Speaker 1: Welcome to the Wired to Hunt Foundations podcast, your guide
Speaker 1: to the fundamentals better dear hunting, presented by First Light,
Speaker 1: creating proven versatile hunting apparel through the stand saddler blind,
Speaker 1: First Light, Go Farther, Stay Longer, and now your host
Speaker 1: Tony Peterson. Hey, everyone, welcome to the Wire to Hunt
Speaker 1: Foundations podcast, 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 what you won't learn from consuming hunting content and
Speaker 1: why that matters. We are right here in the middle
Speaker 1: of the worst month of the year, at least in
Speaker 1: my opinion. You might want to debate me on that,
Speaker 1: but honestly, that would be embarrassing for you, because March
Speaker 1: is obviously the suckiest, stupidest month there is to be
Speaker 1: a white tail hunter in a lot of places. That
Speaker 1: probably holds true even if you are a white tail hunter.
Speaker 1: But if you aren't, you're in the wrong neighborhood with
Speaker 1: this podcast. Anyway. This is the month when seasonal depression
Speaker 1: really opens up some dark doors between the old ears
Speaker 1: and can cause us to try to live vicariously through
Speaker 1: hunting content, to feel that old spark of real hunting.
Speaker 1: It's a poor substitute, I know, but it's worth a try.
Speaker 1: It's also worth understanding that all of the things you're
Speaker 1: missing if you do spend some time reading articles or
Speaker 1: watching YouTube videos and yes, even listening to hunting podcasts.
Speaker 1: My wife is always trying to get me to work
Speaker 1: more jobs. It's annoying, especially considering I already have a
Speaker 1: full time job. Chowie's tells me to find something fun
Speaker 1: and maybe pick up some evening shifts or something, which
Speaker 1: feels a lot like she's trying to get rid of me.
Speaker 1: And one job that she encourages me to pick up
Speaker 1: is as a personal trainer at the gym. Now, I
Speaker 1: know what you're thinking. That makes total sense. You think, well,
Speaker 1: Tony is insanely fit, he has muscles for days, he
Speaker 1: can outrun a cheetah even if he pulls a hammy,
Speaker 1: and he's one of the most helpful guys in the
Speaker 1: hunting industry. And I get it, and I do appreciate
Speaker 1: all those compliments I just made up about myself. The
Speaker 1: truth is, I wouldn't hate doing it. I love seeing
Speaker 1: people who decide they want to own their future by
Speaker 1: starting to exercise. It's honestly one of my favorite things
Speaker 1: about going and working out, besides the far more selfish
Speaker 1: reason that it helps keep the old demons locked up
Speaker 1: in the basement when it has been winner for four
Speaker 1: months and the deer season is still half a year away.
Speaker 1: But the truth is, I happen to know quite a
Speaker 1: few of the personal trainers at my gym, mostly because
Speaker 1: they are the people I see nearly every day. They
Speaker 1: are all fit as you can imagine, and they handle
Speaker 1: people really well. They are brought into someone's life when
Speaker 1: that person is at a vulnerable point. But that makes
Speaker 1: it a little bit of a tricky situation though. So
Speaker 1: when someone says I need to get my ass moving
Speaker 1: for whatever reason, that's kind of like admitting they haven't
Speaker 1: taken care of themselves, usually for years. It's not really
Speaker 1: something to be proud of, but taking some initiative over
Speaker 1: it is. So these personal trainers, they work like this.
Speaker 1: People set up a free consultation, usually for like an hour,
Speaker 1: and the goal is to decide if signing up for
Speaker 1: more sessions and really committing to something is in the cards.
Speaker 1: And one of the trainers who I lived with occasionally
Speaker 1: told me this year that in January he had twenty
Speaker 1: four of these consultations. I asked him how many of
Speaker 1: them turned into repeat clients and he said, none, zero,
Speaker 1: not even one. Now, he's a really nice guy who
Speaker 1: knows his stuff, so I doubt he scared them all off.
