Speaker 1: Welcome to the Wired to Hunt podcast, your guide to
Speaker 1: the White Tail Woods, presented by First Light, creating proven
Speaker 1: versatile hunting apparel for the stand, saddle or blind. First
Speaker 1: Light Go Farther, Stay Longer, and now your host, Mark Kenyon.
Speaker 2: Welcome to the Wired to Hunt podcast. This week on
Speaker 2: the show, I'm joined by my right hand man, Tony
Speaker 2: Peterson to discuss his biggest wins, misses and mistakes, lessons learned,
Speaker 2: and book recommendations from the twenty twenty three season. All right,
Speaker 2: welcome back to the Wired to Hunt podcast, brought to
Speaker 2: you by First Light and their Camo for Conservation initiative,
Speaker 2: which I've always been a big fan of because what
Speaker 2: it does it sends a portion of all sales of
Speaker 2: First Light's whitetail Camo gear to the National Deer Association.
Speaker 2: And I've always been a big fan of the National
Speaker 2: Deer Association. But I have some news related to the NDA. Tony,
Speaker 2: I'm now, I guess extra biased towards us helping the
Speaker 2: NDA because I am now on the board of directors
Speaker 2: for the National Deer Association.
Speaker 3: Nice.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so hopefully going to be able to do some
Speaker 2: more good stuff for the NDA. Between First lights, donations,
Speaker 2: and hopefully I can offer an idea two and we'll
Speaker 2: keep on keeping on when it comes to making sure
Speaker 2: the white tails and white tail hunt's good in this country.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 2: That's cool man, Yeah, so that's exciting news. In other news,
Speaker 2: last week, Tony, I did something that I don't do often,
Speaker 2: which is a solo podcast, and you do it every
Speaker 2: week on Foundations, But I did a solo one last
Speaker 2: week in which I just went through the nerdy thing
Speaker 2: that I do and my wife do here at home
Speaker 2: for our day to day life, which is every year
Speaker 2: we do this annual review where we talked through kind
Speaker 2: of all of our highlights from the last year, any
Speaker 2: possible low lights. We kind of review our goals from
Speaker 2: the last year and then start planning for twenty four,
Speaker 2: planning for the next year. So we talked through, you know,
Speaker 2: different goals, different ideas, trips, all that kind of stuff.
Speaker 2: So I did that last week on the show and
Speaker 2: kind of talk through how I do that, why I
Speaker 2: do that, and specifically how you could do that for
Speaker 2: your hunting season. And since you left me all by
Speaker 2: myself last week and didn't have to go through that process,
Speaker 2: I thought this week I should force you to do
Speaker 2: that a little bit today with me. Are you game
Speaker 2: for that?
Speaker 3: So hold on, I'm being vilified for you going rogue.
Speaker 3: You can get a hold of me multiple ways, and
Speaker 3: you didn't try to get me on there. You decided
Speaker 3: you're just it's your show, You're gonna do it. And
Speaker 3: now I'm at fault somehow.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so now you really are sounding like my wife?
Speaker 3: Yeah, well it felt like we got married there. I
Speaker 3: was like, Wow, that was a weird shot to take
Speaker 3: at me, Mark.
Speaker 2: So, regardless of that very legitimate feedback, are you game
Speaker 2: for the idea?
Speaker 3: Sure? Man?
Speaker 2: Okay, first off, though, good, good Christmas break, a holiday vacation,
Speaker 2: all that stuff.
Speaker 3: It was good. I've been you know, I talked to
Speaker 3: a bunch of my random buddies and it feels like
Speaker 3: three fold days of holiday stuff in a row is
Speaker 3: a lot. Oh yeah. Like I had a conversation with
Speaker 3: my wife last night where most of the Christmas stuff's
Speaker 3: obviously put away now, but I just noticed this one
Speaker 3: random thing and I was like, hey, can that go?
Speaker 3: Like we don't need it anymore? And then we got
Speaker 3: to do an argument about like Christmas spirit and you know,
Speaker 3: the typical married stuff but I was like, I was like,
Speaker 3: I wouldn't probably have a tree, or like, if it
Speaker 3: were just up to me Christmas, we like a hell
Speaker 3: of a lot different than it does.
Speaker 2: Are you really are you really that scroogey? You really
Speaker 2: wouldn't do a tree?
Speaker 3: I man, I would if the girls wanted it. Yes,
Speaker 3: I would probably do it. But I mean, I think
Speaker 3: I don't know if we've talked about this or not,
Speaker 3: but I feel like there are times I just walk
Speaker 3: through my house and you know, I'm sure it looks
Speaker 3: different if you're looking at this background here and in
Speaker 3: my basement where I have a lot of deer heads
Speaker 3: and fishing rods and boat presses and all that crap.
Speaker 3: But like, generally in my house, in the space that
Speaker 3: I spend most of the time, there's nothing that I
Speaker 3: bought and brought in there other than like maybe some furniture,
Speaker 3: you know, Like I look at the walls and I'm like,
Speaker 3: I don't know where this painting came from, or that
Speaker 3: thing or whatever.
Speaker 2: It's all nobody would Nobody would know that you lived there,
Speaker 2: right unless they went to the missal basement.
Speaker 3: No, no way, Yeah, same here.
Speaker 2: But isn't that the bargain like we make like that's
Speaker 2: in exchange for them letting us go do crazy stuff
Speaker 2: all over the state, in the country, do our thing.
Speaker 2: We grant full dominion of the home and the rest
Speaker 2: of the life, right.
Speaker 3: I don't think we grant it, buddy. I think it's
Speaker 3: a good point taken from us.
Speaker 2: That's a good point. We we're lucky to get our
Speaker 2: little thing in.
Speaker 3: I think it's like what's going on with space and
Speaker 3: the moon right now, where everybody's trying to get up
Speaker 3: there and claim these resources, and whoever gets there first
Speaker 3: and plants their flag wins, and I think we just
Speaker 3: get into a house and we're like, I don't know,
Speaker 3: I'll throw some euro amounts up or whatever. Here's my books,
Speaker 3: and then all the other real estate starts to get
Speaker 3: claimed real fast.
Speaker 2: It took all of four minutes, in fifty four seconds
Speaker 2: of your first podcast episode of twenty twenty four for
Speaker 2: you get a space reference in. That's good, that's real good.
Speaker 3: I'm not done yet, Buddy.
Speaker 2: Oh Man. Yeah, so I hear you, I hear you,
Speaker 2: and all that stuff. I do like Christmas, but but
Speaker 2: it does get to be a lot. This year was
Speaker 2: like a marathon for us too. We had three days
Speaker 2: of full Christmas stuff of family and then friends, and
Speaker 2: then two additional days of my family coming to visit us,
Speaker 2: and then another friend thing. So I ended up being
Speaker 2: like almost seven days straight. That's that's a lot. That's enough,
Speaker 2: mm hmm. But but yeah, so you survived it. It
Speaker 2: was good. Do you do any kind of goal stuff
Speaker 2: or annual review stuff or anything like what I'm talking
Speaker 2: about here? Is that a part of your life at all?
Speaker 3: You know?
Speaker 1: Not?
Speaker 3: I do some goals. I don't, you know, do like
Speaker 3: a formal review of my year? I mean personally, because
Speaker 3: you know what we do for a living. I mean,
Speaker 3: I'm creating content around what I did all year, you know,
Speaker 3: so I'm kind of like reminded of the things that
Speaker 3: I'm like, man, that was really fun or that kind
Speaker 3: of sucked or whatever. So it's it's like a soft
Speaker 3: way to review just just through my professional life and
Speaker 3: kind of helps guide me toward, you know, what do
Speaker 3: I want to do this year with some of that stuff.
Speaker 3: But as far as like, you know, what goals do
Speaker 3: I make? I don't. I don't make a lot of
Speaker 3: hunting goals, but I do make goals around like running
Speaker 3: or lifting, or like what I want to do that way,
Speaker 3: and it all it all kind of just blends together,
Speaker 3: you know.
Speaker 2: Yeah, what's the like when you look back on twenty
Speaker 2: three with those goals that you talked about, not necessarily hunting,
Speaker 2: but you're running and all that other kind of stuff.
Speaker 2: Is there anything that you either really crushed or really
Speaker 2: failed on? Does anything stand out?
Speaker 3: There's So my goal for a couple of years has
Speaker 3: been seven hundred miles, to run seven hundred miles in
Speaker 3: the year, because that's just like a nice one for me,
Speaker 3: not to beat myself up, but it keeps me motivated.
Speaker 3: And what happened I think I think it was in
Speaker 3: twenty twenty I tore a muscle in my calf. I
Speaker 3: was out photographing turkeys and just just had a little
Speaker 3: tear in this muscle in my calf. Took me out
Speaker 3: of the game for a little bit, got back in
Speaker 3: at whatever, No big deal I did. I retore that
Speaker 3: this year in Oklahoma packing Steve's buck out, and it
Speaker 3: made it a real struggle to get back to that
Speaker 3: goal because I just I had to take weeks off
Speaker 3: and so that kind of stuff. If I if I
Speaker 3: have something like that, happened where I'm like, this goal
Speaker 3: pretty should be pretty easy. I didn't really need to
Speaker 3: take that goal that seriously. But as soon as little thing,
Speaker 3: a little wrinkle in the plan comes up, and now
Speaker 3: you're like, Okay, I don't know if I'm going to
Speaker 3: get there, And so it kind of made me look
Speaker 3: at like how do I How am I going to
Speaker 3: ensure that I stay healthy enough and not do stuff
Speaker 3: like that to take myself out. So I didn't I increased.
