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 Kenya,
Speaker 1: Welcome to the Wired to Hunt podcast.
Speaker 2: This week on the show, we are continuing our series
Speaker 2: exploring the habits, mindsets, routines and methods of the best
Speaker 2: deer hunters in the world. And today's guest is mister
Speaker 2: Tony Peterson. All right, welcome to the wir Ton Podcast,
Speaker 2: brought to you by First Lights. And today on that note,
Speaker 2: historically we've talked about First Light bringing you this podcast
Speaker 2: and their camera for Conservation initiative and all that kind
Speaker 2: of good stuff, which is still ongoing. But today we
Speaker 2: also have some different excited First Light whitetail news that
Speaker 2: I want to quickly tell you about before we get
Speaker 2: to this Mindsets of the whitetail Masters podcast and in
Speaker 2: a special edition of our Mindsets of the whitetail Masters podcast.
Speaker 2: Because the guy who's on here today, I wouldn't call
Speaker 2: him a white tail master. He's more of a knucklehead.
Speaker 2: But somehow he slipped his way in here. But I'm kidding.
Speaker 2: I'm kidding. But before we get to that, and while
Speaker 2: I still have Tony on mute, we have to talk
Speaker 2: about first Lights brand new as of just a couple
Speaker 2: of days ago, launch of are revamped, completely new white
Speaker 2: tail system. Three new whitetail systems have launched as of
Speaker 2: July thirtieth, twenty twenty four. Tony and I both got
Speaker 2: to be a part of that process, you know, prototyping
Speaker 2: this gear for like three years. I've been involved in
Speaker 2: kind of conference calls and zoom meetings and back and
Speaker 2: forth feedback sessions discussing what we liked about the old stuff,
Speaker 2: what we didn't like about the old stuff, what are
Speaker 2: all the little things and changes that we would like
Speaker 2: to see made. You know, I think something that Tony
Speaker 2: and I have talked a lot about within our deer
Speaker 2: hunting kind of world is the importance of the little details,
Speaker 2: the tiny tweaks, all these little one percent things that
Speaker 2: stack up and end up making a big difference in
Speaker 2: the end. That's the approach that we've tried to take
Speaker 2: with this new gear, and so that's that's at a
Speaker 2: very high level. What's now dropped there is the new
Speaker 2: phase system, the core system and the thermic system. The
Speaker 2: phase is going to be well, you know, Tony, do
Speaker 2: you wanna do you wanna run through any thoughts or
Speaker 2: sharing quick thoughts before I walk through a quick system overview?
Speaker 3: Yeah, man, I think I think it might just help.
Speaker 3: You know, you you've mentioned that we helped kind of
Speaker 3: r and D this stuff and work on it. But
Speaker 3: I think that's sort of a throwaway statement. I don't
Speaker 3: think people understand what goes into revamping three different lineups
Speaker 3: for you know, basically any part of the season, you know,
Speaker 3: whether whether you're hunting early or you hunt down south
Speaker 3: or through right up to Canada horrible late December type
Speaker 3: of weather. But what I thought was so cool about
Speaker 3: this process. You know, we spend time sitting around a
Speaker 3: table with the people who actually put this stuff together,
Speaker 3: and you know, in July and Idaho three years ago
Speaker 3: or whatever, it was talking about what we want to see,
Speaker 3: and these things go through iterations and you know, they
Speaker 3: they do a lot of behind the scenes stuff and
Speaker 3: it bounces back and forth with us where we get
Speaker 3: to try this stuff out in the field and it's
Speaker 3: amazing to be a part of that and go hunt
Speaker 3: really nasty conditions and then be able to text somebody
Speaker 3: or email somebody from a tree stand and be like, hey,
Speaker 3: this little thing is not working for me, or like
Speaker 3: I love this or I hate this or whatever, and
Speaker 3: you can you can affect change, like in real time
Speaker 3: while you're actually hunting with this stuff. And there's you know,
Speaker 3: it's not just you and I working on this right Like,
Speaker 3: there's so we had so many people out testing this
Speaker 3: stuff out on actual hunts that people can watch, you know,
Speaker 3: coming up here pretty soon that we filmed for the
Speaker 3: last few years. It's pretty incredible process. There's so I
Speaker 3: didn't know what really went into that until being involved
Speaker 3: in this latest wave.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, you're right, and I think an important thing.
Speaker 2: And I guess I have some assumptions about how other
Speaker 2: folks do this. I can't say with real perspective, but
Speaker 2: I have assumptions that the other folks do not have
Speaker 2: the team of people that we had, you know, ground
Speaker 2: troothing this stuff, back checking this stuff, putting it through
Speaker 2: the paces. I mean, you were out there. I was
Speaker 2: out there, Levi Morgan, Andy May, Taylor Chamberlain, the guy
Speaker 2: has from Hartlan Bowhunter. You know a lot of people
Speaker 2: that take this stuff really really serious, put this stuff
Speaker 2: through the paces, and you know, we would reach out
Speaker 2: to our buddy Greg at First Light and the other
Speaker 2: guy's working on say hey, this thing sucks or this
Speaker 2: thing didn't work, or this thing needs to be changed
Speaker 2: or whatever, and we would get changes made, which is
Speaker 2: like you said, it's encouraging, it's exciting. And what we
Speaker 2: have now is a set of products that I think
Speaker 2: we're pretty stoked to be using and excited that the
Speaker 2: rest of the world now gets to see and use.
Speaker 2: And like I mentioned, as of July thirtieth, it's out there.
Speaker 2: You can see him over at first light dot com.
Speaker 2: There's the three sets. Like I mentioned, We've got the
Speaker 2: Phase system, which is going to be the kind of
Speaker 2: soft shell replacement in the past. We put the catalyst
Speaker 2: in this bucket, so if anyone's used the catalyst, this
Speaker 2: is kind of within that use case bucket. It is
Speaker 2: a wind proof, incredibly silent soft ship all jacket and bib.
Speaker 2: It's got a light flea sexterior. That's something that a
Speaker 2: lot of people have wanted. People really like that flea
Speaker 2: sex tier because it's so quiet. We finally now have
Speaker 2: that and it's the quietest wind proof soft shell out there.
Speaker 2: That's the phase that's gonna be something you can wear
Speaker 2: earlier in the year, or you could wear it later
Speaker 2: into the year if you layer a whole bunch of
Speaker 2: stuff underneath it, but it's not heavily insulated, it's more
Speaker 2: of that outer shell and light fleece insulation.
Speaker 3: Then you bump in reverstile system. Yeah, yeah, I.
Speaker 2: Think that's the key thing there, versatility. The next one
Speaker 2: is the Core, and that is you know, called the
Speaker 2: Core because it's for the core of your season. That is,
Speaker 2: it fills the bucket that the Solitude used to So
Speaker 2: we were wearing and talking about the Solitude is like
Speaker 2: that peak of the rot kind of kit. Now we
Speaker 2: have the Core for the core of the season. It
Speaker 2: is a new insulation package in there, so it's it's
Speaker 2: actually warmer than the Solitude was, but it's significantly and
Speaker 2: more packable. And then the exterior is the same as
Speaker 2: what we have on the Source jacket. So everyone who's
Speaker 2: used the Source loves the Source. Right, that's our white
Speaker 2: tail puffy, very silent, but still heavy duty and puffy
Speaker 2: and packable. Well, now you essentially have that but built
Speaker 2: out with you know, improved, you know, white tail specific
Speaker 2: feature set with a new kit link pass through system,
Speaker 2: with new removable hoods, new fit and feel with the collar,
Speaker 2: fit and feel with the wrists, a whole bunch of things.
Speaker 2: I won't go through every single little feature set right now,
Speaker 2: but I will say that all of these feature improvements
Speaker 2: are across all three systems Phase, Core, and Thermic, So
Speaker 2: that is the same. You'll just have a different fabrics,
Speaker 2: different insulations for each kit. So there's the Phase, like
Speaker 2: we talked about, versatile or earlier than the Core, which
Speaker 2: is like you're, you know, twenty degrees through forty degrees,
Speaker 2: kind of like the sweet spot for the core, you know,
Speaker 2: that rut, hopeful rut temperatures. And then there's the Thermic,
Speaker 2: which is like that you're never going to be cold again,
Speaker 2: super late season, super nasty blizzard, freezing, freezing, freezing cold temperatures,
Speaker 2: very burly late season suits, and that again has the
Speaker 2: same feature set, but a ton of insulation, a very thick,
Speaker 2: like heavy piled fleece interior even in there. So if
Speaker 2: you're looking to be super duper cozy and you hunt
Speaker 2: in North Dakota or northern Minnesota or Canada or whatever
Speaker 2: it is. That's a great option. So I guess I
Speaker 2: don't want to spend too much time on it and
Speaker 2: bore folks. But that's that's I think the high level.
Speaker 2: Is there any other quick thing you want to make
Speaker 2: sure relief folks with?
Speaker 3: On that note, you kind of touched on it, but
Speaker 3: I think you know, I know that Andy May drove
Speaker 3: Greg Nutts for years about our collars and a few
Speaker 3: like the little like a feel of the like a
Speaker 3: few of the little fit things that you kind of
Speaker 3: you know, you look at them on a shelf for
Speaker 3: shopping online, you would never know and then you put
Speaker 3: them on and you're like, oh, this is you know,
Speaker 3: works for some people, doesn't work for others. Like man,
Speaker 3: they did a good job addressing that stuff, you know,
Speaker 3: and when you say you like the core is sort
Speaker 3: of the heart of the rut type of of system. Dude.
Speaker 3: I wore that sucker sitting all day in a blizzard
Speaker 3: in North Dakota, just because I didn't think I was
Speaker 3: going to be dealing with weather that bad. And this
Speaker 3: was like weather that would call for thermic on paper
Speaker 3: all day long. And we sat out there all day
Speaker 3: in that prairie wind killed the buck at last light,
Speaker 3: and it was it was gnarly and that was our
Speaker 3: mid layer system, but it was you know, when you
Speaker 3: start blocking the wind and dealing with some of the
Speaker 3: materials they've put in there, it's just it's amazing what
Speaker 3: a good job they've done. And how much more like
Speaker 3: I don't know if you feel this way, but like,
Speaker 3: how much more form fitting our stuff has gotten like
Speaker 3: this this new these new releases are awesome.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the core especially is very noticeable compared to the Solitude.
Speaker 2: So it's just much lighter, much more packable, much there's
Speaker 2: less insulating fabric in it. It feels like it's much less bulky.
Speaker 2: You can stuff it down into your backpack much more easily,
Speaker 2: like if you don't want to wear that jacket in
Speaker 2: hiking to the stand. But because it's premium Loft gold,
Speaker 2: it's a it's a higher quality insulating material. You actually
Speaker 2: get significantly higher insulating value in this lighter, packable, seemingly
Speaker 2: lighter weight garment, which which I which I really like.
Speaker 2: And it's all all three of these systems are all
Speaker 2: one wind proof, so you know you're gonna have no
Speaker 2: wind problems no matter which version you decide it is
Speaker 2: right for your setup or for where you're You know,
Speaker 2: your region of hunting is the most So yeah, I
Speaker 2: guess I'll leave it at that. I'd say go to
Speaker 2: first light dot com, dive into the details on this
Speaker 2: stuff if you're interested. We'll have a lot more on
Speaker 2: this in the future, lots to share as far as
Speaker 2: you know, our favorite pieces or our setups and our
Speaker 2: kits and what we're using in different situations. But for now,
Speaker 2: you're where it's out, it's exciting worth checking out. And
Speaker 2: with that, the one other thing that's out now and
Speaker 2: exciting and worth checking out is a thing that you
Speaker 2: and I Tony have been working on closely, which is
Speaker 2: our new white Tail edu video series. You want to
Speaker 2: tell folks about that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, we're on the the Meat Eater YouTube clips channel.
Speaker 3: We've been dropping some new content where we have addressed
Speaker 3: like the some of the really common questions we get
Speaker 3: that don't have simple answers, you know, like just as
Speaker 3: an example, the one, you know, the first one we
Speaker 3: dropped was about what do deer really eat and when?
Speaker 3: Because it's kind of if if you took a brand
Speaker 3: new hunter and they were like, hey, what a deer eat.
Speaker 3: You could answer that so many different ways. And we
Speaker 3: realized as we were kind of conceptualizing this thing that
Speaker 3: there's a lot of these sort of universal questions that
Speaker 3: we get that just need sort of a deep dive
Speaker 3: answer that's not just super regionally specific, that covers everybody.
