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 has brought to you by first Light. I'm your host,
Speaker 2: Tony Peterson, and today I'm going to talk about learning
Speaker 2: to move on from your deer hunting mistakes. All right,
Speaker 2: before I get into this, I need to do this
Speaker 2: because I'm bound by the reality that I need a
Speaker 2: job to buy food for my kids, and I don't know.
Speaker 2: There is the reality that phishing lures are really expensive.
Speaker 2: So employment is a good thing for me. Right now,
Speaker 2: we have an enormous Black Friday sale going on. You
Speaker 2: want hunting, You're at a steep discount.
Speaker 3: This is it.
Speaker 2: I know you've heard it before, you're going to hear
Speaker 2: it again, but this is a good one. In fact,
Speaker 2: it's the biggest sale of the year here at Meat Eater.
Speaker 2: I want to find some good hunting gear. Go check
Speaker 2: it out at the media dot Com. At least take
Speaker 2: a look around, you might find something you absolutely have
Speaker 2: to have, and if you do, it's very likely you're
Speaker 2: not going to pay full price for it. All Right,
Speaker 2: this episode is one I really don't want to do,
Speaker 2: but I'm going to. I'm having a weird season, and
Speaker 2: it's mostly weird because I don't feel like I hunted
Speaker 2: very well. I mean a lot of mistakes this year,
Speaker 2: and some of them really bother me. I'm going to
Speaker 2: talk about that, but also the reality of us all
Speaker 2: out there doing our thing and making huge mistakes, and
Speaker 2: of course how to get past them. It's hard for
Speaker 2: us today to realize how crazy it is that companies
Speaker 2: like SpaceX and rocket Lab can put dozens of rockets
Speaker 2: in their payloads into space in any given year. Hell,
Speaker 2: SpaceX is on track to launch like two hundred times
Speaker 2: next year. It wasn't that long ago that there was
Speaker 2: no reliability in getting anything out of Earth's gravity well,
Speaker 2: and if we did, it wasn't guarantee that whatever we
Speaker 2: sent up would function at all. The history of our
Speaker 2: space race with Russia, in our space program in general,
Speaker 2: is rife with mistakes. One of the first occurred when
Speaker 2: NASA decided it was time to send something to Venus
Speaker 2: to take a look around way back in nineteen sixty two.
Speaker 2: Back then, we were trying real hard to make Russia
Speaker 2: look like total amateurs when it came to rocket technology,
Speaker 2: so we poured some serious years into developing interplanetary technology.
Speaker 2: So on July twenty second of that year, the big
Speaker 2: brains at NASA sent the Mariner one probe toward Venus.
Speaker 2: Its job was to gather info on the planet and
Speaker 2: help us learn better how to send more stuff into
Speaker 2: space for scientific research. This might seem a little mundane
Speaker 2: these days, but it was a different story back then. Hell,
Speaker 2: that was only fifty nine years after Orville and Wilbur
Speaker 2: Wright took the first man flight ever in their little airplane,
Speaker 2: which was get this, powered by a twelve horsepower gas engine.
Speaker 2: We moved the tech needle a long ways in those
Speaker 2: six decades, and sending a crude robot to another planet
Speaker 2: in our Solar system.
Speaker 3: Was a huge, huge deal.
Speaker 2: The whole thing costs eighty million dollars, which in today's
Speaker 2: money would be ten x that. It only took a
Speaker 2: few seconds after the highly anticipated launch that it became
Speaker 2: clear the rocket wasn't headed to Venus, but was far
Speaker 2: more likely to crash into one of the busier shipping
Speaker 2: lanes in the Atlantic Ocean. Instead of letting that happen,
Speaker 2: the flight director had to do what flight directors hope
Speaker 2: they never have to do, which has essentially hit the
Speaker 2: self destruct button and blow that sum bitch up. When
Speaker 2: they started to do a post mortem on what went wrong,
Speaker 2: they ended up realizing that someone who had written code
Speaker 2: for the guidance program had misplaced a hyphen, a simple
Speaker 2: bit of punctuation, and suddenly years of work and an
Speaker 2: unfathomable amount of money went literally up in smoke. Imagine
Speaker 2: being the engineer who wrote that code when the word
Speaker 2: got out. I can't prove this, so I'm just filling
Speaker 2: in the blanks here, but I'm guessing he finished out
Speaker 2: his career doing some landscaping or something non rocket science related.
