Latest / Wired To Hunt Podcast / Ep. 1041: Learning from our Top 6 Whitetail Failures

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Ep. 1041: Learning from our Top 6 Whitetail Failures · Wired To Hunt Podcast

• 0:01
  Speaker 1: Welcome to the Wired to Hunt podcast, your guide to
• 0:04
  Speaker 1: the whitetail woods, presented by first Light, creating proven versatile
• 0:09
  Speaker 1: hunting apparel for the stand, saddle or blind. First Light
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: Go Farther, Stay Longer, and now your host, Mark Kenyon.
• 0:19
  Speaker 2: Welcome to the Wired to Hunt podcast. This week on
• 0:22
  Speaker 2: the show, I'm joined by Tony Peterson to discuss our
• 0:25
  Speaker 2: top six failures in the deer hunting woods and the
• 0:29
  Speaker 2: lessons that we and you can learn from them. All Right,
• 0:40
  Speaker 2: welcome back to the Wired to Hunt podcast, brought to
• 0:43
  Speaker 2: you by Moultrie. This week on the show, we're talking failure.
• 0:47
  Speaker 2: We are talking about what we all can learn from
• 0:51
  Speaker 2: the inevitable failures, challenges, speed bumps that we're all going
• 0:56
  Speaker 2: to face as whitetail deer hunters. It's gonna happen. It's
• 1:01
  Speaker 2: going to happen most of the time, right. I mean,
• 1:02
  Speaker 2: if you hunt, I don't know, a week, two weeks,
• 1:06
  Speaker 2: three weeks, a year, you might get one successful hunt,
• 1:10
  Speaker 2: one hunt where it all comes together. All the rest
• 1:13
  Speaker 2: might be you know, quote unquote failures. So what can
• 1:17
  Speaker 2: we learn from those days when things don't go right?
• 1:20
  Speaker 2: What can we learn from those moments when we make
• 1:23
  Speaker 2: the wrong decision or somehow things just go wrong. That's
• 1:28
  Speaker 2: what we're going to discuss here today. My guest is,
• 1:31
  Speaker 2: you know co host extraordinary Tony Peterson. The two of
• 1:34
  Speaker 2: us are going to get on here shortly and walk
• 1:37
  Speaker 2: through each of our top three failures over the course
• 1:41
  Speaker 2: of our recent deer hunting history. And we're going to
• 1:44
  Speaker 2: talk through what happened, what went wrong, and then what
• 1:48
  Speaker 2: we learn from it and how we grew as deer
• 1:50
  Speaker 2: hunters and how I think hopefully all of you can
• 1:52
  Speaker 2: learn from our mistakes and maybe take some of these
• 1:55
  Speaker 2: examples we share and apply them to your own deer
• 1:59
  Speaker 2: hunting experience. Is so that you can not only learn
• 2:01
  Speaker 2: from these experiences, but also you know, be able to
• 2:04
  Speaker 2: process failures in your own hunts in a way that
• 2:09
  Speaker 2: can lead to success down the road. So that's the
• 2:12
  Speaker 2: game plan. This is a lighthearted, fun conversation as much
• 2:17
  Speaker 2: fun as I guess you can have while talking about
• 2:20
  Speaker 2: deer hunting failure. So thanks for being here and without
• 2:22
  Speaker 2: any further ado on conversation on failure with Tony Peterson.
• 2:32
  Speaker 2: All right, joining me now, mister Tony Peterson, welcome back
• 2:36
  Speaker 2: to the show.
• 2:38
  Speaker 3: Thanks for having me, buddy.
• 2:40
  Speaker 2: We uh it's I guess I shouldn't really say welcome
• 2:43
  Speaker 2: back to the show because you're on the show every week,
• 2:45
  Speaker 2: but just in a different version of the show. But
• 2:48
  Speaker 2: it's it's been a little while since you and I
• 2:50
  Speaker 2: have got on here together and talked, so I'm glad
• 2:53
  Speaker 2: we're doing it. And I got to give you credit
• 2:57
  Speaker 2: because what we're going to talk about here today is
• 2:59
  Speaker 2: something you have brought up in conversations between the two
• 3:01
  Speaker 2: of us, like for a number of I don't know,
• 3:03
  Speaker 2: for a year or two, we've kind of talked about
• 3:05
  Speaker 2: this idea of someday doing like a full deep dive
• 3:09
  Speaker 2: into failure and different examples we have from our lives.
• 3:14
  Speaker 2: And I'm actually planning on talking to some other people
• 3:17
  Speaker 2: about this too, and I think it's useful and I
• 3:21
  Speaker 2: want to hear your thoughts on this, Tony. But I
• 3:23
  Speaker 2: think that today we are being flooded on social media
• 3:27
  Speaker 2: and on YouTube and on TV, and I guess this
• 3:30
  Speaker 2: isn't unique to today because we've been flooded with this
• 3:33
  Speaker 2: kind of stuff in the past, but now it just
• 3:34
  Speaker 2: seems like the amount of media that we just get
• 3:38
  Speaker 2: jammed on our throats is at another level, we're just
• 3:40
  Speaker 2: constantly barraged by success and how good everybody else is
• 3:45
  Speaker 2: and how great everybody else else's lives are and hunting
• 3:48
  Speaker 2: seasons are, you know, and it can become easy to
• 3:52
  Speaker 2: assume that everyone else is just knocking out of the
• 3:55
  Speaker 2: park and that I am horrible. But the reality is
• 4:00
  Speaker 2: that everybody's failing most of the time, right.
• 4:03
  Speaker 4: I mean, the numbers don't lie, buddy, like me, I
• 4:07
  Speaker 4: think about I think about that a lot, like what
• 4:09
  Speaker 4: you just talked about, how how easy it is to
• 4:12
  Speaker 4: sort of internalize everybody else's success and just wonder what
• 4:16
  Speaker 4: the hell's going on with ourselves. And one of the
• 4:19
  Speaker 4: things that one of the things that like frames that
• 4:22
  Speaker 4: up for me. So my tournament partner, my fishing partner,
• 4:25
  Speaker 4: tournament partner, he's like very plugged into kind of the
• 4:30
  Speaker 4: local regional scene, and so when we fish together, I
• 4:34
  Speaker 4: don't I don't pay attention to that stuff anymore.
• 4:36
  Speaker 3: I'm just not into it like I was. And so like,
• 4:38
  Speaker 3: I don't know who.
• 4:39
  Speaker 4: Won this tournament last week and what they were using
• 4:41
  Speaker 4: that kind of stuff, I don't care. But when I
• 4:44
  Speaker 4: go fishing with him, he has all of that stuff
• 4:46
  Speaker 4: rattling around in his brain. He pays attention to that
• 4:49
  Speaker 4: a lot. And so if we're out there and you
• 4:51
  Speaker 4: know whatever, we're throwing frogs for large mouths in the
• 4:54
  Speaker 4: summer in a tournament, he'll think, well, this guy won
• 4:58
  Speaker 4: throwing chatterbaits on a sand drop over here on pool
• 5:00
  Speaker 4: nine and we're on pool eight throwing frogs, and like
• 5:03
  Speaker 4: he has that going in and there. I mean, there
• 5:07
  Speaker 4: could be an argument that that is beneficial in some way,
• 5:09
  Speaker 4: if you're like, well, this guy won doing this, maybe
• 5:11
  Speaker 4: we should try this. But I think mostly it's just
• 5:14
  Speaker 4: like a distraction, and I think it's I think it
• 5:16
  Speaker 4: mostly just sort of bogs us down mentally, and when
• 5:19
  Speaker 4: I go I don't have that stuff, and so I'm
• 5:22
  Speaker 4: just like, what are they showing? What are the fish
• 5:23
  Speaker 4: showing me? Now I'm not catching them this way, then
• 5:25
  Speaker 4: I'll try to catch them this way or whatever. And
• 5:26
  Speaker 4: I think in hunting we do that a lot, like
• 5:29
  Speaker 4: we are affecting so much like, well, this guy's style,
• 5:33
  Speaker 4: he's killed four big bucks this year doing this, and
• 5:36
  Speaker 4: this guy and whatever, and it's like you kind of
• 5:38
  Speaker 4: just got to run your own race. And that's like
• 5:39
  Speaker 4: a hard thing to do because you feel like, you know,
• 5:43
  Speaker 4: the hunting industry is sort of predicated on the you know,
• 5:46
  Speaker 4: us giving you the answer or Zach Ferrenbau giving you
• 5:48
  Speaker 4: that whoever, it's like, man, the only one who's going
• 5:51
  Speaker 4: to find the answer for how for you to be
• 5:53
  Speaker 4: really successful out there and enjoy it.
• 5:55
  Speaker 3: It's just you.
• 5:56
  Speaker 2: Well, and not only that, but sometimes the answer that
• 6:02
  Speaker 2: has helped me the most during a tough hunting season
• 6:06
  Speaker 2: is when I talk to someone like you or Andy
• 6:10
  Speaker 2: or Zach or anyone else about what I'm struggling with,
• 6:13
  Speaker 2: and then they say, oh, yeah, I'm struggling with the
• 6:16
  Speaker 2: same thing, or oh yeah, I had the same thing
• 6:18
  Speaker 2: happened to me last year or last week, or oh yeah,
• 6:20
  Speaker 2: I've screwed it up in that kind of way too, right.
