Speaker 1: Welcome to the Wired to Hunt podcast, your guide to
Speaker 1: the whitetail woods, presented by first Light, creating proven versatile
Speaker 1: hunting apparel for the stand, saddle or blind. First Light
Speaker 1: Go Farther, Stay Longer, and now your host, Mark Kenyon.
Speaker 2: Welcome to the Wired to Hunt podcast. This week on
Speaker 2: the show, I'm joined by Tony Peterson to discuss our
Speaker 2: top six failures in the deer hunting woods and the
Speaker 2: lessons that we and you can learn from them. All Right,
Speaker 2: welcome back to the Wired to Hunt podcast, brought to
Speaker 2: you by Moultrie. This week on the show, we're talking failure.
Speaker 2: We are talking about what we all can learn from
Speaker 2: the inevitable failures, challenges, speed bumps that we're all going
Speaker 2: to face as whitetail deer hunters. It's gonna happen. It's
Speaker 2: going to happen most of the time, right. I mean,
Speaker 2: if you hunt, I don't know, a week, two weeks,
Speaker 2: three weeks, a year, you might get one successful hunt,
Speaker 2: one hunt where it all comes together. All the rest
Speaker 2: might be you know, quote unquote failures. So what can
Speaker 2: we learn from those days when things don't go right?
Speaker 2: What can we learn from those moments when we make
Speaker 2: the wrong decision or somehow things just go wrong. That's
Speaker 2: what we're going to discuss here today. My guest is,
Speaker 2: you know co host extraordinary Tony Peterson. The two of
Speaker 2: us are going to get on here shortly and walk
Speaker 2: through each of our top three failures over the course
Speaker 2: of our recent deer hunting history. And we're going to
Speaker 2: talk through what happened, what went wrong, and then what
Speaker 2: we learn from it and how we grew as deer
Speaker 2: hunters and how I think hopefully all of you can
Speaker 2: learn from our mistakes and maybe take some of these
Speaker 2: examples we share and apply them to your own deer
Speaker 2: hunting experience. Is so that you can not only learn
Speaker 2: from these experiences, but also you know, be able to
Speaker 2: process failures in your own hunts in a way that
Speaker 2: can lead to success down the road. So that's the
Speaker 2: game plan. This is a lighthearted, fun conversation as much
Speaker 2: fun as I guess you can have while talking about
Speaker 2: deer hunting failure. So thanks for being here and without
Speaker 2: any further ado on conversation on failure with Tony Peterson.
Speaker 2: All right, joining me now, mister Tony Peterson, welcome back
Speaker 2: to the show.
Speaker 3: Thanks for having me, buddy.
Speaker 2: We uh it's I guess I shouldn't really say welcome
Speaker 2: back to the show because you're on the show every week,
Speaker 2: but just in a different version of the show. But
Speaker 2: it's it's been a little while since you and I
Speaker 2: have got on here together and talked, so I'm glad
Speaker 2: we're doing it. And I got to give you credit
Speaker 2: because what we're going to talk about here today is
Speaker 2: something you have brought up in conversations between the two
Speaker 2: of us, like for a number of I don't know,
Speaker 2: for a year or two, we've kind of talked about
Speaker 2: this idea of someday doing like a full deep dive
Speaker 2: into failure and different examples we have from our lives.
Speaker 2: And I'm actually planning on talking to some other people
Speaker 2: about this too, and I think it's useful and I
Speaker 2: want to hear your thoughts on this, Tony. But I
Speaker 2: think that today we are being flooded on social media
Speaker 2: and on YouTube and on TV, and I guess this
Speaker 2: isn't unique to today because we've been flooded with this
Speaker 2: kind of stuff in the past, but now it just
Speaker 2: seems like the amount of media that we just get
Speaker 2: jammed on our throats is at another level, we're just
Speaker 2: constantly barraged by success and how good everybody else is
Speaker 2: and how great everybody else else's lives are and hunting
Speaker 2: seasons are, you know, and it can become easy to
Speaker 2: assume that everyone else is just knocking out of the
Speaker 2: park and that I am horrible. But the reality is
Speaker 2: that everybody's failing most of the time, right.
Speaker 4: I mean, the numbers don't lie, buddy, like me, I
Speaker 4: think about I think about that a lot, like what
Speaker 4: you just talked about, how how easy it is to
Speaker 4: sort of internalize everybody else's success and just wonder what
Speaker 4: the hell's going on with ourselves. And one of the
Speaker 4: things that one of the things that like frames that
Speaker 4: up for me. So my tournament partner, my fishing partner,
Speaker 4: tournament partner, he's like very plugged into kind of the
Speaker 4: local regional scene, and so when we fish together, I
Speaker 4: don't I don't pay attention to that stuff anymore.
Speaker 3: I'm just not into it like I was. And so like,
Speaker 3: I don't know who.
Speaker 4: Won this tournament last week and what they were using
Speaker 4: that kind of stuff, I don't care. But when I
Speaker 4: go fishing with him, he has all of that stuff
Speaker 4: rattling around in his brain. He pays attention to that
Speaker 4: a lot. And so if we're out there and you
Speaker 4: know whatever, we're throwing frogs for large mouths in the
Speaker 4: summer in a tournament, he'll think, well, this guy won
Speaker 4: throwing chatterbaits on a sand drop over here on pool
Speaker 4: nine and we're on pool eight throwing frogs, and like
Speaker 4: he has that going in and there. I mean, there
Speaker 4: could be an argument that that is beneficial in some way,
Speaker 4: if you're like, well, this guy won doing this, maybe
Speaker 4: we should try this. But I think mostly it's just
Speaker 4: like a distraction, and I think it's I think it
Speaker 4: mostly just sort of bogs us down mentally, and when
Speaker 4: I go I don't have that stuff, and so I'm
Speaker 4: just like, what are they showing? What are the fish
Speaker 4: showing me? Now I'm not catching them this way, then
Speaker 4: I'll try to catch them this way or whatever. And
Speaker 4: I think in hunting we do that a lot, like
Speaker 4: we are affecting so much like, well, this guy's style,
Speaker 4: he's killed four big bucks this year doing this, and
Speaker 4: this guy and whatever, and it's like you kind of
Speaker 4: just got to run your own race. And that's like
Speaker 4: a hard thing to do because you feel like, you know,
Speaker 4: the hunting industry is sort of predicated on the you know,
Speaker 4: us giving you the answer or Zach Ferrenbau giving you
Speaker 4: that whoever, it's like, man, the only one who's going
Speaker 4: to find the answer for how for you to be
Speaker 4: really successful out there and enjoy it.
Speaker 3: It's just you.
Speaker 2: Well, and not only that, but sometimes the answer that
Speaker 2: has helped me the most during a tough hunting season
Speaker 2: is when I talk to someone like you or Andy
Speaker 2: or Zach or anyone else about what I'm struggling with,
Speaker 2: and then they say, oh, yeah, I'm struggling with the
Speaker 2: same thing, or oh yeah, I had the same thing
Speaker 2: happened to me last year or last week, or oh yeah,
Speaker 2: I've screwed it up in that kind of way too, right.
Speaker 2: Sometimes I don't want the answer. I just want to
Speaker 2: know that somebody else got the problem wrong too, and
Speaker 2: that that sometimes just alleviates the concern enough for you
Speaker 2: to refocus on doing what you just said when you're
Speaker 2: not so mixed up in this Oh gosh, I'm the
Speaker 2: only one in the world who can't get this thing done.
Speaker 2: So just having that partner in the boat with you, you know,
Speaker 2: somebody who can ride along with you, or who you
Speaker 2: can relate to, or who can say like, yes, I've
Speaker 2: been there before and I got through it, or I
Speaker 2: figured it out or I got better. That is h
Speaker 2: That's no small thing. And I think that's kind of
Speaker 2: what I'm hoping we can help with here today is
Speaker 2: a little bit of not just that reassurance, but also
Speaker 2: also provide a pathway out of the thicket, right, if
Speaker 2: that makes any sense, Because I think I've found myself
Speaker 2: lost in the thicket many times and have been able
Speaker 2: to navigate myself out a time or two, but it's
Speaker 2: it's not always been easy. And so I thought maybe
Speaker 2: the two of us could walk through a handful of
Speaker 2: our greatest failures, like our most just disastrous, foot in mouth,
Speaker 2: screw the pooch, mess it all up, experiences from our
Speaker 2: deer hunting lives, and talk through, you know, what we
Speaker 2: did wrong, how it all happened, what we learned from it,
Speaker 2: and then maybe how we've tried to, you know, take
Speaker 2: something from that or change based on that, or kind
Speaker 2: of navigate things differently in the future. And I'm hoping
Speaker 2: that you know, someone's going to listen to this now
Speaker 2: and and you know when they have something get messed
Speaker 2: up in September or October or November, they will remember
Speaker 2: this conversation and remember that, oh, yeah, Tony did the
Speaker 2: same thing, or Mark struggled with that same thing. I
Speaker 2: can get through this, or I can figure this out,
Speaker 2: or I can not make the same mistake that Mark man.
Speaker 2: That is my big hope for all of this is
Speaker 2: that the many times that you and I have screwed
Speaker 2: up can somehow help somebody else.
Speaker 4: That's an important I mean, it will. And you brought
Speaker 4: up a really good point. You know, like if you
Speaker 4: talk to Andy May during the hunting season, he's not like, yep,
Speaker 4: I'm out.
Speaker 3: There crushing it, killed another giant.
Speaker 4: He's always like, I struggled with this, or I'm looking
Speaker 4: for this right I don't have him here. But it's
Speaker 4: not like it's not like he's dwelling on his failures.
Speaker 4: He's just like, I just have to work through these
Speaker 4: problems I have right now, these new set of conditions
Speaker 4: and variables that were handed to me in this season
Speaker 4: and this weather and this hunting pressure and on and on,
Speaker 4: and I have to figure it out. And so he's
Speaker 4: when you know, you talk to him, he's like mostly
Speaker 4: working on problems.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you know, which is like in a weird.
Speaker 4: Way, is like if anybody could be focusing on their wins,
Speaker 4: it's him, But he's not. And the reason he gets
Speaker 4: those wins is because he's fixing those problems, like he's
Speaker 4: actively trying to find a solve for them. And that
Speaker 4: is like that I know that seems like intuitive to people,
Speaker 4: but it's generally not. Okay, well I'm not seeing deer
Speaker 4: off this field head stands, so I pick up my
Speaker 4: rattling antlers, and now I solve the problem. Like it's
Speaker 4: generally like a bigger solve than that, right, And that's
Speaker 4: that's what those guys do.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So when I when I throw out the word
Speaker 2: failure for you, what is the first experience that came
Speaker 2: to your mind when I when I pitched this idea
Speaker 2: to you and you had to start thinking about your
Speaker 2: top failures? What uh? What came to the top of
Speaker 2: the list.
