Speaker 1: Welcome to the wired to hunt foundations podcast, your guide
Speaker 1: to the fundamentals of better deer hunting, and now your host,
Speaker 1: Tony Peterson. Hey everyone, welcome to the wire to hunt
Speaker 1: foundations podcast, which has brought to you by first light.
Speaker 1: I'm your host, Tony Peterson, and today I'm going to
Speaker 1: talk about kicking off the bow season and what you
Speaker 1: should do if your early season hunting doesn't go as planned.
Speaker 1: The thing about white tails, hunting white tails anyway, is
Speaker 1: that it rarely goes as plan. That's why the best
Speaker 1: of the best scout so much. They know it's a
Speaker 1: necessity and if they do, they might find one of
Speaker 1: those magical in the moment spots where they can point
Speaker 1: to the stands, Babe Ruth Style, and call their shots.
Speaker 1: Most of the time, when you do that, White Tail
Speaker 1: wise you don't end up taking a slow jog around
Speaker 1: the aces while the crowd showers you in adoration. Instead,
Speaker 1: you do that kind of sad Charlie Brown walked back
Speaker 1: to the dugout after a strikeout, and I used that
Speaker 1: example specifically because I saw a guy named Aaron Foreman
Speaker 1: do that in Little League one time, and that sucks,
Speaker 1: but it happens what you do when it does happen.
Speaker 1: That's what matters, though, and usually pretty common during the
Speaker 1: first week of the season. So that's what this episode
Speaker 1: is really all about. One of the things I enjoy
Speaker 1: most in life is something that I just didn't see coming.
Speaker 1: I mean, if you went back in time and asked me,
Speaker 1: I don't know ten years ago, if I'd ever coach
Speaker 1: any sport for any reason, I would have said you're
Speaker 1: off your rocker there, Betty Crocker. But now, with my
Speaker 1: little girls in basketball and softball, I love coaching. Maybe
Speaker 1: it's is my competitive nature, something else, I don't know,
Speaker 1: but I just enjoy it so much. Well, most of
Speaker 1: the time. Last year, after a regular Basketball House League
Speaker 1: where we did pretty well, my wife mentioned that she
Speaker 1: wanted the girls to do a taste of travel league. Now,
Speaker 1: I'm sure this is the case in an awful lot
Speaker 1: of places, but if you're a suburb dweller in the
Speaker 1: twin cities like I am, people take traveling basketball very,
Speaker 1: very serious, even with third and fourth graders. I didn't
Speaker 1: know this until we went to our first tournament, and
Speaker 1: there we actually managed to get third place out of
Speaker 1: six teams. But we played some teams that were pretty bad,
Speaker 1: which helps a lot. We also played one team that
Speaker 1: was so much more advanced than us it was a
Speaker 1: freaking miracle that we scored it all, and I mean
Speaker 1: we barely did score. And then we went to another
Speaker 1: tournament and like every team there was that good. Then
Speaker 1: we went to another and again we got stomped. We
Speaker 1: got smote. We didn't stand a chance. Now I don't
Speaker 1: mind playing up to see some real competition and to
Speaker 1: learn a thing or two, but I'm also forty two
Speaker 1: and I've dealt with a fair amount of loss and
Speaker 1: failure and a hell of a lot of different forms
Speaker 1: in my life. For Nine and ten year olds staring
Speaker 1: down the barrel of an absolute ass whooping, it was
Speaker 1: a lot to handle. You could see during warmups the
Speaker 1: look on the girls faces as they watched the opposing
Speaker 1: teams exhibit a level of basketball skills that would just
Speaker 1: beyond our crew. Our girls were defeated between their ears
Speaker 1: before the ref ever blew the whistle and lined up
Speaker 1: the teams to kick off the game with a jump ball. And,
Speaker 1: to be fair, the girls really weren't wrong. We were
Speaker 1: outclassed mostly, but not all the time. We had a
Speaker 1: few games where we could have stayed in there and maybe, maybe,
Speaker 1: squeaked out a win, but we didn't and we didn't
Speaker 1: even get close because they expected failure and they leaned
Speaker 1: right into it. I bet you might be able to
Speaker 1: guess where I'm going with this. White Tail hunting is
Speaker 1: a game of failure. Hell, all hunting usually is, and
Speaker 1: if it isn't, it's actually not that fun. I know
Speaker 1: a sure thing sounds amazing. Put an awful lot of
Speaker 1: folks who have a sure thing, or as close as
Speaker 1: you can get to a sure thing hunting. Wise they
Speaker 1: tend to give up hunting after a while. We need
Speaker 1: a challenge, we need hard but achievable goals, but we
Speaker 1: also need to recognize how we deal with the inevitable
Speaker 1: failure that comes along with white tail hunting. It's everywhere
Speaker 1: in the woods, just waiting for you. Failure gets carried
Speaker 1: in on the breeze right into a deer's waiting nose.
