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, everybody, welcome to the wire to
Speaker 1: Hunt Foundations podcasts, which is brought to you by First Light.
Speaker 1: I'm your host, Tony Peterson, and today's episode is all
Speaker 1: about hunting with kids and newbies, really how to set
Speaker 1: them up for good shots and a great experience. Last
Speaker 1: week I talked about taking kids and beginners hunting and
Speaker 1: how there is this internal battle for us to figure
Speaker 1: out how to make it easy. This week, I want
Speaker 1: to take it a step further and talk about the
Speaker 1: things I've learned after taking my twin daughters deer hunting
Speaker 1: for two years, or I guess more specifically, what I've
Speaker 1: learned about the setups and the things I have to
Speaker 1: do right so they love their time out there in
Speaker 1: the woods and they get hooked on hunting, which is
Speaker 1: my secret goal. Yeah. Here's the thing, my young listeners,
Speaker 1: who may not have a minivan full of kids yet.
Speaker 1: You may not think this topic is relevant to you,
Speaker 1: but it probably is. Taking kids out isn't a whole
Speaker 1: lot different from taking newbie hunters out. You learn that
Speaker 1: your game has to be damn near perfect because there's
Speaker 1: won't be, and we should be taking people out. If
Speaker 1: you remember a couple of weeks ago when I talked
Speaker 1: about where hunting goes to die, and that the hedge
Speaker 1: against that that I think is at least possible is participation,
Speaker 1: more participation by us. So I say, let's not let
Speaker 1: it die on our watch. Let's keep it alive because
Speaker 1: hunting is a gift, and one way to do that
Speaker 1: is to introduce people to hunt it, like I did
Speaker 1: with my daughters. But just like when I had my
Speaker 1: punks out there with me, you've got us think through
Speaker 1: your setups when you've got newbies. You really do. But
Speaker 1: this is a good thing on two fronts. The main
Speaker 1: one i'll get too later in this episode, but the
Speaker 1: first one is that you kind of just default right
Speaker 1: back to just hunting deer. And I've talked about this
Speaker 1: a lot, but I think there's a huge benefit to
Speaker 1: just hunting deer. I think when we laser focus in
Speaker 1: on big box, which is totally okay in so many situations,
Speaker 1: we tend to miss a lot of important aspects of
Speaker 1: being a good hunter and about enjoying the whole process. Now,
Speaker 1: when you take two fourth grade girls, you learn all
Speaker 1: about this. The girls had one rule for me, well
Speaker 1: too technically, but the first was they were not shooting fawns.
Speaker 1: I figured that was pretty much a given anyway, so
Speaker 1: early wasn't on the table. The second was that they
Speaker 1: wouldn't orphan fawns. If a doe had fawns, it was
Speaker 1: a no go. They were not cleared hot. The good
Speaker 1: news on that front is that we were hunting a
Speaker 1: predator rich environment where a lot of does lose or
Speaker 1: fawns to bears and coyotes and bobcats and wolves. I
Speaker 1: knew it would be just as likely we'd have a
Speaker 1: lone dough come through as we would a doe with fawns,
Speaker 1: and it it turns out it's actually way more likely because
Speaker 1: there's really high fond mortality over there. If you take
Speaker 1: a new bee out, it's important to listen to them
Speaker 1: about stuff like that. Everyone has their own hangups and expectations.
Speaker 1: And while you might be some weirdo who loves nothing
Speaker 1: more than to shoot those with youngs, you know, still
Speaker 1: spotted triplets, the person you're taking out might be devastated
Speaker 1: by that. In that way, you kind of have to
Speaker 1: play by their rules. If that seems dumb, think about
Speaker 1: the lines you draw in the sand around your own hunting.
Speaker 1: We all have things we like and things we don't,
Speaker 1: things we will do, and things we won't. I feel
Speaker 1: like I just wrote a pop song that Mark would
Speaker 1: play on his way to some dumb convention somewhere. Anyway,
Speaker 1: it's important to pay attention to the hunters you take out.