Speaker 2: I need stories like this in my life, and maybe
Speaker 2: you do too. One thing I've noticed with a lot
Speaker 2: of folks who reach out to me about deer hunting
Speaker 2: is how they want to share their successes with me
Speaker 2: after a long road of mistakes. Sometimes it's people who
Speaker 2: have actually overcome the worst of them and have killed
Speaker 2: a good one, And sometimes it's people who are stuck
Speaker 2: in the mistake zone and they don't see a way out.
Speaker 2: I have good news and bad news on that front.
Speaker 2: The mistake zone doesn't ever really leave you. If you
Speaker 2: think the best of the best do this stuff and
Speaker 2: don't make mistakes, you're way wrong. They do all the time.
Speaker 2: They just make a few more of the right decisions
Speaker 2: and a lot of folks, and they don't let the
Speaker 2: mistakes derail them for their mission. I have a hard
Speaker 2: time with this. Last season, I danuear killed every buck
Speaker 2: that walked by me. Public land, private land, you name it.
Speaker 2: The season just went well. This year, it feels different,
Speaker 2: even though on paper, I've had a decent season. My
Speaker 2: daughters have killed two deer and a bear, which is great.
Speaker 2: I'm up to four deer as of this writing, and
Speaker 2: for most folks four deer in a season would be
Speaker 2: a pretty good one.
Speaker 3: But here's the thing.
Speaker 2: I didn't do my job very well on a couple
Speaker 2: of them, and that bothers me so much. If I'm
Speaker 2: being totally honest, most of my mistakes this year have
Speaker 2: been while filming hunts, which happens. There's a different level
Speaker 2: of pressure there, and it doesn't do a head case
Speaker 2: like me much good. I started out in North Dakota
Speaker 2: this year and missed a giant buck right away, simply
Speaker 2: because I guessed what distance he'd be when he walked
Speaker 2: through and didn't realize he was much closer when I
Speaker 2: finally settled in to shoot. It was dumb, dumb, dumb,
Speaker 2: but I've missed big bucks before. What sucks when you
Speaker 2: do that is hunting your ass off for several days
Speaker 2: after and then deciding that a doe would be just
Speaker 2: a fine option to wrap up a trip, because venison
Speaker 2: in the cooler is better than not in my opinion.
Speaker 2: So when I went to do just that, I was
Speaker 2: sitting in a very awkward position, and I had told
Speaker 2: myself roughly I don't know a thousand times during that
Speaker 2: sit that I needed to check and recheck my site's
Speaker 2: bubble level because I was bound to cant my bow.
Speaker 2: That's exactly what I did, and the shot was ugly.
Speaker 2: It was pure luck to catch an artery and she
Speaker 2: piled up seventy yards away. My buddy Tim Kent calls
Speaker 2: those happy accidents, and I think that's about all you
Speaker 2: need to say about that. So I tried to shake
Speaker 2: off two bad shots and go to Iowa and kill
Speaker 2: something on public land down there. The buck that I
Speaker 2: ended up decoying in wasn't the giant I was hoping for,
Speaker 2: but he put on a hell of a show, and
Speaker 2: I wanted to go see my kids and stop sleeping
Speaker 2: in a tent for a few days. The shot was
Speaker 2: close from the ground and by all accounts, a done deal.
Speaker 2: When my arrow ticked a little willow branch and spiral
Speaker 2: toward that buck, I had half of a second of terror,
Speaker 2: followed by what is now several weeks of dread. That
Speaker 2: arrow smacked right into his guts, and it did not
Speaker 2: look good.
Speaker 3: Now.
