Latest / Wired To Hunt Podcast / Ep. 1056: Foundations - Problem-Based Thinking and The Big Buck Conundrum
Transcript
- 0:01Speaker 1: Welcome to the Wired to Hunt Foundations podcast, your guide
- 0:05Speaker 1: to the fundamentals of better deer hunting, presented by first Light,
- 0:09Speaker 1: creating proven versatile hunting apparel for the stand, saddle or blind.
- 0:14Speaker 1: First Light, Go Farther, Stay Longer, and now your host,
- 0:19Speaker 1: Tony Peterson.
- 0:20Speaker 2: Hey everyone, welcome to the Wired to Hunt Foundation's podcast
- 0:23Speaker 2: was brought to you by first Light. I'm heros Tony Peterson,
- 0:25Speaker 2: and today's episode is all about how we think about
- 0:27Speaker 2: big deer and why that often doesn't do us a
- 0:30Speaker 2: whole lot of good. Metacognitive thinking is a way of
- 0:37Speaker 2: thinking about our thinking. In other words, it's the ability
- 0:41Speaker 2: to examine our thoughts and beliefs and ask ourselves why
- 0:44Speaker 2: we have them, why we hold them, and what they
- 0:47Speaker 2: mean in the context of our lives. This is a
- 0:49Speaker 2: broad topic, but when you start using it in the
- 0:52Speaker 2: realm of deer hunting, you start realizing not only how
- 0:56Speaker 2: we are often our own worst enemies, but also why
- 0:58Speaker 2: so many of us never are rarely ever killed the
- 1:01Speaker 2: big deer that we all want to kill. I'm going
- 1:03Speaker 2: to talk about that right now, and I hope it
- 1:05Speaker 2: helps you get into a place of looking at yourself
- 1:07Speaker 2: as a deer hunter in a whole new light. Truly
- 1:16Speaker 2: successful people tend to think about problems differently from people
- 1:20Speaker 2: who just aren't as successful. This goes for athletes, it's
- 1:23Speaker 2: relevant to business, it applies to relationships, and is generally
- 1:27Speaker 2: true in any facet of life that can be measured
- 1:29Speaker 2: through the lens of success. It works in deer hunting too,
- 1:33Speaker 2: but I'm not quite ready to get there yet. I
- 1:36Speaker 2: read a book recently that veered into the topic of
- 1:38Speaker 2: thinking about how we think, and it offered up an
- 1:40Speaker 2: example of how most people approach issues in their lives.
- 1:43Speaker 2: They view them through a problem based filter. In other words,
- 1:48Speaker 2: let's just say you can't afford to buy a house,
- 1:51Speaker 2: not an uncommon issue in today's world. A problem based
- 1:55Speaker 2: thinker will acknowledge that not only is housing more expensive
- 1:58Speaker 2: than it's ever been, which is pretty much true on
- 2:01Speaker 2: any given year no matter what, but they'll also focus
- 2:04Speaker 2: on why houses are more expensive. The value of the
- 2:08Speaker 2: dollar sucks. The market has gone bonkers, and real estate
- 2:11Speaker 2: prices are just out of whack when it comes to
- 2:13Speaker 2: median incomes. Huge corporate entities bought up all the single
- 2:16Speaker 2: family homes and they're renting them out.
- 2:19Speaker 3: My boss doesn't recognize my.
- 2:20Speaker 2: Work, so I'll never get paid enough to afford a
- 2:22Speaker 2: thirty year loan at six percent.
- 2:25Speaker 3: Any one of these things might be true, or they
- 2:27Speaker 3: might all be true.
- 2:29Speaker 2: But what's also true is that if you look at
- 2:31Speaker 2: it as a huge, unsolvable problem, it will go unsolved.
- 2:35Speaker 2: A solution based approach questions what would need to be
- 2:38Speaker 2: done to be able to put twenty percent down and
- 2:41Speaker 2: safely sign your John Hancock to those mortgage papers? The
- 2:44Speaker 2: dollar has been devalued, how do I get more of them?
