Speaker 1: Welcome to the Wired to Hunt Foundations podcast, your guide
Speaker 1: to the fundamentals of better dear hunting. Present it by
Speaker 1: First Light, creating proven versatile hunting apparel for the stand,
Speaker 1: saddle or blind. First Light Go farther, stay Longer, and
Speaker 1: now your host Tony Peterson.
Speaker 2: Hey, everyone, welcome to the Wire to Hunt Foundations podcast,
Speaker 2: which is brought to you by First Light. Today, I'm
Speaker 2: going to talk about a whole bunch of random stuff
Speaker 2: that's related to white tails and hunting them, mostly because
Speaker 2: I want to. And this just happens to be the
Speaker 2: one hundredth episode of Foundations. You heard me right, Even
Speaker 2: though these episodes get lumped in with the regular Wire
Speaker 2: to Hunt episodes and the Fall Fresh episodes, so you
Speaker 2: can't easily see how many of these I've done just
Speaker 2: by looking at the number. Trust me, this is the
Speaker 2: old century mark on here. Did you know what that means? Means?
Speaker 2: That means I've written approximately three hundred thousand words for
Speaker 2: this thing. That's a higher word count than most of
Speaker 2: the books out there, even the ones centered on pollinators
Speaker 2: that Kenyon loves to read. In fact, three hundred thousand
Speaker 2: words is like four or five times as much as
Speaker 2: an entire bull hunting public land White Tails book that
Speaker 2: I wrote. That's how much you put into this thing.
Speaker 2: And what I plan to do today was just tell
Speaker 2: you some deer hunting stories. But lately I've been turkey hunting,
Speaker 2: which means I've had a lot of time to think,
Speaker 2: and I just want to go a different route with
Speaker 2: this one, because I think there's a better opportunity with
Speaker 2: this podcast than just me sitting here recounting some of
Speaker 2: my past dear successes and failures. But before I get
Speaker 2: into that, I have to let you know about the
Speaker 2: meat Eater giveaway that is going on right now until
Speaker 2: May twenty. First, if you want the chance to win
Speaker 2: three thousand dollars worth of sweet hunting gear along with
Speaker 2: a personalized outfitting session with a Latvian eagle himself, you
Speaker 2: just have to head over to the meadeater dot com
Speaker 2: slash giveaway to enter again the meat eater dot com
Speaker 2: slash giveaway. It's free, takes about thirty seconds, and you
Speaker 2: could end up with a boatload of kick ass gear. Recently,
Speaker 2: I got the old invite to be on the meat
Speaker 2: Eater podcast. Now I suspect I probably won't get invited
Speaker 2: back again, but that's okay. In the show, Steve and
Speaker 2: I debated a few topics, one of which was the
Speaker 2: recent trail camera ban on public land in Kansas. I
Speaker 2: bet most of you you probably have an opinion on
Speaker 2: this one way or the other. Either you think they
Speaker 2: should be allowed or you don't. The reasoning behind the van,
Speaker 2: at least partially, was to reduce hunter conflicts, which I
Speaker 2: personally think is kind of stupid. In the white tail world.
Speaker 2: This isn't a super limited water hole in Arizona where
Speaker 2: you could wait twenty years to draw the elk tag
Speaker 2: of a lifetime only to scout a few tanks and
Speaker 2: walk into see seventy three cameras on every available source
Speaker 2: at h two. Oh. This is a different thing. It's
Speaker 2: white tails. And while I'm actually pretty agnostic on cameras
Speaker 2: on public land or even private land for that matter,
Speaker 2: I am pretty sincere in my belief that we should
Speaker 2: be very careful about allowing or advocating for any type
Speaker 2: of outdoor opportunity to just go away. Listen, I've bitched
Speaker 2: about this a lot, so I apologize in advance, but
Speaker 2: I think we need to be honest with ourselves as hunters.
Speaker 2: When we go after non residents for shooting all of
Speaker 2: our deer, or we just continually gripe about our hunting
Speaker 2: opportunities and how there's just nothing left but crowds everywhere
Speaker 2: and only terrible deer hunting. We are signaling that we
Speaker 2: need and want change. I mean, we really want it.