• 6:23
  Speaker 2: Sometimes I don't want the answer. I just want to
• 6:25
  Speaker 2: know that somebody else got the problem wrong too, and
• 6:28
  Speaker 2: that that sometimes just alleviates the concern enough for you
• 6:34
  Speaker 2: to refocus on doing what you just said when you're
• 6:37
  Speaker 2: not so mixed up in this Oh gosh, I'm the
• 6:40
  Speaker 2: only one in the world who can't get this thing done.
• 6:43
  Speaker 2: So just having that partner in the boat with you, you know,
• 6:47
  Speaker 2: somebody who can ride along with you, or who you
• 6:49
  Speaker 2: can relate to, or who can say like, yes, I've
• 6:52
  Speaker 2: been there before and I got through it, or I
• 6:54
  Speaker 2: figured it out or I got better. That is h
• 6:58
  Speaker 2: That's no small thing. And I think that's kind of
• 7:01
  Speaker 2: what I'm hoping we can help with here today is
• 7:04
  Speaker 2: a little bit of not just that reassurance, but also
• 7:11
  Speaker 2: also provide a pathway out of the thicket, right, if
• 7:15
  Speaker 2: that makes any sense, Because I think I've found myself
• 7:17
  Speaker 2: lost in the thicket many times and have been able
• 7:21
  Speaker 2: to navigate myself out a time or two, but it's
• 7:24
  Speaker 2: it's not always been easy. And so I thought maybe
• 7:26
  Speaker 2: the two of us could walk through a handful of
• 7:30
  Speaker 2: our greatest failures, like our most just disastrous, foot in mouth,
• 7:37
  Speaker 2: screw the pooch, mess it all up, experiences from our
• 7:40
  Speaker 2: deer hunting lives, and talk through, you know, what we
• 7:43
  Speaker 2: did wrong, how it all happened, what we learned from it,
• 7:48
  Speaker 2: and then maybe how we've tried to, you know, take
• 7:51
  Speaker 2: something from that or change based on that, or kind
• 7:54
  Speaker 2: of navigate things differently in the future. And I'm hoping
• 7:57
  Speaker 2: that you know, someone's going to listen to this now
• 7:59
  Speaker 2: and and you know when they have something get messed
• 8:02
  Speaker 2: up in September or October or November, they will remember
• 8:06
  Speaker 2: this conversation and remember that, oh, yeah, Tony did the
• 8:08
  Speaker 2: same thing, or Mark struggled with that same thing. I
• 8:11
  Speaker 2: can get through this, or I can figure this out,
• 8:13
  Speaker 2: or I can not make the same mistake that Mark man.
• 8:16
  Speaker 2: That is my big hope for all of this is
• 8:19
  Speaker 2: that the many times that you and I have screwed
• 8:21
  Speaker 2: up can somehow help somebody else.
• 8:24
  Speaker 4: That's an important I mean, it will. And you brought
• 8:27
  Speaker 4: up a really good point. You know, like if you
• 8:28
  Speaker 4: talk to Andy May during the hunting season, he's not like, yep,
• 8:33
  Speaker 4: I'm out.
• 8:33
  Speaker 3: There crushing it, killed another giant.
• 8:36
  Speaker 4: He's always like, I struggled with this, or I'm looking
• 8:40
  Speaker 4: for this right I don't have him here. But it's
• 8:42
  Speaker 4: not like it's not like he's dwelling on his failures.
• 8:46
  Speaker 4: He's just like, I just have to work through these
• 8:49
  Speaker 4: problems I have right now, these new set of conditions
• 8:53
  Speaker 4: and variables that were handed to me in this season
• 8:54
  Speaker 4: and this weather and this hunting pressure and on and on,
• 8:57
  Speaker 4: and I have to figure it out. And so he's
• 9:00
  Speaker 4: when you know, you talk to him, he's like mostly
• 9:02
  Speaker 4: working on problems.
• 9:04
  Speaker 3: Yeah, you know, which is like in a weird.
• 9:06
  Speaker 4: Way, is like if anybody could be focusing on their wins,
• 9:09
  Speaker 4: it's him, But he's not. And the reason he gets
• 9:12
  Speaker 4: those wins is because he's fixing those problems, like he's
• 9:14
  Speaker 4: actively trying to find a solve for them. And that
• 9:17
  Speaker 4: is like that I know that seems like intuitive to people,
• 9:21
  Speaker 4: but it's generally not. Okay, well I'm not seeing deer
• 9:25
  Speaker 4: off this field head stands, so I pick up my
• 9:27
  Speaker 4: rattling antlers, and now I solve the problem. Like it's
• 9:29
  Speaker 4: generally like a bigger solve than that, right, And that's
• 9:33
  Speaker 4: that's what those guys do.
• 9:34
  Speaker 2: Yeah, So when I when I throw out the word
• 9:38
  Speaker 2: failure for you, what is the first experience that came
• 9:43
  Speaker 2: to your mind when I when I pitched this idea
• 9:45
  Speaker 2: to you and you had to start thinking about your
• 9:47
  Speaker 2: top failures? What uh? What came to the top of
• 9:50
  Speaker 2: the list.
• 9:52
  Speaker 4: So I think I think about a lot of my
• 9:57
  Speaker 4: hunting success and failure in like whole seasons now instead
• 10:02
  Speaker 4: of just being like that time that I missed two
• 10:04
  Speaker 4: Giant Bucks in a row or something like that, Like
• 10:06
  Speaker 4: those those failures are I've come to accept that I
• 10:09
  Speaker 4: am going to fail that way enough where it's just
• 10:12
  Speaker 4: like going to be a part of my journey. But
• 10:15
  Speaker 4: the things that I learned from So the first thing
• 10:19
  Speaker 4: I thought of when you brought this up when you
• 10:20
  Speaker 4: texted me, is how in twenty eighteen, I had a
• 10:26
  Speaker 4: good season. I didn't kill any really big bucks, but
• 10:28
  Speaker 4: I killed a bunch of deer in different states, killed
• 10:30
  Speaker 4: some public land ones. Like had an okay season, but
• 10:32
  Speaker 4: I felt like I was like scrambling, Like I felt
• 10:36
  Speaker 4: like I was always kind of redlining, then like pushing it,
• 10:40
  Speaker 4: like gott to find new deer, Gotta find this, Gotta
• 10:42
  Speaker 4: find that, not being patient. And I went into twenty
• 10:45
  Speaker 4: nineteen and I'm like, I have to you have to
• 10:48
  Speaker 4: be more patient, like do the deer work and then
• 10:51
  Speaker 4: let the deer, let it breathe, let it happen for you.
• 10:55
  Speaker 4: And that season, I had a really good season like
• 10:59
  Speaker 4: I had. I killed big bucks in a couple of
• 11:01
  Speaker 4: different states on public land, killed them at home, killed
• 11:04
  Speaker 4: an elk like I had.
• 11:05
  Speaker 3: I had one of.
• 11:06
  Speaker 4: Those seasons where you're like this is awesome. You know,
• 11:08
  Speaker 4: three or four Pope and young Bucks like that kind
• 11:10
  Speaker 4: of thing. But what really struck me was I got
• 11:14
  Speaker 4: laid into October of that year and like, these these
• 11:17
  Speaker 4: lessons that I take like, I'm like, I always have
• 11:19
  Speaker 4: to remind myself of them, like I forget them pretty quickly.
• 11:23
  Speaker 2: It's incredible how quickly we forget them.
• 11:25
  Speaker 3: Dude, totally.
• 11:26
  Speaker 4: And I went into I had had a Wisconsin buck
• 11:30
  Speaker 4: tag and I had a North Dakota tag left that
• 11:33
  Speaker 4: I had. I had driven all the way to western
• 11:35
  Speaker 4: North Dakota. My truck broke down. I didn't get to hunt,
• 11:36
  Speaker 4: so I was just sitting on this tag, but it
• 11:38
  Speaker 4: was like, I'm not going back out there, so it
• 11:40
  Speaker 4: was kind of just like one of those lost tags.
• 11:42
  Speaker 3: Well.
• 11:42
  Speaker 4: I had found this spot in Wisconsin that I was like,
• 11:45
  Speaker 4: if you put your time in, I think you'll kill
• 11:47
  Speaker 4: a good one here, and I ended up doing that.
• 11:50
  Speaker 4: I ended up sitting on this little funnel I found
• 11:52
  Speaker 4: between these swamps and.
• 11:53
  Speaker 3: I killed a good buck, saw a really good buck.
• 11:56
  Speaker 4: And then I had that North Dakota tag left and
• 11:59
  Speaker 4: I was like, you know what, I'm gonna to that
• 12:00
  Speaker 4: eastern side of North Dakota. I'm just gonna find something.
