Latest / Wired To Hunt Podcast / Ep. 1074: 10 Greatest Whitetails Lessons We’ve Learned Missing Big Bucks with Tony Peterson

Transcript

Ep. 1074: 10 Greatest Whitetails Lessons We’ve Learned Missing Big Bucks with Tony Peterson · Wired To Hunt Podcast

• 0:01
  Speaker 1: Welcome to the Wired2Hunt podcast, your guide to the whitetail woods.
• 0:06
  Speaker 1: Presented by First Light, creating proven, versatile hunting apparel for
• 0:10
  Speaker 1: the stand, saddle, or blind. First Light, go farther, stay longer.
• 0:16
  Speaker 1: And now, your host, Mark Kenyon. Welcome to the Wired2Hunt podcast.
• 0:22
  Speaker 1: This week in the show, I'm joined by Tony Peterson
• 0:25
  Speaker 1: to discuss our top 10 greatest whitetail lessons learned from
• 0:30
  Speaker 1: our worst hunters.
• 0:31
  Speaker 2: Hunting fails. That means the big bucks we've missed. All right,
• 0:40
  Speaker 2: welcome back to the Wired Ton podcast brought to you
• 0:43
  Speaker 2: by Moultrie. Today I'm joined by Tony Peterson. one of
• 0:47
  Speaker 2: my good friends, my right-hand man here at Wired to Hunt,
• 0:50
  Speaker 2: and one of the best DIY whitetail hunters that I know.
• 0:54
  Speaker 2: And we are going to be discussing some of our
• 0:57
  Speaker 2: very most important whitetail lessons learned over the course of
• 1:00
  Speaker 2: our lifetimes. And those lessons learned from our toughest moments,
• 1:04
  Speaker 2: those moments in which we came so close to success,
• 1:08
  Speaker 2: but instead failed because we missed. So we're going to
• 1:12
  Speaker 2: share 10 different examples of misses that we've had on
• 1:15
  Speaker 2: big bucks and then break down the lessons that we
• 1:19
  Speaker 2: learned from those mistakes. Now, some of these fails, some
• 1:22
  Speaker 2: of these mistakes, some of these lessons learned are related
• 1:25
  Speaker 2: to actually the miss itself, shooting, how to execute in
• 1:29
  Speaker 2: those moments. But then also some of these lessons learned,
• 1:32
  Speaker 2: some of these mistakes are actually related to larger hunting strategy,
• 1:36
  Speaker 2: larger hunting, kind of philosophical questions, even decision making, all
• 1:43
  Speaker 2: of that. So what we discussed today is is relevant
• 1:46
  Speaker 2: to becoming a better hunter in many, many different ways.
• 1:49
  Speaker 2: This is just, this is not just about shooting. This
• 1:52
  Speaker 2: is about making good decisions, strong deer hunting strategies, how
• 1:57
  Speaker 2: to make the most of your season in so many
• 1:59
  Speaker 2: different ways. So that is the game plan for today.
• 2:02
  Speaker 2: Before we get to that very briefly, I want to
• 2:04
  Speaker 2: let you know that today, September 24th, 2026, we are
• 2:07
  Speaker 2: kicking off whitetail week at meat eater. That means there's
• 2:11
  Speaker 2: going to be even more Whitetail articles, films, shows, podcasts,
• 2:16
  Speaker 2: social media, all sorts of stuff over at TheMeatEater.com, The
• 2:21
  Speaker 2: Meat Eater YouTube channel, our social media pages. Wherever you
• 2:24
  Speaker 2: interact with Meat Eater stuff over the next week from
• 2:27
  Speaker 2: September 24th through, I think, October 4th, it's Whitetail everywhere.
• 2:32
  Speaker 2: We are just going to be celebrating the greatest big
• 2:34
  Speaker 2: game animal in the world for this whole period. I'm
• 2:38
  Speaker 2: stoked about it. It's going to be great. There is
• 2:40
  Speaker 2: also The ultimate whitetail giveaway is what we're calling it.
• 2:44
  Speaker 2: There is something like more than $ 23, 000 in prizes that
• 2:47
  Speaker 2: you can enter to win. Stuff like a SIG rifle
• 2:51
  Speaker 2: and binos, Moultrie cameras, First Light gift card, new First
• 2:55
  Speaker 2: Light whisper down jacket and pant, all sorts of stuff.
• 2:58
  Speaker 2: Tethered saddle setup, really good stuff. You can learn more
• 3:02
  Speaker 2: about that and enter at firstlight.com. So that's my quick plug.
• 3:06
  Speaker 2: Let's get to the chat with me and Tony Peterson.
• 3:09
  Speaker 2: I think this is an important one for all of
• 3:11
  Speaker 2: us to listen to now that whitetail seasons are kicking off.
• 3:15
  Speaker 2: We're all going to be faced with some tough situations.
• 3:17
  Speaker 2: Mistakes will happen. How do we learn from them? How
• 3:20
  Speaker 2: do we grow from them? Here we go. All right,
• 3:26
  Speaker 2: here with me now on the line is my right-hand man, Mr.
• 3:31
  Speaker 2: Tony Peterson. Welcome to the show, Tony.
• 3:33
  Speaker 3: Thanks for having me, buddy.
• 3:35
  Speaker 2: It's that time of year when this show comes out.
• 3:38
  Speaker 2: It's going to be September, I don't know, mid-September-ish. So
• 3:44
  Speaker 2: either hunting seasons are already open for people or will
• 3:46
  Speaker 2: be any day now. I got to ask, do you
• 3:50
  Speaker 2: feel ready for it?
• 3:52
  Speaker 3: Man, I feel pretty good about this year, dude. I've
• 3:58
  Speaker 3: put in a fair amount of work, done a lot
• 4:00
  Speaker 3: of scouting, got a bunch of setups out there. I
• 4:03
  Speaker 3: was really excited for the Wisconsin opener and the Minnesota
• 4:06
  Speaker 3: opener because they're happening on different weekends this year. My
• 4:09
  Speaker 3: Wisconsin opener plans with the girls got changed. I got
• 4:11
  Speaker 3: to go to a funeral. It's a bad deal. So
• 4:13
  Speaker 3: I'm going to try to maybe pull them out of
• 4:14
  Speaker 3: school or something. But just generally, with what I have
• 4:17
  Speaker 3: planned for September, I'm pretty stoked, dude. Good.
• 4:21
  Speaker 2: Me and Dan... talked on the last episode I was
• 4:26
  Speaker 2: on about our plans and all of our hopes and
• 4:29
  Speaker 2: dreams and things we've got going on for this for
• 4:32
  Speaker 2: this upcoming season but we also had a really good
• 4:35
  Speaker 2: time ragging on you for not being able to figure
• 4:38
  Speaker 2: out the technology to be able to join us for
• 4:40
  Speaker 2: that one so so I'm glad to hear you're feeling
• 4:44
  Speaker 2: ready because we were we were discussing and wondering if
• 4:47
  Speaker 2: you did or not or if your hunting season prep
• 4:49
  Speaker 2: was as poor as your podcast prep.
• 4:52
  Speaker 3: I love that because every time you guys do something
• 4:54
  Speaker 3: like that, I just look around my trophy room at
• 4:56
  Speaker 3: all the big public land bucks on the walls, and
• 4:59
  Speaker 3: it makes me happy.
• 5:01
  Speaker 2: That's good. And I just look at all my books.
• 5:04
  Speaker 3: Hey, I've got to tell you something. One of my
• 5:10
  Speaker 3: buddy's kids drew a bear tag in Wisconsin. And I
• 5:14
  Speaker 3: make fun of you a lot for butterflies in, in, in,
• 5:19
  Speaker 3: on lots of different platforms. I was going to say
• 5:21
  Speaker 3: many different ways, many different times.
• 5:22
  Speaker 2: Yes.
• 5:23
  Speaker 3: But I actually saw some butterfly behavior when I was
• 5:27
  Speaker 3: getting those bear bait buckets ready to go to hike
• 5:30
  Speaker 3: them into the swamp. I don't know if you've ever
• 5:32
  Speaker 3: seen like the butterfly rut. Have you ever watched that?
• 5:36
  Speaker 3: It's incredible. I saw these, it was like a little
• 5:38
  Speaker 3: butterfly cyclone. And I was like, man, that's super cool.
• 5:41
  Speaker 3: And I was watching it and it just, They were
• 5:43
  Speaker 3: doing crazy maneuvers, and then all of a sudden one
• 5:46
  Speaker 3: of them would peel off and land, and then another
• 5:48
  Speaker 3: one would peel off and land. And I went home
• 5:49
  Speaker 3: and I looked it up, and it's like a display
• 5:52
  Speaker 3: of their prowess to fly all over and do these
• 5:56
  Speaker 3: cool maneuvers, and a bunch of dudes will be up
• 5:58
  Speaker 3: there flying, and there'll be one female. Part of it
• 6:01
  Speaker 3: is they release a pheromone, so there's like a scent
• 6:03
  Speaker 3: component involved in it too to show her that they're ready.
• 6:07
  Speaker 3: But part of it is just them posturing up and
• 6:09
  Speaker 3: doing the butterfly version of like, badass shit. And then
• 6:14
  Speaker 3: she just chooses somehow flies off and that guy knows.
• 6:17
  Speaker 3: And it's like this crazy behavior that, you know, it's
• 6:20
  Speaker 3: probably happened around me 5,000 times and I've never noticed it,
• 6:24
  Speaker 3: but I just happened to be sitting there and I'm like,
• 6:26
  Speaker 3: Oh my God, like that's super cool. So in some
• 6:29
  Speaker 3: ways I'm with you on the butterfly thing, buddy.
• 6:33
  Speaker 2: You know, we could have a whole podcast about the
• 6:35
  Speaker 2: butterfly rut. Maybe we'll save that for November. I'm sure
• 6:39
  Speaker 2: that for people would love that.
• 6:41
  Speaker 3: What butterflies teach us about mature bucks.
• 6:44
  Speaker 2: Uh-huh. But in all seriousness, you did have a better
• 6:48
  Speaker 2: idea than that, which is our topic for today's episode. With,
• 6:52
  Speaker 2: you know, with seasons kicking off right now or very
• 6:55
  Speaker 2: soon for many people, you know, I've been thinking like, hey,
• 6:59
  Speaker 2: what's a good way that you and I could, you know,
• 7:02
  Speaker 2: come together to kick off the season with something like
• 7:04
  Speaker 2: very actionable, something very, you know, information-packed, experience-packed that anybody
• 7:11
  Speaker 2: could listen to, whether they are a new deer hunter
• 7:13
  Speaker 2: or have been doing this for a thousand years. And
• 7:15
  Speaker 2: they could say, all right, this is something that can
• 7:16
  Speaker 2: be either a good reminder for me or give me
• 7:19
  Speaker 2: some new ideas to consider or prepare me for something
• 7:22
  Speaker 2: I've yet to experience myself. What could that be? And
• 7:25
  Speaker 2: you and I bounced a couple ideas around and you
• 7:28
  Speaker 2: struck on a topic that I thought would be both
• 7:31
  Speaker 2: painful and very helpful, which is kind of this idea
• 7:36
  Speaker 2: of the greatest lessons that we've learned from missing big bucks, right?
• 7:42
  Speaker 2: I think we hear from people a lot of times
• 7:44
  Speaker 2: talking about what they learned from killing all these big bucks,
• 7:47
  Speaker 2: but what about our mistakes? What have we learned from
• 7:50
  Speaker 2: the times we really screwed it up? Do you, do
• 7:53
  Speaker 2: you feel like that is, and we've, we've, we've kind
• 7:56
  Speaker 2: of explored the edges of this sometimes in the past,
• 7:59
  Speaker 2: but do you think you learn more from your wins
• 8:01
  Speaker 2: or your losses?
• 8:04
  Speaker 3: Uh, Probably the losses just because they happen so much
• 8:07
  Speaker 3: more often. I mean, just generally, but I also think,
• 8:11
  Speaker 3: you know, I guess I don't know where, where you
• 8:14
  Speaker 3: went with this topic. We'll find out. But what I find,
• 8:17
  Speaker 3: and I do this all the time is people want
• 8:20
  Speaker 3: to know about big bucks, right? Like they want to
• 8:22
  Speaker 3: know where do they bed? What do they do? Why
• 8:24
  Speaker 3: do they leave sign here and not there? Whatever. Yeah.
• 8:27
  Speaker 3: And we focus so heavily on big buck behavior, but,
• 8:31
  Speaker 3: most of the success that we find, or at least
• 8:34
  Speaker 3: a huge portion of it is just our decision-making, right?
• 8:37
  Speaker 3: Like it's, it's, it's an exercise where we think we
• 8:41
  Speaker 3: have to learn about the deer, but we really need
• 8:43
  Speaker 3: to also be learning about ourselves. And I think when
• 8:47
  Speaker 3: you talk about missing big bucks, you can use those,
• 8:51
  Speaker 3: those times, those events as, you know, as a way
• 8:54
  Speaker 3: to learn about yourself or not. And if you don't,
• 8:59
  Speaker 3: you're probably in trouble. And it's not that much fun
• 9:02
  Speaker 3: to face because it is a failure. It's a big failure,
• 9:05
  Speaker 3: especially if you do it on film. That really sucks.
• 9:07
  Speaker 3: But even just doing it when you're out there and
• 9:09
  Speaker 3: nobody's watching really sucks too. So that's kind of the
• 9:11
  Speaker 3: approach I took with it. And I think you can
• 9:14
  Speaker 3: learn a lot about yourself and how to proceed by
• 9:18
  Speaker 3: paying attention to these kind of failures.
• 9:21
  Speaker 2: And I think I would piggyback on that and I'd
• 9:23
  Speaker 2: say that by learning about yourself, you then better position
• 9:28
  Speaker 2: yourself for more deer hunting success.
• 9:30
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 9:30
  Speaker 2: Right. To your earlier point, the assumption is that I
• 9:33
  Speaker 2: need to learn about deer. I need to learn about
• 9:35
  Speaker 2: deer sign, deer behavior, deer movement, whatever. But sometimes it's
• 9:40
  Speaker 2: learning about this thing or learning about how you deal
• 9:42
  Speaker 2: with challenges or deal with adversity or deal with a
• 9:45
  Speaker 2: tough decision. That sometimes, as you mentioned, is more important
• 9:48
  Speaker 2: than anything. So Why don't you kick things off? Give
• 9:52
  Speaker 2: me your first example, your first lesson learned tied to
• 9:56
  Speaker 2: a miss, and then let's kind of see how we
• 9:58
  Speaker 2: can generate some work. widely applicable, you know, lessons that,
• 10:02
  Speaker 2: that anybody could take from this stuff.