- 2:48Speaker 2: Real estate prices right here are just out of touch
- 2:50Speaker 2: with reality. But where are they more in line with
- 2:54Speaker 2: my potential budget? Can I move to one of those
- 2:56Speaker 2: places and find a job? What can I actively do
- 2:59Speaker 2: to change my position in life to be able to
- 3:02Speaker 2: be a first time home buyer? Now, look, I'm not
- 3:05Speaker 2: saying that buying a house is as easy as changing
- 3:07Speaker 2: how you think, but changing how you think will help
- 3:10Speaker 2: you approach problems with solutions, not just an acknowledgment of
- 3:14Speaker 2: the issues that coalesced to create the problem in the
- 3:17Speaker 2: first place. Let's plug this into the deer world for
- 3:20Speaker 2: a second and use an easy example. If you talk
- 3:24Speaker 2: to enough deer hunters across the country. You hear people
- 3:27Speaker 2: say something like this, here in Texas, we don't have
- 3:29Speaker 2: any public land, so it's not worth even trying, or
- 3:33Speaker 2: I don't know. Here in Nebraska, the non residents in
- 3:36Speaker 2: the early rifle season causes all the up and coming
- 3:38Speaker 2: two and three year olds to get shot before they
- 3:40Speaker 2: are mature. If the problem for a Texas hunter is
- 3:44Speaker 2: finding land to hunt, and they believe that there isn't
- 3:46Speaker 2: any public land, then they just need to knock on
- 3:50Speaker 2: doors or find a lease. But everyone knows that leasing
- 3:53Speaker 2: is expensive and knocking on doors is a lost cause.
- 3:56Speaker 2: So it's a done deal that that person will never
- 3:59Speaker 2: have a place to hunt hunt, except that Texas has
- 4:02Speaker 2: like two million acres of public land, and a better
- 4:05Speaker 2: move would be to acknowledge that, figure out how to
- 4:07Speaker 2: hunt it, and then go That Nebraska hunter wants an
- 4:10Speaker 2: excuse to not kill mature bucks, and by Gottley, he
- 4:13Speaker 2: has found it. After all, how can you, as one
- 4:16Speaker 2: lowly residence stop the flow a non residence, You can't,
- 4:20Speaker 2: just like you can't move the gun season out of
- 4:22Speaker 2: the rut just because you want to. Of course, not
- 4:24Speaker 2: too many years ago in Nebraska, win Ahead limited non
- 4:27Speaker 2: residence anyway, which should be a win for that hunter,
- 4:30Speaker 2: But there's still that issue of the rifle season time,
- 4:33Speaker 2: still a good problem to have to keep you from
- 4:35Speaker 2: killing big bucks. A different way to look at it
- 4:38Speaker 2: would be I see pictures all the time of people
- 4:41Speaker 2: killing big bucks in my home state, but I can't
- 4:44Speaker 2: do it. It's clearly possible. It's also clearly true that some
- 4:49Speaker 2: bucks reach maturity, because well, they just do, and the
- 4:52Speaker 2: evidence is everywhere. So a better question to ask himself
- 4:56Speaker 2: is if they can do it, why can't I? What
- 4:59Speaker 2: am mine not doing?
- 5:00Speaker 1: That?
- 5:00Speaker 3: They are the default.
- 5:03Speaker 2: The problem based thinker would go to on this is
- 5:06Speaker 2: to say, well, I don't have access to that really
- 5:09Speaker 2: good land, and you know my job is super busy,
- 5:12Speaker 2: so I only get an a few nights a season whatever.
- 5:15Speaker 2: Instead of looking for how to be more successful, he's
- 5:18Speaker 2: finding more reasons to explain why he's not successful. But
- 5:22Speaker 2: some non resident with four days of PTO in total
- 5:24Speaker 2: can drive to Nebraska and kill a mature buck on
- 5:26Speaker 2: public land. And I know this because not only have
- 5:29Speaker 2: I done it, but so have a lot of people.
