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, and today I'm going to talk about how
Speaker 2: to become a better bow shot in the field, not
Speaker 2: just that home on the rain. Just a quick heads
Speaker 2: up here, you can check out whitetail Guru Andy May
Speaker 2: and I catching smallmouth and Largemouth at the meat eater
Speaker 2: dot com. If you head on over there and look
Speaker 2: at the tab with yours truly on it, you can
Speaker 2: also check out to start us something New that features
Speaker 2: your favorite white tailed guru and Mark Kenyon. We have
Speaker 2: a new project dropping this week. It's kind of a
Speaker 2: fun and entertaining thing called Whitetail Edu, which will be
Speaker 2: housed on the meat eat Clips YouTube channel. Mark and
Speaker 2: I are going to be breaking down some concepts in
Speaker 2: whitetail hunting and addressing a lot of the questions we
Speaker 2: get asked by whitetail hunters every year if you're looking
Speaker 2: for some new whitetail content, that's a good place to go.
Speaker 2: That's also enough sales pitches for you. You got to
Speaker 2: talk about this episode a little bit. In a past life,
Speaker 2: I put together a lot of bows and tune them.
Speaker 2: It kind of got to the point where I hated it,
Speaker 2: mostly because it's, you know, it's a tedious process, and
Speaker 2: it reminded me of how I'd shoot a bow for
Speaker 2: a week on a hunt somewhere and then most likely
Speaker 2: have to shoot a different model the next week. Now
Speaker 2: I miss my old job of being just a magazine
Speaker 2: writer a lot, but not that part. It's a first
Speaker 2: world problem, I know. But I was reminded of this
Speaker 2: whole situation recently while putting together a new bow and
Speaker 2: starting the process of shooting, and it led me to
Speaker 2: this show, where I'm going to talk about what you
Speaker 2: can do now to be far more deadly shot in
Speaker 2: the woods this fall. One of the things that bothers
Speaker 2: me so much about influencer culture, which I guess is
Speaker 2: pretty ironic since influencer is literally in my job title,
Speaker 2: and it makes me a little ashamed as a human anyway,
Speaker 2: what bothers me is the weird desire people have to
Speaker 2: post something from their workouts. Now, if someone goes and
Speaker 2: runs one hundred miles Mountain marathon and they post about it,
Speaker 2: that doesn't really bother me at all. I love that, honestly.
Speaker 2: I think you should be proud of that moment and
Speaker 2: are totally justified in sharing that with the world. It's
Speaker 2: kind of like how it doesn't bother me at all
Speaker 2: when someone shoots a big buck and creates a social
Speaker 2: media post around it. I know some people disagree with that,
Speaker 2: but generally that's a big accomplishment and I'm totally okay
Speaker 2: with people being proud of it. But it also bothers
Speaker 2: me when people post mundane stuff all the time. That
Speaker 2: just represents the tiny little pieces that eventually coalesce into
Speaker 2: a big accomplishment. You know, take gym culture for example. Now,
Speaker 2: and keep in mind, these are arbitrary rules based around
Speaker 2: what bothers me as a person, so the value is
Speaker 2: almost non existent to anyone but me. If you go
Speaker 2: out and put up your personal best bench press, that's great.
Speaker 2: Maybe it's the first time you put, you know, two
Speaker 2: forty five pound plates on each side and did a
Speaker 2: few reps. I feel like I can understand posting something
Speaker 2: about that, even if it's not really my jam. It's
Speaker 2: when every set gets a post, and every little thing
Speaker 2: building up to the big stuff just has to be
Speaker 2: put out there that just starts to bother me. I
Speaker 2: don't know why. Maybe I'm just getting old, or I'm
Speaker 2: just over the totally disingenuous nature of social media. The
Speaker 2: crazy thing about this stuff is that while it's the
Speaker 2: big accomplishments we want to show off, it is the
Speaker 2: daily Monday and stuff that builds a foundation upon which
Speaker 2: those accomplishments sit. You don't bench two hundred and twenty
Speaker 2: five pounds without benching less for a long time. You
Speaker 2: don't run one hundred miles at elevation without a hell
Speaker 2: of a lot of smaller training runs. That's part of
Speaker 2: the journey, and without it, the big, newsworthy stuff is
Speaker 2: just not going to happen. This exists in bowhunting too,
Speaker 2: and where it really becomes noticeable is in shooting. Some
Speaker 2: people have loads of confidence that when a deer walks in,
Speaker 2: that deer is going to die if they so choose.