• 12:03
  Speaker 4: And because of the timing, I'm gonna go find a
• 12:05
  Speaker 4: couple of good pinch points that I think I can
• 12:08
  Speaker 4: kind of identify and walk in there, and I'm just
• 12:10
  Speaker 4: gonna ride it up because I only had like four
• 12:11
  Speaker 4: days and I saw almost no deer every day except
• 12:16
  Speaker 4: maybe one good buck. I saw a buck every day,
• 12:18
  Speaker 4: and then on the fourth day, I killed a good buck,
• 12:21
  Speaker 4: and it was just like a sort of one of
• 12:23
  Speaker 4: those moments where you're like you know the recipe, like
• 12:29
  Speaker 4: like you know how to do this, but it's so
• 12:32
  Speaker 4: easy for that second guessing to come in, especially when
• 12:35
  Speaker 4: you know how it is. When you're gonna go, I'm
• 12:36
  Speaker 4: gonna go do all day sits on a chunk of
• 12:39
  Speaker 4: public land I've never seen before, and cross my fingers.
• 12:44
  Speaker 4: The second guessing by like ten o'clock in the morning,
• 12:46
  Speaker 4: especially because it's cold and windy, because it's always cold
• 12:48
  Speaker 4: and windy out there, is like all of those voices
• 12:52
  Speaker 4: are like get out, go find it, Go find something else,
• 12:54
  Speaker 4: go do something else. But it's like a self preservation
• 12:58
  Speaker 4: thing because you're like, I don't have what it takes
• 13:00
  Speaker 4: to sit here dark to dark, But if you can
• 13:02
  Speaker 4: find that and tap into that, if you've done that
• 13:05
  Speaker 4: work leading up to it, I just think that's what's
• 13:07
  Speaker 4: that's what kills big deer or just you know, like
• 13:11
  Speaker 4: puts you in a good spot to have good encounters.
• 13:13
  Speaker 3: And that year.
• 13:14
  Speaker 4: Going from a year where I felt like I was
• 13:15
  Speaker 4: scrambling to one where I was forcing myself to wait,
• 13:18
  Speaker 4: like when I found something good, like put in your
• 13:20
  Speaker 4: time and then you see the results, You're like, that's
• 13:22
  Speaker 4: like a reinforcement. They're like a reinforcing thing big time.
• 13:27
  Speaker 2: So so hold on the I feel like you've skipped
• 13:29
  Speaker 2: over the failure part pretty quickly and just really focused
• 13:31
  Speaker 2: on how great your twenty nineteen was.
• 13:33
  Speaker 4: No so because I felt like I was failing the
• 13:37
  Speaker 4: whole time in twenty eighteen and I didn't. I mean,
• 13:40
  Speaker 4: I killed deer and I had an okay season, but
• 13:43
  Speaker 4: I just like personally felt like I didn't do it
• 13:45
  Speaker 4: right because I was scrambling.
• 13:46
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 13:47
  Speaker 2: So that's what I want to better understand though, is
• 13:49
  Speaker 2: what led to that feeling like this idea of scrambling,
• 13:53
  Speaker 2: What does that look like? What does that actually mean?
• 13:56
  Speaker 2: Because I think understanding that is probably the best way
• 14:00
  Speaker 2: any of us could ever hoped to have a twenty
• 14:02
  Speaker 2: nineteen like you had, right, so that we'd learned not
• 14:03
  Speaker 2: to do what twenty eighteen was? So what do you mean?
• 14:06
  Speaker 4: So everything I'm going to talk about today, all of
• 14:08
  Speaker 4: my failures are basically me fighting my own nature, like
• 14:13
  Speaker 4: basically me what I want to do versus what I
• 14:18
  Speaker 4: know I need to do to have success. And so
• 14:23
  Speaker 4: I felt, and you know, you kind of like go
• 14:27
  Speaker 4: through different stages when you're hunting. But I felt like,
• 14:30
  Speaker 4: for a while, like I got this thing all figured
• 14:32
  Speaker 4: it out. I cover a ton of ground, I find
• 14:34
  Speaker 4: good spots, I drop pins, I go in there and
• 14:36
  Speaker 4: I hunt, and I move, and I move and I move.
• 14:39
  Speaker 4: That works sometimes, but once you start dealing with more
• 14:43
  Speaker 4: hunting pressure, a little bit cagy or deer, once you
• 14:46
  Speaker 4: start dealing with a wider variety of weather, seasonal timing,
• 14:51
  Speaker 4: it's like you you can't just walk them down, right.
• 14:54
  Speaker 4: And so I was forcing something to happen because I
• 14:57
  Speaker 4: wanted to hunt that way. And I'm like, di, I
• 15:00
  Speaker 4: believe this right. So it's to me that's no different.
• 15:03
  Speaker 4: Where that played out for me was on a whole
• 15:05
  Speaker 4: bunch of different properties public private, in a bunch of
• 15:08
  Speaker 4: different states. For the For most hunters, the closest parallel
• 15:12
  Speaker 4: would probably be like I have my three stands, and
• 15:15
  Speaker 4: I want to kill one out of this field edge
• 15:17
  Speaker 4: stand because I know, like I believe that they're going
• 15:20
  Speaker 4: to come out here eventually instead of going and doing
• 15:23
  Speaker 4: the mobile thing or whatever. And so what you want
• 15:25
  Speaker 4: to do is you want to take that route that's
• 15:26
  Speaker 4: comfortable and like easy for you, right, but really you
• 15:31
  Speaker 4: have to probably if that doesn't work, you probably have
• 15:34
  Speaker 4: to do the thing that you don't really want to do.
• 15:37
  Speaker 4: Like I would rather go in season scout with a
• 15:39
  Speaker 4: stand or a saddle and find some fresh sign and
• 15:42
  Speaker 4: post up on it versus putting three dark to dark
• 15:44
  Speaker 4: sits in a row on a pinch point that has
• 15:47
  Speaker 4: very low activity. And recognizing the difference between those two
• 15:51
  Speaker 4: is super important. So for me, it's like this kind
• 15:55
  Speaker 4: of thing being patient is no different than almost every
• 15:57
  Speaker 4: part of my life that's good for me, Like I
• 15:59
  Speaker 4: have to for myself to do it like I because
• 16:01
  Speaker 4: I don't want to. I don't want to go for
• 16:03
  Speaker 4: a run, I don't want to sit dark to dark
• 16:05
  Speaker 4: for a week, Like that's not fun generally, but it's
• 16:09
  Speaker 4: often the thing that I'm like I have if I
• 16:12
  Speaker 4: want to aerow a big one or I want to
• 16:13
  Speaker 4: see deer doing what I expect them to do. I
• 16:16
  Speaker 4: have to do that part and that's hard.
• 16:20
  Speaker 2: When you got to that twenty nineteen season, were you
• 16:25
  Speaker 2: did you have like a clear was it like a
• 16:30
  Speaker 2: clear shift you had to make, like you could you
• 16:33
  Speaker 2: see this at that point? Could you look back at
• 16:35
  Speaker 2: that moment and say, Okay, twenty eighteen, I was forcing
• 16:38
  Speaker 2: the issue, trying to bounce around too much. In twenty nineteen,
• 16:41
  Speaker 2: I am going to be patient and stick with it
• 16:44
  Speaker 2: and stuff. Was that like did you know it at
• 16:46
  Speaker 2: that moment or did you go through the year and
• 16:49
  Speaker 2: kind of figure this out and have that aha moment
• 16:51
  Speaker 2: as it went along?
• 16:53
  Speaker 4: I mean I went into it intentionally trying to do
• 16:56
  Speaker 4: better that way and it But so what I hate
• 17:00
  Speaker 4: about this kind of stuff is it makes it sound
• 17:01
  Speaker 4: like I figured it out. I struggle with this all
• 17:04
  Speaker 4: the time, you know, I mean I really do, and
• 17:07
  Speaker 4: you can go so this is this is the other
• 17:09
  Speaker 4: problem too, is I say this now?
• 17:12
  Speaker 3: And that was the answer for me.
• 17:13
  Speaker 4: Then last year in Wisconsin, I was like, I'm going
• 17:17
  Speaker 4: to go ride out this spot that I know deer
• 17:19
  Speaker 4: are going to go through, and I've got a camera
• 17:21
  Speaker 4: in there and bucks are cruising through there and if
• 17:23
  Speaker 4: I put in my time, I will kill one. And
• 17:24
  Speaker 4: I wrote it out for three and a half days
• 17:25
  Speaker 4: and never saw a deer, and so I went too
• 17:28
  Speaker 4: far the other way and ended up going to kill
• 17:31
  Speaker 4: one in a different way. Like that I totally didn't expect.