• 10:04
  Speaker 3: So the, the first one that I put down that
• 10:07
  Speaker 3: I think is the most important, cause it's sort of
• 10:08
  Speaker 3: the bedrock for the rest of them is that most
• 10:11
  Speaker 3: of our excuses for missing are bullshit. And yeah, And
• 10:16
  Speaker 3: I say that as somebody who's used them all many
• 10:19
  Speaker 3: times and has, you know, put that nice warm blanket
• 10:23
  Speaker 3: on of, oh, I must've hit a limb. You know,
• 10:25
  Speaker 3: the deer must deduct it, right? Like it's never, it's never,
• 10:30
  Speaker 3: I just melted down and I, I made a mistake, right?
• 10:33
  Speaker 3: Like I, I didn't, I didn't do what I needed
• 10:36
  Speaker 3: to do. And I think, I think it's, you know,
• 10:39
  Speaker 3: we're protecting our egos, right? Like sometimes there's a legitimate, issue, right?
• 10:45
  Speaker 3: Like sometimes you genuinely misjudge the range. Sometimes you genuinely
• 10:50
  Speaker 3: do hit something in the way that you just didn't see,
• 10:53
  Speaker 3: you know, low light situation, or he came in on
• 10:55
  Speaker 3: the opposite side of your stand or whatever, like that
• 10:57
  Speaker 3: stuff happens, but you have to be really honest about it.
• 11:01
  Speaker 3: Like if he walks in at 20 yards and you
• 11:04
  Speaker 3: just punch it because you're, you know, buck fever, you
• 11:07
  Speaker 3: red lining, it's okay. Like that happens, but not not
• 11:12
  Speaker 3: recognizing that and covering that up. Like what else are
• 11:15
  Speaker 3: you making excuses for in your deer hunting? You know,
• 11:18
  Speaker 3: like we, we love to blame all the pressure on
• 11:22
  Speaker 3: public land, but not the fact that we don't scout enough, right?
• 11:26
  Speaker 3: Like we love to blame the DNR for allowing too
• 11:29
  Speaker 3: many bucks to get killed or our gun season to
• 11:31
  Speaker 3: be at the wrong time. It's like, we need to
• 11:34
  Speaker 3: learn to work within the framework of what we have, right?
• 11:37
  Speaker 3: Like if you, if you are making excuses like that,
• 11:41
  Speaker 3: you're probably, you're probably making them all over in your
• 11:44
  Speaker 3: deer hunting and just not doing what you need to do.
• 11:47
  Speaker 3: So I think like that was the first one that
• 11:48
  Speaker 3: I really started with. Cause I'm like, that's a hard
• 11:50
  Speaker 3: truth to face, but it's an important one.
• 11:53
  Speaker 2: So what's the opposite of that? So, so if, if
• 11:56
  Speaker 2: that's the mistake we don't want to make, making excuses
• 11:59
  Speaker 2: for our misses, making excuses for our bad hunt or
• 12:01
  Speaker 2: our bad season or our bad trip, like how do
• 12:05
  Speaker 2: you do, how do you, how do you live the alternative?
• 12:09
  Speaker 3: Pay attention to when you settle, like pay attention to
• 12:11
  Speaker 3: when you're inclined to not face that truth. Right. So let's,
• 12:18
  Speaker 3: let's say not shooting, right? Let's say the season opens
• 12:21
  Speaker 3: and in Michigan where you're hunting or wherever for whoever,
• 12:24
  Speaker 3: and you've got your place to hunt your lease, your
• 12:27
  Speaker 3: grandma's farm and you, you know, opening day hits and
• 12:31
  Speaker 3: it's a East wind or it's a, it's a North
• 12:34
  Speaker 3: wind and you're expecting South. And you're like, I don't
• 12:36
  Speaker 3: have any place to hunt. I don't have anything set up.
• 12:39
  Speaker 3: It's like right there, you couldn't anticipate that you needed
• 12:44
  Speaker 3: more setups. Like how many times, how many years has
• 12:46
  Speaker 3: this happened where you're like, man, I'm sitting in the
• 12:48
  Speaker 3: same three spots or I'm waiting for the conditions to
• 12:51
  Speaker 3: line up so I can sit that one spot. Cause
• 12:52
  Speaker 3: I like it. And it's like, yeah, that spot might
• 12:55
  Speaker 3: be great, but it's not going to produce every day.
• 12:57
  Speaker 3: It's not going to be a all season long thing probably.
• 13:01
  Speaker 3: And there's so many, there's so many moments like that,
• 13:04
  Speaker 3: or you go do, you know, put up five stands, right.
• 13:07
  Speaker 3: And you get into one. And you look around and
• 13:10
  Speaker 3: you're like, I can't shoot there and I can't really
• 13:12
  Speaker 3: shoot there. It's like, yeah, you were in there in August.
• 13:15
  Speaker 3: You had your pole saw and you're like, I did
• 13:17
  Speaker 3: good enough. And those moments, like for me personally, when
• 13:23
  Speaker 3: I used to make a lot of excuses, it was
• 13:25
  Speaker 3: because I settled for something. Right? Like when you feel
• 13:28
  Speaker 3: like you're like, ah, this is good enough. Right? I
• 13:30
  Speaker 3: talked to Steve about that a lot last year when
• 13:32
  Speaker 3: we were hunting Nebraska. It's like, well, this was good enough.
• 13:34
  Speaker 3: I could see deer. And say, no, you settled for
• 13:37
  Speaker 3: a good view, but not to be on the spot
• 13:39
  Speaker 3: the deer go. And I think that just kind of
• 13:41
  Speaker 3: bleeds into everything, you know?
• 13:43
  Speaker 2: So true. That's one of my, and maybe we'll jump
• 13:48
  Speaker 2: to this in a minute, but I've definitely experienced that
• 13:51
  Speaker 2: same thing. And time and time again, that comes to
• 13:56
  Speaker 2: life in my hunts in different ways. Like that simple
• 13:59
  Speaker 2: nugget of truth there is a part of so many hunts.
• 14:03
  Speaker 2: And are you going to Are you going to focus
• 14:05
  Speaker 2: on those little things? Are you going to focus on
• 14:07
  Speaker 2: getting it just right? Or are you going to settle
• 14:09
  Speaker 2: for the easy, the comfortable, the convenient, the known? And
• 14:14
  Speaker 2: it takes time, I think, and experience to figure that out.
• 14:19
  Speaker 2: But the sooner you can, the more you're going to
• 14:22
  Speaker 2: enjoy your hunts and feel good about your experiences out
• 14:25
  Speaker 2: there too, I think. Because I don't know about you,
• 14:28
  Speaker 2: but I always know it. Like in my heart of hearts,
• 14:32
  Speaker 2: I know when I settled. And so I'll be sitting
• 14:34
  Speaker 2: there in the tree or sitting at home or driving
• 14:36
  Speaker 2: home or whatever. And it'll be like gnawing at me
• 14:38
  Speaker 2: in the back of my mind. I knew what I did.
• 14:40
  Speaker 2: Maybe I don't want to admit it to myself, but
• 14:42
  Speaker 2: I'm like, oh yeah, you quit or you settled or
• 14:44
  Speaker 2: you should have done this thing. And I hate living
• 14:48
  Speaker 2: with should haves.
• 14:50
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 14:51
  Speaker 3: Yeah, for sure. I mean, like you said, you know,
• 14:55
  Speaker 3: you just know generally. Like very, very rarely is there
• 14:59
  Speaker 3: just a total mystery that comes your way in the
• 15:01
  Speaker 3: deer world. And you're like, I have no, I have
• 15:02
  Speaker 3: no idea why this happened or why I'm not seeing
• 15:05
  Speaker 3: deer or whatever. It's like, usually you have an idea. Yeah.
• 15:09
  Speaker 2: So, so I want to jump on then with another
• 15:11
  Speaker 2: one that's, that's kind of related to how we think
• 15:14
  Speaker 2: about things or interpret why things happen. And this one,
• 15:19
  Speaker 2: this one kind of was illustrated for me on a
• 15:21
  Speaker 2: hunt on opening day, like 10, 12 years ago, something
• 15:26
  Speaker 2: like that. hunting one of my favorite early season setups.
• 15:30
  Speaker 2: It's a location that I had kind of finally perfected.
• 15:35
  Speaker 2: It had been a spot that I thought would be
• 15:36
  Speaker 2: a good early season location. And then over a couple
• 15:39
  Speaker 2: of years was kind of trying to, you know, manicure it,
• 15:42
  Speaker 2: kind of massage it, figure out how do I make
• 15:44
  Speaker 2: this spot better? How do I set up? So the
• 15:46
  Speaker 2: access is really, really good for an early season evening.
• 15:49
  Speaker 2: How do I make sure that there's a better food
• 15:50
  Speaker 2: source than anywhere else for an early season hunt? How
• 15:53
  Speaker 2: do I make sure that You know, there's not just
• 15:55
  Speaker 2: one good thing going on here, but maybe two or
• 15:57
  Speaker 2: three good things going on here to take advantage of
• 15:59
  Speaker 2: some natural movement and then enhance it. I really thought
• 16:02
  Speaker 2: I was kind of figuring out how to layer these things.
• 16:05
  Speaker 2: And so I was very excited for that first hunt.
• 16:08
  Speaker 2: It was a little bit of a cold front. It
• 16:09
  Speaker 2: was like, I don't remember exactly, but probably was one
• 16:12
  Speaker 2: of those October 1st where it's, you know, maybe 60.
• 16:16
  Speaker 2: So it feels pretty nice and cool after a bunch
• 16:18
  Speaker 2: of 70 degree days. And I was on a little
• 16:21
  Speaker 2: tiny food plot. that was on the edge of a
• 16:24
  Speaker 2: really thick nasty bedding area and then surrounded by a
• 16:27
  Speaker 2: standing cornfield so it was this perfect little transition from
• 16:30
  Speaker 2: terrific bedding this tiny green food source and then transition
• 16:34
  Speaker 2: to a big food source after that and it was
• 16:37
  Speaker 2: one of those sits that you dream of opening day
• 16:40
  Speaker 2: slipped in perfect wind perfect temperature perfect setup i got
• 16:45
  Speaker 2: in clean you know, didn't think anything smelled or heard
• 16:48
  Speaker 2: or saw me. And then within minutes, here's deer moving.
• 16:51
  Speaker 2: All right. I could see deer moving back and kind
• 16:52
  Speaker 2: of the transition area from the bedding. And then over
• 16:55
  Speaker 2: the course of the next few hours, just more and
• 16:57
  Speaker 2: more and more deer. And then eventually they started filtering
• 17:00
  Speaker 2: out bonds and dough, started feeding in the food plot
• 17:03
  Speaker 2: and then moving off to the cornfield and some young bucks.
• 17:06
  Speaker 2: And then bam, I don't know, like the last hour
• 17:09
  Speaker 2: of daylight or so I turned and looked over my
• 17:11
  Speaker 2: right shoulder and and here's a bachelor group of bucks
• 17:14
  Speaker 2: right there. They had slipped in on me and were
• 17:17
  Speaker 2: already approaching in range. There was three of them, if
• 17:21
  Speaker 2: I remember correctly, and one of them was a nice, solid,
• 17:24
  Speaker 2: mature eight-pointer, one of the good, solid, older bucks in
• 17:28
  Speaker 2: that area. It all happened fast. He moved in. They
• 17:32
  Speaker 2: were just kind of walking steadily at a steady pace
• 17:36
  Speaker 2: from behind me, moving past me. for a whole bunch
• 17:40
  Speaker 2: of different, you know, back to excuses, there's a whole
• 17:43
  Speaker 2: number of different things that I may or may not
• 17:45
  Speaker 2: have done wrong. But I think that the most simple
• 17:49
  Speaker 2: version of what I did wrong is I just rushed it.
• 17:51
  Speaker 2: And I took a shot at the steer and shot
• 17:54
  Speaker 2: right underneath him. And then he ran off. And now it's,
• 17:57
  Speaker 2: you know, an hour of daylight or 45 minutes of
• 18:00
  Speaker 2: daylight left or whatever. And I had the perfect opportunity.
• 18:03
  Speaker 2: I had a mature buck in range. I get up.
• 18:07
  Speaker 2: Chipshot easy shot at him in this perfect setup that
• 18:10
  Speaker 2: I had planned around for months and I whiffed it.
• 18:14
  Speaker 2: And I remember in those minutes after that, just assuming
• 18:20
  Speaker 2: the worst. And this is the lesson that I want
• 18:22
  Speaker 2: to speak to, which is avoiding worst case thinking. So
• 18:28
  Speaker 2: in this moment, I immediately jumped to the worst case possibility,
• 18:32
  Speaker 2: which is that I just blew my chance. I am
• 18:35
  Speaker 2: a horrible deer hunter. I missed, I ruined my chances tonight.
• 18:39
  Speaker 2: This was like one of these once every five year
• 18:42
  Speaker 2: situations where everything lines up perfect for opening day. And yeah, yeah,
• 18:47
  Speaker 2: you just, you screwed the pooch. And I remember thinking
• 18:51
  Speaker 2: my night's done. My best chance of October is done.
• 18:54
  Speaker 2: You know, what an idiot. And I kind of dwelled
• 18:58
  Speaker 2: in that misery for five minutes or so. And that
• 19:02
  Speaker 2: was a mistake. What I was reminded of though, about 25,
• 19:07
  Speaker 2: 30 minutes later though, is that oftentimes while we jump
• 19:11
  Speaker 2: to worst case assumptions and worst case conclusions, when we
• 19:14
  Speaker 2: make mistakes as hunters, oftentimes that's our mind playing tricks
• 19:17
  Speaker 2: on us. Oftentimes things aren't as bad as we think
• 19:20
  Speaker 2: they are, or they can change very quickly, or there's
• 19:23
  Speaker 2: alternate opportunities. There's different ways things can go. And on
• 19:27
  Speaker 2: that given night, I was, this was illustrated for me
• 19:30
  Speaker 2: because like a half hour after I missed this great buck,
• 19:34
  Speaker 2: which I thought was like the one and only great
• 19:36
  Speaker 2: chance I would have. And I spooked every deer around
• 19:39
  Speaker 2: and there was deer cascading back into the, back into
• 19:42
  Speaker 2: the woods and, you know, disastrous encounter with almost no
• 19:45
  Speaker 2: daylight left, you know, 45 minutes left. Well, sure enough,
• 19:48
  Speaker 2: 30 minutes later, from a totally different direction, a different,
• 19:52
  Speaker 2: pretty darn nice buck came out, came right out into
• 19:55
  Speaker 2: that food plot. And I got a shot at another,
• 19:58
  Speaker 2: you know, three and a half, probably three and a
• 20:00
  Speaker 2: half year old buck, which at that time was like,
• 20:02
  Speaker 2: it was an awesome deer for me in Michigan. And
• 20:04
  Speaker 2: I was thrilled and I had a great shot at
• 20:06
  Speaker 2: him and I killed my opening day buck. And An
• 20:09
  Speaker 2: hour earlier, I would have thought there was no way
• 20:11
  Speaker 2: in the world that could have happened. But I was
• 20:14
  Speaker 2: reminded on this particular night that oftentimes the worst cases
• 20:18
  Speaker 2: that we jump to are not necessarily true. And there's
• 20:21
  Speaker 2: plenty of other good things and good opportunities and new
• 20:24
  Speaker 2: chances that can arise if we just stay positive, stay
• 20:28
  Speaker 2: at it, and give the world a chance to unfold
• 20:32
  Speaker 2: in front of us. And that's played out for me
• 20:36
  Speaker 2: in so many other types of deer hunting scenarios too, right?