- 5:31Speaker 3: I know.
- 5:32Speaker 2: The issue isn't you know that there aren't any big bucks?
- 5:35Speaker 2: On public land or private land for that matter, anymore
- 5:38Speaker 2: than it is due entirely to the amount of time
- 5:40Speaker 2: and an individual gets to put into hunting. There are solutions
- 5:44Speaker 2: to everything, but we often don't look for them. A
- 5:47Speaker 2: metacognitive person would look first not at what the problem
- 5:51Speaker 2: really is and what the solve is, but why they
- 5:55Speaker 2: believe that the problem exists in the first place. They
- 5:58Speaker 2: would examine their own thinking and going, so, why do
- 6:01Speaker 2: I believe that there are no mature bucks out there?
- 6:04Speaker 2: Is it because I never kill them or worse, never
- 6:06Speaker 2: see them while I'm hunting? If the latter is the
- 6:09Speaker 2: most important contributor to that belief, what's the solve?
- 6:13Speaker 3: Is it?
- 6:13Speaker 2: To keep hunting the same way as I always do.
- 6:17Speaker 2: If you think about how you think about things, you
- 6:20Speaker 2: can't help but learn if something isn't working and you
- 6:24Speaker 2: don't change your approach, it will pretty much I always
- 6:27Speaker 2: just not work. I would say that almost every deer
- 6:30Speaker 2: hunter in my life thinks this way, and I did
- 6:33Speaker 2: too for a long, long long time. A good way
- 6:38Speaker 2: to frame this up is this. Let's say you hunt
- 6:40Speaker 2: ten days a season and you never kill bucks over
- 6:43Speaker 2: one hundred and twenty five inches, which is your goal.
- 6:45Speaker 2: An easy way to address that is to say I
- 6:48Speaker 2: need to spend twenty days a season hunting. It's only
- 6:51Speaker 2: a matter of time. But a metacognitive approach would be
- 6:54Speaker 2: more like, I'm putting in enough time to at least
- 6:57Speaker 2: see one, but I'm not. I'm not making progress. So
- 7:01Speaker 2: is it the amount of time I'm spending, or is
- 7:03Speaker 2: it where I'm spending my time? Or is it my
- 7:06Speaker 2: effort with the time I do spend out there. Now
- 7:10Speaker 2: it gets a little muddy. It's not just a matter
- 7:12Speaker 2: of more time, or at least it's often not that,
- 7:16Speaker 2: but it's generally a matter of where and when that
- 7:18Speaker 2: time is put in and how that time is used.
- 7:21Speaker 2: For example, if you spend every sit in the same
- 7:23Speaker 2: stand on the edge of a cornfield all season, your
- 7:25Speaker 2: problem could be solved by sitting a few more, just
- 7:28Speaker 2: different spots. But instead of that, we often ignore the
- 7:31Speaker 2: reality you know, of bucks fighting and buck to dough
- 7:34Speaker 2: ratios and decide that the solution is to rattle in
- 7:37Speaker 2: that spot we want to hunt. But you'd have to
- 7:39Speaker 2: ask yourself why you believe that what's going to work
- 7:42Speaker 2: when you've never rattled in a buck in your life,
- 7:44Speaker 2: let alone ever seen two bucks really fight in person?
- 7:48Speaker 2: Why would you believe that is the solve for your
- 7:50Speaker 2: problems over some other tactics. Likely because it's so easy
- 7:54Speaker 2: to spend most of our energy focusing on what's wrong
- 7:57Speaker 2: instead of acknowledging the problem and then being honest on
- 7:59Speaker 2: how to fix it through a series of different actions. Now,
- 8:03Speaker 2: this isn't about ignoring problems, because that doesn't work at all,
- 8:07Speaker 2: pretending problems don't exist. It's probably why we have a
- 8:09Speaker 2: fifty percent divorce rate in this country. Solution based thinking.