Speaker 3: And you know, so in that one, just to just
Speaker 3: kind of lay it out, you know, yeah, we talked
Speaker 3: about egg and destination, food sources and food plots, but
Speaker 3: you get pretty deep into soft mask hard masked brows
Speaker 3: and the entirety of the white tail's diet, no matter
Speaker 3: where you're hunting, and whether you're on public or private,
Speaker 3: or you're in the big woods up north or some
Speaker 3: real egg heavy section of Middle America, and it's just
Speaker 3: every topic is like that. So deer tracks, rubs, stuff
Speaker 3: that sounds pretty basic, and maybe somebody who's been you know,
Speaker 3: bow hunting for forty five years, maybe you know, maybe
Speaker 3: it's not entirely for them as much, but for most
Speaker 3: of the white tail audience we hear from, it was
Speaker 3: just kind of a way to get this this educational
Speaker 3: piece out there, this series and cover so many of
Speaker 3: these fundamental, fundamental questions we get asked all the time.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and I think and I think a key thing
Speaker 2: that we tried to do was with every one of
Speaker 2: these major topics, which we always get questions about, is
Speaker 2: that we try to establish a foundation, so making sure like,
Speaker 2: no matter who you are, you are going to now
Speaker 2: understand the language and the context of what we're talking about.
Speaker 2: So if you listen to a future Wired Hunt episode
Speaker 2: after watching these videos, now all of a sudden, you'll
Speaker 2: understand what we're talking about. You get you'll get what
Speaker 2: we're getting at. But then also we would we would
Speaker 2: try to end with that next level of how do
Speaker 2: you use this? How do you interpret this? How do
Speaker 2: how do we get from just identifying deer tracks to
Speaker 2: then identifying the little nuances that deer tracks tell us,
Speaker 2: to then also thinking about how do we connect all
Speaker 2: these dots to formulate a hunting strategy. I think we
Speaker 2: tried to do that with each of these different topics.
Speaker 2: So there's gonna be a little bit something for that
Speaker 2: beginner all the way to you know, that more experienced
Speaker 2: deer hunter who's just trying to shore up their foundation,
Speaker 2: get some good remind and maybe get an interesting aha
Speaker 2: moment or two. Throughout But the idea here was to
Speaker 2: get anyone who listens to the Wired Hunt podcast who's
Speaker 2: been jumping in and maybe sometimes feels like, man, they're
Speaker 2: talking about a few things here that I'm not exactly
Speaker 2: sure what they're getting at, Like it's a little over
Speaker 2: my head. If you follow along with this edu series,
Speaker 2: you shouldn't have that problem in the future. So if
Speaker 2: you're new if you have newer friends, if you've got
Speaker 2: folks who are you know, a little bit earlier in
Speaker 2: their journey than you are, you know, if you're a
Speaker 2: forty five years in, guy, pass these along to them,
Speaker 2: check them out yourself. I imagine we're going to continue
Speaker 2: to do more of these as we get feedback and
Speaker 2: get you know, more ideas about the other topics that
Speaker 2: folks have questions about that want this kind of treatment on.
Speaker 2: But yeah, that's that's the idea. So the first one
Speaker 2: came out in July. There's probably three or four of
Speaker 2: them out by now when this episode drops, So check
Speaker 2: out out over at the Meat either Clips YouTube channel,
Speaker 2: so that's Meat Eater Clips C l I p s
Speaker 2: and subscribe there so you'll see all the new episodes
Speaker 2: when they drop. I'll say there was one of these
Speaker 2: episodes that I don't know if it'll make it into
Speaker 2: the cut, but I literally cried. I was laughing so
Speaker 2: hard while we were trying to film it. So I
Speaker 2: don't know if that's gonna see the lighted day or not.
Speaker 2: But but there is a moment where I'm crying and
Speaker 2: Tony called me an asshole or something. So with that
Speaker 2: only pretty pretty rich if it makes it out, then.
Speaker 3: I was crying for a different reason.
Speaker 2: Why, Yeah, one of the dumbest things I've ever done. Anyways. Anyways,
Speaker 2: with with all that kind of housekeeping out of the way,
Speaker 2: I do want to get you, Tony, to uh to
Speaker 2: run through this series I've been doing and and I
Speaker 2: joked at the beginning that you were not qualified for this,
Speaker 2: but I, in all seriousness and at lack or at
Speaker 2: risk of blowing up your head too much, I do
Speaker 2: truly view you as one of the best white tail
Speaker 2: hunters in the world. And I say that begrudgingly, but.
Speaker 3: Well, I appreciate that, buddy. It warm It warms my
Speaker 3: heart to hear you have to just pull that out
Speaker 3: and say that, yeah, I know it does. That's gonna
Speaker 3: that's gonna carry me for a long time buddy. I'm
Speaker 3: gonna live off that ship, so moving on.
Speaker 2: No, I really do think that what I was, what
Speaker 2: I was trying to achieve with this series, as I've
Speaker 2: talked about over the last few weeks, is trying to
Speaker 2: better understand how the best of the best deer hunters
Speaker 2: do what they do. But I'm not as I'm not
Speaker 2: as concerned with like, oh, you know, do you set
Speaker 2: up on rubs or do you set up on scrapes.
Speaker 2: It's not that kind of stuff I'm interested in. It's
Speaker 2: the the mechanics, like the decision making, the mental models,
Speaker 2: the way these people think, the way these people deal
Speaker 2: with adversity, adversity, the way these people deal with success,
Speaker 2: all that kind of stuff. I want to understand that
Speaker 2: kind of behind the curtains kind of thing. And you know,
Speaker 2: you and I have talked about the nuts and bolts
Speaker 2: of deer hunting at Nausen for years now, but I
Speaker 2: don't think we've covered some of this stuff with you.
Speaker 2: And you obviously are very thoughtful, analytical, and I think
Speaker 2: you're gonna have a lot to share on this one.
Speaker 2: So I'm excited to run you through with this series
Speaker 2: of questions I'd say the only kind of thing I
Speaker 2: would tell you is the more that you can tell
Speaker 2: me and us about your internal dialogue when you think
Speaker 2: about this stuff or when you're in these moments, the
Speaker 2: more interesting it is. I think that's been Like the
Speaker 2: thing I've tried to get to all of our guests
Speaker 2: is like, what's going on in your head when this
Speaker 2: thing happens? What do you say to yourself or what
Speaker 2: do you what are the demons you're wrestling with? And
Speaker 2: I know you've got some demons, Tony, so this one
Speaker 2: should be good man.
Speaker 3: Let's go. Yeah, here we go.
Speaker 2: So are you? Are you gamed for that? All right?
Speaker 2: So we're gonna kick it off here with a with
Speaker 2: a high level understanding of how you view success and failure.
Speaker 2: So how would you define for you, dear hunting success.
Speaker 3: I would say. I would say I started out as
Speaker 3: a hunter, viewing success is just being able to kill
Speaker 3: a deer. And it took me a long time to
Speaker 3: get there. I went through the whole stages and then
Speaker 3: it was killing you know x dear wy deer all
Speaker 3: the way up. But really, for me, now, if I
Speaker 3: do the work to put myself in a position to
Speaker 3: have a chance that really matters to me. Think it's
Speaker 3: very satisfying for me at this point in my life
Speaker 3: to you know, encounter a new situation whatever that is,
Speaker 3: you know, even if it's a place I've been hunting
Speaker 3: a long time, but there's new people there, you know,
Speaker 3: new crop rotation, whatever, I don't I don't care. Or
Speaker 3: if it's going someplace to public land hunt for four days,
Speaker 3: putting myself in a position like doing the work to
Speaker 3: get into the position where I'm like, I have a
Speaker 3: real shot, like it might not I might not get one,
Speaker 3: it might not work out, but seeing that deer, or
Speaker 3: putting myself in a position where I'm like, I believe
Speaker 3: I did what it takes to get here, and a
Speaker 3: lot of times it doesn't break your way, but for me,
Speaker 3: it really It bothers me to not fill tags, but
Speaker 3: not like it used to. It bothers me more than
Speaker 3: anything to feel like I settled at any level, Like
Speaker 3: I just I don't like that feeling. I like feeling
Speaker 3: like you scouted, you put the work in, however that
Speaker 3: may go for whatever hunt I'm on, and just getting
Speaker 3: to the point where it's like he's there, but he
Speaker 3: didn't come in or he came in and he shot him,
Speaker 3: or he got down windy and he winded you, but
Speaker 3: it was you know, he was at forty yards. Like
Speaker 3: those are like successful moments to me, you know. And
Speaker 3: and of course I like filling tags, but I like
Speaker 3: feeling like I just I did everything I could to
Speaker 3: get there.
Speaker 2: Are you able to feel that way in the moment,
Speaker 2: like are you able to judge it? Or what am
Speaker 2: I trying to say here? Are you able to recognize
Speaker 2: that success a non tag feeling success in the moment
Speaker 2: or is it months later after the season when you
Speaker 2: can look back on it and say, Okay, yeah I
Speaker 2: didn't fill the tag here, or yeah I muffed that opportunity,
Speaker 2: but it was successful because of ab and C. I
Speaker 2: say this just because I feel this. I say the
Speaker 2: same thing you're saying, and I'm trying to get there,
Speaker 2: But I also struggle with it being easier said than
Speaker 2: done sometimes in the moment when there's all this like
Speaker 2: in season pressure and expectations.
Speaker 3: So it depends, it depends what happens. Like if I
Speaker 3: whiff on a big one, it'll take I'll have a
Speaker 3: little pity party, right or if you know, just if
Speaker 3: I just make a dumb mistake. But I'm pretty good
Speaker 3: now at recognizing in the moment when when it's when
Speaker 3: I feel like it's come together for me, you know
Speaker 3: what I mean? And so and the other part of
Speaker 3: that is the thing that drives me to keep doing
Speaker 3: this stuff is when I don't fill those tags. You
Speaker 3: know that that looks like failure on paper. The places
Speaker 3: I head back to and the new places I hunt
Speaker 3: and that you know they're trying to hunt at different
Speaker 3: times of the season or trying new stuff out almost
Speaker 3: always stems from me getting my ass kicked somehow, and
Speaker 3: so it instead of like dwelling on it and being like, man,
Speaker 3: I paid for this non resident tag and I ate
Speaker 3: it and that sucks a lot of that stuff just
Speaker 3: makes me really want to go back next year, you know.
Speaker 3: And anybody who's who's elk hunted, you know, like the
Speaker 3: first time yell hunt like it, it takes you one
Speaker 3: of two ways, right, You're like, I don't need to
Speaker 3: do this again, like that was I'm glad I did it.
Speaker 3: I don't need it anymore. Or you're like, I have
Speaker 3: to go back to the mountains. I have to be
Speaker 3: in that setting and I have to try again, and
Speaker 3: you know you're gonna work out harder next year. You're
Speaker 3: gonna blow on that bugle tube until your dogs go insane.
Speaker 3: You're gonna you're gonna use that as motivation. And so
Speaker 3: I look at this stuff. You know, people people look
Speaker 3: at us or you know, like people in the industry,
Speaker 3: and they go, you know, like it seems easy for
Speaker 3: Andy May to go fill tags, right, but you don't
Speaker 3: get to see Andy May's struggle years. Like you don't
Speaker 3: get to see just the amount of scouting. And I
Speaker 3: know we've talked about this a lot, but like that's
Speaker 3: those are the parts that make this whole thing, huh.
Speaker 3: And so to go out and put in that world
Speaker 3: wherever and not fill that tag is okay because it's
Speaker 3: gonna drive a certain amount of people and like I'm
Speaker 3: one of them, Like you're going to keep trying at that,
Speaker 3: you know, And it's it's like the other part of
Speaker 3: that for me is once I do something like let's
Speaker 3: say I go I don't know wherever, South Dakota and
Speaker 3: I kill a buck on a pond, part of me
Speaker 3: wants to go back there and hunt that same pond again.
Speaker 3: And part of me never wants to see it again,
Speaker 3: because I know I did it, you know, and you
Speaker 3: know how it is like you go out there and
Speaker 3: now they're graising cattle here and there's a quarantine and
Speaker 3: the situation is vastly different. So it's not like you're
Speaker 3: returning to the same thing. But it's like that process
Speaker 3: of figuring new stuff out and just feeling that feeling
Speaker 3: of like you put yourself there and you failed, like
Speaker 3: go back, get like complete this mission and move on.
Speaker 3: It's just that that part is like such a powerful
Speaker 3: motivator for me.
Speaker 2: So you touched on this a little bit, but I
Speaker 2: want you to more explicitly elaborate on failure. So so
Speaker 2: you just told me clearly what success is. Can you
Speaker 2: can you elaborate a little bit on what failure looks
Speaker 2: like or what examples of something you would consider failure.