• 20:39
  Speaker 2: Like imagine you are, and all of these things have
• 20:42
  Speaker 2: happened to me. Let's say you are out there and
• 20:44
  Speaker 2: you're walking to your tree stand for an afternoon hunt
• 20:47
  Speaker 2: and you spook a shooter buck on your way in.
• 20:50
  Speaker 2: And then you're like, oh gosh, I just ruined the
• 20:51
  Speaker 2: hunt because I spooked this big buck. But then two
• 20:54
  Speaker 2: hours later, that buck circles back through or a different
• 20:57
  Speaker 2: buck shows up. Or what about when you are sitting
• 21:00
  Speaker 2: on stand and a doe comes walking in with you know,
• 21:05
  Speaker 2: two hours of daylight left or an hour of daylight left,
• 21:07
  Speaker 2: and then she wins you or sees movement and she
• 21:10
  Speaker 2: starts blowing, right? And then she blows and blows and blows.
• 21:13
  Speaker 2: And then you think, well, tonight's done. My hunt's ruined.
• 21:16
  Speaker 2: She just alerted everything for a mile around. But if
• 21:20
  Speaker 2: you stick it out and give it a chance, sure enough,
• 21:22
  Speaker 2: sometimes stuff still does happen in a good kind of way,
• 21:25
  Speaker 2: despite that. Or I don't know, hunting public land and
• 21:28
  Speaker 2: another hunter comes walking through and you think, oh, geez,
• 21:31
  Speaker 2: my night's ruined. But then it still works out. Or
• 21:34
  Speaker 2: a neighbor kills your target buck and you think your
• 21:37
  Speaker 2: season's over, but then a surprise deer shows up. There's
• 21:41
  Speaker 2: so many different ways this can play out. And maybe
• 21:45
  Speaker 2: I'm just a head case and I'm the one, maybe
• 21:46
  Speaker 2: I'm unique in jumping to these worst case conclusions, but
• 21:49
  Speaker 2: I think it's a pretty common thing for a lot
• 21:52
  Speaker 2: of folks. When you build something up, when you work
• 21:54
  Speaker 2: really hard towards something, when you're trying really hard and
• 21:57
  Speaker 2: then it doesn't go as planned, there's a human tendency
• 22:01
  Speaker 2: for a lot of people to jump to, ah, that's it. Ah, that's,
• 22:05
  Speaker 2: you know, that's done. And, and I've had to work
• 22:08
  Speaker 2: hard over the last like 15, 20 years to continuously
• 22:12
  Speaker 2: catch myself when I do that and remind myself, well,
• 22:15
  Speaker 2: not so fast, buddy. Like there's, there's, there's many other
• 22:19
  Speaker 2: ways go. If you are willing to stay positive, stay
• 22:22
  Speaker 2: at it and believe in this different set of possibilities,
• 22:25
  Speaker 2: it might still unfold. So I don't know. Does that,
• 22:28
  Speaker 2: does that resonate with you at all?
• 22:29
  Speaker 3: Yeah, it does, buddy. I mean, it's real easy to
• 22:33
  Speaker 3: go negative. I mean, real easy. I mean, in fact,
• 22:36
  Speaker 3: my second point was give yourself a break. Like literally
• 22:41
  Speaker 3: what you're talking about, if you hunt enough, you know,
• 22:45
  Speaker 3: you're going to miss, right? A lot of times you're
• 22:50
  Speaker 3: going to miss the big one for many reasons, which
• 22:52
  Speaker 3: I'm sure we'll get into. And it's like, it just happens.
• 22:58
  Speaker 3: The best thing you can do is knock another arrow
• 23:00
  Speaker 3: and start paying attention. Because what are you going to do?
• 23:03
  Speaker 3: And you talked about that, how I really believe, or
• 23:07
  Speaker 3: I'm coming to believe more and more about deer hunting,
• 23:09
  Speaker 3: that it's just a series of failures and eventually sometimes
• 23:13
  Speaker 3: it works out if you keep going. And we see
• 23:17
  Speaker 3: a curated version of deer hunting that really doesn't mirror
• 23:22
  Speaker 3: what most people are going through. We see a 21-minute
• 23:26
  Speaker 3: show now and it'll have three big bucks killed. It's
• 23:29
  Speaker 3: just not it's not what's going on for most people.
• 23:32
  Speaker 3: Most people have to go through, take their lumps, screw up,
• 23:36
  Speaker 3: screw up, screw up, but keep, keep putting in the time,
• 23:38
  Speaker 3: keep being patient and eventually it'll happen. And I always,
• 23:41
  Speaker 3: I think about that, like, so your example of that,
• 23:45
  Speaker 3: that opening night buck, that's, that's like a very relatable thing.
• 23:49
  Speaker 3: That buck comes in, you just screw up, you just
• 23:52
  Speaker 3: miss him. And then all you're thinking about is you
• 23:56
  Speaker 3: not doing your job correctly and What's the impact on
• 23:59
  Speaker 3: the spot? What's the impact on that buck? And every,
• 24:01
  Speaker 3: everything your brain can conjure up is a negative.
• 24:05
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 24:05
  Speaker 3: And it's like, it's not that big of a deal.
• 24:08
  Speaker 3: Like it just, you did it once you put yourself
• 24:11
  Speaker 3: in that position. Once he came by, it's not like
• 24:15
  Speaker 3: you can't do that again. You have an entire season
• 24:17
  Speaker 3: ahead of you, but it's very easy to hunt. Like
• 24:21
  Speaker 3: you don't, once you make that mistake. And man, I had,
• 24:25
  Speaker 3: when I, When I hit a point in my career
• 24:28
  Speaker 3: where I had killed a whole bunch of little bucks,
• 24:31
  Speaker 3: some two-and-a-half-year-olds, and I was like, I just want that
• 24:34
  Speaker 3: next level up. That just deep chest, big buck. Yeah.
• 24:39
  Speaker 3: It was like they had a force field around them.
• 24:43
  Speaker 3: If they came in, I was going to miss that shot.
• 24:46
  Speaker 3: And it was probably... I don't know if it was
• 24:51
  Speaker 3: the hardest section of my deer hunting life. It was definitely...
• 24:57
  Speaker 3: a time period where it was harder to handle than
• 25:01
  Speaker 3: almost any other time period. Maybe when I started out,
• 25:03
  Speaker 3: how hard that was at first for the first several seasons,
• 25:06
  Speaker 3: maybe that was different just to, just to start killing
• 25:08
  Speaker 3: them consistently with a bow. Cause that was, that was
• 25:10
  Speaker 3: a long time too. Yeah. But that, that time period
• 25:14
  Speaker 3: when you're like, that's what I want and that's what
• 25:16
  Speaker 3: I'm going to shoot and you can't hit them. It is,
• 25:20
  Speaker 3: it is so easy to go dark. And you know,
• 25:24
  Speaker 3: what I realized was, The season before I started, I
• 25:28
  Speaker 3: killed my first big one. And when I did that,
• 25:31
  Speaker 3: it has happened every single year for me since, at
• 25:34
  Speaker 3: least once. The season before that, I missed two big
• 25:38
  Speaker 3: ones on the same sit 10 minutes apart. And they
• 25:40
  Speaker 3: were big. They were really good deer. And it was
• 25:43
  Speaker 3: entirely my fault. Like I just, I fell apart on one.
• 25:46
  Speaker 3: I fell apart on the other. This late October sit,
• 25:49
  Speaker 3: beautiful opportunities. And dude, I wanted to set fire to
• 25:53
  Speaker 3: my bow. I wanted to quit. And it was stupid because,
• 25:58
  Speaker 3: you know, like I said before, like you did when
• 26:00
  Speaker 3: you're sitting on that opening nightstand, it's like, if you
• 26:04
  Speaker 3: put yourself in that position once it's you'll, you'll do
• 26:08
  Speaker 3: it again. If you keep going, you know, it's, we
• 26:11
  Speaker 3: think that this is like the, I mean, part of
• 26:13
  Speaker 3: the reason we lose our shit when we shoot at
• 26:15
  Speaker 3: them is because we think it's so rare that it
• 26:16
  Speaker 3: won't happen again. And we want to possess them so bad.
• 26:19
  Speaker 3: You know, like I see this, I see this all
• 26:21
  Speaker 3: the way through hunting and fishing. I mean, I've taken
• 26:24
  Speaker 3: a lot of new hunters, pheasant hunting, and you know,
• 26:28
  Speaker 3: they want that first rooster so bad that you'll have
• 26:32
  Speaker 3: a big rooster get up in front of them and
• 26:33
  Speaker 3: they'll whiff with both barrels or however, you know, if
• 26:35
  Speaker 3: they're shooting a semi out or whatever, maybe more. And
• 26:38
  Speaker 3: it's like, then the next one's going to come. Like
• 26:42
  Speaker 3: you're going to, you're going to flush another one, but
• 26:43
  Speaker 3: it gets in their head and they start missing. And
• 26:45
  Speaker 3: it's like, man, if we can do that with a bird,
• 26:48
  Speaker 3: we certainly can do it with a, 200 pound whitetail
• 26:51
  Speaker 3: that has a nice rack, you know, like it's, it's
• 26:53
  Speaker 3: just tough, but you just have to give yourself a break. It's,
• 26:56
  Speaker 3: it's going to happen and it's not that important.
• 27:13
  Speaker 2: And I think another thing is that when you do
• 27:15
  Speaker 2: give yourself a break, When you're able to forgive yourself
• 27:19
  Speaker 2: or realize, hey, it happens. It's not the end of
• 27:22
  Speaker 2: the world. It's all right. That does two things, I think.
• 27:25
  Speaker 2: Number one, it allows you to relax a little bit
• 27:29
  Speaker 2: back into a normal state of mind. And then I
• 27:31
  Speaker 2: think that opens things up enough to then believe in
• 27:34
  Speaker 2: the possibility of you being able to do it right
• 27:36
  Speaker 2: or for good things to happen again. And once those
• 27:39
  Speaker 2: two things happen, like when you're relaxed and then you
• 27:42
  Speaker 2: have some level of belief or confidence in what you're
• 27:44
  Speaker 2: doing again, that's when you can actually hunt. You cannot
• 27:48
  Speaker 2: hunt effectively when you are tight and anxious and upset
• 27:53
  Speaker 2: and negative. You're not going to be focusing right. You're
• 27:56
  Speaker 2: not going to be able to execute correctly. You're not
• 27:58
  Speaker 2: going to be able to stick it out. There's all
• 28:01
  Speaker 2: these different things that are required to consistently have deer
• 28:03
  Speaker 2: hunting success that just won't happen consistently anymore if you're
• 28:09
  Speaker 2: feeling all those things. But if you relax a little bit,
• 28:13
  Speaker 2: believe in what you're doing. Again, you have confidence that, Hey,
• 28:15
  Speaker 2: this could happen. Uh, then all of a sudden you're,
• 28:18
  Speaker 2: you're in it, you're present, you're focused, you're enjoying yourself.
• 28:21
  Speaker 2: You're able to see the deer slipping in behind you.
• 28:24
  Speaker 2: You're able to hear it. You're able to refocus, recenter
• 28:27
  Speaker 2: and be like, all right, I screwed up once. That's
• 28:29
  Speaker 2: all right. Now let's, let's get it done this next
• 28:31
  Speaker 2: time and be able to take advantage of that next
• 28:33
  Speaker 2: opportunity that day or later that week or whatever it is. Um,
• 28:38
  Speaker 2: so it's got all these like trickle down effects. from
• 28:41
  Speaker 2: those simple kind of like mental switches, I think.
• 28:44
  Speaker 3: For sure. For sure.
• 28:45
  Speaker 2: Um, so, so that was your second one. Give yourself
• 28:49
  Speaker 2: a break. Was there anything else on that one or
• 28:50
  Speaker 2: do you want me to jump to the next?
• 28:51
  Speaker 3: Nope, go ahead.
• 28:53
  Speaker 2: All right. So the next one is, is I think
• 28:56
  Speaker 2: we're going to be doing this a lot. There's going to,
• 28:57
  Speaker 2: we're going to say things that are going to be
• 28:58
  Speaker 2: tied to what each of us have in mind. You
• 29:01
  Speaker 2: mentioned how in a lot of these hunts, we see
• 29:06
  Speaker 2: that deer and that opportunity and we want to possess
• 29:08
  Speaker 2: it so badly, right? Um, my lesson here is to
• 29:12
  Speaker 2: not force things. And this is something that has happened
• 29:15
  Speaker 2: with like shot execution. And this is something that happens
• 29:19
  Speaker 2: like just on hunt decisions too. Um, but for me,
• 29:23
  Speaker 2: it was really hammered home on one particular hunt. Um,
• 29:27
  Speaker 2: this was a different scenario where it was a specific
• 29:30
  Speaker 2: buck that I had been after for multiple years and
• 29:33
  Speaker 2: it had all sorts of encounters with him, all sorts
• 29:36
  Speaker 2: of close calls, like one of those kind of, um,
• 29:40
  Speaker 2: you know, classic Mark Kenyon cat and mouse games where
• 29:43
  Speaker 2: I had seen this buck and back and forth, back
• 29:45
  Speaker 2: and forth, back and forth. It was like this big,
• 29:47
  Speaker 2: tall eight pointer. Um, and finally I thought like, I'm
• 29:52
  Speaker 2: taking a big swing. I'm diving into the bedding area.
• 29:56
  Speaker 2: I'm going to go to this spot where it's going
• 29:58
  Speaker 2: to be hard to get to, but I'm going to
• 29:59
  Speaker 2: get there super early in the morning before they come back.
• 30:01
  Speaker 2: And if I remember right, it was late October, maybe
• 30:04
  Speaker 2: super early November. I'm not exactly sure, but somewhere in that,
• 30:07
  Speaker 2: you know, that window. And sure enough, an hour after daylight,
• 30:12
  Speaker 2: something like that, I see a doe kind of slowly
• 30:16
  Speaker 2: nipping her way back towards me. And there he was
• 30:18
  Speaker 2: like locked on her right behind her. And for an
• 30:22
  Speaker 2: hour or so, they just slowly milled their way in
• 30:25
  Speaker 2: my direction. Um, I think I spotted them when they
• 30:27
  Speaker 2: were probably a hundred and some yards away and for
• 30:31
  Speaker 2: an hour, you know, they maybe didn't cover 50 yards,
• 30:33
  Speaker 2: but he was just right there with her and she'd
• 30:36
  Speaker 2: take a couple of steps and he'd stand behind her
• 30:37
  Speaker 2: and then he, she'd take a couple of steps. And
• 30:40
  Speaker 2: so I had a whole hour just to watch and
• 30:42
  Speaker 2: think about, okay, this is going to happen finally. I
• 30:44
  Speaker 2: really hope it's going to happen. She's just got to
• 30:46
  Speaker 2: pull them this way a little bit more. Um, you know,
• 30:48
  Speaker 2: three years of following this deer.
