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 I'm going to talk about the
Speaker 2: deer that change us and why those encounters matter so much.
Speaker 2: I've been thinking about this topic for a while, and
Speaker 2: it was during a January dough hunt with one of
Speaker 2: my daughters where I got hit upside the head with
Speaker 2: the reality that some deer just changes Some deer encounters
Speaker 2: just change the arc of our hunting. I hadn't figured
Speaker 2: out why it really matters or what to say about
Speaker 2: it before then, but sometimes the pieces just fall into
Speaker 2: place and the picture becomes so much clearer. So what
Speaker 2: I'm going to talk about now are the moments with
Speaker 2: deer that alter the course of me as a hunter,
Speaker 2: and why you should think about this stuff too, because
Speaker 2: there's something important to be learned from this thought exercise
Speaker 2: that will make you a better hunter. My daughter and
Speaker 2: I walked across a mostly snowless wheat field in southwest
Speaker 2: Wisconsin in the middle of January. Our destination was a
Speaker 2: redneck blind on a clover plot that was situated on
Speaker 2: the top of a bluff above the Mississippi River Valley.
Speaker 2: You'd really have a hard time drawing up sort of
Speaker 2: dreamier deer country than that. I think there is one
Speaker 2: hell of an important education to be had in the outdoors.
Speaker 2: So I had pulled her out of school that day
Speaker 2: to try to get her on a dough or two
Speaker 2: before the clock ran out on the late season there.
Speaker 2: And when we crested the rise and the plot came
Speaker 2: into view, I realized we were about to spook a
Speaker 2: whole herd of them. It didn't matter that they all
Speaker 2: ran off, because I knew that a bunch of them
Speaker 2: would probably come back. The deer density there and that
Speaker 2: part of the state is real high, and they are
Speaker 2: the kind of babysat deer that shake off getting spooked
Speaker 2: pretty easily. To me. It was most meat mission where
Speaker 2: I expected a specific outcome that I really don't expect
Speaker 2: on most of my hunts. We settled into the blind
Speaker 2: opened up one of the windows and my daughter practiced
Speaker 2: aiming with her crossbow. She had a buck tag and
Speaker 2: a dough tag, but the goal was just a good
Speaker 2: shot on a dough now. Naturally, the first year to
Speaker 2: show up were bucks, a button buck and a little
Speaker 2: five pointer. I texted my buddy to gauge his interest
Speaker 2: in her shooting the buck, and he gave her the
Speaker 2: green light, but I also knew that it would probably
Speaker 2: be better if she just shot a dough. Well, the
Speaker 2: bucks made the decision for us anyway, when they spooked. Later,
Speaker 2: a whole bunch of doughs came out and they got
Speaker 2: super close to shooting range, and then all spooked from
Speaker 2: something that we just didn't understand. Later, the floodgates opened
Speaker 2: and we had probably about fifteen of them munching on
Speaker 2: the clover and heading our way. It was truly candy
Speaker 2: land hunting and honestly, just not really my thing. But
Speaker 2: she didn't know that, and after only seeing a handful
Speaker 2: of deer all season in northern Wisconsin and our hunts
Speaker 2: in Minnesota, she was just enjoying every second of being
Speaker 2: snowed in with deer. We were two feet apart, having
Speaker 2: a totally different experience now. When we finally had a
Speaker 2: mature dough feed into her range, I gave her the
Speaker 2: thumbs up and watched as she made an absolutely perfect
Speaker 2: shot that cleared the field except for four doughs that
Speaker 2: didn't seem to have the best survival instincts. I managed
Speaker 2: to get the crossbow cocked again, but they were far
Speaker 2: enough to the side of the blind that she couldn't shoot.
