Speaker 1: Welcome to the Wired to Hunt Foundations podcast, your guide
Speaker 1: to the fundamentals of better dear hunting, and now your
Speaker 1: host Tony Peterson. Hey everyone, welcome to the Wire to
Speaker 1: Hunt Foundations podcast, which has brought to you by First Light.
Speaker 1: I'm your host Tony Peterson, and today's episode is all
Speaker 1: about how confidence helps you kill deer. I know, I know,
Speaker 1: being confident helps you kill white tails. We all know
Speaker 1: that it also helps you get the girls and make
Speaker 1: the team and get a raise and win a fight
Speaker 1: or a thumb wrestling match or whatever that helps in
Speaker 1: a lot of ways. Having a little swagger is a
Speaker 1: good thing, but it's kind of like respect. You have
Speaker 1: to earn it. Confidence doesn't just come from some divine
Speaker 1: finger snap and suddenly infect your being so that you're just, like,
Speaker 1: I don't know, a stone cold killer or an unstoppable
Speaker 1: ladies man. And this episode is all about that. I mean,
Speaker 1: the first part, you're on your own with the second part,
Speaker 1: and you sure as hell don't want to listen to
Speaker 1: me if you want to become a ladies man. And
Speaker 1: you really don't want to listen to Mark if you've
Speaker 1: seen his mustache so you know he's not the guy.
Speaker 1: Listen up if you want to learn about how confidence
Speaker 1: can help you kill some bigger deer. As many of
Speaker 1: you know, the baby making phase of my life was
Speaker 1: short and sweet. I got a two fur out of
Speaker 1: the deal, a deal where I saw my wife only
Speaker 1: a couple of times during Turkey season over a decade ago.
Speaker 1: Those little girls born in the middle of December. They
Speaker 1: have changed my life in a lot of ways, too
Speaker 1: many to count. And while the obvious stuff of parenthood
Speaker 1: should be obvious, they've taught me so many things that
Speaker 1: I did not see coming. One that really surprised me
Speaker 1: is a lesson on confidence one of my daughters. Now
Speaker 1: keep in mind, if you're one of my slower listeners,
Speaker 1: that these girls are twins, so theoretically we should kind
Speaker 1: of expect them to behave in similar ways. One of
Speaker 1: my daughters, she's pretty self conscious. She worries too much
Speaker 1: about what other kids will think, and that is a
Speaker 1: factor in so many of her decisions. Her sister, on
Speaker 1: the other hand, has probably the most unearned confidence I've
Speaker 1: ever seen in a person. She's like a ten year
Speaker 1: old girl. Version of Kenny Powers, the main character from
Speaker 1: the Masterpiece series that is eastbound and down. Honestly, that
Speaker 1: daughter of mine believes in herself so deeply that I'm
Speaker 1: kind of jealous. I think most of us harbor I
Speaker 1: don't know a fair level of anxiety and self doubt,
Speaker 1: and as adults we just kind of learned to hide
Speaker 1: it better and learn to avoid situations where it will
Speaker 1: be obvious to casual observers. Now, this girl, or my daughter,
Speaker 1: she doesn't really operate in that world. She knows, and
Speaker 1: I mean absolutely knows she can do things that she
Speaker 1: literally cannot do. Imagine that she has full faith in
Speaker 1: herself in an astounding way. This was truly evident to
Speaker 1: me as we coach the girls in a false offtball
Speaker 1: league recently, my not so confident twin daughter, she wouldn't
Speaker 1: pitch in those early years of player pitch, all eyes
Speaker 1: are on the picture and mostly they are terrible. And
Speaker 1: it's not a great place to be if you're not confident.
Speaker 1: And you know, honestly, all those kids are terrible, But
Speaker 1: that doesn't make suffering through the personal experience of being
Speaker 1: the terrible picture right now in front of everybody is
Speaker 1: something I don't know less mortifying, I guess. So she
Speaker 1: wouldn't pitch. Her sister, though, the confident one, was bagging
Speaker 1: us to pitch. Even though she was mostly terrible at it,
Speaker 1: she had some bright spots, maybe possibly because the batters,
Speaker 1: I don't know, they couldn't hit a beach ball off
Speaker 1: at tea if he gave them tense swings at it.
