Speaker 1: Welcome to the Wired to Hunt Foundations podcast, your guide
Speaker 1: to the fundamentals of better deer 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 taking advantage of your best hunting situations and apologizing
Speaker 1: to no one. Okay, this is this is a weird episode,
Speaker 1: so bear with me. The idea for it actually came
Speaker 1: from listening to the Exodus podcast a couple of weeks ago. No,
Speaker 1: those fellows over there at that company not only makes
Speaker 1: some pretty sweet trail cameras and some other outdoor gear,
Speaker 1: but they also have a great podcast as well. And
Speaker 1: in the episode I listened to, they actually talked about me,
Speaker 1: which was flatter ring and pretty sweet. But they also
Speaker 1: got onto the topic of where they hunt and the
Speaker 1: bucks they target, and it got me thinking. So now
Speaker 1: you get to hear I guess what I was thinking.
Speaker 1: Perspective is important. You younger listeners might not quite grasp
Speaker 1: that yet, but but listen, trust me. As you get
Speaker 1: older and you get a little better at spotting the
Speaker 1: bs and a lot less tolerant of it, you start
Speaker 1: to realize a few things. One of those is that
Speaker 1: perspective is so important. Nuances to my old boss, Ben O'Brien,
Speaker 1: who has moved on to things beyond the mediator world,
Speaker 1: often used to talk about how he was pro nuance.
Speaker 1: Ben's a smart guy, and he has dug into enough
Speaker 1: issues to know and probably believe the old saying about
Speaker 1: their being three sides to every story. You his mind
Speaker 1: and the truth if you will. And why do I
Speaker 1: say this, Well, there's many reasons. Life has an annoying
Speaker 1: habit of showing you how good life really is, or
Speaker 1: sometimes how bad it can be. I've mentioned this briefly
Speaker 1: on a few different episodes. But the people who I
Speaker 1: look up to more than most in this world, they're
Speaker 1: not the ones that are known for their hunting skills.
Speaker 1: They happened to be a couple of my wife's relatives
Speaker 1: who lost the genetic lottery. When they conceived their second child.
Speaker 1: Their son, Jake, was born with mitochondrial disease. This isn't
Speaker 1: a terribly common disease, but it is terrible. Period. Within
Speaker 1: the first two years of his life, it was evident
Speaker 1: he wasn't advancing on a normal toddler type schedule, and
Speaker 1: by the time he should have been in kindergarten playing
Speaker 1: with his peers, he was using a walker to barely
Speaker 1: get around. By the time he should have been in
Speaker 1: second grade, he was on a feeding tube and then
Speaker 1: a breathing tube full time in a wheelchair. Basically, he
Speaker 1: needed twenty four hour care and often, well pretty often
Speaker 1: an ambulance to take him in to the hospital for
Speaker 1: respiratory issues or worse. Jake's life and subsequently the life
Speaker 1: of his loved ones, was dominated by the effects of
Speaker 1: that mitochondrial disease. How a few days before Christmas last year,
Speaker 1: his heart stopped. While medics eventually got it going, the
Speaker 1: brain damage had been done. The outlook was not good,
Speaker 1: and it got worse as the scans and the tests
Speaker 1: rolled in. When they took Jake off a life support,
Speaker 1: he passed away a few minutes later at the age
Speaker 1: of fourteen. The weight of his death on his family's
Speaker 1: pretty heavy, real heavy stuff, my friends. It's hard to
Speaker 1: imagine a much worse hand to be dealt, although such
Speaker 1: hands are dealt every day in this world, and no
Speaker 1: one can say why. But it doesn't matter. If it
Speaker 1: could be explained to be honest. When you see the
Speaker 1: dice roll a certain way for full and there's no
Speaker 1: escaping the gravity of those situations. It makes me feel
Speaker 1: an inch tall when I bitch about missing a deer
Speaker 1: or not having a very good hunter or a very
Speaker 1: good season. It makes me feel like a great a
Speaker 1: piece of ship for all the complaints to be honest,
Speaker 1: and that's what this episode is about. When those fellows
Speaker 1: over at Exodus, Jake and Chad broke down this year
Speaker 1: on their podcast the way I mentioned at the beginning,
Speaker 1: they got into the topic of how it almost seemed
Speaker 1: shameful to shoot a buck anywhere but on public land
Speaker 1: these days, and they both agreed that was pretty stupid.