Speaker 3: I'm gonna I'm shooting for eight hundred miles this year
Speaker 3: just to give myself a little bit more. But also
Speaker 3: I'm like I'm looking at like my overall fitness and going,
Speaker 3: how how do I avoid anything like that? Because every
Speaker 3: once in a while, you know, I mean, you do
Speaker 3: this stuff long enough and whatever, like you're gonna have
Speaker 3: something that happens that takes you out of the game somehow.
Speaker 3: You know, I had that happen one time with my
Speaker 3: shoulder with bow hunting and or you know where I
Speaker 3: thought it was going to take me out. It didn't.
Speaker 3: But it's like a it's a hell of a reminder man,
Speaker 3: Like this is we're on thin ice sometimes with this
Speaker 3: stuff that we don't you know, like if you might
Speaker 3: never be forced to face it, but you might. And
Speaker 3: so I'm just looking at it that way, like how
Speaker 3: how do I how do I ensure that I can
Speaker 3: I can hit these goals and you know, keep up
Speaker 3: doing the things I want to do and go elk
Speaker 3: hunting and everything else.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you take it for granted until all of a
Speaker 2: sudden it's not. The ability is not there, whether it
Speaker 2: because of an injury or whatever. I had that you know,
Speaker 2: that wrist injury this summer. It was the first thing
Speaker 2: that's happened to me in a long time that took
Speaker 2: me out of being able to do the things I
Speaker 2: want to do. Couldn't shoot my boat, couldn't row the boat,
Speaker 2: couldn't you know, do some of those things that usually
Speaker 2: I just be like off doing all the time. And
Speaker 2: so for the first time this year, and I guess
Speaker 2: coming into the new year, a I'm having like I'm
Speaker 2: coming to grips with not my mortality, but just like, hey,
Speaker 2: stuff's changing, Like you're approaching like middle life where stuff
Speaker 2: can just not work the way it used to or
Speaker 2: injuries more likely, like unless you're really thinking about it
Speaker 2: and doing the kind of stuff you're talking about, like
Speaker 2: staying up on your fitness and all that kind of stuff,
Speaker 2: and staying flexible or whatever the thing is you're worried
Speaker 2: about messing up. You kind of have to work for it.
Speaker 2: You can't just assume it's all just gonna do it
Speaker 2: like it did back when you were twenty. So, yeah,
Speaker 2: like a lot of my fitness related goals now or
Speaker 2: just to keep me in the game, like I want
Speaker 2: to be able to go backpacking with my kids and
Speaker 2: rafting and fishing and shooting my boat and all that
Speaker 2: kind of stuff without cont only fearing about, well, am
Speaker 2: I going to tear my calf or tear my whatever
Speaker 2: or roll my ankle or whatever it is. So with
Speaker 2: that eight hundred miles a year, what's that I'm not
Speaker 2: good at math? In my head? What's that factor out
Speaker 2: to a weekly average?
Speaker 3: Well, weekly, I don't know, forty miles a week or something? Well,
Speaker 3: actually play thirty No, no, no, no, not forty miles a week.
Speaker 3: That's way too much. I don't know. I'm really really
Speaker 3: bad at math.
Speaker 2: What do you usually run? Like, what do you what
Speaker 2: are your What I'm getting is how much are you
Speaker 2: actually running a week? Now?
Speaker 3: So, right, now. Well, the first week of January, I
Speaker 3: ran twenty one miles. But I shoot. I use a
Speaker 3: running app, and I know from my trends because I've
Speaker 3: probably done this for like eight years now. I'll do
Speaker 3: a lot of miles in the winter. I'll do not
Speaker 3: so many miles in Turkey season. I'll do a lot
Speaker 3: of miles in the summer, and then in the fall
Speaker 3: it really tapers off. So I always try to shoot
Speaker 3: for a big January, a big February, big March, because
Speaker 3: I know, I know how this is going to pace out.
Speaker 3: And then in the summer, I just like running outside
Speaker 3: a lot, and so I know I'll kick it back
Speaker 3: up in June, July and August. So I don't. I
Speaker 3: don't go like I have to do this this week.
Speaker 3: When I when I was doing a thousand miles a year,
Speaker 3: it was like, I think it was almost three miles
Speaker 3: a day that you have to do two point eight
Speaker 3: seven or something, I remember exactly, And so I was
Speaker 3: like almost too aware of that, like I would think
Speaker 3: about it all and then you know, if you go
Speaker 3: on vacation or you go on a hunt, you're like,
Speaker 3: I've been I haven't ran in eight days and then
Speaker 3: you do the math and you're like, Okay, now I'm
Speaker 3: twenty five miles hind or whatever. Yeah, it's it's rough,
Speaker 3: and so I don't I don't you know, I don't
Speaker 3: break it down by the week, but I'm real aware
Speaker 3: of how my progress is going for the month.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's interesting the way you're doing that with your
Speaker 2: mileage goal. In the way I'm trying to achieve my
Speaker 2: running goal is by putting a big stick, you know,
Speaker 2: in my future that being a race that I've got
Speaker 2: to make sure that I'm ready for. I haven't gone
Speaker 2: the weekly or yearly kind of tally, but this year
Speaker 2: I think I haven't. I haven't told my wife this year,
Speaker 2: but I think I'm going to try to run a
Speaker 2: marathon this year. And the thing keep the thing keeping
Speaker 2: me from doing that to this point has been the
Speaker 2: fact that I don't want my training to take any
Speaker 2: more time away from the family than my half marathon
Speaker 2: training has. But I'm thinking, like I'm trying to figure
Speaker 2: out if I can figure out a way to be
Speaker 2: ready for a race like this. I just want to
Speaker 2: finish without getting injured. I'm not trying to like do
Speaker 2: it fast, but but if I can do that in
Speaker 2: a way that's not significantly different than the amount of
Speaker 2: running I was doing leading up to this. I think
Speaker 2: I want to try to do that, So that's my
Speaker 2: big fitness goal twenty four.
Speaker 3: Let me ask you this, how do you figure that
Speaker 3: you're going to be able to do a marathon with
Speaker 3: roughly the same amount of training as a half marathon.
Speaker 2: Well, I'm just not going to, like, if there's certain
Speaker 2: training plans where I guess I'm going to train lightly
Speaker 2: for it, I'm not going to like go buy the book.
Speaker 2: But it seems like from some of the talking I've done,
Speaker 2: like I don't need to train to crush a marathon
Speaker 2: right where I'm doing like twenty mile runs all the
Speaker 2: time or twenty five mile runs all the time. You
Speaker 2: know I can do you know, I can make sure
Speaker 2: that I'm doing the occasional extra long training run, so
Speaker 2: making sure I can do my sixteen miles or eighteen
Speaker 2: miles a few times. So there'll be a few days,
Speaker 2: you know, over the course of a few months where
Speaker 2: I'm gone three hours instead of two, but not so
Speaker 2: much that the family notices is basically what I'm getting at.
Speaker 2: So there'll there'll be a few more long runs, but
Speaker 2: not so much that I'm an absentee parent anymore than
Speaker 2: I was before.
Speaker 3: Right, are you what's the longest run you've ever done?
Speaker 3: Is it?
Speaker 2: There's a half?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, So, I mean it's a dramatic. It's a
Speaker 2: dramatic bump bump man.
Speaker 3: More power to you. I I kind of toyed with
Speaker 3: that idea for a while. But if when you run
Speaker 3: thirteen miles, I'm like, or you know, thirteen point one miles,
Speaker 3: I'm like the idea of doing that again twice?
Speaker 2: Yeah, Like no, See, my thing with it is and
Speaker 2: this is kind of I think one of the maybe
Speaker 2: a thing that's helped me from a hunting perspective too,
Speaker 2: is that I can do almost anything for a long
Speaker 2: time at like a modern pace, Like I could hike forever.
Speaker 2: I think that I can run forever. Not forever, but
Speaker 2: I think I can run. I think I just go
Speaker 2: and I'm just determined enough as long as I'm not
Speaker 2: like trying to beat some kind of pace or or
Speaker 2: race someone like individually, Like I can hike all day.
Speaker 2: We do like big hikes and stuff. That's something I've
Speaker 2: done before. I've hiked, you know, twenty miles or something
Speaker 2: of that in a day, so I can do like
Speaker 2: a heavy loaded pack hike. Can't be that much easier
Speaker 2: than a no pack very slow job, is my mental
Speaker 2: math I'm trying to convince myself of.
Speaker 3: At least it sounds good. Sounds good, buddy, on any
Speaker 3: of those runs, did you ever did you ever have
Speaker 3: that experience where you just chafed the crap out of
Speaker 3: your nipples.