Speaker 2: As hunters, we are hard wired genetically to look for
Speaker 2: short cuts in some of these changes or shortcuts, I
Speaker 2: mean why work harder? Have to? Am I right, On
Speaker 2: every piece of ground out there that is public, there's
Speaker 2: an opportunity to succeed or fail. Most will fail because
Speaker 2: that's the nature of our pursuit. But some people always
Speaker 2: find a way to get it done. They just do,
Speaker 2: and we all could, honestly, but it's easier to advocate
Speaker 2: for opportunities to go away. In the near term, you'll
Speaker 2: have easier hunting. And that's good, right. I mean, it's
Speaker 2: not good for people who enjoy hunting new areas and
Speaker 2: finding a little adventure in their pursuits, just as it's
Speaker 2: not good if you, oh, I don't know, enjoy running
Speaker 2: a few trail cameras on public land and happen to
Speaker 2: live or hunt in Kansas. Here's the thing. When things
Speaker 2: in our world go, they are gone. Remember that. I
Speaker 2: remember at least ten years ago when in my home
Speaker 2: state of Minnesota the moose numbers started to become a
Speaker 2: real concern. Wildlife biologists speculated on global warming being the
Speaker 2: cause brain worms from white tails mixing with moose tick
Speaker 2: born diseases. Hunters speculated quite vocally that it was our
Speaker 2: wolf population. You know, we have a population that was
Speaker 2: and probably still is second only to Alaska in quantity.
Speaker 2: When they shut down the season over population concerns. I
Speaker 2: didn't know any more than they did about why the
Speaker 2: moose were going downhill, But I knew something else. I'd
Speaker 2: never hunt moose in my home state. I should have
Speaker 2: applied earlier, and I didn't. And now we are well
Speaker 2: passed a decade into this seasonal closure, and you know what,
Speaker 2: hunters don't even really talk about it much anymore. We
Speaker 2: have just become conditioned to not having moose hunts. And
Speaker 2: you know what else, I don't hear about the moose
Speaker 2: population anymore. I don't honestly know how well our bullwinkles
Speaker 2: are doing. That kind of sucks. Things change. Interview folks
Speaker 2: out there that have a pensiont for pheasants like I do.
Speaker 2: And you're old enough probably remember the late nineties rooster
Speaker 2: numbers in some states. It was stupid fun and we
Speaker 2: didn't know what we had until the CRP come tracks
Speaker 2: started drying up and the crop prices decided to head
Speaker 2: north for a while. Grassland became far less profitable than eggland,
Speaker 2: and without grass your pheasants aren't going to be around.
Speaker 2: I remember brook trout fishing a lot in my youth.
Speaker 2: I love brookies, and I think probably the most beautiful
Speaker 2: fish out there has to be the native brookie. They
Speaker 2: are the drake wood ducks of the fish world, if
Speaker 2: that makes any sense. Those spring fed streams of my
Speaker 2: youth don't hold much in the way of brook trout
Speaker 2: these days. Brown trout, yep stocked rainbows, sure, but brookies
Speaker 2: not so much. Things change, change is inevitable. You're probably like, Okay,
Speaker 2: are you depressed or what? Well, let me tell you
Speaker 2: all through March I listened to a stupid amount of radiohead,
Speaker 2: So what do you think? But I'm not listing this
Speaker 2: stuff to just be doom and gloom. I'm setting up
Speaker 2: a larger point, which is this, we are going to
Speaker 2: lose hunting opportunities. As it is, land use practices change,
Speaker 2: urban swell isn't slowing down. We aren't beating the more
Speaker 2: public land drum enough because it's not an easy path
Speaker 2: and it's not a quick solution for most of us.
Speaker 2: It's not like signing a new lease. It takes time.
Speaker 2: Things are not really changing for the better out there,
Speaker 2: in my opinion, And you know, it is an unforgivable
Speaker 2: sin to me, at least an unforgivable deer hunting sin
Speaker 2: that we so quickly advocate to take away our opportunities
Speaker 2: from fellow hunters. When Steve and I were going back
Speaker 2: and forth on the Kansas ban, I mentioned that I
Speaker 2: would stand up for the opportunities to trap, because I
Speaker 2: would even though I don't trap, and I have zero
Speaker 2: interest in trapping any kind of fur bear. It doesn't
Speaker 2: appeal to me at all. And I don't even really
Speaker 2: like trapping the four mice a year that come into
Speaker 2: my house. I mean, if it wasn't for my wife's
Speaker 2: constant complaining about it, i'd probably just live with them.
