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's episode is all about retraining our
Speaker 2: brains so we can make better.
Speaker 3: Deer hunting decisions.
Speaker 1: Absolutely.
Speaker 2: I know this might seem like a weird one, but
Speaker 2: you know, as I get older, I feel like I'm
Speaker 2: constantly fighting a battle against what is good for me.
Speaker 3: Versus what I want.
Speaker 2: A default to my mind can convince me to make
Speaker 2: poor decisions and self destructive decisions, and often just stupid,
Speaker 2: lazy decisions. It does this during scouting sessions and certainly
Speaker 2: actual deer hunts too. But it's also something I can
Speaker 2: work on. We all can work on this, which is
Speaker 2: what I'm going to talk about right now. Have you
Speaker 2: ever heard of the simulation theory? You probably have, and
Speaker 2: maybe you write it off as total bunk, which is
Speaker 2: an understandable reaction, But maybe you don't because life is
Speaker 2: weird and it often feels like we really kind of
Speaker 2: aren't in control, so you think, who freaking knows, Maybe
Speaker 2: we are living in the matrix. As we get exposure
Speaker 2: to companies working on artificial intelligence, simulation theory enters the
Speaker 2: conversation more and more.
Speaker 3: After all, artificial.
Speaker 2: Intelligence could become sentient, and if it did, it could
Speaker 2: harness computational power and the unreal amount of data on
Speaker 2: humanity that we just put out there in the world
Speaker 2: in a way that could be used against us, and
Speaker 2: maybe we will become flesh and blood batteries for the machine. Now,
Speaker 2: for the record, I'm not sold on the simulation theory
Speaker 2: yet I think it's interesting for no other reason than
Speaker 2: we are all just made up of star stuff. Yet
Speaker 2: somehow we can ponder whether we really exist as we
Speaker 2: generally believe we do, or if we are stuck in
Speaker 2: a living hell waiting on Keanu reeves to come along
Speaker 2: and unplug us. The mind is wild, and a part
Speaker 2: of the mind, or a function of the mind that
Speaker 2: is fascinating to me is neuroplasticity, which is the ability
Speaker 2: of the brain to change in structure or function in
Speaker 2: response to an experience. Neuroplasticity can kind of be sort
Speaker 2: of a prison, or it can facilitate our voluntary self containment,
Speaker 2: or it can be used to literally change our reality
Speaker 2: through our thoughts and actions. In a way, if we
Speaker 2: can change our reality by simply thinking about it or
Speaker 2: using our brains to learn new things, isn't that kind
Speaker 2: of like we control the simulation?
Speaker 3: Who knows what I do?
Speaker 2: Know? As someone who has struggled with addiction in my
Speaker 2: life and who has spilled his guts to a few
Speaker 2: therapists in the hopes that they'll tell me what I
Speaker 2: want to hear and not what I need to hear,
Speaker 2: I realize that our minds are often not our friends.
Speaker 2: This is a concept that came to me when I
Speaker 2: heard a song by some musicians who go by the
Speaker 2: name of the National and their song is called your
Speaker 2: mind is not your friend. You guys know that I
Speaker 2: love music and I love words, and I think the
Speaker 2: challenge to being a good musician or a good writer
Speaker 2: is to say the same thing but in a new way,
Speaker 2: sort of like how nearly every fiction book out there
Speaker 2: is a love story, despite it being presented not necessarily
Speaker 2: in a traditional Hallmark movie type of love story. The
Speaker 2: point of the song, at least how I take it,
Speaker 2: is that it's hard to understand, but your imagination, your mind,
Speaker 2: they can work against you in ways that you just
Speaker 2: don't see coming. You might not understand them at all.
Speaker 2: And when that happens, you're trusting a flawed system, a
Speaker 2: flawed system that we are awfully biased toward. I might add,
Speaker 2: it's sort of like how when you're really really hungry,
Speaker 2: you want to go right for the most calorie dense
Speaker 2: foods you can find. This is an evolutionary trait that
Speaker 2: hasn't caught up to our modern world of convenience and
Speaker 2: process foods. Your body and your mind, of which the
Speaker 2: two are a hell of a lot more closely intertwined
Speaker 2: than we sometimes like to think, works against you in
Speaker 2: that moment. It makes itself unhealthy or talks itself into
Speaker 2: unhealthy decisions because the operating system hasn't been updated in
Speaker 2: the last couple one hundred thousand years. Sort of, But
Speaker 2: what the hell does this have to do with deer hunting?