• 17:35
  Speaker 4: But it's like you're always trying to find that balance, right,
• 17:38
  Speaker 4: And to me, that's like put in the work to
• 17:40
  Speaker 4: find that spot, and then your backup spot for the
• 17:43
  Speaker 4: next wind or the next conditions or whatever, and then
• 17:46
  Speaker 4: put your faith in that, you know, as long as
• 17:49
  Speaker 4: you can stand it. And if they finally show you
• 17:51
  Speaker 4: that you're being too patient in a place that's just dead,
• 17:53
  Speaker 4: you got to restart the whole thing again. So it's
• 17:55
  Speaker 4: like it's a it's such a moving target. But it's
• 17:58
  Speaker 4: like I think that if you looked at our hardwiring,
• 18:03
  Speaker 4: like for most of us is to be less patient
• 18:07
  Speaker 4: is to allow, you know, the second guessing to talk
• 18:10
  Speaker 4: us into leaving at ten o'clock in the morning and
• 18:12
  Speaker 4: going to check this camera or moving to this stand
• 18:15
  Speaker 4: or whatever, instead of putting our faith in something and
• 18:18
  Speaker 4: being really patient with it.
• 18:20
  Speaker 2: Yeah, And it is, though, so difficult to know what
• 18:25
  Speaker 2: the right call is in the moment, you know, as
• 18:27
  Speaker 2: you talked about, like, sometimes the right answer is the move,
• 18:30
  Speaker 2: Sometimes the right answer is the stick it out. And
• 18:34
  Speaker 2: for a lot of years I would find myself asking
• 18:37
  Speaker 2: those same questions and not having enough of my own
• 18:42
  Speaker 2: personal lived experience to answer it from my gut, and
• 18:47
  Speaker 2: instead I was thinking like, Okay, what would John Eberhart
• 18:50
  Speaker 2: say I should do here? And what did I read
• 18:52
  Speaker 2: in this one book or in this one magazine about
• 18:54
  Speaker 2: how to handle this situation? And you know, you drive
• 18:58
  Speaker 2: yourself crazy trying to think about what the right answers
• 19:00
  Speaker 2: you know, quote unquote right answers are for any one
• 19:03
  Speaker 2: of these situations. The only way I've been able to
• 19:06
  Speaker 2: work myself out of that over the years has just
• 19:09
  Speaker 2: been trying all these things in all the different ways,
• 19:13
  Speaker 2: over and over and over again, over years and years
• 19:15
  Speaker 2: and years and years, until there's finally that real lived
• 19:20
  Speaker 2: experience that leads to you know, having that gut feeling
• 19:24
  Speaker 2: that you can trust, or that intuition that you can trust,
• 19:26
  Speaker 2: or just knowing like, Okay, I've been down this path before,
• 19:31
  Speaker 2: I've seen how it goes. This is when I need
• 19:33
  Speaker 2: to shift or this is when I need to start
• 19:34
  Speaker 2: listening to that voice that says do the uncomfortable thing.
• 19:38
  Speaker 2: And so there's I guess what I'm getting at here
• 19:41
  Speaker 2: is that some folks listening should not feel bad if
• 19:46
  Speaker 2: they find themselves in the tree stand this fall and
• 19:49
  Speaker 2: are like, I don't know, I don't know if I
• 19:51
  Speaker 2: should do the thing Tony said in twenty eighteen or
• 19:54
  Speaker 2: in twenty nineteen, Like that is part of the struggle,
• 19:57
  Speaker 2: is that you have to go through ten, fifteen, twenty
• 20:00
  Speaker 2: years of riding this out and making the wrong choices
• 20:03
  Speaker 2: most of the time, occasionally getting it right and learning
• 20:06
  Speaker 2: what worked that time, and then having go the complete
• 20:09
  Speaker 2: opposite way a year or two later. And that is
• 20:12
  Speaker 2: just part of this process and that and this isn't
• 20:16
  Speaker 2: what this isn't a failure I was planning on talking about.
• 20:19
  Speaker 2: But I think just you have to repeatedly fail in
• 20:23
  Speaker 2: all these different ways, over and over and over and
• 20:26
  Speaker 2: over and over again to ever get to the point
• 20:28
  Speaker 2: where you can occasionally make the right decision on purpose
• 20:32
  Speaker 2: and feel like, oh, yeah, I kind of knew what
• 20:34
  Speaker 2: I was doing here. That is just part of this.
• 20:37
  Speaker 2: Like maybe the most important part of deer hunting is
• 20:40
  Speaker 2: just failing in all of these different ways repeatedly so
• 20:45
  Speaker 2: many times. That's the only way to truly get to
• 20:48
  Speaker 2: a point where you can ever make decisions.
• 20:50
  Speaker 4: Like you talked about well, right, and I mean when
• 20:53
  Speaker 4: you talk about the indecision like that, everybody has that, right,
• 20:58
  Speaker 4: Like I think about and I'll talk about this later,
• 21:02
  Speaker 4: but I think about how often I'm like, this is
• 21:05
  Speaker 4: just going to be it. I have it figured out,
• 21:07
  Speaker 4: and I go and I don't. I don't see deer.
• 21:09
  Speaker 4: I don't see the deer. I want to whatever. But
• 21:12
  Speaker 4: I think I think the lesson for me anyway, is
• 21:15
  Speaker 4: like everybody deals with the second guessing, everybody deals with
• 21:18
  Speaker 4: the indecision. But if you can err on the side
• 21:20
  Speaker 4: of being patient, right, So let's say it's nine o'clock
• 21:23
  Speaker 4: in the morning and you're like, they just they didn't
• 21:25
  Speaker 4: come through. They're not going to come through. It's like
• 21:28
  Speaker 4: I was going to sit all day, but now I'm
• 21:29
  Speaker 4: thinking it's probably better on the other valley or the
• 21:32
  Speaker 4: other bench point or whatever. And it's like, now you're
• 21:36
  Speaker 4: talking yourself out of doing the thing that you felt
• 21:38
  Speaker 4: was the best decision originally, and you're going to go
• 21:42
  Speaker 4: make a bigger impact. Right if you if you walk
• 21:45
  Speaker 4: into that stand in the morning to sit all day,
• 21:48
  Speaker 4: and at ten o'clock in the morning, you're like, I'm
• 21:50
  Speaker 4: going to move now. You have twice the impact on
• 21:53
  Speaker 4: that land at least, right, and so you've you've already
• 21:58
  Speaker 4: cut your odds down there. And it's like when you
• 22:01
  Speaker 4: can learn and I talk about this all the time,
• 22:02
  Speaker 4: but like when you can learn to be like, I'm
• 22:05
  Speaker 4: going to just quiet that voice down a little bit.
• 22:07
  Speaker 4: I'm going to give it another hour, or I'm going
• 22:08
  Speaker 4: to give it till noon, or I'm going to do
• 22:10
  Speaker 4: I'm just I'm going to condition myself for this.
• 22:12
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 22:12
  Speaker 4: It's like, you know, Yannie's going to run a hundred
• 22:15
  Speaker 4: mile or here in a little bit, but he didn't
• 22:16
  Speaker 4: start out running one hundred mile marathons, right, you got it.
• 22:19
  Speaker 4: You have to start somewhere and you have to condition
• 22:21
  Speaker 4: yourself to make that a little bit harder of a
• 22:23
  Speaker 4: choice and just tamp down that and go, yeah, Like
• 22:27
  Speaker 4: we make the wrong decisions all the time, but you
• 22:29
  Speaker 4: have to trust it, like you have to. You have
• 22:30
  Speaker 4: to just trust yourself and go I felt like this
• 22:33
  Speaker 4: was the best decision. You know, the wind switches or something, mate,
• 22:36
  Speaker 4: you know, that might make the decision for you. But
• 22:39
  Speaker 4: are you looking for that excuse? That's there's the difference there,
• 22:43
  Speaker 4: you know, or are you just taking it and going man,
• 22:45
  Speaker 4: supposed to be out of south all day and now
• 22:46
  Speaker 4: it's blown straight out of the north. Well there there
• 22:49
  Speaker 4: you go, Like, that's that's beyond your control and you
• 22:52
  Speaker 4: just have to take that. But if it's just you going, man,
• 22:55
  Speaker 4: I thought they were going to be cruising all over
• 22:56
  Speaker 4: him here and they're not. It's like, oh, it's only
• 22:59
  Speaker 4: been light for three hours or whatever, you know, like
• 23:02
  Speaker 4: just let it breathe a little bit.
• 23:04
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that's a really good point, And I feel like
• 23:07
  Speaker 2: that's that's a pretty good transition to one of my
• 23:10
  Speaker 2: failure stories. This was a a hunt that was a
• 23:15
  Speaker 2: multi year hunt that definitely taught me a lot, and
• 23:19
  Speaker 2: it's a deer that I never ended up getting. It
• 23:22
  Speaker 2: was this buck that I was chasing in southern Michigan,
• 23:25
  Speaker 2: called him Holy Field, and I learned a lot about
• 23:29
  Speaker 2: this deer because it was a buck that was relatively
• 23:33
  Speaker 2: like in the earlier ish years of my kind of
• 23:37
  Speaker 2: pursuit of trying to kill mature bucks, and I was
• 23:39
  Speaker 2: still at that phase where I was definitely living off
• 23:42
  Speaker 2: of what other people said you should be doing right
• 23:46
  Speaker 2: that I kind of alluded to earlier. And I was
• 23:49
  Speaker 2: in that phase of my hunting life where I was
• 23:51
  Speaker 2: afraid to make mistakes, where I was constantly worried about
• 23:56
  Speaker 2: not screwing it up. If I do that, I'll blow
• 23:59
  Speaker 2: it up. I do that, it's probably my only I'll
• 24:01
  Speaker 2: probably make one mistake and then he'll be gone. If
• 24:03
  Speaker 2: I go over that line, it's probably gonna screw stuff up.