Speaker 1: It's in the slight squeak and your stand, that squeak
Speaker 1: that you should have taken care of before the season,
Speaker 1: but you didn't because you didn't think it'd be a
Speaker 1: big deal. It's in the panic of the moment when
Speaker 1: you just are compelled to draw your oh at the
Speaker 1: wrong time, when he's looking up at you, facing your way.
Speaker 1: Failure is the devil on your shoulder that convinces you
Speaker 1: to hit the snooze button or, worse, just roll over
Speaker 1: and go back to sleep, because you talk yourself into
Speaker 1: believing that, since it's, I don't know, a full moon,
Speaker 1: or since it's pretty windy or whatever, that there are
Speaker 1: better uses of your time than hikings through the woods
Speaker 1: in the dark to sit in a stand and probably
Speaker 1: not kill a deer. Failure is the best friend of
Speaker 1: that little deer hunting devil perched on your shoulder holding
Speaker 1: a mini pitchfork, who says that maybe tonight the good
Speaker 1: one you had on camera in August will just magically
Speaker 1: show up in front of the field edge stand that
Speaker 1: you've already sat seven times and you've burned right to
Speaker 1: the ground. If you think I'm being facetious, I'm gonna
Speaker 1: let you in on a little secret. The whole reason
Speaker 1: I'm any good at white tail hunting, which really seems
Speaker 1: to vary by the day, in the sit in the season,
Speaker 1: is that I've failed so much. When I turned fifteen,
Speaker 1: I got permission to hunt a farm in Minnesota that
Speaker 1: was a hung buck factory. Now I can't remember the
Speaker 1: exact number of four keys and basket rack sixes and
Speaker 1: eights that I missed that season, but I'm confident it
Speaker 1: was in double digits. That was a lot of failure
Speaker 1: crammed into a small season. Or, more recently, I spent
Speaker 1: some time hunting in northern Wisconsin for a deer, just
Speaker 1: a deer, dough buck whatever. I had tags for both
Speaker 1: and I had some space in my freezer and over
Speaker 1: the course of three weeks I sat probably, I don't know,
Speaker 1: nine or ten times, or at least part of nine
Speaker 1: or ten days over there, mostly on public land but
Speaker 1: some on private, and I never saw a deer during
Speaker 1: that whole span. And when I say I never saw one,
Speaker 1: that's what I mean. I wasn't passing on dear, I
Speaker 1: wasn't watching them browsed to the far side of a
Speaker 1: clear cut, I mean I never saw a single freaking deer.
Speaker 1: That's a shot to the old deer hunting ego, my friends.
Speaker 1: When that bad spell finally broke, I managed to Arrow
Speaker 1: an old long nose dough on a track of public land.
Speaker 1: End that has mostly kicked my ass, and I'll tell
Speaker 1: you what it was so wheat another time. If you
Speaker 1: want another example how bad I can be. Happened in
Speaker 1: South Dakota while trying to kill a dough in a
Speaker 1: buck on public land. I sat six times in spots
Speaker 1: that I fully believed in, fully believed in. You know
Speaker 1: what I saw? I saw mostly cows and one day
Speaker 1: I had five coyotes coming through together. I don't know,
Speaker 1: maybe I saw crow or a blue jay or something too,
Speaker 1: but I didn't see any deer. I couldn't lay eyes
Speaker 1: on a deer, and that was in a place with
Speaker 1: good visibility and a great dear population. But on the
Speaker 1: fourth day I did see a deer. In fact I
Speaker 1: saw a dough in a buck and I killed both
Speaker 1: of them within ten minutes one another. It happens like that.