Speaker 2: So she looked at me and she said, you should
Speaker 2: shoot them. It really hadn't occurred to me to do that,
Speaker 2: mostly because I was in the guide mindset, but I
Speaker 2: thought it'd be really nice to cap off our season
Speaker 2: with two more doughs from a property where the deer
Speaker 2: could stand a little thinning than just the one that
Speaker 2: we already had shot. The dough spooked, and I didn't
Speaker 2: really care. We had done what we set out to do,
Speaker 2: and that's about all you can ask out of any hunt.
Speaker 2: She was bummed, and it occurred to me how different
Speaker 2: the experience was for her than me. So when a
Speaker 2: lone dough popped up literally out of nowhere at twenty
Speaker 2: yards and practically begged me to shoot her, my daughter
Speaker 2: looked at me and she said, Dad, you have to.
Speaker 2: So Dad did, and that dough died maybe twenty yards
Speaker 2: from her dough. She was ecstatic, and she said, other
Speaker 2: than the buck we decoyed in last year together, that
Speaker 2: was the coolest hunt she's ever had. Now that kind
Speaker 2: of floored me, honestly. But she doesn't know the same
Speaker 2: challenge as I know, and she isn't wired the same
Speaker 2: way I am. And quite honestly, what I want out
Speaker 2: of a hunt and what she wants out of a
Speaker 2: hunt are just different. That deer, or I should say
Speaker 2: those deer. They didn't represent any real hunting challenge to me,
Speaker 2: but to her it was incredible. And I'll say this
Speaker 2: before I looked like too much of an asshole. The
Speaker 2: whole trip down there to my buddies was so fun
Speaker 2: with her. We made some cheeseburgers that night, watched a
Speaker 2: few hunting shows on TV, and spent the next day butchering.
Speaker 2: On the way home, we stopped at her favorite fast
Speaker 2: food place, which is Arbi's, where they couldn't have screwed
Speaker 2: up our order anymore if they tried, But that didn't matter.
Speaker 2: It was a good weekend for her and for me.
Speaker 2: Even if we got vastly different things out of it.
Speaker 2: The deer she shot and the deer she watched me
Speaker 2: shoot will change her forever. Now you might be thinking that, well,
Speaker 2: no shit, man, when you kill a deer, it's a
Speaker 2: good thing and it changes you for the better. But
Speaker 2: that's not where I want to go with this episode.
Speaker 2: I think about the deer encounters I've had throughout my
Speaker 2: career that put me in a different space and help
Speaker 2: me level up my skills, or made me take blood
Speaker 2: tracking more seriously, or made me feel like absolute shit
Speaker 2: as a human and as a hunter. I think about how,
Speaker 2: in a matter of two seasons I killed two different
Speaker 2: doughs in Minnesota because someone else bumped them directly to me.
Speaker 2: One was a farmer on an ATV that put a
Speaker 2: doll right in my lap, and another was a woodcock
Speaker 2: hunter on public land here in the Cities that pushed
Speaker 2: a trio of doughs from nearly out of rifle range
Speaker 2: to twenty five yards out in broadside, which made me
Speaker 2: think about how often I think of someone else messing
Speaker 2: up my hunts, but never about how they might actually
Speaker 2: do me a favor. About the first time I really
Speaker 2: patterned any deer with trail cameras, and how the first
Speaker 2: morning I hunted acrossing in a swamp here in central
Speaker 2: Minnesota and I saw a specific dough coming that had
Speaker 2: been like clockwork on my camera, it all sort of
Speaker 2: became clearer that this tool that was mostly an interesting
Speaker 2: novelty to me up to that point, could actually be
Speaker 2: much more. You see, we think it's the big bucks
Speaker 2: we killed it matter the most, that changes the most.
Speaker 2: But I don't think so, at least not always. There
Speaker 2: is a tendency to be dismissive about DOES in general,
Speaker 2: often because the biggest trophy hunters out there have places
Speaker 2: where killing DOES is like going to the grocery store.