Speaker 2: I haven't had the chafing, so we'll see you haven't. No,
Speaker 2: oh man, nope, So we'll see. If that's something that
Speaker 2: pops up a mile twenty in a run, well, it's TBD.
Speaker 2: But that's the thing I'm floating around on my head
Speaker 2: right now.
Speaker 3: Because I'm just envisioning you finishing the race with like
Speaker 3: the blood spots on the front of your chest, and.
Speaker 2: God, that would be bad. That would be bad. I
Speaker 2: don't know. We're getting ahead of ourselves. I want to
Speaker 2: talk about twenty three with you before we get to
Speaker 2: twenty four. But somehow here we are. So so I
Speaker 2: said last week, I reviewed my twenty three season and
Speaker 2: we've done. You know, we talked about our twenty three
Speaker 2: season more this past year than we did in the
Speaker 2: last like three or four years, which I think has
Speaker 2: been good because people people enjoy getting to follow, you know,
Speaker 2: I think it's useful for people to hear how we
Speaker 2: are trying to take the things we talk about every
Speaker 2: week on the podcast and actually put them into action, right,
Speaker 2: And so I was hoping we could better illustrate that
Speaker 2: this year, which I think we did. But looking back now,
Speaker 2: if you were to start a list, like a two
Speaker 2: column list, here, on your left you've got your big wins,
Speaker 2: and on your right side of the column, you've got
Speaker 2: misses or mistakes or you know, low lights, whatever you're
Speaker 2: gonna call them, namely a few things that would be
Speaker 2: on that list for you, Like what stands out as
Speaker 2: far as like the highlights or things you're most proud of,
Speaker 2: or the things you did really well this year. What's
Speaker 2: on that side of the column for you.
Speaker 3: I was real happy with the way I shot this year,
Speaker 3: you know, shot quite a few and I felt really
Speaker 3: good about that. I also felt it just you know,
Speaker 3: we've talked about this. We talked about this a few
Speaker 3: times last year. But you know, for the last couple
Speaker 3: of years, I haven't done a ton of public land hunting.
Speaker 3: I've been I've had just a different couple falls because
Speaker 3: of the filming with Meat Eater and everything, and last
Speaker 3: year doing the Oklahoma thing and then doing the North
Speaker 3: Dakota thing again and kind of getting back into the
Speaker 3: swing of public land hunting that was that was my
Speaker 3: most enjoyable stuff. And then doing the muzzloader hunt here
Speaker 3: in Minnesota. Just that for me, those were highlights, right.
Speaker 3: I mean, obviously hunting with my kids was really fun,
Speaker 3: and getting my daughter that decoy buck was really cool.
Speaker 3: Like I think about that a lot, Yeah, but personally
Speaker 3: for my own hunting, where I'm like, Okay, what's the
Speaker 3: arc of the next year, look like I wanted to
Speaker 3: contain a lot more of the public land stuff where
Speaker 3: I'm like, I'm kind of feel like I slipped back
Speaker 3: into that groove of having to scout right in the moment,
Speaker 3: get mobile, react and just kind of you know the
Speaker 3: things we talk about all the time, you know, those
Speaker 3: are muscles you gotta work. And I felt I felt
Speaker 3: like I was missing something for myself, Like I'm a
Speaker 3: this drives my wife absolutely crazy, but I'm just like
Speaker 3: I don't like doing the same stuff over and over again,
Speaker 3: you know, Like I don't I know that people are
Speaker 3: like my dream is to have this land and build
Speaker 3: it up, and and I get that one hundred percent.
Speaker 3: But for me, I know what that would be for me,
Speaker 3: Like I wouldn't I wouldn't enjoy it as much as
Speaker 3: some people because I don't want to go to the
Speaker 3: same box blind or like, I don't want to get
Speaker 3: myself into a position where I'm like I know, if
Speaker 3: I stay out of there until Halloween and I go
Speaker 3: in there, it's probably over. Like I don't want to
Speaker 3: I don't want to make a deal where I'm going
Speaker 3: to have good hunting but I don't get to hunt
Speaker 3: as much or I don't need to scout as much.
Speaker 3: And so I just when I look at like the
Speaker 3: highlights from last year, the things that really meant something
Speaker 3: to me, just just getting into that process again and
Speaker 3: trying to find deer on public land and dealing with
Speaker 3: that whole aspect, I just it just does something for me.
Speaker 2: Is there anything that you think you got better at?
Speaker 2: Like is there anything that you have known like, hey,
Speaker 2: I've got to work on this, or this is an
Speaker 2: area of focus, and then you actually executed on it,
Speaker 2: Like I know you did things that were more fun
Speaker 2: you did the thing you liked, But was there a
Speaker 2: thing that actually, like a change you made or a
Speaker 2: shift in mindset or anything like that actually paid off.
Speaker 3: I think what I'm getting what I think one of
Speaker 3: the things that happened to me last year that I
Speaker 3: actually like felt kind of tangibly was I'm getting just
Speaker 3: so much more confidence in calling my shots and being
Speaker 3: like this is I'm going to do this whether it
Speaker 3: works out or not. I feel like this is the
Speaker 3: best and not and not second guessing myself, you know.
Speaker 3: I mean I went through you know, and a lot
Speaker 3: of people do right where you go through like, well,
Speaker 3: you know, what if the conditions or what if somebody
Speaker 3: came through here, what if I'm not set up right?
Speaker 3: And I'm kind of like, yeah, I'm kind of I
Speaker 3: kind of feel myself getting to a point where if
Speaker 3: I if I feel like I'm putting in the effort
Speaker 3: to figure out a spot or figure out a location,
Speaker 3: I'm like, Okay, here's my plan today, and if this
Speaker 3: doesn't work, this is what I'm gonna do tomorrow. And
Speaker 3: if that doesn't work, this is what I'm gonna do.
Speaker 3: And I feel like I'm just getting to a point
Speaker 3: where I'm just believing in that process more and being like,
Speaker 3: don't like, don't overthink it, like if you if you're
Speaker 3: you know, the spidy senses are like, this is where
Speaker 3: he's gonna be tonight or in the next two days.
Speaker 3: Figure this out and forget about those other options, forget
Speaker 3: about everything else, and then if it doesn't prove to
Speaker 3: be true, Okay, that's fine, move on. But I just
Speaker 3: kept finding like it it kind of kept being true.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's a really good feeling when you when the
Speaker 2: second guessing is is not the loudest voice in your head,
Speaker 2: when you're instead sitting there like, hey, I feel confident
Speaker 2: in this thing, and I have an idea and I
Speaker 2: have a plan. B if that doesn't work out, I'm
Speaker 2: I'm sure I'm not to the same point you are
Speaker 2: because you've got a decade on me. But I definitely
Speaker 2: can see like the change in that for myself over
Speaker 2: the over the last decade and just how much more
Speaker 2: confident I am out there and how much more comfortable
Speaker 2: I am with like, Okay, this is what's in front
Speaker 2: of me, this is my plan and why I think
Speaker 2: this will work, and I feel very confident in why
Speaker 2: this is something that should work, but if not, I'll shift,
Speaker 2: I'll shift. But yeah, like that sense of I don't
Speaker 2: want to say certainty because I don't think you're ever
Speaker 2: certain out there, but just confidence and like and comfort
Speaker 2: maybe with what's happening and why you're doing it. That
Speaker 2: is a really reassuring feeling out there versus you know,
Speaker 2: ten fifteen years ago when I was out there, like
Speaker 2: should I be doing this or this or this or ah,
Speaker 2: I don't.
Speaker 3: Know, dude, it's important, man. And I think like on
Speaker 3: that line too, if you're like, this is this is
Speaker 3: where I think it's gonna happen, not not how necessarily,
Speaker 3: but if you're like I'm hunting this farm or I'm
Speaker 3: hunting this property and you're like, the signs pointing here,
Speaker 3: the conditions are pointing here, then you go, Okay, I
Speaker 3: have that thing I believe in, and so now it's like, okay,
Speaker 3: if the conditions aren't ripe for it tonight, it's like
Speaker 3: I don't I don't mind backing off and doing something
Speaker 3: else then, And it sort of gives you a little
Speaker 3: leeway with a lower confidence hunt. If you know, like
Speaker 3: in your back pocket, you're like, okay, I'm when it
Speaker 3: when it breaks right, I'm going right there and that's
Speaker 3: where I want to be the most. Then I don't
Speaker 3: like I noticed this a lot of my public land hunts,
Speaker 3: because I'll find a few places like that. But you know,
Speaker 3: as well as I do, like front's roll in, people
Speaker 3: walk in, trucks are parked there, whatever, And if that's
Speaker 3: like all you're hanging your hat on, then it's it
Speaker 3: messes with you bad. Or if you you know, if
Speaker 3: you have a four or five day hunt, you look
Speaker 3: at the forecast, you know, like like when we went
Speaker 3: to Oklah it was eighty five degrees when I got
Speaker 3: down there, and I'm like, I'm gonna kill them on water,
Speaker 3: and a cold front came in, which happens to me
Speaker 3: all the time, and the entire plan changed. But I
Speaker 3: had I had run across some mast while scouting and
Speaker 3: some other stuff, and so it was like, even though
Speaker 3: that thing might not work, I found another thing that
Speaker 3: I feel just as good about. I just might have
Speaker 3: to tweak it a little bit or whatever. But you
Speaker 3: just like when you when you get into that state,
Speaker 3: it's sort of like you don't have a bad sit
Speaker 3: because even if you go do a backup one because
Speaker 3: you're playing it safe or you couldn't get in there
Speaker 3: for some reason. You're like, I still have that, and
Speaker 3: I'm still doing something at a certain level up to it.
