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: was brought to you by first Light. I'm heros Tony Peterson,
Speaker 2: and today's episode is all about how we think about
Speaker 2: big deer and why that often doesn't do us a
Speaker 2: whole lot of good. Metacognitive thinking is a way of
Speaker 2: thinking about our thinking. In other words, it's the ability
Speaker 2: to examine our thoughts and beliefs and ask ourselves why
Speaker 2: we have them, why we hold them, and what they
Speaker 2: mean in the context of our lives. This is a
Speaker 2: broad topic, but when you start using it in the
Speaker 2: realm of deer hunting, you start realizing not only how
Speaker 2: we are often our own worst enemies, but also why
Speaker 2: so many of us never are rarely ever killed the
Speaker 2: big deer that we all want to kill. I'm going
Speaker 2: to talk about that right now, and I hope it
Speaker 2: helps you get into a place of looking at yourself
Speaker 2: as a deer hunter in a whole new light. Truly
Speaker 2: successful people tend to think about problems differently from people
Speaker 2: who just aren't as successful. This goes for athletes, it's
Speaker 2: relevant to business, it applies to relationships, and is generally
Speaker 2: true in any facet of life that can be measured
Speaker 2: through the lens of success. It works in deer hunting too,
Speaker 2: but I'm not quite ready to get there yet. I
Speaker 2: read a book recently that veered into the topic of
Speaker 2: thinking about how we think, and it offered up an
Speaker 2: example of how most people approach issues in their lives.
Speaker 2: They view them through a problem based filter. In other words,
Speaker 2: let's just say you can't afford to buy a house,
Speaker 2: not an uncommon issue in today's world. A problem based
Speaker 2: thinker will acknowledge that not only is housing more expensive
Speaker 2: than it's ever been, which is pretty much true on
Speaker 2: any given year no matter what, but they'll also focus
Speaker 2: on why houses are more expensive. The value of the
Speaker 2: dollar sucks. The market has gone bonkers, and real estate
Speaker 2: prices are just out of whack when it comes to
Speaker 2: median incomes. Huge corporate entities bought up all the single
Speaker 2: family homes and they're renting them out.
Speaker 3: My boss doesn't recognize my.
Speaker 2: Work, so I'll never get paid enough to afford a
Speaker 2: thirty year loan at six percent.
Speaker 3: Any one of these things might be true, or they
Speaker 3: might all be true.
Speaker 2: But what's also true is that if you look at
Speaker 2: it as a huge, unsolvable problem, it will go unsolved.
Speaker 2: A solution based approach questions what would need to be
Speaker 2: done to be able to put twenty percent down and
Speaker 2: safely sign your John Hancock to those mortgage papers? The
Speaker 2: dollar has been devalued, how do I get more of them?
Speaker 2: Real estate prices right here are just out of touch
Speaker 2: with reality. But where are they more in line with
Speaker 2: my potential budget? Can I move to one of those
Speaker 2: places and find a job? What can I actively do
Speaker 2: to change my position in life to be able to
Speaker 2: be a first time home buyer? Now, look, I'm not
Speaker 2: saying that buying a house is as easy as changing
Speaker 2: how you think, but changing how you think will help
Speaker 2: you approach problems with solutions, not just an acknowledgment of
Speaker 2: the issues that coalesced to create the problem in the
Speaker 2: first place. Let's plug this into the deer world for
Speaker 2: a second and use an easy example. If you talk
Speaker 2: to enough deer hunters across the country. You hear people
Speaker 2: say something like this, here in Texas, we don't have
Speaker 2: any public land, so it's not worth even trying, or
Speaker 2: I don't know. Here in Nebraska, the non residents in
Speaker 2: the early rifle season causes all the up and coming
Speaker 2: two and three year olds to get shot before they
Speaker 2: are mature. If the problem for a Texas hunter is
Speaker 2: finding land to hunt, and they believe that there isn't
Speaker 2: any public land, then they just need to knock on
Speaker 2: doors or find a lease. But everyone knows that leasing
Speaker 2: is expensive and knocking on doors is a lost cause.