Speaker 2: But for a lot of us, it's not so simple,
Speaker 2: and it's not so easy. I've talked about this a
Speaker 2: few times, but back in twenty seventeen, I spent six
Speaker 2: days in northern Wisconsin hunting the big woods with a
Speaker 2: buck and a dough tag in my pocket during what
Speaker 2: should have been somewhat of a chase fest. Well, you
Speaker 2: don't get much of a chase fest where there aren't
Speaker 2: very many deep but I did manage to see a
Speaker 2: handful of bucks and doze every dough that got anywhere
Speaker 2: near me busted me, and it started to give me
Speaker 2: kind of a complex. I couldn't get it done with
Speaker 2: quite a bit of time and a lot of whatever
Speaker 2: it is that helps me get it done in other places.
Speaker 2: So when I sat down on my second to last night,
Speaker 2: twenty yards from a pounded trail on the edge of
Speaker 2: a public land creek bottom, and I finally heard the
Speaker 2: footfalls of deer coming, I drew the instant I saw
Speaker 2: a flash of brown in the brush. That old doe
Speaker 2: walked out, looked right at me, and was about to
Speaker 2: spook when I shot. She was more of a challenge
Speaker 2: than most of the big Bucks I've killed, and it
Speaker 2: was a good reminder to me that how we present
Speaker 2: hunting to the masses is rarely a true view of
Speaker 2: what it is actually like out there. For most folks.
Speaker 2: It's not always the deer you kill that change us either.
Speaker 2: We all have the ones we missed that haunt us.
Speaker 2: Adam Moore just wrote a piece for the Mediatter Dot
Speaker 2: about this, which highlights some of our crew's biggest white
Speaker 2: tail misses. They involve, as I'm sure you'd expect, shooting
Speaker 2: at big Bucks. Mostly missing big Bucks sucks a lot,
Speaker 2: But what that teaches us usually is that we have
Speaker 2: buck fever and we just don't want to admit it. Now,
Speaker 2: I know that's not all that newsworthy. There are other
Speaker 2: misses or times when you get caught drawing that sting
Speaker 2: just as much, and that can change you as a hunter.
Speaker 2: There are times when you don't shoot that do as well.
Speaker 2: One of those deer that taught me a real valuable
Speaker 2: lesson was a nice two and a half year old
Speaker 2: eight pointer that was as big as any deer I
Speaker 2: had shot at that time in my life. I was
Speaker 2: in a stand in a poplar tree when he walked
Speaker 2: by during an early morning sit in October. I didn't
Speaker 2: draw or shoot, even though I wanted to kill him badly.
Speaker 2: But I was sitting there with a recurve in my hand,
Speaker 2: and the year before I had killed a doe in
Speaker 2: a very similar buck with it. But the year before
Speaker 2: I shot a lot, and by that I mean a lot.
Speaker 2: I was prepared for that season with that trad bow,
Speaker 2: and the results showed it, but I hadn't practiced enough
Speaker 2: the following season, so when that buck walked through, I
Speaker 2: was terrified to shoot because I expected to screw it. Up.
