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, everybody, welcome to the Wired to Hunt Foundations 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 shot selection
Speaker 2: and what we often get wrong around when we draw
Speaker 2: on deer and try to shoot them. It's that time
Speaker 2: of year again when I know that on certain nights
Speaker 2: I'll get a text or a phone call about a
Speaker 2: poorly hit deer from someone in my life. This happens
Speaker 2: quite a bit, and it's part of the game. It's
Speaker 2: also true that a lot of folks don't practice enough,
Speaker 2: sometimes take questionable shots, and just don't know how to
Speaker 2: generally address this crucial part of being a bow and
Speaker 2: it is crucial. I believe it, and I believe that
Speaker 2: you can kind of get your reps in a couple
Speaker 2: different ways, and you can rehearse how to get through
Speaker 2: a shot opportunity even if a buck doesn't really follow
Speaker 2: the script, which is what I'm going to explain right now.
Speaker 2: Picture this if you will. You are a bad bear hunter,
Speaker 2: but your twelve year old daughter has a bear tag,
Speaker 2: so you head on over to Wisconsin with a truck
Speaker 2: full of expired circus peanuts and fruit snacks and trail
Speaker 2: mix and cookie dough and banana chips and about sixty
Speaker 2: pounds of generic Swedish fish. You set up a blind
Speaker 2: and a bait site in front of it, but you
Speaker 2: have to put it fairly close because of how tight
Speaker 2: the situation is. You bait the site, You bait your
Speaker 2: buddy's site because you're a good guy, and you wait
Speaker 2: for the dopamine dump that comes when your cell camera
Speaker 2: shows you that Yogi found your goodies and is well
Speaker 2: on his way to type two diabetes. Maybe you have
Speaker 2: some giants come in, like legit three hundred and fifty
Speaker 2: pounds plus types of bears with their bellies nearly hitting
Speaker 2: the ground with every step, but they are nocturnal, as
Speaker 2: big bears often are. But you also have one normal
Speaker 2: size bear, the kind that most people shoot, even though
Speaker 2: everyone says they shoot three hundred pounders, just like everyone
Speaker 2: who bass fishes. Seems to catch six pounders or like
Speaker 2: the one guy at my gym just loads up on
Speaker 2: eight pounders, which is quite a feat in a state
Speaker 2: like Minnesota. I mean, you don't bump up on the
Speaker 2: state record large mouth with a lot of consistency unless
Speaker 2: you're really, really good or I don't know, totally full
Speaker 2: of shit. Anyway, one bear a great bear for anyone,
Speaker 2: let alone a first bear for a seventh grade girl,
Speaker 2: starts coming in pretty regularly, so regularly it's like nothing
Speaker 2: you've ever seen before. For nine days, this bear hits
Speaker 2: the bait in daylight, and it's all you can do
Speaker 2: to even sleep at night, knowing how good that first
Speaker 2: sit is gonna be. So you pull your daughter out
Speaker 2: of school on Friday of the first week of school year,
Speaker 2: by the way, which according to some of the basketball
Speaker 2: moms you talk to, is totally Bunyana's especially to kill
Speaker 2: a poor, innocent, cute little baby bear. Maybe it's one
Speaker 2: of those rare situations in the outdoors where you believe,
Speaker 2: in your hunting heart of hearts that you're going to
Speaker 2: get an easy one finally, and better yet, your daughter
Speaker 2: is going to have an exciting and amazing sit. So
Speaker 2: as you slip into the blind. You know it's just
Speaker 2: a matter of time, but the slow decay of time
Speaker 2: doesn't stop, and soon you're out of light, You're out
Speaker 2: of ideas, and back to the reality of just being
Speaker 2: a terrible bear hunter. Overnight, you check your cell cameras
Speaker 2: about seven thousand times and realize that for some reason,
Speaker 2: the bears are just gonezo. So, with nothing to lose,
Speaker 2: you get up early and decide that it's time for
Speaker 2: an all day sit, or at least dang near an
Speaker 2: all day sit. By the time you get your daughter
Speaker 2: to eat some donuts and get her stuff ready for
Speaker 2: the long haul, And instead of going in and banging
Speaker 2: some bait buckets around and generally announcing to the local
Speaker 2: bears that there are some fresh growls available, you go
Speaker 2: in like a pair of ninjas. Three hours pass she
Speaker 2: falls asleep, and just like that, there's a bear at
Speaker 2: twenty yards enclosing real fast inside that blind. It's straight
Speaker 2: up to your nobyl, but she gets on her crossbow
Speaker 2: and you both watch as the bear puts its nose
Speaker 2: in the air, turns around and walks away. The one
Speaker 2: bear you had to work with just winded you, and
Speaker 2: it feels like curtains for the hunt. But for some reason,
Speaker 2: while you're sitting there in your despair and frustration, you
Speaker 2: want to cry just a little bit. You know. Ten
Speaker 2: minutes later that bear is back, and this time, after
Speaker 2: about five hundred careful sniffs of the air, it makes
Speaker 2: its way to the logs piled over the bait. You
Speaker 2: whisper to her to take the first good shot, because
Speaker 2: it's a situation that could be over in the matter
Speaker 2: of one errant breeze, which feels more likely by the
Speaker 2: second you know more than utter that sentence. Then the
Speaker 2: bear climbs up on the logs, sits down like a dog,
Speaker 2: and the crossbow goes off, surprising both you and Yogi.