Speaker 2: So it's a done deal that that person will never
Speaker 2: have a place to hunt hunt, except that Texas has
Speaker 2: like two million acres of public land, and a better
Speaker 2: move would be to acknowledge that, figure out how to
Speaker 2: hunt it, and then go That Nebraska hunter wants an
Speaker 2: excuse to not kill mature bucks, and by Gottley, he
Speaker 2: has found it. After all, how can you, as one
Speaker 2: lowly residence stop the flow a non residence, You can't,
Speaker 2: just like you can't move the gun season out of
Speaker 2: the rut just because you want to. Of course, not
Speaker 2: too many years ago in Nebraska, win Ahead limited non
Speaker 2: residence anyway, which should be a win for that hunter,
Speaker 2: But there's still that issue of the rifle season time,
Speaker 2: still a good problem to have to keep you from
Speaker 2: killing big bucks. A different way to look at it
Speaker 2: would be I see pictures all the time of people
Speaker 2: killing big bucks in my home state, but I can't
Speaker 2: do it. It's clearly possible. It's also clearly true that some
Speaker 2: bucks reach maturity, because well, they just do, and the
Speaker 2: evidence is everywhere. So a better question to ask himself
Speaker 2: is if they can do it, why can't I? What
Speaker 2: am mine not doing?
Speaker 1: That?
Speaker 3: They are the default.
Speaker 2: The problem based thinker would go to on this is
Speaker 2: to say, well, I don't have access to that really
Speaker 2: good land, and you know my job is super busy,
Speaker 2: so I only get an a few nights a season whatever.
Speaker 2: Instead of looking for how to be more successful, he's
Speaker 2: finding more reasons to explain why he's not successful. But
Speaker 2: some non resident with four days of PTO in total
Speaker 2: can drive to Nebraska and kill a mature buck on
Speaker 2: public land. And I know this because not only have
Speaker 2: I done it, but so have a lot of people.
Speaker 3: I know.
Speaker 2: The issue isn't you know that there aren't any big bucks?
Speaker 2: On public land or private land for that matter, anymore
Speaker 2: than it is due entirely to the amount of time
Speaker 2: and an individual gets to put into hunting. There are solutions
Speaker 2: to everything, but we often don't look for them. A
Speaker 2: metacognitive person would look first not at what the problem
Speaker 2: really is and what the solve is, but why they
Speaker 2: believe that the problem exists in the first place. They
Speaker 2: would examine their own thinking and going, so, why do
Speaker 2: I believe that there are no mature bucks out there?
Speaker 2: Is it because I never kill them or worse, never
Speaker 2: see them while I'm hunting? If the latter is the
Speaker 2: most important contributor to that belief, what's the solve?
Speaker 3: Is it?
Speaker 2: To keep hunting the same way as I always do.
Speaker 2: If you think about how you think about things, you
Speaker 2: can't help but learn if something isn't working and you
Speaker 2: don't change your approach, it will pretty much I always
Speaker 2: just not work. I would say that almost every deer
Speaker 2: hunter in my life thinks this way, and I did
Speaker 2: too for a long, long long time. A good way
Speaker 2: to frame this up is this. Let's say you hunt
Speaker 2: ten days a season and you never kill bucks over
Speaker 2: one hundred and twenty five inches, which is your goal.
Speaker 2: An easy way to address that is to say I
Speaker 2: need to spend twenty days a season hunting. It's only
Speaker 2: a matter of time. But a metacognitive approach would be
Speaker 2: more like, I'm putting in enough time to at least
Speaker 2: see one, but I'm not. I'm not making progress. So
Speaker 2: is it the amount of time I'm spending, or is
Speaker 2: it where I'm spending my time? Or is it my
Speaker 2: effort with the time I do spend out there. Now
Speaker 2: it gets a little muddy. It's not just a matter
Speaker 2: of more time, or at least it's often not that,
Speaker 2: but it's generally a matter of where and when that
Speaker 2: time is put in and how that time is used.
Speaker 2: For example, if you spend every sit in the same
Speaker 2: stand on the edge of a cornfield all season, your
Speaker 2: problem could be solved by sitting a few more, just
Speaker 2: different spots. But instead of that, we often ignore the
Speaker 2: reality you know, of bucks fighting and buck to dough
Speaker 2: ratios and decide that the solution is to rattle in
Speaker 2: that spot we want to hunt. But you'd have to
Speaker 2: ask yourself why you believe that what's going to work
Speaker 2: when you've never rattled in a buck in your life,
Speaker 2: let alone ever seen two bucks really fight in person?
Speaker 2: Why would you believe that is the solve for your
Speaker 2: problems over some other tactics. Likely because it's so easy
Speaker 2: to spend most of our energy focusing on what's wrong
Speaker 2: instead of acknowledging the problem and then being honest on
Speaker 2: how to fix it through a series of different actions. Now,
Speaker 2: this isn't about ignoring problems, because that doesn't work at all,
Speaker 2: pretending problems don't exist. It's probably why we have a
Speaker 2: fifty percent divorce rate in this country. Solution based thinking.