Speaker 1: This is mostly failure, with these random little bouts of success.
Speaker 1: That's what makes deer hunting deer hunting, and you might
Speaker 1: be experiencing that right now with many of the White
Speaker 1: Tail seasons open up across the country, and I think
Speaker 1: the first week or two of this season is really
Speaker 1: the best time to address failure for what it is
Speaker 1: and just move on. You want to know why? Because
Speaker 1: all summer long, you know, we run cameras, we scroll
Speaker 1: through photos of velvet racked bucks. We build a plan
Speaker 1: around those images. We Scout. We scout more than any
Speaker 1: other time of the season. We eat, Scout, we walk
Speaker 1: our dear spots, we get into the freaking preseason groove
Speaker 1: and we shoot a lot more than any other time
Speaker 1: of the season. We organize our gear, we pack our packs,
Speaker 1: we wash our clothes, we prep and we prep and
Speaker 1: we prep. We hang stands, we brush in blinds. We
Speaker 1: do all of this work so that we can hit
Speaker 1: the ground running. But you know what mostly happens? We
Speaker 1: don't kill deer. Oftentimes we don't see dear or we
Speaker 1: don't see the dear we are really hoping to see.
Speaker 1: So in that way we fail, and you know what
Speaker 1: that failure in finds us off all the past seasons
Speaker 1: where we've had similar results, the anticipation is so high
Speaker 1: that the letdown, if it comes, it's pretty bad. The
Speaker 1: best laid plans turn out to be turd sandwiches and
Speaker 1: that old familiar feeling comes creeping right back in. Do
Speaker 1: you know what's almost worse than not seeing dear or
Speaker 1: killing a buck when you have put in so much work,
Speaker 1: actually having him come in and then either spooking him
Speaker 1: or missing him. That's a big time failure in a
Speaker 1: lot of ways. Now, when you're in the I don't know,
Speaker 1: shoot a scrapper stage, yeah, a mishurts, but at least
Speaker 1: you know that another dink six pointer might walk down
Speaker 1: the trails through this season. Probably will. When you have
Speaker 1: your heart set on a I don't know, a hundred
Speaker 1: forty inch or and he shows up and then he
Speaker 1: buss you or you shoot over him, it's not so
Speaker 1: likely that he or another bucket his caliber is going
Speaker 1: to show up for the rest of the season. In
Speaker 1: my experience it's not so were likely, even if you
Speaker 1: have tons of time to put in one or two
Speaker 1: good encounters throughout the season is often all we can
Speaker 1: ask for. And boy does it staying when you piss
Speaker 1: that right down your leg. But you know what's crazy
Speaker 1: about that? It happens. It happens all the time. It
Speaker 1: happens to weekend warriors with one bow season under their
Speaker 1: belt and it happens to seasoned veterans with a whole
Speaker 1: trophy room full of mature public land buck mounts. It
Speaker 1: might happen to the last category of hunters a little
Speaker 1: less than the former, but that doesn't mean it doesn't
Speaker 1: still happen, because it does. But you know what's different
Speaker 1: about those hunters, though? They understand that it's a part
Speaker 1: of the deer hunting game. They understand that their job
Speaker 1: is to mitigate the ways in which they cause their
Speaker 1: own failures, because there are enough variables out there that
Speaker 1: aren't in their control that will tank the best of
Speaker 1: deer hunting plans. They understand that cliched statement that goes
Speaker 1: something like failing to plan is planning to fail. Except
Speaker 1: in a way, they do plan to fail in the
Speaker 1: big picture sense, but they also plan to win on
Speaker 1: a smaller scale. With every sit with every scouting trip
Speaker 1: and every hunt, they're hoping to learn something, something that
Speaker 1: can be put to good use now or in the future.
Speaker 1: Enough of those some things and you guess what, you
Speaker 1: have a hunt that is not a failure on the
Speaker 1: big picture scale. Let me frame this up a different
Speaker 1: way to drive this point home. Let's say it's time
Speaker 1: for you to pick up a new Labrador retriever puppy.