Speaker 2: When we slowed down the footage, it did show me
Speaker 2: a better angle than my brain remembered, and it showed
Speaker 2: me far more penetration than I assumed. In fact, I've
Speaker 2: had a couple of times on film where I've thought
Speaker 2: there is no way I got much penetration. But when
Speaker 2: you can go back and watch it frame by frame,
Speaker 2: you can see the arrow go in way farther than
Speaker 2: you think instantly back out.
Speaker 3: It's kind of interesting. Anyway.
Speaker 2: Well, we gave that buck seven hours, but when we
Speaker 2: found him, we probably could have given him maybe half
Speaker 2: an hour.
Speaker 3: The exit wound was behind his.
Speaker 2: Off side shoulder, and he took a two inch cut
Speaker 2: to the gut's liver.
Speaker 3: In one lung.
Speaker 2: My broadhead had also broken a blade, which tells me
Speaker 2: it was probably open on impact, and that is not good.
Speaker 2: That's also topic for a different podcast. I started this
Speaker 2: year with a perfect shot on a do in Minnesota,
Speaker 2: and then had three dreadful shots on film, and then
Speaker 2: I came home and killed a buck in Minnesota that
Speaker 2: had a great big hole in his heart when I
Speaker 2: was done with him. So two perfect shots, but they
Speaker 2: don't make up for the other ones, and that sucks.
Speaker 2: I also managed to let a great Wisconsin Big Woods
Speaker 2: bucket right on top of me before I knew he
Speaker 2: was there, and watched as he winded me at ten
Speaker 2: yards when I was just about to shoot him. You
Speaker 2: don't get public land opportunities in the big woods like
Speaker 2: that very often, which made it even worse when I
Speaker 2: took my daughter in there and we had the very
Speaker 2: same thing happen with like one hundred and thirty inch year.
Speaker 2: That would have made her her and me very happy.
Speaker 2: So many mistakes. You know the jokes about anxiety where
Speaker 2: you're about to fall asleep and suddenly you remember something
Speaker 2: dumb you did in sixth grade, like maybe you shit
Speaker 2: your pants in Fayette or something. Well, I knock out
Speaker 2: something like that about every other time I go hunting,
Speaker 2: and boy do I think about them a lot at
Speaker 2: night when all I want is a quiet mind and
Speaker 2: some deep sleep. And added bonus of this job of
Speaker 2: mine is that not only do I have to live
Speaker 2: with those mistakes, but I also have to think about
Speaker 2: them for a full year before we share them with
Speaker 2: thousands and thousands of people, many of whom will let
Speaker 2: me know personally that they could do a much better
Speaker 2: job than me. And that might be true. Hell, there
Speaker 2: are a lot of days where I'd give them the
Speaker 2: job just to see if that was true. The thing is,
Speaker 2: we are all total f ups. I recently had a
Speaker 2: conversation with a sheriff down in Iowa who was looking
Speaker 2: for some stolen kayaks and and to find some dipshit
Speaker 2: dragging a buck down the middle of the river at
Speaker 2: like two in the morning, and he mentioned that he
Speaker 2: listens to this podcast and appreciates the message that we
Speaker 2: are all struggling. I don't know who would be in
Speaker 2: a better position to see the general struggle of many,
Speaker 2: many people than a law enforcement officer these days.
Speaker 3: But that was nice to hear.
Speaker 2: In fact, I hope he listens to this, and I
Speaker 2: hope by the time he hears it, he's killed a buck
Speaker 2: in that spot where I killed mine, because it turns
Speaker 2: out we were both on the same deer pattern down there.
Speaker 2: So here's the thing I want to tell you, and
Speaker 2: I want all of you to understand. We are all
Speaker 2: pretending we are better at this than we are. Every
Speaker 2: one of us. We don't want to admit to our mistakes,
Speaker 2: and we don't want anyone to know that we have flaws.
Speaker 2: But guess what, that's dumb. Let me give you an
Speaker 2: example of a time when this became apparent to me.
Speaker 2: A couple buddies and I were on a combo hunt
Speaker 2: for antelopen deer quite a few years ago.