Speaker 4: So I think I think about a lot of my
Speaker 4: hunting success and failure in like whole seasons now instead
Speaker 4: of just being like that time that I missed two
Speaker 4: Giant Bucks in a row or something like that, Like
Speaker 4: those those failures are I've come to accept that I
Speaker 4: am going to fail that way enough where it's just
Speaker 4: like going to be a part of my journey. But
Speaker 4: the things that I learned from So the first thing
Speaker 4: I thought of when you brought this up when you
Speaker 4: texted me, is how in twenty eighteen, I had a
Speaker 4: good season. I didn't kill any really big bucks, but
Speaker 4: I killed a bunch of deer in different states, killed
Speaker 4: some public land ones. Like had an okay season, but
Speaker 4: I felt like I was like scrambling, Like I felt
Speaker 4: like I was always kind of redlining, then like pushing it,
Speaker 4: like gott to find new deer, Gotta find this, Gotta
Speaker 4: find that, not being patient. And I went into twenty
Speaker 4: nineteen and I'm like, I have to you have to
Speaker 4: be more patient, like do the deer work and then
Speaker 4: let the deer, let it breathe, let it happen for you.
Speaker 4: And that season, I had a really good season like
Speaker 4: I had. I killed big bucks in a couple of
Speaker 4: different states on public land, killed them at home, killed
Speaker 4: an elk like I had.
Speaker 3: I had one of.
Speaker 4: Those seasons where you're like this is awesome. You know,
Speaker 4: three or four Pope and young Bucks like that kind
Speaker 4: of thing. But what really struck me was I got
Speaker 4: laid into October of that year and like, these these
Speaker 4: lessons that I take like, I'm like, I always have
Speaker 4: to remind myself of them, like I forget them pretty quickly.
Speaker 2: It's incredible how quickly we forget them.
Speaker 3: Dude, totally.
Speaker 4: And I went into I had had a Wisconsin buck
Speaker 4: tag and I had a North Dakota tag left that
Speaker 4: I had. I had driven all the way to western
Speaker 4: North Dakota. My truck broke down. I didn't get to hunt,
Speaker 4: so I was just sitting on this tag, but it
Speaker 4: was like, I'm not going back out there, so it
Speaker 4: was kind of just like one of those lost tags.
Speaker 3: Well.
Speaker 4: I had found this spot in Wisconsin that I was like,
Speaker 4: if you put your time in, I think you'll kill
Speaker 4: a good one here, and I ended up doing that.
Speaker 4: I ended up sitting on this little funnel I found
Speaker 4: between these swamps and.
Speaker 3: I killed a good buck, saw a really good buck.
Speaker 4: And then I had that North Dakota tag left and
Speaker 4: I was like, you know what, I'm gonna to that
Speaker 4: eastern side of North Dakota. I'm just gonna find something.
Speaker 4: And because of the timing, I'm gonna go find a
Speaker 4: couple of good pinch points that I think I can
Speaker 4: kind of identify and walk in there, and I'm just
Speaker 4: gonna ride it up because I only had like four
Speaker 4: days and I saw almost no deer every day except
Speaker 4: maybe one good buck. I saw a buck every day,
Speaker 4: and then on the fourth day, I killed a good buck,
Speaker 4: and it was just like a sort of one of
Speaker 4: those moments where you're like you know the recipe, like
Speaker 4: like you know how to do this, but it's so
Speaker 4: easy for that second guessing to come in, especially when
Speaker 4: you know how it is. When you're gonna go, I'm
Speaker 4: gonna go do all day sits on a chunk of
Speaker 4: public land I've never seen before, and cross my fingers.
Speaker 4: The second guessing by like ten o'clock in the morning,
Speaker 4: especially because it's cold and windy, because it's always cold
Speaker 4: and windy out there, is like all of those voices
Speaker 4: are like get out, go find it, Go find something else,
Speaker 4: go do something else. But it's like a self preservation
Speaker 4: thing because you're like, I don't have what it takes
Speaker 4: to sit here dark to dark, But if you can
Speaker 4: find that and tap into that, if you've done that
Speaker 4: work leading up to it, I just think that's what's
Speaker 4: that's what kills big deer or just you know, like
Speaker 4: puts you in a good spot to have good encounters.
Speaker 3: And that year.
Speaker 4: Going from a year where I felt like I was
Speaker 4: scrambling to one where I was forcing myself to wait,
Speaker 4: like when I found something good, like put in your
Speaker 4: time and then you see the results, You're like, that's
Speaker 4: like a reinforcement. They're like a reinforcing thing big time.
Speaker 2: So so hold on the I feel like you've skipped
Speaker 2: over the failure part pretty quickly and just really focused
Speaker 2: on how great your twenty nineteen was.
Speaker 4: No so because I felt like I was failing the
Speaker 4: whole time in twenty eighteen and I didn't. I mean,
Speaker 4: I killed deer and I had an okay season, but
Speaker 4: I just like personally felt like I didn't do it
Speaker 4: right because I was scrambling.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: So that's what I want to better understand though, is
Speaker 2: what led to that feeling like this idea of scrambling,
Speaker 2: What does that look like? What does that actually mean?
Speaker 2: Because I think understanding that is probably the best way
Speaker 2: any of us could ever hoped to have a twenty
Speaker 2: nineteen like you had, right, so that we'd learned not
Speaker 2: to do what twenty eighteen was? So what do you mean?
Speaker 4: So everything I'm going to talk about today, all of
Speaker 4: my failures are basically me fighting my own nature, like
Speaker 4: basically me what I want to do versus what I
Speaker 4: know I need to do to have success. And so
Speaker 4: I felt, and you know, you kind of like go
Speaker 4: through different stages when you're hunting. But I felt like,
Speaker 4: for a while, like I got this thing all figured
Speaker 4: it out. I cover a ton of ground, I find
Speaker 4: good spots, I drop pins, I go in there and
Speaker 4: I hunt, and I move, and I move and I move.
Speaker 4: That works sometimes, but once you start dealing with more
Speaker 4: hunting pressure, a little bit cagy or deer, once you
Speaker 4: start dealing with a wider variety of weather, seasonal timing,
Speaker 4: it's like you you can't just walk them down, right.
Speaker 4: And so I was forcing something to happen because I
Speaker 4: wanted to hunt that way. And I'm like, di, I
Speaker 4: believe this right. So it's to me that's no different.
Speaker 4: Where that played out for me was on a whole
Speaker 4: bunch of different properties public private, in a bunch of
Speaker 4: different states. For the For most hunters, the closest parallel
Speaker 4: would probably be like I have my three stands, and
Speaker 4: I want to kill one out of this field edge
Speaker 4: stand because I know, like I believe that they're going
Speaker 4: to come out here eventually instead of going and doing
Speaker 4: the mobile thing or whatever. And so what you want
Speaker 4: to do is you want to take that route that's
Speaker 4: comfortable and like easy for you, right, but really you
Speaker 4: have to probably if that doesn't work, you probably have
Speaker 4: to do the thing that you don't really want to do.
Speaker 4: Like I would rather go in season scout with a
Speaker 4: stand or a saddle and find some fresh sign and
Speaker 4: post up on it versus putting three dark to dark
Speaker 4: sits in a row on a pinch point that has
Speaker 4: very low activity. And recognizing the difference between those two
Speaker 4: is super important. So for me, it's like this kind
Speaker 4: of thing being patient is no different than almost every
Speaker 4: part of my life that's good for me, Like I
Speaker 4: have to for myself to do it like I because
Speaker 4: I don't want to. I don't want to go for
Speaker 4: a run, I don't want to sit dark to dark
Speaker 4: for a week, Like that's not fun generally, but it's
Speaker 4: often the thing that I'm like I have if I
Speaker 4: want to aerow a big one or I want to
Speaker 4: see deer doing what I expect them to do. I
Speaker 4: have to do that part and that's hard.
Speaker 2: When you got to that twenty nineteen season, were you
Speaker 2: did you have like a clear was it like a
Speaker 2: clear shift you had to make, like you could you
Speaker 2: see this at that point? Could you look back at
Speaker 2: that moment and say, Okay, twenty eighteen, I was forcing
Speaker 2: the issue, trying to bounce around too much. In twenty nineteen,
Speaker 2: I am going to be patient and stick with it
Speaker 2: and stuff. Was that like did you know it at
Speaker 2: that moment or did you go through the year and
Speaker 2: kind of figure this out and have that aha moment
Speaker 2: as it went along?
Speaker 4: I mean I went into it intentionally trying to do
Speaker 4: better that way and it But so what I hate
Speaker 4: about this kind of stuff is it makes it sound
Speaker 4: like I figured it out. I struggle with this all
Speaker 4: the time, you know, I mean I really do, and
Speaker 4: you can go so this is this is the other
Speaker 4: problem too, is I say this now?
Speaker 3: And that was the answer for me.
Speaker 4: Then last year in Wisconsin, I was like, I'm going
Speaker 4: to go ride out this spot that I know deer
Speaker 4: are going to go through, and I've got a camera
Speaker 4: in there and bucks are cruising through there and if
Speaker 4: I put in my time, I will kill one. And
Speaker 4: I wrote it out for three and a half days
Speaker 4: and never saw a deer, and so I went too
Speaker 4: far the other way and ended up going to kill
Speaker 4: one in a different way. Like that I totally didn't expect.
Speaker 4: But it's like you're always trying to find that balance, right,
Speaker 4: And to me, that's like put in the work to
Speaker 4: find that spot, and then your backup spot for the
Speaker 4: next wind or the next conditions or whatever, and then
Speaker 4: put your faith in that, you know, as long as
Speaker 4: you can stand it. And if they finally show you
Speaker 4: that you're being too patient in a place that's just dead,
Speaker 4: you got to restart the whole thing again. So it's
Speaker 4: like it's a it's such a moving target. But it's
Speaker 4: like I think that if you looked at our hardwiring,
Speaker 4: like for most of us is to be less patient
Speaker 4: is to allow, you know, the second guessing to talk
Speaker 4: us into leaving at ten o'clock in the morning and
Speaker 4: going to check this camera or moving to this stand
Speaker 4: or whatever, instead of putting our faith in something and
Speaker 4: being really patient with it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And it is, though, so difficult to know what
Speaker 2: the right call is in the moment, you know, as
Speaker 2: you talked about, like, sometimes the right answer is the move,
Speaker 2: Sometimes the right answer is the stick it out. And
Speaker 2: for a lot of years I would find myself asking
Speaker 2: those same questions and not having enough of my own
Speaker 2: personal lived experience to answer it from my gut, and
Speaker 2: instead I was thinking like, Okay, what would John Eberhart
Speaker 2: say I should do here? And what did I read
Speaker 2: in this one book or in this one magazine about
Speaker 2: how to handle this situation? And you know, you drive
Speaker 2: yourself crazy trying to think about what the right answers
Speaker 2: you know, quote unquote right answers are for any one
Speaker 2: of these situations. The only way I've been able to
Speaker 2: work myself out of that over the years has just
Speaker 2: been trying all these things in all the different ways,
Speaker 2: over and over and over again, over years and years
Speaker 2: and years and years, until there's finally that real lived
Speaker 2: experience that leads to you know, having that gut feeling
Speaker 2: that you can trust, or that intuition that you can trust,
Speaker 2: or just knowing like, Okay, I've been down this path before,
Speaker 2: I've seen how it goes. This is when I need
Speaker 2: to shift or this is when I need to start
Speaker 2: listening to that voice that says do the uncomfortable thing.