Speaker 1: I asked him what the deal was, and he said,
Speaker 1: it's just like that a lot of the times. And
Speaker 1: then he said, and I quote, it really burns me
Speaker 1: out because he cares if people get healthy. He hears
Speaker 1: the stories of work injuries and depression and all kinds
Speaker 1: of issues that can lead to people not taking care
Speaker 1: of themselves. And he knows that while getting into shape
Speaker 1: isn't a total magic bullet, it's usually a really solid
Speaker 1: start if you want to feel better mentally and of
Speaker 1: course physically. He ended our little chat by saying he
Speaker 1: just keeps smiling and meeting with people, and a few
Speaker 1: of them end up hiring him long term. Some even
Speaker 1: end up as Jim regulars after he's done with them,
Speaker 1: and knows, he said, make him real happy. The thing
Speaker 1: about this is that, even without my wife pushing me
Speaker 1: to get certified and be a personal trainer, I always
Speaker 1: look at those folks like they have a pretty sweet gig.
Speaker 1: They get a free gym membership, they get to help
Speaker 1: people out. What I saw and what I think I
Speaker 1: knew about their job was about three percent of what
Speaker 1: it actually is. Though. Now, I bet you could take
Speaker 1: about any profession out there and make the same claim
Speaker 1: and be right. You can do the same thing with
Speaker 1: hunting content. And that's what the show is about. Now.
Speaker 1: I know I've talked about this topic in the past,
Speaker 1: but I want to share some of my personal experience
Speaker 1: about it to frame this whole thing up and tie
Speaker 1: into this stupid, dumbass month of March when you might
Speaker 1: be sitting on your couch in the evening watching an
Speaker 1: edited version of someone else's hunt. The first time I
Speaker 1: ever filmed was a turkey hunt when I was fifteen.
Speaker 1: My buddy Jared. He didn't draw a tag, but I did,
Speaker 1: so he offered to use my parents video camera to
Speaker 1: document the whole thing, and we figured it would probably
Speaker 1: be a pretty epic turkey hunt. I'd already killed one
Speaker 1: tom the year before, so it was pretty much a lock.
Speaker 1: I figured well. Jared and I set up in the
Speaker 1: dark in the corner of a cut cornfield, and not
Speaker 1: long after we cozied up to a couple of oak trees,
Speaker 1: a tom gobbled in the dark. Several did. Actually, I
Speaker 1: can't remember for sure, but I think I was using
Speaker 1: one of those springloaded pushbutton calls that a not very
Speaker 1: smart monkey could probably operate. This was a long time ago,
Speaker 1: and the birds weren't nearly as pressured then as they
Speaker 1: are now. This became evident when out of the woodline
Speaker 1: a monster Tommy emerged in half strut. He saw my home.
Speaker 1: Jake pushed into the dirt over a foam hen and said,
Speaker 1: not on my watch, Junior. Unbeknownst to me, during the
Speaker 1: whole encounter, which was maybe thirty seconds, Jared was whispering
Speaker 1: shoot him, shoot him, shoot him, shoot him. I don't
Speaker 1: think he knew he was saying it, kind of like
Speaker 1: a duck dog that can't help it whine a little
Speaker 1: when the sky's lighten up and the birds start circling. Anyway,
Speaker 1: I dumped that time when he got to my decoys,
Speaker 1: and Jared nearly dropped the camera wall, shouting, holy shit,
Speaker 1: we got him. Apparently he didn't know that being a
Speaker 1: videographer usually means you're not also the real time narrator.
Speaker 1: That was all for fun, of course, and It wasn't
Speaker 1: until I got the job of equipment editor at bow
Speaker 1: Hunter that I actually filmed my first industry hunt, my
Speaker 1: first professional hunt. I guess this was a South Dakota
Speaker 1: hunt where you hide behind horses and sneak into a
Speaker 1: prong horns guard and shoot him. Now you know my
Speaker 1: stance on trophy hunting western game, but if not, I'll
Speaker 1: explain it. I don't trophy hunt out West. I'm an
Speaker 1: equal opportunity hunter when it comes to elk, mule, deer,
Speaker 1: and antelope. But back then, if you were on TV,
Speaker 1: you didn't shoot little stuff, so I knew i'd have
Speaker 1: to hold off. Still, it didn't take us very long
Speaker 1: before we had closed the distance on a pretty good
Speaker 1: buck that was chasing dose around and running off some youngsters.