Speaker 1: So your research and pedigrees, you do your due diligence
Speaker 1: and you settle on a litter that should have the
Speaker 1: kind of blood you're really looking for. At eight weeks
Speaker 1: you pick up an adorable little sausage legged pupster. You
Speaker 1: take it home and you think about all the birds
Speaker 1: will shoot over him, all the ducks and the roosters,
Speaker 1: the GROUSE, woodcock whatever. You think about all the shed
Speaker 1: antlers you'll train him to vacuum up during those winter
Speaker 1: scouting trips. But that a puppy doesn't know anything other
Speaker 1: than what his instincts tell him. He knows he likes
Speaker 1: to pick up stuff in his mouth, he likes to
Speaker 1: run around a little chew on stuff, he likes the
Speaker 1: smell of a rooster or grouse feather, but he doesn't
Speaker 1: know what you want out of him yet. In fact,
Speaker 1: he's mostly just an adorable idiot. My Wife's uncle likes
Speaker 1: to say that you can look right into a puppy's
Speaker 1: eyes and see all the way to its asshole, because
Speaker 1: there's nothing in between. But there is, and there is
Speaker 1: the chance to help him learn simple behaviors that can
Speaker 1: be daisy chain to bigger, more desirable, more complex behaviors.
Speaker 1: Take a simple retrieve, for example. A good dog is
Speaker 1: a steady dog with rock solid recall and the understanding
Speaker 1: that if he is to hold an object, he is
Speaker 1: to hold an object. There's no spitting it out to
Speaker 1: sniff where other dogs Pete. There's no dropping at three
Speaker 1: yards from your feet. It's delivered a hand or nothing.
Speaker 1: So you start with some steadiness with that puppy, maybe
Speaker 1: some healing work. You make the pup wait a few
Speaker 1: seconds to eat so he learns a little patience. You
Speaker 1: encourage retrieving desire, but really only to stoke the flames
Speaker 1: and keep him wanting more. You don't want to Overdo
Speaker 1: it and you work on recall with a check cord
Speaker 1: and a handful of Kibbl in a way, you're working
Speaker 1: on several different behaviors that eventually will all coalesce into
Speaker 1: the kind of retrieve you want. Eventually that PUP will
Speaker 1: be a dog that heals at your side and marks
Speaker 1: the bumper, waits for the release, takes a straight line
Speaker 1: to it, comes back to heal and waits until you
Speaker 1: say drop or give before he gently places the bumper
Speaker 1: in your hand. Deer hunting is like that in a
Speaker 1: weird way. You have to fail at setting stands to
Speaker 1: learn how to set them better. You have to fail
Speaker 1: at timing your draw when a deer is closed to
Speaker 1: learn how to read when exactly you need to get
Speaker 1: that bow back to your face. You have to rattle
Speaker 1: at the wrong bucks to know what might make the
Speaker 1: right bucks come in. You have to cheat the wind
Speaker 1: a little, a little too much, to listen to a
Speaker 1: bunch of snorts from some Mama does to learn what
Speaker 1: you can get away with and what you can't. You
Speaker 1: got to shoot under a few and over a few
Speaker 1: more to learn where to aim and how to aim
Speaker 1: during the moment of truth and how to read a
Speaker 1: buck that might jump the string. You have to develop
Speaker 1: a Badass no way can this fail, opening week plan
Speaker 1: only to have it fizzle and sputter out right before
Speaker 1: your eyes, to learn how to develop a better plan
Speaker 1: for next year and how to cope with that failure
Speaker 1: and how to just move on from it to week
Speaker 1: two of the season and then week three or whatever.
Speaker 1: And this part, this is one that is most important,
Speaker 1: you have to learn to let those failures just go,
Speaker 1: like a toxic person in your life who always drags
Speaker 1: you down, even though you want to like them, or hell,
Speaker 1: you even love them so much. But you gotta let
Speaker 1: that ship go, my friends. You have to learn from that.
Speaker 1: You have to use it to inform better decisions in
Speaker 1: the future. Failure in the woods it's like that. It's
Speaker 1: actually valuable. In fact, it might be the most important
Speaker 1: aspect of becoming a good deer hunter. And listen the
Speaker 1: big winds. They're sweet too. The first big buck you kill,
Speaker 1: that one is going to stick with you in an
Speaker 1: awful lot of ways, and man is it nice. But
Speaker 1: developing as a deer hunter is an awful lot like
Speaker 1: how we use and view social media. No one posts
Speaker 1: the boring stuff, the little stuff on instagram. Alright, some
Speaker 1: people do, but they are freaking psychos. They are the
Speaker 1: people who post every meal they eat, as if anyone
Speaker 1: in the world cares what a stranger head for breakfast.