• 30:51
  Speaker 3: This is it.
• 30:51
  Speaker 2: Finally, I made the right move. I got into the
• 30:53
  Speaker 2: right spot. Uh, this is it. And as that, you know,
• 30:58
  Speaker 2: next 15 minutes progressed after that first hour, she finally
• 31:01
  Speaker 2: is slipping into range. And she comes through this one
• 31:03
  Speaker 2: spot where of course, like there's all these different ways
• 31:06
  Speaker 2: she could have came. She came through the thickest one
• 31:08
  Speaker 2: spot that it didn't have many good options for shooting.
• 31:12
  Speaker 2: And now I'm starting to get a little bit panicky
• 31:14
  Speaker 2: in my, in my head as she slips in there,
• 31:16
  Speaker 2: I'm seeing like, Oh no, like, how am I going
• 31:18
  Speaker 2: to get a shot? And I'm, I'm now trying to
• 31:20
  Speaker 2: readjust in my saddle. Like, okay, If he follows her
• 31:24
  Speaker 2: right there, maybe that's a hole I can get a
• 31:26
  Speaker 2: shot through, maybe not. And so in this minute, 60 seconds,
• 31:30
  Speaker 2: two minutes, whatever it was, as she passes through her
• 31:32
  Speaker 2: own range, but through this gnarly thick stuff, I remember thinking,
• 31:36
  Speaker 2: this is going to be your only chance. You have
• 31:37
  Speaker 2: to get a shot. This is it. All of this
• 31:40
  Speaker 2: has led up to this moment. You have to find
• 31:42
  Speaker 2: a way to get a shot through here. And so
• 31:44
  Speaker 2: I'm bending, leaning back in my saddle, trying to find
• 31:47
  Speaker 2: different heights or angles for my tree where I can find,
• 31:50
  Speaker 2: can I find a little pocket like this I can
• 31:51
  Speaker 2: shoot through? And he finally walked through and he steps
• 31:55
  Speaker 2: into like this little tiny pocket. And I'm like, this
• 31:58
  Speaker 2: is it. I got to take it. And I let
• 31:59
  Speaker 2: it rip. And of course I missed him. And in the,
• 32:04
  Speaker 2: you know, subsequent minutes and, you know, hours after that,
• 32:08
  Speaker 2: I was kicking myself doing all the things we've just
• 32:11
  Speaker 2: talked about. And I'm thinking through, you know, what would
• 32:13
  Speaker 2: have been worse in this moment? How I'm feeling right
• 32:16
  Speaker 2: now when I thought I had to force the shot,
• 32:20
  Speaker 2: had to make it happen and then missed him. is
• 32:22
  Speaker 2: that worse or would have just watching him pass through
• 32:27
  Speaker 2: and admitting to myself, man, this is not a good shot.
• 32:30
  Speaker 2: This is not a good opportunity. Um, there will probably
• 32:34
  Speaker 2: be better options down the road. Let's just make sure
• 32:37
  Speaker 2: we don't screw it up. Now let's wait till the
• 32:39
  Speaker 2: right opportunity and just let him walk. Um, that would
• 32:43
  Speaker 2: have been a bummer.
• 32:43
  Speaker 3: I'm sure.
• 32:44
  Speaker 2: I'm sure I would have been like, ah, man, I
• 32:45
  Speaker 2: was so close, but didn't work out. Instead, I'm miserable
• 32:49
  Speaker 2: with myself because I missed. I could have wounded him.
• 32:52
  Speaker 2: It could have been even worse. What I realized is
• 32:56
  Speaker 2: that that was just a very important reminder of the
• 32:58
  Speaker 2: fact that you can never get an arrow back. You
• 33:02
  Speaker 2: just don't need to force a shot. It is always
• 33:05
  Speaker 2: better to not have the shot, to not have the opportunity,
• 33:09
  Speaker 2: than to force something and have it go bad. That
• 33:13
  Speaker 2: has been, unfortunately, reminded I've been reminded of that several
• 33:16
  Speaker 2: times because it's so human. It's so tempting. Like you
• 33:19
  Speaker 2: just said, like you'd think like, here's this thing that
• 33:22
  Speaker 2: I've worked so hard for. And it's, it's so close.
• 33:24
  Speaker 2: Like I got to make it happen now. Cause it's
• 33:25
  Speaker 2: going to be gone. That chance is going to be
• 33:27
  Speaker 2: gone any second. And when we go back to like
• 33:30
  Speaker 2: our reptile brains and we just go, go, go. And
• 33:33
  Speaker 2: it almost never works out. Right.
• 33:36
  Speaker 3: So that is, that is almost exactly what I had
• 33:41
  Speaker 3: written down for my third point, which was, rushing the
• 33:44
  Speaker 3: shot almost never works out. Yeah. And so to, to
• 33:49
  Speaker 3: maybe take a different path than what you just said.
• 33:51
  Speaker 3: So you looked at that situation, you watched him come
• 33:54
  Speaker 3: in forever. Uh, you got into the mode where you're like,
• 33:57
  Speaker 3: I got to shoot. I got to find a way
• 33:59
  Speaker 3: to shoot.
• 34:00
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 34:01
  Speaker 3: It's, and it's like a thing that we do. It's
• 34:03
  Speaker 3: a hard thing to get past that and let that
• 34:06
  Speaker 3: deer go and not take an opportunity when you get it.
• 34:10
  Speaker 3: You know, we've also heard you know, take the first
• 34:12
  Speaker 3: good shot you get, right? Because you don't know what's
• 34:15
  Speaker 3: going to happen. I'm generally on board with that, generally.
• 34:21
  Speaker 3: But what I've realized after hunting deer a lot is
• 34:26
  Speaker 3: you really need to learn how to read the situation
• 34:29
  Speaker 3: and decide when your shot is going to happen. And
• 34:32
  Speaker 3: if you feel yourself trying to make something happen, it's
• 34:37
  Speaker 3: almost never going to work out. And it's like, it's
• 34:42
  Speaker 3: a really tough thing. It's kind of like if you
• 34:45
  Speaker 3: can stand at the range and shoot 50 yards all
• 34:48
  Speaker 3: day and have a fairly tight group, you know, that
• 34:52
  Speaker 3: buck standing in the bean field at 50 yards and
• 34:54
  Speaker 3: you've been hunting for a month straight, it's hard to go.
• 34:58
  Speaker 3: That's not my shot. Right. Cause you're like, I could
• 35:01
  Speaker 3: make it. I could take that and I could make it,
• 35:03
  Speaker 3: but what are the odds? Like, what are the odds
• 35:05
  Speaker 3: that's going to work out the same thing when you
• 35:07
  Speaker 3: just find yourself scrambling to get a shot off? It,
• 35:11
  Speaker 3: Part of it is because sometimes those encounters happen real fast.
• 35:15
  Speaker 3: Sometimes we don't hear them coming. Sometimes it's the rut
• 35:17
  Speaker 3: and they trot right in. Like, you just never know.
• 35:20
  Speaker 3: But a lot of times, in my experience shooting at
• 35:22
  Speaker 3: all kinds of deer, you generally have more time than
• 35:26
  Speaker 3: you think. And especially in situations, you know, I think about,
• 35:31
  Speaker 3: you know, deer coming and feeding on acorns or deer
• 35:36
  Speaker 3: that are just kind of staging up or deer that
• 35:39
  Speaker 3: are not, you know, actively looking for does. they're kind
• 35:42
  Speaker 3: of just doing their thing. They generally have a slow
• 35:45
  Speaker 3: vibe where they'll, they'll, you know, hang out around you,
• 35:49
  Speaker 3: you know, it's, you know, if you're in the place
• 35:51
  Speaker 3: they kind of want to go to. And when you,
• 35:54
  Speaker 3: when you try to make something happen, shooting wise, it's
• 35:58
  Speaker 3: almost always going to go south. And that's like, that's an,
• 36:02
  Speaker 3: that's easy advice to, to give, you know, but it's
• 36:06
  Speaker 3: like a hard, you, you have to go out and
• 36:08
  Speaker 3: you have to like, you have to learn that. And
• 36:10
  Speaker 3: the only way to learn it is to, is to
• 36:13
  Speaker 3: make bad mistakes. But a lot of misses happen because
• 36:16
  Speaker 3: we just, we don't read the situation real well. And
• 36:20
  Speaker 3: we're like, I gotta get that arrow off my wrist.
• 36:23
  Speaker 3: Like I gotta get a shot off here. And it's
• 36:26
  Speaker 3: just usually a recipe for a miss or a wound
• 36:30
  Speaker 3: or just something that's just not a double lung. Let
• 36:33
  Speaker 3: me put it that way. Yeah. Yeah.
• 36:35
  Speaker 2: Once that, snowball starts rolling down the hill. It is
• 36:38
  Speaker 2: very hard to cat to catch it again.
• 36:40
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 36:41
  Speaker 2: Stop it. Um, but yeah, you almost have to experience
• 36:45
  Speaker 2: the negative side of that a handful of times and
• 36:48
  Speaker 2: realize just how shitty that is to then be able
• 36:52
  Speaker 2: to have the, the, I don't know the, that pain
• 36:57
  Speaker 2: in the back of your mind to catch you, you know,
• 36:59
  Speaker 2: next time around bit.
• 37:00
  Speaker 3: Whoa, whoa, whoa.
• 37:01
  Speaker 2: Like it went really South last time that happened. Um,
• 37:05
  Speaker 2: And maybe that's enough to catch you the next time
• 37:07
  Speaker 2: that snowball starts rolling because it's, you know, it's happened
• 37:10
  Speaker 2: to me a number of times and I still am tempted.
• 37:12
  Speaker 2: I still have this moment where I'm like, ah, and
• 37:15
  Speaker 2: now hopefully more times than not, I can catch myself
• 37:18
  Speaker 2: when it's, you know, one of those kinds of moments
• 37:20
  Speaker 2: are unfolding. And, you know, over the last two years
• 37:24
  Speaker 2: or whatever it's been, you and I have talked about,
• 37:26
  Speaker 2: you know, how I've switched a lot of my general
• 37:28
  Speaker 2: shooting and kind of how I determine my maximum range
• 37:32
  Speaker 2: and my shooting setup. It's went from, How do I
• 37:35
  Speaker 2: maximize opportunities? That's what it used to be. It's like,
• 37:37
  Speaker 2: how can I shoot further? How can I get more shots? Uh,
• 37:40
  Speaker 2: how can I get the biggest cut? Now it's more
• 37:43
  Speaker 2: so like, how do I minimize the bad stuff? So it's,
• 37:46
  Speaker 2: let's bring in the range. Let's, let's make sure I
• 37:48
  Speaker 2: only take chip shots because I just, I'd rather kill
• 37:52
  Speaker 2: fewer deer, but have fewer bad things happen. Like I
• 37:55
  Speaker 2: would rather minimize the negative because that's so crappy. I'd
• 37:59
  Speaker 2: rather just try to get better hunting and get closer shots.
• 38:01
  Speaker 2: I'd rather, you know, make a setup that's, that's simple, that, that,
• 38:05
  Speaker 2: takes stock of my common failings and my common mistakes
• 38:09
  Speaker 2: and tries to account for those beforehand so that I'm
• 38:12
  Speaker 2: not in the moment having to make all these different
• 38:15
  Speaker 2: decisions or think through all these different things when all
• 38:18
  Speaker 2: of these things are going on that we're talking about, right?
• 38:21
  Speaker 2: We are human beings that aren't perfect in so many
• 38:25
  Speaker 2: different ways. How can you set yourself up for.
• 38:27
  Speaker 3: Dealing with that?
• 38:28
  Speaker 2: Yeah, crazy, right? But yeah, this idea of forcing things,
• 38:34
  Speaker 2: I think, applies to hunting outside of just shooting too, right?
• 38:40
  Speaker 2: And it gets trickier outside of shooting because I think
• 38:43
  Speaker 2: there's this fine line to walk that the only way
• 38:48
  Speaker 2: I've been able to figure out is through personal experience.
• 38:50
  Speaker 2: But there's two approaches you could take to any kind
• 38:54
  Speaker 2: of deer hunt, right? You could go and you could
• 38:57
  Speaker 2: force it You could try to force something because it's
• 39:00
  Speaker 2: the way you want it to go or it's the
• 39:01
  Speaker 2: way you think it's supposed to go or you think
• 39:03
  Speaker 2: this is your only chance. You force an idea or
• 39:06
  Speaker 2: force a move or force into a spot. And sometimes
• 39:11
  Speaker 2: that's a mistake, but also sometimes it's a mistake not
• 39:15
  Speaker 2: to try the hard thing or do aggression. I guess
• 39:18
  Speaker 2: there's this tension between forcing things that aren't right versus
• 39:22
  Speaker 2: being aggressive at the right times, right? And then the
• 39:25
  Speaker 2: flip side of that is being passive all the time,
• 39:27
  Speaker 2: being conservative all the time, and just hoping things will
• 39:30
  Speaker 2: come to you. And I think it's a mistake to
• 39:33
  Speaker 2: go either way too much or too far in either
• 39:35
  Speaker 2: direction and learning how to pick your moments, to pick
• 39:40
  Speaker 2: your spots, to pick your pockets, to walk that line
• 39:44
  Speaker 2: and then know when you can step on one side
• 39:46
  Speaker 2: or the other. That is a very tricky thing. That's
• 39:48
  Speaker 2: like a whole other conversation. Um, but it's something that
• 39:52
  Speaker 2: I think about when I consider like, how do we
• 39:54
  Speaker 2: try to force things as deer hunters? And it seems
• 39:56
  Speaker 2: to me to be shots and then like ideas, like strategy,
• 40:01
  Speaker 2: like sits.
• 40:03
  Speaker 3: Dude, I, I talked to Steve and Pat about this
• 40:06
  Speaker 3: on our Nebraska hunt a lot last year because we
• 40:08
  Speaker 3: had three guys hunting what was essentially a little core
• 40:11
  Speaker 3: area that didn't have very many deer in it. And
• 40:14
  Speaker 3: so it was like, if the wind wasn't right, we
• 40:16
  Speaker 3: weren't going to sit on a stand or a blind.
• 40:19
  Speaker 3: And we talked about how often, like when you're growing
• 40:22
  Speaker 3: up and you're learning how to bow hunt whitetails or
• 40:25
  Speaker 3: hunt deer, you know, you're like, oh, it's October 30th.
• 40:29
  Speaker 3: I can probably get away with this wind on this spot.
• 40:32
  Speaker 3: Or it's November 5th and I can probably get away
• 40:34
  Speaker 3: with it. It's not ideal, but if they come in
• 40:36
  Speaker 3: from this direction, but you know, like, you know, like
• 40:39
  Speaker 3: that's a, that's a Western North wind stand. It just is.
• 40:42
  Speaker 3: And you go out there and it's like Southwest or something. Okay.