Speaker 2: It never occurred to you that the first good shot
Speaker 2: would look like that, but it wasn't your call, and
Speaker 2: you don't even have a chance to really think about
Speaker 2: it before you hear the death mone All's well, that
Speaker 2: ends well, I guess now you may have guessed, but
Speaker 2: that wasn't actually a made up hypothetical, but a very
Speaker 2: trimmed down version of a recent bear hunt I had
Speaker 2: with my daughter, which I might add was one of
Speaker 2: the most badass experiences I've had in the outdoors, even
Speaker 2: if it ended up with me having to butcher a
Speaker 2: bear and find someone to make a rug out of it,
Speaker 2: which might end up costing me more than a year
Speaker 2: of tuition at a state school. Although it's been a
Speaker 2: few years since I walked the hallowed halls of our
Speaker 2: finest institutions, the first good shot. It's a rule that
Speaker 2: we all should know, we should probably all follow. We
Speaker 2: should all admit that we often don't really understand what
Speaker 2: it means at a deeper level, though on the surface
Speaker 2: it just means what it says. If that buck walks
Speaker 2: in and he's twenty seven yards out and you are
Speaker 2: very confident and he's roadside, are quartering away, why wait?
Speaker 2: You know, maybe he looks like he's going to walk
Speaker 2: into fifteen and that would be better, But that's also
Speaker 2: a gamble. Another buck could walk in and mess things up.
Speaker 2: He could turn right around and leave. You could feel
Speaker 2: a slight breeze on your back, you know, on the
Speaker 2: back of your neck, like you do out west all
Speaker 2: the time when you're elk hunting. Whatever else could happen.
Speaker 2: Close Proximity is why bow hunting is so awesome, but
Speaker 2: also why it's so difficult. It's easy to get busted
Speaker 2: when they're right in your lap. What take the first
Speaker 2: good shot means on a deeper level is that you
Speaker 2: have to let the deer tell you when to shoot.
Speaker 2: In hunting, probably a lot of other things in life,
Speaker 2: we get an idea in our head of how, you know,
Speaker 2: either we want things to go down or how it
Speaker 2: will go down. This happens a lot when we are
Speaker 2: redlining from adrenaline and the buck we've been waiting on
Speaker 2: all season is right there. We think all he has
Speaker 2: to do has walked ten more feet down the row
Speaker 2: of beans across the river like they always do, and
Speaker 2: just pose up at eighteen yards. But when we wait
Speaker 2: for that to happen, deer just tend to do other stuff.
Speaker 2: I almost never killed deer exactly how I envision it,
Speaker 2: unless I'm on a really really good terrain trap or
Speaker 2: sitting on a kill plot where they just kind of
Speaker 2: naturally position themselves. What happens mostly is I expect them
Speaker 2: to do something and they just do something else, And
Speaker 2: often I think, shit, I should have shot the first
Speaker 2: time he walked in, but I didn't. And now a
Speaker 2: higher level of panic is settling in because now it's
Speaker 2: going a different way than I expected it to. This
Speaker 2: is where bad shots happen and stupid decisions are made.