Speaker 2: That is not a good way to go about the
Speaker 2: whole hunting thing. But that buck arcing into and out
Speaker 2: of my life, and the feeling that I hadn't done
Speaker 2: enough to be confident in a totally doable shot situation
Speaker 2: stuck with me in a way that gives me anxiety
Speaker 2: to write about even now. Nearly two decades later, when
Speaker 2: I first got into the hunting industry and the free
Speaker 2: gear started to show up and the invites to media
Speaker 2: hunts started coming in, I didn't know anything about how
Speaker 2: most of the industry really operated. The first white tail
Speaker 2: and I did for work was in Texas, and it
Speaker 2: was so easy that I could scarcely believe it. I'm
Speaker 2: not saying it wasn't fun, because it was. I saw
Speaker 2: more bucks and more rod activity in one sit that
Speaker 2: I'd seen in an entire season back home. But the
Speaker 2: buck I killed meant really nothing to me, and worse,
Speaker 2: it made me realize how many deer were killed like
Speaker 2: that by people who hadn't worked for them to present
Speaker 2: the image that they really knew what they were doing
Speaker 2: with hunting. Maybe that sounds too harsh, but that first
Speaker 2: Texas buck I killed, and the others that I saw
Speaker 2: come back to camp and Dusty side by sides made
Speaker 2: me realize that the whispers I heard from the audience
Speaker 2: were justified. We were doing things that were easy and
Speaker 2: yet presenting them as something else. It sparks something in
Speaker 2: me that still burns to this day, and I owe
Speaker 2: that to those tiny bodied, big racked Texas deer that
Speaker 2: knew nothing other than to go right to the feeder
Speaker 2: when it turned on. The deer we encounter teach us
Speaker 2: a lot, and if we are open to their lessons,
Speaker 2: we can become better hunters, not just in the skill department,
Speaker 2: although that's undeniably true, but also when it comes to
Speaker 2: our personal ethics. There is nothing that says you have
Speaker 2: to blood trail deer until you're brain dead from exhaustion
Speaker 2: and staring at the leaves for the tiniest, slightest little
Speaker 2: pin prick of blood that tells you he or she
Speaker 2: went this way or that way. You can give it
Speaker 2: a half assed quick grid search the minute things get tough,
Speaker 2: and you're not gonna get arrested. It's not like that.
Speaker 2: Just like you can take the shot when it's a
Speaker 2: half a minute before legal shooting light ends and maybe
Speaker 2: it'll work out. But maybe it won't. No one's gonna
Speaker 2: stop you, and no one will really care. But if
Speaker 2: you find yourself looking at an arrow covered in gut
Speaker 2: material when you know you have to go to work
Speaker 2: in the morning, that almost dark shot takes on a
Speaker 2: different feel, and that can change how you operate from
Speaker 2: here until it's time to hang up your bow forever.
Speaker 2: Sometimes it's just the deer we see do something that
Speaker 2: challenges our thoughts to change us. I've watched fawns hide
Speaker 2: in the grass while dogs and people walk by, and
Speaker 2: they've always made me think about how often mature deer
Speaker 2: must do that to me and other hunters. Does that
Speaker 2: change how I hunt? I don't know. Probably not, but
Speaker 2: it makes me think about this stuff more. So, maybe
Speaker 2: it doesn't. I don't even know it. The bucks that
Speaker 2: we encounter pheasant hunting almost always teach me something about
Speaker 2: how important cover is to them and how much of
Speaker 2: a survival mechanism it is to tuck themselves away into
Speaker 2: that good wind blocking geothermal cover and then sit so
Speaker 2: tight you would bet real good money they aren't there.
Speaker 2: And then when you and your buddies and the dogs
Speaker 2: are about thirty yards past, you hear them get up
Speaker 2: and run like greyhounds out behind you. There are some
Speaker 2: lessons there that will probably would help me if I
Speaker 2: was more of a bed hunter, but maybe they help
Speaker 2: me anyway. I know it doesn't hurt us to learn
Speaker 2: about the quarry we hunt, and those lessons carry a
Speaker 2: hell of a lot more weight than a series of
Speaker 2: trail camera photos usually do. But there are lessons obvious
Speaker 2: and not so obvious in that type of scouting too.
Speaker 2: This will come as no surprise to anyone who regularly
Speaker 2: listens to this show that I sometimes don't know where
Speaker 2: I'm going with these episodes, and the aha moment just
Speaker 2: hits me in time with this one. The biggest takeaway
Speaker 2: I can give you is a parallel to something I
Speaker 2: talk about a lot. If you do the same thing
Speaker 2: over and over, you might kill deer, but you won't
Speaker 2: learn about hunting nearly as much. To many of us,
Speaker 2: that doesn't matter at all, and that's good enough. But
Speaker 2: if you want to get better, if you want to
Speaker 2: meet up with the deer that might teach you something real, valuable,
Speaker 2: you often have to do something a tiny bit outside
Speaker 2: of your comfort zone. The obvious route is to travel
Speaker 2: to hunt, but I'm not going to talk about that here.