• 40:45
  Speaker 3: Well now I'm forcing this because I want to do this.
• 40:48
  Speaker 3: And I find this, you know, I think that's like
• 40:51
  Speaker 3: an easy relatable example, but I find that when, you know,
• 40:55
  Speaker 3: that hunt, for example, when I went down there and
• 40:57
  Speaker 3: scouted that ranch, I was like, we are going to
• 40:59
  Speaker 3: decoy in three bucks and kill them with a doe decoy.
• 41:03
  Speaker 3: Like I was so confident of that. We never used
• 41:06
  Speaker 3: a decoy, you know, and I, And I, I wanted to,
• 41:11
  Speaker 3: I wanted to make that kind of strategy work. But
• 41:15
  Speaker 3: as I got into it and the trail camera started
• 41:18
  Speaker 3: showing me things and started realizing like the forecast and everything,
• 41:20
  Speaker 3: I'm like where we need to hunt and what's going on.
• 41:23
  Speaker 3: That's just as much as I want that. It's just
• 41:26
  Speaker 3: not going to happen. And if I try to make
• 41:28
  Speaker 3: it happen, it's probably going to blow up in my face.
• 41:30
  Speaker 3: And it's hard to do that when you get married
• 41:32
  Speaker 3: to an idea or a strategy or a way of thinking,
• 41:35
  Speaker 3: but you have to be really honest about it. Yeah. Yeah.
• 41:38
  Speaker 2: And being able to catch yourself when you're like going
• 41:42
  Speaker 2: down that path. And if you, if you can, and
• 41:45
  Speaker 2: I think that it's a thing where again, having done
• 41:48
  Speaker 2: it enough times, you can start to kind of feel it.
• 41:50
  Speaker 2: You're like, Oh yeah, I'm trying to make things go
• 41:53
  Speaker 2: the way I wanted them to, or the way I
• 41:55
  Speaker 2: planned them rather than taking what's being given to me
• 41:58
  Speaker 2: rather than assessing the situation and adjusting to the, to the,
• 42:01
  Speaker 2: you know, facts of the matter. Um, But that's something
• 42:05
  Speaker 2: you've got to, again, most of this, you have to
• 42:07
  Speaker 2: learn the hard way and then learn how to like
• 42:08
  Speaker 2: notice the signs in yourself.
• 42:10
  Speaker 3: Right. For sure. Yeah.
• 42:12
  Speaker 2: So what's a, what's your next one?
• 42:15
  Speaker 3: Um, I'll do one more kind of from the brain
• 42:18
  Speaker 3: and then I'll do one actionable one. People can take
• 42:20
  Speaker 3: away that I think is a, is really good. But
• 42:23
  Speaker 3: if you think you're going to miss, you're going to miss.
• 42:24
  Speaker 3: If you're, if you're thinking that you might miss or
• 42:30
  Speaker 3: you might screw up that shot, you probably will. So I, this,
• 42:35
  Speaker 3: this really hit home with me when I, when I
• 42:38
  Speaker 3: hunted with a trad bow for a couple of years,
• 42:42
  Speaker 3: because you just had the, the level of practice that
• 42:44
  Speaker 3: that requires is so vastly different from a compound in a,
• 42:47
  Speaker 3: or especially a crossbow, but definitely a compound. And the,
• 42:53
  Speaker 3: the first year that I hunted, I shot a ton
• 42:56
  Speaker 3: and I went out and I killed a way at
• 42:58
  Speaker 3: that time was a really good buck for me. And
• 42:59
  Speaker 3: I killed a doe and I was like, man, I
• 43:00
  Speaker 3: kind of got this figured out.
• 43:02
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 43:02
  Speaker 3: Like I need close shots, but if they come in,
• 43:04
  Speaker 3: I can make this happen. So I went into the
• 43:08
  Speaker 3: next season really cocky and I didn't shoot as much.
• 43:11
  Speaker 3: And I'll never forget. I sat on this little kind
• 43:15
  Speaker 3: of terrain trap back in the woods on opening morning
• 43:18
  Speaker 3: and I had a decent buck go through and he
• 43:20
  Speaker 3: was at like, I don't remember what range, but it
• 43:23
  Speaker 3: was like right at the end of where I would shoot.
• 43:25
  Speaker 3: So 25 yards or 20 yards or whatever it was
• 43:28
  Speaker 3: with that recurve at that time. And I didn't shoot.
• 43:32
  Speaker 3: And I remember thinking, I really want to kill that
• 43:35
  Speaker 3: buck and I really wanted to shoot him. But I
• 43:38
  Speaker 3: remember being so scared that I was going to make
• 43:41
  Speaker 3: a bad shot that I didn't shoot. And I was like, man,
• 43:45
  Speaker 3: this has sort of been a thing that's been happening
• 43:49
  Speaker 3: to me my whole bow hunting career, where it's like,
• 43:53
  Speaker 3: you know, sometimes you're sitting there and everything's calm and
• 43:55
  Speaker 3: they walk into the beans at 15 yards. And you're like,
• 43:58
  Speaker 3: they're so dead. They're so dead. And they often are right. Yeah.
• 44:03
  Speaker 3: But then you're sitting there and, you know, they come
• 44:06
  Speaker 3: through the woods and they're kind of trotting along during
• 44:08
  Speaker 3: the rut and they're, you know, 33 yards out and
• 44:11
  Speaker 3: you're like, okay, there's my window. I'm going to stop him.
• 44:14
  Speaker 3: But you start thinking like, what if he doesn't stop
• 44:16
  Speaker 3: in time? Or what if he takes a couple of
• 44:17
  Speaker 3: extra steps? Or what if he turns this way? Whatever.
• 44:21
  Speaker 3: What if I don't have time? When you start having
• 44:23
  Speaker 3: those thoughts, like that, it's, that it's like, it's not,
• 44:27
  Speaker 3: I'm going to kill this deer now. It's like, what's
• 44:31
  Speaker 3: going to go wrong or how am I going to
• 44:33
  Speaker 3: screw this up, man? It is like, you're going to
• 44:38
  Speaker 3: screw up, you know? And I, and I've talked about
• 44:40
  Speaker 3: this before. I really, and I, I kind of passed
• 44:42
  Speaker 3: this on to my daughters where I try to get
• 44:44
  Speaker 3: them to understand it too. It's like, I always think
• 44:47
  Speaker 3: about them now is if that was a 3d target
• 44:50
  Speaker 3: standing there, would I miss it? Like, would I not
• 44:53
  Speaker 3: feel super confident that I'm going to hit it right
• 44:55
  Speaker 3: in the 10 ring? And when I start looking at
• 44:59
  Speaker 3: deer that way, you know, you're sitting there and you're like,
• 45:01
  Speaker 3: that's a big deer at 25 yards. You should be
• 45:04
  Speaker 3: able to hit that a thousand times out of a thousand.
• 45:06
  Speaker 3: And you sort of kind of like trick your brain
• 45:08
  Speaker 3: into going like, I absolutely can do this because I
• 45:10
  Speaker 3: do this all summer long on a smaller target. The
• 45:13
  Speaker 3: only difference here is it has a heartbeat. I really
• 45:16
  Speaker 3: want to possess it. But when you can start to
• 45:18
  Speaker 3: kind of get past that thinking and that, you know,
• 45:20
  Speaker 3: part of it too is just shooting confidence, right? But
• 45:23
  Speaker 3: when you can listen to that voice in your head
• 45:27
  Speaker 3: when it's all going down, is it confident? Is it
• 45:32
  Speaker 3: like this deer is not going to make it 100
• 45:35
  Speaker 3: yards and you're going to be wrapping your tag around
• 45:37
  Speaker 3: its antlers? Or are you thinking something's going to go wrong?
• 45:41
  Speaker 3: And if you're thinking that, it often does.
• 45:45
  Speaker 2: Do you think that you can... address that in the moment?
• 45:50
  Speaker 2: Or is this something that only comes from the proper preparation?
• 45:54
  Speaker 3: Like you just talked about? I think it's both. I mean,
• 45:57
  Speaker 3: like you said, you know, I'm, I'm the same way, man. My,
• 46:00
  Speaker 3: I want all my shots at 20 yards. No, I
• 46:02
  Speaker 3: don't even want to think about a 40 yard shot
• 46:04
  Speaker 3: at a whitetail anymore. And that was not the case
• 46:06
  Speaker 3: in a lot in a good chunk of my bow
• 46:08
  Speaker 3: hunting career. Right. Yeah. So you can absolutely set up
• 46:12
  Speaker 3: for good shots and you should, right? Like you should
• 46:14
  Speaker 3: set up for the shot. You know, you can make.
• 46:17
  Speaker 3: But you can also sit there and you start watching
• 46:20
  Speaker 3: that buck walk down the trail. You know, that fight
• 46:23
  Speaker 3: or flight response kicks in, which causes the buck fever.
• 46:26
  Speaker 3: You can hear your heart pounding in your ears. You
• 46:29
  Speaker 3: can talk yourself down. I mean, look at them. Look
• 46:32
  Speaker 3: at what you have to work with as far as
• 46:34
  Speaker 3: a vital zone. You know, like that's a big target
• 46:37
  Speaker 3: to hit. Just like it's a big target to miss.
• 46:40
  Speaker 3: People miss bull elk. They miss moose. Like it happens.
• 46:42
  Speaker 3: But when you start thinking about like, all I got
• 46:45
  Speaker 3: to do is hit a, you know, paper plate at
• 46:48
  Speaker 3: 20 yards or even bigger. It's like, you can do that.
• 46:52
  Speaker 3: And I, I, I try to tell myself that a lot.
• 46:55
  Speaker 3: And I also, you know, like when you're sitting out
• 46:59
  Speaker 3: there on a stand, anybody's listening to this. When I
• 47:02
  Speaker 3: have a deer go through that, I don't want to shoot.
• 47:05
  Speaker 3: I'm always looking at it. Like, where would I shoot it?
• 47:07
  Speaker 3: And when, you know what I mean? Like, okay, they
• 47:10
  Speaker 3: came down this trail, but some of them peel off
• 47:12
  Speaker 3: down that little drainage and some of them come my way.
• 47:15
  Speaker 3: They often stop when they hop up the riverbank and
• 47:17
  Speaker 3: look around, whatever. Like, what do deer do? Because when
• 47:21
  Speaker 3: you can start to sort of predict that, it sort
• 47:24
  Speaker 3: of quiets that voice a little bit. Like that voice
• 47:26
  Speaker 3: that's scared you're going to screw it up because you're like,
• 47:28
  Speaker 3: I know what they do here. And, you know, they
• 47:30
  Speaker 3: don't always do it. But the more you watch deer
• 47:33
  Speaker 3: and the more you pay attention to them, it's like, okay,
• 47:34
  Speaker 3: he shook his tail. He's going to walk now. He's
• 47:36
  Speaker 3: going to walk up to that fence and he's going
• 47:38
  Speaker 3: to stop and he's going to look around. And when
• 47:39
  Speaker 3: he hops it, he's going to take 10 rush steps
• 47:41
  Speaker 3: and he's going to put his head down like they
• 47:43
  Speaker 3: all do. when you start, when you start thinking about
• 47:47
  Speaker 3: it that way, I think in the moment you can just,
• 47:50
  Speaker 3: just quiet that voice a little bit and not, not
• 47:53
  Speaker 3: have those thoughts of like impending failure, just dominating your brain. Yeah.
• 47:58
  Speaker 2: You know, a lot of that stuff comes from the
• 48:01
  Speaker 2: fact that for a lot of people, they don't actually
• 48:04
  Speaker 2: do this that often. Like you might hunt a bunch,
• 48:06
  Speaker 2: but maybe you shoot your bow at a living animal
• 48:08
  Speaker 2: once a year or something. Right. Um, So I think that,
• 48:12
  Speaker 2: of course, our body is going to go into and
• 48:14
  Speaker 2: our minds are going to go into this crazy fight
• 48:16
  Speaker 2: or flight mode because of the fact that you simply
• 48:18
  Speaker 2: don't get many reps to actually deal with that very
• 48:21
  Speaker 2: unique situation, right? So I think one possible additional solution
• 48:24
  Speaker 2: is just shoot more deer, you know, shoot a bunch
• 48:27
  Speaker 2: of does, do whatever it is that makes you happy
• 48:30
  Speaker 2: and gives you that experience and fills your freezer. That's
• 48:32
  Speaker 2: a great thing. But also, you know, to your point,
• 48:36
  Speaker 2: I think that you can kind of simulate it. other deer, right?
• 48:40
  Speaker 2: As you said that you do, I oftentimes when another
• 48:43
  Speaker 2: deer will come through, I'll oftentimes visualize, okay, this is
• 48:47
  Speaker 2: now when I will draw back. If it's a doe
• 48:49
  Speaker 2: or something and I feel good about my situation, I
• 48:50
  Speaker 2: might even just kind of act it out almost. Just visualize,
• 48:55
  Speaker 2: look at it as a practice rep. Kind of hold
• 48:57
  Speaker 2: my finger up and imagine hovering that pin over the
• 48:59
  Speaker 2: vitals and just take a practice rep. And of course,
• 49:04
  Speaker 2: it's not the exact same thing, but Every time you
• 49:07
  Speaker 2: do that over day after day after day, all that
• 49:10
  Speaker 2: stuff slowly starts to build like a groove that your
• 49:13
  Speaker 2: brain can fall into when the real thing's happening, where
• 49:16
  Speaker 2: it knows what to do. It believes it can do it.
• 49:19
  Speaker 2: And that stuff adds up.
• 49:22
  Speaker 3: Oh, dude, I totally agree. And I think that, you know,
• 49:26
  Speaker 3: we've talked about this before, but like the visualization thing
• 49:30
  Speaker 3: that sounds like woo-woo crap is so important. And when
• 49:34
  Speaker 3: you think about, you know, when you have, let's say
• 49:37
  Speaker 3: you're out there and you're hunting your target buck and
• 49:39
  Speaker 3: a forky comes in. When you watch that deer and
• 49:43
  Speaker 3: you're looking at where you would shoot it, when he
• 49:45
  Speaker 3: turns to nibble on this thing or he turns away
• 49:48
  Speaker 3: to scratch his nose with his back hoof, he walks
• 49:51
  Speaker 3: up to the scrape a certain way. When you're looking
• 49:53
  Speaker 3: at where your point of impact would be, especially bow hunting, right?
• 49:57
  Speaker 3: Like where would I need that wound channel to go
• 49:59
  Speaker 3: through to hit both lungs? You realize how much that
• 50:04
  Speaker 3: changes like second by second in those encounters, right? And
• 50:10
  Speaker 3: the more that you see that, and the more that
• 50:11
  Speaker 3: you watch that, the more you realize like, man, I,
• 50:16
  Speaker 3: I need to be in this moment and read this correctly.