- 8:24Speaker 2: It doesn't change the problem, but it changes the questions
- 8:27Speaker 2: we ask ourselves about the problem. Instead of saying, why
- 8:31Speaker 2: is this happening to me? In reference to eating tag
- 8:34Speaker 2: soup again versus saying I don't know what factors contribute
- 8:37Speaker 2: to my crappy performance and which ones can I influence
- 8:41Speaker 2: for a more positive outcome, Maybe a better one is
- 8:44Speaker 2: instead of saying who's to blame, say what needs to
- 8:49Speaker 2: happen next. The thing about us pesky humans is that
- 8:53Speaker 2: we often know what we need to do, but we
- 8:55Speaker 2: also just don't do those things. We should shoot arrows
- 8:59Speaker 2: every week of the year, but we don't because we
- 9:01Speaker 2: just don't. We should scout more, but we don't because well,
- 9:06Speaker 2: we just don't. We have to put into practice what
- 9:09Speaker 2: we know will help us, but that's really hard. Because
- 9:12Speaker 2: we are creatures of habitat. We have definitive patterns to
- 9:15Speaker 2: our behaviors that we generally aren't willing to change. This
- 9:19Speaker 2: is why most hunters don't kill big bucks, and I
- 9:22Speaker 2: don't know how to put that any other way. It's
- 9:24Speaker 2: also true that most hunters won't look for active solutions
- 9:27Speaker 2: to their problems and will instead dwell on those problems
- 9:30Speaker 2: and use them as the guiding force in their hunting decisions.
- 9:34Speaker 2: If you want to kill big bucks, a huge step
- 9:36Speaker 2: in the right direction is to actively try not to
- 9:38Speaker 2: think like the average hunter. Where this gets wonky is
- 9:42Speaker 2: that most hunters believe that there is a way to
- 9:44Speaker 2: think about deer and big bucks specifically that will reveal
- 9:47Speaker 2: some truth on how to kill them in a way
- 9:50Speaker 2: that capitalizes on weaknesses in a buck's game. If only
- 9:54Speaker 2: I understood buck betting as well as this guy, or
- 9:57Speaker 2: I understood the early season game as much as this
- 10:00Speaker 2: super successful fella. That's great, and learning about you know,
- 10:04Speaker 2: buck betting and early season hunting will help you be
- 10:06Speaker 2: a better hunter. But those hunters didn't become bed hunting
- 10:09Speaker 2: experts or early season hunting experts by just thinking about
- 10:13Speaker 2: those things as problems. They thought about them in a
- 10:15Speaker 2: way that led them to try to find solutions. If
- 10:19Speaker 2: you don't know much about buck betting, the strategy won't
- 10:22Speaker 2: suddenly be totally understandable and actionable because someone tells you how.
- 10:26Speaker 3: They do it.
- 10:28Speaker 2: That might not hurt, But we have to ask yourself,
- 10:31Speaker 2: is how can I learn more about this to implement
- 10:34Speaker 2: it into my hunting strategy. There are a lot of
- 10:37Speaker 2: solutions here. You can scout more at all times of
- 10:40Speaker 2: the year. That's an easy one. And if you scout
- 10:43Speaker 2: to locate beds and then try to figure out why
- 10:45Speaker 2: beds are where they are in January and then in July,
- 10:49Speaker 2: you're going to be better off for it. If you
- 10:51Speaker 2: run a whole bunch of cameras and start paying attention
- 10:53Speaker 2: to where the bucks go in the morning and where
- 10:55Speaker 2: they come from in the evening, you can start to
- 10:57Speaker 2: understand what betting behavior is happening during the day, different
- 11:00Speaker 2: types of the year and during different conditions. The problem
- 11:04Speaker 2: is buck betting is often a mystery, but the solution
- 11:06Speaker 2: isn't to just declare it unknowable and then never put
- 11:09Speaker 2: in any efforts of figuring out what's really going on. Instead,
- 11:13Speaker 2: there are lots of actions you can take to start
- 11:15Speaker 2: to get a better handle on not only where bucks
- 11:18Speaker 2: bet and when, but how you can more accurately predict
- 11:21Speaker 2: buck betting behavior. Let's use another one that has come
- 11:25Speaker 2: across my radar a lot lately.