Speaker 2: And so there's I guess what I'm getting at here
Speaker 2: is that some folks listening should not feel bad if
Speaker 2: they find themselves in the tree stand this fall and
Speaker 2: are like, I don't know, I don't know if I
Speaker 2: should do the thing Tony said in twenty eighteen or
Speaker 2: in twenty nineteen, Like that is part of the struggle,
Speaker 2: is that you have to go through ten, fifteen, twenty
Speaker 2: years of riding this out and making the wrong choices
Speaker 2: most of the time, occasionally getting it right and learning
Speaker 2: what worked that time, and then having go the complete
Speaker 2: opposite way a year or two later. And that is
Speaker 2: just part of this process and that and this isn't
Speaker 2: what this isn't a failure I was planning on talking about.
Speaker 2: But I think just you have to repeatedly fail in
Speaker 2: all these different ways, over and over and over and
Speaker 2: over and over again to ever get to the point
Speaker 2: where you can occasionally make the right decision on purpose
Speaker 2: and feel like, oh, yeah, I kind of knew what
Speaker 2: I was doing here. That is just part of this.
Speaker 2: Like maybe the most important part of deer hunting is
Speaker 2: just failing in all of these different ways repeatedly so
Speaker 2: many times. That's the only way to truly get to
Speaker 2: a point where you can ever make decisions.
Speaker 4: Like you talked about well, right, and I mean when
Speaker 4: you talk about the indecision like that, everybody has that, right,
Speaker 4: Like I think about and I'll talk about this later,
Speaker 4: but I think about how often I'm like, this is
Speaker 4: just going to be it. I have it figured out,
Speaker 4: and I go and I don't. I don't see deer.
Speaker 4: I don't see the deer. I want to whatever. But
Speaker 4: I think I think the lesson for me anyway, is
Speaker 4: like everybody deals with the second guessing, everybody deals with
Speaker 4: the indecision. But if you can err on the side
Speaker 4: of being patient, right, So let's say it's nine o'clock
Speaker 4: in the morning and you're like, they just they didn't
Speaker 4: come through. They're not going to come through. It's like
Speaker 4: I was going to sit all day, but now I'm
Speaker 4: thinking it's probably better on the other valley or the
Speaker 4: other bench point or whatever. And it's like, now you're
Speaker 4: talking yourself out of doing the thing that you felt
Speaker 4: was the best decision originally, and you're going to go
Speaker 4: make a bigger impact. Right if you if you walk
Speaker 4: into that stand in the morning to sit all day,
Speaker 4: and at ten o'clock in the morning, you're like, I'm
Speaker 4: going to move now. You have twice the impact on
Speaker 4: that land at least, right, and so you've you've already
Speaker 4: cut your odds down there. And it's like when you
Speaker 4: can learn and I talk about this all the time,
Speaker 4: but like when you can learn to be like, I'm
Speaker 4: going to just quiet that voice down a little bit.
Speaker 4: I'm going to give it another hour, or I'm going
Speaker 4: to give it till noon, or I'm going to do
Speaker 4: I'm just I'm going to condition myself for this.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 4: It's like, you know, Yannie's going to run a hundred
Speaker 4: mile or here in a little bit, but he didn't
Speaker 4: start out running one hundred mile marathons, right, you got it.
Speaker 4: You have to start somewhere and you have to condition
Speaker 4: yourself to make that a little bit harder of a
Speaker 4: choice and just tamp down that and go, yeah, Like
Speaker 4: we make the wrong decisions all the time, but you
Speaker 4: have to trust it, like you have to. You have
Speaker 4: to just trust yourself and go I felt like this
Speaker 4: was the best decision. You know, the wind switches or something, mate,
Speaker 4: you know, that might make the decision for you. But
Speaker 4: are you looking for that excuse? That's there's the difference there,
Speaker 4: you know, or are you just taking it and going man,
Speaker 4: supposed to be out of south all day and now
Speaker 4: it's blown straight out of the north. Well there there
Speaker 4: you go, Like, that's that's beyond your control and you
Speaker 4: just have to take that. But if it's just you going, man,
Speaker 4: I thought they were going to be cruising all over
Speaker 4: him here and they're not. It's like, oh, it's only
Speaker 4: been light for three hours or whatever, you know, like
Speaker 4: just let it breathe a little bit.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's a really good point, And I feel like
Speaker 2: that's that's a pretty good transition to one of my
Speaker 2: failure stories. This was a a hunt that was a
Speaker 2: multi year hunt that definitely taught me a lot, and
Speaker 2: it's a deer that I never ended up getting. It
Speaker 2: was this buck that I was chasing in southern Michigan,
Speaker 2: called him Holy Field, and I learned a lot about
Speaker 2: this deer because it was a buck that was relatively
Speaker 2: like in the earlier ish years of my kind of
Speaker 2: pursuit of trying to kill mature bucks, and I was
Speaker 2: still at that phase where I was definitely living off
Speaker 2: of what other people said you should be doing right
Speaker 2: that I kind of alluded to earlier. And I was
Speaker 2: in that phase of my hunting life where I was
Speaker 2: afraid to make mistakes, where I was constantly worried about
Speaker 2: not screwing it up. If I do that, I'll blow
Speaker 2: it up. I do that, it's probably my only I'll
Speaker 2: probably make one mistake and then he'll be gone. If
Speaker 2: I go over that line, it's probably gonna screw stuff up.
Speaker 2: If I pushed too far in here, it's definitely gonna
Speaker 2: be you know, it's too risky. And so I was
Speaker 2: incredibly risk averse while hunting that deer, and so for
Speaker 2: that reason, I saw him a lot, but it was
Speaker 2: always out of range. So one of the biggest mistakes
Speaker 2: in that hunt was simply treading too lightly, never being
Speaker 2: willing to take a swing a true swing. I was
Speaker 2: hunting to see deer, not hunting to kill a mature buck,
Speaker 2: and I was trusting things I had read and heard
Speaker 2: and not trusting my own eyes enough. Secondly, another thing
Speaker 2: within that hunt is a lot of times that I
Speaker 2: was seeing this buck. I was seeing him on a
Speaker 2: neighboring property, and I just kept lamenting to myself like, oh, man,
Speaker 2: if only I could hunt there, if only I could
Speaker 2: hunt there, I could kill this buck. But I never
Speaker 2: did anything about it because I was I don't know,
Speaker 2: too nervous to ask permission, too lazy, or like didn't
Speaker 2: want to get uncomfortable and go bother this other person
Speaker 2: to see if I could ever hunt there. And so
Speaker 2: not only was I not aggressive enough on the places
Speaker 2: that I could hunt, but then also a lot of
Speaker 2: the time where I watched this deer, I never even
Speaker 2: tried to explore the possibility of getting to hunt there.
Speaker 2: And later, though I would, I would learn from that mistake,
Speaker 2: and I did ask permission, and I got permission, and
Speaker 2: then ended up being able to hunt that whole area
Speaker 2: for years later. And if I had gotten permission, I
Speaker 2: probably could have maybe could have killed this buck if
Speaker 2: I was hunting in this zone where he was at
Speaker 2: all the time. So that was another big mistake. The
Speaker 2: third big mistake I made on this buck was that
Speaker 2: despite doing all those things, despite being incredibly passive, despite
Speaker 2: not doing the little extra uncomfortable work to get permission
Speaker 2: to hunt him where he really lived, despite all of that,
Speaker 2: I still did put in a ton of time on
Speaker 2: the edges, waiting and trying and doing everything I thought
Speaker 2: I could do. And I was hunting all day in
Speaker 2: the rut, doing what you were talking about. I was
Speaker 2: telling myself, you got to put in a little bit
Speaker 2: more time, you got to stick it out. So I'm
Speaker 2: sitting there at like eleven thirty on maybe first week
Speaker 2: of November give or take, in that ballpark, and I'm
Speaker 2: sitting on the edge of what should be some pretty
Speaker 2: good stuff. And I'd had high hopes in the morning.
Speaker 2: But then you know, as it gets to that, you know,
Speaker 2: late morning early afternoon time period, when nothing's been going
Speaker 2: on for three four hours, you start to lose some
Speaker 2: of that focus, You lose some faith. You start thinking like, ah,
Speaker 2: probably nothing's going to happen. And I had my phone
Speaker 2: out and I eventually was reading a book on my phone.
Speaker 2: So I had been hunting this year for three years.
Speaker 2: I think this is the third year I've been trying
Speaker 2: to get this one buck. I'd you know, been struggling
Speaker 2: for all these years, seeing him never can close the distance.
Speaker 2: I'm out there like eleven to thirty. All of that
Speaker 2: led to this moment I hear like a snap, I
Speaker 2: look up for my phone, look over my left shoulder,
Speaker 2: and this buck I've been chasing for all this time
Speaker 2: is standing twenty yards away, looking right up at me,
Speaker 2: because I had spun and looked to look back at him,
Speaker 2: and so he's looking at me at twenty yards and
Speaker 2: I'm holding my phone reading some stupid novel. And I
Speaker 2: mean we've all been in some version of that scenario,
Speaker 2: just the worst, the worst, feeling felt like such an idiot.
Speaker 2: And then of course he spun and ran, and you know,
Speaker 2: I finally had him in range. And I didn't even
Speaker 2: know it because I had not been able to keep
Speaker 2: the faith and keep the focus and keep my eye
Speaker 2: on the prize during that period of times. So like
Speaker 2: I came so close, I did a lot of the
Speaker 2: right things. I was in the right place, I was
Speaker 2: in the right I stuck it out to the right
Speaker 2: part of the day, and just was not mentally there.
Speaker 2: I was physically there, but not mentally there. And eventually
Speaker 2: that deer disappeared. Never saw them again. And I don't
Speaker 2: know what happened, but I know that three or four
Speaker 2: years of my hunting life in Michigan had been devoted
Speaker 2: to trying to figure out this Buck, and for all
Speaker 2: of those reasons, I never pulled it off. And so
Speaker 2: in the subsequent season after that one, like I mentioned,
Speaker 2: I knocked on that door eventually and did get permission
Speaker 2: and have had success in there. I learned that you
Speaker 2: can't always be so risk averse. You can't always just
Speaker 2: live life on the edges like they do on the
Speaker 2: Outdoor Channel and expect to have success in kind of
Speaker 2: real world pressured situations. Sometimes you really do need to
Speaker 2: rip off the band aid and swing for the fences.