Speaker 3: And I just I think that that feeling of just
Speaker 3: going in there and being like I believe in this
Speaker 3: enough for that, and then the backup enough for that,
Speaker 3: it's just it's a game changer for you.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I hear you in that. What about the flip side, though, Like,
Speaker 2: what's what's the thing? Is there anything still this year
Speaker 2: that gave you the eh feeling that gave you like
Speaker 2: the that left a bad taste in my mouth, or
Speaker 2: a regret, or you left something on the field that
Speaker 2: you you know, no looking back, you could have done differently,
Speaker 2: you could have em better, or anything like that.
Speaker 3: Yeah. So my Wisconsin hunting, you know, I kind of
Speaker 3: take it for granted that I'm gonna take my girls
Speaker 3: over there. It's gonna be pretty easy. They'll kill a
Speaker 3: couple deer and then I'll do my thing. And my
Speaker 3: biggest regret from last year was, even though I knew
Speaker 3: that winter was rough, I was like what I saw
Speaker 3: in the spring and the early summer over there, I
Speaker 3: was like, man, these deer came through really well. Heard
Speaker 3: from a forester who said they came through really well.
Speaker 3: And so my plan I got lazy thinking there were
Speaker 3: enough deer there to work with. And then once we
Speaker 3: started hunting, even when I was running trail cameras over
Speaker 3: there and not seeing very many deer and not seeing
Speaker 3: the fawns that you should, I still in my head
Speaker 3: I was like, this is not going to be a
Speaker 3: heavy lift this year, Like you don't need to devote
Speaker 3: a bunch of energy to scouting over here, Like you
Speaker 3: kind of got this thing figured out. And then you know,
Speaker 3: my daughter killed a deer. My other one didn't got
Speaker 3: into the rut. She finally killed one, and then it
Speaker 3: was my turn. And I felt like when I was
Speaker 3: hunting over there, even though I did kill a deer,
Speaker 3: I felt like I was way behind because I believed
Speaker 3: something that wasn't true and it kept me. It kept
Speaker 3: me from doing what I needed to do. And so
Speaker 3: when I actually got into the woods for myself, I
Speaker 3: was like, I knew it. I'm like, you're not working
Speaker 3: with nearly as many deer as you thought, and this
Speaker 3: is going to be just way tougher than you expected.
Speaker 3: And I and I live through it, and I was like,
Speaker 3: that was so dumb, Like you had all the evidence
Speaker 3: all year long that what you were believing going into
Speaker 3: spring wasn't true. And I chose to believe this fake
Speaker 3: thing because it made my life easier until I had
Speaker 3: to face the reality of hunting, and then it got
Speaker 3: a hell of a lot harder because that was what
Speaker 3: I was actually dealing with.
Speaker 2: What could you have done differently though?
Speaker 3: Scout? I just needed to scout more. I mean I
Speaker 3: just took it for granted that I was going to
Speaker 3: have way more dear to work with, and so some
Speaker 3: of my old reliable stuff was going to work. And
Speaker 3: you know, I'm real confident during that time period if
Speaker 3: you have multiple all day sits in a row, somebody's
Speaker 3: coming by, you know, like if you have enough spots.
Speaker 3: And I just didn't. I did way more scouting after
Speaker 3: I killed my buck. Let me put it that way,
Speaker 3: just because I was like, don't, don't do this to
Speaker 3: yourself again, like this will be an easy trap to
Speaker 3: fall into. And so it was just a matter of
Speaker 3: just putting myself in more high odd spots more often
Speaker 3: that I didn't do.
Speaker 2: What did you learn that additional scouting or did you
Speaker 2: did anything light up for you and when you did
Speaker 2: do that post kill scouting.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I did. I'm I'm really starting to into this
Speaker 3: when I I do this in the big woods a lot.
Speaker 3: If I shoot a deer and I still have some
Speaker 3: time to play around, because you know how it is
Speaker 3: by the time you get to like your fifth or
Speaker 3: sixth shoot of the season, or you know it's two
Speaker 3: and a half months into it, if you kill one
Speaker 3: when you're on the road, You're like, I just want
Speaker 3: to go home. I want to go see my kids.
Speaker 3: I'm sick of doing this, but I'm starting to go
Speaker 3: if you have a day or two that you can
Speaker 3: play with, go walk, get out there and just go
Speaker 3: look in the moment, see that sign And dude, I
Speaker 3: ran cameras, I covered some ground and I just I
Speaker 3: just looked for what I was missing. And what I
Speaker 3: found was I was missing a lot and it was
Speaker 3: just dumb. It was just it was just purely because
Speaker 3: I went into it think it was going to be
Speaker 3: easy and I wasn't going to have to figure out
Speaker 3: in the moment what I needed to do. But you know,
Speaker 3: when you're dealing with a low, low deer density, it's
Speaker 3: all about finding just any deer first, like where's that
Speaker 3: little tiny concentration? How do you work off of it?
Speaker 3: And so after I killed that buck this year, I
Speaker 3: spent you know, almost two days just walking and I
Speaker 3: found some stuff and ran some cameras and I was like, okay,
Speaker 3: they were they were close or you know, there there
Speaker 3: were deer, good deer close that I was just missing
Speaker 3: because I was working off of old information. And it
Speaker 3: was just a it was just like a good reminder
Speaker 3: of how easy it is to just sort of be
Speaker 3: a little lazy and expect the rut's going to deliver
Speaker 3: to you, and it just it's it's never that easy.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So coming in twenty four, do you have is
Speaker 2: is that it is that the thing that you want
Speaker 2: to work on more is like more and more scouting
Speaker 2: or is there anything else that you're thinking this season
Speaker 2: that's like on your to do list as a big
Speaker 2: shift or a big focus or an area like hey,
Speaker 2: I gotta I gotta start working on this next thing,
Speaker 2: Like what's that next focus point for you this year?
Speaker 3: So I'm gonna a couple of things I'm focusing on
Speaker 3: for this year. I'm definitely gonna do probably three states
Speaker 3: for just public land. I want to I want to
Speaker 3: do a new state that I haven't hunted. I'm kind
Speaker 3: of looking hard at Missouri because I've scouted it a
Speaker 3: few times, so I've never actually deer hunted down there.
Speaker 3: I want that part. I don't I don't know what
Speaker 3: states exactly it'll be. I should draw Iowa this year,
Speaker 3: so one of them will be Iowa. Uh, that's going
Speaker 3: to be real important to me. My one daughter, my
Speaker 3: daughter who killed that decoy buck, has been talking a
Speaker 3: lot about doing that more and so, and I killed
Speaker 3: my buck with the decoy this year over there too,
Speaker 3: and so I'm kind of like, I've never even hardly
Speaker 3: considered them a viable option for most of my deer hunting.
Speaker 3: I mean, you know me, like, I'm not I'm not
Speaker 3: a big caller, I'm not a big sense guy whatever.
Speaker 3: But seeing the way that DSD dough worked twice last
Speaker 3: year and how fun it was, I'm like, is there
Speaker 3: more ways I can kind of build this in and
Speaker 3: have some fun with it and just try to like
Speaker 3: learn more, Because that's that's one of the things I
Speaker 3: love about turkey hunting, when you start to figure out
Speaker 3: the decoy game, especially if you both bohunt them a lot.
Speaker 3: It's it's like really a game changer for the entire experience.
Speaker 3: Like it's I know it's that sounds like duh, but
Speaker 3: it's it's big. Like a lot of people, especially a
Speaker 3: lot of people who only gun on them, don't quite
Speaker 3: get there, like to understand how important certain decoy setups
Speaker 3: and how you're gonna do them throughout the season. And
Speaker 3: I just like, I feel like I'm kind of missing
Speaker 3: that with white tails too, And it's this thing that
Speaker 3: I could involve into my world a little bit more,
Speaker 3: and so I'm kind of looking at that too.
Speaker 2: M Okay, So three new states are not new states,
Speaker 2: but one new state, three public land hunts, more decoy
Speaker 2: what's what's like the what's like on your bucket list
Speaker 2: still that you haven't done white tail related? That's like
Speaker 2: the golden goose you're chasing, all right, Maybe maybe there's
Speaker 2: not a thing like that, but is there anything? Like
Speaker 2: you've been doing this a long time, Tony, You've done
Speaker 2: the public thing a long time. You don't really need
Speaker 2: to prove that to yourself anymore or anybody else.
Speaker 3: I do.