Speaker 2: I'll get to a few of those in a second,
Speaker 2: but let me tell you a story from last season
Speaker 2: about a deer I felt like I almost didn't get
Speaker 2: because I was waiting for a better shot. It was
Speaker 2: the last day of a four day shoot here in Minnesota,
Speaker 2: and I hadn't had a good opportunity at anything but
Speaker 2: a couple of scrap in a couple of does, but
Speaker 2: even they had all young fawns, so I hadn't even
Speaker 2: really got close to drawing my bow yet. And for
Speaker 2: the last sit, I walked with my cameraman through a
Speaker 2: bean field and saw that it was browsed like crazy,
Speaker 2: and there were also a lot of acorns in there
Speaker 2: on the edges of that field as well, and the
Speaker 2: whole corner of the field was just buzzing with deer sign.
Speaker 2: I had intended to go much deeper to a different stand,
Speaker 2: but walking past that much sign is dumb. So I
Speaker 2: got into a backup stand that my buddy and I
Speaker 2: had hung there during the summer, and as the light faded,
Speaker 2: two bucks hit the field behind us. One was a
Speaker 2: little six pointer, and the other was a really nice
Speaker 2: ten pointer. The ten pointer was feeding in a row
Speaker 2: right behind that little buck. When the little buck hit
Speaker 2: my best shooting lane, he cut right to the stand
Speaker 2: and then took a trail ten yards in front of us,
Speaker 2: and it was perfect. Now, I figured that the bigger deer,
Speaker 2: which was browsing away at like thirty yards, would do
Speaker 2: the exact same thing, so I didn't shoot, but he
Speaker 2: didn't do the same thing. He turned around and started
Speaker 2: staring back up the field edge, and it looked a
Speaker 2: little bit wiggy. I don't know what he was looking at.
Speaker 2: I don't know what he heard or smelled, But all
Speaker 2: of a sudden, the whole vibe change. My best shot opportunity,
Speaker 2: the one I was counting on, even though I could
Speaker 2: have already shot him several times, went up in smoke.
Speaker 2: And then I had more panic in my heart, in
Speaker 2: my head, more bad thoughts telling me to rush things
Speaker 2: before he leaves. And he looked like he might leave.
Speaker 2: I waited for him to turn and open up to
Speaker 2: a broadside shot, but he stopped slightly. According to it
Speaker 2: was an ideal, but I was in kill mode. It
Speaker 2: was definitely a very doable shot, and I hit him
Speaker 2: right where I needed to. But I didn't have to
Speaker 2: take that shot. I had a better shot earlier. In fact,
Speaker 2: I had multiple opportunities to take a shot on that
Speaker 2: deer at absolutely doable effective range, and I opted out.
Speaker 2: I let perfect be the enemy of good enough, and
Speaker 2: it nearly cost me that deer. That type of thinking
Speaker 2: has gotten me before. Maybe I'm just a slow learner,
Speaker 2: but you can learn from my stupidity. If you have
Speaker 2: a shot where you are very confident you can make it,
Speaker 2: just take it, honestly, take it. Maybe in some situations
Speaker 2: where they are coming into water or something where they
Speaker 2: are very likely to position themselves better. Maybe. Wait, but
Speaker 2: I lost one hundred and fifty inch Wisconsin buck a
Speaker 2: few years ago thinking like that, So I don't know.
Speaker 2: I'm a little cagy. I had him dead to rights
Speaker 2: and then he caught me dead to rights in what
Speaker 2: was seven minutes of sheer panic that broke his way.
Speaker 2: How do you know what shot is your best first shot? Though?
Speaker 2: Well that's up to you. But the best way to
Speaker 2: get really confident in that situation is to just shoot more. Dear,
Speaker 2: The thing about this is you might have done this
Speaker 2: yourself or you have. I doubtedly heard people say this
Speaker 2: that they could have shot this buck or that buck,
Speaker 2: or they could have stacked up the doze. Passing up
Speaker 2: deer gives us a lot of confidence that we could
Speaker 2: have killed deer. But let me tell you something, until
Speaker 2: you pick up that bow, draw aim, and execute a
Speaker 2: good shot, there is no such thing as you definitely
Speaker 2: would have without a doubt, killed that deer. About twelve
Speaker 2: years ago, I snuck in and hung a stand on
Speaker 2: a small river bottom in Nebraska to try to arrow
Speaker 2: a public land buck. The trip wasn't going all that great,
Speaker 2: but I was still on the fence about what i'd shoot.
