Speaker 1: Welcome to the Wired to Hunt Foundations podcast, your guide
Speaker 1: to the fundamentals of better deer hunting, presented by first Light,
Speaker 1: creating proven versatile hunting apparel for the stand, saddle or blind.
Speaker 1: First Light, Go Farther, Stay Longer, and now your host
Speaker 1: Tony Peterson.
Speaker 2: Hey everyone, welcome to the Wire to Hunt Foundation's podcast,
Speaker 2: which is brought to you by first Light. I'm your host,
Speaker 2: Tony Peterson, and today's episode is all about our hunting
Speaker 2: regrets and how to avoid them in the future. Life
Speaker 2: mostly sucks and then you die, hopefully not by a
Speaker 2: crocodile attack, which is one of my worst fears after
Speaker 2: very recently going down a rabbit hole on saltwater croc information.
Speaker 2: I'm sure there are worse ways to shed your mortal
Speaker 2: coil than getting pulled under by a giant dinosaur lizard
Speaker 2: that we should have gone extinct like fifty million years ago,
Speaker 2: but that's way on the top of my list. Anyway,
Speaker 2: Life doesn't actually always suck, and that's a good thing.
Speaker 2: The one way that life does suck for all of
Speaker 2: us at different points is that we all have regrets.
Speaker 2: We have all experienced things if we wish we would
Speaker 2: have done, but we didn't, and those things haunt us.
Speaker 2: That's what this podcast is all about. Although it'll be
Speaker 2: more cheerful than I'm leading on, trust me. Is there
Speaker 2: a sweeter feeling than making a prediction about something and
Speaker 2: then that something actually happens. No, well, unless your prediction
Speaker 2: is that I don't know, all of our over the
Speaker 2: counter elk hunting opportunities are going to go away, and
Speaker 2: from here on how the chance to chase bugles in
Speaker 2: the mountains is going to be greatly diminished for the
Speaker 2: average hunter. That's one you actually don't want to be
Speaker 2: right about. Or I guess if you follow the stock
Speaker 2: market and there's a company you're interested in that you
Speaker 2: think could go on to make tons of money, and
Speaker 2: you think, I need to buy some shares in that company.
Speaker 2: I know it's going to explode, but you don't. Then
Speaker 2: guess what happens That company invents a new widget, or
Speaker 2: they announce a partnership with Apple or something, and then boom,
Speaker 2: your little four dollars a share stock suddenly jumps to
Speaker 2: forty dollars a share and you realize that you could
Speaker 2: have had your dream beach house and maybe put your
Speaker 2: kids through a sweet college, but instead you're just some
Speaker 2: poor loser who knew, just absolutely knew that buying into
Speaker 2: that company was the right call. This is called hindsight bias,
Speaker 2: and it's ripe in the world of finances. It's mostly
Speaker 2: a psychological issue that is also known as creeping determinism
Speaker 2: or knew it all along phenomenon. That's not actually a joke,
Speaker 2: my friends. It's called that. It's a weird thing that
Speaker 2: we all do where once an event happens, we think
Speaker 2: we predicted it, and that makes us feel two things,
Speaker 2: overconfident in our abilities to see the future, and sad
Speaker 2: that we didn't act on those predictions, at least when
Speaker 2: those predictions are actionable, like during the dead years of
Speaker 2: Microsoft's rain under Steve Balmer, where the stock traded sideways
Speaker 2: before finally finding its legs and shooting up to the
Speaker 2: moon while making lots of people who stuck around insanely wealthy.
Speaker 2: This is happening in the stock market right now. Do
Speaker 2: at least partially to the artificial intelligence feeding frenzy out there.