Speaker 2: So like I'm talking more, I'm talking more overarching here
Speaker 2: and maybe okay, so maybe that's the case, but like,
Speaker 2: what's the next thing you're chasing? Like we always have
Speaker 2: like personal somethings that we're chasing. Do you have anything
Speaker 2: like that? Like is that like do you want to
Speaker 2: kill a giant or do you want to kill an
Speaker 2: X or a Y or every state that has public landway,
Speaker 2: is there anything like that that's like in the back
Speaker 2: of your mind?
Speaker 3: Ever, my, my, the things that just eat away at
Speaker 3: me are always different environments. So you know, the big
Speaker 3: Woods thing is I'm I'm I'm like I have that
Speaker 3: sort of on pause since my daughter started hunting, because
Speaker 3: that's most of my time over there is for them,
Speaker 3: and so it's like, I don't I kind of know
Speaker 3: I don't have enough time to do what I need
Speaker 3: to because even when I had more time, I couldn't
Speaker 3: get it done. And so I'm like, where I'm at
Speaker 3: now is it's sort of like just in a holding
Speaker 3: pattern for me, but that that won't go away, Like
Speaker 3: killing a big one in the big Woods on public
Speaker 3: land is it's just always there. This this thing I
Speaker 3: did with the muzzloader hunt in western Minnesota and the
Speaker 3: cattails in that environment that I I'm you know, like
Speaker 3: I'm only familiar with it through pheasant hunting and a
Speaker 3: little bit of rabbit hunting, and just like a very
Speaker 3: you know, I've only spent five days in my life,
Speaker 3: well maybe six days of my life deer hunting. That
Speaker 3: stuff that's like under my skin because I see, you know,
Speaker 3: I told you this, We talked about this on the podcast.
Speaker 3: But the one day that I was down there with
Speaker 3: my muzzleloader and I and I followed those tracks and
Speaker 3: jumped all those deer in the in the cattails, those
Speaker 3: deer were as unkillable as they're gonna be. And now
Speaker 3: you would think that's an open environment and that wouldn't
Speaker 3: be the case. But when you're in cattails, I'm six
Speaker 3: to two. Those cattails are way over my head, and
Speaker 3: I'm like when you walk in there and they're bedded
Speaker 3: there before first light and you go, you know, you jump,
Speaker 3: you jump them right there, and you have a gun,
Speaker 3: and it's like, unless you have buckshot, that would be
Speaker 3: the only chance you might have there. And I just
Speaker 3: I go, how do you figure? Like how do you
Speaker 3: solve for this? Like how do you And that's that's
Speaker 3: like the stuff that I love is like it's not
Speaker 3: you know, it's fun to go back to some places
Speaker 3: you like the Western River bottoms I love, and it's
Speaker 3: it's fun to do that kind of stuff. But when
Speaker 3: you get into an environment that says you can't do
Speaker 3: this easily here, like trust me on this. They're here
Speaker 3: and you're not going to get them that. I love that,
Speaker 3: and so I kind of look at it that way, like,
Speaker 3: you know, I'm not like I got to kill a
Speaker 3: one seventy or something like that. That just it doesn't
Speaker 3: matter to me as much. But doing it right in
Speaker 3: these environments where I just walk in and I'm like,
Speaker 3: I don't I don't have a strong basis here and
Speaker 3: I have limited time, and you know there's a lot
Speaker 3: of hunters using this stuff. I love that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I can, I can relate. I'd say that's that's
Speaker 2: where a lot of my just a lot of my
Speaker 2: interest is like the the experiential aspect, like, man, I
Speaker 2: want to kill one in this kind of way, and
Speaker 2: I'm going to try to figure out this kind of place.
Speaker 2: I when to figure out this kind of adventure and
Speaker 2: now right now, like the thing I talked about this
Speaker 2: last week a little bit, I need like some new
Speaker 2: adventure in my hunting, like I want to shift it
Speaker 2: up again. And I'm not sure what that's going to
Speaker 2: look like yet, but but I have some ideas and
Speaker 2: and and just like give it.
Speaker 3: What's an example, Like what's one thing you're thinking about.
Speaker 2: Well, I'm gonna hold off on the on the one
Speaker 2: I'm really really thinking about, but I'm like an example
Speaker 2: of one I have talked about in the past that's
Speaker 2: probably not next year, but like a backpacking, backcountry whitetail hunt,
Speaker 2: like that kind of thing, like something that's like truly
Speaker 2: different or you know, like going in. I mean, yes,
Speaker 2: that kind of thing is the general idea. I'm thinking
Speaker 2: of a rafting white tail trip something like that that's
Speaker 2: just you know, different than the usual get on like
Speaker 2: park the truck by the road, hike in, hunt for
Speaker 2: the afternoon, hike back out, go to your tent, or
Speaker 2: go to your house, or go wherever. I just think
Speaker 2: so much of And I love that, right, I love
Speaker 2: my everyday deer hunting, But I also like, you just
Speaker 2: want new and I want to grow, and I want
Speaker 2: to try new things, and I want to see what's
Speaker 2: at the at the boundaries. Of this whole thing and
Speaker 2: what else is out there? And one of the coolest
Speaker 2: things about white tails, and some of my adventure seeking
Speaker 2: is outside of white tails too. But a really cool
Speaker 2: thing about white tails is they are almost everywhere, in
Speaker 2: almost every different type of habitat, and you can hunt
Speaker 2: them in so many different ways. It's very easy to
Speaker 2: get like locked into the usual, which is like, well,
Speaker 2: we're in hunt them from a tree in the Midwest
Speaker 2: in farm ground, right. It's especially for those of us
Speaker 2: that live in this area, it's very tempting to just
Speaker 2: get sucked into that basic template. And so I still
Speaker 2: want to do some of that, of course, but I
Speaker 2: want to continue to explore outside color, outside of those
Speaker 2: lines some and so this year one of my goals
Speaker 2: is to do that. I've got I've got one very
Speaker 2: very different idea, which which we'll talk about a later date.
Speaker 2: But uh, but in the meantime, I'm still thinking of
Speaker 2: like what a what a second option might be. So
Speaker 2: so yeah, that's that's the kind of stuff that's on
Speaker 2: my mind right now. I do want to do when
Speaker 2: it comes to this year, I want to I got
Speaker 2: a question for you related to one of my ideas
Speaker 2: for a project this year and it goes like this,
Speaker 2: you know, the Working for Wildlife to it. Right, You've
Speaker 2: heard me doing this whole thing last year, right, traveling
Speaker 2: around volunteering on public lands, doing various habitat projects, encouraging
Speaker 2: volunteers to come out. So we're gonna do that again
Speaker 2: this year. But I want to figure out a way
Speaker 2: to tell that story through a film. And my idea
Speaker 2: is to do this, Go do more projects, but find
Speaker 2: one of these projects where we can do a Working
Speaker 2: for Wildlife event. Go out there and improve wildlife habitat
Speaker 2: volunteer and public land, but then come back and do
Speaker 2: a hunt or a fishing trip or whatever, Come back
Speaker 2: and do a thing on that piece of ground and
Speaker 2: showcase like you do the work and then you reap
Speaker 2: the rewards down the line. Like that's possible. My worry though,
Speaker 2: is like how do you do that without spot burning?
Speaker 2: Like how do you do that without ruining the place?
Speaker 2: You know, because by doing a project like that, you're
Speaker 2: people are going to be out there like we're gonna
Speaker 2: be talking about, hey, we're on this piece of public land.
Speaker 2: Or is there way I can do that without talking
Speaker 2: about the place. I mean, this is something that you
Speaker 2: and I and really anyone now with a social media
Speaker 2: account has to think about, which is, we want to
Speaker 2: share what we're doing, we want to talk about what
Speaker 2: we're doing, We want to enjoy these places, but at
Speaker 2: the same time, you don't want to unnecessarily, you know,
Speaker 2: drive more people to a sensitive location that ends up
Speaker 2: making it worse for wildlife, worse for hunting, et cetera,
Speaker 2: et cetera. How do you do that? Like, that's what
Speaker 2: I'm trying to figure out that I don't know how
Speaker 2: to do that, but I think there's got to be
Speaker 2: a way.
Speaker 3: I think you would have to. I think the easiest
Speaker 3: way to do that, or maybe the most responsible way
Speaker 3: to do that, would be to find some category of
Speaker 3: project in a region and you know, planting trees or
Speaker 3: whatever whatever it is, something like that, and then find
Speaker 3: a different property that had had that ten years ago
Speaker 3: or twenty years ago, or you know what I mean.
Speaker 3: It wasn't the same thing, but it was the same
Speaker 3: concept of here here is like a look into the
Speaker 3: future of it instead of just going right back. But
Speaker 3: even then people would figure it out. So I don't know,
Speaker 3: I don't know if I want to touch this one
Speaker 3: because I feel like you're going to get yourself into
Speaker 3: trouble with the audience here, Mark.
Speaker 2: Or what about this? What if what if the place
Speaker 2: where we go do the volunteer work. What if I
Speaker 2: do go back and hunt, but I shoot a tony buck,
Speaker 2: I shoot a spike on day one, and it's so
Speaker 2: I shoot a deer, but it's not the kind of
Speaker 2: deer that's going to drive a thousand people to go
Speaker 2: try and hunt there. Is that effective?