Speaker 2: When I saw a scrapper seven pointer coming in on
Speaker 2: the exact trail I was set up to cover, I
Speaker 2: realized that my standards were down to exactly a scraper
Speaker 2: seven pointer. I took it for granted that the tenderloins
Speaker 2: of that young, lust filled buck would be sizzling on
Speaker 2: my open fire later that day. All I had to
Speaker 2: do was let him get into range, turn a bit
Speaker 2: in my stand, stop him, and kill him. Simple right,
Speaker 2: Except when I turned a little bit in my stand,
Speaker 2: one of those bootloop grammet things that Almost all hunting
Speaker 2: boots have caught on the cable of my stand that
Speaker 2: holds up the seat platform connects the whole thing, and
Speaker 2: it causes little ping sound that was enough to take
Speaker 2: a sure thing and make it a not going to
Speaker 2: happen thing. Little stuff like that happens when deer are
Speaker 2: super close, and they rarely make it easier for us
Speaker 2: to fill our tag when something goes down like that,
Speaker 2: if you have the chance to go out and take
Speaker 2: more shots that actual deer, do it. I have to
Speaker 2: say this so people don't get pissed now. I'm not
Speaker 2: advocating shooting deer just to get better at shooting deer.
Speaker 2: They're not good for living target practice. Don't do that.
Speaker 2: Shoot them because you want to eat them or someone
Speaker 2: else wants to eat them. But try to find a reason,
Speaker 2: a good reason to fill more tags. It'll make you
Speaker 2: more of a killer. This honestly changes everything about taking
Speaker 2: shots on deer, in my opinion. You learn much better
Speaker 2: about when exactly to time your draw, when to stop
Speaker 2: them with a little mirp or let them go naturally,
Speaker 2: and where your point of impact needs to be at
Speaker 2: all times when a deer is close and moving and
Speaker 2: eating and scratching its nose and doing deer things when
Speaker 2: it decides for whatever reason to circle the pond and
Speaker 2: not drink, but instead of standing the brush at twenty
Speaker 2: seven yards nibbling away on something tasty. That's the kind
Speaker 2: of situations I'm talking about. You learn to take the
Speaker 2: gift and open it right away instead of setting it
Speaker 2: aside for the perfect moment. Because in this case, not
Speaker 2: only do deer often do what we just don't expect,
Speaker 2: they are more likely to spook or get wiggy the
Speaker 2: more they spend time in close proximity to us. This
Speaker 2: is the worst case scenario when you've already slipped into
Speaker 2: killer mode. And this happens a lot. You take a
Speaker 2: sure thing encounter and suddenly, before you know it, the
Speaker 2: buckets put his nose up in the air and his
Speaker 2: eyes are bugging out, and suddenly he walks straight away.
Speaker 2: He does that thing where they bound ten yards farther out,
Speaker 2: stops and stares. This is a time when a lot
Speaker 2: of deer either get shot at, missed, or hit poorly.
Speaker 2: Happens a lot. It's sometimes unavoidable and just breaks that way.
Speaker 2: But it also sometimes happens because we don't take the
Speaker 2: first shot we can. It also happens when we aren't
Speaker 2: paying attention, or can be a consequence of us not
Speaker 2: quite having the lead time we need to get ourselves
Speaker 2: ready for the first good shot. I don't know how
Speaker 2: to address this because I'm as guilty of anyone else,
Speaker 2: But if you're in a situation where you might not
Speaker 2: hear them coming for a ways, it's best to pay
Speaker 2: attention when a deer surprises you. And believe me, I
Speaker 2: know this from experience, is suddenly a matter of how
Speaker 2: far out they are and what their trajectory is like.
Speaker 2: This is a time of panic, and again might not
Speaker 2: work out all that well shot wise during the run.