Speaker 1: You know what I do too, even though I'm as
Speaker 1: guilty of pushing the public land message, I don't know
Speaker 1: more than just about anyone short of the hunting Public
Speaker 1: crew out there. But those guys, they're smart dudes that
Speaker 1: they are. They were right. It doesn't matter where you
Speaker 1: shoot your dear, you should be just happy to have
Speaker 1: places to hunt. Now. I know that's an easy a
Speaker 1: thing to say, but it's harder to live that life
Speaker 1: in practice. This is because the jealousy thing is so real,
Speaker 1: and so is the reality that all of our egos
Speaker 1: are just a little more fragile than we'd like to
Speaker 1: admit to our friends, let alone thousands of strangers who
Speaker 1: listened to you ramble on for seventeen or eighteen minutes
Speaker 1: a week. It's also easy to be judging. Well, maybe
Speaker 1: not for you, but for me. It's a freaking breeze.
Speaker 1: I recently saw a thread on both site about an
Speaker 1: industry fellow who claimed to have killed his six white till.
Speaker 1: I don't know the guy, but I do know his reputation,
Speaker 1: and I personally feel like he hasn't done US Hunters
Speaker 1: any favors, and I don't want to say his name.
Speaker 1: So that was an easy one for me, though I
Speaker 1: could think without training the old gray matter too hard
Speaker 1: that I don't know, maybe he shot it illegally or
Speaker 1: with a ton of advantages. I mean, he does, after all,
Speaker 1: have a track record of some citations. But here's the thing,
Speaker 1: I don't know anything about him. I don't know anything
Speaker 1: about his dear I know I don't like what he
Speaker 1: stands for kinda although in the eyes of plenty of people,
Speaker 1: he and I have similar jobs. And probably look similarly
Speaker 1: do she. That's a bummer for me, But what am
Speaker 1: I gonna do about it? I don't know if the
Speaker 1: guy has any real hunting skill or not. It's easy
Speaker 1: again for me to think, well, I know he asked
Speaker 1: quite a bit of land, and I would have worked
Speaker 1: with and I held a lot of money to work with.
Speaker 1: Those two things. Well, actually, just the money thing, they
Speaker 1: can get you to buck, maybe not six of them.
Speaker 1: It'll get you a hell of a lot faster than
Speaker 1: I don't scouting and whatever else will. But the real
Speaker 1: question is why should I care? Shouldn't I be happy
Speaker 1: for him? Or at least I don't know, agnostic about it.
Speaker 1: It's harder than it looks, and honestly is fairly muddied
Speaker 1: up when you consider the representation of our industry and
Speaker 1: his legal issues. Fine, maybe that guy sucks and he
Speaker 1: deserves to be judged, But what about some other random
Speaker 1: hunter who happens to arrow a giant? What's the first reaction?
Speaker 1: Mine is often to assume, which is a bad idea,
Speaker 1: that they must have a great place to hunt. Many do,
Speaker 1: But does that really take away anything from their kill?
Speaker 1: And why does it make me feel better to find
Speaker 1: out it's some blue collar man or woman who happened
Speaker 1: to knock on the right farmer's door, or better yet,
Speaker 1: get a little lucky on some state land. Why does
Speaker 1: that matter? It shouldn't, but I forget that all the time.
Speaker 1: It's hard not to get jealous. I had a conversation
Speaker 1: with a buddy of mine recently where he mentioned that
Speaker 1: it seems like everyone has more money than him, even
Speaker 1: though he knows that's not true. He's just perceiving the
Speaker 1: world that way. And I think a lot of us
Speaker 1: do this in so many different ways. When I go
Speaker 1: up to the lake where we have our travel trailer,
Speaker 1: I see bass boats that would cost sure grand new.
Speaker 1: Now I see wake boats that cost double that, and
Speaker 1: I always think, where the hell do these people get
Speaker 1: their money, and why can't I have some of it?
Speaker 1: And then I realized, well, I have a bass boat.
Speaker 1: It's certainly not new, but a hell of a lot
Speaker 1: of people in a little aluminum deep v boats have
Speaker 1: commented on how much they liked the look of that boat.
Speaker 1: I'm sure the folks I see paddling around in canoes
Speaker 1: kayaks might trade me for a day or maybe a
Speaker 1: summer too. When I was younger, and I couldn't kill
Speaker 1: a deer despite hours and hours and hours of effort.
Speaker 1: I always sort of hated the guys who wrote for magazines.
Speaker 1: I softly despised. I don't like the Real Tree crew,
Speaker 1: or the Monster Bucks crew, or the premost guys, or
Speaker 1: whoever was making the videos. I saw where they were
Speaker 1: routinely killing bucks way bigger than I ever saw, literally
Speaker 1: ever saw in my life hunting or not hunting. But
Speaker 1: why because I was jealous. I wanted what they had.
Speaker 1: I don't actually want to wake boat, for example. In fact,
Speaker 1: I hate them, but I wish I got a forward one.
Speaker 1: I don't want to shoot a high fence deer without
Speaker 1: defences on a primo managed piece of ground either. I
Speaker 1: just want the offer, maybe the invite. I want to
Speaker 1: be able to look people in the eye and tell
Speaker 1: them I could have hunted someplace really sweet, but I'm
Speaker 1: gonna go grind it out on public. Why does that matter?