Speaker 3: I think you should absolutely do that because I think
Speaker 3: you think that's going to be easy, and I want
Speaker 3: to see you do it. Just go shoot a quick
Speaker 3: little buck, Mark, no problem.
Speaker 2: I I'll follow a tony methodology and uh and we'll
Speaker 2: report back here next year. I don't know that's one
Speaker 2: of my ideas, but I want to figure out a
Speaker 2: way to do it responsibly. But I think, like I
Speaker 2: think it's a it's an idea that I want to
Speaker 2: get out there, which is the idea of giving back
Speaker 2: to the landscape more right, getting out there doing this,
Speaker 2: doing good things, and then it being a reminder like, hey,
Speaker 2: you can also benefit from it, Like you can go
Speaker 2: out there and you don't have to benefit from it,
Speaker 2: do it just for the sake of doing it. But also, hey,
Speaker 2: like it's pretty cool to get out here, and it's
Speaker 2: super satisfying to enjoy the fruits of your labor. I
Speaker 2: think anyone who owns private land knows that. Right, you
Speaker 2: go out there, you do the work, planning your food
Speaker 2: plots or improving timber or whatever, and then you get
Speaker 2: to go out there and hunt and do your thing. Well,
Speaker 2: that's possible to some degree on public land too, for folks,
Speaker 2: for sure. I mean, even if it's just you going
Speaker 2: out there SOLbo and picking up trash.
Speaker 3: So yeah, if anybody who's listening is down in Oklahoma
Speaker 3: and they want to do that, I recommend it. I've
Speaker 3: never been in a place that had more garbage in
Speaker 3: the woods really, yeah, just weird. I mean some of it,
Speaker 3: some of it was floodplain stuff, you know, but a
Speaker 3: lot of it. I was just like, and maybe it's
Speaker 3: just more part of it. Might be because then you
Speaker 3: get into a drier climate, stuff sticks around longer a
Speaker 3: lot of times, so maybe that was part of it.
Speaker 3: But I was like, man, there's a lot of just
Speaker 3: trash here we're hunting specifically, I hate that.
Speaker 2: I got to the point though, with so we try to.
Speaker 2: Like when we're out hiking around doing whatever, the kids
Speaker 2: and stuff, we try to pick up things and you
Speaker 2: know when you can clean up. And we were on
Speaker 2: a hike over Christmas break and we passed like what
Speaker 2: looked like dirty toilet paper and my three year old
Speaker 2: like ran to pick it up, and no, no, no, don't
Speaker 2: touch it. Don't touch it. We can't pick that up,
Speaker 2: and he got so magic, No, we have to pick
Speaker 2: up the trash. You say, we have to pick up
Speaker 2: the trash, Like, no, that might be like something really gross.
Speaker 2: Don't touch that.
Speaker 3: Same rule as apply if you find like one glove
Speaker 3: in the woods, just leave it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, anything anything like that dangerous? Yeah, man? So
Speaker 2: any other any other big plans thoughts? Uh for twenty
Speaker 2: four other than the new state? The decoy in public land?
Speaker 2: You're gonna go back to your buddy's lease anymore? Or
Speaker 2: you you done with that?
Speaker 3: I'm not sure or not lease.
Speaker 2: I guess he owns it right, well, but it's farm.
Speaker 3: Oh, I'm not sure. So I didn't hunt it this year.
Speaker 3: I'm you know, I'm going a turkey hunt it. It's
Speaker 3: it's always there. I don't know, it's just if I
Speaker 3: go down there to southwestern Wisconsin, and I hunt that place.
Speaker 3: It's awesome, but I just want to be in the
Speaker 3: north woods. Man. I don't know how to describe it.
Speaker 3: The you know, my odds are killing a one forty
Speaker 3: on that southwestern place or like at least a decent
Speaker 3: buck or so high compared to you know, northern Wisconsin.
Speaker 3: But I just love the environment. Man. So I don't know,
Speaker 3: I don't know I'm I'm looking at. I mean, you
Speaker 3: know how this goes. This is a this is definitely
Speaker 3: a dumb complaint. But when you do what we do,
Speaker 3: I'm always like, should I film in Minnesota or Wisconsin?
Speaker 3: Which you know, Minnesota is my home state, but I
Speaker 3: Wisconsin I just hunt a lot too, is right there
Speaker 3: and whatever. And you know how it is when you're like,
Speaker 3: you don't save something for yourself and it changes your
Speaker 3: entire season. And so I'm like, I don't I don't
Speaker 3: know what I'm gonna do with Minnesota and Wisconsin this
Speaker 3: season as far as filming. And it like you talking
Speaker 3: about you know, a back like a backcountry hunt for
Speaker 3: white tails or something. I've had this hunt in the
Speaker 3: back of my mind. I've got this old town kayak.
Speaker 3: It's a badass fish in kayak, but it'd be good
Speaker 3: for getting into a hunting spot too. And I have
Speaker 3: this chunk of public land in Minnesota that I think
Speaker 3: I could go in and kill a pretty good one
Speaker 3: on if I brought my buvy stuff and camped and
Speaker 3: paddled in there and did that kind of adventure type hunt.
Speaker 3: And I'm I'm kind of like, should I do that
Speaker 3: this year? You know? You know? The downside is like, Okay,
Speaker 3: I'm probably gonna draw Iowa. Something else will come up
Speaker 3: for work, and I'm like, I don't. I don't know
Speaker 3: if I want to hang my hat on. But it's
Speaker 3: just like one of those things that you think about
Speaker 3: a lot where you're like, I really just should just
Speaker 3: carve it out and say I'm just doing it, just
Speaker 3: to do it, get it out of the way, because
Speaker 3: you know how it is like some of this stuff
Speaker 3: you start thinking about and you're like, I've been thinking
Speaker 3: about doing this for ten years and haven't. It's like,
Speaker 3: come on, man, just do it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and you blink and it's like you're, however old,
Speaker 2: and you've been saying you want to do it someday
Speaker 2: forever and all of a sudden, You're like, what can
Speaker 2: I do it anymore?
Speaker 3: Yeah? Well do you want to? And I mean that's
Speaker 3: you know, something that I thought of when you were
Speaker 3: talking about like just twenty four goals and just you know,
Speaker 3: setting them, maybe the marathon goal, that kind of stuff.
Speaker 3: I had a conversation with Eddie Claypool, you know, who's
Speaker 3: a phenomenal hunter several years ago, and he told me,
Speaker 3: you know, because he was one of those guys who
Speaker 3: got after it so hard, like Western game, white tail,
Speaker 3: you knit turkeys. I mean, I would have conversations with
Speaker 3: Eddie Claypool and I'd be going to Nebraska to turkey,
Speaker 3: and he'd like, oh, where are you going? And I'd
Speaker 3: be you know, like we trust each other, we're friends.
Speaker 3: So i'd be like, oh, I'm this WMA and and
Speaker 3: he'd be like, yeah, just walk in here, and usually
Speaker 3: the birds are back in this corner. And I'm like,
Speaker 3: I could not bring up a place and he doesn't
Speaker 3: live there, he lives in Oklahoma. But I could not
Speaker 3: bring up a place where he wasn't like yeah I've
Speaker 3: been in there, or I killed a deer here or whatever.
Speaker 3: But he told me, and this was several years ago.
Speaker 3: But he's like, believe me when I say this, you
Speaker 3: will lose the drive eventually, Like figure out a way
Speaker 3: to keep yourself motivated to get out there, to keep
Speaker 3: doing it, because as you get older and you do
Speaker 3: more stuff, and you know, family wears on you and
Speaker 3: you get tired and you know, the usual stuff. He's like,
Speaker 3: you don't think it'll happen, but it will. And I've
Speaker 3: thought about that, you know, hundreds of times in my
Speaker 3: life because there's a guy who was like, live in it,
Speaker 3: and he's telling you, like he's in the future and
Speaker 3: he's like, hey, trust me on this. You won't be
Speaker 3: as motivated to do this when you get to my age.
Speaker 3: And I just look at it and I go, how
Speaker 3: can I stay Like, how can you like push that
Speaker 3: away or keep that at bay for a while.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I don't know the answer to that, other than
Speaker 2: continuing to walk that careful line between chasing it now
Speaker 2: but also not doing the opposite of that, which is
Speaker 2: the ten years from now or fifteen years from now
Speaker 2: we say, oh man, we did a lot of epic hunts,
Speaker 2: but I missed my kids this thing, and I missed
Speaker 2: my kids that thing, and I didn't get to do
Speaker 2: this stuff with my son or my daughter's or whatever.
Speaker 2: It's like, how do you balance that drive to do
Speaker 2: it all with knowing that we don't get our kids
Speaker 2: childhoods back either, or our marriage back or whatever. Like
Speaker 2: that's the constant balance, right.
Speaker 3: Well, and you don't get your own time back either,
Speaker 3: you know, like you don't get your old health back.
