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 Wired to Hunt Foundation's podcast,
Speaker 2: which is brought to you by first Light. I'm your host,
Speaker 2: Tony Peterson. Today's episode is all about the right way
Speaker 2: to approach long game whitetails. If there is a white
Speaker 2: tail time that teaches you whether you did things right
Speaker 2: this year, it's probably the end of October, after all,
Speaker 2: you know, the pre ruts kicking in kind of you're
Speaker 2: starting to hear people say they saw bucks chasing. You know,
Speaker 2: at least if you live in the North Country, the
Speaker 2: promise is real and this year it's the year for you.
Speaker 2: But what if it's not, Or what if you go
Speaker 2: out and it's supposed to be awesome and it sucks.
Speaker 2: What if the bucks don't come running when you're blowing
Speaker 2: on your Phelps grunt call or you're doing your best
Speaker 2: buck fight impression with their rattle bag, Well you might
Speaker 2: be what I'd affectually refer to as a deer hunting
Speaker 2: gambler when really you should be an investor. Allow me
Speaker 2: to explain myself as a sober dude who would rather
Speaker 2: not set fire to his money. I can't think of
Speaker 2: a worse place to be than a casino. It's not
Speaker 2: my jam. And even though I kind of actually like
Speaker 2: playing blackjack and poker, I'm not very good at either
Speaker 2: one of them. You have to be able to think
Speaker 2: about numbers beyond the level of a toddler to be
Speaker 2: any good at cards, and I can't, so I'm not.
Speaker 2: Casinos are a big case study in human psychology. People
Speaker 2: go in with the promise that they might win big,
Speaker 2: and almost always they don't. In fact, the truth is
Speaker 2: that every casino game is designed to give the house
Speaker 2: better odds than the player, every single game. Now, blackjack
Speaker 2: players have pretty good odds, well compared to other games.
Speaker 2: You know, the odds of winning blackjack are slightly less
Speaker 2: than a coin flip. The folks sitting down thinking they
Speaker 2: are due for a face card and an ace are
Speaker 2: mostly destined to lose via a war of attrition against
Speaker 2: the house. Craps has nearly the same odds, maybe slightly better,
Speaker 2: but again not good enough to get your mortgage paid
Speaker 2: on a consistent basis. Roulette offers roughly the same deal.
Speaker 2: The odds is sitting down at a slot machine and winning.
Speaker 2: They're far worse, although it depends a little bit on
Speaker 2: the game. You don't really have to even go to
Speaker 2: a casino to gamble. You can bet on sports these days.
Speaker 2: You can eat gas station sushi and then go powerlift
Speaker 2: at the gym an hour later. You can buy a
Speaker 2: puppy and not tell your significant other. Or you can
Speaker 2: listen to the financial media and buy a bunch of
Speaker 2: stock and some company that is bound to be the
Speaker 2: next Google or Apple. This one might be the worst
Speaker 2: because that doesn't really feel like a gamble after all.
Speaker 2: How could a company that makes cutting edge artificial intelligence
Speaker 2: that is going to change our lives for the better
Speaker 2: ever really go down in value? Or I don't know,
Speaker 2: how could a company that is three D printing rockets
Speaker 2: to send a space to bring down the cost of
Speaker 2: delivering satellites into orbit and not succeed. Well, a lot
Speaker 2: of companies are working on AI and there will only
Speaker 2: be a few really big winners, And I don't know,
Speaker 2: rockets explode on the launch pad all the time. High
Speaker 2: level employees em bezel money or do worse things. Pandemics happen,
Speaker 2: Disruptive technologies you won't see coming show up on the scene,
Speaker 2: and quite often our own impatience and ignorance gets us
Speaker 2: to buy in after the hype train has already gone through,
Speaker 2: and then sell as soon as the euphoria fades and
Speaker 2: reality sets in. Buying individual equities also known as stock
Speaker 2: and publicly traded companies is amble. It can make you rich,
Speaker 2: probably won't. Buying ETF some mutual funds that hold the
Speaker 2: entire domestic market or the entire international market, or an
Speaker 2: equal way to every company in the s and P
Speaker 2: Five hundred is a different story, provided your timeline is
Speaker 2: sufficiently long and you're patient enough. It's also boring, But
Speaker 2: if you want to get rich kids, or at least
Speaker 2: be wealthy enough to potentially retire early, this is the way.