Speaker 2: Every earnings report where companies can talk about their artificial
Speaker 2: intelligence ambitions is an attempt to be a part of
Speaker 2: the it crow to attach themselves to this what some
Speaker 2: might call a little bit of a bubble. They want
Speaker 2: to be a part of this AI movement. They want
Speaker 2: to capitalize on it. So do the average people who
Speaker 2: want to buy into stocks. The thing is, even if
Speaker 2: your gut said you should have bought Pallunteer Technologies or
Speaker 2: Google or whatever, if you didn't at whatever time, you
Speaker 2: probably weren't that convinced. After the fact, of course, you
Speaker 2: know that you were right, but during the moment you
Speaker 2: didn't believe it, at least so much that you dumped
Speaker 2: a bunch of your money into those tickers and cross
Speaker 2: your fingers. This isn't limited to the Wall Street bets
Speaker 2: crowd over there on Reddit either. Hindsight by us is
Speaker 2: rampant in our lives, and it mostly sucks. But it's
Speaker 2: also a reminder that you don't have to suffer regret
Speaker 2: unnecessarily all of the time. You can take control of
Speaker 2: your life and you're hunting future at least to some extent.
Speaker 2: Look at it this way. You want to own land, right,
Speaker 2: of course you do, we all do. But land is expensive,
Speaker 2: and it's always expensive, and interest rates suck right now
Speaker 2: and there will be a better time for you to
Speaker 2: pull a trigger. Right, No, there probably won't. Land is
Speaker 2: going to stay expensive. It's going to get more expensive,
Speaker 2: and interest rates might come down or they might go up.
Speaker 2: But the truth is it's not likely to get any
Speaker 2: easier for you or I to buy something unless a
Speaker 2: rich uncle we have gets eaten by a crocodile and
Speaker 2: we suddenly find ourselves the benefactor of this diligent saving
Speaker 2: and is untimely chomping to death. I have experienced this
Speaker 2: on the land front recently. A lot back in twenty fifteen,
Speaker 2: I bought thirty acres in north central Wisconsin that was
Speaker 2: priced like a couple from Chicago owned it and they
Speaker 2: didn't ever want to use it, and we're sick of
Speaker 2: paying the property taxes on it. So I got it
Speaker 2: at a good price, but it didn't seem like crazy
Speaker 2: cheap then, and it was still a lot of money
Speaker 2: for me at the time. When I paid that property off,
Speaker 2: another parcel one hundred yards down the road came up
Speaker 2: for sale. It was a little bigger, had some egg
Speaker 2: on it, which is like an animal gold mine in
Speaker 2: that region, and was generally priced pretty well for the time.
Speaker 2: I looked at it a lot. I thought about it
Speaker 2: a lot, but I decided I wasn't interested in immediately
Speaker 2: putting myself into more debt right after cling my way
Speaker 2: out of my last land debt. And you know what
Speaker 2: happened right That property sold, and since I'm right next
Speaker 2: to it often I get to see the deer that
Speaker 2: use it. This year in July, I drove by that
Speaker 2: property on my way to work on my ground and
Speaker 2: there was a very nice velvet buck, nice eight pointer
Speaker 2: standing in their field, just taunting me. I should have
Speaker 2: figured out a way to buy it, because I regret
Speaker 2: it now and I knew, and I mean I just
Speaker 2: knew it was going to be a good deer property.
Speaker 2: It's also probably worth double what it was just seven
Speaker 2: years ago, maybe more. This happens on a smaller scale
Speaker 2: with hunting, too. It's not all about real estate. Most years,
Speaker 2: Minnesota and Wisconsin opened their bowseason on the same Saturday
Speaker 2: in mid September. This forces me to make a choice
Speaker 2: on which state I'm gonna hunt, But every so often
Speaker 2: Wisconsin has an opener that is a week earlier than Minnesota.
Speaker 2: The last time this happened, I was stoked. I knew
Speaker 2: I was going to hunt both states on back to
Speaker 2: back weekends and not miss out on anything. And since
Speaker 2: Wisconsin was up first, I hung some stands, I scouted
Speaker 2: my happy ass off, and I had a pretty solid
Speaker 2: plan for opening weekend. What I wasn't super confident in
Speaker 2: was a morning stand that I had that was in
Speaker 2: a staging area off of some destination food. I knew
Speaker 2: I could probably get there undetected, but there was a
Speaker 2: chance i'd blow the whole spot up. I also knew
Speaker 2: from in person scouting and trail cameras that there were
Speaker 2: some bucks using the trail right by the stand, and
Speaker 2: that one of them was still in velvet. I don't
Speaker 2: know why this is, but it's just cool arrowing a
Speaker 2: velvet buck, and it's really really cool to do it
Speaker 2: in a state where it's very rare to even see
Speaker 2: one during bo season. Anyway, that opening morning alarm went off,
Speaker 2: and I sat in bed and I talked myself out
Speaker 2: of going. I had a really good evening planned and
Speaker 2: so I skipped the morning, but I didn't feel good
Speaker 2: about it, and I really didn't feel good about it.