Speaker 2: If you ever want to get one of these pressure bucks,
Speaker 2: you can't just watch them. You actually have to go
Speaker 2: try to kill them. And then finally, yes, it's important
Speaker 2: to be there, but you have to be there both
Speaker 2: mentally and physically. You can't just be like checking the
Speaker 2: box of being out there and then not actually be
Speaker 2: a part of the moment when it's when it's presented
Speaker 2: to you. So that one, that whole multi year saga
Speaker 2: with that Buck, it's uh, it's it's one of the
Speaker 2: most that that whole story sticks with me more than
Speaker 2: most other Bucks because of the fact that he did
Speaker 2: get away, and he didn't get away just because of
Speaker 2: some random thing he got away because of all of
Speaker 2: these different things I did wrong over many years. I've
Speaker 2: got one of the shed antlers, and every time I
Speaker 2: see that shit antler, I'm reminded of one of those things.
Speaker 4: Do you think that you at that point in your
Speaker 4: life for giving Big Bucks too much credit?
Speaker 3: For sure?
Speaker 2: One?
Speaker 3: So, dude, I think that.
Speaker 4: I think the two worst things that the Outdoor Channel
Speaker 4: type of content did to us was convinced everyone they
Speaker 4: could just look at a deer an agent no matter what.
Speaker 4: And it made them seem like it made Big Bucks
Speaker 4: seem like they were just.
Speaker 3: Unreachable most of the time.
Speaker 4: Yeah, And I mean part of that is a symptom
Speaker 4: because people who are hunting in Candyland want you to
Speaker 4: think they're hunting hard deer, so everybody paints their hunting
Speaker 4: as harder than it really is. But it's just they're
Speaker 4: actually more forgiving than you think, Like I think anyway.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, And it's like it's not insane that that's
Speaker 2: not saying it's easy to kill mature bucks, right, I mean,
Speaker 2: ninety nine percent of the time you still fail, right,
Speaker 2: But there's somewhere, like the truth lies somewhere in the middle.
Speaker 2: You can hunt in Wisconsin or Minnesota or Michigan where
Speaker 2: there's tons of hunters and these bucks are very highly
Speaker 2: educated and pressured and it's very challenging. But that does
Speaker 2: not mean that make one mistake and that buck's gonna
Speaker 2: move ten miles down the road and you're never gonna
Speaker 2: see him again. I think that's what I worried about
Speaker 2: a lot. I was like, if this buck ever smells
Speaker 2: me one time, or if this buck crossed my path
Speaker 2: and walks across my footprints and I didn't perfectly have
Speaker 2: my scen you know, taking care of her whatever, like
Speaker 2: one thing is going to be the end, and that
Speaker 2: buck will be gone. I'm never gonna see him again.
Speaker 2: I lived and breathed that way of hunting for a
Speaker 2: good like five to eight years. Maybe I don't know
Speaker 2: something like that. Where I was, I was walking on
Speaker 2: eggshells at all times, and that did two things. Number One,
Speaker 2: that kept me from doing the aggressive things that I
Speaker 2: need to do to actually get a chance of these bucks.
Speaker 2: More often than not, I was like, just like as
Speaker 2: I described, But then number two, it made every time
Speaker 2: I did screw up feel so devastating. I felt like,
Speaker 2: oh my, I'm done, Like I just screwed it up.
Speaker 2: I all this time, I put in this year out
Speaker 2: the window. You know, it just made every little thing
Speaker 2: so nerve wracking. It made like walking into the tree stand,
Speaker 2: it made like every time that the wind swirled, it
Speaker 2: felt like such a big deal, like, oh my god,
Speaker 2: this is it, this is going to be the end,
Speaker 2: and what's supposed to be a fun and enjoyable experience
Speaker 2: instead felt like mentally just like rot with stress, because
Speaker 2: it just seemed like everything was riding on this little
Speaker 2: tiny edge that you had to walk and it was
Speaker 2: going to be all tumbling down if you made one
Speaker 2: tiny little mistake. And to your point, it's just not
Speaker 2: the case most of the time, right.
Speaker 4: Right, I mean, I think you think about how many
Speaker 4: times you've been out there and had you know, that
Speaker 4: dough wind you and bust out of there and snort
Speaker 4: a million times, and then ten minutes later somebody else
Speaker 4: walks in and resets the scene. We I think that
Speaker 4: generally we default to way too cautious. And you know,
Speaker 4: like there's a difference, right because you know, if you
Speaker 4: if you're in a state where crossbows are legal, for example,
Speaker 4: and you hunt public land enough, you see dudes walking
Speaker 4: around with crossbows trying to shoot one.
Speaker 3: Like the rifle hunting. You know, that's not what I'm.
Speaker 4: Talking about here, And to be fair, you see vertical
Speaker 4: bull hunters do that too, Like you see hunters try that,
Speaker 4: and it's just a it's a rough strategy, right, big impact,
Speaker 4: low odds. But if you're doing if you're if you're
Speaker 4: trying to do things you know you're trying to be
Speaker 4: smart about it, you're still going to get busted. You're
Speaker 4: gonna walk in and you're gonna have deer snort at you.
Speaker 4: They're gonna be eating the acorns when you get there
Speaker 4: in the morning whatever. Like that stuff isn't as it's
Speaker 4: not as big of an impact in the moment it
Speaker 4: feels huge, but overall it's not as big of an
Speaker 4: impact as we often think. And we've been so conditioned
Speaker 4: to be cautious over and over and over again. And
Speaker 4: it's like like we talked about with the patient's thing
Speaker 4: versus going nuts, like there's always a balance, right, But
Speaker 4: the lesson with you there, I think that's like most
Speaker 4: important is if you start giving big bucks that much credit,
Speaker 4: you're in trouble because you're just they're just going to
Speaker 4: be this un attainable thing, and you're going to you're
Speaker 4: not going to hunt correctly if you're neurotic and you're
Speaker 4: and you're pissed at yourself because you're making all these
Speaker 4: little mistakes that really don't matter that much and that
Speaker 4: everyone makes because nobody walks into the woods in the
Speaker 4: dark and makes no noise. Yeah, you know, like nobody
Speaker 4: goes and hunts a whole season and doesn't get winded
Speaker 4: by somebody at some point.
Speaker 3: It just happens.
Speaker 2: It happens, and so yeah, to your point, it's it's
Speaker 2: number one, you can't keep yourself from making the right
Speaker 2: moves because you're so worried about making the wrong moves.
Speaker 2: And then secondly, you got to give yourself some grace,
Speaker 2: like forgive yourself because it's not the end of the world.
Speaker 2: We're not saving lives out here. We're not rocket scientists.
Speaker 2: We're just trying to you know, as you say, kill
Speaker 2: a rabbit with antlers, So chill the f out right,
Speaker 2: So what's your what's your next example?
Speaker 4: So this is something, this is another thing that I
Speaker 4: am just reminded of every single season of my life,
Speaker 4: and I have to like work at it.
Speaker 3: But it's sort of a two parter.
Speaker 4: It's hunting on memories and not listening to what the
Speaker 4: deer are telling me right now. So I can come
Speaker 4: up with elaborate scenarios in my head of how I'm
Speaker 4: going to drive to South Dakota or North Dakota, or
Speaker 4: hunt somewhere in Minnesota or wherever draw that tag in Iowa,
Speaker 4: and this is how I'm gonna kill a deer, And
Speaker 4: in my head, I will think about that over and
Speaker 4: over and over again. I'll be like, Oh, we'll convince
Speaker 4: myself that's what's going to happen, you know, because last
Speaker 4: year I went there and I threw a decoy out
Speaker 4: and they came in and I killed one or whatever.
Speaker 4: I never go back to places like that and have
Speaker 4: the same hunt ever. I mean, it's just even even
Speaker 4: on my private stuff in Wisconsin and Minnesota, unless it's
Speaker 4: like a pond or something, I very rarely kill deer
Speaker 4: doing the same thing two years in a row. And
Speaker 4: I know that's a little bit different from a lot
Speaker 4: of people in there, you know, if you got a
Speaker 4: lease or permission ground or whatever. But even then when
Speaker 4: you go in and you're like it's going to happen
Speaker 4: like it did last year, or like it did two
Speaker 4: years ago when I killed that big one.
Speaker 3: It probably won't.
Speaker 4: Because of all of those things that have just changed, Right,
Speaker 4: Like you might have killed that buck three seasons ago
Speaker 4: because one of the oak trees in the area was dropping,
Speaker 4: or a doe came in a little bit early, or
Speaker 4: some kind of outlier thing. Right, maybe the neighbors had
Speaker 4: beans instead of corn. Maybe the neighbors let somebody hunt
Speaker 4: who hunted every day and you didn't know it because
Speaker 4: it was a high school kid or something, and that
Speaker 4: pushed the deer onto your side. Like you have to
Speaker 4: kind of go in with that blueprint, like, yeah, this
Speaker 4: could happen just like it always has, but it probably won't.
Speaker 4: Like you still have to factor in what the deer
Speaker 4: is showing you and what the sign is showing, and
Speaker 4: we and we really like to find that confirmation bias stuff.
Speaker 4: They're like, well, I had a camera in the same
Speaker 4: spot and the big one's going through once a week.
Speaker 4: Or I walked out here and here's those that scrape
Speaker 4: line again on the field edge, Like duh, of course
Speaker 4: they're going to be doing this. But it's like if
Speaker 4: they're not really showing you that, Like if you're like,
Speaker 4: I'm forcing this thing and I want this to happen,
Speaker 4: but the deer aren't showing you that there's a problem there.
Speaker 4: And for me, I mean, the easiest example for me
Speaker 4: on this one is I go back to those river
Speaker 4: bottoms in North Dakota, and I can sit up there
Speaker 4: on a glassing now, but I can go I kill
Speaker 4: the buck out of that tree. I killed the buck
Speaker 4: out of that tree. I killed the buck on the
Speaker 4: ground over there. And it's never the same tree, you know,
Speaker 4: like it's just not It's never the same ground blind,
Speaker 4: it's never the same crossing for some reason. It's always
Speaker 4: a little bit different, even in a scenario that shouldn't
Speaker 4: really change that much.
Speaker 3: And so many times I'll go.
Speaker 4: Into a hunt and think like, I'm gonna run this
Speaker 4: play again because it worked. And I will, you know,
Speaker 4: be walking out to a pond or a water tank
Speaker 4: or a crossing or something and see a whole bunch
Speaker 4: of rubs or see this, you know, banging scrape or
Speaker 4: something and be like, huh, I should probably pay attention
Speaker 4: to that. But I know what my plan is going
Speaker 4: to be, and I know it's going to work. And
Speaker 4: almost inevitably I end up having to come back to
Speaker 4: that sign and work deer in a way that I
Speaker 4: just didn't expect. And so it's like this is one
Speaker 4: of those like gray area things again, because you want
Speaker 4: to go in and run something you know worked, right,
Speaker 4: we all do.
Speaker 3: But how long do you give it?
Speaker 4: Like how long do you ignore that you're seeing deer
Speaker 4: do something that you just usually don't or you didn't expect,
Speaker 4: Like why are they over there? Why are they running
Speaker 4: that fence line now and not just coming straight down
Speaker 4: through here, through the past or whatever. And for me,
Speaker 4: just like really keeping an open mind, and if the
Speaker 4: deer tell me something, listening to it is like me
Speaker 4: fighting my nature of just wanting to run something that
Speaker 4: has produced for me in the past.