Speaker 3: Now, failure I don't even consider like a miss a failure,
Speaker 3: Like I consider that just like a part of you know,
Speaker 3: bow hunting specifically, where it's like it's just gonna happen
Speaker 3: sometimes and yet like if you if it happens, you
Speaker 3: failed at your job. But I don't like that doesn't
Speaker 3: eat me up, like what I feel as a failure
Speaker 3: is when I'm like I'm just gonna sit here, when
Speaker 3: even in like the little devil on my shoulder, the
Speaker 3: Angel on my shoulder, like no, no, no, you got to
Speaker 3: like figure this out, like you're not there yet. When
Speaker 3: I'm just like now I'm just gonna do this or
Speaker 3: I don't you know, like let's a lot of these
Speaker 3: hunts you go on, right, hunt in the morning, scout
Speaker 3: hunt in the evening. That's kind of your day setup.
Speaker 3: If I don't use that midday time, you know, so
Speaker 3: then I'm like i feel like I'm a little bit behind.
Speaker 3: Like that's a failure to me, like not being efficient
Speaker 3: and just keep looking, because that's that's the thing. You know,
Speaker 3: Like Steve talks about this since our hunt where it's
Speaker 3: like he's like, you're not like an optimistic hunter. You're like,
Speaker 3: just nose to the grindstone. Let's just work through this
Speaker 3: and figure it out. But that's like the process, you know,
Speaker 3: Like you and I were talking before this about your
Speaker 3: race that you just did a little bit ago, and
Speaker 3: you were talking about how the prep work and the
Speaker 3: training runs were almost more satisfying than actually doing the race,
Speaker 3: and it's like that's why whitetail hunting is so beautiful.
Speaker 3: I don't care if you have that private place that
Speaker 3: you're just like working on making it into like a
Speaker 3: deer paradise and you're putting all that off season time in,
Speaker 3: or if you're a hardcore public land hunter and you
Speaker 3: scout a lot and on a totally different path like
Speaker 3: that work building up to it. If you can feel
Speaker 3: good about that, it's going to be hard to believe
Speaker 3: you fail. But it's like when you just take that
Speaker 3: shortcut or you go like you sit somewhere where you're
Speaker 3: like the wind is not right, or I just like
Speaker 3: have no belief that they're going to come in here,
Speaker 3: which is you know when I think about like when
Speaker 3: I was growing up, my dad and I would hang
Speaker 3: like four or five stands, and then when you had
Speaker 3: a chance to hunt, you'd be like, well, you're going
Speaker 3: to sit the acorn stand or the crossing or what like.
Speaker 3: It was never like they should be going through here
Speaker 3: now because it's October tenth and they should be doing this.
Speaker 3: It was just like, let's just sit there and hope
Speaker 3: they walk by. That's like a failure to me, you know,
Speaker 3: and I think a lot of people do that, and
Speaker 3: I don't. I just that feeling drives me freaking nuts.
Speaker 3: I don't like it.
Speaker 2: Yep, you have that like whispering voice in the back
Speaker 2: of your mind just telling you, man, you know you
Speaker 2: shouldn't be doing this. You know you should be doing
Speaker 2: that other thing. You know you should be doing X,
Speaker 2: Y or Z. That's that's the worst if you let
Speaker 2: yourself fall into that trap of convenience or comfort or whatever,
Speaker 2: and you just know you're not doing it well when
Speaker 2: you when you think about that. I mean, there's been
Speaker 2: a few times in my life, like I can remember
Speaker 2: very specifically one time down in Oklahoma hunting this total
Speaker 2: deer desert down there in this on this public land
Speaker 2: where I couldn't find a deer. I mean, I just
Speaker 2: like I walked around for like five hours one afternoon, sweating,
Speaker 2: I had nothing going on. I finally jumped a little
Speaker 2: buck out of a patch of timber, and I'm like,
Speaker 2: I'm gonna set up here, see if he comes back.
Speaker 2: Like this is like the deer I have to work with.
Speaker 2: And I walked up to this tree and it had
Speaker 2: the deep grooves in the bark, and there were all
Speaker 2: these hornets that perfectly matched the color of the bark
Speaker 2: as I'm like throwing my first stick strap around and
Speaker 2: I'm like, oh my god, what's going on here? And
Speaker 2: I looked and they were all in there because it
Speaker 2: was like it was a cold front down there, so
Speaker 2: I think they were just hold up, but they certainly
Speaker 2: wouldn't have tolerated me climbing that tree. And I just
Speaker 2: remember thinking like this sucks so much, like I have
Speaker 2: nothing going on, and on that trip, I just like
Speaker 2: I remember that feeling of like trying so hard and
Speaker 2: having nothing, and my buddy and I just talk and like,
Speaker 2: let's just go somewhere else. Let's not because you're kind
Speaker 2: of at the point like should we just go home
Speaker 2: like it was that hopeless or should we just call
Speaker 2: an audible go somewhere else.
Speaker 3: So we did that and ended up having a great
Speaker 3: little hunt in the last couple of days. I killed
Speaker 3: a doe in a buck in like totally different place,
Speaker 3: and I think about those moments like I had another
Speaker 3: one in South Dakota one time a few years ago.
Speaker 3: I just couldn't get anything going, like I just I
Speaker 3: could not find anything to work with, and that I
Speaker 3: found one group of bucks that I thought I could
Speaker 3: maybe maybe have a chance with and they just they
Speaker 3: didn't play with me, like for whatever reason. The best
Speaker 3: setup I had for them, I had five coyotes come
Speaker 3: in at one time, which I've never had before, and
Speaker 3: it was just like another one of those times where
Speaker 3: it's like, you know, I could be home in ten hours,
Speaker 3: like what am I doing here? And just that feeling
Speaker 3: of being like, you know, if you keep going, something's
Speaker 3: probably going to fall into place and you might not
Speaker 3: kill one, but at least you'll have like an answer
Speaker 3: to this huge problem you can't seem to solve. And
Speaker 3: I ended up finding a little honey hoole thing after
Speaker 3: walking around forever and killing two deer. In like ten minutes,
Speaker 3: I kill a don a buck, And I was like,
Speaker 3: those moments are so reinforcing because there's not like in
Speaker 3: those situations, you can't go back to the house and
Speaker 3: be like I'll just come back on Halloween. You know,
Speaker 3: like it's either you do it now or you don't
Speaker 3: do it. And so you know how that is, Like
Speaker 3: you sit there and you make all these excuses and
Speaker 3: you second guess yourself and sometimes you just flame out
Speaker 3: for days and days and days and it doesn't work.
Speaker 3: But sometimes you fight through those those bad thoughts and
Speaker 3: something good happens and that is like fuel forever, Like
Speaker 3: that never goes away from you, you know what I mean,
Speaker 3: Like I was, you know, you just did that race.
Speaker 3: My buddy just did a Marria on this spring, and
Speaker 3: he was telling me and he I mean, he's he's
Speaker 3: a pretty fast runner. He had a great time, and
Speaker 3: he was he was ready, like he trained hard, and
Speaker 3: he said he hit mile twenty four and it was
Speaker 3: like he was carrying an extra person on his back,
Speaker 3: and he's like, I wanted to quit in a way
Speaker 3: that never has occurred to me before. But he's like
Speaker 3: mile twenty four, you know, like you got to power
Speaker 3: through that, and he did, and he was like, you know,
Speaker 3: he wrote rode that runners high afterwards and he you know,
Speaker 3: like he did an awesome job. But we hit those
Speaker 3: moments in hunting all the time. They're probably a little
Speaker 3: more subdued than that, like that would hit you like
Speaker 3: that would be a heavy one. But every time you
Speaker 3: kind of just fight through that and go I'm not
Speaker 3: I'm not going to listen to the voice that tells
Speaker 3: me to just give in or make the excuse to
Speaker 3: try later when it might be better, like just just
Speaker 3: fight through that stuff. It oftentimes works in your favor.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and it's amazing too, Like how and this might
Speaker 2: be unique to everyone. Maybe everyone's got their own approach,
Speaker 2: but like I need to explicitly like have self talk
Speaker 2: to talk myself through that stuff. Like maybe I'm maybe
Speaker 2: I'm a crazy person, but uh, but like, for example,
Speaker 2: speaking of races, like the race that I just did,
Speaker 2: you you the first like two thirds of the race
Speaker 2: is going up to the top of the Teetown Range,
Speaker 2: like almost six thousand feet up, just endless climbing, and
Speaker 2: then you come off the summit and there's a very
Speaker 2: long it was mostly single track trail all the way
Speaker 2: to the top. But then on the way down there's
Speaker 2: like a service road that comes down off this this
Speaker 2: peak because there's a ski resource, so there was a
Speaker 2: road up one side. So there's just a long steep,
Speaker 2: pretty fast rundown. So your quads are just getting pounded.
Speaker 2: So first you're like, oh, this is great going downhill,
Speaker 2: but then after you do that for like two miles
Speaker 2: or however long, it was like you're like, oh man,
Speaker 2: now your quads are just getting hammered. Every time, right
Speaker 2: at that moment where you start to feel like, oh geez,
Speaker 2: like my quads are getting destroyed, it stops and then
Speaker 2: it went way down and now all of a sudden,
Speaker 2: there's another uphill and you go up again. Forever it
Speaker 2: was all downhill from there, like you just thought it
Speaker 2: was all easy stand on from now, and now it's like, man,
Speaker 2: another huge climb. And I just remember, like on that
Speaker 2: huge climb. It's very cheesy, but I literally for half
Speaker 2: hour just said like, you can do this, you will
Speaker 2: do this, you can do this, you will do this.
Speaker 2: And I literally said that to myself for half an
Speaker 2: hour in my head as I just like trudged up
Speaker 2: this freaking mountain again. And and that kind of stuff works.
Speaker 2: That kind of stuff helps well.
Speaker 3: But also not only just having a you know that
Speaker 3: internal you know, monologue going on in your head, but
Speaker 3: also just the more you do stuff like that, the
Speaker 3: easier it is to do stuff like that. And I
Speaker 3: think you build that. I mean this I even kind
Speaker 3: of ties back to our EDU series. I think everybody
Speaker 3: thinks that they can hunt deer as well as everyone else,
Speaker 3: you know, I mean, I guess it's a little different
Speaker 3: for like newbies like seem to know, like, hey, I
Speaker 3: don't know what the hell's going on, Especially with dudes
Speaker 3: who've been doing it a while. It's like it's very
Speaker 3: easy to be like we're all kind of on the
Speaker 3: same level, but really, like the difference maker is almost
Speaker 3: always what's between your ears, Like you if you put
Speaker 3: a bunch of people, you know, like I've I've been
Speaker 3: talking about this a lot lately because a lot of
Speaker 3: people have been reaching out about you know, the resident
Speaker 3: non resident fighting in all these different states and these
Speaker 3: opportunities we're losing. And I'll tell you what, dude, I
Speaker 3: have people reach out often who are like I hunt
Speaker 3: X state and the public land's so busy, I can't
Speaker 3: kill deer anymore. So I do think we should cut
Speaker 3: down on the over the countertags or make it all
Speaker 3: a draw or whatever. But you don't I never hear
Speaker 3: anybody say like I've been scouting more than usual, or
Speaker 3: I've been putting in more work, or I've been trying
Speaker 3: to figure something out. It's it's almost always like what
Speaker 3: I've always done doesn't work anymore, and so there's some
Speaker 3: out external factor that needs to change. But you can
Speaker 3: get rid of those non residents, and the leasing is
Speaker 3: still going to happen, and there's still going to be
Speaker 3: more people pushed on to public land, and it's still
Speaker 3: going to be on you to figure this stuff out.
Speaker 3: And certainly you could certainly make it easier for yourself
Speaker 3: if you kicked out twenty percent of the hunters or
Speaker 3: whatever the number is. But over time it's going to
Speaker 3: normalize again, and it's going to be up to you
Speaker 3: to figure that stuff out. And the more that you're
Speaker 3: just like I just have to kind of see this
Speaker 3: through and think about this and work through these problems,
Speaker 3: the better off, you know.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, take it, take it on your own shoulders, adapt, evolve,
Speaker 2: it's always it's always a better solution, and pointing fingers
Speaker 2: of other people and bemoaning, well the situation.
Speaker 3: I mean, I think one of the most dangerous mindsets
Speaker 3: that that I see people adopt in white tail hunting,
Speaker 3: and this is like very common, is that's not possible, like, oh,
Speaker 3: you can't come here to where I hunt and kill one,
Speaker 3: they're not there, or the rifle hunters, Like I've talked
Speaker 3: about this a few times, but I will never forget
Speaker 3: when I first started hunting Nebraska public land, for white tails,
Speaker 3: which I think the first year I hunted there was
Speaker 3: like maybe twenty twelve or something, twenty eleven, and I
Speaker 3: remember like reading a forum, bow site or archery talk
Speaker 3: or something, and so many people were like, there are
Speaker 3: no big bucks on public land in Nebraska because our
Speaker 3: gun season happens during the rut and we have over
Speaker 3: the counter non resident tags and just like on down
Speaker 3: the line, and I was just like, I have very
Speaker 3: rarely encountered better hunting anywhere than I'm seeing on your
Speaker 3: public land that you guys believe isn't good enough. And
Speaker 3: you see that all over and like I do it,
Speaker 3: like we all have our you know, we're all biased
Speaker 3: towards something, but that mindset of like it's just not possible,
Speaker 3: like there's no big bucks here or they're all killed
Speaker 3: off or they all get pushed off of this land
Speaker 3: or whatever. I'm like, almost without question everything that we
Speaker 3: say in hunting where we're like you can't do that,
Speaker 3: somebody does it, you know what I mean. Like, and
Speaker 3: you may can go to Kentucky and the land between
Speaker 3: the Lakes to kill a big one if you live there,
Speaker 3: you have that opportunity too. So what's going on.