Speaker 2: It's not fun, it's not quick, but it is the
Speaker 2: best way to do it. Start early, invest more than
Speaker 2: you think you can, and let the power of time
Speaker 2: and compounding do its thing for you. Check back in oh,
Speaker 2: I don't know, thirty years and feel free to send
Speaker 2: me a healthy tip, you know, because I'm the guy
Speaker 2: who convinced you to be responsible with your money. There
Speaker 2: are other ways to do it. You know. You can
Speaker 2: invest in real estate. That's a big one right now.
Speaker 2: But that's something that sounds easy and can come with
Speaker 2: a whole bunch of risks and other headaches. Essentially, if
Speaker 2: it's popular and sexy and sounds exciting, probably a bad route.
Speaker 2: Stick to boring and time tested when it comes to
Speaker 2: your money. Now, I know you won't fully listen to me,
Speaker 2: so let me give you one example of how I
Speaker 2: have come to be so wise. When I first started investing,
Speaker 2: I was super duper clueless. I also found myself in
Speaker 2: a conversation with a buddy of mine who does marketing
Speaker 2: work for a whole bunch of outdoor companies. At the time,
Speaker 2: which was probably about fifteen years ago, those companies were
Speaker 2: all in on magnets, on packs and clothes and biny
Speaker 2: harnesses and such. He and I were talking about this,
Speaker 2: and he mentioned that he was investing heavily into rare
Speaker 2: earth mineral companies, you know, the miners and the processors.
Speaker 2: His spiel was impressive. After all, rare earth minerals have
Speaker 2: to be rare, and they are used in all kinds
Speaker 2: of things like hunting, backpacks and smartphones. So I did
Speaker 2: something really dumb. I went out and found a company
Speaker 2: that was all about this rare earth mineral life and
Speaker 2: better yet, their stock was like thirty cents of share cheap, right,
Speaker 2: So I dumped a grand into it, and then started
Speaker 2: learning that rare earth minerals aren't that rare, and nearly
Speaker 2: the entire market is controlled by China. I also learned
Speaker 2: that the company I had staked my future on didn't
Speaker 2: have much of a future, and when they went belly up,
Speaker 2: I got an expensive education. We are hard wired to
Speaker 2: gamble because we love surprising rewards. This makes us susceptible
Speaker 2: to our own psychology, and that's bad news and so
Speaker 2: many different things in life. One of those things is
Speaker 2: you freaking guessed it windsurfing just kidding. Well, I don't know,
Speaker 2: Maybe that does seem like kind of a gamble, but
Speaker 2: obviously here I'm talking about deer hunting. As I mentioned
Speaker 2: in the intro, you're probably as optimistic now as you'll
Speaker 2: be all season. The best couple of weeks of the
Speaker 2: season are upon us, and there's nothing standing between you
Speaker 2: and a giant dead buck. But you know, a little
Speaker 2: time in the saddle are a blind. Now, that might
Speaker 2: be true, but it's probably not. It's far more likely,
Speaker 2: because the odds don't really lie, that you'll be one
Speaker 2: of the eighty percent issh or so of bow hunters
Speaker 2: who don't kill a deer this year. Factor in mature bucks,
Speaker 2: and it's far more likely that that number is probably
Speaker 2: closer to ninety seven or ninety eight percent of people
Speaker 2: don't kill one, maybe even a little higher. You know,
Speaker 2: I'm not a math guy. I remember that. But here's
Speaker 2: the thing, though. You can gamble on deer hunting, or
Speaker 2: you can invest in your success. You can do a
Speaker 2: little both, actually, or a little one and a lot
Speaker 2: of the other. But I don't want to go there yet.