Speaker 1: But she also got shelled a few times. And when
Speaker 1: those girls would get into a batting groove, it often
Speaker 1: didn't make the defense look too good. And during those times,
Speaker 1: my daughter would walk off the field and honest to God,
Speaker 1: she said this to me, I guess it just wasn't
Speaker 1: my day to pitch. She shook that shipped off like
Speaker 1: an NFL quarterback, and it made me jealous. I couldn't
Speaker 1: imagine not mind grinding over that for at least a
Speaker 1: couple of days, maybe a couple of weeks or months.
Speaker 1: Her confidence in herself, it's going to be a life
Speaker 1: changer for her. Your confidence in yourself could be too,
Speaker 1: if you learn how to develop it properly. Around hunting,
Speaker 1: I know this sounds easy, like maybe you should go
Speaker 1: out and just shoot a few more big bucks and
Speaker 1: really get your swagger on when you stop into the
Speaker 1: local watering hole with fresh blood stains on your first
Speaker 1: light camo and a few times periscoping their way out
Speaker 1: of the edge of your pickup bed. But it's not
Speaker 1: so simple because to kill a good one or I
Speaker 1: don't know, seven or eight for that matter, you've got
Speaker 1: to get more than lucky. You have to make a
Speaker 1: lot of the right decisions and string them all together,
Speaker 1: sometimes over a matter of quite a long time, and
Speaker 1: that's just not easy. Instead, i'd take a long, honest
Speaker 1: look at what parts of hunting caused you to have
Speaker 1: that nagging feeling of anxiety. An easy jumping off place
Speaker 1: here is with shooting. And I covered this quite a
Speaker 1: bit earlier in some episodes, so I won't go down
Speaker 1: that rabbit hole again. But I'll say this, there's really
Speaker 1: no excuse not to be a good enough shot at say,
Speaker 1: I don't know sub forty yard ranges. At least if
Speaker 1: you're shooting a somewhat modern compound, there isn't that's really
Speaker 1: on you. Now, I know, shooting foam targets is a
Speaker 1: different deal than shooting living, breathing antler, sporting deer. If
Speaker 1: you have all of the confidence in the world that
Speaker 1: you can shoot spots on a target well, but you
Speaker 1: don't really have that closer mentality when a deer walks in.
Speaker 1: The ugly truth is that you don't have confidence in
Speaker 1: your ability to make that kind of shot happen. Now,
Speaker 1: your confidence extends as far as the shooting range boundaries
Speaker 1: go in that situation, but not any farther, like into
Speaker 1: the woods. This is a huge problem with a lot
Speaker 1: of bow hunters, and they intentionally hamstring themselves by targeting
Speaker 1: low odds deer and getting to go through the moment
Speaker 1: of truth motions only maybe once or twice a season.
Speaker 1: I've said this a lot, and I'll say it again.
Speaker 1: You can't get good at shooting deer correctly without shooting
Speaker 1: quite a few deer. If you go to YouTube, you
Speaker 1: can see plenty examples of this on different platforms. Shaky arms,
Speaker 1: poor form, and just a general sense of someone who
Speaker 1: is about to lose his freaking mind. Now, all of
Speaker 1: us should get excited when we shoot a deer, so
Speaker 1: I'm not dogging on anyone for that. Hell, I do
Speaker 1: to like an embarrassing level, but you should work to
Speaker 1: have the confidence to make good shots, knowing full well
Speaker 1: you'll be functioning largely off of your reptile brain, and
Speaker 1: that's one of those moments where confident shines. Or how
Speaker 1: about another example that sort of plays off of the
Speaker 1: shooting thing. How confident are you shooting off of a stand?