Speaker 2: Have you ever ran an old program all the way
Speaker 2: to the end and failed because of Have you ever
Speaker 2: had one that you refuse to pivot on that doomed you?
Speaker 4: I probably had tons of those. I have definitely, I've
Speaker 4: definitely done that on the road. And in fact, when
Speaker 4: I think about situations like in Nebraska or South Dakota
Speaker 4: or North Dakota where I went out and didn't fill
Speaker 4: a tag, it was because I did that generally, you know,
Speaker 4: And the times that I did fill a tag was
Speaker 4: almost always even if I ran an old program for
Speaker 4: three days and just pivoted on it or four days,
Speaker 4: find something different and kill. So yeah, I've definitely done that,
Speaker 4: and I've done it. The thing that stings the most
Speaker 4: is when I do it here in Minnesota. I do
Speaker 4: it in Wisconsin, especially if I'm hunting private land, and
Speaker 4: I'm like.
Speaker 3: How hard can this freaking be?
Speaker 4: And then I do you know, You're like, oh, it's
Speaker 4: going to be the last week of October. They're going
Speaker 4: to be community scrape here and they're going to be
Speaker 4: coming through here. And then you know, for whatever reason,
Speaker 4: things have changed, and I don't go do what I
Speaker 4: need to to figure them out. I do what I
Speaker 4: want to because I think it's.
Speaker 3: Going to work.
Speaker 2: Now. I know, every situation is different, every hunt has
Speaker 2: its own unique circumstances. But let's just for the sake
Speaker 2: of someone trying to get a rough idea. If we
Speaker 2: were to look at like a ten day hunt, just
Speaker 2: because tends an easy number to look at, and if
Speaker 2: you were to go into a ten day hunt and
Speaker 2: you have like one main set of strategies that's your program.
Speaker 2: It's how you really think you're gonna get it done.
Speaker 2: If you had to generalize and give me like a
Speaker 2: drop dead moment through your ten day hunt, at what
Speaker 2: point would you be, you know, everything else being equal?
Speaker 2: Would you say, like, buy, you know, sixty percent of
Speaker 2: the way through you got to pull the emergency cord
Speaker 2: and do something different or is it fifty percent or
Speaker 2: is it eighty percent or ninety? Like how much time
Speaker 2: would you recommend giving someone in order to pull the
Speaker 2: more emergency cord but then also have time to make
Speaker 2: something of it? You know what I mean?
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean that it it's variable on what they're
Speaker 4: showing me.
Speaker 3: You know. I would like my default would be five
Speaker 3: days through.
Speaker 4: If I don't have something going on, I better figure
Speaker 4: something else right halfway through that. On a four day hunt,
Speaker 4: I'd probably look at it the same way like if
Speaker 4: I'm two days in, I don't have something going on,
Speaker 4: but it it really depends on what I'm seeing, right,
Speaker 4: because sometimes you know how it is, like sometimes you're
Speaker 4: like you're just you're close enough where you're like, I'm
Speaker 4: not gonna move, Like it feels like they're just gonna
Speaker 4: get here, right, and that river bottom stuff out west
Speaker 4: is a prime example, Like you always see them, so
Speaker 4: you're like, oh, they crossed there again, but they probably
Speaker 4: get here. So that's an easy program to hold on to.
Speaker 4: The hard ones are when you go into like a
Speaker 4: low deer densy thing like that big woods Wisconsin stuff
Speaker 4: where you're just not going to see very many and
Speaker 4: you're like, well, I killed one on this crossing, you know,
Speaker 4: two years ago, Like how much time do I give it?
Speaker 4: And in those situations I probably tend to give it
Speaker 4: too much time before I pivot, just because it's like,
Speaker 4: I know, the task of going out and finding a
Speaker 4: concentration of deer might take me longer than I have left.
Speaker 4: But at the same time, the thing that the thing
Speaker 4: that happens to me almost every single season that kind
Speaker 4: of reinforces this whole idea of you don't want to
Speaker 4: hunt on memories solely, or you don't want to lean
Speaker 4: too heavily on that is how often I go somewhere
Speaker 4: with that idea in my head and they just blatantly
Speaker 4: show me they're using something else, or they you know,
Speaker 4: blatantly show me that they're laying down a ton of
Speaker 4: sign here for a reason, you know, or you walk
Speaker 4: into a spot and you're like you jumped a bunch
Speaker 4: of deer and you're like, okay, you've got to factor
Speaker 4: that in pretty quickly, right, Like if you know how
Speaker 4: it is, like if you go out and you find
Speaker 4: the right concentration to sign that's just humming, and you're like, well,
Speaker 4: I was going to go another three quarters of a
Speaker 4: mile down here, but I probably should check that out.
Speaker 4: You probably should check it out, you should probably hunt it.
Speaker 4: And that's we have a hard time with that. So
Speaker 4: we try to, like I think a lot of hunters
Speaker 4: look at it and go I have my plan and
Speaker 4: if it's not working, I'm going to spruce it up
Speaker 4: with the decoys and the calls and whatever else. And
Speaker 4: I'm because I believe in what I want to do
Speaker 4: there instead of going to look. But there's so many
Speaker 4: times when you're out there where I think about this
Speaker 4: a lot. Where you know, people access tree stands often
Speaker 4: on field edges. Right, So you're walking along and you
Speaker 4: see that field edge sign, which is like encouraging, but
Speaker 4: who cares kind of you know, like it's cool, but
Speaker 4: generally like, yeah, I expect to see some rubs and
Speaker 4: scrapes on.
Speaker 3: A field edge where there's lots of deer.
Speaker 4: But think about how often, Let's say it's like October
Speaker 4: twentieth and you're walking along and you're gonna go sit
Speaker 4: that cut cornfield and you see that rub on the
Speaker 4: edge and you're like, dang, that's a nice rub. And
Speaker 4: then you look down in the woods and you see
Speaker 4: another one, and it's like, most people aren't gonna peel
Speaker 4: off and go check that out. But that is a
Speaker 4: huge sign, right like that that's telling you something that
Speaker 4: not only was he up here what you expect, but
Speaker 4: now I know he walked down there and did it
Speaker 4: or somebody did who I'm really interested in? And what's
Speaker 4: the next one look like? Or why why that way?
Speaker 4: What's down there?
Speaker 3: You know?
Speaker 4: And I think again, it's sort of that indecisiveness, the
Speaker 4: second guessing thing where you're like, well, if I walk
Speaker 4: down in there, I'll probably blow them, or I don't
Speaker 4: have like a I don't have a good plan for that,
Speaker 4: So I'm just gonna take it. I'm gonna be safe,
Speaker 4: and I'm gonna go to that tree stand that I
Speaker 4: wanted to go to anyway, but I'm gonna put that
Speaker 4: big buck decoy out because if this dude comes out here,
Speaker 4: he might see it. But you already walk through there.
Speaker 4: You know, Like it's hard to do. But I think
Speaker 4: that when you when you learn that it's okay to
Speaker 4: try that stuff, and I think that, I think that's
Speaker 4: what like a lot of the hang and bang public
Speaker 4: land hunts teach you, is like it's just okay to
Speaker 4: try stuff like you have to, like you have to
Speaker 4: get your ass in a tree somewhere and just try
Speaker 4: something out. So you're generally gonna do that in a
Speaker 4: place where you're like there's enough sign here to get
Speaker 4: me to commit to this.
Speaker 3: When you're on a piece of private ground and you have.
Speaker 4: Your stands hung since you know the end of July,
Speaker 4: and you have your whole plan out, and you're like,
Speaker 4: I'm not gonna I'm gonna be very light on my presence.
Speaker 4: I'm gonna tread lightly, and then I'm gonna hit this
Speaker 4: hard during my rut caation. It's like that's fine, that
Speaker 4: works a lot, But it's also like if you're walking
Speaker 4: out there for that fun hunt on October fifteenth, and
Speaker 4: you might want to shoot it dough or whatever, and
Speaker 4: then you see that bang and rub line, you have
Speaker 4: the opportunity to go figure that out, and it's a
Speaker 4: hard thing to do, but it's important.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's that's actually really good, really good lead into
Speaker 2: another one of my failures, which kind of piggybacks not
Speaker 2: only off what you were just sharing, but also my
Speaker 2: first failure in which you know, I talked about for
Speaker 2: a long time. I failed repeatedly because I was living
Speaker 2: off of other people's rules and other people's best practices.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 2: Well, I got a hunting spot in Ohio back in
Speaker 2: like twenty fourteen, maybe somewhere on that ball twenty thirteen fourteen,
Speaker 2: give or take, and this was the best zone I'd
Speaker 2: ever had permission to hunt. And first hunt ever there,
Speaker 2: I saw the biggest bucke't ever you know, laid eyes
Speaker 2: on while I had a bow in my hand, like
Speaker 2: a true one, you know, sixty kind of buck, just
Speaker 2: like a giant Ohio buck that was, you know, coming
Speaker 2: my way, very exciting, like just like a real deal buck.
Speaker 2: And I hunted that buck that season, never got a
Speaker 2: crack at him, saw him another time or two. But
Speaker 2: the next year I came back and I told myself
Speaker 2: I was gonna do things differently. I was going to
Speaker 2: be more aggressive. I was going to try to like
Speaker 2: get into his zone. I wasn't going to just hunt
Speaker 2: him on the edges. We're safe, kind of all the
Speaker 2: stuff I talked about with that other deer. And so
Speaker 2: I did a bunch of scouting. I found what I
Speaker 2: thought were like the spots that man, this buck probably
Speaker 2: lives in here, Like this could be like one of
Speaker 2: his bedrooms, you know. I found some beds. I found
Speaker 2: like where I thought one of his safe places was.
Speaker 2: Got it kind of dialed in, was feeling really good
Speaker 2: about things, and really this is a story full of
Speaker 2: a lot of getting things right. I'll preface this by
Speaker 2: and then getting the wrong answer at the very end.
Speaker 2: So I so I get all of that knowledge, I'm
Speaker 2: feeling very excited. I go in do the early season
Speaker 2: hunts doesn't pan out. I remember thinking to myself that
Speaker 2: I wasn't going to go back to hunt till like
Speaker 2: late October. I was gonna wait till that pre red
Speaker 2: stuff was really kicking in. And then I think it
Speaker 2: was mid October, right in that window when a cold
Speaker 2: front moved through, A rainy cold front kind of day
Speaker 2: moved through in mid October, and I just remember thinking,
Speaker 2: and I can't remember all of the different things that
Speaker 2: were lining up, but for some reason, there was a
Speaker 2: whole series of things that were lining up. I think
Speaker 2: it was the rain, it was the wind direction, and
Speaker 2: it was the fact that I thought I knew one
Speaker 2: of these spots where this buck was bedded, and all
Speaker 2: of that. On one morning, I remember like sitting at
Speaker 2: my computer looking at all these conditions. I wasn't planning
Speaker 2: on going down to Ohio to hunt, but I'm looking
Speaker 2: at all this stuff and I'm thinking, like, man, this
Speaker 2: all would set up so perfectly to get really close
Speaker 2: to that bed. You know, I could sneak in through
Speaker 2: the standing cornfield, which would be really hard to do quietly,
Speaker 2: except for on a windy, rainy day, and except for
Speaker 2: like on a day when I really knew exactly where
Speaker 2: I wanted to get to, I could probably sneak through
Speaker 2: that cornfield and get like just above this zone. I
Speaker 2: bet you, with this wind direction, it would make sense
Speaker 2: for him to actually be betting there and using this
Speaker 2: particular location on that kind of day. So I was like,
Speaker 2: you know what I'm gonna I'm gonna go for it.