Speaker 2: When I went in there later that day and I
Speaker 2: checked my camera by that stand, that velvet eight pointer
Speaker 2: went right on through late in the morning. Now, if
Speaker 2: I had been there, you know, he might have winded me,
Speaker 2: he might have saw me, he might have heard me going,
Speaker 2: and he might not have gone through. I'll never know.
Speaker 2: What I do know is that I think about that
Speaker 2: decision and that buck a lot more than I should.
Speaker 2: I just knew I should have gone, and I didn't,
Speaker 2: or at least that's kind of how I think about
Speaker 2: it now. The truth is, I made a call and
Speaker 2: it turned out to be a bad one. But I
Speaker 2: did kill a buck that evening, which is kind of crazy.
Speaker 2: But he wasn't that velvet eight, and I don't know why,
Speaker 2: but it still stings. Hunting is like that. But mostly
Speaker 2: we don't know who came through when we weren't there.
Speaker 2: That's probably a good thing, otherwise we'd be all press
Speaker 2: even more than we already are. Hindsight bias happens in
Speaker 2: other ways too. I'm experiencing some serious and I do
Speaker 2: mean serious fomo right now. I'm not going elk hunting
Speaker 2: this fall, and in fact, I'm not going west at
Speaker 2: all this whole season, at least unless something changes, which
Speaker 2: I don't think is gonna happen. And I know I
Speaker 2: only have so many elk hunting opportunities left, and I
Speaker 2: could probably swing in an early season hunt this year
Speaker 2: if I wanted to. But my September is going to
Speaker 2: be busy and the girls and I have some bear
Speaker 2: tags and some other plans, and I'm trying to ignore
Speaker 2: the fact that I know, I just absolutely know that
Speaker 2: my elk hunting partner is going to go have an
Speaker 2: amazing time in the mountains and he'll probably kill a
Speaker 2: bull right where I was gonna hunt. That's enough bitching
Speaker 2: about that on my part, because you know what, that's life.
Speaker 2: Complaining about not going on another l hunt because you
Speaker 2: get to bear hunt with your daughters is dumb. Complaining
Speaker 2: that you didn't buy Google back when the Internet looked
Speaker 2: like it was created by kindergarteners is dumb. Losing sleep
Speaker 2: over one hundred and ten inch buck that walk by
Speaker 2: your stand when you were snoozing away, it's dumb. But
Speaker 2: all of those things are lessons. To experience regret now
Speaker 2: is to understand how to possibly avoid regret later. How's
Speaker 2: that for a philosophical quote You definitely never get from
Speaker 2: that guy, Mark Kenyan. The truth is you're going to
Speaker 2: face many, many choices in your hunting life, and throughout
Speaker 2: this hunting season, as we gear up to get going,
Speaker 2: ask yourself what you can do. What situations in your
Speaker 2: life are right for regret if you don't take care
Speaker 2: of them, if you don't do them, are you talking
Speaker 2: yourself out of an opportunity because it'll be easier to
Speaker 2: just not go. Will it save a fight at home?
Speaker 2: What's the motivation for your decisions? Or let's look at
Speaker 2: this another way. What's a hard decision you could make
Speaker 2: this year that will most likely cause you to not
Speaker 2: regret it. I'll start. It's not going out hunting. I
Speaker 2: want to selfishly for all the obvious reasons. But I
Speaker 2: know if I stay home and I can bait bears
Speaker 2: more and set up for the early deer season better,
Speaker 2: and I can spend some time fishing with my girls
Speaker 2: when the trout will be hungry and this mom mouth
Speaker 2: will be schooling up, I'm not going to regret it now.