Speaker 2: A lot we look at deer hunting in this modern
Speaker 2: age as largely in academic pursuit. I talk about this
Speaker 2: all the time, but I believe it. We don't really
Speaker 2: need to scout a whole lot thanks to trail cameras.
Speaker 2: We don't really need to know how to hide very
Speaker 2: well because we can get in a portable cameo box
Speaker 2: and it'll hide us very well. We don't have to
Speaker 2: learn that cold fronts might mean more dear movement because
Speaker 2: that information is everywhere. We honestly don't have to do
Speaker 2: a ton of work to kill deer anymore, and I
Speaker 2: think that's why it's not as enjoyable for us now
Speaker 2: as it was not that long ago. Oh maybe I'm
Speaker 2: way off based there, I don't think.
Speaker 3: So.
Speaker 2: We don't really have to learn anything new with deer hunting,
Speaker 2: and when it comes to neuroplasticity and how we could
Speaker 2: train our brains to think about deer hunting on a
Speaker 2: deeper level, we just don't have to do it. We
Speaker 2: can kill deer fine without that, or so we think.
Speaker 2: But what has all of this information done for most hunters?
Speaker 2: Sure we understand how to hack the herd kind of,
Speaker 2: and if we have the right amount of land and
Speaker 2: the right amount of control over that land, we can
Speaker 2: pretty much make the deer do what we want. Them
Speaker 2: to and we can go in and try to kill
Speaker 2: them when we deem the timing to be right. But
Speaker 2: a lot of folks don't have that, and some of
Speaker 2: the folks that do still don't have a stellar track
Speaker 2: record of killing big bucks every season.
Speaker 3: Why is that? Why, with all of.
Speaker 2: Our technological advantages and the sheer amount of information we
Speaker 2: have on deer, isn't it easier than it is? Well,
Speaker 2: let's start with a basic premise here, one that is
Speaker 2: sort of predicated on something. I talk about a lot
Speaker 2: lot doing something different in the deer hunting space. Most
Speaker 2: folks have a hunting spot and they try to figure
Speaker 2: that spot out. When they don't succeed, they often double
Speaker 2: down on.
Speaker 3: What they believe should work.
Speaker 2: This is what leads us to hunting less than we
Speaker 2: should because there is often a short term negative feedback loop.
Speaker 2: When we try new things, they often don't work right away,
Speaker 2: but because they are new, we tend to assign more
Speaker 2: weight to that failure. We don't think about going to
Speaker 2: our favorite stand and not seeing anything, because that's easy
Speaker 2: to write off. It's just some anomaly where the deer
Speaker 2: just weren't moving, you know, full moon or whatever. But
Speaker 2: when we saddle up for the first time and go
Speaker 2: in somewhere and hang and bang, and the deer don't show.
Speaker 2: It's easier to believe that whole process is just not
Speaker 2: cracked up to what it's supposed to be. We have
Speaker 2: to try new things and learn from them, and eventually
Speaker 2: our brains will change to meet the reality of deer hunting.
Speaker 2: We have not the one we believe we have. Now,
Speaker 2: let me give you an example of this that kind
Speaker 2: of might frame it all up. When my wife and
Speaker 2: I had our daughters, I knew my hunting time would
Speaker 2: be greatly shortened. I also knew, since I was a
Speaker 2: freelance writer back then, primarily mostly in the bow hunting space,
Speaker 2: that I still needed to go hunt a bunch of
Speaker 2: states and try to stack up a few.
Speaker 3: Bucks every season.
Speaker 2: Now, the first trip that I took that first year,
Speaker 2: you know, when we had a pair of ten months
Speaker 2: olds at home, was to North Dakota. I had a
Speaker 2: couple of days to scout and a couple of days
Speaker 2: to bowhunt. I knew that my odds of filling a
Speaker 2: public land buck tag on the bow opener with only
Speaker 2: a couple of days to hunt were not that great.