Speaker 3: Like I really think that this is going to sound stupid,
Speaker 3: but I just as I get older, and my patience
Speaker 3: and discipline sure seemed to serve me well for a
Speaker 3: lot of stuff. And so I I look at that
Speaker 3: and I go, you don't have to lose your family
Speaker 3: over a deer, you know, Like, but you also don't
Speaker 3: have to try to get into a situation where it's
Speaker 3: so easy that the challenge is gone and you don't
Speaker 3: appreciate it anymore. Because when you see that, and I
Speaker 3: know people don't believe it, but when you see that,
Speaker 3: it's it's like a tangible thing that happens to people
Speaker 3: when they get a really, really good spot. It's very
Speaker 3: easy to just go, well, I don't have to work extra?
Speaker 3: Why would I? But that when you put yourself in
Speaker 3: a position to be challenged and work extra it's It
Speaker 3: usually makes you feel pretty good and it keeps you
Speaker 3: kind of going. Man, it didn't happen this year, but
Speaker 3: next year, I'm going back to do that trip again.
Speaker 3: Or keep buying those over the counter elk takes till
Speaker 3: they're gone, you know, like because they're going to be gone.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I've got a buddy who I think he'd be
Speaker 2: okay with me saying this. A couple of friends that
Speaker 2: now have a situation kind of like that, and they
Speaker 2: now call themselves box blind bastards.
Speaker 3: Are these here the Iowa Buddies?
Speaker 2: Yeah, And you know, you get a sweet spot and
Speaker 2: it gets comfortable and there's nothing wrong with that, Like
Speaker 2: that's all some people want, which is great. Like if
Speaker 2: you were happy with that, heck, yeah you got a mate.
Speaker 2: But you know that might not be what.
Speaker 3: Dude, you got to be real honest with yourself, I mean,
Speaker 3: because because right it could be your thing, and that
Speaker 3: could be exactly what you want out of your hunting,
Speaker 3: and that would be a perfect scenario. But you have
Speaker 3: to be really honest about it, like are you enjoying it? Like,
Speaker 3: are you enjoying going to the same view and opening
Speaker 3: the same window when you want to shoot a deer
Speaker 3: every time, or do you need something else? Like it's
Speaker 3: so personal.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And I mean that's one of the great things
Speaker 2: about what we do, right, It's like, this can be
Speaker 2: whatever it is you want to be. You know, it's
Speaker 2: it's and I suppose that's the case with a lot
Speaker 2: of different activities. I guess if you want to be
Speaker 2: a climber, a runner or whatever, you can make your
Speaker 2: own goals and your own experience. But that is particularly
Speaker 2: true with hunting, as long as you don't fall prey
Speaker 2: to the pressures of like what everybody else thinks, right
Speaker 2: and so and so I guess to that point, like, man,
Speaker 2: if you want to be a box blind guy or girl, man,
Speaker 2: more power to you. That's awesome if that's the thing
Speaker 2: that gets you stoked and you are excited to go
Speaker 2: do do it, and you should not be at all
Speaker 2: worried about what Tony or I think. But on the
Speaker 2: flip side, you know the same at the same time,
Speaker 2: like if that's not going to do it for you,
Speaker 2: but you're falling into the trap of like, oh man,
Speaker 2: this feels easy, and then you just keep doing it
Speaker 2: because it's the easy thing. Well, then maybe you want
Speaker 2: to reconsider it too. So it comes down to like
Speaker 2: knowing yourself, knowing what's going to keep you energized and
Speaker 2: excited about this, and then chasing that well.
Speaker 3: And I think one of the things that we see
Speaker 3: with hunters a lot, you know, like the general hunting
Speaker 3: population is terrified a change. Like you see this if
Speaker 3: there's a proposal to move a gun season or a
Speaker 3: bo season or something for some reason. I mean, you
Speaker 3: name it, We've seen it a million times. But you
Speaker 3: also have to recognize that you're going to change over
Speaker 3: the next two years and five years and ten years.
Speaker 3: And so that goal of having that thing, you know,
Speaker 3: maybe when you have kids and having you know, buying
Speaker 3: that forty acres and putting those box lines up and
Speaker 3: giving them that experience is like, you know, closest thing
Speaker 3: to dying and going to heaven. But you know, when
Speaker 3: those kids hit teenage years and maybe they're not hunting
Speaker 3: with you or something like, you might be in a
Speaker 3: totally different place, you know, or you might do it.
Speaker 3: You know, you might do the public land thing and
Speaker 3: be like, that's that's only my thing and burn yourself
Speaker 3: right to the ground for five seasons or ten seasons
Speaker 3: in a row and go. Man, I'm not I'm not
Speaker 3: looking forward to it anymore. I'm not scouting the way
Speaker 3: I want to. And like, if you're honest about that,
Speaker 3: maybe you're going the other way, you know, and and
Speaker 3: who knows where you'll end up. But if you're open
Speaker 3: to that stuff, it's it's important to just be honest
Speaker 3: about it. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think there's a lot of truth to that
Speaker 2: and sampling and testing and seeing where you where that
Speaker 2: right places for you. So hard pivot here before we
Speaker 2: wrap up, There's one thing I wanted to ask you
Speaker 2: about about last year and something I thought it'd be
Speaker 2: kind of fun to talk about here for a few minutes,
Speaker 2: which is one of our guilty pleasures Tony, which is reading.
Speaker 2: We both do a lot of reading, and I never
Speaker 2: get to do podcasts where I get to talk about books,
Speaker 2: and you're the only person I could talk about books with.
Speaker 2: So do you have a favorite book or two or
Speaker 2: recommended book or two, or something that stands out? It
Speaker 2: doesn't have to be a book. It could also be
Speaker 2: like a film, a documentary, a podcast series or anything
Speaker 2: like that. But I've got books. Do you have any recommendations? Coming?
Speaker 2: On twenty three?
Speaker 3: I do so, even just what we talked about about changing.
Speaker 3: And you know, I spent a lot of my life
Speaker 3: reading a lot of fiction and writing that way. And
Speaker 3: then you know, probably the last five or seven years,
Speaker 3: I've mostly been reading nonfiction stuff mostly Like I just
Speaker 3: I wasn't drawn to just made up stories anymore, but
Speaker 3: ID up reading. And I think you've read some of
Speaker 3: his stuff, Andy Weiers books. You know, he wrote The Martian,
Speaker 3: Artemis Hail Mary. Have you read those?
Speaker 2: I've no, I've I've I've read part of The Martian,
Speaker 2: so I haven't finished Martian, and I own Project Hail Mary,
Speaker 2: and it's like on my to read list this year,
Speaker 2: but I haven't got to it yet. But I've read
Speaker 2: like the first chapter and like, I got to read this,
Speaker 2: so I was intrigued when he brought that up.
Speaker 3: That was probably one of my favorite books the last year.
Speaker 3: And I'll tell you what if I if I read
Speaker 3: the synopsis of it, I probably wouldn't have read it.
Speaker 3: Like I kept I kept getting into it. He has
Speaker 3: like a very he's a weird style because it's very
Speaker 3: almost informal writing, Like there's a lot of like this
Speaker 3: is going to make me sound like a prick. But
Speaker 3: if if I see something and it has a lot
Speaker 3: of exclamation points, I'm like, uh, I don't want to
Speaker 3: read this, probably just yeah whatever. But that book, I
Speaker 3: kept reading it and getting into it, and I'm like,
Speaker 3: I was just like so surprise at how much I
Speaker 3: just enjoyed, you know, being entertained by it, and it
Speaker 3: gets you to think about a lot of stuff because
Speaker 3: he's real science based. But it was like a it
Speaker 3: was a good lesson for me because I was kind
Speaker 3: of like, I'm not you know, Cormack McCarthy died, I'm
Speaker 3: kind of done reading fiction right for the most part.
Speaker 3: And then I read that and I was like, I
Speaker 3: just enjoyed it so much. And I liked all of
Speaker 3: his books. I read them all last year, but that one,
Speaker 3: I was like that one actually kind of just like
Speaker 3: partially because I was like, there's no way this is
Speaker 3: going to do it for me, so that one and
Speaker 3: I ended up going through I'm reading a lot of
Speaker 3: space books, which would not surprise you, and I've been
Speaker 3: reading a lot of Carl Sagan stuff and man Cosmos.
Speaker 3: It was just I don't know, I didn't read it
Speaker 3: for whatever reason, and then I read it last year,
Speaker 3: and I was like, it's just so interesting, Like anybody
Speaker 3: who can take the concepts of astrophysics and all of
Speaker 3: the math involved in all of the ways in which
Speaker 3: we know what's happening and explain it to somebody like me,
Speaker 3: Like you heard me try to do math when you
Speaker 3: were asking me about how many miles I run at
Speaker 3: the beginning of the episode, I was off by like
Speaker 3: twelve hundred miles. I anybody who can take those concepts
Speaker 3: because all of that stuff is math and and just
Speaker 3: make it so digestible and interesting.
Speaker 2: He's he was, and he wrote that back in like
Speaker 2: the eighties or nineties, right, yes, and so like this
Speaker 2: this holds up still, it's.