Speaker 1: When we got to sixty yards on that buck, which
Speaker 1: was as far as I wanted to shoot, the guide
Speaker 1: turned the horses sideways and told me to draw. I
Speaker 1: did as I told, and there sixty yards away was
Speaker 1: the antelope walking. I held my pin and waited for
Speaker 1: him to stop, but the guide started whispering in my ear.
Speaker 1: You have to shoot him, now, you have to shoot him. Now,
Speaker 1: he's going to get away. In my head, I was like, yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't take walking shots at sixty yards ever. But
Speaker 1: you know what I did. I shot because I wanted
Speaker 1: the whole thing over with. I was aiming in front
Speaker 1: of that antelope by a hair and I missed him
Speaker 1: by about a foot in the other end. It was
Speaker 1: not pretty and it was not something I was proud of. Now.
Speaker 1: After that speed goat ran off, I knew I was
Speaker 1: going to look like a total d bag on the show,
Speaker 1: and I sure did. I also had a conversation with
Speaker 1: the guide off camera about how I'll choose my own
Speaker 1: shot opportunities from there on out. Later that day, we
Speaker 1: walked right through a herd of beedded antelope while leaning
Speaker 1: into the sides of the horses, and a little buck,
Speaker 1: you know, not twenty yards away never even got up,
Speaker 1: never ran away. I told the guide I wanted to
Speaker 1: shoot that goat because I was pretty sure i'd hit
Speaker 1: him in the lungs, and the guide made it clear
Speaker 1: that while it was my call, it kind of wasn't,
Speaker 1: so we kept going. Eventually we found a good enough
Speaker 1: loaner feeding in the pasture to let me get to
Speaker 1: fifty one yards and I actually hit him right in
Speaker 1: the heart, which I cannot stress enough was extremely relieving
Speaker 1: after my poor showing earlier. After that was all the
Speaker 1: post shot footage, and of course the butchering and all
Speaker 1: the other things you do when you kill an animal.
Speaker 1: But when I saw the show, I realized something. Well,
Speaker 1: I did look like a total dbate when I took
Speaker 1: that shot, probably a few other times. But the reality
Speaker 1: was most of that hunt didn't make it. Given that
Speaker 1: my entire hunt was a half of a one show.
Speaker 1: It was reduced to less than eleven minutes of actual
Speaker 1: hunting for a four day hunt with multiple stocks and
Speaker 1: all that stuff that happens after you shoot one. I
Speaker 1: filmed quite a few shows for them, and it filmed
Speaker 1: quite a few for other companies. Every one of them
Speaker 1: has always left me thinking that we never really have
Speaker 1: the chance to show a real hunt. We show highlights
Speaker 1: which are up to an editor, we might not even know.
Speaker 1: And that's kind of that. It's weird, and it's not
Speaker 1: limited to video. Back before a big old internet asteroid
Speaker 1: hit Earth and caused most print titles to go the
Speaker 1: way of the dinosaur, we used to get to write
Speaker 1: hunting features. These were two thousand, maybe three thousand or
Speaker 1: thirty five hundred word articles that told the story of
Speaker 1: a hunt or a particular animal. They were my favorite
Speaker 1: thing to write, and still would be if I could
Speaker 1: find someone to publish them and pay me for the time.
Speaker 1: It's not going to happen anyway. The biggest challenge was
Speaker 1: always what do you not tell? What parts of the
Speaker 1: story were necessary to the whole arc all along, and
Speaker 1: what could be left out because it didn't go you know,
Speaker 1: well enough along with the narrative to warrant inclusion. As
Speaker 1: you can imagine, a lot of those stories just get
Speaker 1: left out. There's a lot of stuff that you're just
Speaker 1: not going to see your read or hear about. And
Speaker 1: this is a side note here, but I've also noticed
Speaker 1: that the random hunters who tell me they're hunting stories
Speaker 1: at deer classics and weddings and bar mitzvahs and recently
Speaker 1: a memorial service, they don't have the editing gene. They
Speaker 1: give the long version ahis and it's usually a lead
Speaker 1: up to a longer version. I'm kind of joking there,
Speaker 1: but mostly not. The truth with content is, most of
Speaker 1: the time most of the stuff is just left out. Now,
Speaker 1: this isn't necessarily a nefarious move. It's just the nature
Speaker 1: of attention spans and the reality of competing for eyeballs
Speaker 1: and ear bawls. Even though it's largely benign and honestly
Speaker 1: mostly dictated by the audience, it's also worth understanding what
Speaker 1: isn't there. There's a false promise with hunting content. Scratch that.