Speaker 2: So I like just like bailed on work for the
Speaker 2: rest of the day. I left in the middle of
Speaker 2: the day, bombed down to southern Ohio, drove like four
Speaker 2: and a half hours, got there just in time to
Speaker 2: sneak in do the whole thing, very high anticipation, Like
Speaker 2: I thought, like, man, I'm doing the thing. I'm making
Speaker 2: this plunge right into the heart of this buck's territory
Speaker 2: because I had this like feeling and everything's lined up
Speaker 2: and YadA, YadA, YadA, and I do the hunt and
Speaker 2: it's all perfect, and then I don't see him nothing crickets,
Speaker 2: don't see a single deer, And I just remember thinking like, ah,
Speaker 2: what an idiot like you came in here the middle
Speaker 2: of October. It's the lull. You know, you probably just
Speaker 2: screwed it up. He wasn't gonna be moving all that
Speaker 2: much anyways, What an idiot. The next morning, I started
Speaker 2: to drive home, and then on my drive home, I'm
Speaker 2: going through all this indecision like we've been talking about,
Speaker 2: and now I'm like arguing with myself, Well, you know,
Speaker 2: you came all the way down here. You did everything right.
Speaker 2: Your execution seemed really good, your wind was really good.
Speaker 2: You didn't bump anything that you know of. You know,
Speaker 2: maybe he just didn't happen to you know, you couldn't
Speaker 2: quite see down to the bed, so he could have
Speaker 2: been there, or we could have embedded off one of
Speaker 2: these other points. You know, you weren't necessarily completely wrong.
Speaker 2: You got to give it another chance. So I get
Speaker 2: part way home and then decide to turn around and
Speaker 2: drive back for one more hunt. And this time like,
Speaker 2: all right, I'm just gonna I'm gonna hunt a slightly
Speaker 2: different I think, if I remember correctly, the wind is
Speaker 2: shifted a little bit, so I wasn't gonna hunt that
Speaker 2: same spot. But I had another zone prepped where I
Speaker 2: could hunt on just kind of the other side of
Speaker 2: this betting area, in a place that I still thought
Speaker 2: was one of this possible kind of exit routes to
Speaker 2: a food source. And I slip in there. It still
Speaker 2: had stuff, was still wet, still nice kind of windy day,
Speaker 2: so I could sneak into this zone close. I was
Speaker 2: being a lot more aggressive than I had in the past,
Speaker 2: and get set up, sit in the tree, feeling good
Speaker 2: about it. You know, I've had this whole thing worked
Speaker 2: out in my head. Gets to the last I don't know,
Speaker 2: ten to fifteen minutes of daylight, and I hear a
Speaker 2: twig snap and I look in this direction and then
Speaker 2: the holy shit, there he is. He did the thing
Speaker 2: like it worked out exactly how I thought it was.
Speaker 2: And here's a one sixty class, just a mammoth of
Speaker 2: a bodied buck, you know, at thirty yards something like that,
Speaker 2: thirty five yards, just the closest I've ever into a
Speaker 2: buck like that that I can get a shot at
Speaker 2: at this point in my hunting career. And it's here,
Speaker 2: like everything worked out. I did it all right, He's
Speaker 2: right there. And then in that moment, it was like,
Speaker 2: holy shit, now I need to pull off the last thing.
Speaker 2: I did everything right, but now I actually have to
Speaker 2: pull off a shot. And I was also though, trying
Speaker 2: to self film it, and so now I'm scurrying to
Speaker 2: try to get a camera spun her arm, and I'm
Speaker 2: trying to spin around the tree and moving the camera
Speaker 2: to be a film while I could also get a shot.
Speaker 2: And this whole time that's happening, the buck is moving
Speaker 2: across the one opening that I had, and I just
Speaker 2: remember in this moment finally getting spun around the camera
Speaker 2: on the target and I can see the buck, and
Speaker 2: I remember thinking, oh, no, you're not going to get
Speaker 2: a shot. Like he's moving, he's not stopping, he's moving across,
Speaker 2: and this is your one chance, after all of these years,
Speaker 2: after doing all of these things, right, I remember in
Speaker 2: my mind just thinking like, you have to get a shot.
Speaker 2: And he's moving, and he's moving kind of in towards
Speaker 2: a down tree. I remember there's like a downtree and
Speaker 2: branches extending out, and he's gonna be behind that downtree soon.
Speaker 2: And so what did I do? I just shot. I
Speaker 2: just got a shot off before I couldn't get a
Speaker 2: shot off right, and that shot hit the buck, but
Speaker 2: it hit him back. And you know later in reviewing
Speaker 2: the footage of it, I did get footage of it.
Speaker 2: You know, it hit he was behind those tree branches,
Speaker 2: and I honestly can't remember if I glanced off a
Speaker 2: branch or just hit back, but it was in that zone.
Speaker 2: And to make a long story short, couldn't find him
Speaker 2: that night, searched for him the whole next day, brought
Speaker 2: out a dog, couldn't find him the whole next day.
Speaker 2: Day three had a different friend who had a dog
Speaker 2: come down searched all that day, could not find the buck.
Speaker 2: And you know, that was the first time that I'd
Speaker 2: hit a buck and not found it, and you know,
Speaker 2: just devastating for that reason. Devastating for like what felt
Speaker 2: like making so much great progress and then to not
Speaker 2: be able to finally get that thing to come together
Speaker 2: in the end, devastating, you know, for all of these
Speaker 2: reasons and many more. And then couldn't find the deer.
Speaker 2: Fast forward two months, three months something like that. I
Speaker 2: come back during shed season and I find him right
Speaker 2: in the zone that I swear we walked all around
Speaker 2: when we were out there searching with dogs. So did
Speaker 2: we just miss him and he'd been dead there all along? Maybe,
Speaker 2: or maybe he just took longer and then came back
Speaker 2: to his bedroom and debt. I do not know, But
Speaker 2: that was like my first major what felt like a
Speaker 2: major success but ended up being a major failure and
Speaker 2: like massive heartbreaking situation. And what I learned from that,
Speaker 2: among many many different things, was like I learned a
Speaker 2: lot of confirming things, like Okay, it paid off to
Speaker 2: like do that scouting and find out where the bedroom
Speaker 2: was and find some of those things that off. It
Speaker 2: paid off to trust my gut to go in and
Speaker 2: do a hunt, even though it was mid October and
Speaker 2: the rules said don't hunt in the middle of October
Speaker 2: because they don't move as much. But actually, as we
Speaker 2: all know, that's not necessarily the case. So that was
Speaker 2: something that was confirmed to me, like I stuck with
Speaker 2: the thing, even though the first hunt didn't worked out.
Speaker 2: I pivoted and adjusted, so all those things confirmed, like, Okay,
Speaker 2: I'm making progress, I'm figuring these things out. But then
Speaker 2: ultimately an end, I put so much pressure on myself
Speaker 2: to get the shot. I put so much into that,
Speaker 2: like that the most important thing was to get a shot.
Speaker 2: That I took a shot that I probably shouldn't have
Speaker 2: first and foremost, you know, I forced a shot. I
Speaker 2: rushed a shot that really, you know, with him moving
Speaker 2: and with me trying to fiddle with all that other stuff,
Speaker 2: I did not put myself in a position to get
Speaker 2: the right shot, and I was not experienced enough or
Speaker 2: I'm not sure what the right words other than that,
Speaker 2: but I didn't make the right decision moment, and that
Speaker 2: was a massive failure that I have continued to struggle
Speaker 2: with in all the years since. As we've all talked about, right,
Speaker 2: those things never end up, you know, not being a
Speaker 2: challenge in one way or another. But that was the
Speaker 2: first big one on many of those different fronts. The
Speaker 2: still sticks with me to this point.
Speaker 4: I mean, if you are gonna if you were going
Speaker 4: to make a top ten or top five list of
Speaker 4: ways in which deer hunters, particularly bow hunters, screw up
Speaker 4: rushing the shot would be like always up there.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, it is just this.
Speaker 4: One of the hardest things to do is pump the
Speaker 4: brakes when you're like, there's the one I'm going to
Speaker 4: shoot at, Like I have to get a shot because
Speaker 4: they're so rare, the encounters are so rare and they
Speaker 4: get within range of you. It is very hard when
Speaker 4: you switch over to that I'm taking a shot to
Speaker 4: not take it if the whole thing falls apart.
Speaker 2: So like there's like like some other force, like something
Speaker 2: takes control and it's like like a tractor being sucking
Speaker 2: you in, Like you lose autonomy in some way, and
Speaker 2: like it's like a ball rolling down a hill. Like
Speaker 2: once that gravity takes over, it's really hard to stop
Speaker 2: that thing once it's.
Speaker 3: Rolling, real hard. Yeah, I don't know. I mean, I
Speaker 3: mean I don't even know.
Speaker 4: You get better about that stuff, but it's not like
Speaker 4: that thing ever goes away. No, you know, like that
Speaker 4: that is always a possibility and it's so rarely works out.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And I mean you and I have have spent
Speaker 2: years and years talking on this podcast about the many
Speaker 2: examples of ways that you and I have had that
Speaker 2: situation happen, and ways we've gotten better at it, ways
Speaker 2: we've tried to deal with it, ways we've I think
Speaker 2: the most effective things for me has been like recognizing
Speaker 2: my shortcomings and like just recognizing, Okay, like there's some
Speaker 2: things you can do to get better, and then there's
Speaker 2: some things you just need to recognize that you're not
Speaker 2: good at some of these things, and you need to
Speaker 2: account for that ahead of time. So like, for example,
Speaker 2: I'm not going to take long shots anymore because I
Speaker 2: just know, like I'm too susceptible to making some tiny air,
Speaker 2: I'm too susceptible too rushing the shots. So I'm going
Speaker 2: to know that ahead of time and just say, hey, Mark,
Speaker 2: you're not going to be the guy that gets to
Speaker 2: shoot deer at fifty yards. You're just not because for me,
Speaker 2: I'm not willing to risk all the bad things happening.