• 24:06
  Speaker 2: If I pushed too far in here, it's definitely gonna
• 24:08
  Speaker 2: be you know, it's too risky. And so I was
• 24:10
  Speaker 2: incredibly risk averse while hunting that deer, and so for
• 24:14
  Speaker 2: that reason, I saw him a lot, but it was
• 24:17
  Speaker 2: always out of range. So one of the biggest mistakes
• 24:21
  Speaker 2: in that hunt was simply treading too lightly, never being
• 24:26
  Speaker 2: willing to take a swing a true swing. I was
• 24:29
  Speaker 2: hunting to see deer, not hunting to kill a mature buck,
• 24:33
  Speaker 2: and I was trusting things I had read and heard
• 24:36
  Speaker 2: and not trusting my own eyes enough. Secondly, another thing
• 24:43
  Speaker 2: within that hunt is a lot of times that I
• 24:46
  Speaker 2: was seeing this buck. I was seeing him on a
• 24:48
  Speaker 2: neighboring property, and I just kept lamenting to myself like, oh, man,
• 24:53
  Speaker 2: if only I could hunt there, if only I could
• 24:55
  Speaker 2: hunt there, I could kill this buck. But I never
• 24:58
  Speaker 2: did anything about it because I was I don't know,
• 25:01
  Speaker 2: too nervous to ask permission, too lazy, or like didn't
• 25:04
  Speaker 2: want to get uncomfortable and go bother this other person
• 25:07
  Speaker 2: to see if I could ever hunt there. And so
• 25:10
  Speaker 2: not only was I not aggressive enough on the places
• 25:12
  Speaker 2: that I could hunt, but then also a lot of
• 25:14
  Speaker 2: the time where I watched this deer, I never even
• 25:18
  Speaker 2: tried to explore the possibility of getting to hunt there.
• 25:23
  Speaker 2: And later, though I would, I would learn from that mistake,
• 25:26
  Speaker 2: and I did ask permission, and I got permission, and
• 25:28
  Speaker 2: then ended up being able to hunt that whole area
• 25:31
  Speaker 2: for years later. And if I had gotten permission, I
• 25:34
  Speaker 2: probably could have maybe could have killed this buck if
• 25:36
  Speaker 2: I was hunting in this zone where he was at
• 25:38
  Speaker 2: all the time. So that was another big mistake. The
• 25:54
  Speaker 2: third big mistake I made on this buck was that
• 25:57
  Speaker 2: despite doing all those things, despite being incredibly passive, despite
• 26:03
  Speaker 2: not doing the little extra uncomfortable work to get permission
• 26:06
  Speaker 2: to hunt him where he really lived, despite all of that,
• 26:09
  Speaker 2: I still did put in a ton of time on
• 26:11
  Speaker 2: the edges, waiting and trying and doing everything I thought
• 26:14
  Speaker 2: I could do. And I was hunting all day in
• 26:18
  Speaker 2: the rut, doing what you were talking about. I was
• 26:20
  Speaker 2: telling myself, you got to put in a little bit
• 26:22
  Speaker 2: more time, you got to stick it out. So I'm
• 26:25
  Speaker 2: sitting there at like eleven thirty on maybe first week
• 26:28
  Speaker 2: of November give or take, in that ballpark, and I'm
• 26:32
  Speaker 2: sitting on the edge of what should be some pretty
• 26:34
  Speaker 2: good stuff. And I'd had high hopes in the morning.
• 26:37
  Speaker 2: But then you know, as it gets to that, you know,
• 26:40
  Speaker 2: late morning early afternoon time period, when nothing's been going
• 26:43
  Speaker 2: on for three four hours, you start to lose some
• 26:47
  Speaker 2: of that focus, You lose some faith. You start thinking like, ah,
• 26:50
  Speaker 2: probably nothing's going to happen. And I had my phone
• 26:54
  Speaker 2: out and I eventually was reading a book on my phone.
• 27:00
  Speaker 2: So I had been hunting this year for three years.
• 27:01
  Speaker 2: I think this is the third year I've been trying
• 27:03
  Speaker 2: to get this one buck. I'd you know, been struggling
• 27:06
  Speaker 2: for all these years, seeing him never can close the distance.
• 27:10
  Speaker 2: I'm out there like eleven to thirty. All of that
• 27:14
  Speaker 2: led to this moment I hear like a snap, I
• 27:18
  Speaker 2: look up for my phone, look over my left shoulder,
• 27:21
  Speaker 2: and this buck I've been chasing for all this time
• 27:23
  Speaker 2: is standing twenty yards away, looking right up at me,
• 27:27
  Speaker 2: because I had spun and looked to look back at him,
• 27:30
  Speaker 2: and so he's looking at me at twenty yards and
• 27:32
  Speaker 2: I'm holding my phone reading some stupid novel. And I
• 27:37
  Speaker 2: mean we've all been in some version of that scenario,
• 27:42
  Speaker 2: just the worst, the worst, feeling felt like such an idiot.
• 27:45
  Speaker 2: And then of course he spun and ran, and you know,
• 27:49
  Speaker 2: I finally had him in range. And I didn't even
• 27:52
  Speaker 2: know it because I had not been able to keep
• 27:54
  Speaker 2: the faith and keep the focus and keep my eye
• 27:58
  Speaker 2: on the prize during that period of times. So like
• 28:00
  Speaker 2: I came so close, I did a lot of the
• 28:02
  Speaker 2: right things. I was in the right place, I was
• 28:04
  Speaker 2: in the right I stuck it out to the right
• 28:06
  Speaker 2: part of the day, and just was not mentally there.
• 28:09
  Speaker 2: I was physically there, but not mentally there. And eventually
• 28:13
  Speaker 2: that deer disappeared. Never saw them again. And I don't
• 28:18
  Speaker 2: know what happened, but I know that three or four
• 28:20
  Speaker 2: years of my hunting life in Michigan had been devoted
• 28:23
  Speaker 2: to trying to figure out this Buck, and for all
• 28:25
  Speaker 2: of those reasons, I never pulled it off. And so
• 28:29
  Speaker 2: in the subsequent season after that one, like I mentioned,
• 28:34
  Speaker 2: I knocked on that door eventually and did get permission
• 28:37
  Speaker 2: and have had success in there. I learned that you
• 28:40
  Speaker 2: can't always be so risk averse. You can't always just
• 28:44
  Speaker 2: live life on the edges like they do on the
• 28:46
  Speaker 2: Outdoor Channel and expect to have success in kind of
• 28:51
  Speaker 2: real world pressured situations. Sometimes you really do need to
• 28:55
  Speaker 2: rip off the band aid and swing for the fences.
• 28:57
  Speaker 2: If you ever want to get one of these pressure bucks,
• 28:59
  Speaker 2: you can't just watch them. You actually have to go
• 29:01
  Speaker 2: try to kill them. And then finally, yes, it's important
• 29:06
  Speaker 2: to be there, but you have to be there both
• 29:09
  Speaker 2: mentally and physically. You can't just be like checking the
• 29:12
  Speaker 2: box of being out there and then not actually be
• 29:16
  Speaker 2: a part of the moment when it's when it's presented
• 29:18
  Speaker 2: to you. So that one, that whole multi year saga
• 29:22
  Speaker 2: with that Buck, it's uh, it's it's one of the
• 29:25
  Speaker 2: most that that whole story sticks with me more than
• 29:30
  Speaker 2: most other Bucks because of the fact that he did
• 29:32
  Speaker 2: get away, and he didn't get away just because of
• 29:34
  Speaker 2: some random thing he got away because of all of
• 29:37
  Speaker 2: these different things I did wrong over many years. I've
• 29:42
  Speaker 2: got one of the shed antlers, and every time I
• 29:43
  Speaker 2: see that shit antler, I'm reminded of one of those things.
• 29:47
  Speaker 4: Do you think that you at that point in your
• 29:51
  Speaker 4: life for giving Big Bucks too much credit?
• 29:54
  Speaker 3: For sure?
• 29:55
  Speaker 2: One?
• 29:56
  Speaker 3: So, dude, I think that.
• 29:59
  Speaker 4: I think the two worst things that the Outdoor Channel
• 30:02
  Speaker 4: type of content did to us was convinced everyone they
• 30:05
  Speaker 4: could just look at a deer an agent no matter what.
• 30:07
  Speaker 4: And it made them seem like it made Big Bucks
• 30:13
  Speaker 4: seem like they were just.
• 30:16
  Speaker 3: Unreachable most of the time.