Speaker 2: But I don't anyway. Even though I don't want to trap,
Speaker 2: I don't want it to go away. I know it's
Speaker 2: a good thing for nest predators. I know it's more
Speaker 2: effective at controlling predators than any other method. And more importantly,
Speaker 2: I know there are a lot of people out there
Speaker 2: who love doing it. They're passionate about it, and this
Speaker 2: shows because they do it even when the fur prices
Speaker 2: are in the crapper. And if those trappers feel even
Speaker 2: remotely connected to their pursuits, as you and I do
Speaker 2: to our pursuit of white tails, why would we not
Speaker 2: fight for that? Who better to understand why we do
Speaker 2: this stuff than ourselves. But the thing is, it's so
Speaker 2: easy to be selfish when it comes to hunting. If
Speaker 2: you're a private land hunter in Kansas, why should you
Speaker 2: care what they do with public You have your lease
Speaker 2: or your grandpa's land, and probably a couple of feeders,
Speaker 2: complete with trail cameras monitoring every deer that happens to
Speaker 2: come in for a little breakfast or dinner. Does it
Speaker 2: sound like I'm being condescending here because I'm trying not
Speaker 2: to be, I really am. But if you think that
Speaker 2: those public land hunters will be on your side, if
Speaker 2: at some point the powers that be deemed baiting or
Speaker 2: the use of sell cameras or live feed cans on
Speaker 2: private land just a little too unethical, and they come
Speaker 2: after it. I don't know if they're going to stick
Speaker 2: up for you, after all, what's good for the goose?
Speaker 2: So on. I look at this like cancel culture. It's
Speaker 2: intoxicating for some people until the mob comes after them.
Speaker 2: The appetite in that beast is never satisfied, never satiated,
Speaker 2: and it's always going to look for more people to
Speaker 2: chew up and spit out. There's always going to be
Speaker 2: a type of hunter who you think doesn't deserve the
Speaker 2: same opportunities as you. And let me tell you that's dangerous,
Speaker 2: dangerous ground, because when those opportunities go away, they don't
Speaker 2: come back. Now, I'm going to take this a step
Speaker 2: further because I'm on a roll. The tightening of tags
Speaker 2: for non residents in any given state is a precedent
Speaker 2: set in stone. It's going to keep happening, and game
Speaker 2: and fish agencies are addicted to those non resident dollars.
Speaker 2: They aren't going to take a budget cut without a fight,
Speaker 2: and right now they don't have to fight because the
Speaker 2: demand is super high. So even if they change the
Speaker 2: rules of the game, when you've bought points for years
Speaker 2: and have been promised an opportunity people keep buying in.
Speaker 2: I do think that tie it's going to turn a
Speaker 2: little bit, largely thanks to some spotlight shining on you know,
Speaker 2: tag systems and places like Wyoming and Iowa. But so
Speaker 2: far that demand is plenty high, and it doesn't appear
Speaker 2: to slow down at all right now, like the cash
Speaker 2: cow will just keep giving up the good stuff. But
Speaker 2: what if it eventually doesn't. What if people realize that
Speaker 2: this whole thing is set up in such a way
Speaker 2: that it's inevitable it becomes a rich man's game. That's
Speaker 2: where we are headed, my friends. And the problem with
Speaker 2: it is, so many of us haven't been forced to
Speaker 2: pay a high price to hunt. Yet what are we
Speaker 2: going to do when that happens to more and more folks.
Speaker 2: What if the residents of I don't know, South Dakota
Speaker 2: eventually have to pay double or triple their price for
Speaker 2: their resident tags because some of the non resident demand
Speaker 2: dies down those people, I think, oh, good, right, I'm
Speaker 2: happy I'll pay that. I mean, it's honestly a small
Speaker 2: price to pay. I mean, sure, it'll kick some weakended
Speaker 2: warriors out of the game, but who cares they're not
Speaker 2: serious hunters like you. It also might increase the likelihood
Speaker 2: that some people find a lease. Maybe they lease up
Speaker 2: a farm that I don't know. Grandma used to let
Speaker 2: you hunt on, but now she needs the money. At
Speaker 2: some point, this thing will go from an US versus
Speaker 2: them thing, meaning resident versus non resident, to an US
Speaker 2: versus us thing. And if you don't have the money,
Speaker 2: you're gonna lose to somebody who does. And if you
Speaker 2: don't your kids will you know where else we're gonna lose.