Speaker 2: It doesn't change the problem, but it changes the questions
Speaker 2: we ask ourselves about the problem. Instead of saying, why
Speaker 2: is this happening to me? In reference to eating tag
Speaker 2: soup again versus saying I don't know what factors contribute
Speaker 2: to my crappy performance and which ones can I influence
Speaker 2: for a more positive outcome, Maybe a better one is
Speaker 2: instead of saying who's to blame, say what needs to
Speaker 2: happen next. The thing about us pesky humans is that
Speaker 2: we often know what we need to do, but we
Speaker 2: also just don't do those things. We should shoot arrows
Speaker 2: every week of the year, but we don't because we
Speaker 2: just don't. We should scout more, but we don't because well,
Speaker 2: we just don't. We have to put into practice what
Speaker 2: we know will help us, but that's really hard. Because
Speaker 2: we are creatures of habitat. We have definitive patterns to
Speaker 2: our behaviors that we generally aren't willing to change. This
Speaker 2: is why most hunters don't kill big bucks, and I
Speaker 2: don't know how to put that any other way. It's
Speaker 2: also true that most hunters won't look for active solutions
Speaker 2: to their problems and will instead dwell on those problems
Speaker 2: and use them as the guiding force in their hunting decisions.
Speaker 2: If you want to kill big bucks, a huge step
Speaker 2: in the right direction is to actively try not to
Speaker 2: think like the average hunter. Where this gets wonky is
Speaker 2: that most hunters believe that there is a way to
Speaker 2: think about deer and big bucks specifically that will reveal
Speaker 2: some truth on how to kill them in a way
Speaker 2: that capitalizes on weaknesses in a buck's game. If only
Speaker 2: I understood buck betting as well as this guy, or
Speaker 2: I understood the early season game as much as this
Speaker 2: super successful fella. That's great, and learning about you know,
Speaker 2: buck betting and early season hunting will help you be
Speaker 2: a better hunter. But those hunters didn't become bed hunting
Speaker 2: experts or early season hunting experts by just thinking about
Speaker 2: those things as problems. They thought about them in a
Speaker 2: way that led them to try to find solutions. If
Speaker 2: you don't know much about buck betting, the strategy won't
Speaker 2: suddenly be totally understandable and actionable because someone tells you how.
Speaker 3: They do it.
Speaker 2: That might not hurt, But we have to ask yourself,
Speaker 2: is how can I learn more about this to implement
Speaker 2: it into my hunting strategy. There are a lot of
Speaker 2: solutions here. You can scout more at all times of
Speaker 2: the year. That's an easy one. And if you scout
Speaker 2: to locate beds and then try to figure out why
Speaker 2: beds are where they are in January and then in July,
Speaker 2: you're going to be better off for it. If you
Speaker 2: run a whole bunch of cameras and start paying attention
Speaker 2: to where the bucks go in the morning and where
Speaker 2: they come from in the evening, you can start to
Speaker 2: understand what betting behavior is happening during the day, different
Speaker 2: types of the year and during different conditions. The problem
Speaker 2: is buck betting is often a mystery, but the solution
Speaker 2: isn't to just declare it unknowable and then never put
Speaker 2: in any efforts of figuring out what's really going on. Instead,
Speaker 2: there are lots of actions you can take to start
Speaker 2: to get a better handle on not only where bucks
Speaker 2: bet and when, but how you can more accurately predict
Speaker 2: buck betting behavior. Let's use another one that has come
Speaker 2: across my radar a lot lately.
Speaker 3: Wind.
Speaker 2: I've written and talked about wind a whole bunch of
Speaker 2: my life, but I still hear folks say that bucks
Speaker 2: won't move when it's windy. There's nothing in the deer
Speaker 2: research that supports this, and there is nothing in my life,
Speaker 2: you know, anecdotally that supports this, because it's not true.
Speaker 2: Bucks do move when it's windy, because they have to. Now,
Speaker 2: if you look at a windy forecast solely through the
Speaker 2: lens of that being a problem that will suppress buck movement,
Speaker 2: what's the action you take?
Speaker 3: Not go hunting.
Speaker 2: Of course, that's an easy one, and it'll protect you
Speaker 2: from learning the truth. Now, if you look at high
Speaker 2: winds as a reason for bucks not to move, and
Speaker 2: you do go hunting anyway, what are the odds you
Speaker 2: put in max effort? Again, how you're thinking about this
Speaker 2: very common factor in hunting influences heavily how you approach hunting. Now,
Speaker 2: let's say you have that windy forecast and instead of saying, well, shit,
Speaker 2: this sucks now the bucks won't be moving and it
Speaker 2: won't be worth hunting, you say that wind is going
Speaker 2: to be smoking from the northwest for a few days.
Speaker 2: How do I find deer in this near tornado level weather?