Speaker 1: It doesn't. But it's a way of thinking. It's a
Speaker 1: stuck in the Rutt mindset, which is kind of damaging.
Speaker 1: It's like, right now, if you take five seconds to
Speaker 1: read about the economy, you'll be bombarded with negativity. Inflation
Speaker 1: has the cost of all the essentials in our life
Speaker 1: away way higher than a couple of years ago. The
Speaker 1: stock market isn't trending in a direction that produces tons
Speaker 1: of millionaires unless you're really good at shorting stocks. Demand
Speaker 1: for housing is abating, people are putting more money on
Speaker 1: credit cards. On the surface, not so great. Underneath the surface,
Speaker 1: also not so great. Many people, especially young people, will
Speaker 1: look at this as another grand kick to the old
Speaker 1: nut sack from the boomers who control the whole machine,
Speaker 1: or some other such excuse which doesn't hold a whole
Speaker 1: lot of water. It's a prime breeding ground for negativity
Speaker 1: and the mindset that once broke, always broke, or that
Speaker 1: you never get ahead in this world. But the folks
Speaker 1: who have weathered through a few bare markets are actually
Speaker 1: looking at it like it's an opportunity to follow the
Speaker 1: old oracle of Omaha into some discounted shares of solid companies.
Speaker 1: Maybe they're buying into the whole market, maybe some I
Speaker 1: bonds or some other inflation protected asset. The mindset is,
Speaker 1: it's probably not as bad as it seems, if I
Speaker 1: can make a few good decisions from here until this
Speaker 1: thing starts to turn around, and these folks who own
Speaker 1: their mindset and can make a few disciplined decisions will
Speaker 1: probably end up pretty happy with themselves when the whole
Speaker 1: thing balances out and starts turning black again. In more
Speaker 1: often than it turns red, because the way we think
Speaker 1: about this stuff matters so much. If you have a
Speaker 1: bad attitude, you're stuck on public land while so many
Speaker 1: people are growing and naming deer on sweet little pieces
Speaker 1: of paradise where the bucks never look up in trees
Speaker 1: and the genetics are hands selected by the big man
Speaker 1: in the sky himself to produce I don't know, top
Speaker 1: end typicals and gnarly points everywhere non typicals. I'll bet
Speaker 1: someone would still change places with you. Even if you're
Speaker 1: just pounding out on public land and you don't have
Speaker 1: that dream scenario. Think about that. You might not get
Speaker 1: to hunt that. I don't know, easy babysat deer. That
Speaker 1: would make a great TV show, kind of buck. That's okay.
Speaker 1: Some people look into spots like that. Some people work
Speaker 1: their asses off somewhere else to buy into that world.
Speaker 1: If you won't or can't, that's okay. Ask yourself, what
Speaker 1: do you have that's still pretty sweet. Do you have
Speaker 1: land that you can hunt any time? That's pretty good,
Speaker 1: It really is. And even if we often bitch about
Speaker 1: public land and look down on it at least until
Speaker 1: we kill something on it and can brag away, the
Speaker 1: truth is it's better than living where you have no
Speaker 1: public land hunt. That's pretty simple, right. It's kind of
Speaker 1: like having a I don't know, a cheap fourteen ft
Speaker 1: aluminum boat with a twenty horsepower tiller steered motor on
Speaker 1: It is better than fishing from shore. Having a spot
Speaker 1: to go to where you can at least theoretically kill
Speaker 1: a deer or two is a lot better than not
Speaker 1: having any place to go hunt better. Yet, with that land,
Speaker 1: you have the option of putting in some sweat equity
Speaker 1: to influence your results in a positive way. That's kind
Speaker 1: of a bonus, isn't it. So What if your wife's
Speaker 1: cousin works in finance and has money to buy I
Speaker 1: don't know, fifteen thousand dollar landowner tag out west to
Speaker 1: hunt elk that bugles so much they sometimes pass out
Speaker 1: from the effort. What if you can't afford and over
Speaker 1: the counter elk hunt in a trampled unit, even if
Speaker 1: you lived on peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for ten days,
Speaker 1: and someone spotted you the gas money to get there.
Speaker 1: Find something else. Maybe the mountains are out of reach,
Speaker 1: but a couple of days across the state line with
Speaker 1: your buddies for some turkeys or small game or white
Speaker 1: tails or whatever that could be in the cards. Maybe
Speaker 1: you'll never get to fish the ocean, but maybe you
Speaker 1: have some pretty sweet little trout streams near your house
Speaker 1: that you can fish any damn time you please. That's
Speaker 1: not nothing, and it doesn't do us any good to
Speaker 1: focus on the asshole who can afford to fish in
Speaker 1: the ocean. It doesn't do us any good to keep
Speaker 1: up with the hunting jones is because they probably aren't
Speaker 1: any happier than you are, or maybe they are, and
Speaker 1: it's on you to be a little bit happier about
Speaker 1: what you do have. That's what I'm trying to do.