Speaker 2: When the funding starts to dry up, the non hunting
Speaker 2: public might be asked to pony up for wildlife management.
Speaker 2: Imagine this scenario in Colorado, which is the best and
Speaker 2: kind of the last holdout for getting an over the
Speaker 2: counter ELK tag. I'm not going to get into the
Speaker 2: weeds too much here. Colorado is a referendum state meeting.
Speaker 2: Citizens have a route to get initiatives placed on a
Speaker 2: ballot in any given year. Back in nineteen ninety two,
Speaker 2: Colorado Amendment ten was placed on the ballot which allowed
Speaker 2: the voters, and by voters, I mean hunters and non
Speaker 2: hunters to decide whether they should allow baiting and hound
Speaker 2: hunting for black bears and whether there should even be
Speaker 2: a spring season for black bears, and those citizens said nope,
Speaker 2: to the tune of over half a million votes, more
Speaker 2: knows than yeses. And guess what but bye. I've had
Speaker 2: a few bear tags in Colorado over the years while
Speaker 2: ol hunting, and you know what I couldn't do to
Speaker 2: fill my tag some thirty years after that referendum, bait
Speaker 2: or hire an outfitter to run them with hounds. Now
Speaker 2: I don't really care about that, because bears are not
Speaker 2: my priority when I head to Colorado. But the lesson stands,
Speaker 2: when something goes, it's gonzo and we have enough problems
Speaker 2: without so quickly advocating away our fellow hunter opportunities. Now,
Speaker 2: maybe it's because I'm getting old. My little girls are
Speaker 2: eleven now, but I find myself thinking more about phishing
Speaker 2: for my future because I know the hunting opportunities are
Speaker 2: going to get harder to come by, but phishing seems
Speaker 2: pretty safe and that comforts me. I like that. I
Speaker 2: don't like thinking about the world that the next generation
Speaker 2: of hunters is going to inherit from us. I know
Speaker 2: they're going to end up with fewer chances to hunt,
Speaker 2: but I don't think we should be so quick to
Speaker 2: increase the volume of those disappearing opportunities simply because it'll
Speaker 2: either make our hunting easier or it really doesn't affect
Speaker 2: our personal situations, so we don't care if it goes.
Speaker 2: I think we have an obligation to at the very
Speaker 2: least consider what we are leaving in our wake. I
Speaker 2: think we need to consider that right now. A hunter's
Speaker 2: fund wildlife mostly, and that has allowed us to do
Speaker 2: what we do and has created this weird, NonStop in
Speaker 2: fight we have going on. If someone else starts paying
Speaker 2: the bills even a little bit, or hell, if you
Speaker 2: live in a state like Colorado, you could potentially look
Speaker 2: at a ban on bow hunting, or hunting out during
Speaker 2: the run, or some other seemingly insane proposition, because it
Speaker 2: might not be hunters deciding the whole thing. If you
Speaker 2: live in a state where you think that will never happen,
Speaker 2: ask some of the folks who live in states that
Speaker 2: they thought that would never happen. It can happen, and
Speaker 2: it will. But we as hunters don't need to dump
Speaker 2: a bunch of gasoline on that fire just because it
Speaker 2: might not directly affect us. Right now. Now, I know
Speaker 2: there are a lot of valid arguments against just about
Speaker 2: everything I've ranted about on this podcast. I understand that
Speaker 2: I understand why you disagree with me, But I think
Speaker 2: at the very least, we should ask ourselves why we
Speaker 2: love hunting, and yet why we might be quick to
Speaker 2: take away opportunities from our fellow hunters. Maybe it's a
Speaker 2: resource concern, then great. If the folks who know, say
Speaker 2: the herd numbers are diving through the effectiveness of a
Speaker 2: certain weapon or technology or season structure or whatever, then
Speaker 2: it's time to listen up and accept those changes. But
Speaker 2: even then, I think we have to take small steps.
