at it. That has changed my
Speaker 1: life in so many ways. It's changed my life when
Speaker 1: it comes to fishing, hunting, playing, guitar, running, being a parent,
Speaker 1: lifting weights, sports, and probably about five million other things
Speaker 1: I can't think of right now. If you can't physically
Speaker 1: move in with Andy May to learn about his scouting
Speaker 1: and his hunting strategy, maybe the best thing to do
Speaker 1: is just follow him on social and listen to every
Speaker 1: podcast he's on. I'm not saying that's a bad thing.
Speaker 1: It's not a bad thing to consume hunting content in
Speaker 1: any form either. You'll probably be entertained at the very least,
Speaker 1: and maybe you'll learn something valuable. But it's worth being
Speaker 1: careful with this stuff too. If you feel those ugly
Speaker 1: stirrings of too much envier jealousy, maybe it's time to
Speaker 1: do something else. If anything you consume in this space
Speaker 1: makes you feel inadequate or uninspired, then it's probably bad
Speaker 1: for you. It probably just is. I don't know, and
Speaker 1: maybe that's the best take on this whole podcast. Acknowledge
Speaker 1: what this all is, take the pieces that matter to
Speaker 1: you somehow, let the rest go. It's cool to be
Speaker 1: totally eaten up with a white tail bug or the
Speaker 1: hunting bug and want to immerse yourself in it. I've
Speaker 1: said this a lot, but you do you. I did
Speaker 1: a whole episode on that. Just be careful with the
Speaker 1: content you consume, is all I'm really saying, because when
Speaker 1: you peep behind the curtains of a huge production or
Speaker 1: even a little production, you realize there's a lot more
Speaker 1: going on that has very little to do with the
Speaker 1: spirit of the hunt. When you read a throwaway article
Speaker 1: on some digital site. The same rules apply. When you
Speaker 1: see social media posts from the biggest names in the industry, well,
Speaker 1: you get my picture. And of course when you see
Speaker 1: just about anything anyone posts about hunting, remember you're only
Speaker 1: getting a sliver of a story that might be good enough,
Speaker 1: or there might be some weasel maneuvering going on. Pay
Speaker 1: attention and ask yourself what you're getting out of it.
Speaker 1: If it's entertainment, or it's educational, or just makes you
Speaker 1: want to scout a few more days each year, or
Speaker 1: try out your first all day sit, or maybe just
Speaker 1: still hunt for a dough in October when the lull
Speaker 1: should be in full effect. Then it's probably pretty good
Speaker 1: for you. If you find yourself disliking the content. That's
Speaker 1: a big red flag, but not as big of a
Speaker 1: red flag as it is when the content makes you
Speaker 1: dis like yourself. That's dangerous dumb territory there, and it's
Speaker 1: worth thinking about because it's a no bueno. Now, next week,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna keep this depression train rolling right down the
Speaker 1: tracks with an episode about the future of hunting. It
Speaker 1: might be a little bleak, but there'll probably be some
Speaker 1: hope tucked into that episode as well. And then I'll
Speaker 1: get off of this and I'm gonna start talking about
Speaker 1: taking some kids hunting and some other late summer scouting
Speaker 1: stuff and get us back into a happier place. That's
Speaker 1: all for this episode of Wire to Hunt Foundations, which
Speaker 1: is brought to you by First Light. I'm your host,
Speaker 1: Tony Peterson, and I just want to say thank you,
Speaker 1: thank you, thank you so much for all your support.
Speaker 1: I really appreciate it, and so does the rest of
Speaker 1: the Meteor crew. If you haven't gotten your fill of
Speaker 1: white tail content yet, head on over to our wire
Speaker 1: to Hunt YouTube channel and check out our latest how
Speaker 1: to videos and go visit the meat eater dot com
Speaker 1: slash Wired to read articles by me Mark Spencer Play,
Speaker 1: Andy May, Alex Gilstrom, Beaumartinic, a whole bunch of white
Speaker 1: tail killers and you'll get your fix there. I promise
Speaker 1: you