Speaker 1: There's actually two false promises. The first is that most
Speaker 1: of it will make you a better hunter somehow. Maybe
Speaker 1: it does in small ways, but I think a lot
Speaker 1: of it is pure entertainment and that's it, and that's okay.
Speaker 1: Entertainment is good. We need it, and there's nothing wrong
Speaker 1: with it. There's nothing wrong with watching another two hundred
Speaker 1: in buck die in a food plot after getting shot
Speaker 1: by some country singer who probably couldn't kill a button
Speaker 1: buck on public land if he gave him the whole
Speaker 1: season and let him hunt at night with a high
Speaker 1: powered rifle talped with a thermoscope. I know that was
Speaker 1: a cheap shot, and I'm not proud of it. The
Speaker 1: other false promise is that what you see or read
Speaker 1: or hear about is what happened. It's not. It's a
Speaker 1: super abbreviated version with the best medium in my opinion,
Speaker 1: being podcasts, it's a hell of a lot easier to
Speaker 1: tell a whole story or as much of a story
Speaker 1: as possible, when you have unlimited time and you're just
Speaker 1: having a conversation. It's much harder to tell the whole
Speaker 1: story of a hunt when you have forty or fifty
Speaker 1: hours of footage during which about ninety percent of it
Speaker 1: nothing really interesting happened, except stuff does happen. The hours
Speaker 1: spent in stand watching squirrels that might get turned into
Speaker 1: a few seconds of footage in the actual episode. That
Speaker 1: stuff matters. If there are days like that, the host
Speaker 1: will probably mention it several times, but you won't really
Speaker 1: get the full picture went on. It's just too hard.
Speaker 1: When you watch a sizzle reel, you might see a
Speaker 1: hunter shoot a great buck, maybe even on public land,
Speaker 1: and never be told or shown that there were four
Speaker 1: other good hunters glassing and scouting for that shooter, or
Speaker 1: in a lot of it shows, there might be someone
Speaker 1: managing dear just for a specific personality to come in
Speaker 1: and shoot it, and of course, you know, writing a
Speaker 1: pretty big check and promising lots of thrilling social media
Speaker 1: content around it. The thing is hunting content can be
Speaker 1: great entertainment, and it can be highly educational. It can
Speaker 1: be a lot of things, but it will never be
Speaker 1: a full picture. It'll be a slice of something, and
Speaker 1: it's up to you to recognize that in your personal
Speaker 1: hunting life. If you're wondering why you don't see big
Speaker 1: bucks on public land, and a total stud like myself
Speaker 1: always seems to it's because I'm not telling you how
Speaker 1: often I blank. I'm not putting up Instagram posts on
Speaker 1: the days when I can't get the old engine turned
Speaker 1: over and I just can't find a deer to save
Speaker 1: my life. When you watch me on something like one
Speaker 1: week in November, you see at most four or five
Speaker 1: minutes of my entire day, a day that starts way
Speaker 1: before first light and usually ends with a mind grinding
Speaker 1: session on where to hunt the following day, well after
Speaker 1: the sun is set in the nocturnal bucks have started chasing.