Speaker 1: What about a saddle? I think one of the biggest
Speaker 1: disservices we have done to the bow hunting masses is
Speaker 1: not talk about how long it takes to get confident
Speaker 1: using a saddle and then not only hunting out of one,
Speaker 1: but being mindful enough of your shooting form from one
Speaker 1: to not send your point of impact way off when
Speaker 1: you're taking shots from them. There are plenty of examples
Speaker 1: of this on YouTube. Now how do you fix that? Well,
Speaker 1: you practice from one a lot. You make it second
Speaker 1: nature to check your form while shooting around the tree
Speaker 1: on both sides and hanging off and shooting directly away
Speaker 1: from the platform. Really, these rules apply to any type
Speaker 1: of act tool hunting shot. How many hunters do you
Speaker 1: know who have shot the side of a blind while
Speaker 1: turkey hunting or deer hunting? I have, and I can
Speaker 1: tell you one thing. It sucks. Not only do you
Speaker 1: definitely not get the critter you're shooting at, you scare
Speaker 1: the living shite out of yourself and you have a
Speaker 1: hole in your blind. If you're really unlucky, you might
Speaker 1: even hit a support pole and have some carbon fiber
Speaker 1: slivers in your future. I'm sure my neighbors think I'm
Speaker 1: a certifiable nut case, but I used to practice shooting
Speaker 1: from blinds a lot, and I used to set up
Speaker 1: a tree stand in my yard or shoot from my deck.
Speaker 1: Now it's not always easy, but it's always worth it
Speaker 1: to have a bend there done that attitude. You have
Speaker 1: to be there and do that a lot. I guess
Speaker 1: I'll give you another example of confidence. You can't replace
Speaker 1: it with someone else's experience. In September, a good buddy
Speaker 1: of mine was looking at hunting Wisconsin's deer opener. He's
Speaker 1: an Iowa guy, born and raised in Iowa, so he's
Speaker 1: used to two things. An October opener and having the
Speaker 1: entire rut to bow hunt, literally the best state in
Speaker 1: the Union. As the opener loom closer. I started getting
Speaker 1: these anxiety ridden texts from him about the weather. It
Speaker 1: was supposed to top out around eighty in the day,
Speaker 1: and he was bemoaning the fact that we wouldn't have
Speaker 1: the right weather to kill a big buck with he
Speaker 1: had no confidence in hunting that hot weather, and he
Speaker 1: talked himself into going fishing more than he sat on
Speaker 1: a stand. If you've listened to me for any length
Speaker 1: of time, you know how that probably drove me nuts.
Speaker 1: I don't care about hot weather at all, and I
Speaker 1: honestly don't think it kills deer movement enough to keep
Speaker 1: me home ever, especially if I have something green to
Speaker 1: sit over, or better, something wet to sit over, and
Speaker 1: it happens to be the early season when the deer
Speaker 1: are pretty accustomed to hot weather. That with my buddy
Speaker 1: was that he just didn't have any confidence in hunting
Speaker 1: those conditions. He's used to being able to wait for
Speaker 1: better weather, so that's his default. But how the hell
Speaker 1: do you think you learn to kill September white tails,
Speaker 1: or really any month white tails if you don't hunt
Speaker 1: them in the conditions that are thrown your way. You've
Speaker 1: got to shoot your shop, my friends, And you know
Speaker 1: what happens when you do and you make it well,
Speaker 1: you get confidence. I have so much confidence in my
Speaker 1: September abilities that it's probably bordering on kind of danger
Speaker 1: zone territory, which is another component of confidence that we
Speaker 1: should be aware of. Being too confident in something is
Speaker 1: going to kill your chances. Let's say you spent your
Speaker 1: formative years hunting a family farm in a pretty good
Speaker 1: white tail state. You had access to controlled land, and
Speaker 1: you had pretty good success, I don't know, rattling, grunting,
Speaker 1: maybe running a full body decoy around Halloween. You've had
Speaker 1: the good life for a long time, but then grandma
Speaker 1: dies in a skydiving accident, and suddenly the farm is
Speaker 1: up for sale, and you're out there with the rest
Speaker 1: of us chumps knocking on doors and you get lucky in.
Speaker 1: A farmer tells you, sure, shoot all those crop eating
Speaker 1: rodents you can, and you think, well, I will, but
Speaker 1: he also says, oh, you know, my grandson and my
Speaker 1: grandson's friends hunt, and so do a couple of the neighbors.