Speaker 2: That's great, but a lot of folks don't ever quite
Speaker 2: get there, or they get there, but it's not a
Speaker 2: true situation, meaning that while they believe that it's all over,
Speaker 2: it often goes way wrong. The missing piece for a
Speaker 2: lot of folks, well at least one very important missing piece,
Speaker 2: is just not enough practice. Now. I know that's a letdown,
Speaker 2: but it's also true. The very first thing you have
Speaker 2: I have to look at if you want to be
Speaker 2: a better dear killer this year is the frequency in
Speaker 2: which you practice. Now. I struggle with this a lot.
Speaker 2: I used to shoot just about every day all summer long.
Speaker 2: I loved shooting, but over time I lost that love.
Speaker 2: It became a job for me. And it also coincided
Speaker 2: with a period in my life where I went from
Speaker 2: being absolutely flushed with free time to wrangling a couple
Speaker 2: of babies and realizing that my schedule wasn't mostly wide
Speaker 2: open anymore. So I went the other way, and I
Speaker 2: didn't shoot nearly enough. I had some good seasons, and
Speaker 2: I had some seasons where I shot like I was
Speaker 2: holding my bow upside down. Not shooting enough is a bad,
Speaker 2: bad deal. It's very common these days. Just like with
Speaker 2: most stuff in life. I try to find the right
Speaker 2: balance between being stupid, obsessed and totally dismissive. That's what
Speaker 2: you might need to do too. You might be one
Speaker 2: of those folks who loves to shoot, so four or
Speaker 2: five days a week is easy to come by. Most
Speaker 2: people aren't there, though, and there are a hell of
Speaker 2: a lot of reasons for it to that. I'd say
Speaker 2: you got to just figure out how to ramp it
Speaker 2: up some. You don't have to go from a couple
Speaker 2: of saturdays at the range before the season to every
Speaker 2: day all summer long. You probably won't be able to anyway.
Speaker 2: That's kind of like the people who on January one
Speaker 2: say I'm going to start running and I'm going to
Speaker 2: start lifting weights and I'm going to do the Keto
Speaker 2: diet and i won't even think about a carb for
Speaker 2: the whole year. A lifestyle switch like that, it's too big,
Speaker 2: it's too unsustainable. It is a recipe for certain failure.
Speaker 2: And while off season target practice might seem like it's
Speaker 2: not as important as getting into shape, it's something that
Speaker 2: we can do to make our season go much better.
Speaker 2: And it's an obligation we have to the animals we
Speaker 2: love and that we weirdly love to kill. So how
Speaker 2: do you increase the frequency of your shooting sessions. First off,
Speaker 2: you have to acknowledge that you can't make up for
Speaker 2: this by shooting a lot at one time. Two hundred
Speaker 2: arrows when you're out of practice is a great way
Speaker 2: to take like one hundred and eighty seven shitty shots.
Speaker 2: It's much better to shoot two dozen or three, you know,
Speaker 2: a couple times a week. I look at it like
Speaker 2: this is the lowest hanging fruit. Just increase your frequency
Speaker 2: by a day or two each week. Now you're talking
Speaker 2: maybe an extra fifteen to thirty minutes in the entire week.
Speaker 2: That will add up to something important by September. And
Speaker 2: I also think it's important to hold yourself to a
Speaker 2: schedule and allow yourself to shoot extra if the mood strikes.
Speaker 2: I know this sounds crazy to a lot of people,
Speaker 2: but I set a yearly goal on how many miles
Speaker 2: I'm going to run. It keeps me accountable to myself,
Speaker 2: and it also allows me the opportunity to go way
Speaker 2: past that goal. If I want, I can put in more,
Speaker 2: and the more I run, the more I want to
Speaker 2: put in more. Shooting can be the same way, mostly
Speaker 2: because it can go from something we feel we have
Speaker 2: to do to something we actually want to do. That
Speaker 2: takes time for a lot of people, but time is
Speaker 2: what you have right now. The next thing you should
Speaker 2: think about is the environment in which you shoot. I
Speaker 2: used to shoot with one of my neighbors and a
Speaker 2: few of his buddies. It was a disaster, at least
Speaker 2: from a value perspective. There's a lot of distractions when
Speaker 2: shooting with someone else, and it's just kind of unnecessary.