- 11:26Speaker 3: Wind.
- 11:27Speaker 2: I've written and talked about wind a whole bunch of
- 11:29Speaker 2: my life, but I still hear folks say that bucks
- 11:32Speaker 2: won't move when it's windy. There's nothing in the deer
- 11:34Speaker 2: research that supports this, and there is nothing in my life,
- 11:37Speaker 2: you know, anecdotally that supports this, because it's not true.
- 11:41Speaker 2: Bucks do move when it's windy, because they have to. Now,
- 11:44Speaker 2: if you look at a windy forecast solely through the
- 11:46Speaker 2: lens of that being a problem that will suppress buck movement,
- 11:49Speaker 2: what's the action you take?
- 11:51Speaker 3: Not go hunting.
- 11:53Speaker 2: Of course, that's an easy one, and it'll protect you
- 11:55Speaker 2: from learning the truth. Now, if you look at high
- 11:58Speaker 2: winds as a reason for bucks not to move, and
- 12:00Speaker 2: you do go hunting anyway, what are the odds you
- 12:03Speaker 2: put in max effort? Again, how you're thinking about this
- 12:08Speaker 2: very common factor in hunting influences heavily how you approach hunting. Now,
- 12:13Speaker 2: let's say you have that windy forecast and instead of saying, well, shit,
- 12:17Speaker 2: this sucks now the bucks won't be moving and it
- 12:19Speaker 2: won't be worth hunting, you say that wind is going
- 12:22Speaker 2: to be smoking from the northwest for a few days.
- 12:24Speaker 2: How do I find deer in this near tornado level weather?
- 12:28Speaker 2: The first solve is to sit somewhere where a northwest
- 12:31Speaker 2: wind is good for you and not so good for
- 12:32Speaker 2: the deer. But maybe you want to go deeper, and
- 12:34Speaker 2: you say, if I were a deer that had to
- 12:36Speaker 2: live out here.
- 12:38Speaker 3: What would I do in this wind?
- 12:40Speaker 2: Maybe bed on a ridge with a stout wind at
- 12:42Speaker 2: my backs and no predators can sneak up on me
- 12:44Speaker 2: from behind. Or maybe it's October and the acorns have
- 12:48Speaker 2: been drying up a little, but that wind comes in,
- 12:50Speaker 2: and if you were a deer that was really trying
- 12:52Speaker 2: to pack on the pounds before the rut hits, you'd
- 12:55Speaker 2: go work through an oak ridge and check some of
- 12:57Speaker 2: the trees that were hot for a few weeks earlier
- 12:59Speaker 2: in the month. Maybe that wind is just the dinner
- 13:02Speaker 2: bell ringing when it comes to hard masks or soft mass.