Speaker 1: The thing about that is you might see four minutes
Speaker 1: of some rando like me explaining my daily hunting situation,
Speaker 1: mixed with those shots of squirrels and maybe a few
Speaker 1: deer and not much else, and not really think a
Speaker 1: whole lot about it. But what's happening there is an
Speaker 1: all day sit where very little happened, which is a
Speaker 1: real common Then you know, randomly, on day seven, a
Speaker 1: clueless eight pointer runs in, stops in some brush with
Speaker 1: one shooting window, and suddenly my week, which didn't mean
Speaker 1: anything to the viewers, looks pretty sweet. So you say,
Speaker 1: damn man, I'm going to do some all day sits
Speaker 1: this year. But you're all day sits don't seem like mine.
Speaker 1: Yet they are. You have the hours and hours of
Speaker 1: no movement and all the second guessing that comes with it.
Speaker 1: You scroll social media and you see grip and grin
Speaker 1: after gripp and grin, and the whole thing kind of sucks.
Speaker 1: But you don't see what one into those grip and grins.
Speaker 1: You don't see the money spent, the time invested, the
Speaker 1: skill that a lot of those folks have. And I
Speaker 1: don't know. You see Andy may post another picture of
Speaker 1: a monster he killed on public land somewhere. You don't
Speaker 1: see his struggle years or the year long scouting obsession
Speaker 1: he has, you know, the one that leads him to
Speaker 1: have seasons that almost no one on earth could match once,
Speaker 1: let alone him multiple years. The truth of it all
Speaker 1: is out. They're in the woods, my friends, it's waiting
Speaker 1: for you, and it's not as fun as it looks
Speaker 1: in the hunting content. It's not as easy as it
Speaker 1: looks or as enjoyable. Generally, it's kind of a bitch, honestly,
Speaker 1: but it's also worth it, and it gets to be
Speaker 1: a hell of a lot more fun when you realize
Speaker 1: that you have your own white tailed journey to take,
Speaker 1: and it's not about a product or the right lighting
Speaker 1: of for your trophy photos. It's about doing what makes
Speaker 1: you happy out there and recognizing that the best anyone
Speaker 1: like me or Andy May or Mark or anyone can
Speaker 1: do for you is offer up a few suggestions, maybe
Speaker 1: some encouragement. Then you're on your own. But that's the
Speaker 1: way it's supposed to be. You can't learn to really
Speaker 1: hunt by just listening to someone talk about it any
Speaker 1: more than you could learn any other skill by just
Speaker 1: listening or observing. Now it doesn't hurt, of course, but
Speaker 1: it's like two percent of what you need. That's better
Speaker 1: than nothing. But it's your scouting sessions and your trail
Speaker 1: camera work, your understanding of your equipment, and your time
Speaker 1: on stand that kills your ear. You know, your big
Speaker 1: bucks or your little bucks or doze or whatever you're
Speaker 1: willing to shoot. It's on you, which is why this
Speaker 1: whole thing is so frustrating yet so rewarding at the
Speaker 1: same time. It's up to you to go beyond that consultation,
Speaker 1: to book those sessions and start picking up some weights
Speaker 1: and pounding away in the treadmill. It's up to you
Speaker 1: to change for the better. Remember that this month, when
Speaker 1: you're begging for your brain to release just a little
Speaker 1: dopemine and for the sun to come out for a
Speaker 1: few days, remember it when you think it's not worth
Speaker 1: it in this stupid month, to go out and look
Speaker 1: for a few antlers, or maybe walk the cattail slow
Speaker 1: before the ice gets too rotten, scout around a little bit.
Speaker 1: Remember that it's on you to figure out something to
Speaker 1: do to get better, even if that's just standing in
Speaker 1: the slushy snow to fling a few arrows now instead
Speaker 1: of waiting until the summer to start shooting. That's it
Speaker 1: for this week. I'm Tony Peterson. This has been the
Speaker 1: Wire to Hunt Foundations podcast, which has brought to you
Speaker 1: by First Light. As always, thank you so much for listening,
Speaker 1: and if you just need some more whitetail content to
Speaker 1: entertain you or hell, educate you. Head on over to
Speaker 1: our YouTube channel you can see a whole bunch of
Speaker 1: how to videos that Mark and I have produced. Or
Speaker 1: you can head over to the dumbyater dot com slash
Speaker 1: wired and read all kinds of articles on hunting strategies
Speaker 1: and tips and scouting and all that good stuff.