Speaker 2: I would much rather have fewer shot opportunities, but fewer
Speaker 2: bad things happen wounded deer, miss deer. So I've pulled
Speaker 2: in my shooting range. That's probably been like some of
Speaker 2: the best things. I've dumbed down my gear. I've decreased
Speaker 2: my range. I have, you know, tried to find ways
Speaker 2: in how I set up shots and how I prepare
Speaker 2: and how I set up locations to minimize those errors,
Speaker 2: knowing full well that like this very well might be
Speaker 2: the number one way that people fail. Like once you
Speaker 2: get to a certain point where you're pretty good at
Speaker 2: deer hunting and you know how to get within a
Speaker 2: range of deer, I gotta believe that most hunters at
Speaker 2: that point I have a whole lot of deer that
Speaker 2: they screwed up on that. Yeah, that's the number of reason,
Speaker 2: number one reason.
Speaker 3: Why I have done the same thing.
Speaker 4: Man, I want them at like twenty yards looking away
Speaker 4: from me, I mean, like already kind of pass me.
Speaker 4: I'm the same way, Like I don't I don't need
Speaker 4: to be shooting deer forty fifty yards away. I want
Speaker 4: them close. And I did the same thing, like I
Speaker 4: need to work with myself. I dumb that shit down,
Speaker 4: and I try to give myself really high odd shots
Speaker 4: because it's so easy to screw up.
Speaker 2: And and you know, I don't I could be wrong.
Speaker 2: I don't think we're unique in that, and I do
Speaker 2: think and you can tell me if you think I'm
Speaker 2: wrong here, Tony. But I think that our industry, the community,
Speaker 2: the marketing machine of the hunting world tries to tell
Speaker 2: hunters that, oh no, all you need is a better
Speaker 2: bow or a better arrow, or more practice or this
Speaker 2: new technique or this shooting style or this answer, and
Speaker 2: all of those things can help, and you should do
Speaker 2: all of the stuff you possibly can to get better
Speaker 2: and more effective. I'm not saying you shouldn't do those things,
Speaker 2: but it is much more unpopular to do what we're
Speaker 2: talking about. Why don't we hear more about restraint, Well,
Speaker 2: because it's not worth any money.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you know, the marketing budgets don't. That's not that's
Speaker 3: not what they're going for.
Speaker 4: But I mean, you know, I remember I don't remember
Speaker 4: what show this was, but I remember watching a bow
Speaker 4: hunting show one time, and it was like a twelve
Speaker 4: year old kid that I think that kid missed a
Speaker 4: giant and then killed a giant in the same show,
Speaker 4: And it was like one of those things where I
Speaker 4: remember being like I would fall apart on those deer
Speaker 4: every time, and then realizing, well, that kid where he's
Speaker 4: hunting expects on another giant to come down the trail.
Speaker 4: You know, we watch people hunting in scenarios where it's
Speaker 4: not the dude on public land in Pennsylvania. You know
Speaker 4: that deer that comes along that one sixty in Ohio.
Speaker 4: That deer is not coming along very often, so it's
Speaker 4: easy to lose your shit. But we watch people all
Speaker 4: the time who are like, if I don't kill this one,
Speaker 4: like they'll be more'll be another one, And most of
Speaker 4: us aren't. Most of the time people aren't hunting that scenario.
Speaker 4: So that's that's when that ego that takes over where
Speaker 4: you're like, I gotta possess that thing, like I need
Speaker 4: to possess that deer because this is not going to
Speaker 4: come around again for me.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that shit's tough, man, Yeah it's tough. And when
Speaker 2: I get to my last story, it relates to this too.
Speaker 2: But I think a really important thing to remember, and
Speaker 2: that has been a big part of most of my failures.
Speaker 2: And it goes back to my second and first story.
Speaker 2: Really it's it's in the end, like this stuff doesn't
Speaker 2: matter that much, like whether or not you get a
Speaker 2: buck this year. You've said this. I think it was
Speaker 2: you who said this to me years ago, and it
Speaker 2: stuck with me, and I try to remind myself of this,
Speaker 2: like nobody cares. For so long, I've thought like it
Speaker 2: was important to me, it was important to other people.
Speaker 2: People were judging me based on this stuff. But in
Speaker 2: the end, nobody really cares. Nobody's really paying attention, and
Speaker 2: it really shouldn't matter what other people think anyways. And
Speaker 2: so we put all this pressure on ourselves that really
Speaker 2: does not need to be there, and that just gets
Speaker 2: in the way of us enjoying ourselves and the experience.
Speaker 2: I would say the only pressure that really should be
Speaker 2: there is simply the pressure to execute the shot in
Speaker 2: a way that leads to an ethical kill, Like that
Speaker 2: is warranted, very important pressure that we should recognize and
Speaker 2: I recognize. But the rest of the outside noise that
Speaker 2: just gets in the way and sometimes makes.
Speaker 3: Things worse for sure, for sure.
Speaker 4: I mean, and kind of what we're talking about here
Speaker 4: is really really leads into my last thing. I mean,
Speaker 4: one of the things that I go through these cycles
Speaker 4: in my hunting that bothers me the most is when
Speaker 4: I go on like a big buck.
Speaker 3: Here, or I'm like, I'm only hunting big ones.
Speaker 4: And it because not necessarily because I don't mind hunting
Speaker 4: big deer, but what I feel like I have to
Speaker 4: do to hunt big deer is in as fun for
Speaker 4: me is if I go out and do what I
Speaker 4: actually really enjoy. And so my point with this is
Speaker 4: not it's not a failure to focus on big deer,
Speaker 4: it's a failure to focus on some kind of end
Speaker 4: result that doesn't.
Speaker 3: Give you what you need out of the process.
Speaker 4: And for me, I don't know why I'm wired this way,
Speaker 4: but the most enjoyable hunting I have is when I
Speaker 4: go someplace new and try to figure it out.
Speaker 3: That's just what works for me.
Speaker 4: And it's private, public whatever, Like I just like showing
Speaker 4: up and being like where do I find them?
Speaker 3: How do I get on them?
Speaker 4: But that's not always conducive to holding out for one fifties, right, Like,
Speaker 4: sometimes you just have to recognize what you're dealing with
Speaker 4: and be like, I'm just hunting deer right now or whatever.
Speaker 4: But to me, I enjoy that more than defaulting to
Speaker 4: a situation where I have a higher odds chance of
Speaker 4: killing a big one. But I don't necessarily have to
Speaker 4: figure anything out. And what I don't know what that
Speaker 4: means for like the average hunter listening to this, But
Speaker 4: there are ways to hunt, and there are things you
Speaker 4: can do that you'll just enjoy it more, you know,
Speaker 4: And it's not necessarily going to be that blueprint for
Speaker 4: killing big bucks that you've been fed by the hunting industry,
Speaker 4: you know, like the you know, I talk about this
Speaker 4: all the time, but like the not hunting during the
Speaker 4: lull and then not hunting during heat waves and not
Speaker 4: hunting during this and not to hunting during that. I'm like,
Speaker 4: that may be a good way to kill a big
Speaker 4: buck in November, but it might be a really good
Speaker 4: way to also have a shitty season where you don't
Speaker 4: hunt very much.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you know, And if if you.
Speaker 4: Don't like being on a tree stand in early October
Speaker 4: when the weather's nice and the leaves are coming down, like,
Speaker 4: I don't know, man, Like it's it's fun to be
Speaker 4: out there and it's fun to figure this stuff out
Speaker 4: and I'm at the stage now I see a lot
Speaker 4: of a lot of my buddies have really good hunting
Speaker 4: spots now, like really good like they own land or
Speaker 4: they lease good land, and they have you know, the
Speaker 4: box blinds and the food pots, and they are just
Speaker 4: losing their fire and you can see it because it's
Speaker 4: like they know how they're going to kill them. There's
Speaker 4: there's not really any mystery left. There's not anything that
Speaker 4: they have to figure out. It's like those cell cameras
Speaker 4: are going to feed you enough intel so you know
Speaker 4: when he's moving and you're going to go in there
Speaker 4: and you're gonna do it, and it's going to be
Speaker 4: you know, can be really fun and some people love it,
Speaker 4: but I can see I can see it in some
Speaker 4: of my buddies where they're like they're struggling with the
Speaker 4: easiest way to kill a big one versus how they
Speaker 4: really kind of need to hunt to get fulfilled by it. Yeah,
Speaker 4: which is which is one of those things that I
Speaker 4: preach a lot where I'm like, go someplace different, don't
Speaker 4: just have one spot to hunt. You don't have to
Speaker 4: leave your state, you know, you like, you don't have
Speaker 4: to travel that far but when you try something new
Speaker 4: in a new environment, it just kind of lights the
Speaker 4: fire again. And it's so easy to not do that
Speaker 4: because that is not a very good way to kill
Speaker 4: big bucks for most people, but it's a good way
Speaker 4: to enjoy deer hunting and sort of find yourself again.
Speaker 4: And I deal with that all the time, Like, you know,
Speaker 4: we we have pressure to kill big ones, right, Like
Speaker 4: if we go five years and don't kill a big one,
Speaker 4: we are not we probably aren't doing this anymore, right
Speaker 4: because just the truth of the matter, And so there's
Speaker 4: always that sort of pressure, and you know that's that
Speaker 4: happens to everybody too, Like everybody wants.
Speaker 3: To kill a big one.
Speaker 4: But when that when that becomes too much, or like
Speaker 4: when that becomes the thing that's the focus, you often
Speaker 4: sacrifice what you actually really.
Speaker 3: Want to get out of it.
Speaker 4: And that's tough, man Like, It's it's a constant sort
Speaker 4: of push pull thing that I deal with all the time.
Speaker 4: And I feel like I'm getting better, partially because I'm
Speaker 4: taking my daughter's hunting so much, so I sort of
Speaker 4: get that hunt any deer fixed through them. But it's
Speaker 4: still something for me where I'm like if I'm kind
Speaker 4: of bumming on a deer season. Usually the answer for
Speaker 4: me is, I'm just gonna go for a long weekend.
Speaker 4: I'm gonna hunt somewhere else and just like blank, slate
Speaker 4: this thing and just figure something out. And then, you know,
Speaker 4: a lot of times I don't kill, but a lot
Speaker 4: of times I'll come back and be like, Okay, that's
Speaker 4: just what I needed, you know.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And that's that theme is the same theme of
Speaker 2: my last failure too. And I think it all comes
Speaker 2: down to knowing yourself, right, figuring out what that enjoyable,
Speaker 2: how you define enjoyable or fun or satisfying. Like, every
Speaker 2: one of us has a different version, right, And there
Speaker 2: can be multiple answers for each of us too, Right,
Speaker 2: Like I can enjoy going and traveling and figuring it out,
Speaker 2: but then I can also enjoy sometimes doing the behind
Speaker 2: the house easy hunt or whatever the thing is. Right,
Speaker 2: We're all going to have our own different versions, and
Speaker 2: maybe there's multiple. But the biggest thing I've learned is
Speaker 2: like recognizing when you were hunting for yourself versus when
Speaker 2: you were hunting for some outside expectation or goal that
Speaker 2: you are driving towards because you think you should, or
Speaker 2: because you know, the pressure or social media or peer
Speaker 2: pressure or whatever the thing is that's making you hunt
Speaker 2: for not your own satisfying reasons. So you know, my
Speaker 2: story that I'll share briefly is one I've told many times,
Speaker 2: so I won't get into all the details. But the
Speaker 2: one that really hammered this home for me was that
Speaker 2: Iowa trip. You know, I don't know, five years ago
Speaker 2: or whatever it was. When I was there with a
Speaker 2: bunch of buddies in town. Everyone's having a good time
Speaker 2: going out, you know, going out for like a late breakfast,
Speaker 2: lunch together, shooting the breeze, having fun evenings, dinners together.