Speaker 2: You're going to be in the stand by yourself most likely,
Speaker 2: and the entire process of figuring out when to draw,
Speaker 2: where to aim, and how to execute your shot it's
Speaker 2: all on you. Your buddies probably won't be there. The
Speaker 2: headspace you need to be in then, is when you
Speaker 2: need to be in a lot during your practice sessions.
Speaker 2: The more distractions you have while target shooting, the easier
Speaker 2: it is to excuse away poor shots, the easier it
Speaker 2: is to not just take it as seriously as you should.
Speaker 2: It's also almost always going to force you to take
Speaker 2: shots you don't want to take, like shots that are
Speaker 2: too far at least if you shoot with a bunch
Speaker 2: of people. Think of it this way. If you want
Speaker 2: to develop into a really good accurate shot. You're probably
Speaker 2: going to have to do that just on your own.
Speaker 2: Shooting with buddies can be great, but it's an activity
Speaker 2: that is different from trying to level up one arrow
Speaker 2: at a time with your full concentration on that simple task. Now,
Speaker 2: I do think shooting in a variety of conditions and
Speaker 2: challenging yourself with longer shots is a good thing. Back
Speaker 2: in my long distance shooting days, I spent a lot
Speaker 2: of time flinging arrows in a variety of situations, and
Speaker 2: that taught me a lot. You might think you know
Speaker 2: what it's like to shoot an antelope or a mule
Speaker 2: deer in real prairie wind, but you probably don't. The
Speaker 2: next time it's super frontal outside and the wind is
Speaker 2: blowing thirty or more miles per hour, head out and
Speaker 2: take some shots. If near paralyzing anxiety doesn't settle in
Speaker 2: when you're trying to get the right pin to the
Speaker 2: right spot, you're cooler than I am under pressure. Low
Speaker 2: light conditions mostly do the same thing. If you don't
Speaker 2: have the best eye sight, or have some type of
Speaker 2: issue with peap rotation or whatever, low light practice will
Speaker 2: highlight those issues. Almost no one I know intentionally practice
Speaker 2: is in low light, but everyone I know will shoot
Speaker 2: at a big buck when it's one minute before closing time.
Speaker 2: Think about that. If there is one confounding condition you
Speaker 2: are guaranteed to face every single time you white tail hunt,
Speaker 2: it's low light. Whether that's at the front end of
Speaker 2: the day or the back, you're gonna deal with it.
Speaker 2: Yet we don't condition ourselves to shoot in that reality,
Speaker 2: and that costs plenty of us deer every year, And
Speaker 2: it also costs plenty of deer plenty of suffering due
Speaker 2: to poor hits. Maybe you shoot enough to feel really confident,
Speaker 2: but don't shoot under adverse conditions. Now you know what
Speaker 2: to add into your routine to make your weekly sessions
Speaker 2: a little more valuable. The next obvious step here would
Speaker 2: be to tell you to shoot from a tree stand,
Speaker 2: but that's not something a lot of folks are going
Speaker 2: to do. That doesn't bother me that much because the
Speaker 2: folks who have that as a real option probably do it,
Speaker 2: and most of us who don't just don't. You can
Speaker 2: get good enough without it, although it's a really good
Speaker 2: idea if you have a way to do it. I
Speaker 2: think saddles are a different story. I think if you're
Speaker 2: going to dive into the saddle world, you should practice
Speaker 2: from it. This can happen two feet off the ground.
Speaker 2: It really doesn't matter. What matters is hanging off a
Speaker 2: tree in a cameo diaper while trying to properly aim
Speaker 2: a bow and not sacrifice anything in your form or
Speaker 2: your concentration. This is easier said than done. And again,
Speaker 2: if you go to saddle route, you're admitting that your
Speaker 2: plan is to well shoot something from a saddle. Not
Speaker 2: practicing for that can lead to some panic in the moment.