Speaker 1: If you have a bad ass spot to hunt deer
Speaker 1: and never really see a reason to pick up your
Speaker 1: bow unless he's a one eighty year better good for you.
Speaker 1: Help every once in a while you take somebody out
Speaker 1: to hunt dos or shed hunt or something, because that's
Speaker 1: a gift worth sharing. But The same goes for the
Speaker 1: public land hunter scraping by in an attempt to shoot
Speaker 1: a dough or a forky. It could always be worse.
Speaker 1: You could not hunt or not have a place to hunt,
Speaker 1: or have an accident at work that breaks both of
Speaker 1: your arms the day before the bow season opens up,
Speaker 1: or worse, an accident at home that breaks both of
Speaker 1: your arms because you're doing something stupid like spraying hornets
Speaker 1: on the eaves of your house and the ladder falls
Speaker 1: over when you get stung right between the eyes. Or hell,
Speaker 1: you find out that you and your wife happen to
Speaker 1: carry a rare, recessive gene and occasionally, in that situation,
Speaker 1: when you make a child together, that child will live
Speaker 1: a short life with a horrible disease. Perspective, my friends,
Speaker 1: things could always be worse. So maybe we shouldn't be
Speaker 1: trying to make things worse for ourselves or others. Maybe
Speaker 1: we should just be happy for the fortunate souls who
Speaker 1: happened to be born into a family that just happen
Speaker 1: to start buying southern Iowa ground in the nineteen fifties
Speaker 1: and now sits on a couple of sections of the
Speaker 1: best deer dirt out there. We should be happy for
Speaker 1: the hard worker who saves up for the trip to
Speaker 1: the mountains to hear a real bugle at least once,
Speaker 1: or the person who talks his buddies into paying for
Speaker 1: at least to experience the deer hunting the way he
Speaker 1: and his buddies want to experience it. Life isn't fair,
Speaker 1: It isn't equitable in its distributional wealth and of opportunity.
Speaker 1: But if you're up walking and talking and capable of
Speaker 1: climbing into a tree stand and holding a bow up
Speaker 1: to shoot it, you're probably doing all right. If you
Speaker 1: have a little cabin to go to for the firearms
Speaker 1: season where some good friends and a few year relatives
Speaker 1: will be and you get to play some cards and
Speaker 1: eat some chili and drag out a few deer, I'd
Speaker 1: say you're pretty damn lucky, and I'm happy for you.
Speaker 1: I'm happy for all of us. Honestly, those of us
Speaker 1: who love to deer hunt, we already have a leg
Speaker 1: up on the rest of the population. I truly believe that.
Speaker 1: Do you know how exciting it is to see a
Speaker 1: good buck walking down the trail when you know he's
Speaker 1: going to eventually be in range and you're eventually going
Speaker 1: to shoot at him. That's what Daddy likes. And the
Speaker 1: folks who don't know that feeling, they're everywhere and they
Speaker 1: don't even know what they're missing. We do, you and
Speaker 1: I the hunters, So really, no matter where you hunt,
Speaker 1: why you hunt, or whatever, I'm actually happy for you
Speaker 1: white tail hunting successfully. And by that I mean in
Speaker 1: a way that is rewarding. Whether you slay booners every
Speaker 1: year or couldn't kill a button buck on a high
Speaker 1: fence corn pile with a week's worth of effort, it's
Speaker 1: the goal, and it doesn't matter where we do it
Speaker 1: or what the final score is. Whether we notched a
Speaker 1: deer tag on private land or the most heavily hunted
Speaker 1: piece of public land out east somewhere, doesn't matter. It's
Speaker 1: all good and we should all be happy we still
Speaker 1: have some fellow hunters out there fighting the good fight
Speaker 1: and living for the same reasons we live for. That's
Speaker 1: all I have for this up episode. This has been
Speaker 1: the Wire to Hunt Foundations podcast, brought you by First Light.
Speaker 1: I'm Tony Peterson, and I sincerely want to thank you
Speaker 1: for the support and if you need more white tail wisdom,
Speaker 1: head on over to the mediator dot com slash wired
Speaker 1: and check out my latest articles, along with articles from
Speaker 1: Mark and Beau Martinic and Alex Gilstrom in a whole
Speaker 1: bunch of white Tail Killers. And you can also view
Speaker 1: a ton of how to videos on our wire to
Speaker 1: Hunt YouTube channel, where Mr Kenyon and myself break down
Speaker 1: all kinds of deer hunting strategies.