Speaker 2: Is that stuff as cool as arrowing another bull in
Speaker 2: the high country? I don't know. Maybe maybe not. But
Speaker 2: the right decision is sometimes shrouded in mystery when you
Speaker 2: make it. What's going on in your life where you
Speaker 2: could make a better hunting decision now, one that will
Speaker 2: wipe away some potential regret and give you the feeling
Speaker 2: that you'd have now if you looked into your brokerage
Speaker 2: account and saw a cost basis for your apple shares
Speaker 2: that is in the single digits. Let's look at an
Speaker 2: easy one here. How much are you shooting your bow?
Speaker 2: If the answer is not much, okay, But what's something
Speaker 2: you'd likely regret for the rest of your life. How
Speaker 2: about missing a buck that you could easily have hit
Speaker 2: well or worse? How about hitting one poorly when you
Speaker 2: have a perfect shot lined up in front of you.
Speaker 2: Maybe there's nothing you could really do about a whiff
Speaker 2: or a bad hit, but oftentimes there is. Maybe it's
Speaker 2: a matter of taking fifteen minutes today and tomorrow and
Speaker 2: the next day to shoot your boat. Because if you
Speaker 2: sit in that stand or saddle and that buck of
Speaker 2: your dreams walks into twenty three yards and you shoot
Speaker 2: over his back or under his belly, because you're straight
Speaker 2: up shook. As the kids would probably say, you know what,
Speaker 2: You'll get to experience hindsight bias in real time, because
Speaker 2: you'll not only think about how you knew you should
Speaker 2: have executed better during the shot, But how you could
Speaker 2: have shot more all summer long and you didn't. You
Speaker 2: just knew you should, but you didn't. Let's take that
Speaker 2: example and go a step further. This summer has been hot,
Speaker 2: so stupid bit hot in fact, that it's kind of
Speaker 2: crazy in a lot of places, going out to work
Speaker 2: on stands and the scout deer on many of the
Speaker 2: days we've had this summer just straight up nightmare fuel
Speaker 2: and mostly a non starter for a lot of folks.
Speaker 2: But what if you could have and if you had,
Speaker 2: you would have trimmed your stand sites up nicely so
Speaker 2: you could shoot the most likely spots for a buck
Speaker 2: to be, but you didn't. And now it's mid September.
Speaker 2: There he is mowing away on the beans while you
Speaker 2: couldn't get an arrow through there to save your life,
Speaker 2: which ironically saves his life. What will you regret if
Speaker 2: you don't do it? What's something you could do now
Speaker 2: to alleviate that sinking feeling of suddenly knowing you should
Speaker 2: have done something, something that you knew you should do
Speaker 2: and you didn't. Maybe it's as simple as you've been
Speaker 2: seeing some bucks in a certain corner of a field
Speaker 2: and you know you should get a blind in there
Speaker 2: or a stand, even though you have a setup already
Speaker 2: in place that's just down the woodline another one hundred
Speaker 2: and fifty yards. Guess what's going to happen on opening
Speaker 2: weekend if you don't set up right where you know
Speaker 2: you should. Or how about this, I recently got permission
Speaker 2: to hunt twenty five acres by my house. Now that
Speaker 2: might not sound like much, but where I live it is.
Speaker 2: It's a huge wind for me and the girls. The
Speaker 2: downside was the guy who gave me a permission has
Speaker 2: been kind of flaky, or I thought he was anyway.
Speaker 2: The first few times I tried to get him to
Speaker 2: commit to taking a quick walk back there on his
Speaker 2: land to see the property lines and just what his
Speaker 2: ground has to offer, he either didn't respond or always
Speaker 2: had some excuse. I could just feel that permission slipping
Speaker 2: away and was hit with the old familiar feeling of
Speaker 2: being excited about something only to really be disappointed. Soon after,
Speaker 2: I told myself it was a lost cause and I
Speaker 2: almost gave up. But looking at the bulldozers and the
Speaker 2: mc mansions popping up on that only spot within two
Speaker 2: hours of my house that I have permission prompted me
Speaker 2: to give it one more go. I hate bothering people
Speaker 2: and have grown to really really hate talking to strangers,
Speaker 2: so it was easy for me to adopt the mindset
Speaker 2: of the whole thing being another lesson learned. But I
Speaker 2: texted the guy anyway and just said that my schedule
Speaker 2: was opened for a quick walk if he was available.