- 13:06Speaker 2: Instead of declaring all of the deer down for the
- 13:08Speaker 2: count when the wind is blowing, ask yourself why you
- 13:12Speaker 2: believe they won't move in the wind. If you still
- 13:15Speaker 2: believe that to be true, ask yourself if that's the
- 13:18Speaker 2: same in Kansas as it would be in, say, I
- 13:21Speaker 2: don't know, Pennsylvania or Georgia. Then ask yourself if that
- 13:25Speaker 2: were also true, would it still be true on November
- 13:28Speaker 2: seventh in southern Iowa? Or would you think that the
- 13:31Speaker 2: rut would be enough to get those bucks cruising even
- 13:34Speaker 2: with sustain thirty mile per hour winds. If we can
- 13:37Speaker 2: get beyond what we believe to think about why we
- 13:39Speaker 2: believe what we believe, as muddy as that sounds, and
- 13:43Speaker 2: we try to figure out ways in which we might
- 13:45Speaker 2: be wrong, we put ourselves on the path to learning
- 13:48Speaker 2: how to actually be right about these things. And look,
- 13:51Speaker 2: it's a hard thing to do. I'm not going to
- 13:53Speaker 2: sit here and tell you I've mastered thinking, because I
- 13:56Speaker 2: can be as pessimistic as the next guy, and I
- 13:58Speaker 2: can find a lot of problems to dwell on. Believe me,
- 14:02Speaker 2: I can find someone to blame for a lot of
- 14:04Speaker 2: things in my life that aren't going the way I
- 14:05Speaker 2: want them to as well. I don't know if there
- 14:08Speaker 2: is anything easier for me than to point the finger
- 14:11Speaker 2: outward before taking a look inward. But it's also true
- 14:14Speaker 2: for me that, at least in the realm of deer hunting,
- 14:17Speaker 2: I've spent a lot of time trying to figure out
- 14:19Speaker 2: how to kill deer when on paper, it's a better
- 14:21Speaker 2: time to stay out of the woods. And what I
- 14:23Speaker 2: found that it's mostly in my head when I decide
- 14:25Speaker 2: that there is an unsolvable deer problem out there. I
- 14:28Speaker 2: firmly believe that most deer hunters would be better off
- 14:30Speaker 2: to approach this thing with the attitude that they're going
- 14:33Speaker 2: to hunt when they can, and because of that, they
- 14:36Speaker 2: need to try to solve for the issues at hand
- 14:38Speaker 2: with each sit in the best way possible. In fact,
- 14:41Speaker 2: a great way to do that would be to think
- 14:42Speaker 2: about what you'd have to do if you didn't have
- 14:44Speaker 2: any calls or sense or lures or decoys or anything
- 14:47Speaker 2: extra like that. If you just had to hunt, maybe
- 14:50Speaker 2: with a mobile set up, maybe on the ground, and
- 14:53Speaker 2: you didn't have that box blind on the food plot
- 14:55Speaker 2: or that go to grunt, call to lean on. How
- 14:58Speaker 2: would you set up to be close to deer in
- 15:00Speaker 2: September or October or November or whenever. What would you
- 15:04Speaker 2: do if you didn't have any crutches but you really
- 15:07Speaker 2: needed to get in range of a deer? How would
- 15:10Speaker 2: you hunt if you needed to kill a big one
- 15:11Speaker 2: to feed your family because there was no other protein available.
- 15:14Speaker 2: Would you go sit the same field a stand over
- 15:17Speaker 2: and over because it's easy, or would you try to
- 15:19Speaker 2: think about the deer and how you think about the
- 15:22Speaker 2: deer and come up with an actionable plan that would
- 15:25Speaker 2: put you in a position to learn and learn until
- 15:27Speaker 2: you got it right.
- 15:29Speaker 3: I bet you do that.
- 15:30Speaker 2: And while that part would take work and action, it
- 15:33Speaker 2: wouldn't come without thinking about the best options for solutions
- 15:37Speaker 2: given your hunting situation. Mull on that because the truth
- 15:41Speaker 2: of how we can all kill big bucks exists out
- 15:43Speaker 2: there in the woods, and it's a matter of how
- 15:45Speaker 2: we plug ourselves into all that nature over and over
- 15:48Speaker 2: until we just get it right. Think solutions, my friends,
- 15:51Speaker 2: not just problems, and come back next week because I'm
- 15:54Speaker 2: going to keep talking about our favorite game animals and
- 15:56Speaker 2: why it's so dang hard to hunt them Sometimes. That's
- 16:00Speaker 2: it for this week. I'm Tony Peterson. This has been
- 16:02Speaker 2: the Wire to Hunt Foundations podcast. Thank you so much
- 16:05Speaker 2: for all of your support. We truly appreciate it here
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