Speaker 3: It felt mostly like a lost cause.
Speaker 2: Now for a rut hunt, maybe because there's always a
Speaker 2: chance every minute you're out there, But for a first
Speaker 2: of September type of hunt, where morning's reel tough and
Speaker 2: there was likely to be hunters all over, I just
Speaker 2: didn't believe it was going to happen. And so it
Speaker 2: went that way until the last fifteen minutes of the
Speaker 2: last evening, when a decent eight pointer walked in and
Speaker 2: I shot him, and the sun went down, and my
Speaker 2: brain learned something new. A few days is enough time
Speaker 2: if you put in the right effort. Now you might
Speaker 2: be thinking that was more luck than anything, but an
Speaker 2: experience like that does change how you think. And my
Speaker 2: reality went from believing I wouldn't have enough time to
Speaker 2: do what I needed to do to killing quite a
Speaker 2: few deer on very short trips. There was a time
Speaker 2: in my deer hunting career where I could go a
Speaker 2: whole season and not kill a deer, and I promise
Speaker 2: you that there is a zero percent chance I believed
Speaker 2: it would ever be any different from me. I had
Speaker 2: learned one thing and hadn't learned the next thing to
Speaker 2: challenge my worldview. So let's take another example. You've heard
Speaker 2: me talk about snort wheezing a lot, and how I
Speaker 2: do it far more than most folks do, and how
Speaker 2: I'm not afraid to snort wheeze well outside of the
Speaker 2: rut at deer that aren't very likely to be what
Speaker 2: we would consider dominant buck. Until you try it and
Speaker 2: see it work, you're likely to believe what your brain
Speaker 2: tells you, which is it won't work. We've been told
Speaker 2: over and over what that call is, and then when
Speaker 2: it should be used and what deer you should use
Speaker 2: it on. But most of that stuff's bullshit, and you
Speaker 2: can learn why. But we have to get past what
Speaker 2: we think we know, and that is really hard to do.
Speaker 2: Your mind is often not your friend, and the first
Speaker 2: step to rewiring your brain is to understand that that
Speaker 2: is fundamentally true.
Speaker 3: Of all of us.
Speaker 2: At least, it's often not your friend, and we need
Speaker 2: to figure out when that is and what we can
Speaker 2: do about it. Think about it this way. Your body
Speaker 2: is capable of a fair amount of exercise and would
Speaker 2: thrive on a very healthy diet. We all know this,
Speaker 2: But then why do we dread going for a run
Speaker 2: so much, or a lot of us engaging in any
Speaker 2: exercise for the pure sake of getting healthier. We know
Speaker 2: it's objectively a good thing, but man, can we talk
Speaker 2: ourselves out of it? My elk hunting partner, Tyler, looks
Speaker 2: like a male model right now. He's literally one of
Speaker 2: the most jacked people I know, and it makes me
Speaker 2: insanely jealous. But I also know what he's doing to
Speaker 2: get that in shape and how disciplined he is with
Speaker 2: his diet. It's a huge, huge commitment. He also says
Speaker 2: often that people will say to him that they just
Speaker 2: don't have the same amount of time to work out
Speaker 2: as he does, and they say this without knowing a
Speaker 2: thing about his life. Their minds assume that he must
Speaker 2: have unlimited free time, or he has found a way
Speaker 2: to extend his days to twenty eight hours when the
Speaker 2: rest of us are still stuck with the stupid twenty
Speaker 2: four hour. It doesn't work that way. So how do
Speaker 2: we rewire our brains to make them our friends? Aside
Speaker 2: from therapy, which is generally a good call, at least
Speaker 2: on the deer hunting front, you have to think about
Speaker 2: the ways in which you think.
Speaker 3: About your process.
Speaker 2: I'll start with an easy one. If you're being honest,
Speaker 2: with yourself. Do you think you scout enough? I know
Speaker 2: I don't. In fact, after stumbling on a little concentration
Speaker 2: of bucks on some public land in the Big Woods
Speaker 2: last year, I'm forcing myself to get over there a
Speaker 2: couple times this winter. I don't know enough about how
Speaker 2: the deer used that area anymore, and it bothers me.