Speaker 2: I left it at that, and he responded with a
Speaker 2: time to come over and said get on over here,
Speaker 2: And he couldn't have been nicer. And I couldn't quite
Speaker 2: believe it when I was standing over a secluded pond
Speaker 2: in the middle of his property looking at a stupid
Speaker 2: good spot to set up a blind. And then I
Speaker 2: couldn't quite believe it when I saw some long beards
Speaker 2: feeding away and he told me I could turkey hunt
Speaker 2: anytime I wanted to. There, we jumped a few deer,
Speaker 2: found some absolute deer highways. I left the day in
Speaker 2: a way where I would only describe our relationship as
Speaker 2: being super best friends. Now, this guy's a very casual
Speaker 2: bowhunter who was about to learn a lot about bow hunting,
Speaker 2: and I'm a very serious bow hunter who is very
Speaker 2: happy to have some ground to hunt where the dough
Speaker 2: tags are unlimited, and the drive to get there is
Speaker 2: like eight minutes. If I hadn't texted him, i'd have
Speaker 2: regretted it forever. But you know what, I figured it
Speaker 2: was going to be a no, and so my hindsight
Speaker 2: bias was actually wrong, dead wrong. The lesson there is this,
Speaker 2: my friends, despite us believing from time to time that
Speaker 2: we can actually predict the future, we can't. The best
Speaker 2: minds on Wall Street can't definitively say what company is
Speaker 2: going to have the next trillion dollar market cap any
Speaker 2: more than the average person can accurately predict the share
Speaker 2: price of any given publicly traded company at any point.
Speaker 2: The best minds in the hunting space don't know what
Speaker 2: the landscape looks like in ten or fifteen years. That's
Speaker 2: just the truth. Hell, they don't know what it looks
Speaker 2: like next year. We have to work with what we
Speaker 2: know and what we believe to be coming down the
Speaker 2: old pike which is short for turnpike. And I only
Speaker 2: know this because I had to look it up and
Speaker 2: make sure that it wasn't actually supposed to be coming
Speaker 2: down the pipe, which makes more sense for modern humans
Speaker 2: and super Mario Brothers enthusiast alike. The future is a mystery,
Speaker 2: but you can take a look at your life thus
Speaker 2: far and tally up some of your bigger regrets. Use
Speaker 2: that list to help you make better decisions from here
Speaker 2: on out. This, at least in the realm of hunting,
Speaker 2: will get you into more beautiful places. It'll help you
Speaker 2: fill more tags, It'll help you fill the freezer. It'll
Speaker 2: help you fill up that intangible part of yourself that
Speaker 2: just needs to spend some time in the woods to
Speaker 2: shake off the ick that comes from work in life
Speaker 2: and then not so fun stuff we fill our days with.
Speaker 2: So think about that and think about coming back next
Speaker 2: week because I'm going to talk about elk hunting, or
Speaker 2: more specifically, how to get out on your first elk
Speaker 2: hunt before it's too late. That's it for this week,
Speaker 2: my friends. I'm Tony Peterson. This has been the Wired
Speaker 2: to Hunt Foundations podcast, which is brought to you by
Speaker 2: First Light. If you're out there sweating and you want
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Speaker 2: like this weird pajama type pant but works really well
Speaker 2: for early season hunting. And as always, I want to
Speaker 2: thank you for listening and for your support for myself
Speaker 2: and Mark and everybody at Mediator here. We really appreciate
Speaker 2: you guys coming and giving us the support that you have.
Speaker 2: If you want to check out some more hunting content,
Speaker 2: head on over to the mediater dot com. You'll see
Speaker 2: tons of articles, video series, how to stuff, you name it,
Speaker 2: it's all there, go check it out.