Speaker 3: This is when we were young and.
Speaker 2: Going real hard out there, and I don't remember the
Speaker 2: exact circumstances, but I had nearly empty to quiver on
Speaker 2: a mule deer and I hadn't touched it. Now, over
Speaker 2: a glass a wild turkey around the campfire, I told
Speaker 2: the story of shooting over, then under, then over a deer,
Speaker 2: and we got a good laugh out of it. And
Speaker 2: then one of my other buddies piped in and mentioned
Speaker 2: that he had whiffed not once, not twice, but also
Speaker 2: thrice on an antelope that day. He had kept that
Speaker 2: to himself on the off chance that it might make
Speaker 2: him look like a total idiot. Only when one of
Speaker 2: his total idiot buddies admitted to a similar oh for
Speaker 2: three performance did he chime in, this is the world
Speaker 2: we live in. Deer hunting is full of ego. That's dumb.
Speaker 2: The trophy obsession is dumb. The fact that we take
Speaker 2: ourselves so seriously that we lie to cover up our
Speaker 2: awards is dumb.
Speaker 3: But we do it.
Speaker 2: And instead we should just accept that we make mistakes.
Speaker 2: I mean, think about it this way. What other outdoor
Speaker 2: pursuits do you do where you dwell on one mistake?
Speaker 3: Fishing? Get out of here.
Speaker 2: I can make multiple mistakes in fishing on the same cast,
Speaker 2: and I make a lot of casts, and by that
Speaker 2: I mean a lot of casts. Pheasant hunting, Get out
Speaker 2: of here. Do you know how many gift roosters I've
Speaker 2: missed with both barrels enough to make me realize that
Speaker 2: my vision of myself as an amazing wingshot is just
Speaker 2: total horseshit on as many days as it might be true.
Speaker 2: Turkey hunting, mm mmm. How many times have you had
Speaker 2: a gobbler walk in to see you move without you
Speaker 2: having a clue he was there? Ever make a sound
Speaker 2: with your box call like a wildebeest just caught his
Speaker 2: nuts and a picket fence? I have ever had one
Speaker 2: just right in and with with a shotgun.
Speaker 3: I have.
Speaker 2: The reason we are all obsessed with white tail hunting
Speaker 2: and why a hell of a lot of us try
Speaker 2: to do it in a way that is a little
Speaker 2: more challenging than it has to be, is because we
Speaker 2: want the feeling of getting it right. But that feeling
Speaker 2: comes with a tax, and that tax is that you
Speaker 2: are going to feel like a complete moron a lot
Speaker 2: far more than you're going to feel like the kind
Speaker 2: of guy who can make Andy may look like an
Speaker 2: amateur in the field. The truth is, you're going to
Speaker 2: make a ton of mistakes, and you know what, who
Speaker 2: cares talk about them?
Speaker 3: Own them.
Speaker 2: They're a part of the process. If you miss an
Speaker 2: easy shot, you think you're the only one.
Speaker 3: You're not.
Speaker 2: If you set your baseline off of what you consume
Speaker 2: for outdoor content, or worse, just the success photos in
Speaker 2: your social feeds. You're going to want to hide the truth.
Speaker 2: But that's dumb. I've hunted with a hell of a
Speaker 2: lot of famous hunters in my life, and I can
Speaker 2: tell you they are not immune to doing really, really
Speaker 2: dumb shit. They have the luxury of telling you about
Speaker 2: that or not, but it exists. We're all in the
Speaker 2: same boat, and do you know how to get over them.
Speaker 2: It's not to strive for perfection because you won't get
Speaker 2: there one time, let alone in a general state of being.
Speaker 3: It's not going to happen.
Speaker 2: What you do is just keep doing the work, the
Speaker 2: prep work.
Speaker 3: The scouting, the shooting, the whatever.
Speaker 2: Just build up the skills you can and understand that
Speaker 2: the mistakes are just teaching you something, which I know
Speaker 2: sounds corny as hell, but it is true.