Speaker 1: They'll tell you what they're looking for out of the experience.
Speaker 1: There's a caveat to this. It involves the size of
Speaker 1: a buck. Usually with a couple of young girls who
Speaker 1: have seen me bring home everything from dose to four
Speaker 1: keys to a hundred and fifty plus inters. I knew
Speaker 1: I probably wouldn't be dealing with an unearned sense of
Speaker 1: entitlement to big Bucks, but it happens all the time.
Speaker 1: I know a lot of husbands who have brought their
Speaker 1: wives out only to find out that they want a
Speaker 1: big buck or nothing for their first year. I know
Speaker 1: a hell of a lot of dudes who have started
Speaker 1: hunting with someone who is acting like a mentor, who
Speaker 1: have the same kind of idea about Big Bucks. In
Speaker 1: that situation, I say no, just kind of read it,
Speaker 1: feel out how much it actually matters to kill a
Speaker 1: big one, and if it seems right, if the opportunity
Speaker 1: comes along, encourage a little drop in the old standards department.
Speaker 1: In this realm, I'm like that Green Day song because
Speaker 1: I'm a walking contradiction. I want people to shoot whatever
Speaker 1: makes them happy, while simultaneously believing that starting out as
Speaker 1: a trophy hunt is a sure way to never really
Speaker 1: develop a love of the game. This is why when
Speaker 1: I take new hunters out, I try to stress that
Speaker 1: we are looking for a no brainer shot first and foremost,
Speaker 1: just like you wouldn't take a brand new hunter on
Speaker 1: a spotting stock antelope hunt where the diaper butts are
Speaker 1: likely to not let you get closer than sixty yards.
Speaker 1: Setting up for good box often means setting up for
Speaker 1: some shots that require a little skill, that might require
Speaker 1: a thread the needle scenario, or something that isn't just
Speaker 1: a fifteen yard broadside situation. Stressing the importance of hunting
Speaker 1: deer for really high odd shot tends to diminish the
Speaker 1: desire for the end result of a big buck at
Speaker 1: least some because it reframes the parameters of the hunt,
Speaker 1: and it shifts the focus from a certain caliber of
Speaker 1: a deer to a deer that poses up in a
Speaker 1: way that is most appreciated by anyone who wants to
Speaker 1: make a perfect shot. The last summer, when I was
Speaker 1: setting up for the girls and this summer while setting
Speaker 1: up for them and my buddy's son, this was first
Speaker 1: and foremost on my mind. I knew this meant one thing.
Speaker 1: Though we wouldn't be where we would see a lot
Speaker 1: of deer. This is one of the ways you just
Speaker 1: have to find a balance with this stuff, and it's
Speaker 1: something I've talked about a ton. It seems like there
Speaker 1: are so many situations where you can sit and see
Speaker 1: deer but the odds of a great shot opportunity are
Speaker 1: pretty low, or you can sit where you won't see
Speaker 1: tons of deer, but the odds of a really good
Speaker 1: shot opportunity are high. I almost always default to the
Speaker 1: latter situation because I had a lot of pressure deer.
Speaker 1: I'm not going to go sit on a food plot
Speaker 1: or a field edge very often and see seventeen deer
Speaker 1: in a sit although I am lucky to hunt places
Speaker 1: where that happens once in a while. For the most part, though,
Speaker 1: I'm always looking for something that will put me right
Speaker 1: on top of a travel route, or some food or
Speaker 1: water source that is small and because of its size,
Speaker 1: should really concentrate movement. Now, remember back at the beginning
Speaker 1: of this episode when I said there were two benefits
Speaker 1: to taking newbies out. I think this one is huge.