Speaker 1: They're the ones who post, I don't know, pictures are
Speaker 1: they're freshly painted toenails. are a stupid selfie while fishing,
Speaker 1: of every single bass they catch, even if it's an
Speaker 1: eight in sure that couldn't barely pulled out a bobber.
Speaker 1: Aside from those looney tunes folks, social media is mostly
Speaker 1: the curated big winds of life. That people post. You know,
Speaker 1: the weight lost journey, the personal best cutthroat trout, Ahem
Speaker 1: Mark Kenyon, the enormous buck, where they sit cross legged
Speaker 1: style and gaze longingly into its dead eyes while someone
Speaker 1: frames up the image with some soft focused vegetation in
Speaker 1: the foreground and maybe, I don't know, maybe the setting
Speaker 1: sun in the background. Most of life isn't social media worthy,
Speaker 1: just as most of hunting isn't a big event one
Speaker 1: way or the other. Most of the time we scout
Speaker 1: and hunt, it's not really going to result in one
Speaker 1: of our worst days, anymore than it will be the
Speaker 1: day that we finally air a two inches so we
Speaker 1: can see our smiling faces on the cover in North
Speaker 1: American White Tail magazine. It's the middle of the road,
Speaker 1: boring stuff that makes up most of life and most
Speaker 1: of deer hunting, and in that stuff there's an awful
Speaker 1: lot of failure, but that's also an awful lot of
Speaker 1: opportunities to improve. It's good to get comfortable with that failure,
Speaker 1: invited in for a nightcap, have a little conversation, just
Speaker 1: tease out the value with it and then send it
Speaker 1: on its way. I guess I really want you to
Speaker 1: think about that as we slide into this most wonderful
Speaker 1: time of the year, the time of year when we
Speaker 1: finally get to do more than scout and more than shoot,
Speaker 1: more than just think about what the deer are doing
Speaker 1: out there. We get to hunt them, we get to
Speaker 1: go sit in trees and we get to watch the
Speaker 1: sunrise and hopefully hear a stick crack in the distance
Speaker 1: or see that too big to be a squirrel movement
Speaker 1: in your peripheral vision. That tells you a deer has
Speaker 1: entered the game and it's time to focus on what
Speaker 1: could become the next best few minutes of your life.
Speaker 1: And if it goes wrong, which it mostly will, who cares?
Speaker 1: There's a lesson there that will help you the next
Speaker 1: time and the time after that. And at some point
Speaker 1: that buck that surprises you by showing up when you're
Speaker 1: not paying attention, he's going to go for a at
Speaker 1: home in the back of your truck and you'll get
Speaker 1: to shoot some hero photos and post them up for
Speaker 1: the world to see to show them you're not a failure,
Speaker 1: at least not today, and that's pretty freaking sweet. My friends,
Speaker 1: learn from your failure, accept it. It's okay. You're gonna
Speaker 1: get better because of it, and we're all going through
Speaker 1: it now. Next week I'm going to get into the
Speaker 1: topic of hunting one target buck, of setting your sights
Speaker 1: on a rider didear that's the only one you're going
Speaker 1: to pick up your bowl rifle for, and how that
Speaker 1: can make for a great season or an absolutely miserable fall.
Speaker 1: That's IT, folks, I'm done for this week. This has
Speaker 1: been the wire to hunt foundations podcast, which has brought
Speaker 1: to you by first light. I'm your host, Tony Peterson,
Speaker 1: and I just want to say thank you so much
Speaker 1: for listening and for your support. I really appreciate it.
Speaker 1: And if this episode didn't quite scratch the itch enough
Speaker 1: for you, feel free to head on over to the
Speaker 1: meat eater dot com slash wired to read some articles
Speaker 1: written by myself for mark or whole slew of White
Speaker 1: Tail Killers, and you can also drop into our ware
Speaker 1: to hunt YouTube channel to check out the weekly how
Speaker 1: tube videos that we throw up every single week to
Speaker 1: help you become a better hunter.