Speaker 2: Yeah, all right. One last thing on this failure side
Speaker 2: of things. Can you point back to you Can you
Speaker 2: remember and tell us about any particular failure in your
Speaker 2: past that you could that you might highlight, is like
Speaker 2: a favorite failure or as the most impactful failure, Like
Speaker 2: like when I say that, I mean a failure something
Speaker 2: that happened, some mistake you made or way you screwed
Speaker 2: up that all of a sudden changed things for you.
Speaker 3: I mean, yep, the most painful one. And I think
Speaker 3: I've talked about this on here a few times. Is
Speaker 3: before I had killed my first big deer, I'd killed,
Speaker 3: you know, a year and a half, two and a half,
Speaker 3: but I'd never killed like a one forty, you know,
Speaker 3: like a freaking good buck. I missed two the same
Speaker 3: night on like Halloween or somewhere around there in Minnesota,
Speaker 3: just total meltdown buck fever thing. And that that moment,
Speaker 3: like what I felt there after like twelve years of
Speaker 3: trying and then having two just perfect opportunities served up
Speaker 3: to me within ten minutes of each other, and me
Speaker 3: just totally shitting the bed on both of them. I
Speaker 3: was like that moment changed how I looked at a
Speaker 3: lot of stuff because it it took. It took everything
Speaker 3: that was like an external thing that I could use, right,
Speaker 3: like the other people who hunted there, or the fact
Speaker 3: that I'm in Minnesota and we don't get a lot
Speaker 3: of rut time, and all of these excuses I could
Speaker 3: have used, and I went, man, none of that mattered there.
Speaker 3: That was all on me, and I screwed it all up.
Speaker 3: And I remember, I mean when I first started hunting
Speaker 3: when I was twelve in Minnesota, and I was like,
Speaker 3: I just want to kill a deer so bad. I
Speaker 3: remember one of the times we used to hunt down
Speaker 3: in the bluffs along the river and it was, you know,
Speaker 3: beautiful country and whatever. And I went into this stand
Speaker 3: in October in the morning, heard a deer coming in.
Speaker 3: I had a little fawn, little dough fawn come into
Speaker 3: like eight yards, and I was like, you know, at
Speaker 3: that time, for me to see a deer, it was
Speaker 3: like a big deal. And that little girl came in
Speaker 3: posed up, and I was like, I'm gonna kill this
Speaker 3: fawn and it's gonna be so awesome. And I shot
Speaker 3: at that little fawn three times at like eight to
Speaker 3: twelve yards, missed her every time, and it was kind
Speaker 3: of another one of those moments where it was like, oh,
Speaker 3: I thought all that needed to happen was for that
Speaker 3: deer to get there, and then I'd have that tag filled,
Speaker 3: you know, And then you learn where you're like, nope,
Speaker 3: it's there's still so many points of failure that can
Speaker 3: happen for me, and you start to realize like, Okay,
Speaker 3: what can I do to mitigate most of this because
Speaker 3: there's gonna be wild card factors no matter what. And
Speaker 3: so those two times, and I've had I've had a
Speaker 3: lot of others, right, Like I've I've had a I
Speaker 3: had a moment turkey hunting one time. This is going
Speaker 3: to sound really stupid, but I'm a pretty patient guy,
Speaker 3: especially like bow hunting turkeys. Like I can sit all
Speaker 3: day and I believe the process. Right, it's kind of
Speaker 3: like rud hunting, Like it's not that much fun. Sometimes
Speaker 3: it's dark to dark, but you know it works, like
Speaker 3: we all know it works, so if you have the
Speaker 3: discipline to do it well. I had gone out. I
Speaker 3: was bow hunting turkeys in southeastern Minnesota, and I sat
Speaker 3: for like, you know till it was like five in
Speaker 3: the afternoon, from from sunrise on to that point, and
Speaker 3: I was gonna sit all day, and all the birds
Speaker 3: I was hunting flew down right away and just left
Speaker 3: the whole farm. I watch them go so far away,
Speaker 3: but you know, like you could call in a rando,
Speaker 3: there could be a two year old whatever. And I
Speaker 3: sat there and I like talked myself in to going
Speaker 3: to get to my truck to get a full strutter,
Speaker 3: because I'm like, I just want like I just wanted
Speaker 3: to get out of the stupid blind, Like I didn't
Speaker 3: really want the full strutter. I didn't care. I needed
Speaker 3: an excuse to get out. And I got out of
Speaker 3: that blind after sitting there for like twelve hours, and
Speaker 3: I looked up the fence row and there was a
Speaker 3: great big tom like fifty yards away walking in and
Speaker 3: he blew off. And I just remember thinking, like, you
Speaker 3: absolutely knew better, You absolutely knew better, but you talked
Speaker 3: yourself into this because you're a weak lit'tle be and
Speaker 3: you just like like those moments when when something like
Speaker 3: that happens where it's like totally in my purview and
Speaker 3: I did it to myself. That drives me crazy. Like
Speaker 3: you know how it is if you're sitting there and
Speaker 3: somebody drives a four wheeler in a last light or
Speaker 3: something like that pisss you off, but it's like that's
Speaker 3: like a part of the game and you can't do it.
Speaker 3: You can't control that god from the machine man, like,
Speaker 3: you can't do anything about it. But when it's you
Speaker 3: and you know you're talking yourself into the dumb decision
Speaker 3: drives me nuts. And so I've had one hundred million
Speaker 3: moments like that that just forced me to like not
Speaker 3: want to feel that way again.
Speaker 2: So this is kind of adjacent to that. But this
Speaker 2: does not have to be failure related. This can be
Speaker 2: something different. But I'm curious, what single change or choice
Speaker 2: have you made over the course of your deer hunting
Speaker 2: life that had the most meaningful impact on your success today.
Speaker 2: So is there some fork in the road you can
Speaker 2: point to where, like, man, once I made that changer,
Speaker 2: once I'm turned onto that path, it changed everything for you.
Speaker 2: Like what was that light switch moment?
Speaker 3: It was when I probably about it was probably like
Speaker 3: my twenty fourteen season, So I really started going after
Speaker 3: I mean, I grew up hunting public land a little bit,
Speaker 3: never did very good out there. But when I in
Speaker 3: twenty ten, when I decided I'm like, I'm gonna try
Speaker 3: hard to kill some big ones on public land. You know,
Speaker 3: I had some success, killed some deer, but I had
Speaker 3: a I think it was twenty fourteen. I had like
Speaker 3: a banger year where it was like everywhere I went,
Speaker 3: like big ones were hitting the dirt and big meal deer.
Speaker 3: I killed bear, Like just a good year. And that
Speaker 3: the variety of situations I was in or that I
Speaker 3: put myself in in the in that year and it
Speaker 3: kind of leading up to it just led me to realize,
Speaker 3: you've been looking for the wrong stuff out here, like
Speaker 3: you've been You've been looking for where like what what
Speaker 3: decoy can I buy? Or you know, if I set
Speaker 3: up here, like what kind of sentense should I put out?
Speaker 3: Or like I was looking for thing that was outside
Speaker 3: the process to fill in a gap. But when you
Speaker 3: start to go travel to new places and you're like,
Speaker 3: I have a limited amount of time. That stuff doesn't work,
Speaker 3: Like I mean I shouldn't say that, Like that stuff
Speaker 3: can work, but it is not going to carry you through.
Speaker 3: Like that is not how you fill a tag. It
Speaker 3: is just getting out there and scouting and always putting
Speaker 3: yourself in Like what you think is the best position
Speaker 3: and managing managing like your impact and your time, like
Speaker 3: knowing I have the best spot I found here, here's
Speaker 3: my my a spot, I have BCD whatever I want
Speaker 3: to hunt a right now, Like I want to go
Speaker 3: in there, but looking at the forecast and going I
Speaker 3: realistically wouldn't be able to hunt there if I was
Speaker 3: being smart until the second to last day, I'm going
Speaker 3: to be here and still knowing that walking away from
Speaker 3: that and going to be and sitting there, going to
Speaker 3: see sitting there and watching this whole thing unfold. That's
Speaker 3: probably like learning to just like trust that process and
Speaker 3: like embrace that reality instead of trying to like plug
Speaker 3: a hole somewhere in there with something I can buy
Speaker 3: or some some tactic that somebody else uses. Just just
Speaker 3: understanding for myself what it takes was a huge Like
Speaker 3: it changed the arc of all of my own I'm
Speaker 3: talking like pheasants, whitetails on private land, elk whatever. It
Speaker 3: changed everything when I realized, like most of what this
Speaker 3: is is just discipline and work. And I know people
Speaker 3: don't want to hear that, but it's it's so true
Speaker 3: to the process.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Okay, So that was a decade ish ago or more.
Speaker 2: What about the last few years, last two three years,
Speaker 2: What new belief or habit or behavior has made the
Speaker 2: biggest difference for you recently.
Speaker 3: Leaning into the fun So i' on you, man, I mean,
Speaker 3: and I kind of credit taking my kids out for
Speaker 3: helping me realize this better. But I'm to the point
Speaker 3: now where the environment that I'm going to be in
Speaker 3: appeals to me more than the potential for big bucks,
Speaker 3: the potential to not see anybody. I want. I want
Speaker 3: to be in the big woods. I want to be
Speaker 3: in those cattail slews. There's like just places I want
Speaker 3: to hunt, and I'll take the hunt that those places
Speaker 3: give me. And I've realized that as long as I
Speaker 3: make the effort to put myself in those environments that
Speaker 3: it just like speak to me for whatever reason, you know,
Speaker 3: sometimes like you hate them in September, but you love
Speaker 3: them in December or whatever. Like there's a lot of
Speaker 3: variables there. But if I feel like my schedule that
Speaker 3: I've laid out is like, man, I'm so excited to
Speaker 3: be there because I love it, you know, like western
Speaker 3: North Dakota, I'm so excited to be there because that
Speaker 3: I just love that environment. The killing a big one
Speaker 3: is sort of secondary, like filling that tag sort of
Speaker 3: feel secondary. But I also end up filling a lot
Speaker 3: of tags when I'm in places I like, and so
Speaker 3: it kind of just puts me if I hunt, If
Speaker 3: I plan for that kind of hunt where I'm like,
Speaker 3: I know, I'll love being there, even if even if
Speaker 3: the deer just kicked my ass or it's covered in people,
Speaker 3: it seems to work out pretty well, and I just
Speaker 3: enjoy it more. And so you kind of plus you
Speaker 3: can stomach the bad stuff coming in, you know, the weather,
Speaker 3: the other people.
Speaker 2: That's key.
Speaker 3: It just changes everything instead of just trying to put
Speaker 3: yourself where you're like, this is my best shot to
Speaker 3: kill a big one, because then you've you know, it's
Speaker 3: kind of like the one buck thing, like you've set
Speaker 3: yourself up where that's sort of the metric by which
Speaker 3: everything is measured, and it's not a good metric anymore.
Speaker 2: And if you lean into the fun, I think it
Speaker 2: gives you. And this is kind of a different way
Speaker 2: of saying what you just said, but if you lean
Speaker 2: into the fun, that is like a renewable resource for
Speaker 2: providing fuel that then goes back into your tank, giving
Speaker 2: you the energy to do the things you need to
Speaker 2: do to put in the work you know you need
Speaker 2: to have, to give you the mental fortitude to push
Speaker 2: through the adversity. All of that becomes easier when you
Speaker 2: have that fun of the experience fueling it, versus being
Speaker 2: out there obsessing over the one deer, or sessing over
Speaker 2: shooting a one to seventy, or obsessing what all the
Speaker 2: bad things are happening, and then just being miserable. If
Speaker 2: you're miserable out there, it's very hard to be able
Speaker 2: to suffer through the inevitable challenges.
Speaker 3: I mean, just you're so right, dude. And there's like
Speaker 3: one of their point I want to make on this.
Speaker 3: People think they know what's going to make them happy.