• 30:19
  Speaker 4: Yeah, And I mean part of that is a symptom
• 30:21
  Speaker 4: because people who are hunting in Candyland want you to
• 30:23
  Speaker 4: think they're hunting hard deer, so everybody paints their hunting
• 30:26
  Speaker 4: as harder than it really is. But it's just they're
• 30:29
  Speaker 4: actually more forgiving than you think, Like I think anyway.
• 30:34
  Speaker 2: Oh yeah, And it's like it's not insane that that's
• 30:37
  Speaker 2: not saying it's easy to kill mature bucks, right, I mean,
• 30:40
  Speaker 2: ninety nine percent of the time you still fail, right,
• 30:43
  Speaker 2: But there's somewhere, like the truth lies somewhere in the middle.
• 30:46
  Speaker 2: You can hunt in Wisconsin or Minnesota or Michigan where
• 30:49
  Speaker 2: there's tons of hunters and these bucks are very highly
• 30:52
  Speaker 2: educated and pressured and it's very challenging. But that does
• 30:57
  Speaker 2: not mean that make one mistake and that buck's gonna
• 31:01
  Speaker 2: move ten miles down the road and you're never gonna
• 31:03
  Speaker 2: see him again. I think that's what I worried about
• 31:05
  Speaker 2: a lot. I was like, if this buck ever smells
• 31:08
  Speaker 2: me one time, or if this buck crossed my path
• 31:11
  Speaker 2: and walks across my footprints and I didn't perfectly have
• 31:14
  Speaker 2: my scen you know, taking care of her whatever, like
• 31:17
  Speaker 2: one thing is going to be the end, and that
• 31:19
  Speaker 2: buck will be gone. I'm never gonna see him again.
• 31:21
  Speaker 2: I lived and breathed that way of hunting for a
• 31:25
  Speaker 2: good like five to eight years. Maybe I don't know
• 31:27
  Speaker 2: something like that. Where I was, I was walking on
• 31:30
  Speaker 2: eggshells at all times, and that did two things. Number One,
• 31:34
  Speaker 2: that kept me from doing the aggressive things that I
• 31:37
  Speaker 2: need to do to actually get a chance of these bucks.
• 31:39
  Speaker 2: More often than not, I was like, just like as
• 31:42
  Speaker 2: I described, But then number two, it made every time
• 31:47
  Speaker 2: I did screw up feel so devastating. I felt like,
• 31:51
  Speaker 2: oh my, I'm done, Like I just screwed it up.
• 31:54
  Speaker 2: I all this time, I put in this year out
• 31:57
  Speaker 2: the window. You know, it just made every little thing
• 32:01
  Speaker 2: so nerve wracking. It made like walking into the tree stand,
• 32:04
  Speaker 2: it made like every time that the wind swirled, it
• 32:07
  Speaker 2: felt like such a big deal, like, oh my god,
• 32:09
  Speaker 2: this is it, this is going to be the end,
• 32:11
  Speaker 2: and what's supposed to be a fun and enjoyable experience
• 32:13
  Speaker 2: instead felt like mentally just like rot with stress, because
• 32:20
  Speaker 2: it just seemed like everything was riding on this little
• 32:22
  Speaker 2: tiny edge that you had to walk and it was
• 32:25
  Speaker 2: going to be all tumbling down if you made one
• 32:27
  Speaker 2: tiny little mistake. And to your point, it's just not
• 32:30
  Speaker 2: the case most of the time, right.
• 32:34
  Speaker 4: Right, I mean, I think you think about how many
• 32:37
  Speaker 4: times you've been out there and had you know, that
• 32:39
  Speaker 4: dough wind you and bust out of there and snort
• 32:42
  Speaker 4: a million times, and then ten minutes later somebody else
• 32:44
  Speaker 4: walks in and resets the scene. We I think that
• 32:49
  Speaker 4: generally we default to way too cautious. And you know,
• 32:53
  Speaker 4: like there's a difference, right because you know, if you
• 32:55
  Speaker 4: if you're in a state where crossbows are legal, for example,
• 32:58
  Speaker 4: and you hunt public land enough, you see dudes walking
• 33:00
  Speaker 4: around with crossbows trying to shoot one.
• 33:02
  Speaker 3: Like the rifle hunting. You know, that's not what I'm.
• 33:05
  Speaker 4: Talking about here, And to be fair, you see vertical
• 33:08
  Speaker 4: bull hunters do that too, Like you see hunters try that,
• 33:10
  Speaker 4: and it's just a it's a rough strategy, right, big impact,
• 33:13
  Speaker 4: low odds. But if you're doing if you're if you're
• 33:18
  Speaker 4: trying to do things you know you're trying to be
• 33:21
  Speaker 4: smart about it, you're still going to get busted. You're
• 33:24
  Speaker 4: gonna walk in and you're gonna have deer snort at you.
• 33:25
  Speaker 4: They're gonna be eating the acorns when you get there
• 33:27
  Speaker 4: in the morning whatever. Like that stuff isn't as it's
• 33:31
  Speaker 4: not as big of an impact in the moment it
• 33:33
  Speaker 4: feels huge, but overall it's not as big of an
• 33:37
  Speaker 4: impact as we often think. And we've been so conditioned
• 33:39
  Speaker 4: to be cautious over and over and over again. And
• 33:41
  Speaker 4: it's like like we talked about with the patient's thing
• 33:44
  Speaker 4: versus going nuts, like there's always a balance, right, But
• 33:48
  Speaker 4: the lesson with you there, I think that's like most
• 33:52
  Speaker 4: important is if you start giving big bucks that much credit,
• 33:56
  Speaker 4: you're in trouble because you're just they're just going to
• 33:59
  Speaker 4: be this un attainable thing, and you're going to you're
• 34:02
  Speaker 4: not going to hunt correctly if you're neurotic and you're
• 34:06
  Speaker 4: and you're pissed at yourself because you're making all these
• 34:08
  Speaker 4: little mistakes that really don't matter that much and that
• 34:11
  Speaker 4: everyone makes because nobody walks into the woods in the
• 34:13
  Speaker 4: dark and makes no noise. Yeah, you know, like nobody
• 34:17
  Speaker 4: goes and hunts a whole season and doesn't get winded
• 34:19
  Speaker 4: by somebody at some point.
• 34:20
  Speaker 3: It just happens.
• 34:21
  Speaker 2: It happens, and so yeah, to your point, it's it's
• 34:25
  Speaker 2: number one, you can't keep yourself from making the right
• 34:29
  Speaker 2: moves because you're so worried about making the wrong moves.
• 34:32
  Speaker 2: And then secondly, you got to give yourself some grace,
• 34:35
  Speaker 2: like forgive yourself because it's not the end of the world.
• 34:39
  Speaker 2: We're not saving lives out here. We're not rocket scientists.
• 34:41
  Speaker 2: We're just trying to you know, as you say, kill
• 34:44
  Speaker 2: a rabbit with antlers, So chill the f out right,
• 34:49
  Speaker 2: So what's your what's your next example?
• 34:52
  Speaker 4: So this is something, this is another thing that I
• 34:56
  Speaker 4: am just reminded of every single season of my life,
• 35:00
  Speaker 4: and I have to like work at it.
• 35:02
  Speaker 3: But it's sort of a two parter.
• 35:04
  Speaker 4: It's hunting on memories and not listening to what the
• 35:07
  Speaker 4: deer are telling me right now. So I can come
• 35:11
  Speaker 4: up with elaborate scenarios in my head of how I'm
• 35:15
  Speaker 4: going to drive to South Dakota or North Dakota, or
• 35:17
  Speaker 4: hunt somewhere in Minnesota or wherever draw that tag in Iowa,
• 35:20
  Speaker 4: and this is how I'm gonna kill a deer, And
• 35:22
  Speaker 4: in my head, I will think about that over and
• 35:24
  Speaker 4: over and over again. I'll be like, Oh, we'll convince
• 35:26
  Speaker 4: myself that's what's going to happen, you know, because last
• 35:28
  Speaker 4: year I went there and I threw a decoy out
• 35:31
  Speaker 4: and they came in and I killed one or whatever.
• 35:33
  Speaker 4: I never go back to places like that and have
• 35:37
  Speaker 4: the same hunt ever. I mean, it's just even even
• 35:41
  Speaker 4: on my private stuff in Wisconsin and Minnesota, unless it's
• 35:45
  Speaker 4: like a pond or something, I very rarely kill deer
• 35:50
  Speaker 4: doing the same thing two years in a row. And
• 35:52
  Speaker 4: I know that's a little bit different from a lot
• 35:53
  Speaker 4: of people in there, you know, if you got a
• 35:55
  Speaker 4: lease or permission ground or whatever. But even then when
• 36:00
  Speaker 4: you go in and you're like it's going to happen
• 36:02
  Speaker 4: like it did last year, or like it did two
• 36:04
  Speaker 4: years ago when I killed that big one.
• 36:05
  Speaker 3: It probably won't.