Speaker 3: In fact later it's probably it does. It's wild to
Speaker 3: hear some of his predictions and know what we've kind
Speaker 3: of proven to be true since then. But also he
Speaker 3: wasn't just like obsessed with space, right, Like it was
Speaker 3: all about like our place in the universe and how
Speaker 3: we treat each other. And it was his way of
Speaker 3: looking at things was so fascinating as far as like
Speaker 3: what what does society need? Like where are we going?
Speaker 3: But what do we actually need? And that I think
Speaker 3: that was why he was so popular, you know, and
Speaker 3: I think that's why it holds true to this day.
Speaker 2: See, I've got a similar fascination with those kinds of questions,
Speaker 2: but not with space. I'm interested in right now just
Speaker 2: like the impacts of AI and where that's going right now.
Speaker 2: That seems like we are on the precipice of this
Speaker 2: massive shift in so many different things. So that's been
Speaker 2: an area of like curiosity for me this year. I've
Speaker 2: read a bunch. I've got a book on that called
Speaker 2: The Coming Wave that I can't recommend yet because I'm
Speaker 2: just working through it still, but very interesting to this point.
Speaker 2: It's written by one of the founders of DeepMind, which
Speaker 2: is one of the AI companies at Google bought you know,
Speaker 2: seven eight years ago or whatever, so they're the ones
Speaker 2: behind Google's big AI push. So interesting, interesting stuff.
Speaker 3: Have you had a chance to talk to Steve Ranella
Speaker 3: about AI yet?
Speaker 2: I have not. You guys get into that.
Speaker 3: In Oklahoma, we had an interest conversation about it. In
Speaker 3: typical Ranella fashion. He's like, Ah, it's not gonna be
Speaker 3: anything kind of thing. Yeah, it's not gonna not gonna
Speaker 3: ruin society. It's not gonna enslave humans. It's just this
Speaker 3: total dismissive.
Speaker 2: Uh well, I'll be sure to bring it up. What
Speaker 2: I see him next and see, uh see where his
Speaker 2: head's at on that one.
Speaker 3: So what was what was your favorite then? Because you
Speaker 3: just started that one? So books, Yeah, if you looked
Speaker 3: at last year, what was the one where you were like,
Speaker 3: oh my god, I can't recommend this enough.
Speaker 2: Probably it would be two books, the two books that
Speaker 2: I and the Trick is like one of them I
Speaker 2: think could be for anyone who listens to this podcast.
Speaker 2: One of them. You'd have to be like, very committed
Speaker 2: to learning about this kind of stuff. So the easy
Speaker 2: recommendation and and folks in our world have seen this
Speaker 2: recommended a bunch but wild New World by Dan f
Speaker 2: Have you read that one.
Speaker 3: I haven't read that one, but I've read his other books.
Speaker 2: Okay, yeah, so you know he's great. He's one of
Speaker 2: Steve's longtime friends. He's been on Steve's podcast. So his
Speaker 2: latest book takes a look at the history of wildlife
Speaker 2: and people in North America since people came to North America.
Speaker 2: So it basically starts like Pleistocene type animals, everything that
Speaker 2: happened there the near I think it's fair to say
Speaker 2: a catasgraphic extinction event that occurred in North America relatively
Speaker 2: soon after folks showed up here. And then it follows
Speaker 2: from that all the way through you know, Europeans showing
Speaker 2: up and everything that happened there, and then kind of
Speaker 2: wraps up almost to where we are now, just kind
Speaker 2: of following that constant push and pull and tension and
Speaker 2: dependency but also destructive relationship we have with wildlife here.
Speaker 2: So really interesting and I think super relevant to anyone
Speaker 2: who hunts or fishes, you know, kind of coming to
Speaker 2: terms of that. It's sometimes very ugly history, but it's
Speaker 2: other times inspiring history. So that's great book. I can't
Speaker 2: recommend that one enough.
Speaker 3: Yeah, he's pretty good, Yeah.
Speaker 2: Very good. Second recommendation is one that I pushed on
Speaker 2: you years ago. We've talked about it since and then
Speaker 2: I pushed it on you, and I had actually not
Speaker 2: finished it when I had pushed on you, and then
Speaker 2: I finally finished it this year, which is the Song
Speaker 2: of the Dodo by David Klemen. And so you know,
Speaker 2: as you know since you read it, but I'll mention
Speaker 2: I think I even talked about this once earlier, back
Speaker 2: in twenty three, I brought it up, but I'm going
Speaker 2: to talk about it again because I just thought it
Speaker 2: was such a profoundly interesting book and well written book.
Speaker 2: You know, it basically looks at kind of how species,
Speaker 2: like it examines evolution and extinction. If I had to
Speaker 2: simplify it, it really dives into how species evolve and how
Speaker 2: species go extinct. And it uses the example of islands,
Speaker 2: and the study of islands, called island biogeography is basically
Speaker 2: this this field of study. And what's interesting about this
Speaker 2: is that you can see evolution and extinction happen much
Speaker 2: more quickly and much more clearly on islands because of
Speaker 2: the fact that these are isolated populations. And so it
Speaker 2: uses all these different examples, and David travels around the
Speaker 2: world exploring these kinds of things, meeting with people learning
Speaker 2: about this kind of stuff, and he goes all the
Speaker 2: way back into the history of like how we kind
Speaker 2: of figure this out in the first place, So it
Speaker 2: talks about Darwin and Wallace and the people who kind
Speaker 2: of figured out the theory of evolution, and then goes
Speaker 2: all the way through relatively currently, how we've also been
Speaker 2: trying to figure like why are species going extinct? And
Speaker 2: how is this happening? And what are the different forces
Speaker 2: that you know, not not like the high level forces
Speaker 2: like not habitat destruction, but like what happens to the
Speaker 2: genetics of a population or what happens when you isolate
Speaker 2: a population. I don't know, nerdy geeky in the in
Speaker 2: the weeds kind of stuff, but he does it in
Speaker 2: a way that's that's pretty darn compelling. And what's what's
Speaker 2: really I think what makes us particularly relevant is right
Speaker 2: this whole idea of like studying extinctions on islands. It
Speaker 2: does not just apply to like physical islands like Maui
Speaker 2: or something. We are also creating islands all over the
Speaker 2: world on the mainland because we are continuing to create
Speaker 2: these isolated pockets of wildlife habitat surrounded by people in development.
Speaker 2: So like Central Park is an island, Yellowstone is an island.
Speaker 2: The piece of woods behind my house is to a
Speaker 2: degree an island surrounded by agriculture all around it. So
Speaker 2: we're creating all these pseudo islands and now those island
Speaker 2: effects that have real ramifications on wildlife populations. We're creating
Speaker 2: those kinds of things all over the world, and species
Speaker 2: are disappearing because of it. So if you care at
Speaker 2: all about wildlife and having critters around and understanding why
Speaker 2: we have fewer critters on average seventy percent fewer animals
Speaker 2: on average, species across the country have gone down seventy percent,
Speaker 2: not the country, world since nineteen seventy. So, like, there's
Speaker 2: this biodiversity crisis, and this is something I'm spend a
Speaker 2: lot of time diving deep into. This is one of
Speaker 2: the best books on it and can't recommend it enough.
Speaker 2: But it is big and it requires a commitment to
Speaker 2: like dive into it, but I think it's worth the time.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that book, That book is really good. It's just
Speaker 3: a real heavy lift.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Like there's there's a lot to unpack. I did
Speaker 2: this thing where I don't know if you've ever done this,
Speaker 2: but I have got the physical book and the audio
Speaker 2: book and I bounce back and forth between the two.
Speaker 2: You've ever done that. Yeah, it's been, like I don't know,
Speaker 2: for like books that take a while to get through,
Speaker 2: it's been a good way to like make time with them,
Speaker 2: go for long drive, cover a bunch of ground with it,
Speaker 2: and then like you're you're deep into it because you
Speaker 2: listen to it, but it's easier to listen and then
Speaker 2: you can, you know, pick it up here and there nights,
Speaker 2: you know, in the week, and then jump in, do
Speaker 2: a long drive over the weekend or something cover some ground.
Speaker 2: I don't know, it's it's been something I've started to
Speaker 2: do more often. It seems a little silly to pay
Speaker 2: extra money for a second copy of the same book,
Speaker 2: but I'm a fan of books, so I guess I
Speaker 2: feel like it's a donation that I'm okay making to
Speaker 2: the author's fine. Yeah, But but with that said, we've
Speaker 2: got to wrap this one up because I've got to
Speaker 2: run off through a snowstore and pick up my son
Speaker 2: and can't be late for that. So thanks man for
Speaker 2: talking books with me. We're talking goals. You know, it's
Speaker 2: gonna be a good year. I'm excited about it.
Speaker 3: Me too, buddy, me too.
Speaker 2: All right. Well, appreciate everyone tuning in for a bit
Speaker 2: of a random show here today. But as we start
Speaker 2: these every new year, I kind of feel like it's
Speaker 2: nice to just kind of ease into the year, have
Speaker 2: some fun talk about what we're thinking about and where
Speaker 2: things are headed, and kind of get ourselves rejuvenated for
Speaker 2: this next push. So that said, appreciate you being here,
Speaker 2: and until next time, stay wired to hun