• 50:19
  Speaker 3: You know, it's the same thing. Like if you're, you know,
• 50:21
  Speaker 3: if you're in a situation and you have a bunch
• 50:23
  Speaker 3: of does and fawns come out in the field or
• 50:25
  Speaker 3: you're on a river crossing or whatever, and you, and
• 50:28
  Speaker 3: you start ranging them, you know, stand up, range them,
• 50:32
  Speaker 3: do that thing. And you're like, Oh, that does actually
• 50:34
  Speaker 3: 31 yards away. And I would have guessed 25 or whatever. Like,
• 50:37
  Speaker 3: you start to just sort of get into the, like
• 50:41
  Speaker 3: give yourself to the moment and, and you become like
• 50:44
  Speaker 3: a bigger part of it. Like you're, you're like, I'm,
• 50:47
  Speaker 3: I'm going through as many steps as I can right now.
• 50:51
  Speaker 3: And when it actually happens, it, it won't be all
• 50:55
  Speaker 3: a surprise. It won't be the first time I'm doing this.
• 50:58
  Speaker 3: Like you said, even if you haven't killed very many deer,
• 51:01
  Speaker 3: there are things you can do to just get ahead
• 51:03
  Speaker 3: of the curve a little bit. And man, all of it,
• 51:06
  Speaker 3: all of it kind of will help you build your
• 51:08
  Speaker 3: confidence like very incrementally, but still like move it in
• 51:12
  Speaker 3: the right direction. Yeah.
• 51:14
  Speaker 2: And, and that stuff, that stuff stacks up big time.
• 51:17
  Speaker 2: It's what ends up making a difference. Uh, so I
• 51:20
  Speaker 2: want to take a pretty hard pivot with, with my
• 51:22
  Speaker 2: next one. And this is, this is a, a miss
• 51:26
  Speaker 2: where I missed a big buck and I learned something
• 51:29
  Speaker 2: that didn't have anything to do with the shot itself,
• 51:32
  Speaker 2: but it had to do with the decisions leading up
• 51:35
  Speaker 2: to the shot. So, a little bit of a departure,
• 51:38
  Speaker 2: but this was a hunt. This was in Iowa and
• 51:42
  Speaker 2: I had done a whole bunch of homework trying to
• 51:45
  Speaker 2: prepare for this. I went and I knocked on like
• 51:48
  Speaker 2: 15 doors, got permission on a super cool place, went
• 51:51
  Speaker 2: there that summer, did the cameras, the scouting, the prep.
• 51:54
  Speaker 2: I showed up and did an October hunt back in
• 51:57
  Speaker 2: late October, November for another hunt. I'd scouted and had
• 52:01
  Speaker 2: like a game plan of what I was going to
• 52:02
  Speaker 2: do and how I was going to do it and
• 52:04
  Speaker 2: where it was going to happen. And it just wasn't working.
• 52:07
  Speaker 2: I don't remember how many days I had hunted, but
• 52:11
  Speaker 2: the game plan wasn't working. The spots weren't working. The
• 52:14
  Speaker 2: setup wasn't as I imagined it was all going to be.
• 52:18
  Speaker 2: And I was getting into that timeline or that part
• 52:22
  Speaker 2: of the timeline where you start to be like, ooh,
• 52:24
  Speaker 2: like I'm running out of time. And I had the
• 52:28
  Speaker 2: momentary wisdom to realize that sometimes you need to try
• 52:34
  Speaker 2: wild new things. Sometimes the plan, kind of as we
• 52:37
  Speaker 2: talked about, you don't always need to force the plan.
• 52:40
  Speaker 2: Sometimes the plan is not the right one. You maybe
• 52:42
  Speaker 2: thought it was going to be, but sometimes you have
• 52:45
  Speaker 2: to be willing to depart from the expected, step away
• 52:48
  Speaker 2: from the game plan, and go and just do something
• 52:52
  Speaker 2: wildly off the wall. Try something unexpected. And so what
• 52:56
  Speaker 2: I decided to do in this moment was, I'd been
• 52:59
  Speaker 2: kind of working my way from plan A to plan
• 53:01
  Speaker 2: B to plan C, And then on this day, whatever
• 53:04
  Speaker 2: it was, seven or whatever, I said, you know what?
• 53:08
  Speaker 2: I'm going to go to the one place that I
• 53:10
  Speaker 2: haven't been yet. There's one area that there's no reason
• 53:13
  Speaker 2: to go to, that nobody else is at, that no
• 53:16
  Speaker 2: one has reason to go to, that I haven't had
• 53:18
  Speaker 2: a reason to go to. But maybe that's the spot
• 53:21
  Speaker 2: that I should go because of the fact that I
• 53:22
  Speaker 2: haven't been ignoring it. Other people are probably ignoring it.
• 53:25
  Speaker 2: So let's just throw a curveball and let's just go see.
• 53:29
  Speaker 2: And so for this hunt, I just went off on
• 53:32
  Speaker 2: a wild hare and went to this wild, far away
• 53:35
  Speaker 2: little corner of this property, kind of ignoring all the
• 53:39
  Speaker 2: really good looking stuff. And I stumbled into Shangri-La. And
• 53:44
  Speaker 2: I had just like a parade of deer come off
• 53:47
  Speaker 2: of this little tiny corner of this little wood lot.
• 53:50
  Speaker 2: And it was like one of those first hunts in
• 53:53
  Speaker 2: my life, one of the only hunts really in my life,
• 53:55
  Speaker 2: where I felt like I was living an outdoor TV
• 53:58
  Speaker 2: show hunt. It was like I stumbled onto Mark Drury's
• 54:02
  Speaker 2: farm or something. There was 50 deer and several big
• 54:07
  Speaker 2: shooter bucks that all came out off of this big
• 54:09
  Speaker 2: chunk of cover into this little tiny back of nowhere field.
• 54:14
  Speaker 2: And then one of them ended up being like a,
• 54:18
  Speaker 2: I don't know, maybe 160 class buck with split G2s
• 54:22
  Speaker 2: and just an amazing deer. And I did what I
• 54:26
  Speaker 2: did in the very first story I mentioned, which is
• 54:28
  Speaker 2: that I rushed the shot and shot right underneath him.
• 54:31
  Speaker 2: And of course, I was beating myself up about that
• 54:33
  Speaker 2: for a little bit. But a few days later, I
• 54:36
  Speaker 2: reminded myself like, hey, you know what? That stunk that
• 54:38
  Speaker 2: you missed that buck. But there is a positive to
• 54:41
  Speaker 2: take from that hunt. And the positive was that I
• 54:44
  Speaker 2: had the momentary good insight to be willing to set
• 54:49
  Speaker 2: all the other plans and the expectations and how I
• 54:52
  Speaker 2: thought things should go. I set that aside. and decided
• 54:55
  Speaker 2: to just try something new, try something wildly unexpected. And
• 55:00
  Speaker 2: oftentimes that can be a very good way to go
• 55:04
  Speaker 2: about things with deer hunting. Like it's great to be prepared.
• 55:07
  Speaker 2: It's great to have plans. It's great to have plan A, B, C, D, E.
• 55:10
  Speaker 2: But sometimes it's all right to just wing it. Just
• 55:15
  Speaker 2: try something new. Just go somewhere different. Just take a
• 55:17
  Speaker 2: different approach. Maybe it's not going to work out, but
• 55:20
  Speaker 2: you're going to learn something. It's going to put yourself
• 55:23
  Speaker 2: in a new situation where you're going to come out
• 55:25
  Speaker 2: of it differently. And then every once in a while,
• 55:28
  Speaker 2: that new thing might be a big eye-opener. And then
• 55:31
  Speaker 2: you all of a sudden realize, oh, wow, that place
• 55:32
  Speaker 2: I ignored, it's actually a honey hole. Or this new
• 55:36
  Speaker 2: technique that I always thought was crazy, but I finally
• 55:38
  Speaker 2: tried it. Oh, it actually works. Experiments are so important,
• 55:44
  Speaker 2: I think, to deer hunting. You got to Try different things.
• 55:47
  Speaker 2: Don't just get stuck in what you've always done or
• 55:51
  Speaker 2: what everybody says you should do or what your family does.
• 55:54
  Speaker 2: Try new crazy stuff. Sometimes it really works out great.
• 56:11
  Speaker 3: So did we switch podcasts here? What does this have
• 56:14
  Speaker 3: to do with Missing Deer?
• 56:18
  Speaker 2: Again, like I, it wasn't the mist that I learned about.
• 56:20
  Speaker 2: It was, I missed that deer, but that experience, what
• 56:24
  Speaker 2: I learned from it was the idea that sometimes you've
• 56:26
  Speaker 2: got to try these different things. So this is a
• 56:29
  Speaker 2: lesson I learned from missing a deer. It just wasn't
• 56:31
  Speaker 2: about the shooting itself.
• 56:33
  Speaker 3: Okay. I got you. I didn't know we were coloring
• 56:35
  Speaker 3: that far outside the lines.
• 56:37
  Speaker 2: Oh man, you can, I can experiment with podcasts, Tony.
• 56:41
  Speaker 3: I absolutely agree with you that you should try shit
• 56:44
  Speaker 3: like that. Like, I think that that's, I think that
• 56:48
  Speaker 3: the willingness to try stuff like that is what separates
• 56:52
  Speaker 3: great hunters from the rest of the pack generally. Like,
• 56:57
  Speaker 3: I think that people look at it and they go, oh,
• 56:58
  Speaker 3: it's because they have this strategy figured out. How to
• 57:00
  Speaker 3: hunt beds or how to do this or how to
• 57:02
  Speaker 3: do that. I'm like, man, they try stuff that shouldn't work.
• 57:05
  Speaker 3: And when you try stuff that shouldn't work, especially on
• 57:07
  Speaker 3: pressured deer, but it's just all deer. Yeah. Sometimes you
• 57:11
  Speaker 3: find something and every lesson that comes from that will
• 57:14
  Speaker 3: feed the rest of your deer hunting life.
• 57:17
  Speaker 2: Yeah. That, that has been one of the biggest unlocks
• 57:20
  Speaker 2: for me as a deer hunter. Like when I realized
• 57:23
  Speaker 2: you don't have to do it this one way, you
• 57:25
  Speaker 2: don't have to follow the prescription. And when I all
• 57:27
  Speaker 2: of a sudden released myself from that and instead was like,
• 57:30
  Speaker 2: all right, let's just try things and then learn from that.
• 57:33
  Speaker 2: And then hunt based on your own experience with these
• 57:36
  Speaker 2: different things you've tried all of a sudden, like, Oh, wow.
• 57:38
  Speaker 2: I didn't think that was possible, but I did it.
• 57:40
  Speaker 2: I didn't think this was a way that you could
• 57:42
  Speaker 2: do it, but I just did it, you know? So
• 57:43
  Speaker 2: now all of a sudden it's like, Hey, let's stand
• 57:45
  Speaker 2: up or hide in a standing cornfield on the ground
• 57:48
  Speaker 2: because you think, man, this might be the spot. I
• 57:50
  Speaker 2: really do think this is the way to do it,
• 57:52
  Speaker 2: but there's no good trees. Previous me would have said, well,
• 57:54
  Speaker 2: if there's no good tree, you can't hunt it. Uh,
• 57:56
  Speaker 2: but I was like, you know, screw it. I'm going
• 57:58
  Speaker 2: to try to just hide in the cornfield. I'm going
• 58:00
  Speaker 2: to lay down. If they come close, I'm going to
• 58:02
  Speaker 2: stand up. If I need to move and then sure enough,
• 58:04
  Speaker 2: kill a deer. Or what about a situation where you
• 58:06
  Speaker 2: see the buck moving on the other side of the river?
• 58:09
  Speaker 2: There's no good trees. And you're like, well, there's no
• 58:11
  Speaker 2: way to kill that buck unless I just hid in
• 58:13
  Speaker 2: this little tuft of grass. There's no way that should work.
• 58:15
  Speaker 2: But hell, I'm going to try it. And then sure enough,
• 58:18
  Speaker 2: it works. There's so many examples now I can point
• 58:21
  Speaker 2: to where 15 years ago, me would have said, oh,
• 58:25
  Speaker 2: that's too risky or that shouldn't work. And I just
• 58:28
  Speaker 2: wouldn't have tried. But since trying all these things, now
• 58:31
  Speaker 2: all of a sudden you're realizing, oh, wow, yeah, you
• 58:32
  Speaker 2: can do it this way and that way and that way.
• 58:35
  Speaker 2: You just got to give it a shot.
• 58:37
  Speaker 3: Oh, for sure. I mean, what, what you're saying kind
• 58:40
  Speaker 3: of reminds me of when climbing stands got really popular,
• 58:43
  Speaker 3: you know, when at whatever timeframe that was, everybody had
• 58:46
  Speaker 3: a climber, right? And then you went out and you're like, well,
• 58:50
  Speaker 3: now I got to find a tree that I can
• 58:51
  Speaker 3: climb with it. And so instead of looking for the
• 58:53
  Speaker 3: best spot to hunt, you're like, I'm looking for a
• 58:55
  Speaker 3: climbable tree. And it's like, you're just forcing something to
• 58:58
  Speaker 3: happen that, that it doesn't make sense. Like you should
• 59:01
  Speaker 3: be looking for the best solve for that situation. So
• 59:04
  Speaker 3: like you brought up, you know, sitting in a cornfield.
• 59:08
  Speaker 3: I just had a conversation with somebody who's a pretty
• 59:10
  Speaker 3: new bow hunter about that. And I was like, man,
• 59:15
  Speaker 3: the amount of times, especially on early season deer where
• 59:19
  Speaker 3: they're betting in the beans or they're just, you know,
• 59:23
  Speaker 3: betting in a grassy swale or slew or something, but
• 59:25
  Speaker 3: they're not, you know, not up in the timber a
• 59:28
  Speaker 3: whole lot on the ridges, eating acorns or whatever, when
• 59:31
  Speaker 3: you can hunt them or when you can shoot them.
• 59:33
  Speaker 3: Oftentimes that setup, just getting into a cornfield two rows
• 59:39
  Speaker 3: deep and just clearing out a little spot to shoot
• 59:42
  Speaker 3: is the answer you need. And man, they look at that,
• 59:44
  Speaker 3: they walk right by it. They don't see you. Like
• 59:47
  Speaker 3: you just, you're just gone. And so, so many times
• 59:51
  Speaker 3: that kind of thing happens where you're like, you know,
• 59:54
  Speaker 3: I bought this new saddle. I really want to sit
• 59:56
  Speaker 3: in it. And you're like, just, it, it might be
• 59:58
  Speaker 3: the right solve for one situation and be holding you
• 1:00:03
  Speaker 3: back the next day.
• 1:00:05
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:00:06
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:00:07
  Speaker 2: So true. All right. What is, uh, what is your
• 1:00:10
  Speaker 2: next one, Tony, that, that obviously must stay right within
• 1:00:14
  Speaker 2: the constraints of our podcast format today.