Speaker 3: So I'll give you two quick examples here from the
Speaker 3: fishing world. Back way back in the day when I
Speaker 3: was fishing a lot. There's a guy I fished against
Speaker 3: in a lot of tournaments. I was talking to him
Speaker 3: one time and we were down on the Mississippi River
Speaker 3: fish in this tournament, and I said, I told him,
Speaker 3: I'm like, next week, a buddy and I are going
Speaker 3: up to the Lhamadu Chain and Alexandria just to fish
Speaker 3: for fun. And he looked at me and he's like,
Speaker 3: don't you like catching big bass? And I was like, well, yeah,
Speaker 3: but I'm like I love the clear water up there,
Speaker 3: and I love the fact that I can sit fish
Speaker 3: all summer long and you just you don't catch You're
Speaker 3: not gonna catch six pounders there, but you're gonna catch
Speaker 3: a ton of fish, and it's it's just fun. And
Speaker 3: I remember thinking like, man, it's weird to me to
Speaker 3: look at it that like his way, just as much
Speaker 3: as he was like it's weird for him to be
Speaker 3: doing this, and like to kind of illustrate that point
Speaker 3: a little further, like on the lake that we go
Speaker 3: to a lot, it's dominated by walleye fishermen. We have
Speaker 3: big smallies, we have nice large mouth but we have
Speaker 3: a lot of meat fishermen up there, and I know
Speaker 3: a lot of them very well. My wife's related to
Speaker 3: half of them. I'll talk to those guys and they'll
Speaker 3: be like, yeah, I caught a twenty inch smally out
Speaker 3: on the rock bar today. It fought like crazy, jumping
Speaker 3: like crazy. It was so fun. And then they go
Speaker 3: right back to fishing for fourteen inch walleyes. On the bottom,
Speaker 3: and it's like, even though they're sitting there, going I
Speaker 3: enjoyed this more than the thing that I went out
Speaker 3: there to do. I'm going to do this thing that
Speaker 3: I go out there to do. And I think we
Speaker 3: do that with deer hunting a lot where we're like,
Speaker 3: I'm gonna go sit the food plot because that's what
Speaker 3: you're supposed to do, Like you're not going to go
Speaker 3: still hunt the public land down the road. But the
Speaker 3: more that you kind of break out of that mold
Speaker 3: and just figure out what you like, the better off
Speaker 3: you are.
Speaker 2: Yeah, what is your single most important habit, whether in
Speaker 2: daily life or more specifically within your deer hunting world.
Speaker 2: I'm guessing that they might be related.
Speaker 1: Uh.
Speaker 3: I'm just and this is going to make me sound
Speaker 3: like a prick. I'm just pretty disciplined dude. Like I've
Speaker 3: just especially when I quit drinking. I mean I always
Speaker 3: kind of was with hunting, but when I quit drinking,
Speaker 3: I started working out and just like looking at my
Speaker 3: life in a different way, just like holding myself accountable
Speaker 3: for things like if I if i'm you know today,
Speaker 3: I'm gonna run six miles, I'm going to go do that,
Speaker 3: Like I'm not gonna let myself even though it's going
Speaker 3: to be so hot, I just can't let myself not
Speaker 3: do that stuff and it and you know this is
Speaker 3: I'm I'm starting to really become like a momentum guy.
Speaker 3: Like I think about momentum a lot in life. And
Speaker 3: so you think about you've had some bad streaks out
Speaker 3: there where you know, you have a couple of bad
Speaker 3: shots in a row or whatever, and you know how
Speaker 3: that feeds, like the negative thing feeds the negative thing,
Speaker 3: and it gets worse and worse. It sort of gets exponential.
Speaker 3: And it's it's easy to fall into that when things
Speaker 3: go wrong and you put a lot of pressure on yourself.
Speaker 3: But the opposite is true too, like when you have
Speaker 3: good things going and you're like holding yourself accountable and
Speaker 3: your your momentum is going in the right way. Like
Speaker 3: just think about if your if your marriage is going
Speaker 3: really good or your job's going really good, like that's
Speaker 3: going to feed your marriage or vice versa. Or you know,
Speaker 3: like you're having a good time with your kids, you
Speaker 3: know they're crushing it at school or whatever. That just
Speaker 3: feeds a better life. And so the more you lean
Speaker 3: into that momentum and you're like, I know, even though
Speaker 3: I don't want to run at all because it's one
Speaker 3: hundred percent humidity and it sucks outside, I know what
Speaker 3: it's going to do for me, and I'm going to
Speaker 3: hold myself accountable. I'm just gonna go do that. Like
Speaker 3: white tail hunting, dude, I'm going over to Wisconsin this weekend.
Speaker 3: It's going to be miserable in the woods, but I
Speaker 3: just have a list of stuff that I have to
Speaker 3: do because I know it's gonna it's I know it's
Speaker 3: gonna make my hunting more fun and enjoyable, both with
Speaker 3: my daughters and for myself. I'd rather go fishing, you know,
Speaker 3: Like there are a lot of things I would rather do,
Speaker 3: honestly than go fight the mosquitoes and the deer flies
Speaker 3: and the heat. But I just know that it'll be
Speaker 3: worth it, and I think that that's like that's been
Speaker 3: the difference maker for me, probably more than anything.
Speaker 2: So being disciplined. You mentioned like, oh, You've always kind
Speaker 2: of been that way, But is there any way that
Speaker 2: you can build that muscle or help make yourself become
Speaker 2: more disciplined or grow in that aspect. I say this
Speaker 2: because I was thinking about that as you were saying that,
Speaker 2: and a thought came to my mind that was, like, Man,
Speaker 2: one of the best things for me that has helped
Speaker 2: me maintain a disciplined I don't know, just to build
Speaker 2: that muscle for me has been to write things down.
Speaker 2: So when I write something down, I stick to it.
Speaker 2: When I write down a goal for the day, or
Speaker 2: when I write down the schedule for the day and say,
Speaker 2: I'm going to do my run today at this time,
Speaker 2: or I'm going to do this many miles, or I'm
Speaker 2: going to make sure I check off that thing off
Speaker 2: the list. If these things are just like in my head,
Speaker 2: it's like, oh, I want to do that, it seems
Speaker 2: very easy for me to not do it, or to
Speaker 2: have some excuse or to have something come up. But
Speaker 2: for whatever reason, when I write it down, like Man,
Speaker 2: this Saturday, I'm doing this project in this project that
Speaker 2: works for me. Like that's been a tool for me
Speaker 2: that has helped me kind of build like a structure
Speaker 2: around my life that keeps me on track and doing
Speaker 2: the things that I know I need to do. Is
Speaker 2: there anything like that for you or any other idea?
Speaker 3: I mean, I write a lot of stuff down too,
Speaker 3: just to hold myself accountable. I mean, it's a dumb,
Speaker 3: little psychological trick, but it works. But I also think
Speaker 3: so like I have definitely not been disciplined my whole life,
Speaker 3: Like definitely not. But with hunting, I always went like
Speaker 3: I was always I loved it so much. I was
Speaker 3: always going to go regardless, so that there's like an
Speaker 3: appearance of discipline there, but really it was just fun
Speaker 3: for me. Mostly what changed is when I figured out, like, Okay,
Speaker 3: to actually do this to a little bit higher level,
Speaker 3: I have to do the not fun parts a lot more.
Speaker 3: You know, like you can't just go glass all summer
Speaker 3: long because that's a blast, Like you have to go
Speaker 3: hang those stands eventually, or like you got to put
Speaker 3: something else in there, right, And I think we look
Speaker 3: at hunting especially, you know, like the people listening is
Speaker 3: look at hunting and it's like that's like their thing
Speaker 3: to go do. That's fun, right, Like that's like their passion,
Speaker 3: their hobby. It's like it's outside of work, it's outside
Speaker 3: of a lot of the bs of life. But that
Speaker 3: doesn't mean it doesn't require that discipline. So when you
Speaker 3: look at life and go I have no problem going hunting,
Speaker 3: but you know, I don't hang stands or I didn't
Speaker 3: cut the shooting lanes that well, if you have something
Speaker 3: outside of hunting that's keeping you disciplined, it's no secret.
Speaker 3: I know people are sick of hearing this, but like
Speaker 3: it's no secret when you look at the Animes and
Speaker 3: the Zach Farrenbaus of the world, they're all in really
Speaker 3: good shape, you know what I mean, Like they're always
Speaker 3: they're working on themselves just as much as the hunting.
Speaker 3: They're taking something that's, to me, is way harder to
Speaker 3: be disciplined for, like going to the gym five days
Speaker 3: a week, or you know, rocking around the block or
Speaker 3: however you have to do it. That sucks way more
Speaker 3: than going in the woods hanging a stand with your buddy, right,
Speaker 3: But it feeds that. And so we look at hunting
Speaker 3: as it's just sort of like purely this enjoyable activity,
Speaker 3: but it's it's a lot of type two fun out there, man,
Speaker 3: Like you're really going I have I have to do
Speaker 3: the not real fun parts of this to have a
Speaker 3: lot of fun later or to have a lot of
Speaker 3: fun whenever. And that getting into that group's hard.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And it depends on what you want to get
Speaker 2: out of it. Right, If if all you want to
Speaker 2: get out of der Ani is just to sit out
Speaker 2: there a couple saturdays a year and just enjoy nature,
Speaker 2: then fine, that doesn't require this. But if you want to,
Speaker 2: you know, if if if your definition of success is
Speaker 2: you know, killing stuff like Zach Randy, then you have
Speaker 2: to follow a similar protocol as far as the inputs in,
Speaker 2: you know, garbage in, garbage out, and vice versa. So right,
Speaker 2: So one last question on habit's, Tony, what is an
Speaker 2: unusual habit or practice that you know that you stick
Speaker 2: to that's important to you, but the other people find absurd, crazy, stupid?
Speaker 2: What's something like that.
Speaker 3: An unusual habit I have that's related to white toil hunting.
Speaker 2: If you can't think of one's white tail related, I'll
Speaker 2: I'm sure I could learn something interesting about you that's
Speaker 2: not related.
Speaker 3: I I don't maybe this isn't unusual. I don't know.
Speaker 3: I think I think you have to look at life.
Speaker 3: I don't think you have to look at life. I
Speaker 3: think I look at life like I have to earn
Speaker 3: little rewards all the time, like I I so if
Speaker 3: I'm writing a lot, or we're doing a lot of
Speaker 3: editing with some of these shows that are coming out.
Speaker 3: You know how that is, Like you you're on the
Speaker 3: third watch of you know, third version of some you
Speaker 3: know film you made or whatever, where it's like mundane,
Speaker 3: tedious shit, and you're like, I, but I have to
Speaker 3: I have to read every word. I have to look,
Speaker 3: I have to listen, I have to watch and I
Speaker 3: I look at that kind of stuff and I go,
Speaker 3: I have to do that. But a reward for that
Speaker 3: is like I'm gonna sit down and play guitar for
Speaker 3: twenty minutes and change my mindset or you know, like
Speaker 3: I love eating junk food. I hate that, I love it,
Speaker 3: but I love it. And so I look at like
Speaker 3: if I don't if I don't work out in a day,
Speaker 3: I'm like, I don't get that reward whatever whatever it is, right,
Speaker 3: like a bowl ice cream with the kids or something
Speaker 3: like that. And I know, I mean, this isn't probably
Speaker 3: like super crazy or quirky, but I I really try
Speaker 3: to view my life that way as like I got
Speaker 3: to clean the garage or organize this or just like this,
Speaker 3: this like a little bit of clutter that's been driving
Speaker 3: me freaking crazy. I'm gonna just take care of it
Speaker 3: so I can go fish with my kids, or I
Speaker 3: can go walk out and hang a trail camera or
Speaker 3: something like, I can earn something else. And I feel
Speaker 3: like that's sort of how I look at white tail hunting.
Speaker 3: I know, Like I'll give you an example last year
Speaker 3: when I went to Oklahoma with Steve. I scouted my
Speaker 3: ass off down there for a couple days and it
Speaker 3: was just pretty rough stuff. But you know how that is,
Speaker 3: Like you check off those spots and you're looking at
Speaker 3: on X and you're like, that place suck, this pond
Speaker 3: was dry. You just have to believe that the reward
Speaker 3: is gonna come when you walk into one of those
Speaker 3: places that's just hums and you're like there's tracks everywhere,
Speaker 3: there's a fresh rub there, there's per simons on the
Speaker 3: ground or something, and then everything else becomes secondary because
Speaker 3: you earned it, you know. And it's like it's hard
Speaker 3: to do because once in a while like that, it's
Speaker 3: all stick, no carrot, you know, like there's no reward there.
Speaker 3: But when you view life like that, it tends to
Speaker 3: just sort of like find this balance and work out.