Speaker 1: It doesn't really matter, though. You think, I got a
Speaker 1: wall full of big ones, and I know, dear. So
Speaker 1: you wait for the right cold front and the right
Speaker 1: moon phase, and you go to your best field edge
Speaker 1: stand and you clang those antlers together and nothing comes
Speaker 1: running in, and you think, maybe maybe my timing is off,
Speaker 1: so you try again a few days later. You know,
Speaker 1: maybe moving in a little deeper into the best timber,
Speaker 1: and not only does nothing come then, but you watch
Speaker 1: a white tail bound to away from you the moment
Speaker 1: you hit those antlers together. This becomes sort of like
Speaker 1: a lather, rent repeat situation, and now you're confidencing what worked.
Speaker 1: It worked free for a long time is a liability
Speaker 1: and not an asset. This happens to me often on
Speaker 1: specific chunks of public land that are always changing, and
Speaker 1: I hate it. Drives me nuts some years, and I
Speaker 1: even fully admit this. I want an easy one. I
Speaker 1: just want to repeat my performance from the year before,
Speaker 1: but that so rarely rarely happens. Instead, there's always some
Speaker 1: new program I have to figure out. I'm sure you
Speaker 1: can relate to this for a lot of you can,
Speaker 1: do you see how muddy this ship starts to get.
Speaker 1: I told you to develop confidence in various aspects of hunting,
Speaker 1: and then I told you too much confidence will kick
Speaker 1: your square in the delegates. And now I'm going to
Speaker 1: tell you that you have to be super confident again
Speaker 1: when I inevitably get divorced because my bride has had enough,
Speaker 1: this podcast will probably be used in court against my character.
Speaker 1: Here's the thing, though, Confidence has to be earned remember
Speaker 1: when I said that earlier. Confidence doesn't come from a
Speaker 1: one off encounter. Usually it comes from stacked experience. Confidence
Speaker 1: that comes too easily should be questioned. If your entire
Speaker 1: deer hunting experience consists of hunting one good property, your
Speaker 1: confidence should be high. But it should be high only
Speaker 1: for that one good property. If you've gone to I
Speaker 1: don't know, seventeen different states and shot pope and young
Speaker 1: bucks on public land and all of them, then you
Speaker 1: should have confidence in yourself to get it done, no
Speaker 1: matter what mother nature throws at you, and no matter
Speaker 1: where you're hunting. And that's the biggest one. And I
Speaker 1: know that most people will never get the opportunity to
Speaker 1: visit seventeen different states, let alone hunting them. I get that.
Speaker 1: So you've got to scale it down. Do you have
Speaker 1: plenty of experience hunting from a stand and from a
Speaker 1: blind and from a saddle and still hunting or whatever?
Speaker 1: If not, maybe your favorite forty acre chunk isn't the
Speaker 1: best place to still hunt, but the five thousand acres
Speaker 1: of public land down the road could be. Do you
Speaker 1: not have much confidence in settling your pin on a
Speaker 1: deer's vitals because you've only killed a few Could you
Speaker 1: hunt a few more doughs? Could you both hunt turkeys
Speaker 1: or some other critter? Where can you get more experience?
Speaker 1: You should ask yourself that, because it's an important question.
Speaker 1: Do you put yourself in a position to be challenged
Speaker 1: in new ways? I think the importance of this can't
Speaker 1: really be overstated. One on a state trip a year
Speaker 1: that takes you to unfamiliar territory and forces you to
Speaker 1: figure out things on the fly. That's going to help
Speaker 1: you build confidence in a major way that you're gonna
Speaker 1: take home with you, especially if you go through right
Speaker 1: to the end of that hunt, you don't give up
Speaker 1: or phone it in. I realized this might be a
Speaker 1: little overwhelming, and I might be out driving my headlights here.
Speaker 1: So let's back up a second and get a little
Speaker 1: granular with this concept. Where are the little mistakes you
Speaker 1: make during your hunts? Are they that you didn't clear
Speaker 1: your entrance routes very well or cut shooting lanes very well?
Speaker 1: Maybe you didn't eat scout to the point where you
Speaker 1: had a lot of confidence that you were going to
Speaker 1: have real options, you know, ambush options on the various
Speaker 1: properties you hunt. Those are kind of easiest things to
Speaker 1: get better at. What mistakes do you make getting into
Speaker 1: your stand? Are you always racing the clock in the morning?