Speaker 3: Now.
Speaker 2: I know I can show up, read some sign, and
Speaker 2: get in the neighborhood of them, But given that short
Speaker 2: time span for hunts I usually have, it's sometimes just
Speaker 2: not enough. Why not use February in March to go
Speaker 2: look at the land and all of last year's rubs
Speaker 2: and learn something about what they do that I don't
Speaker 2: know about. If I let it, my mind would convince
Speaker 2: me to not make the drive over there and to
Speaker 2: not go scout that ground, because it knows that I
Speaker 2: can get close enough without it, And honestly, I'm sick
Speaker 2: of driving across the Upper Midwest and snowstorms and sleeping
Speaker 2: in hotels and on and on. The mind can spin
Speaker 2: a woeful tale to us that we are always primed
Speaker 2: to believe. But I know something else. I like scouting,
Speaker 2: especially winter scouting, which is going to be the topic
Speaker 2: for next week's podcast. And I know when I just
Speaker 2: force myself to go do it, I feel better. It's
Speaker 2: so simple, but so difficult.
Speaker 3: Sometimes.
Speaker 2: I also know that the more I winter scout, the
Speaker 2: better I feel about deer hunting in general, and that
Speaker 2: makes me want to scout more. It's a positive feedback loop.
Speaker 2: It helps with summertime camera placement, it helps with planning
Speaker 2: out potential stand sites for the whole season, and walking
Speaker 2: a couple thousand acres of big woods in February helps
Speaker 2: me figure things out in Oklahoma or wherever I might
Speaker 2: end up. That might on paper look nothing like that
Speaker 2: big woods up north, but it is like that in
Speaker 2: some ways. So ask yourself, what does your brain tell
Speaker 2: you to do that actively works against your deer hunting
Speaker 2: success or your deer hunting enjoyment. Do you have a
Speaker 2: spot where you can almost always kill a hundred and
Speaker 2: twenty inch deer if you sit long enough during the rut,
Speaker 2: but the one forty plus you really want is still
Speaker 2: a very rare deer doer, talk yourself into the easy
Speaker 2: route and killing the kind of deer that will just
Speaker 2: eventually walk down the trail, even though you secretly want to.
Speaker 3: Level up what do you have to do to rewire
Speaker 3: your brain? There?
Speaker 2: Listen to it when it says you don't really need
Speaker 2: to scout, should stay home instead to watch the NFL playoffs.
Speaker 2: That's probably not the best way to go, right, Let's
Speaker 2: look at it another way, one in which I see
Speaker 2: a lot of folks sabotage themselves. The saddle movement came
Speaker 2: on way strong in the last ten.
Speaker 3: Years, total resurgence.
Speaker 2: It's everywhere in diehard set. Sattle hunters are a little
Speaker 2: like vegans and that they absolutely want you to know
Speaker 2: who they are as people and why they've made the
Speaker 2: choices they've made. But saddle hunting is also wildly effective
Speaker 2: if you know how to do it. You have to
Speaker 2: be willing to learn how to use them effectively, and
Speaker 2: a hell of a lot of saddles end up on
Speaker 2: Facebook marketplace as slightly used items that just didn't do
Speaker 2: it for the owner. I'd be willing to bet a
Speaker 2: lot of those folks bought into the hype but didn't
Speaker 2: learn how to use them well enough to understand where
Speaker 2: they shine and how they can help them kill deer.
Speaker 2: Because they're an amazing tool, but you don't unbox them and
Speaker 2: suddenly use them perfectly. There's a process to it, and
Speaker 2: nature is real good at throwing us curveballs. Maybe the
Speaker 2: tree you thought was super straight isn't because they often
Speaker 2: just aren't. And so your backyard saddle sessions prepping to
Speaker 2: learn how to use it maybe didn't translate very well
Speaker 2: to the spots where bucks actually live. It takes time,
Speaker 2: i'm to rewire your brain. But if you look at
Speaker 2: this example, it would take one stubborn ass hunter to
Speaker 2: say there is zero benefit to being a competent saddle hunter.