Speaker 2: So everyone talks about hard work. It's incredibly cliche, like
Speaker 2: everyone says, oh, you gotta work hard, but what does
Speaker 2: that actually look like for you? Like, how would you
Speaker 2: define hard work in the context of deer hunting? What
Speaker 2: does that actually mean for someone to work hard? To
Speaker 2: do hard work in this context?
Speaker 3: I mean, I'm sure it varies for everyone, but when
Speaker 3: you're kind of used to, like the public land thing specifically,
Speaker 3: that has made my private land setups seem way way
Speaker 3: more tolerable, you know, Like before I started doing that,
Speaker 3: we'd have a day me and my buddies or me
Speaker 3: and my dad where it's like you're going to go
Speaker 3: hang four or five stands and it's August and it's brutal, right,
Speaker 3: and that at that time feels like a ton of work.
Speaker 3: But then when you go out and do some of
Speaker 3: these other hunts where you have to do that in
Speaker 3: four days but also go find them in varying conditions
Speaker 3: and after driving ten hours and sleeping in a tent,
Speaker 3: it changes what you look at as hard work, you know.
Speaker 3: So it's like I think it's like highly individual, but
Speaker 3: you kind of just have to look at the stuff
Speaker 3: that you sort of dread and go, Okay, how can
Speaker 3: I how do I make this more manage. Well, for me,
Speaker 3: if I if I'm in my truck and I'm halfway
Speaker 3: down to Oklahoma and I'm looking at the forecast, I'm like, Okay,
Speaker 3: it's going to be eighty five degrees tomorrow by eleven
Speaker 3: o'clock in the morning. I know that's going to suck.
Speaker 3: So how do I make it easier on myself? Well,
Speaker 3: I got a cooler full of body armor, a gatorader
Speaker 3: or whatever, ice cold, and I have a plan, and
Speaker 3: I go, I'm going to walk into this spot first,
Speaker 3: because I think this pond has got a lot of potential.
Speaker 3: I'm going to walk in here. And then you start
Speaker 3: to go it's not I'm not giving myself a chance
Speaker 3: to sit there and think about how much this sucks,
Speaker 3: because I just checked this off the list and here's
Speaker 3: the next one, and one of them in this process
Speaker 3: is going to work for me, and so the hard
Speaker 3: work doesn't feel quite the same. And I think I
Speaker 3: think a lot of white tail hunters, you know, they
Speaker 3: hear this, like you mentioned this. They hear about like, oh, well,
Speaker 3: it's you know, everybody works hard, and he may's out
Speaker 3: there working hard, but they don't understand what that means
Speaker 3: for him versus themselves. Like for a lot of people,
Speaker 3: it might be get one more stand up this year,
Speaker 3: or get one mobile setup that you can use to
Speaker 3: fill in the gaps when you're kind of season long
Speaker 3: stuff starts to get burned out. It doesn't have to
Speaker 3: be like a super hardcore burn yourself right to the
Speaker 3: ground thing. It can just be like you yourself going,
Speaker 3: I'm here and I just want to be a little
Speaker 3: bit higher, like I want to do like a little
Speaker 3: bit more.
Speaker 2: It goes back to the whole race topic we were
Speaker 2: talking about earlier. How like the cool thing about like
Speaker 2: these trail races that I've been doing is they're not
Speaker 2: necessarily competing against each other. Everyone out there is not
Speaker 2: trying to beat the other person. They're more so just
Speaker 2: trying to beat themselves. Be better than I was yesterday,
Speaker 2: be better than I was last time. And there's there's
Speaker 2: something to be said about taking that approach to deer
Speaker 2: hunting as well. Right, not being overly worried about Zach
Speaker 2: or Andy or Tony, but just knowing, hey, man, this
Speaker 2: is what hard work was for me last year, and
Speaker 2: these are the outcomes. How can I take that up
Speaker 2: to the next step? This coming year, how can I
Speaker 2: work a little bit, how can I do the right
Speaker 2: thing a little bit more? And that's a useful way,
Speaker 2: I think.
Speaker 3: I think sort of a secondary component of that is
Speaker 3: I think people are too hard on themselves, Like I don't.
Speaker 3: I don't think people give themselves enough grace to just
Speaker 3: make mistakes, you know. I think I think we look
Speaker 3: at it and go, I can't go in that way
Speaker 3: because they're gonna all know I'm there, or I can't
Speaker 3: try this style or do this thing I kind of
Speaker 3: want to do just for the hell of it, because
Speaker 3: I don't think it's gonna work, or you don't have
Speaker 3: the confidence in it, man, just giving yourself the chance
Speaker 3: to go make some mistakes and being like, well I
Speaker 3: tried it, Like I tried still hunting through my best
Speaker 3: betting area and I blew a bunch of deer out
Speaker 3: and that kind of sucks. Or I had a blast
Speaker 3: doing it. But we look at it and go, we're
Speaker 3: too afraid because that big buck might get pushed out
Speaker 3: to the neighbors or something that I'm I'm not gonna try.
Speaker 3: I'm not gonna go sit on the ground on that
Speaker 3: point that he likes to walk out in I'm gonna
Speaker 3: wait for him to come by here because I have
Speaker 3: a tree stand. I get set up, I look at
Speaker 3: that stuff, and I go, if you if you're too
Speaker 3: scared to do that on your home ground, go hunt
Speaker 3: somewhere else and try some stuff. Because when you start
Speaker 3: doing those kind of things like that, you're forced to
Speaker 3: in certain situations, like if you want to be successful
Speaker 3: over the road, you have to do things that you
Speaker 3: just wouldn't do at home, you know what I mean.
Speaker 3: Like you it's just a different approach. And you start
Speaker 3: doing that and having some good encounters, and you go, Okay,
Speaker 3: I have a little bit more. I have another tool
Speaker 3: in my tool bag, and yeah, you might screw it
Speaker 3: up learning that process, but once you have that, you
Speaker 3: always have that option, you know. And it's it's not
Speaker 3: like you have to walk out there and always sit
Speaker 3: a tree stand, like you can go build a natural
Speaker 3: groundblone like try it out, or you know, like sneak
Speaker 3: into a spot that you're like, I'm probably gonna get busted.
Speaker 3: Like remember when you and I were filming down in
Speaker 3: Iowa a couple of years ago, when we were down
Speaker 3: in the bottom of that ravine and the wind was
Speaker 3: blown right over the top, and you and I just
Speaker 3: like we looked at it totally different because you were
Speaker 3: like this, it's going to swirl like crazy, and was
Speaker 3: swirling like crazy in there. But in my head, I'm like,
Speaker 3: I'd try it just because what the hell Like, sometimes
Speaker 3: you try that stuff and you kill a big one,
Speaker 3: you know. But it's I think a lot of people
Speaker 3: lock themselves in the mindset that there's like so much
Speaker 3: you can't do because you might bump a buck or
Speaker 3: you might like screw up your chances, and I think
Speaker 3: we lean way too far in that direction sometimes, and
Speaker 3: you just have to just allow yourself the chance to
Speaker 3: just have a little fun and try some stuff and
Speaker 3: understand that you'll probably screw up, but it's okay. Who
Speaker 3: cares that buck's not moving out?
Speaker 2: Yeah? Yeah. Or you might do the safe thing like
Speaker 2: I did, which is hunt on the ridges where the
Speaker 2: wind shouldn't swirl, and then one hundred and fifty inch
Speaker 2: eight pointer does come into shooting range, and then you
Speaker 2: still screw it up and miss them.
Speaker 3: So but there's a lot of ways that can break
Speaker 3: bad out there, buddy.
Speaker 2: Man.
Speaker 1: That's the truth.
Speaker 2: Learned that the hard way time. Too many times so
Speaker 2: along those lines then kind of the the flip side,
Speaker 2: or not the flip side, but the cousin of hard
Speaker 2: work when it comes to intangibles within the deer hunting world,
Speaker 2: I think is mental toughness. It's another thing that it's
Speaker 2: it's a word of cliche that gets thrown around a lot,
Speaker 2: But I'd be interested in your perspective on that. So
Speaker 2: how would you define mental toughness? How does that factor
Speaker 2: into your deer hunting success? What does that look like?
Speaker 3: I think I don't think there's I don't know how
Speaker 3: to describe this. I wouldn't say like, I wouldn't classify,
Speaker 3: classify myself as like super mentally tough, like I'm a
Speaker 3: head case dude, like I can I can go a
Speaker 3: lot of ways that aren't good real fast. I just think, huh.
Speaker 2: I said, I'll vow for this. I've heard I've heard
Speaker 2: you talk at long stretches.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm freaking head case man. Uh. I don't I
Speaker 3: think that being mentally tough is a concept like being happy.
Speaker 3: I think it's a moving target. I think you might
Speaker 3: be super mentally tough with your job, but maybe not
Speaker 3: with your kids when they're being shitheads and you're losing
Speaker 3: your patience, you know, or some other situation. And so
Speaker 3: I think again and like happiness, right, like, well, if
Speaker 3: I only had this amount of money or income, i'd
Speaker 3: be happy. Or if I was skinny and had us
Speaker 3: expect like I would, I would be happy. And it's like, no,
Speaker 3: you wouldn't. Like there's a reason all of these rock
Speaker 3: stars keep killing themselves, Like there's a reason that you see,
Speaker 3: you know, movie stars get caught banging the nanny, Like
Speaker 3: there's a reason people they're they're not happy. They're still
Speaker 3: looking for something, you know. So I think I think
Speaker 3: mental toughness is like is one of those things where
Speaker 3: it's like, okay, are you happy with the decisions you're
Speaker 3: making overall? Like when this situation came to you, are
Speaker 3: you happy with how you handle it or not? And
Speaker 3: if it's like you can start to get to the
Speaker 3: point where you're like that one doesn't bother me. My
Speaker 3: reaction there like or the way that we work through that,
Speaker 3: that feels pretty good, Like you're on the right path.
Speaker 3: It's kind of like with the happiness thing. If you're
Speaker 3: like I am not happy with myself because I'm out
Speaker 3: of shape and whatever, it's like you might hate going
Speaker 3: to do that first five k run, you'll be a
Speaker 3: happier person for a certain amount of time afterwards, and
Speaker 3: you will look and go there is a key to
Speaker 3: leveling up, like being a little better than I was
Speaker 3: before this. And so I don't know, I don't know
Speaker 3: how to describe it. I don't know how to address
Speaker 3: mental toughness. I guess Mark, Well, So.
Speaker 2: It's interesting, like with something like a five k or
Speaker 2: a race or run, there's a very clear way to
Speaker 2: build those muscles figuratively and literally, right, like go exercise more,
Speaker 2: go train, go do the thing, and you'll get better
Speaker 2: at that. But when it comes to dealing with your
Speaker 2: mental muscle, your brain, the demons in your head, I
Speaker 2: think you're an interesting case study for this, Tony, because
Speaker 2: like you naturally, like you, your baselinees like I'm a
Speaker 2: head case. You worry, you overthink you, you know, have
Speaker 2: those demons whatever, right, but you've you've found a way
Speaker 2: to harness that. You've found some kind of way to
Speaker 2: either quiet those voices or reason with those voices, or
Speaker 2: or temper that or redirect that energy. And that I
Speaker 2: think is encouraging for a lot of people because I
Speaker 2: think a lot of people just think they're stuck with
Speaker 2: whatever's going on here and that can't change. But I
Speaker 2: think you are an example. I think there's many other
Speaker 2: examples of people that have been able to exercise that
Speaker 2: muscle or point that energy in a different direction. And
Speaker 2: I know you say you don't really know how you
Speaker 2: did it, but I gotta believe there's been something or
Speaker 2: some things that have helped you deal with the mental
Speaker 2: side of things. I mean, there's there's the constant second
Speaker 2: guessing that we have as decision makings and hunting. There's
Speaker 2: the dealing with adversity when we're out there. There's the
Speaker 2: dealing with the man, this sucks moments or man I
Speaker 2: screw that up moments, or the oh i'm tired moments.
Speaker 2: Can you point to any things that have changed or
Speaker 2: worked for you to help do that?
Speaker 3: It's honestly, it's not living outside of yourself. It's not
Speaker 3: thinking about what other people are capable of or what
Speaker 3: other people are doing. And I say that with like
Speaker 3: an asterisk, right, because I have some friends who are
Speaker 3: you know, like hardcore trail run Like I have buddies
Speaker 3: who are like inspiring to me in different ways, like
Speaker 3: I have people in my life I look at and
Speaker 3: I go, man, that dude's bad ass for this reason,
Speaker 3: and that that like motivates me to try to be better.