Speaker 1: Maybe you just gotta set your alarm a little earlier
Speaker 1: and bite the bullet that you're gonna get a you know,
Speaker 1: a few less minutes of sleep. I guess. Do you
Speaker 1: often realize that you're climbing sticks, squeak on the tree,
Speaker 1: or your ladder stand creeks and pops when you shift
Speaker 1: your weight in it. Those things are going to cut
Speaker 1: your confidence off at the knees, even if they don't
Speaker 1: seem like that big of a deal most of the time.
Speaker 1: Trust me, if a buck is close and you're terrified
Speaker 1: to move for fear of making noise, that buck is
Speaker 1: pretty damn safe. And maybe you've shot a few deer
Speaker 1: and you've gotten poor penetration on them. There's a confidence
Speaker 1: issue built in there that is going to come roaring
Speaker 1: back to life when you see a deer walk in
Speaker 1: that you want to shoot. Maybe it's a broad hit issue,
Speaker 1: or a bow tuning issue or something else, but whatever
Speaker 1: it is, it's also a confidence robber. Instead of thinking
Speaker 1: I've got this, this is over. He's as good as
Speaker 1: being in the back of my truck and tagged. You'll
Speaker 1: be thinking, I hope I've got this, and that is bad, bad, bad.
Speaker 1: And look at the big stuff and ask yourself where
Speaker 1: you believe in yourself, what are your strengths, play off
Speaker 1: of them, but also look at your weaknesses, the secret
Speaker 1: things that make you nervous. Those are the things you
Speaker 1: have to really figure out now. I'll never forget as
Speaker 1: a young man chasing a bass fishing dream that went nowhere,
Speaker 1: how nervous I'd be heading to a body of water
Speaker 1: that was famous for a certain bite, like say a
Speaker 1: Carolina rig by, or maybe a deep rock pile or
Speaker 1: weed line type of bite that just wasn't my thing,
Speaker 1: Even if I didn't fully acknowledge it, I was always
Speaker 1: always full of nervous energy over not being able to
Speaker 1: do the single thing I probably would need to do
Speaker 1: to catch a limit. It forced me, in my off
Speaker 1: time to work on those techniques and figure out how
Speaker 1: to catch fish on them. I know that probably sounds dumb,
Speaker 1: but it took that to give me confidence to fish
Speaker 1: anywhere with basically any style I might have to use.
Speaker 1: And hunting is like that, except we don't do it
Speaker 1: for competition, thank God. And we mostly do it alone also,
Speaker 1: thank god, but we do need to try to develop
Speaker 1: a whole bunch of different skills. It will all be
Speaker 1: linked together. And we do need to find mental space
Speaker 1: that fuels the flames of belief in ourselves. That says
Speaker 1: without question, if that buck walks in within forty yards
Speaker 1: and stops broadside or quartering away in a decent opening,
Speaker 1: that he's going to be wearing our tag by the
Speaker 1: into the hunt. When you get to that place, it's
Speaker 1: pretty nice, even if the footholds and the handholds aren't
Speaker 1: always as solid as they seem, because after all, things
Speaker 1: can go sideways in a variety of bad ways, but
Speaker 1: they don't have to, and they often won't unless we
Speaker 1: allow them to, the best way to not force those
Speaker 1: outliers situations to happen is to work on ourselves in
Speaker 1: small doses for years to be become more confident in
Speaker 1: our abilities to do exactly what we need to do.
Speaker 1: Every time we enter the woods and you can get there,
Speaker 1: I promise you that, And if you do, you're gonna
Speaker 1: shoot it some deer, So you know what you're gonna
Speaker 1: have to blood trail some deer. The next two episodes
Speaker 1: are going to be all about that process, so be
Speaker 1: sure to tune in. That's it for this week, my friends.
Speaker 1: I'm Tony P. And this has been the Wired Hunt
Speaker 1: Foundations podcast, brought to you by First Light. As always,
Speaker 1: thank you so much for your support, and if you
Speaker 1: want more of a white tail fix, feel free to
Speaker 1: check out Mark's new show on the Mediator YouTube channel,
Speaker 1: which is called Deer Country. You can also visit the
Speaker 1: wire to Hunt YouTube channel for how to videos and
Speaker 1: go to the mediator dot com slash wired to read
Speaker 1: all kinds of white tail related articles