Speaker 3: It really is.
Speaker 2: It's not the success that makes us better, it's the failure.
Speaker 2: Think about it this way. If you were to go
Speaker 2: to candy Land, where the bucks are everywhere and they
Speaker 2: are dumb, and you spend a week hunting there and
Speaker 2: kill a giant, what will happen to you? Sure you'll
Speaker 2: be happy to have that grippingrin. You'll be happy to
Speaker 2: have had a really fun hunt. Nothing wrong with those things.
Speaker 2: But now go from that to a week on public
Speaker 2: land where you're lucky to see a few deer on
Speaker 2: any given day. You get busted, You hear a lot
Speaker 2: of snorting. You hang and hunt and hang and hunt
Speaker 2: and hang and hunt, and you look for sign and
Speaker 2: you work the people and the deer. Which week will
Speaker 2: make you a better hunter? You know the answer to this,
Speaker 2: It's the one that's full of real challenge, because real
Speaker 2: challenge produces.
Speaker 3: Failure as a byproduct.
Speaker 2: If you haunt a place with tons of big bucks
Speaker 2: that never look up into trees and don't live off
Speaker 2: the wind to detect danger, you're not learning how to
Speaker 2: be better at this.
Speaker 3: Stuff can be great, can be fun. It's not teaching
Speaker 3: you much. Now. I know that's an extreme example.
Speaker 2: Now, But if you go out on a list or
Speaker 2: grandma's farm and make mistakes, they sting a lot. But
Speaker 2: so what everyone is out there screwing up and so
Speaker 2: are you. What do they teach you?
Speaker 3: Though?
Speaker 2: Maybe you reach for your boat at exactly the wrong
Speaker 2: time and he saw you. Maybe you didn't clear out
Speaker 2: your entrance road as well as you know you should,
Speaker 2: and you made a lot more noise than you needed
Speaker 2: to on the way in. What does that teach you?
Speaker 2: And maybe you're hard on yourself over your mistakes, and
Speaker 2: I get that, I really do. I'm my own worst critic,
Speaker 2: which is saying something, because boy do I have some critics.
Speaker 2: I'm sure you're harder on yourself than you need to be,
Speaker 2: And honestly, you should give yourself some grace, give yourself
Speaker 2: a chance with this stuff. You're trying something super difficult,
Speaker 2: and that means the mistakes are just built into the code.
Speaker 2: They're there waiting for you. And while it sucks so
Speaker 2: much to watch a dear slip from your grip because
Speaker 2: of a dumb decision, you know for sure that you
Speaker 2: shouldn't have made. It's done, and it might keep you
Speaker 2: from doing it again. We all leaven extra hyphen in
Speaker 2: the code. Sometimes when that happens, we want to self destruct.
Speaker 2: But you gotta pick up the pieces. You gotta keep
Speaker 2: working the process, and you don't beat yourself up too much.
Speaker 2: You're doing fine if you're learning and growing as a hunter.
Speaker 2: I mean that because I believe it to be true.
Speaker 2: So do that for yourself and come back next week
Speaker 2: because I'm going to talk about how to kill more
Speaker 2: deer by understanding the connective tissue of different properties and
Speaker 2: how to read the land on a bigger level. That's
Speaker 2: it for this week. I'm Tony Peterson. This has been
Speaker 2: the Wired to Hunt Foundation's podcast. As always, thank you
Speaker 2: so much for your support. If you're listening to this
Speaker 2: in the week that it drops, you can head on
Speaker 2: over to the mediat dot com and see one hell
Speaker 2: of a Black Friday sale, so much good stuff on
Speaker 2: sale there, or you just want to head over there
Speaker 2: and maybe find a new podcast to listen to, like
Speaker 2: Brent Reeves This Country Life, or maybe test your knowledge
Speaker 2: on media or trivia, maybe find a recipe, maybe you
Speaker 2: read an article, whatever, There's so much good stuff over
Speaker 2: there at the mediat dot com. Go check it out,
Speaker 2: and once again, thank you so much for your support.