• 36:07
  Speaker 4: Because of all of those things that have just changed, Right,
• 36:12
  Speaker 4: Like you might have killed that buck three seasons ago
• 36:15
  Speaker 4: because one of the oak trees in the area was dropping,
• 36:19
  Speaker 4: or a doe came in a little bit early, or
• 36:22
  Speaker 4: some kind of outlier thing. Right, maybe the neighbors had
• 36:25
  Speaker 4: beans instead of corn. Maybe the neighbors let somebody hunt
• 36:29
  Speaker 4: who hunted every day and you didn't know it because
• 36:30
  Speaker 4: it was a high school kid or something, and that
• 36:32
  Speaker 4: pushed the deer onto your side. Like you have to
• 36:35
  Speaker 4: kind of go in with that blueprint, like, yeah, this
• 36:38
  Speaker 4: could happen just like it always has, but it probably won't.
• 36:42
  Speaker 4: Like you still have to factor in what the deer
• 36:44
  Speaker 4: is showing you and what the sign is showing, and
• 36:46
  Speaker 4: we and we really like to find that confirmation bias stuff.
• 36:50
  Speaker 4: They're like, well, I had a camera in the same
• 36:52
  Speaker 4: spot and the big one's going through once a week.
• 36:54
  Speaker 4: Or I walked out here and here's those that scrape
• 36:56
  Speaker 4: line again on the field edge, Like duh, of course
• 36:58
  Speaker 4: they're going to be doing this. But it's like if
• 37:01
  Speaker 4: they're not really showing you that, Like if you're like,
• 37:04
  Speaker 4: I'm forcing this thing and I want this to happen,
• 37:06
  Speaker 4: but the deer aren't showing you that there's a problem there.
• 37:09
  Speaker 4: And for me, I mean, the easiest example for me
• 37:11
  Speaker 4: on this one is I go back to those river
• 37:14
  Speaker 4: bottoms in North Dakota, and I can sit up there
• 37:18
  Speaker 4: on a glassing now, but I can go I kill
• 37:19
  Speaker 4: the buck out of that tree. I killed the buck
• 37:21
  Speaker 4: out of that tree. I killed the buck on the
• 37:22
  Speaker 4: ground over there. And it's never the same tree, you know,
• 37:26
  Speaker 4: like it's just not It's never the same ground blind,
• 37:29
  Speaker 4: it's never the same crossing for some reason. It's always
• 37:31
  Speaker 4: a little bit different, even in a scenario that shouldn't
• 37:34
  Speaker 4: really change that much.
• 37:36
  Speaker 3: And so many times I'll go.
• 37:39
  Speaker 4: Into a hunt and think like, I'm gonna run this
• 37:42
  Speaker 4: play again because it worked. And I will, you know,
• 37:46
  Speaker 4: be walking out to a pond or a water tank
• 37:48
  Speaker 4: or a crossing or something and see a whole bunch
• 37:51
  Speaker 4: of rubs or see this, you know, banging scrape or
• 37:55
  Speaker 4: something and be like, huh, I should probably pay attention
• 37:57
  Speaker 4: to that. But I know what my plan is going
• 37:59
  Speaker 4: to be, and I know it's going to work. And
• 38:01
  Speaker 4: almost inevitably I end up having to come back to
• 38:04
  Speaker 4: that sign and work deer in a way that I
• 38:07
  Speaker 4: just didn't expect. And so it's like this is one
• 38:10
  Speaker 4: of those like gray area things again, because you want
• 38:12
  Speaker 4: to go in and run something you know worked, right,
• 38:15
  Speaker 4: we all do.
• 38:16
  Speaker 3: But how long do you give it?
• 38:18
  Speaker 4: Like how long do you ignore that you're seeing deer
• 38:22
  Speaker 4: do something that you just usually don't or you didn't expect,
• 38:25
  Speaker 4: Like why are they over there? Why are they running
• 38:27
  Speaker 4: that fence line now and not just coming straight down
• 38:28
  Speaker 4: through here, through the past or whatever. And for me,
• 38:32
  Speaker 4: just like really keeping an open mind, and if the
• 38:35
  Speaker 4: deer tell me something, listening to it is like me
• 38:38
  Speaker 4: fighting my nature of just wanting to run something that
• 38:42
  Speaker 4: has produced for me in the past.
• 38:44
  Speaker 2: Have you ever ran an old program all the way
• 38:50
  Speaker 2: to the end and failed because of Have you ever
• 38:52
  Speaker 2: had one that you refuse to pivot on that doomed you?
• 38:56
  Speaker 4: I probably had tons of those. I have definitely, I've
• 39:03
  Speaker 4: definitely done that on the road. And in fact, when
• 39:05
  Speaker 4: I think about situations like in Nebraska or South Dakota
• 39:09
  Speaker 4: or North Dakota where I went out and didn't fill
• 39:11
  Speaker 4: a tag, it was because I did that generally, you know,
• 39:14
  Speaker 4: And the times that I did fill a tag was
• 39:16
  Speaker 4: almost always even if I ran an old program for
• 39:19
  Speaker 4: three days and just pivoted on it or four days,
• 39:23
  Speaker 4: find something different and kill. So yeah, I've definitely done that,
• 39:26
  Speaker 4: and I've done it. The thing that stings the most
• 39:30
  Speaker 4: is when I do it here in Minnesota. I do
• 39:31
  Speaker 4: it in Wisconsin, especially if I'm hunting private land, and
• 39:35
  Speaker 4: I'm like.
• 39:35
  Speaker 3: How hard can this freaking be?
• 39:37
  Speaker 4: And then I do you know, You're like, oh, it's
• 39:39
  Speaker 4: going to be the last week of October. They're going
• 39:41
  Speaker 4: to be community scrape here and they're going to be
• 39:43
  Speaker 4: coming through here. And then you know, for whatever reason,
• 39:46
  Speaker 4: things have changed, and I don't go do what I
• 39:49
  Speaker 4: need to to figure them out. I do what I
• 39:51
  Speaker 4: want to because I think it's.
• 39:52
  Speaker 3: Going to work.
• 39:54
  Speaker 2: Now. I know, every situation is different, every hunt has
• 39:57
  Speaker 2: its own unique circumstances. But let's just for the sake
• 40:01
  Speaker 2: of someone trying to get a rough idea. If we
• 40:04
  Speaker 2: were to look at like a ten day hunt, just
• 40:06
  Speaker 2: because tends an easy number to look at, and if
• 40:09
  Speaker 2: you were to go into a ten day hunt and
• 40:11
  Speaker 2: you have like one main set of strategies that's your program.
• 40:15
  Speaker 2: It's how you really think you're gonna get it done.
• 40:17
  Speaker 2: If you had to generalize and give me like a
• 40:21
  Speaker 2: drop dead moment through your ten day hunt, at what
• 40:24
  Speaker 2: point would you be, you know, everything else being equal?
• 40:26
  Speaker 2: Would you say, like, buy, you know, sixty percent of
• 40:29
  Speaker 2: the way through you got to pull the emergency cord
• 40:31
  Speaker 2: and do something different or is it fifty percent or
• 40:33
  Speaker 2: is it eighty percent or ninety? Like how much time
• 40:37
  Speaker 2: would you recommend giving someone in order to pull the
• 40:40
  Speaker 2: more emergency cord but then also have time to make
• 40:43
  Speaker 2: something of it? You know what I mean?
• 40:45
  Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean that it it's variable on what they're
• 40:49
  Speaker 4: showing me.
• 40:50
  Speaker 3: You know. I would like my default would be five
• 40:52
  Speaker 3: days through.
• 40:53
  Speaker 4: If I don't have something going on, I better figure
• 40:54
  Speaker 4: something else right halfway through that. On a four day hunt,
• 40:58
  Speaker 4: I'd probably look at it the same way like if
• 41:00
  Speaker 4: I'm two days in, I don't have something going on,
• 41:02
  Speaker 4: but it it really depends on what I'm seeing, right,
• 41:05
  Speaker 4: because sometimes you know how it is, like sometimes you're
• 41:07
  Speaker 4: like you're just you're close enough where you're like, I'm
• 41:10
  Speaker 4: not gonna move, Like it feels like they're just gonna
• 41:11
  Speaker 4: get here, right, and that river bottom stuff out west
• 41:14
  Speaker 4: is a prime example, Like you always see them, so
• 41:17
  Speaker 4: you're like, oh, they crossed there again, but they probably
• 41:19
  Speaker 4: get here. So that's an easy program to hold on to.
• 41:23
  Speaker 4: The hard ones are when you go into like a
• 41:27
  Speaker 4: low deer densy thing like that big woods Wisconsin stuff
• 41:30
  Speaker 4: where you're just not going to see very many and
• 41:32
  Speaker 4: you're like, well, I killed one on this crossing, you know,
• 41:35
  Speaker 4: two years ago, Like how much time do I give it?
• 41:37
  Speaker 4: And in those situations I probably tend to give it
• 41:40
  Speaker 4: too much time before I pivot, just because it's like,
• 41:46
  Speaker 4: I know, the task of going out and finding a
• 41:48
  Speaker 4: concentration of deer might take me longer than I have left.