Speaker 2: That's going to happen quickly, and it rarely results in
Speaker 2: a dead buck. If you're deep into Instagram and not
Speaker 2: paying attention to the world around you, there is nothing
Speaker 2: worse than getting caught off guard and missing a prime
Speaker 2: shot opportunity. Because we are all addicted to the algorithms,
Speaker 2: there is nothing like the panic that settles in when
Speaker 2: you realize you already missed your first good shot opportunity
Speaker 2: because of pure operator error. In that case, you stack
Speaker 2: the odds against yourself in a way that becomes apparent quickly.
Speaker 2: That doesn't mean you won't get another shot opportunity. You
Speaker 2: certainly might, but you might not, or you might and
Speaker 2: not be as calm and prepared as you could have been.
Speaker 2: Both are potential outcomes, and neither are all that great.
Speaker 2: This part used to be the most frustrating for beginning
Speaker 2: hunters because it wasn't that long ago when it was
Speaker 2: just a lot harder to get close to deer. We
Speaker 2: didn't have as many deer thirty years ago, we didn't
Speaker 2: have the cameras or the blinds are the great clothing
Speaker 2: that we have now. It just wasn't as easy to
Speaker 2: sit undetected in the woods as it is now, so
Speaker 2: when you had one get close, it was go time,
Speaker 2: and often go time went wrong. Today, at least for
Speaker 2: a lot of hunters, it's easier to deer close, have
Speaker 2: more information and way better hunting gear, but that doesn't
Speaker 2: make it easier to be closer sometimes, and it doesn't
Speaker 2: make it easier to be a closer. People still have
Speaker 2: to work through that stage. And while it can be
Speaker 2: easier to keep your stuff together on a year link
Speaker 2: dough than it is on one hundred and sixty five
Speaker 2: inch non typical. You want to be able to read
Speaker 2: both encounters and choose the first good shot you get,
Speaker 2: no matter what deer it is. And I know which
Speaker 2: one of those deer is more likely to give you
Speaker 2: an opportunity, and that's an important distinction. But we run
Speaker 2: our own races, my friends. You can shoot what you want,
Speaker 2: but you should think about this as you get into
Speaker 2: the season and start to have some encounters with real, live,
Speaker 2: actual white tail deer. Now I don't advocate drawing on
Speaker 2: and aiming at non target deer because that means there
Speaker 2: is a small chance you'll actually shoot somehow, But I
Speaker 2: do think it's a good idea to go through the
Speaker 2: rest of the motions when deer come in. If you
Speaker 2: feel like they won't get you busted, think through how
Speaker 2: you'll stand up, if you're going to stand up, or
Speaker 2: switch sides in your saddle, or pick your bow up
Speaker 2: in your blind, do whatever you have to do in
Speaker 2: order to take the first high odd shot opportunity. And
Speaker 2: this might seem dumb, but it's not. If you get
Speaker 2: the reps in of just rehearsing how you're gonna get
Speaker 2: close there, and that buck walks in, that's only a
Speaker 2: little fork and you know you're not going to shoot him,
Speaker 2: it's still valuable to stand up and turn and get
Speaker 2: into position to shoot and watch how he reacts and
Speaker 2: watch how he moves through the landscape by your stand
Speaker 2: when you're ready to shoot, even if you might not shoot,
Speaker 2: because it's different than sitting there kind of watching them
Speaker 2: go through. It'll be a great opportunity for you if
Speaker 2: a really big buck comes into that stand four weeks
Speaker 2: later in the season, or if you're on a different
Speaker 2: stand three years down the road, because this is a
Speaker 2: skill that can be developed and worked on continually, and
Speaker 2: it's a guarantee that at some point, if you keep hunting,
Speaker 2: you're gonna need it. So think about that, Do that,
Speaker 2: and come back next week because I'm going to drop
Speaker 2: a whole bunch of Foundations episodes in honor of our
Speaker 2: white Tail Week. That's it for this episode. I'm Tony Peterson.
Speaker 2: This has been the Wired to Hunt Foundation's podcast, brought
Speaker 2: to you by First Light. As always, thank you so
Speaker 2: much for listening, for checking in, for all of your support.
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