Speaker 2: It's almost a guarantee that it will be a positive addition,
Speaker 2: a complimentary addition to almost every hunter's arsenal. But will
Speaker 2: only be that good thing if it is allowed to
Speaker 2: become a good thing through a lot of trial and
Speaker 2: error and learning and confidence building. And when it comes
Speaker 2: to confidence, you know, the confidence to try something new.
Speaker 2: Our mind is definitely often our enemy. We take comfort
Speaker 2: and familiarity, and that's one of the reasons we go
Speaker 2: back to the box blind over and over when we
Speaker 2: know the deer are generally avoiding it at all costs,
Speaker 2: because the hunting pressure of the experience on your property
Speaker 2: is highly concentrated to that one location. Your mind might
Speaker 2: say that's a safe move because the entrance and exit
Speaker 2: routes are so well planned out and you rarely get winded,
Speaker 2: and blah blah blah, but it mostly doesn't want to
Speaker 2: face the reality that the deer habit totally figured out.
Speaker 2: What we can talk ourselves into, hunting wise is bananas.
Speaker 2: Think about the decisions you made last season, and the
Speaker 2: way you hunted the preseason, and how you set things up,
Speaker 2: your time spent e scouting, your overall enjoyment of every
Speaker 2: day that you hunted, or the times you could have
Speaker 2: hunted but you didn't. What was your thinking then, and
Speaker 2: if you're honest about it, what did that thinking give you?
Speaker 2: As far as results, we are generally pretty biased toward
Speaker 2: ourselves and think we are pretty smart people. But if
Speaker 2: that were true, we wouldn't consistently have to elevate big
Speaker 2: bucks to such crazy status because we can't kill them.
Speaker 3: We wouldn't have.
Speaker 2: To find so many reasons to cling.
Speaker 3: To our failure out there. As far as.
Speaker 2: Filling tags goes, we wouldn't have to listen to guys
Speaker 2: like Mark for eight hundred episodes interview the small percentage
Speaker 2: of folks out there who really seem to have it
Speaker 2: figured out, but who also still fail all the freaking time.
Speaker 2: I will say this to wrap things up. If you
Speaker 2: do listen to all eight hundred of those Wired to
Speaker 2: Hunt episodes, or follow the hunting public, or whoever you
Speaker 2: think is the top dog in the white tail space,
Speaker 2: you'll probably notice they often try new things, They often
Speaker 2: deviate from a plan or from conventional wisdom, and just
Speaker 2: often enough they kill big bucks many times on public
Speaker 2: land when it would be a safe bet generally that
Speaker 2: they were going to fail. This isn't due to them
Speaker 2: being able to scout way differently from you or some
Speaker 2: product they bought that just brings the deer in. It's
Speaker 2: because they've learned to learn about deer and to question
Speaker 2: their choices so much that they're willingly try to go
Speaker 2: against their own grain, so to speak, you know, despite
Speaker 2: their mind's insistence that there is a better, easier way,
Speaker 2: but it's just not true very often. So think about
Speaker 2: that as we dive into the heart of winter scouting
Speaker 2: season here, which is what I'm going to talk about
Speaker 2: next week, because as I said, I'm getting all fired
Speaker 2: up to go figure out some big woods Bucks right now.
Speaker 2: That's it for this episode, I'm Tony Peterson. This has
Speaker 2: been the Wired to Hunt Foundations podcast, which is brought
Speaker 2: to you by.
Speaker 3: A First Light.
Speaker 2: I know you're bored as hell right now because it's
Speaker 2: the middle of winter and it kind of sucks. And
Speaker 2: other than nice fishing or maybe shed hunting or something,
Speaker 2: there isn't a lot to do. If you are bored
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Speaker 2: learn something, head over to the medeater dot com. Tons
Speaker 2: of articles, tons of recipes, every podcast you might want
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Speaker 2: Eater has three drops on there. Lots of good stuff
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Speaker 2: Little Girls hunting, you know, Wisconsin, Bear and Deer on
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Speaker 3: Go check it out.