Speaker 2: I want to explain this concept first. Investing in your
Speaker 2: success involves a lot of things. It involves scouting. You know.
Speaker 2: Of course, if you don't scout enough, you're not going
Speaker 2: to be very good at deer hunting without having you
Speaker 2: know the keys to an amazing spot. I keep saying
Speaker 2: this and people keep asking me what the secret is
Speaker 2: to being more successful. It's scouting, you know, as if
Speaker 2: I'm keeping something secret to myself here. Believe me, I'm not.
Speaker 2: It's not complicated. Scouting is like setting that automatic withdrawal
Speaker 2: from your paycheck every pay period. At first you go
Speaker 2: with ten percent because that's a nice round number and
Speaker 2: allows you to take advantage of your employer match. Then
Speaker 2: you get a five percent raise, so you bump up
Speaker 2: your contributions by two or three percent. It's boring, not
Speaker 2: fun at all, but it is a great way to
Speaker 2: stave off lifestyle creep wile also investing in your future.
Speaker 2: Scouting is that move, It's that strategy. The time spent
Speaker 2: walking the winter woods in March, that's an investment. Your
Speaker 2: summer glassing sessions, the mid morning sneaky session you make
Speaker 2: into a spot right now this week, just to see
Speaker 2: what it looks like. That's responsibly investing in your deer
Speaker 2: hunting future, maybe the immediate future, or maybe three seasons
Speaker 2: down the road. And it goes beyond that. Every shot
Speaker 2: you take at the range, every arrow you index to
Speaker 2: a specific broadhead, every time you pack your gear specific
Speaker 2: way so you don't forget any thing. Every time you
Speaker 2: sneak in to check a camera and pay close attention
Speaker 2: to making as little disturbance as possible. All of this
Speaker 2: stuff is mostly mundane but highly necessary. Think of the
Speaker 2: boring stuff you do or should do, and look at that.
Speaker 2: Look at each thing like it's a little investment in
Speaker 2: your future. This is because it's true, and this does
Speaker 2: a couple things for you. It makes you a better
Speaker 2: hunter because you're getting the work done. That's a simple one.
Speaker 2: But it also conditions you to do the work and
Speaker 2: to be mindful of the details, to be disciplined. It
Speaker 2: puts you in the mindset of someone who takes care
Speaker 2: of business. And that's not nothing. My friends. There are
Speaker 2: patterns to our behavior in ways we can either encourage
Speaker 2: the right ones or lean into the negative ones. Get
Speaker 2: into the right ones. Condition yourself to be the kind
Speaker 2: of hunter who takes care of this stuff all year long,
Speaker 2: because when it's the last week of October, your chances
Speaker 2: of success will be so much higher than folks who
Speaker 2: don't do this. Just like the person who puts away
Speaker 2: fifteen percent of their gross pay for three decades or
Speaker 2: somewhere around there is going to be so happy to retire,
Speaker 2: while the person who buys lottery tickets each week and
Speaker 2: doesn't save is going to have an ugly moment of
Speaker 2: reckoning at some point. The other thing this does for
Speaker 2: you is keeps you from gambling irresponsibly. And what do
Speaker 2: I mean when I'm talking about this with deer hunting? Well,
Speaker 2: it's something I've mentioned a lot, but let's make this personal.
Speaker 2: Do you own any deer calls? How many bottles of
Speaker 2: dope have you bought for this season? When you go
Speaker 2: out hunting? Do you always put out a cent wi
Speaker 2: with some dope on it? Are you always trying to
Speaker 2: add something extra to your sits to increase your odds?
Speaker 2: Let me ask you, why is it? Because you believe
Speaker 2: that this stuff is mostly harmless? So why not? Well?
Speaker 2: Is it mostly harmless? If you go out and put
Speaker 2: a cent wick up or three of them, you probably
Speaker 2: have to walk where you intend to shoot a buck.