Speaker 2: Take the ban on trail cameras on public land in
Speaker 2: Kansas as an example. Again, why start with a wholesale
Speaker 2: year round ban is the first choice. Why not a
Speaker 2: ban on in season use only at first, or why
Speaker 2: not a three year band to see if hunter conflicts
Speaker 2: actually decrease as a result. How did they even measure
Speaker 2: that in the first place. Maybe you agree with me,
Speaker 2: maybe you disagree. Maybe we are on an inevitable path
Speaker 2: to the end of hunting and it doesn't matter, or
Speaker 2: maybe I have this whole thing wrong and people will
Speaker 2: be bow hunting white tails for a few more centuries.
Speaker 2: Who knows, I don't. I do know that right now
Speaker 2: we are in a place where we could think beyond
Speaker 2: ourselves a little to decide on our own individual effects
Speaker 2: of the future. I think about this during this one
Speaker 2: hundredth episode because most of these and honestly most of
Speaker 2: the hunting content out there, is built to sell one
Speaker 2: of two things, education or entertainment, although nearly all of
Speaker 2: it falls into some hybrid category of both. We want
Speaker 2: to know how to scout. We want to know how
Speaker 2: to kill big bucks. We want to know when to call,
Speaker 2: when to sit on the ground versus climbing up into
Speaker 2: a tree. We want to know what moon phase is best,
Speaker 2: and on down the line. And I love that shit,
Speaker 2: I really do. I think the most beautiful thing about
Speaker 2: white tail hunting is not only that it's still available
Speaker 2: to so many people, but it's still so mysterious. Sure
Speaker 2: we talk a big game about this betting area and
Speaker 2: that travel route in certain food sources, but for the
Speaker 2: most part, most of us, on any given year don't
Speaker 2: kill a big buck. Most of us don't kill a
Speaker 2: big one on any given five or ten year period.
Speaker 2: That's testament to how hard this is, but also that
Speaker 2: it must speak to us on a level that is
Speaker 2: worth fighting for. It must at least shine a bit
Speaker 2: of spotlight on the reality that these opportunities to hunt
Speaker 2: are pretty damn special, and we shouldn't want them just
Speaker 2: for ourselves. We should want others to be able to partake.
Speaker 2: I mean, can you think of another thing in your
Speaker 2: life that you'd willingly pay a lot of money to
Speaker 2: do and where you put in a ton of time
Speaker 2: into it, and where you identify at least partially with
Speaker 2: the pursuit itself the way we do with deer hunting.
Speaker 2: That speaks to something powerful, especially when you consider all
Speaker 2: of that and the fact that you're destined to lose
Speaker 2: almost every single time you hunt, at least if the
Speaker 2: score is kill or no kill. But that's not why
Speaker 2: we hunt, and we all know it. We don't act
Speaker 2: like it very often, but we hunt to hunt, and
Speaker 2: killing deers a real sweet bonus to the whole thing
Speaker 2: when it does happen. So all I'm saying is, let's
Speaker 2: be careful with this stuff. Let's think about the direction
Speaker 2: we are heading and take a long look at lost
Speaker 2: opportunities in the hunting space because they mostly pour tend
Speaker 2: law opportunities somewhere down the road, some of which might
Speaker 2: affect you personally, and probably not in a positive way. Lastly,
Speaker 2: now that I've gotten that out of my system, I
Speaker 2: just want to say things. I know you have so
Speaker 2: many hunting podcasts to listen to. You have a lot
Speaker 2: going on in life, you know, stuff that's begging for
Speaker 2: your attention and your support. So it means a lot
Speaker 2: to me and the Mark and the rest of the
Speaker 2: crew here at meat Eater that you stick with us
Speaker 2: even when we and by we I mean me say
Speaker 2: offensive stuff or stuff you disagree with or whatever. I
Speaker 2: can't tell you how much it means to me that
Speaker 2: you guys and gals keep coming back and you keep listening.
Speaker 2: I honestly truly appreciate it. That's it for this week.
Speaker 2: I'm Tony Peterson. This has been the Wire to Hunt
Speaker 2: Foundation's podcast. As I always, thank you so much for listening.
Speaker 2: If you want some more whitetail advice, you can head
Speaker 2: on over to the meat eater dot com slash wired
Speaker 2: and see articles by myself, Mark fellas like Alex Gilstrom
Speaker 2: and Beau Martonic and Antie May and whoever white Tail
Speaker 2: Killers go check him out.
Speaker 1: M HM.