Speaker 2: And do you know what panic does, then it saves
Speaker 2: deer lives. A slight blip of panic at the moment
Speaker 2: of truth immediately reduces your odds of making a good shot.
Speaker 2: I'll give you an example of this from my last
Speaker 2: season that is terribly embarrassing but about to be a
Speaker 2: hell of a lot worse when the show gets released.
Speaker 2: When I was hunting with Ranella and Oklahoma last year,
Speaker 2: our goal was to get any public land deer, oh buck, whatever.
Speaker 2: When I had a spike buck nomming on some per
Speaker 2: Simmons the first morning we hunt, I said to myself,
Speaker 2: that is exactly what any deer looks like and I
Speaker 2: got ready to shoot him. I wasn't really nervous. It
Speaker 2: was a tiny little deer that was totally relaxed, and
Speaker 2: by the time I saw him he was already in range.
Speaker 2: I figured I'd laser him right through the lungs and
Speaker 2: we'd have a show. Except when I murped him to
Speaker 2: get him to stop, he jumped about six feet forward
Speaker 2: on the trail. Now enter that tiny little dose of panic,
Speaker 2: and while I readjusted to take the shot, I didn't
Speaker 2: notice a little vine hanging off a tree about halfway
Speaker 2: between the buck and eye, and that resulted in me
Speaker 2: hitting it with my arrow and a total whiff. If
Speaker 2: it wasn't for the wind and that deer's lack of
Speaker 2: experience with hunters, I would have never got a second shot,
Speaker 2: which went much better than the first. But the point
Speaker 2: is I shouldn't have needed the second shot at all.
Speaker 2: That story, besides reminding you guys that I'm a dumbass
Speaker 2: who can miss a thirteen inch or at twenty yards,
Speaker 2: is that there are so many things that can happen
Speaker 2: during an encounter that will tip the odds in the
Speaker 2: deer's favor. You can't do anything about most of them.
Speaker 2: They're just part of the tapestry that makes bow hunting Stow,
Speaker 2: rewarding and challenging. Now, this is a long story, long
Speaker 2: way of saying that if you can try to build
Speaker 2: some confidence around the shots you'll know you'll take, you'll
Speaker 2: be much better off. That's what you can do to
Speaker 2: make this easier. It's also a way to say some
Speaker 2: effort in the right direction is always better than no effort. Now,
Speaker 2: I know that seems like foreheads slapping dumb, but hear
Speaker 2: me out on this last point. I don't know how
Speaker 2: many bowl hunters I've talked to who tell me they
Speaker 2: don't need to shoot long distance when their white tail
Speaker 2: shots are twenty yards and in. That's great if all
Speaker 2: of your white tail shots are actually twenty yards and in,
Speaker 2: But I'm guessing most of the hunters who say that
Speaker 2: also have thirty and probably forty yard pins. What happens
Speaker 2: if you're out there and the deer don't do what
Speaker 2: they're supposed to and worse, I don't know, one of
Speaker 2: the deer is one hundred and fifty five inch ten pointer,
Speaker 2: and instead of walking along the crossing that is twenty
Speaker 2: yards from your stand, he pulls a crazy eye and
Speaker 2: then skirts you passing by a thirty three yards Do
Speaker 2: you stay a twenty yard shooter then and stick to
Speaker 2: your guns? Sure, sure you do, But the other guys won't.