Speaker 3: But when you look at you know how unhappy people
Speaker 3: seem to be lately, and you know a lot of
Speaker 3: people struggle with anxiety and depression and a lot of
Speaker 3: different stuff, addiction, whatever. Those are all your problem, right,
Speaker 3: Like you can make them your wife's problem or your
Speaker 3: family's problem or whatever. But but the person who fixes
Speaker 3: those or who not necessarily even fixes them, but addresses
Speaker 3: them and tries to mitigate the negativity around them, that's
Speaker 3: just on you. So the more you like, and it
Speaker 3: takes a while, especially for guys like you, got to
Speaker 3: grow up. You got to look past that ego a
Speaker 3: little bit and be like, man, this, there's nobody else
Speaker 3: who's gonna fix this. You can go pay two hundred
Speaker 3: bucks an hour and sit on the couch and spill
Speaker 3: your life secrets and that helps, and it's great. You know,
Speaker 3: you can go get on some meds. Great, but really,
Speaker 3: like you have to look at this and go, how
Speaker 3: do how do I do this for myself? And so
Speaker 3: you know you you mentioned this when you hear people.
Speaker 3: Let's just use Andy May for an example. You know,
Speaker 3: Andy comes up on here all the time, and he's
Speaker 3: the best white tail hunter out there. Andy has not
Speaker 3: lived an easy life. I think people look at Andy
Speaker 3: and they go, the dude just has it made. But
Speaker 3: when you spend time with Andy and you get to
Speaker 3: know him as a friend, you're like, man, And this
Speaker 3: happens with so many people, Like outwardly, we see this
Speaker 3: scissor reel of just like everybody's life so bad ass,
Speaker 3: and everybody makes so much money and that guy's got
Speaker 3: a new boat and blah blah, his wife's hot whatever. Yeah,
Speaker 3: I guess right, most people are struggling, and there are
Speaker 3: things outside of your like your agency that you know,
Speaker 3: your boss or whatever like there there you might be
Speaker 3: in situations that suck, right, Like, there are things that
Speaker 3: there are people who can influence you in a horrible way,
Speaker 3: for sure, But a lot of what we deal with
Speaker 3: there's only like it's just our responsibility. And so you
Speaker 3: see this. You know, we talked about this earlier with
Speaker 3: the white tail thing, like it's not my fault that
Speaker 3: the gun hunters kill all the the big bucks or
Speaker 3: it's not my fault that the DNR has the gun
Speaker 3: season open this time when I want to bowhunt the
Speaker 3: rut or the neighboring farmer has an awesome food plot
Speaker 3: and he brings in all the deer and I don't
Speaker 3: have any left, and like, no, it's up to you
Speaker 3: to figure it out, Like you can't change that shit,
Speaker 3: you know.
Speaker 2: And that's been like the very maybe one of the
Speaker 2: very most, if not the very most important realizations for me.
Speaker 2: And this is not a new realization. This is like
Speaker 2: for thousands of years people have been talking about this,
Speaker 2: but this stoic principle, like one of the core things
Speaker 2: in life is to learn how to identify what's in
Speaker 2: your control and what's not, and then be able to
Speaker 2: own those things that are within your control and focus
Speaker 2: your energy and effort there while releasing and accepting those
Speaker 2: things that are not. Because any energy diverted to bitch
Speaker 2: about being a victim, to complaining about worrying about what
Speaker 2: other people control is energy taken away from the things
Speaker 2: that you actually can influence. And that realization and being
Speaker 2: able to separate those two things and clear yourself of
Speaker 2: that stuff that's out of your reach and out of
Speaker 2: your control is freeing. It is empowering and it is
Speaker 2: one of the best things I've ever incorporated into my life.
Speaker 2: And I think it's a huge part of mental toughness
Speaker 2: is just learn, Like when you're out there on November
Speaker 2: tenth and even hunting for eleven straight days and it
Speaker 2: sucked and everything's going wrong, and you can sit there
Speaker 2: and point to all the reasons why this sucks or
Speaker 2: all the things that have gone wrong. But if you
Speaker 2: can just separate these says, Okay, man, I can't control
Speaker 2: what the deer do. I can't control what the neighbor did.
Speaker 2: I can't control the weather. So why am I sitting
Speaker 2: here ruminating on those things? Why am I sitting here
Speaker 2: worrying about things? Why am I sitting here, you know,
Speaker 2: crying myself to sleep because of these things? No, just
Speaker 2: think about what can I do? What can I do
Speaker 2: to change the situation or to embrace the situation, or
Speaker 2: how can I make this more fun? How can I
Speaker 2: make this different? And that is.
Speaker 3: That can change everything. Well, and you know what's a
Speaker 3: great example of that that will probably tick some people
Speaker 3: off in the hunting space is like the wolf situation,
Speaker 3: Like I hear, you know, we recently started getting way
Speaker 3: more trail camera pictures of wolves than I ever have
Speaker 3: in the past where I hunt, and one of my
Speaker 3: buddies is kind of twisted up over it, like, oh
Speaker 3: my god, they're going to kill all the deer. You know,
Speaker 3: you've heard this, We've heard this, and wolves, without question
Speaker 3: have an impact on deer, no question. But in this
Speaker 3: particular situation, my buddy's like, he wants to hunt his
Speaker 3: land right there, and this is a place with tons
Speaker 3: of public land, and there's kind of like different pockets
Speaker 3: where you see a lot of deer in some places
Speaker 3: where you don't see very many. And I'm like, you know,
Speaker 3: it sucks that we have more wolves now, but we're
Speaker 3: also in a beautiful place where we have tens of
Speaker 3: thousands of acres to hunt. And you go over there,
Speaker 3: and let's say you're going trout fishing, like we brook
Speaker 3: troutfish over there. A lot totally unrelated to deer hunting, really,
Speaker 3: other than these streams run through a lot of the
Speaker 3: public land, and a lot of times when I'm driving
Speaker 3: over there, I'll see a horse hayfield that has a
Speaker 3: bachelor group of you know, all different age classes. Good deer,
Speaker 3: good really goodyear especially for over there, and I go, man,
Speaker 3: there's still like a great opportunity here. So there is
Speaker 3: this idea that the wolves are there and they're going
Speaker 3: to screw everything up, but you're literally looking at it
Speaker 3: not happening right now, you know what I mean. So
Speaker 3: it's like you're dwelling on something that hasn't happened yet,
Speaker 3: and it sure it could happen, like a whole pack
Speaker 3: of them could move in and things could get pretty rough.
Speaker 3: Then you get in your truck and you drive fifteen
Speaker 3: minutes away and you hunt public land somewhere where that
Speaker 3: you know what I mean. Like, we always have an
Speaker 3: option to sort of not just pontificate on this like
Speaker 3: horrible negativity and be like, well, this is going to
Speaker 3: end it for me. And that's that's a thing that
Speaker 3: I have struggled with a lot.
Speaker 2: Man.
Speaker 3: I see the negative in everything, and it's very easy
Speaker 3: for me to sort of like compulsively obsess on it.
Speaker 3: But we were pretty freaking lucky, dude, Like, can you
Speaker 3: start to realize that as you get older and you're like, man, okay,
Speaker 3: so maybe maybe they screwed up the hunt right where
Speaker 3: I kind of wanted to have my easy hunt this year.
Speaker 3: Are you totally out of the game? Probably not, So
Speaker 3: what's next? Like, what do you do, Dick? You have
Speaker 3: a backup spot? So if the wolves show up here
Speaker 3: and it's you know, you're not getting a trail camera
Speaker 3: picture for three weeks of a deer because they went
Speaker 3: underground or they moved two miles away. Instead of being like, well,
Speaker 3: this sucks and now I can't hunt, can you just
Speaker 3: do something else? You know, like can you go follow
Speaker 3: the dogs around for some grouse and that in that
Speaker 3: timber company land and then maybe you run across a
Speaker 3: big community scrape that you should return to or something
Speaker 3: like what can you do to mitigate that because you
Speaker 3: can't get rid of those wolves?
Speaker 2: Yeah? That I think that. I think that's a useful example.
Speaker 2: And I was going to ask you about two different
Speaker 2: examples about this mental side of things, one of which
Speaker 2: was what do you do when you're stumped when things
Speaker 2: are going wrong? YadA, YadA, YadA. I think you spoke
Speaker 2: to some of the things that you think about and
Speaker 2: do to deal with that. I do still want to
Speaker 2: ask you about one other one of these, which is
Speaker 2: the decision making process. So when you are deciding where
Speaker 2: to hunt, Let's say it's the you know you're going
Speaker 2: to sleep and you're think about we're gonna hut the
Speaker 2: next morning, or it's the drive to wherever you're gonna
Speaker 2: hunt the next morning, or the drive out in the
Speaker 2: afternoon to go hunt in Afternoon's about whatever it is
Speaker 2: when you're trying to decide where do I hunt next?
Speaker 2: Can you talk me through that dialogue? Can you walk
Speaker 2: me through your decision making process? You know, I'm less
Speaker 2: interested in like, oh, I want to hunt a rub
Speaker 2: or I want to hunt a food source, because it's
Speaker 2: this I'm more interested in, like all the whys and
Speaker 2: like what are all the variables you consider? How do
Speaker 2: you weigh these differ from things? What does that look
Speaker 2: like for you?
Speaker 3: I guess it kind of depends what I'm I'm working with.
Speaker 3: My decisions are made based on largely based on like
Speaker 3: the block of time I'm working with. So if I
Speaker 3: have one day, you know, for whatever reason, I might
Speaker 3: bond's eye in somewhere and take a way bigger risk.
Speaker 3: But if usually in my life I don't because I
Speaker 3: almost always have to travel to hunt, I don't. I
Speaker 3: just don't have much around my house to hunt, And
Speaker 3: so for me specifically, I'm I'm looking at like probably
Speaker 3: two to four days at a time, and so for me,
Speaker 3: it's like, how do I manage every sit in every
Speaker 3: potential scouting session to do things the way I need to?
Speaker 3: And so for my decision making process, I've really learned
Speaker 3: I need backups to my backups that I believe in
Speaker 3: to some extent, right like where I'm like, I probably
Speaker 3: won't kill a big one here, but I'll probably see
Speaker 3: some deer or maybe I'll get clued into something, or
Speaker 3: who knows, maybe something will come in. But as long
Speaker 3: as I'm like working that plan and going, I believe
Speaker 3: I have these three spots to work with, this is
Speaker 3: the best one, second, best, third best. These are the
Speaker 3: conditions today, tomorrow, the next day. Here's how I'm going
Speaker 3: to play this out, and I go, if this doesn't work,
Speaker 3: then I'm going to back off and try this. And
Speaker 3: I love I love feeling like I have that framework
Speaker 3: that's built through scouting, even if it's just E scouting.
Speaker 3: Sometimes I'm just going, I believe this plan will put
Speaker 3: me on there somewhere. So my decision making process is
Speaker 3: really like how do I make the most of however
Speaker 3: much time I have, That's what factors in more than anything.
Speaker 2: Interesting. I want to take a little bit of a
Speaker 2: hard pivot here and shift back towards something we spend
Speaker 2: a lot of time on the front end on. But this,
Speaker 2: this is back to kind of struggles challenges, and I'm curious.
Speaker 2: You know, we've talked over the years about plenty of
Speaker 2: things You've screwed up on myself too, But today, in
Speaker 2: twenty twenty four, heading into the twenty twenty four deer
Speaker 2: hunting season, what would you say is the area that
Speaker 2: you feel like you are currently struggling with the most,
Speaker 2: and how have you tried to mitigate that, deal with that,
Speaker 2: get better at that handle that.
Speaker 3: I would say the thing that I struggle with the
Speaker 3: most is just the fact that I don't get I
Speaker 3: feel like I'm always behind the eight ball a little
Speaker 3: bit on scouting. Like I feel like I don't get
Speaker 3: enough time for any one of the places I hunt,
Speaker 3: and so I always feel like I've just put in
Speaker 3: just the way my life is structured right now, I
Speaker 3: feel like I just don't have the time I need
Speaker 3: to like really tie a bow on any one of
Speaker 3: my spots. Like I'm always kind of like this will
Speaker 3: be good enough, this will get me somewhere, but just
Speaker 3: not not being like I have worked this farm or
Speaker 3: this chunk of public to like where I'm like, this
Speaker 3: is I've got it. And maybe that's like a thing,
Speaker 3: you know, because I've been there in the past where
Speaker 3: I'm like, this is gonna happen, and then it just doesn't,
Speaker 3: and you're like, Okay, well, so maybe maybe it's actually
Speaker 3: a good thing for me to be at this spot
Speaker 3: because I have been there where I'm like, for for sure,
Speaker 3: I've got four days on the opener on this private
Speaker 3: place in Minnesota, like I'm going to fill this tag
Speaker 3: and then you don't. So sometimes it doesn't work out.
Speaker 3: But I think that, like the thing that I struggle
Speaker 3: with the most is just that like I feel like
Speaker 3: and I don't know if that'll happen till I get
Speaker 3: out of this job or what, or get out of
Speaker 3: the industry, but I feel like I'm always just like
Speaker 3: a little bit like there's more I could do and
Speaker 3: I'm not doing it.