• 1:00:17
  Speaker 3: So, so my last one I think is, is one
• 1:00:20
  Speaker 3: that I'm certain that some people will disagree with me
• 1:00:23
  Speaker 3: on and I don't care. This has come through from
• 1:00:26
  Speaker 3: a lot of deer hunting and I'm to the point
• 1:00:29
  Speaker 3: now where I would say probably at least 80% of
• 1:00:34
  Speaker 3: the time I'm going to shoot at a deer. I
• 1:00:37
  Speaker 3: will draw when they're dead. So what I mean by
• 1:00:40
  Speaker 3: that is I don't, I'm not going to look at
• 1:00:43
  Speaker 3: that buck coming down the trail and go, okay, now
• 1:00:46
  Speaker 3: I can draw cause he's 20 yards out. I want
• 1:00:49
  Speaker 3: that deer to be right where I'm going to kill
• 1:00:52
  Speaker 3: him when I draw. And the reason for that is
• 1:00:56
  Speaker 3: the amount of times, and this kind of goes back
• 1:00:58
  Speaker 3: to what we talked about at the beginning, but the
• 1:01:00
  Speaker 3: amount of times where I drew early or I drew
• 1:01:03
  Speaker 3: at the wrong time and they cut back and they
• 1:01:08
  Speaker 3: walk around your stand or they stop for whatever reason.
• 1:01:12
  Speaker 3: Maybe they hear you draw. Maybe it's calm. Maybe they don't.
• 1:01:16
  Speaker 3: Maybe you drew and a squirrel barked and it stopped them.
• 1:01:19
  Speaker 3: Or maybe they just stopped. When you do that, then
• 1:01:23
  Speaker 3: you go into that mode where you're like, now I'm panicking.
• 1:01:28
  Speaker 3: Because what I expected to last about five seconds is
• 1:01:34
  Speaker 3: now the clock is ticking. And the instant you hit
• 1:01:36
  Speaker 3: full draw, that clock is ticking. And you're painfully aware
• 1:01:41
  Speaker 3: of it. And so I see, you know, you see
• 1:01:43
  Speaker 3: videos pop up where you'll see people draw and they're
• 1:01:46
  Speaker 3: at full draw. you know, 10, 15, 20, 30 seconds. And,
• 1:01:50
  Speaker 3: you know, usually you're seeing the highlight reel. So they
• 1:01:52
  Speaker 3: made it happen. But when that happens to you, the
• 1:01:55
  Speaker 3: panic is real. And for me, man, people really, really
• 1:02:01
  Speaker 3: worry about a deer busting them drawing. I don't really
• 1:02:06
  Speaker 3: care anymore. I don't want to get busted, but I
• 1:02:09
  Speaker 3: want to make all my big movements outside of drawing
• 1:02:12
  Speaker 3: before I draw. And I want that deer to be
• 1:02:15
  Speaker 3: exactly where I want to kill them or where I'm
• 1:02:18
  Speaker 3: like that, that deer gets there. I'm drawing and it's dead.
• 1:02:21
  Speaker 3: I have a six foot lane or whatever. When I
• 1:02:25
  Speaker 3: started doing that, I, I got busted, you know, like
• 1:02:29
  Speaker 3: I get busted by deer when I draw and I'm like,
• 1:02:31
  Speaker 3: I still kill them. Like they just die because once
• 1:02:34
  Speaker 3: you're at full draw, they're not getting away. So you aim,
• 1:02:36
  Speaker 3: you know, top third of the heart or whatever, and
• 1:02:38
  Speaker 3: you're good to go. But the amount of times in
• 1:02:41
  Speaker 3: my career where, I've drawn at the wrong time. A
• 1:02:45
  Speaker 3: lot of that has resulted in me missing because it's,
• 1:02:48
  Speaker 3: it's just puts me in a different situation. It's a
• 1:02:51
  Speaker 3: hard thing to learn and a lot of people won't
• 1:02:54
  Speaker 3: do it. But for me, I feel like that's one
• 1:02:57
  Speaker 3: of the things that has helped me kill a lot
• 1:02:59
  Speaker 3: more deer. Yeah.
• 1:03:02
  Speaker 2: I have had that happen a few times and it
• 1:03:03
  Speaker 2: is a nightmare. I remember one in particular where I
• 1:03:06
  Speaker 2: was stuck at, I think I, I was self filming
• 1:03:10
  Speaker 2: at the time and I think it was like a
• 1:03:11
  Speaker 2: minute and 15 seconds. I was stuck at full draw
• 1:03:13
  Speaker 2: and it was just horrible.
• 1:03:16
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 1:03:16
  Speaker 2: So not only do you have the whole mental thing,
• 1:03:18
  Speaker 2: but then also just your physical capacity, like when you're
• 1:03:21
  Speaker 2: already like all shook up and then you're just holding
• 1:03:23
  Speaker 2: for that long and, and then trying to get a
• 1:03:26
  Speaker 2: good shot when you finally do get the opportunity, like
• 1:03:28
  Speaker 2: you're just, you're setting yourself up for bad, bad stuff
• 1:03:32
  Speaker 2: to happen. Um, so yeah, I would, I would generally
• 1:03:35
  Speaker 2: say that I'm pretty much in the same camp. I might,
• 1:03:38
  Speaker 2: you know, I probably have a little bit more wiggle
• 1:03:42
  Speaker 2: room with it. If there's a tree and they're going
• 1:03:46
  Speaker 2: to pass behind it just as they walk into that lane,
• 1:03:48
  Speaker 2: I try to take advantage of those kinds of things.
• 1:03:52
  Speaker 2: I think that makes a lot of sense to me.
• 1:03:55
  Speaker 3: If you think about it, it's like they're not going
• 1:04:03
  Speaker 3: to get out of the way of that arrow. If
• 1:04:07
  Speaker 3: you think about the conventional advice is I think people
• 1:04:12
  Speaker 3: generally think they need to draw way earlier than they
• 1:04:15
  Speaker 3: need to. But I, I mean, I can think about a,
• 1:04:17
  Speaker 3: I can think about a buck that I missed in
• 1:04:19
  Speaker 3: North Dakota one time on a, on a river crossing
• 1:04:23
  Speaker 3: where he was coming in clueless. Right. And I drew
• 1:04:27
  Speaker 3: early and then he just kind of juked a little bit,
• 1:04:31
  Speaker 3: but not enough to like, I was like, he's still toast.
• 1:04:34
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 1:04:35
  Speaker 3: But I had to move. And so now I'm at
• 1:04:37
  Speaker 3: full draw and I kind of have to, you know,
• 1:04:40
  Speaker 3: pivot position a little differently. And now my elbow hits
• 1:04:43
  Speaker 3: the tree because I've changed the positioning of my body, right?
• 1:04:48
  Speaker 3: Like I have a bigger profile to move around. And
• 1:04:50
  Speaker 3: when you think about if you draw that bow and
• 1:04:55
  Speaker 3: you have to move now, that has become so much
• 1:04:59
  Speaker 3: harder than quietly just shifting into position and then drawing.
• 1:05:03
  Speaker 3: And your brain, you know, your brain will go from like,
• 1:05:06
  Speaker 3: Now I'm going to draw, and that's the thing that
• 1:05:09
  Speaker 3: has my attention. So you're not thinking, where is your
• 1:05:12
  Speaker 3: elbow going to be if you have to turn 20
• 1:05:15
  Speaker 3: degrees in the stand, or he walks closer, and now
• 1:05:18
  Speaker 3: you've got to shoot lower, something like that. When that
• 1:05:21
  Speaker 3: stuff happens to you, it takes your mind out of
• 1:05:24
  Speaker 3: the shot, and that's when you miss. And so for me,
• 1:05:28
  Speaker 3: I'm like, I need to just dumb it down every
• 1:05:29
  Speaker 3: way I can, and if it's like, get into the
• 1:05:34
  Speaker 3: position I can shoot, wait for him to put himself
• 1:05:38
  Speaker 3: where he's dead. And then I draw those steps are
• 1:05:41
  Speaker 3: all kind of compartmentalized and my brain is just easier
• 1:05:44
  Speaker 3: at handling. And it goes, okay, well that worked out,
• 1:05:46
  Speaker 3: that worked out, that worked out. Now we're at full draw.
• 1:05:49
  Speaker 3: I don't care if he's looking at me, like, cause
• 1:05:51
  Speaker 3: now I just got to put the pin on his
• 1:05:52
  Speaker 3: lungs and kill him. Yeah.
• 1:05:54
  Speaker 2: And to our earlier discussion, if you are willing to,
• 1:05:58
  Speaker 2: you know, have that kind of shrunken, max range that
• 1:06:03
  Speaker 2: you're willing to shoot at. You've got these deer at
• 1:06:05
  Speaker 2: 20 yards anyways. Like they're not, they're not jumping the
• 1:06:07
  Speaker 2: string on you at 20 yards. Right. Um, when you
• 1:06:09
  Speaker 2: draw back, if you do get busted, right. Um, kind of,
• 1:06:13
  Speaker 2: you mentioned something there, like when you get drawn back
• 1:06:15
  Speaker 2: and you're stuck and then you're moving around, you're bumping
• 1:06:17
  Speaker 2: your elbow and stuff. That is a perfect segue into
• 1:06:20
  Speaker 2: my last lesson here, which is to mind the tiny things,
• 1:06:26
  Speaker 2: like pay attention to the details. The little things are
• 1:06:29
  Speaker 2: big and This was illustrated for me in a miss
• 1:06:34
  Speaker 2: that I have talked about a lot. So I will
• 1:06:36
  Speaker 2: not kind of belabor the story on this hunt because
• 1:06:39
  Speaker 2: I've told it so many times. Um, but I'll, I'll
• 1:06:42
  Speaker 2: give the broad strokes just in case people aren't familiar.
• 1:06:44
  Speaker 2: This was a hunt, another different hunt, different year in Iowa.
• 1:06:47
  Speaker 2: Iowa has been a, has been a curse for me. Um, but, uh,
• 1:06:52
  Speaker 2: this was a situation where I had been hunting with
• 1:06:56
  Speaker 2: a cameraman and And we had been hunting all week
• 1:07:00
  Speaker 2: and nothing had been going right. And I had a
• 1:07:02
  Speaker 2: bunch of kind of just like everything had been leading
• 1:07:04
  Speaker 2: up to the end. Couldn't kill a deer. Really, really
• 1:07:06
  Speaker 2: wanted this. This nicely ties in so many of the
• 1:07:08
  Speaker 2: things we've talked about. Actually, I put so much pressure
• 1:07:11
  Speaker 2: on myself throughout the week. I'd been trying to just
• 1:07:13
  Speaker 2: force this thing to happen. I finally went to a
• 1:07:16
  Speaker 2: new place and we get set.
• 1:07:19
  Speaker 3: Up in the tree.
• 1:07:20
  Speaker 2: We climb, we're setting up like a saddle set up
• 1:07:22
  Speaker 2: in the tree and we climb in there and As
• 1:07:25
  Speaker 2: you know, a little bit unique because we're filming here,
• 1:07:28
  Speaker 2: but as you know, when you have a second person
• 1:07:29
  Speaker 2: in the tree with you, there's just more stuff. There's
• 1:07:32
  Speaker 2: more movement. It takes longer. And so my cameraman is
• 1:07:36
  Speaker 2: getting all set up and I'm trying to get it
• 1:07:37
  Speaker 2: set up and we're racing towards daylight. It's a morning hunt.
• 1:07:41
  Speaker 2: And I remember it's just about daylight and my camera
• 1:07:43
  Speaker 2: guy is all set up finally. And I remember, you know,
• 1:07:46
  Speaker 2: eyeballing the situation. And something that I do whenever I
• 1:07:50
  Speaker 2: get into any tree stand, really any setup at all,
• 1:07:53
  Speaker 2: hunt in a blind or tree stand or on the ground,
• 1:07:57
  Speaker 2: tying back to the importance of the little things, I
• 1:08:01
  Speaker 2: try to go and kind of do a walkthrough of
• 1:08:03
  Speaker 2: if a deer shows up here, can I draw back?
• 1:08:06
  Speaker 2: Can I get a shot here? If a deer walks
• 1:08:07
  Speaker 2: behind me, what will I do? Can I spin around?
• 1:08:10
  Speaker 2: Can I move in this way without my elbow hitting
• 1:08:12
  Speaker 2: the back of the tree or hitting a branch? Will
• 1:08:15
  Speaker 2: my bow be able to be fully extended without hitting
• 1:08:17
  Speaker 2: these leaves or whatever? If I step forward, will the
• 1:08:20
  Speaker 2: trees underneath my platform rattle the leaves? I try to
• 1:08:25
  Speaker 2: do all of this stuff. I do like a walkthrough
• 1:08:27
  Speaker 2: of every possible scenario. And I think this really, really
• 1:08:30
  Speaker 2: helps because little things are oftentimes what makes a shot
• 1:08:35
  Speaker 2: go bad and make a hunt go bad. So in
• 1:08:37
  Speaker 2: this case, I did all of that stuff. But while
• 1:08:40
  Speaker 2: doing that, what I noticed was that when I tried
• 1:08:43
  Speaker 2: to shoot in one particular place, my cameraman's backpack, was
• 1:08:48
  Speaker 2: hanging on the side of the tree there and the
• 1:08:50
  Speaker 2: top of my bow would bump up against that. And
• 1:08:52
  Speaker 2: I could not fully extend and shoot my bow comfortably
• 1:08:54
  Speaker 2: because of the backpack there. So in this moment, I'm like,
• 1:08:57
  Speaker 2: oh gosh, like I have to, we have to move
• 1:09:00
  Speaker 2: the backpack. Even though it's like now daylight, anytime now
• 1:09:03
  Speaker 2: Buck's going to come walking through. I talked to him like, hey,
• 1:09:07
  Speaker 2: we have to move the backpack. It's just in the spot.
• 1:09:09
  Speaker 2: It's not going to work right. So he then has to,
• 1:09:11
  Speaker 2: I grabbed the backpack for him. He has to unscrew
• 1:09:13
  Speaker 2: the thing or undo the, whatever it was, re-screw in
• 1:09:17
  Speaker 2: the hanger, put the backpack up. It takes, I don't know,
• 1:09:20
  Speaker 2: five minutes. The whole time I'm on eggshells imagining that
• 1:09:23
  Speaker 2: a deer is going to show up at any second.
• 1:09:25
  Speaker 2: And he sets it back up. He's like, okay, how's that?
• 1:09:29
  Speaker 2: And I go and I go try to draw back
• 1:09:31
  Speaker 2: and stuff. And it's not quite right still. Like it's
• 1:09:35
  Speaker 2: still not quite out of my way enough. But it
• 1:09:39
  Speaker 2: wasn't too bad. And I thought to myself, well, it's
• 1:09:41
  Speaker 2: only this one little spot where it really wouldn't be perfect.
• 1:09:44
  Speaker 2: And that's probably not where it's going to happen. And
• 1:09:47
  Speaker 2: even if a deer did show up in that one
• 1:09:49
  Speaker 2: little spot, I bet you I could just lean down
• 1:09:51
  Speaker 2: a little bit or I could just lean back a
• 1:09:52
  Speaker 2: little bit or get down. I can make it work. Uh,
• 1:09:55
  Speaker 2: I just, we don't have time to deal with this anymore.