Speaker 2: The first solve is to sit somewhere where a northwest
Speaker 2: wind is good for you and not so good for
Speaker 2: the deer. But maybe you want to go deeper, and
Speaker 2: you say, if I were a deer that had to
Speaker 2: live out here.
Speaker 3: What would I do in this wind?
Speaker 2: Maybe bed on a ridge with a stout wind at
Speaker 2: my backs and no predators can sneak up on me
Speaker 2: from behind. Or maybe it's October and the acorns have
Speaker 2: been drying up a little, but that wind comes in,
Speaker 2: and if you were a deer that was really trying
Speaker 2: to pack on the pounds before the rut hits, you'd
Speaker 2: go work through an oak ridge and check some of
Speaker 2: the trees that were hot for a few weeks earlier
Speaker 2: in the month. Maybe that wind is just the dinner
Speaker 2: bell ringing when it comes to hard masks or soft mass.
Speaker 2: Instead of declaring all of the deer down for the
Speaker 2: count when the wind is blowing, ask yourself why you
Speaker 2: believe they won't move in the wind. If you still
Speaker 2: believe that to be true, ask yourself if that's the
Speaker 2: same in Kansas as it would be in, say, I
Speaker 2: don't know, Pennsylvania or Georgia. Then ask yourself if that
Speaker 2: were also true, would it still be true on November
Speaker 2: seventh in southern Iowa? Or would you think that the
Speaker 2: rut would be enough to get those bucks cruising even
Speaker 2: with sustain thirty mile per hour winds. If we can
Speaker 2: get beyond what we believe to think about why we
Speaker 2: believe what we believe, as muddy as that sounds, and
Speaker 2: we try to figure out ways in which we might
Speaker 2: be wrong, we put ourselves on the path to learning
Speaker 2: how to actually be right about these things. And look,
Speaker 2: it's a hard thing to do. I'm not going to
Speaker 2: sit here and tell you I've mastered thinking, because I
Speaker 2: can be as pessimistic as the next guy, and I
Speaker 2: can find a lot of problems to dwell on. Believe me,
Speaker 2: I can find someone to blame for a lot of
Speaker 2: things in my life that aren't going the way I
Speaker 2: want them to as well. I don't know if there
Speaker 2: is anything easier for me than to point the finger
Speaker 2: outward before taking a look inward. But it's also true
Speaker 2: for me that, at least in the realm of deer hunting,
Speaker 2: I've spent a lot of time trying to figure out
Speaker 2: how to kill deer when on paper, it's a better
Speaker 2: time to stay out of the woods. And what I
Speaker 2: found that it's mostly in my head when I decide
Speaker 2: that there is an unsolvable deer problem out there. I
Speaker 2: firmly believe that most deer hunters would be better off
Speaker 2: to approach this thing with the attitude that they're going
Speaker 2: to hunt when they can, and because of that, they
Speaker 2: need to try to solve for the issues at hand
Speaker 2: with each sit in the best way possible. In fact,
Speaker 2: a great way to do that would be to think
Speaker 2: about what you'd have to do if you didn't have
Speaker 2: any calls or sense or lures or decoys or anything
Speaker 2: extra like that. If you just had to hunt, maybe
Speaker 2: with a mobile set up, maybe on the ground, and
Speaker 2: you didn't have that box blind on the food plot
Speaker 2: or that go to grunt, call to lean on. How
Speaker 2: would you set up to be close to deer in
Speaker 2: September or October or November or whenever. What would you
Speaker 2: do if you didn't have any crutches but you really
Speaker 2: needed to get in range of a deer? How would
Speaker 2: you hunt if you needed to kill a big one
Speaker 2: to feed your family because there was no other protein available.
Speaker 2: Would you go sit the same field a stand over
Speaker 2: and over because it's easy, or would you try to
Speaker 2: think about the deer and how you think about the
Speaker 2: deer and come up with an actionable plan that would
Speaker 2: put you in a position to learn and learn until
Speaker 2: you got it right.
Speaker 3: I bet you do that.
Speaker 2: And while that part would take work and action, it
Speaker 2: wouldn't come without thinking about the best options for solutions
Speaker 2: given your hunting situation. Mull on that because the truth
Speaker 2: of how we can all kill big bucks exists out
Speaker 2: there in the woods, and it's a matter of how
Speaker 2: we plug ourselves into all that nature over and over
Speaker 2: until we just get it right. Think solutions, my friends,
Speaker 2: not just problems, and come back next week because I'm
Speaker 2: going to keep talking about our favorite game animals and
Speaker 2: why it's so dang hard to hunt them Sometimes. That's
Speaker 2: it for this week. I'm Tony Peterson. This has been
Speaker 2: the Wire to Hunt Foundations podcast. Thank you so much
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