Speaker 2: So then how how are you accounting for that? Like,
Speaker 2: how do you when you have something that that you recognize, like, man,
Speaker 2: here's a problem, here's a struggle now what.
Speaker 3: I just try to make sure that I can feel
Speaker 3: good enough about it, like I try to be like it.
Speaker 3: And so a lot of times it's e scouting for
Speaker 3: me or it's like when I get that day or
Speaker 3: two to scout, I am burning myself right to the
Speaker 3: ground because I'm going to put as much in as
Speaker 3: I can there. And I tell you, this is something
Speaker 3: that I think maybe maybe drives me the most nuts
Speaker 3: about a lot of those people who reach out about
Speaker 3: like the non resident resident thing is I'm like, man,
Speaker 3: if you have a home field advantage, like if you
Speaker 3: live close to where you're hunting, like you have such
Speaker 3: an advantage. And I think I think we look we
Speaker 3: kind of sort of focus on well, there's lots of
Speaker 3: people at the trailhead or there's you know, like I
Speaker 3: found four stands in here, and it's like, yeah, you're
Speaker 3: you're looking at the negative side of this stuff, But
Speaker 3: are you are you trying to figure out where you
Speaker 3: have these advantages? You know? Like I've talked about this.
Speaker 3: A buddy of mine who I out count with from
Speaker 3: his house, he can see two over the counter units
Speaker 3: in Colorado, they're right there. And he's a really good hunter,
Speaker 3: like he's really good. He's a good elk hunter. He
Speaker 3: almost always kills bulls on public land multiple states, knows
Speaker 3: a shit, But when you talk to him, he's gonna
Speaker 3: bitch about the non residence and I'm always like, ouch,
Speaker 3: like that's me. But I'm like, even this guy who's
Speaker 3: like a very disciplined like he's he's doing just fine,
Speaker 3: but when you talk to him, he's like focusing on
Speaker 3: the negatives of lots of other people being there and
Speaker 3: lots of people in the back country, despite the fact
Speaker 3: that he goes out and kills usually a really good
Speaker 3: bowl every year, let alone sometimes a raghorn whatever. And
Speaker 3: I'm like, your success is so consistent and so impressive,
Speaker 3: But when you like in your head you're looking at
Speaker 3: the negative side of things, It's just wild how we're
Speaker 3: wired for that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this might be related to what we're talking about here.
Speaker 2: If you were to pinpoint one. We've talked a lot
Speaker 2: about some mindsets, habits, routines, ways to look at the world.
Speaker 2: Is there one thing like that, one routine, one habit,
Speaker 2: mindset trait that you see as consistent among all the
Speaker 2: best deer hunters you know. Is there one thing that's
Speaker 2: always true, because I know there's a lot of different things,
Speaker 2: right You and I have talked to a lot of
Speaker 2: different successful deer hunters, and many of them do things
Speaker 2: in wildly different ways. But there are some things that
Speaker 2: are always true. What would you think?
Speaker 3: I think one of the biggest gaps between some of
Speaker 3: the best hunters out there, and by that I mean
Speaker 3: the people who can go anywhere and get it done,
Speaker 3: not like a single property expert or whatever. I think
Speaker 3: the biggest gap between those guys or those folks and
Speaker 3: most hunters is those guys fundamentally understand how to hunt
Speaker 3: deer first. And I think a lot of people look
Speaker 3: at it and they go, I'm hunting a certain age
Speaker 3: class of buck, right, Like if I want to kill those,
Speaker 3: I'll go kill those later or whatever. They usually don't.
Speaker 3: But I think the people who are the best at this,
Speaker 3: they have a fundamental understanding of how to find and
Speaker 3: hunt all deer first, and then they can hone that down.
Speaker 3: And I'll tell you, dude, like, one of the things
Speaker 3: that I think has opened up my world so much
Speaker 3: more and really help me hunt is I give myself
Speaker 3: permission a lot of times to just hunt deer. Sometimes
Speaker 3: I do it at home. Sometimes I do it on
Speaker 3: the road a lot, but I think we have this
Speaker 3: sort of tunnel with mature bucks or whatever age class
Speaker 3: we want to get to, and we jump there pretty early,
Speaker 3: and maybe we can do that on Grandma's farm pretty
Speaker 3: well because we have the time. But then you bring
Speaker 3: that to your first over the road trip and you
Speaker 3: struggle bad, or you bring that kind of mindset on
Speaker 3: an el khunt or whatever and you struggle bad. I
Speaker 3: think you have to understand that there's a lot of
Speaker 3: situations where it's like, even if it's the first two
Speaker 3: days of your hunt, you have to figure out how
Speaker 3: to hunt deer first and find them. And this becomes
Speaker 3: something like when you go and you've done this, when
Speaker 3: you go to the Big Woods and you're used to
Speaker 3: a place with a pretty high deer density, you don't
Speaker 3: have a choice. You're like, I have to just like
Speaker 3: find some level of concentration of deer first and hunt them.
Speaker 3: But then you take somebody who's like born and raised
Speaker 3: in Iowa. They take it for granted that they're around
Speaker 3: deer all the time, but they might not really learn
Speaker 3: how to figure out deer beyond sitting like a destination
Speaker 3: food source or something kind of easy that that really
Speaker 3: helps you learn those animals. And so I think that's like,
Speaker 3: I think that's like a super important thing that a
Speaker 3: lot of people miss.
Speaker 2: What is a commonly held piece of deer hunting dogma
Speaker 2: that you think is actually false?
Speaker 3: I think the worst thing we do to ourselves is
Speaker 3: we have we subscribe to so many ideas that keep
Speaker 3: us out of the woods. I think the and I
Speaker 3: and I've talked about that a lot, with the heat
Speaker 3: and the you know, I don't know, wind, whatever you name,
Speaker 3: name your condition. I think that the worst thing we
Speaker 3: do to ourselves is we have so many built in
Speaker 3: excuses to not go hunting. And that's it that you know, Oh,
Speaker 3: it's the Lowell, it's whatever, dude. I just think that
Speaker 3: people set themselves back so much with that mindset of
Speaker 3: being like, well, if Marjory doesn't go in until November fifth, here,
Speaker 3: I probably should neither. It's like, man, you're probably not
Speaker 3: hunting Mark Jury's stuff, right, Like, it's probably not yeah,
Speaker 3: commensurate to like you. And the more that you just
Speaker 3: go out and figure out that that stuff's kind of
Speaker 3: bs like you can find dear anywhere, it'll force you
Speaker 3: to do something different. You can't just go ride out
Speaker 3: a funnel all day when it's October fifth, right, Or
Speaker 3: you can't just go sit, you know, downwind of a
Speaker 3: betting area when it's September fifteenth, Like, you have to
Speaker 3: figure out how to make that stuff work and go
Speaker 3: as much as possible instead of being like, here's my
Speaker 3: excuse to not hunt, and I'm being a good hunter
Speaker 3: by not hunting.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, all right. Three final rapid fire kind of
Speaker 2: questions here. Two of them are are pretty different than
Speaker 2: the rest, but really quickly want to look into your
Speaker 2: perspective on gear. It's just a quick touch on gear here.
Speaker 2: What purchase of one hundred or less has been the
Speaker 2: most positively impactful to your hunting success or enjoyment? Best
Speaker 2: hundred bucks or less you've spent on hunting.
Speaker 3: Books or less. Hmmm, that's a pretty good question. Everything
Speaker 3: we have is a freaking expensive now. Yeah, man, I'm
Speaker 3: trying to think of a category that I take out
Speaker 3: their thermocel I would probably say a Thermoicell unit not
Speaker 3: only for hunting early season, but scouting like glassing. That
Speaker 3: is a really good product. That's I don't know, I
Speaker 3: can't remember what they call it forty bucks or something
Speaker 3: thirty bucks now. But yeah, man, game changer for a
Speaker 3: lot of situations.
Speaker 2: Yeah, keeps you out there. Uh, Okay, you've got top
Speaker 2: tier Camo, top tier optics, top tier bow boots, stand saddles,
Speaker 2: you got the best of the best, Tony. If you
Speaker 2: had to give it all up and have it replaced
Speaker 2: with entry level Walmart versions of all of that stuff,
Speaker 2: except for one category, you could keep one of your
Speaker 2: top tier, high end things. It could be your clothing,
Speaker 2: your bow, whatever, but just one of those you get
Speaker 2: to keep that high dollar thing. A different way of
Speaker 2: looking at this could be like I'm gonna let you
Speaker 2: spend a lot of money on one thing. What would
Speaker 2: be that one thing?
Speaker 3: Yeah? Time on stand man. I mean I think I
Speaker 3: could get away. I mean I know I could get
Speaker 3: away with an old bow. Uh you know, it wouldn't
Speaker 3: be that much fun to go back to a bunch
Speaker 3: of steel sticks and heavy stands and stuff. Well, you
Speaker 3: could do it, right, you could do it. But not
Speaker 3: being comfortable out there is just not an option. And
Speaker 3: so I think I think it wouldn't even really be
Speaker 3: a question for me. I think it would be like
Speaker 3: high end close just for what they they the sheer
Speaker 3: amount of hours extra hours they allow me to spend
Speaker 3: out there where the deer are.
Speaker 2: Yep, all right. Imagine you are given the opportunity to
Speaker 2: place a billboard on the side of the highway next
Speaker 2: to a Cabela's or a Brass Pro shops, some superstore
Speaker 2: that every hunter and angler, every hunter, every hunter is
Speaker 2: going to come driving by there and see this billboard.
Speaker 2: You could to put a message on that billboard. If
Speaker 2: you were to put something on that billboard for every
Speaker 2: white tailed deer hunter to see, that would distill, you know,
Speaker 2: your best deer hunting advice or philosophy or message that
Speaker 2: you want to leave folks with. If if this is
Speaker 2: your last chance to say something to that audience, our audience,
Speaker 2: what would you put on that billboard.
Speaker 3: I think the message that would probably be the most
Speaker 3: like resonate the most would be that patience kills deer.
Speaker 3: Like you could you could say discipline. I think that
Speaker 3: I think that that concept is a little bit harder
Speaker 3: for like a broad subset of people to grasp because
Speaker 3: it could mean different things. I think patience is universal,
Speaker 3: Like I think a lot of hunters are just not
Speaker 3: patient enough and you know, you think about how often
Speaker 3: when you sit an extra hour, or you go out
Speaker 3: an extra two hours early, or you do the all
Speaker 3: days sits like how often just being like I'm not
Speaker 3: leaving yet, or I'm not going to give myself a
Speaker 3: chance to leave. I'm just like I'm going to just
Speaker 3: wait them out because I did, I did the work right,
Speaker 3: like I found the spot, I found the train trap whatever.
Speaker 3: Then it's just a matter of like being patient. So
Speaker 3: I think I would put like patience kills deer or
Speaker 3: big bucks like whatever.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I love it all right, man, you did it.
Speaker 2: You made it through. I appreciate you answering those questions,
Speaker 2: talking to you everybody.
Speaker 3: And I appreciate you begrudgingly admitting that I am a
Speaker 3: white tail master.
Speaker 2: Yep, enjoy it. Enjoy it. While last I will. I
Speaker 2: will return to my denigrating habits in the future, but
Speaker 2: for today, Tony, you can wallow in the glory of
Speaker 2: me admitting that I respect and admire you.
Speaker 3: So I appreciate that. Hey, are you gonna grow that
Speaker 3: mustache back? Or what's going on here? Man?
Speaker 2: I don't know, TBD do.
Speaker 3: Do you get carted again? Like when you head into
Speaker 3: the liquor store.
Speaker 2: Now I was getting carted even with the mustache.
Speaker 3: I guess I could believe that.
Speaker 2: I think I'll be I'll be getting the baby face
Speaker 2: problems till I'm problem.
Speaker 3: What how much time do you think you saved running
Speaker 3: that race by just having a little bit less drag
Speaker 3: on your face?
Speaker 2: Yeah, the air of dynamics save me at least five
Speaker 2: to ten minutes.
Speaker 3: There you go.
Speaker 2: Man, It's all worth it, buddy, all worth it, all
Speaker 2: right man. Well, thank you for taking the time to
Speaker 2: do this. Thank you everyone for tuning in. We appreciate
Speaker 2: you being here. We appreciate you being a part of
Speaker 2: this community. I hope that this series has been helpful,
Speaker 2: giving you some different ways of looking at things, some
Speaker 2: different views, and a different insight into how some of
Speaker 2: these best deer hunters do what they do. It's not
Speaker 2: happening by accident, that's for sure, and hopefully you've learned
Speaker 2: something along the way. So thank you, and until next time,
Speaker 2: stay Wired to hun.