• 1:09:57
  Speaker 2: It'll it's good enough.
• 1:09:58
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 1:09:58
  Speaker 2: I settled as we talked about the beginning, right? I
• 1:10:01
  Speaker 2: settled for good enough. And that tiny little thing ended
• 1:10:06
  Speaker 2: up being the tiny little thing that sent me, uh,
• 1:10:09
  Speaker 2: you know, sent me downhill with this story because of
• 1:10:13
  Speaker 2: course the one place I don't want a buck to
• 1:10:15
  Speaker 2: show up is the one place where he did show
• 1:10:17
  Speaker 2: up and presented a shot opportunity and, And I drew back,
• 1:10:21
  Speaker 2: and as I'm trying to get a shot, I'm trying
• 1:10:23
  Speaker 2: to maneuver around this backpack. I'm trying to crouch down
• 1:10:25
  Speaker 2: underneath it. My top of my cam is hitting the backpack.
• 1:10:29
  Speaker 2: I miss the deer. And that was one of those
• 1:10:32
  Speaker 2: situations where two of our topics today had something to
• 1:10:36
  Speaker 2: do with this. Number one being, I settled. I did
• 1:10:39
  Speaker 2: not mind that tiny thing. And the second thing is
• 1:10:42
  Speaker 2: that I had put so much pressure on myself. I
• 1:10:45
  Speaker 2: had so much building up this entire week. I probably
• 1:10:48
  Speaker 2: was a mental head case in that moment too. So
• 1:10:50
  Speaker 2: between those two things, I had an amazing opportunity to
• 1:10:54
  Speaker 2: slip through my fingers. And coming out of it, what
• 1:10:56
  Speaker 2: I reminded myself, I was like, okay, I did like
• 1:11:01
  Speaker 2: a 95% good job of minding the tiny things. I
• 1:11:03
  Speaker 2: did the walkthrough, I made adjustments, I did all that stuff.
• 1:11:06
  Speaker 2: But still that last 5% or the last 2% still matter.
• 1:11:10
  Speaker 2: And then number two, as we've talked about many times
• 1:11:14
  Speaker 2: since this hunt, I have learned to lower the pressure,
• 1:11:18
  Speaker 2: to lower the temperature on these hunts for all the
• 1:11:21
  Speaker 2: reasons we've talked about today. This stuff is not life
• 1:11:23
  Speaker 2: or death. This is not the end of the world.
• 1:11:26
  Speaker 2: We don't have to have worst case thinking. We don't
• 1:11:28
  Speaker 2: need to put so much pressure. We don't need to
• 1:11:29
  Speaker 2: force these shots. Just have a good time out there.
• 1:11:33
  Speaker 2: Enjoy it. And that's going to put you in a
• 1:11:36
  Speaker 2: better headspace that will lead to better execution on the shots,
• 1:11:39
  Speaker 2: better decision making, and make you not only a happier hunter,
• 1:11:43
  Speaker 2: but I think a much more effective one too. And that,
• 1:11:47
  Speaker 2: I think that story for me sums up so many
• 1:11:49
  Speaker 2: of the lessons here today. And so much of what
• 1:11:52
  Speaker 2: I hope will help me this year and hope other,
• 1:11:55
  Speaker 2: other people too.
• 1:11:56
  Speaker 3: Totally. And I, I just want to, I want to
• 1:11:58
  Speaker 3: hit on a quick point there because I think it's
• 1:12:00
  Speaker 3: super valuable. So you talked about it. There's a different
• 1:12:05
  Speaker 3: level of challenge when you're filming a hunt, right, man.
• 1:12:10
  Speaker 3: One of the things that that just drives home for
• 1:12:12
  Speaker 3: me when we're filming whitetail hunts is if my attention
• 1:12:16
  Speaker 3: is divided, which is so much easier to have happen
• 1:12:20
  Speaker 3: when you have somebody in the tree and you have
• 1:12:22
  Speaker 3: to think about, is that deer in frame? Can they
• 1:12:24
  Speaker 3: get on them? You realize how, you know, that's like
• 1:12:30
  Speaker 3: a unique example, but it's across the board. If you're
• 1:12:34
  Speaker 3: not focused on that shot and just doing what you
• 1:12:37
  Speaker 3: have to do to execute that shot and follow through,
• 1:12:40
  Speaker 3: you're in trouble. And that's, to me, you know, I
• 1:12:43
  Speaker 3: went through a long period of buck fever and kind
• 1:12:46
  Speaker 3: of got it under control, generally shoot pretty well when
• 1:12:49
  Speaker 3: I'm out there just hunting on my own. But when
• 1:12:51
  Speaker 3: I started filming a lot again, I was like, Oh man,
• 1:12:54
  Speaker 3: I'm like backsliding.
• 1:12:56
  Speaker 1: Why?
• 1:12:57
  Speaker 3: And it's like, because you're not focused. Like you're always to,
• 1:13:01
  Speaker 3: to a certain extent, you always have a little bit
• 1:13:03
  Speaker 3: of your attention being sucked away by that other thing.
• 1:13:07
  Speaker 3: And most people listening to this, they don't have to
• 1:13:09
  Speaker 3: worry about that, but anything that's there, like you said,
• 1:13:12
  Speaker 3: that pack, right? Like, Maybe, maybe you don't have a
• 1:13:15
  Speaker 3: cameraman in the stand hanging a pack above you, but
• 1:13:18
  Speaker 3: you have a limb that you could have trimmed on
• 1:13:20
  Speaker 3: that one side of your stand. Or, you know, maybe
• 1:13:23
  Speaker 3: you were practice shooting and you heard your bow kind of,
• 1:13:26
  Speaker 3: you know, maybe it clicked a little bit when it
• 1:13:27
  Speaker 3: came to full draw or your cams rolled over or something.
• 1:13:31
  Speaker 3: And you're like, ah, that's probably not that big of
• 1:13:32
  Speaker 3: a deal.
• 1:13:33
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:13:33
  Speaker 3: In your backyard. Right.
• 1:13:35
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:13:35
  Speaker 3: But now when you're like, oh, I'm going to have
• 1:13:37
  Speaker 3: to draw and it's going to make that noise and
• 1:13:39
  Speaker 3: it's pin drop quiet, little stuff like that, that's going
• 1:13:42
  Speaker 3: to pull your attention away. it's a great way to miss.
• 1:13:45
  Speaker 2: Yeah. And it, and again, like it, it applies to
• 1:13:49
  Speaker 2: so many different parts of the hunting year.
• 1:13:52
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 1:13:53
  Speaker 2: I think that this whole conversation, and I know it's
• 1:13:57
  Speaker 2: expanding outside of the original plan for this, but so
• 1:14:02
  Speaker 2: much of what leads to mistakes on shots is, is
• 1:14:06
  Speaker 2: like a metaphor for what leads to mistakes in a
• 1:14:09
  Speaker 2: hunting season. And that's why I think this is a,
• 1:14:13
  Speaker 2: this is a particularly interesting one for me because of like, there's,
• 1:14:16
  Speaker 2: there's all these like similar things. There's like these core
• 1:14:19
  Speaker 2: things in our like mind, like putting pressure on ourselves, focus, uh, belief, uh, preparation,
• 1:14:28
  Speaker 2: paying attention to details. Like this is like foundational human
• 1:14:31
  Speaker 2: things that then come to life in different ways. It
• 1:14:35
  Speaker 2: could be in a shot. It could be in a decision.
• 1:14:38
  Speaker 2: It could be in how we make, you know, our
• 1:14:40
  Speaker 2: choices about where we hunt, when we hunt, how we hunt, like,
• 1:14:43
  Speaker 2: There's some ways that deer hunting can feel so complex
• 1:14:48
  Speaker 2: and complicated and challenging and difficult. And then other ways
• 1:14:52
  Speaker 2: where it's, it's very simple. Um, and it kind of
• 1:14:56
  Speaker 2: comes down to some, some very basic human things. If
• 1:14:59
  Speaker 2: you figure out a few basic things about deer and
• 1:15:01
  Speaker 2: then you can kind of figure out yourself, you'll be
• 1:15:04
  Speaker 2: all right. And, and maybe that's what I'm taking away
• 1:15:07
  Speaker 2: from this conversation here today.
• 1:15:08
  Speaker 3: I mean, I totally agree that the deer are actually
• 1:15:11
  Speaker 3: pretty simple. It's us that, make things complicated.
• 1:15:17
  Speaker 2: That's the truth. So tell me this, Tony, before I
• 1:15:20
  Speaker 2: let you go. For people that want to get more
• 1:15:26
  Speaker 2: of this, who want to kind of think about deer
• 1:15:28
  Speaker 2: hunting from some different perspectives, I would highly recommend they
• 1:15:32
  Speaker 2: listen to your weekly show on Wired Hunt, the Foundations podcast,
• 1:15:36
  Speaker 2: where you have free reign to go wherever your strange
• 1:15:39
  Speaker 2: little mind takes you. And you explore deer hunting and
• 1:15:43
  Speaker 2: other related topics in wildly different ways than most anyone
• 1:15:47
  Speaker 2: ever would. You have this freedom to go down weird
• 1:15:49
  Speaker 2: wormholes in strange and interesting ways that I think is
• 1:15:53
  Speaker 2: so cool. So if people aren't already listening, give us
• 1:15:58
  Speaker 2: a quick preview of what you do on foundations and
• 1:16:01
  Speaker 2: maybe some of the things that might be coming up
• 1:16:03
  Speaker 2: this season that you're thinking about.
• 1:16:05
  Speaker 3: Man, I really try to address... people first. I think like,
• 1:16:13
  Speaker 3: I think, you know, and I'm not saying I haven't
• 1:16:15
  Speaker 3: done a million episodes on how to read sign and
• 1:16:18
  Speaker 3: why bucks do this and do that. But I think,
• 1:16:21
  Speaker 3: I think at least at this point in my life,
• 1:16:25
  Speaker 3: I'm looking at how do I think what holds me
• 1:16:28
  Speaker 3: back in my head? Right. And then how do deer
• 1:16:31
  Speaker 3: think not what do deer do, but like what, what
• 1:16:34
  Speaker 3: would be the reason behind a buck's behavior? Just like,
• 1:16:37
  Speaker 3: what's the reason behind my behavior? And when you start
• 1:16:40
  Speaker 3: peeling back those layers, and that's what a lot of
• 1:16:41
  Speaker 3: foundations is, it's like, why are you doing this? Like,
• 1:16:45
  Speaker 3: why do you think that doing this is the best way?
• 1:16:48
  Speaker 3: Or why not try this? What's holding you back? And
• 1:16:52
  Speaker 3: what do you believe about deer that's probably not always true?
• 1:16:58
  Speaker 3: Which is a lot of stuff, right? Like, we internalize
• 1:17:01
  Speaker 3: a lot of deer hunting advice that doesn't have anything
• 1:17:05
  Speaker 3: to do with our situations. And that, and that generally
• 1:17:08
  Speaker 3: steers us in a not very productive direction. And so
• 1:17:10
  Speaker 3: foundations is like, I kind of try to strip away
• 1:17:14
  Speaker 3: a lot of the BS or like a lot of
• 1:17:15
  Speaker 3: the things that like muddy the waters and get people
• 1:17:18
  Speaker 3: to think about themselves individually and the deer individually. Like,
• 1:17:21
  Speaker 3: what do you know about your deer? What can you learn?
• 1:17:24
  Speaker 3: What can you learn about yourself? Because those two things
• 1:17:27
  Speaker 3: are going to be a thousand times better than me
• 1:17:29
  Speaker 3: sitting there going, well, I really like rubs because of this. Like,
• 1:17:33
  Speaker 3: I know, I know there's value in that.
• 1:17:35
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 1:17:36
  Speaker 3: But there's not as much value as actually learning, like,
• 1:17:40
  Speaker 3: why do you do the things you do? And why
• 1:17:42
  Speaker 3: do they do the things that they do? And how
• 1:17:44
  Speaker 3: can you just meet up with them and kill them?
• 1:17:47
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Well, I hate to say this because you rag
• 1:17:51
  Speaker 2: on me so much that it pains me to have
• 1:17:53
  Speaker 2: to shower you with praise. But I would highly recommend,
• 1:17:59
  Speaker 2: if anybody's listening to this today and you are not
• 1:18:02
  Speaker 2: already consistently listening to Foundations with Tony... You really should.
• 1:18:07
  Speaker 2: It is one that I turn to. I hate to
• 1:18:09
  Speaker 2: admit it, but when I'm like driving out on a
• 1:18:11
  Speaker 2: hunting trip or something, every once in a while, I
• 1:18:13
  Speaker 2: will reach for my angry, psychotic, strange friend, Tony, and
• 1:18:20
  Speaker 2: listen to him on the Foundations podcast as I'm heading
• 1:18:23
  Speaker 2: to Iowa or Nebraska or some trip. And it's always good.
• 1:18:27
  Speaker 2: So Tony, I appreciate the work you do.
• 1:18:30
  Speaker 3: I appreciate that, buddy. And I would also say on
• 1:18:33
  Speaker 3: that note, before we wrap up here, Your thought process
• 1:18:39
  Speaker 3: with whitetails and my thought process, they don't hardly ever touch, right?
• 1:18:46
  Speaker 3: I look at the way that you think about it.
• 1:18:49
  Speaker 3: It's vastly different. from me. And I think when you
• 1:18:52
  Speaker 3: talk about, you know, you've interviewed more whitetail experts than
• 1:18:55
  Speaker 3: anyone probably in the country. We look at, you know,
• 1:18:59
  Speaker 3: Andy May and we're like, oh, what does he do, right?
• 1:19:03
  Speaker 3: What does Zach Faribault do? What does, you know, Bill
• 1:19:05
  Speaker 3: Winkie do to kill these bucks? But the lesson when
• 1:19:09
  Speaker 3: you spend time with those guys is not necessarily like
• 1:19:12
  Speaker 3: I put a food plot here or I scout this way.
• 1:19:14
  Speaker 3: It's like, how do they think? And I think that
• 1:19:17
  Speaker 3: exposing yourselves to people who think differently from you, but
• 1:19:21
  Speaker 3: who end up, they're focused on the same journey, right?
• 1:19:25
  Speaker 3: It's just a different route. I think that that's so important.
• 1:19:29
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I agree 100%. So thank you, Tony, for doing
• 1:19:34
  Speaker 2: that work and for taking time for this chat.
• 1:19:36
  Speaker 3: Awesome. Thanks, buddy.
• 1:19:38
  Speaker 2: And for all the rest of you, we'll let you
• 1:19:40
  Speaker 2: go with that. We appreciate you tuning in. If your
• 1:19:43
  Speaker 2: season has kicked off, good luck out there. Have a
• 1:19:47
  Speaker 2: lot of fun. Hopefully some of the things we shared
• 1:19:50
  Speaker 2: here today will stick with you and help out down
• 1:19:52
  Speaker 2: the road. And until next time, stay wired to hunt.