Speaker 2: You know how I feel about that and why I
Speaker 2: think it's valuable. Instead, I think it's better to look
Speaker 2: at the year ahead and try to identify those opportunities
Speaker 2: in which you can meet the deer where they'll be
Speaker 2: in a way that you normally wouldn't If you only
Speaker 2: ever run cameras to scout, you might want to get
Speaker 2: out the summer and glass hunt the big woods up north,
Speaker 2: or you're a Southern white tail hunter down in the
Speaker 2: swampy grounds in Louisiana or Florida, Alabama, wherever you might
Speaker 2: not have easy fields to glass, then trail cameras are
Speaker 2: probably a big part of your process, but so should
Speaker 2: winter scouting be, and just walking through the woods at
Speaker 2: any point in the air. If you always sit the
Speaker 2: same three tree stands all fall across your fingers that
Speaker 2: a buck will come by, you have so many options
Speaker 2: to learn something about the deer and encounter them in
Speaker 2: a different way. One of the main reasons I push
Speaker 2: this point is because I don't think most of us
Speaker 2: understand how well the deer actually pattern us. Now. I
Speaker 2: know that's a cliche, but as a rabid pheasant hunter,
Speaker 2: something struck me this year while following my labs around
Speaker 2: the cattails. Pheasants are masters at patterning most hunters. This
Speaker 2: tiny brain disco chicken of a bird that spent most
Speaker 2: of its evolutionary journey in China, of all places, completely
Speaker 2: understands where the hunting pressure originates from and how it's
Speaker 2: going to proceed through their home turf, and those pheasants
Speaker 2: react accordingly to survive. You think deer don't do that better,
Speaker 2: I promise you that they do, and they do it
Speaker 2: to the same level, which might seem crazy until you
Speaker 2: realize the winning result is just them surviving and avoiding us,
Speaker 2: and whether it's a rooster who does that or one
Speaker 2: hundred and forty inch buck, that result is them winning
Speaker 2: and us not making a plan to sit in a
Speaker 2: ground blind or still hunt, or find a new property
Speaker 2: that comes with a whole new set of riddles to
Speaker 2: figure out, or traveling across state lines the first time
Speaker 2: to wade into unfamiliar habitat will eventually expose you to
Speaker 2: the deer that will take what you think you know,
Speaker 2: squat right over it, and piss away. If you're a
Speaker 2: student of the game, that lesson will stick and it
Speaker 2: will usher you into some new phase of hunting and
Speaker 2: of being a better hunter. Not only is that a
Speaker 2: good way to get better at killing deer, but is
Speaker 2: probably the most overlooked and easiest way to learn to
Speaker 2: enjoy the whole thing just a little bit more. So
Speaker 2: think about that and think about coming back next week,
Speaker 2: because I'm gonna talk about stress, which is something we're
Speaker 2: all dealing with in our lives right now, but I'm
Speaker 2: gonna relate it to deer hunting and how we can
Speaker 2: help ourselves relax a little and enjoy hunting more throughout
Speaker 2: the year. That's it. I'm Tony Peterson. This has been
Speaker 2: the Wire to Hunt Foundations podcast, which is brought to
Speaker 2: you by First Light. I want to say thank you.
Speaker 2: I do this every week because I mean it. All
Speaker 2: of your support, all your loyalty. You know, when I'm
Speaker 2: at a shields somewhere and I see somebody in a
Speaker 2: beargreas hat or a meat eater's shirt, whatever's it truly
Speaker 2: means the world to us that you guys show up
Speaker 2: and you support us and we're all kind of on
Speaker 2: the same team together. So thank you for that. If
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