Speaker 1: It's just for us to develop his hunters. When you
Speaker 1: have someone who might move too much, or you know,
Speaker 1: make a bit too much noise or whatever, you need
Speaker 1: to do everything you can to put deer right in
Speaker 1: front of them. That makes you better. For my girls,
Speaker 1: that meant pop up blinds that are truly brushed in
Speaker 1: and seasoned. And I'm not joking here. I like to
Speaker 1: get my blinds out in midsummer at least and then
Speaker 1: cross my fingers that an angry yogi doesn't come along
Speaker 1: and tear them up. At least once per year that happens.
Speaker 1: In fact, bears tend to take out at least one
Speaker 1: of my blinds and one of my trail cameras every
Speaker 1: single year. It sucks, but it's just a name of
Speaker 1: the game in the north Woods. This year, I put
Speaker 1: up a camera in Wisconsin to leave it for several weeks,
Speaker 1: only to have a d twelve pound bear come in,
Speaker 1: swat it right off the tree and move on with
Speaker 1: his life. Like six hours after I hung it, he
Speaker 1: hit it hard enough to snap the plastic pieces on
Speaker 1: the back that holds the strap. I've that happened a lot,
Speaker 1: and without a bearcage, it's almost a given at some point.
Speaker 1: I even had one Minnesota bear that I tried my
Speaker 1: hardest arrow and never did that put his canine tooth
Speaker 1: right through the lens of a camera. It was a
Speaker 1: perfect bull's eye, turned my camera into a camel covered
Speaker 1: paper weight. I don't know. Maybe you deal with bears,
Speaker 1: maybe you don't. But pop up blinds are a really,
Speaker 1: really good option for new hunters. The ability to move
Speaker 1: and whisper and eat a sandwich or sip some coffee,
Speaker 1: or eat fifty calories worth of runts and those unbelievable
Speaker 1: gummy nerd candies that we recently discovered. That's nice. The
Speaker 1: downside to blinds is well known to most of us,
Speaker 1: and if you follow my strategy of setting up fifteen
Speaker 1: to twenty yards downwind of a pounded trailer water source,
Speaker 1: you might not hardly see anything until the year is
Speaker 1: right on top of you. That's the downside. Now. That
Speaker 1: happened to my daughters and I last year with almost
Speaker 1: every deer we encountered. We were hunting mostly early season,
Speaker 1: so the leaves didn't do us any favors for hearing
Speaker 1: or seeing approach deer. And we're in the big woods,
Speaker 1: you know, the timber is thick. You just not not
Speaker 1: a great option to watch a lot of deer activity.
Speaker 1: And that's the downside, especially when you put yourself in
Speaker 1: a blind. But the upside was that the deer that
Speaker 1: did come in almost all posed up so well that
Speaker 1: even two kids with the woodsmanship skills of a born
Speaker 1: and raised Los Angeles socialite could kill them, and they did.
Speaker 1: The three high odd shots that they took and made
Speaker 1: didn't happen by accident, even though there were spots I
Speaker 1: wanted to set them up in because I thought we'd
Speaker 1: see more, Dear, I didn't want to get into a
Speaker 1: situation where the deer we encountered weren't anywhere other than
Speaker 1: right on us and oblivious to our presence. This goes
Speaker 1: back to the brushing and blinds thing, And I mean
Speaker 1: I truly blend them in with limbs, branches hanging over
Speaker 1: the windows, I want to give it a true three
Speaker 1: D look and hide our movements in the shadows. It
Speaker 1: also meant that we could only keep one window open
Speaker 1: where the shot would be w cross our fingers that
Speaker 1: that was what would happen. It also meant that I
Speaker 1: had to think about prevailing wind directions not only for
Speaker 1: the mid September opener, but what it was going to
Speaker 1: be like when we were hunting in mid October. It
Speaker 1: also meant since the girls were in school and had
Speaker 1: limited time to hunt, I needed morning and evening options
Speaker 1: for different winds. Now, this is something I'm going to
Speaker 1: go through like in a deep dive in the next episode,
Speaker 1: so I'll keep this a little light here, but I'll
Speaker 1: say this, having to think through all of that stuff
Speaker 1: absolutely made me a better hunter. I really mean that,
Speaker 1: it really did. I didn't think it would either. It's
Speaker 1: easier to get delusional about yourself as a hunter, and
Speaker 1: I've kind of relied on my public Land resume to
Speaker 1: do the talking for me. You know, it's easy to
Speaker 1: drink your own cool and I guess, but I've been
Speaker 1: hunting white tails for thirty years. I should know how
Speaker 1: to put myself on a deer putting new hunters on
Speaker 1: a deer is different, and it forces you to really
Speaker 1: consider the possibilities. It forces you to think about the
Speaker 1: little details and a thing you might have gotten wrong.