Speaker 2: Is that risk free? I'd say it's not. You're inviting
Speaker 2: a deer to go right where you just were, if
Speaker 2: you planned to rattle or grant you or both in
Speaker 2: blind calling sequences? Is that risk free? There's movement associated
Speaker 2: with it, but that can be mitigated. There's also the
Speaker 2: reality that when bucks come to a call, they often
Speaker 2: swing down wind. It's not risk free. There's another truth
Speaker 2: here too, and it's that dose don't like hearing calling
Speaker 2: a whole lot, and some bucks are real spooky about it.
Speaker 2: How about running cameras this time of year, there's some
Speaker 2: major risks there. The obvious is not hunting because bucks
Speaker 2: aren't showing up on your camera. There's no greater risk
Speaker 2: to your hunting success than gambling that the bucks aren't
Speaker 2: moving because there is one tiny glimpse of the woods
Speaker 2: that is somewhat unreliable tells you the deer aren't there
Speaker 2: doing their thing. Now, I'm not saying to not do
Speaker 2: these things. Blind calling sessions are fun, trail cameras are fun.
Speaker 2: This stuff can be useful. A lot of this extra
Speaker 2: stuff is just enjoyable. But I want you to ask
Speaker 2: yourself when you head out hunting in the next week,
Speaker 2: why you think you need any of those things, and
Speaker 2: what is the risk of doing any of that stuff
Speaker 2: on any given hunt. Are you talking yourself into trying
Speaker 2: to make something happen because you have very little faith
Speaker 2: in your setup, or are you convinced that the conditions
Speaker 2: are right to rattle Because there's a huge difference between
Speaker 2: the two. The investing part of white Tail hunting does
Speaker 2: this for you. It gives you faith in your setups
Speaker 2: and you're hunting plans. It's reassuring because you know that
Speaker 2: the rubs were thick on a ridgetop after last season,
Speaker 2: and you know that you haven't been in there yet
Speaker 2: this season, and the odds are real good that a
Speaker 2: buck is going to be doing now what a buck
Speaker 2: was doing last year in there. Or maybe you found
Speaker 2: a huge community scrape last spring in a travel hub
Speaker 2: and haven't been in there yet this season. But you
Speaker 2: go in with the idea that the wind is right
Speaker 2: and the scrape is there, the exact tree you'll hunt
Speaker 2: is prepped and ready to go. This is a far
Speaker 2: cry from going into one of your old stands that
Speaker 2: you've been sitting since the opener and deciding the pre
Speaker 2: rud is going to revive the spot, especially if the
Speaker 2: neighborhood bucks hear some grunning or antler smashing together, or
Speaker 2: maybe they just need to get a whiff of dopey
Speaker 2: that is supposed to be fresh. But it also only
Speaker 2: cost six dollars for a bottle, and there were hundreds
Speaker 2: of bottles in the store you just went to, and
Speaker 2: there must be thousands and thousands of them in other stores,
Speaker 2: so how could they really be fresh do and estrascent.
Speaker 2: Here's how you know whether you've invested in your success
Speaker 2: or not. When you get set up, do you have
Speaker 2: confidence to not do anything extra? I mean, do you
Speaker 2: believe that without any get rich quick stuff full faith
Speaker 2: that the deer will go through, including the type of
Speaker 2: deer you probably want to shoot. If so, you've invested. Well,
Speaker 2: if not, you probably haven't. This is where it gets
Speaker 2: weird for me and maybe you. People often look to
Speaker 2: me to give them the answer for right now, the
Speaker 2: short term green light on some strategy or style or
Speaker 2: decoy usage or whatever. Instead, I want you to think
Speaker 2: long term and use the next couple of weeks to
Speaker 2: catalog how you feel about the work you've put in
Speaker 2: and what you would maybe do differently in the future.
Speaker 2: I do this a lot, and honestly, it sucks, but
Speaker 2: it also puts me in a headspace to make better decisions.