Speaker 2: They'll go, hey, I have pins to cover this distance,
Speaker 2: and so this should be no problem for a fellow
Speaker 2: like me, all while losing their ever loving shit over
Speaker 2: the biggest buck they've ever had in range? How well
Speaker 2: do you think that one goes shot? Distant limitations are
Speaker 2: a tough one. We go our own way on those,
Speaker 2: and it's up to us to hold ourselves accountable. It's
Speaker 2: also up to us to be reasonable about the reality
Speaker 2: in which we live. Very few bow hunters, at least
Speaker 2: modern compound shooters, would argue that thirty or thirty five
Speaker 2: yards is too far of a shot in the right conditions,
Speaker 2: even if we might all agree on some farther range
Speaker 2: just being too much. If you know there's a chance
Speaker 2: you might be tempted, you better prepare for that. Sometimes
Speaker 2: I think people make an excuse to not practice by
Speaker 2: saying they are close shooters. Only some might be telling
Speaker 2: the truth, but a lot of them are probably just
Speaker 2: giving themselves an out. A much better bet is to
Speaker 2: practice whatever you consider far distances at least some of
Speaker 2: the time throughout the off season. For me, when I
Speaker 2: get past the break in stage of my bow and
Speaker 2: my muscles, I almost never shoot twenty yard practice shots
Speaker 2: at some point, at least at that range, that type
Speaker 2: of shot is pretty easy on a target. I'd rather shoot,
Speaker 2: say in the thirty to fifty or sixty yard range
Speaker 2: for most of my practice, even though I have a
Speaker 2: pretty hard limit of forty yards and under these days
Speaker 2: when I'm white tail hunting, and to be honest, I
Speaker 2: have a strong preference for the fifteen to twenty yard
Speaker 2: shots now. Stretching out the practice that way has the
Speaker 2: obvious benefit of making the close shots easy or easier,
Speaker 2: but it's also going to let you understand what you
Speaker 2: need to do to make a series of really good
Speaker 2: shots at forty yards. If you can do that, you
Speaker 2: know your form is on point and your execution is repeatable,
Speaker 2: and your confidence is going to go in the right direction.
Speaker 2: That's the great intangible to this stuff, and it matters
Speaker 2: so much. There's a quote in an old Gene Hill
Speaker 2: essay about a wingshooter he knew who had a reputation
Speaker 2: for missing very few ducks in. In exchange with the fella,
Speaker 2: Hill made a comment about how the guy seemed to
Speaker 2: never miss a teal, and that guy's response was that
Speaker 2: if he can shoot mallards in the head all day long,
Speaker 2: why would it be hard for him to hit a
Speaker 2: whole duck. Now, if you've ever shot at a teal
Speaker 2: strafing along in a strong headwind, you know why that's
Speaker 2: so bananas. The point stands, though, if you can do
Speaker 2: everything right on a non breathing target at forty or
Speaker 2: fifty yards consistently, you'll have the confidence to do enough
Speaker 2: on a breathing target at half those distances to ensure
Speaker 2: a short blood trail and the chance to post a
Speaker 2: grippengrin with your latest many tined accomplishment. This goes far
Speaker 2: beyond a procedural task that you can repeat, though, and
Speaker 2: delves into the realm of believing in yourself. Even when
Speaker 2: the buck doesn't take the exact trail you expect, or
Speaker 2: he comes in when the light is fading fast, or
Speaker 2: when the wind is threating to turn you into a
Speaker 2: Camo tumbleweed, figure out what you need to do to
Speaker 2: practice a little bit more and in a more beneficial way.
Speaker 2: And then do that then come back next week because
Speaker 2: I'm going to talk about how we all kind of
Speaker 2: have some white tail hunting privileges, whether it's a home
Speaker 2: field advantage or something else, but it's easy to look
Speaker 2: past those and kind of have a bad attitude about
Speaker 2: our personal hunting situation. In this next podcast, I'm going
Speaker 2: to talk about how that's just a bad idea and
Speaker 2: how we should look for the things that can work
Speaker 2: for us and then work on those things that have
Speaker 2: a better hunt. That's it for this week. I'm Tony Peterson.
Speaker 2: This has been the Wire to Hunt Foundation's podcast, which
Speaker 2: is brought to you by First Light. As I mentioned
Speaker 2: in the intro, there you can go check out Andy
Speaker 2: May and I catching some smallies in largemouth in Minnesota
Speaker 2: on video. You can check out a whole bunch of
Speaker 2: new projects we have coming out and including a white
Speaker 2: Tail edu which is hosted by my arc and myself
Speaker 2: and we answer all the big questions about white tail hunting.
Speaker 2: If you need more than that, the mediator dot com
Speaker 2: has tons of articles, some sweet recipes for that wild
Speaker 2: game or maybe those fish that you're out there catching
Speaker 2: right now. You can listen to all the other podcasts,
Speaker 2: we're putting out their video series. Lots of good stuff there.
Speaker 2: Go check it out, and of course and as always,
Speaker 2: thank you so much for listening and for all your support.
Speaker 2: We truly truly appreciate it.