Speaker 1: It makes you consider whether you have enough setups to
Speaker 1: keep things going through a variety of conditions, and you
Speaker 1: know what, it makes you realize that you can always
Speaker 1: do more. Last year I put up three blinds for
Speaker 1: the girls. I set them up for south and west winds.
Speaker 1: Mostly I set them up from mornings and evenings, and
Speaker 1: in fact they all worked for both. Some worked better
Speaker 1: for first light, well, some worked better for last light,
Speaker 1: but they would do for either scenario. No, I'm bad
Speaker 1: at math, but that feels kind of like I might
Speaker 1: have doubled our options. And even so, after one of
Speaker 1: my daughters killed a doe on the second morning of
Speaker 1: the season, it felt like that blind was burned. That
Speaker 1: left two, which isn't that many. I felt like I
Speaker 1: needed more. So this summer we did more. Not only
Speaker 1: did I have my buddy's son to think about, so
Speaker 1: I had another youth hunter to consider, but also just
Speaker 1: the reality that if the conditions don't favor my setups, well,
Speaker 1: I end up forcing something that I don't want to force.
Speaker 1: I think us deer hunters we do this a lot,
Speaker 1: especially when we have private land to set up for
Speaker 1: the season. And on this note, I think there's really
Speaker 1: something important to talk about too, to help, or more specifically,
Speaker 1: having kids or whoever you're taking out help when they
Speaker 1: get involved in that process. Like I talked about in
Speaker 1: the last episode, they just tend to own it more.
Speaker 1: And I think we don't acknowledge this enough in this space.
Speaker 1: Quite frankly, with parenting in general, when it comes to
Speaker 1: hunting deer with bow or a gun, being involved in
Speaker 1: the preseason work or the set up work throughout the season,
Speaker 1: it just helps everyone form a stronger connection to the
Speaker 1: work and the hunts. It's real important. I think it
Speaker 1: might be something that a lot of us who hunt
Speaker 1: for ourselves don't even truly understand. Back when I had
Speaker 1: a lot more time to check my d m s
Speaker 1: and respond to all of them, before this weird meat
Speaker 1: eater association made it just too much time. One of
Speaker 1: the most common things that happened to me was people
Speaker 1: reaching out to ask me where I hunt. They always
Speaker 1: think they are being tricky and often really try to
Speaker 1: brow you up before their real motives come out. You know.
Speaker 1: This bothers me for obvious reasons, like if I put
Speaker 1: a ton of time into scouting a spot in a
Speaker 1: specific state so I can have an enjoyable hunt there,
Speaker 1: I don't really want to just give that info away
Speaker 1: to a stranger. But it also bothers me because that's
Speaker 1: so much a part of what is fun about hunting,
Speaker 1: finding spots and scouting spots and hunting spots, and of
Speaker 1: course the less fun part, which is the inevitable losing spots.