Speaker 2: Let me give you a quick example from my season
Speaker 2: so far. I killed a solid ten pointer on the
Speaker 2: fourth day of the Minnesota season. Since I knew I
Speaker 2: was going to hunt early season bucks and I needed
Speaker 2: morning and evening sits for a variety of wins. I
Speaker 2: couldn't just phone it in. With the help of a
Speaker 2: good buddy, we tackle the process, scouting and hanging stands
Speaker 2: and running cameras and developing a good plan to kill
Speaker 2: just such a buck. In the first four days of
Speaker 2: the season, when the wind didn't cooperate and other hunters
Speaker 2: came into some of my spots and one housecat hosed
Speaker 2: up a good opportunity, I didn't really panic. I didn't
Speaker 2: run to my bag of tricks. I just kept hunting
Speaker 2: good spots based on the conditions. The buck I killed
Speaker 2: was simply a result of investing into that hunt so
Speaker 2: that I wouldn't be tempted to gamble. Of course, it
Speaker 2: doesn't always work that way. Oftentimes it doesn't. Those rascally
Speaker 2: deer are tough, and fates are fickle for all of us.
Speaker 2: But you can head your bet on a bright future
Speaker 2: by taking note of what you're not doing that you should,
Speaker 2: and then instead of forgetting about it, by about January
Speaker 2: actually doing that stuff. So I'll wrap it up this way.
Speaker 2: Just pay attention to yourself for the next couple of weeks.
Speaker 2: When you rattle, ask yourself, why is it because you're bored?
Speaker 2: Is it because you don't have faith that anything is
Speaker 2: going to come by? Is it because you've sat the
Speaker 2: same blind for four days and you know the whole
Speaker 2: area is probably burned, but there is a shot that
Speaker 2: something will come running in any way. Or are you
Speaker 2: sitting over a sweet pinch point near a gnarly bedding
Speaker 2: area and it's first light and it's cold and you
Speaker 2: know there have been some big cruisers in your area
Speaker 2: because there's a world of difference there which treats the
Speaker 2: get rich quick stuff as complimentary to a well planned
Speaker 2: and well executed hunt, not as the savior for poor
Speaker 2: planning or low confidence sits because you don't have anything
Speaker 2: better going on. Be honest with yourself as we slide
Speaker 2: into the rut. Take note of how you feel during
Speaker 2: your sits. What's your confidence level? Like? Are you stoked
Speaker 2: to wake up and get into a specific stand because
Speaker 2: you believe it's going to be full of action or
Speaker 2: are you kind of dreading walking out for another sit
Speaker 2: where you need to cross your fingers and toes and
Speaker 2: just hope and pray something will come by. How often
Speaker 2: do you have one experience or the other? How much
Speaker 2: fun are you having going out to sit that might
Speaker 2: be the true litmus to us because anticipation and the
Speaker 2: expectation that you'll see something, they're the true heroes of
Speaker 2: deer hunting. They make everything better and when either wanes
Speaker 2: or disappears completely, it's a powerful motivator to start gambling
Speaker 2: on a good outcome, and we know how that works
Speaker 2: out unfortunately. So do this come back next week because
Speaker 2: I'm going to talk about midday hunting and why it's
Speaker 2: both overrated and underrated at the same time. That's it
Speaker 2: for this week, folks. I'm Tony Peterson and this has
Speaker 2: been the Wired to Hunt Foundation's podcast. I honestly, truly
Speaker 2: cannot tell you how much I appreciate your support. So
Speaker 2: many of you guys and gals out there have been
Speaker 2: awesome to us. You know, you're buying some first light stuff,
Speaker 2: you're watching our videos, you're listening to our podcast. It
Speaker 2: really makes this all feel pretty amazing, So thank you
Speaker 2: for that. If you need more whitetail hunting content, if
Speaker 2: you want to, check out Clay's podcast. If you want
Speaker 2: to you know, check out some mediat or trivial whatever,
Speaker 2: go to the medieater dot com and you will find everything, podcast, video, series, articles,
Speaker 2: you name it. You can get your fix over and
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