Speaker 2: If somebody shot, when everyone would go help them track it, hunting,
Speaker 2: some of the share properties with each other, not taking
Speaker 2: it too terribly serious, and enjoying it. It's Iowa, It's
Speaker 2: fun and exciting. But they were focused on enjoying the experience.
Speaker 2: I meanwhile, I had so much of an expectation built
Speaker 2: up in my head that I had to choose. I
Speaker 2: had to shoot a giant. I had to do it
Speaker 2: in the most hardcore di way, running gun mobile hunting,
Speaker 2: badass kind of way. So I wasn't gonna hunt anything
Speaker 2: other than like my own saddle, set up my own way,
Speaker 2: and so because of that, I did everything quote unquote right.
Speaker 2: I hunted, you know, from dawn till dusk, every single day,
Speaker 2: all day, and the result was that I was mostly miserable.
Speaker 2: I did not kill a buck, and I didn't spend
Speaker 2: any time with my hunting buddies, who all had a
Speaker 2: great week together enjoying camaraderie and hunting, while I just
Speaker 2: suffer fested in the tree, beating myself up for not
Speaker 2: having been a good enough hunter. While all the rest
Speaker 2: of them didn't necessarily they weren't necessarily any better or
Speaker 2: any worse than me, or have any more or less
Speaker 2: success than me. But they had a great week right,
Speaker 2: and I instead had a miserable one. I thought after
Speaker 2: all of that, driving home, like what am I doing?
Speaker 2: I This is not why I got into honey. I
Speaker 2: got into honey because yes, I love being out there
Speaker 2: in the field. Yes I love all the things actually
Speaker 2: involved with hunting. But I also enjoyed my friends and
Speaker 2: family while I was out there. I enjoyed the camaraderie.
Speaker 2: I enjoyed all the tradition and ritual around it. I
Speaker 2: enjoyed you know, this isn't like a war. You don't
Speaker 2: have to win the war. You're supposed to be having
Speaker 2: an enjoyable experience. And coming out of that, I realized
Speaker 2: that what you talked about, like finding what your thing is,
Speaker 2: finding the ways to keep the joy, that's what really matters.
Speaker 2: And so for me, in the years since, I've learned
Speaker 2: things that matter to me are the people I'm with.
Speaker 2: It is the places that I'm at, the experiences, the process,
Speaker 2: being out there with my friends and family, teaching learning.
Speaker 2: Sometimes that means I'm going to be hunting balls to
Speaker 2: the wall all day, and sometimes that means I'm going
Speaker 2: to come in and get lunch with my friends, or
Speaker 2: take my son out, or spend a core part of
Speaker 2: the rut when I should be hunting in a great
Speaker 2: state for big deer and instead be hunting with my
Speaker 2: kids and my dad up north where we're going to
Speaker 2: see a couple spikes. I've learned that that's the stuff
Speaker 2: that really matters. Having balance, having diversity, having camaraderie, enjoying
Speaker 2: all of that is what makes a hunting season successful
Speaker 2: for me today, and I'm a happier hunter because of it.
Speaker 2: And I think I'm going to be just as successful
Speaker 2: quote unquote a hunter too, because I'm going into a
Speaker 2: season and any particular hunt with like a greater reservoir
Speaker 2: of energy and creativity and excitement. And I think when
Speaker 2: you have that, you're going to end up making better
Speaker 2: decisions and performing better out there too, totally.
Speaker 4: I mean, if you really want to fail at deer hunting,
Speaker 4: take it too seriously. Yeah, there are parts you should
Speaker 4: take very seriously. But if you take the whole thing
Speaker 4: so seriously all the time that the fun evaporates, you're
Speaker 4: gonna you're gonna make terrible decisions, yeah, because you're not
Speaker 4: going to be operating from the right place, and it's
Speaker 4: just not going to be enjoyable. It's just it is
Speaker 4: so easy. It's so easy to cross that line. And
Speaker 4: I mean it's sort of again, this is sort of
Speaker 4: an industry standard thing where you sort of paint that
Speaker 4: as the you know, the m O, right, like that's
Speaker 4: that's how you should be, That's how you have to
Speaker 4: be to kill a big public land box. It's like,
Speaker 4: you don't have to do that, thank you don't. And
Speaker 4: if you and if you're not having fun with it,
Speaker 4: you will just not hunt as well. Like it's the
Speaker 4: same thing. It's like confidence too. If you're not confident,
Speaker 4: you're just you're in trouble, you know. And you can
Speaker 4: only get to these places by doing the wrong thing
Speaker 4: a whole bunch and realizing what you need out of it.
Speaker 2: Yep, yeah, yeah, it's it's having those experiences, failing a lot,
Speaker 2: recognizing that's okay, forgiving yourself, trying again, learning and carrying
Speaker 2: on on and on and on, trying to get better,
Speaker 2: but also recognizing this the end of the world. We're
Speaker 2: not you know, we're not solving world peace here. We're
Speaker 2: trying to have a fun and enjoyable experience in nature,
Speaker 2: trying to put some food on the table. Whether or
Speaker 2: not you kill a big buck really doesn't matter. So
Speaker 2: don't stress too much, you know, do the work. If
Speaker 2: your goal is if you have a hard goal, great
Speaker 2: chase that goal, pursue hard things, grow, push yourself, all
Speaker 2: of that. But with that balance, with that understanding that
Speaker 2: it's really easy to go too far, or to do
Speaker 2: things for the wrong reason, or to get in over
Speaker 2: your head, and so it's like you need these little
Speaker 2: reality checks. Ever once in a while, I don't know,
Speaker 2: I haven't quite yet figured out the way to plan
Speaker 2: for that ahead of time. Usually it just like hits
Speaker 2: me in the moment, maybe there's something I should do to,
Speaker 2: Like have an alarm clock set for November fifth every
Speaker 2: year that just says, hey, wake up, idiot, chill out,
Speaker 2: something like that. I need these little reminders, like take
Speaker 2: a deep breath, remember, like there's more to life than
Speaker 2: killing a five and a half year old buck. You'll
Speaker 2: be okay, go get lunch with your dad or whatever.
Speaker 2: Like those kinds of things are just a little bit
Speaker 2: of a shake you out of your craziness that sometimes
Speaker 2: will be helpful.
Speaker 3: Well, I mean totally.
Speaker 4: And you when you talk about drawing, drawing that Iowa tag,
Speaker 4: you're just like absolutely creating a situation where you're very
Speaker 4: ripe to take it too seriously.
Speaker 3: And that's that's a big problem.
Speaker 4: I mean, there are a lot of people out there
Speaker 4: sitting on a lot of Iowa points who are scared
Speaker 4: to draw because they don't want to. They don't I mean,
Speaker 4: it's true, they don't want to burn that tag and
Speaker 4: they know that there's going to be pressure on that
Speaker 4: to go kill a big one. And so again, you
Speaker 4: can kind of condition yourself to this stuff like if
Speaker 4: you go, you know, wherever you live, if you travel
Speaker 4: in state to some part of the state you don't
Speaker 4: hunt very much, it's a way easier situation to allow
Speaker 4: yourself to not kill in right, or if you end
Speaker 4: up going somewhere that isn't no for producing booners left
Speaker 4: and right, you know, like put yourself into a hard
Speaker 4: environment where killing any deer would be great. Now, all
Speaker 4: of a sudden, you have a different focus, right because
Speaker 4: that big buck thing you see that happen so often,
Speaker 4: especially with traveling hunts or the thing with trail cameras
Speaker 4: now is you know, if there's a one to eighty
Speaker 4: in your section and everybody's getting videos of it, it
Speaker 4: can do the same thing on your home ground hunt,
Speaker 4: where like it's that deer bust and it's like, man,
Speaker 4: you just sometimes you have to, like we talked about
Speaker 4: before with like reining in your shooting range. Sometimes you
Speaker 4: have to just work with yourself and go like, man,
Speaker 4: if I know that I've never traveled to hunt anywhere,
Speaker 4: and if the first tag I draw is an Iowa
Speaker 4: tag that I'm only gonna I'm gonna put six seven
Speaker 4: years into it or whatever, I know me, I'm gonna
Speaker 4: spin out and lose my shit.
Speaker 3: But if I just drove up north.
Speaker 4: For a long weekend and hunted the national forest up there,
Speaker 4: maybe try to kill a couple of grouse during launch
Speaker 4: or whatever, there's like a stepping star there.
Speaker 3: Without the pressure.
Speaker 4: You're still doing the process, You're still you're still putting
Speaker 4: yourself in an unfamiliar environment, but you don't have that
Speaker 4: pressure of that seven hundred dollars dear tag that you
Speaker 4: waited six years to draw and everybody's expecting you to
Speaker 4: kill a big one. You have to kind of think
Speaker 4: about that stuff because if you just jump into that,
Speaker 4: people do that all the time with an elk tag,
Speaker 4: right first time elk hunters almost always get totally overwhelmed,
Speaker 4: almost always get their asses handed to them, and almost
Speaker 4: always go out with too high of expectation, you know,
Speaker 4: just because it's I'm only going to do one elk hunt.
Speaker 4: I want to kill a three hundred inch bowl and
Speaker 4: it's like, brother, you better be looking for a calf,
Speaker 4: like yeah, you know, because that's just what's going to
Speaker 4: be delivered to you.
Speaker 3: Maybe if you work really hard.
Speaker 2: Yeah, speaking of failure, I've got an elk tag for
Speaker 2: the first time in like eight years. And uh, and yeah,
Speaker 2: I'm probably gonna be that guy who's going to be
Speaker 2: really excited if I just happen to see a calf
Speaker 2: because it's gonna be a little bit of a readjustment period.
Speaker 2: I'm sure it'll be fun, but but it will be fun.
Speaker 2: And I think that's the important thing to remember, is
Speaker 2: keeping it fun, keep learning, know yourself, know when to
Speaker 2: push it, no one to step back, know when to
Speaker 2: shake yourself out of the madness, and keep your eye
Speaker 2: on the prize. And I can tell you one thing.
Speaker 2: I know I'm going to fail this season most of
Speaker 2: the time. But if you keep on trucking and you
Speaker 2: focus on the fun, focus on the process, it's all
Speaker 2: worth it.
Speaker 3: It absolutely is.
Speaker 2: Buddy well Tony, thanks for joining me for this one.
Speaker 3: Thanks for having me man.
Speaker 2: And to all of you listening, thanks for being here.
Speaker 2: And until next time, stay wired to hunt.