Speaker 1: But when that happens, the cycle starts over, so you
Speaker 1: get to have some fun again. Owning that part, or
Speaker 1: those parts, I should say, it's important, just like it's
Speaker 1: important for a couple of ten year old girls to
Speaker 1: swat some horse flies while setting up cameras or helping
Speaker 1: brush in blinds, or maybe sitting on the edge of
Speaker 1: a bean field in late August to use the spotting
Speaker 1: scope to find a few velvet bucks. There's another aspect
Speaker 1: of this that's worth acknowledging as well, the role of
Speaker 1: the teacher. I really believe, especially after getting to know
Speaker 1: some of my daughter's teachers over the last half a decade,
Speaker 1: the good teachers are so damn important to society. I
Speaker 1: think they rank right up there with good cops and
Speaker 1: good nurses and anyone else who has a career mixed
Speaker 1: with helping people. Being a teacher, which I most definitely
Speaker 1: am not in a professional capacity, provides a great benefit.
Speaker 1: If you want to learn a subject, well, you can
Speaker 1: study it, but you want to develop a deep understanding
Speaker 1: of a subject, you also have to learn how to
Speaker 1: teach it. And teaching hunting, as silly as that might sound,
Speaker 1: is going to help you level up. Explaining the why
Speaker 1: behind everything helps you understand the reasons so much better,
Speaker 1: and it helps spawn new ideas too. It's important. I
Speaker 1: think it's actually probably some kind of evolutionary thing. It
Speaker 1: might be why so many societies help. Probably all of
Speaker 1: them had such a strong oral tradition with their stories,
Speaker 1: and not really just stories, but tales and myths and
Speaker 1: fables and lessons that were good enough to remember and
Speaker 1: pass on on through multiple generations. In that case, the
Speaker 1: listener gets a benefit from them in the lesson, but
Speaker 1: to tell her those stories get something out of it too.
Speaker 1: Thinking about the ancient Greeks or maybe Native Americans passing
Speaker 1: along their lesson filled tales of existence at various points
Speaker 1: through their history might seem like a real stretch when
Speaker 1: you're compared to trying to take a I don't know
Speaker 1: a new biout and talk them through their set up,
Speaker 1: or why you hang a camera certain way, or just
Speaker 1: why all the tracks emerge from the standing corn here
Speaker 1: and not there. But it's not. It's not as far
Speaker 1: away as it sounds. It's not to me anyway. I
Speaker 1: think we aren't so far removed from our recent history.
Speaker 1: And hell, I mean a couple of generations ago, Lewis
Speaker 1: and Clark thought they might run into Mastodon's in the
Speaker 1: middle of America because it was so wild, which is
Speaker 1: crazy to consider that wasn't that long ago. We aren't
Speaker 1: so different from those explorers heading up river into territory
Speaker 1: unknown to them but well known to others. Even though
Speaker 1: a lot of that has changed, what hasn't are the
Speaker 1: fundamentals of learning and of teaching, Of giving a gift
Speaker 1: to someone in the form of a well placed blind
Speaker 1: and a setting sun accompanied by the sound of hoofs
Speaker 1: scraping and the dried leaves. That's so important. And that's
Speaker 1: enough for now, my friends. Next week, I'm gonna expand
Speaker 1: on this topic of giving yourself real options. I mean
Speaker 1: real options, because it's not just important if you take
Speaker 1: a couple of kids, or a new coworker, your brother
Speaker 1: in law, or whoever out hunting. It's good for you too,
Speaker 1: especially if you want to kill mature bucks, and I
Speaker 1: know you do, so tune in next week because I'm
Speaker 1: gonna make a case for you to truly expand your
Speaker 1: options to be a more effective hunter this fall. That's
Speaker 1: it for this week, my dear obsessed amigoes. I'm Tony
Speaker 1: Peterson and this has been the Wired to Hunt Foundations podcast,
Speaker 1: which has brought to you by First Light. As always,
Speaker 1: thank you so much for listening. All of us here
Speaker 1: at Metator truly appreciate it. And if you need more
Speaker 1: white tail wisdom, go to the meat eator dot com
Speaker 1: slash wired and you can see all kinds of articles
Speaker 1: by Mark myself and a whole slew of white tail
Speaker 1: killers and and head on over to our wire to
Speaker 1: Hunt YouTube channel where we drop weekly how to content
Speaker 1: as well. MHM