• 41:52
  Speaker 4: But at the same time, the thing that the thing
• 41:54
  Speaker 4: that happens to me almost every single season that kind
• 41:57
  Speaker 4: of reinforces this whole idea of you don't want to
• 42:00
  Speaker 4: hunt on memories solely, or you don't want to lean
• 42:03
  Speaker 4: too heavily on that is how often I go somewhere
• 42:06
  Speaker 4: with that idea in my head and they just blatantly
• 42:09
  Speaker 4: show me they're using something else, or they you know,
• 42:13
  Speaker 4: blatantly show me that they're laying down a ton of
• 42:16
  Speaker 4: sign here for a reason, you know, or you walk
• 42:18
  Speaker 4: into a spot and you're like you jumped a bunch
• 42:20
  Speaker 4: of deer and you're like, okay, you've got to factor
• 42:22
  Speaker 4: that in pretty quickly, right, Like if you know how
• 42:25
  Speaker 4: it is, like if you go out and you find
• 42:27
  Speaker 4: the right concentration to sign that's just humming, and you're like, well,
• 42:31
  Speaker 4: I was going to go another three quarters of a
• 42:33
  Speaker 4: mile down here, but I probably should check that out.
• 42:37
  Speaker 4: You probably should check it out, you should probably hunt it.
• 42:39
  Speaker 4: And that's we have a hard time with that. So
• 42:42
  Speaker 4: we try to, like I think a lot of hunters
• 42:44
  Speaker 4: look at it and go I have my plan and
• 42:47
  Speaker 4: if it's not working, I'm going to spruce it up
• 42:49
  Speaker 4: with the decoys and the calls and whatever else. And
• 42:51
  Speaker 4: I'm because I believe in what I want to do
• 42:53
  Speaker 4: there instead of going to look. But there's so many
• 42:56
  Speaker 4: times when you're out there where I think about this
• 42:58
  Speaker 4: a lot. Where you know, people access tree stands often
• 43:02
  Speaker 4: on field edges. Right, So you're walking along and you
• 43:04
  Speaker 4: see that field edge sign, which is like encouraging, but
• 43:08
  Speaker 4: who cares kind of you know, like it's cool, but
• 43:10
  Speaker 4: generally like, yeah, I expect to see some rubs and
• 43:12
  Speaker 4: scrapes on.
• 43:13
  Speaker 3: A field edge where there's lots of deer.
• 43:15
  Speaker 4: But think about how often, Let's say it's like October
• 43:20
  Speaker 4: twentieth and you're walking along and you're gonna go sit
• 43:22
  Speaker 4: that cut cornfield and you see that rub on the
• 43:24
  Speaker 4: edge and you're like, dang, that's a nice rub. And
• 43:26
  Speaker 4: then you look down in the woods and you see
• 43:28
  Speaker 4: another one, and it's like, most people aren't gonna peel
• 43:31
  Speaker 4: off and go check that out. But that is a
• 43:34
  Speaker 4: huge sign, right like that that's telling you something that
• 43:39
  Speaker 4: not only was he up here what you expect, but
• 43:41
  Speaker 4: now I know he walked down there and did it
• 43:44
  Speaker 4: or somebody did who I'm really interested in? And what's
• 43:46
  Speaker 4: the next one look like? Or why why that way?
• 43:49
  Speaker 4: What's down there?
• 43:50
  Speaker 3: You know?
• 43:51
  Speaker 4: And I think again, it's sort of that indecisiveness, the
• 43:56
  Speaker 4: second guessing thing where you're like, well, if I walk
• 43:58
  Speaker 4: down in there, I'll probably blow them, or I don't
• 44:00
  Speaker 4: have like a I don't have a good plan for that,
• 44:04
  Speaker 4: So I'm just gonna take it. I'm gonna be safe,
• 44:05
  Speaker 4: and I'm gonna go to that tree stand that I
• 44:08
  Speaker 4: wanted to go to anyway, but I'm gonna put that
• 44:09
  Speaker 4: big buck decoy out because if this dude comes out here,
• 44:12
  Speaker 4: he might see it. But you already walk through there.
• 44:14
  Speaker 4: You know, Like it's hard to do. But I think
• 44:18
  Speaker 4: that when you when you learn that it's okay to
• 44:21
  Speaker 4: try that stuff, and I think that, I think that's
• 44:23
  Speaker 4: what like a lot of the hang and bang public
• 44:26
  Speaker 4: land hunts teach you, is like it's just okay to
• 44:29
  Speaker 4: try stuff like you have to, like you have to
• 44:31
  Speaker 4: get your ass in a tree somewhere and just try
• 44:33
  Speaker 4: something out. So you're generally gonna do that in a
• 44:35
  Speaker 4: place where you're like there's enough sign here to get
• 44:37
  Speaker 4: me to commit to this.
• 44:38
  Speaker 3: When you're on a piece of private ground and you have.
• 44:41
  Speaker 4: Your stands hung since you know the end of July,
• 44:44
  Speaker 4: and you have your whole plan out, and you're like,
• 44:46
  Speaker 4: I'm not gonna I'm gonna be very light on my presence.
• 44:49
  Speaker 4: I'm gonna tread lightly, and then I'm gonna hit this
• 44:51
  Speaker 4: hard during my rut caation. It's like that's fine, that
• 44:54
  Speaker 4: works a lot, But it's also like if you're walking
• 44:57
  Speaker 4: out there for that fun hunt on October fifteenth, and
• 44:59
  Speaker 4: you might want to shoot it dough or whatever, and
• 45:01
  Speaker 4: then you see that bang and rub line, you have
• 45:04
  Speaker 4: the opportunity to go figure that out, and it's a
• 45:07
  Speaker 4: hard thing to do, but it's important.
• 45:09
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 45:11
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that's that's actually really good, really good lead into
• 45:17
  Speaker 2: another one of my failures, which kind of piggybacks not
• 45:22
  Speaker 2: only off what you were just sharing, but also my
• 45:24
  Speaker 2: first failure in which you know, I talked about for
• 45:27
  Speaker 2: a long time. I failed repeatedly because I was living
• 45:30
  Speaker 2: off of other people's rules and other people's best practices.
• 45:33
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 45:35
  Speaker 2: Well, I got a hunting spot in Ohio back in
• 45:39
  Speaker 2: like twenty fourteen, maybe somewhere on that ball twenty thirteen fourteen,
• 45:44
  Speaker 2: give or take, and this was the best zone I'd
• 45:48
  Speaker 2: ever had permission to hunt. And first hunt ever there,
• 45:55
  Speaker 2: I saw the biggest bucke't ever you know, laid eyes
• 45:58
  Speaker 2: on while I had a bow in my hand, like
• 45:59
  Speaker 2: a true one, you know, sixty kind of buck, just
• 46:02
  Speaker 2: like a giant Ohio buck that was, you know, coming
• 46:06
  Speaker 2: my way, very exciting, like just like a real deal buck.
• 46:12
  Speaker 2: And I hunted that buck that season, never got a
• 46:16
  Speaker 2: crack at him, saw him another time or two. But
• 46:18
  Speaker 2: the next year I came back and I told myself
• 46:21
  Speaker 2: I was gonna do things differently. I was going to
• 46:24
  Speaker 2: be more aggressive. I was going to try to like
• 46:26
  Speaker 2: get into his zone. I wasn't going to just hunt
• 46:29
  Speaker 2: him on the edges. We're safe, kind of all the
• 46:31
  Speaker 2: stuff I talked about with that other deer. And so
• 46:34
  Speaker 2: I did a bunch of scouting. I found what I
• 46:37
  Speaker 2: thought were like the spots that man, this buck probably
• 46:40
  Speaker 2: lives in here, Like this could be like one of
• 46:41
  Speaker 2: his bedrooms, you know. I found some beds. I found
• 46:44
  Speaker 2: like where I thought one of his safe places was.
• 46:48
  Speaker 2: Got it kind of dialed in, was feeling really good
• 46:50
  Speaker 2: about things, and really this is a story full of
• 46:53
  Speaker 2: a lot of getting things right. I'll preface this by
• 46:57
  Speaker 2: and then getting the wrong answer at the very end.
• 47:01
  Speaker 2: So I so I get all of that knowledge, I'm
• 47:04
  Speaker 2: feeling very excited. I go in do the early season
• 47:06
  Speaker 2: hunts doesn't pan out. I remember thinking to myself that
• 47:08
  Speaker 2: I wasn't going to go back to hunt till like
• 47:10
  Speaker 2: late October. I was gonna wait till that pre red
• 47:13
  Speaker 2: stuff was really kicking in. And then I think it
• 47:18
  Speaker 2: was mid October, right in that window when a cold
• 47:23
  Speaker 2: front moved through, A rainy cold front kind of day
• 47:26
  Speaker 2: moved through in mid October, and I just remember thinking,
• 47:32
  Speaker 2: and I can't remember all of the different things that
• 47:33
  Speaker 2: were lining up, but for some reason, there was a
• 47:35
  Speaker 2: whole series of things that were lining up. I think
• 47:37
  Speaker 2: it was the rain, it was the wind direction, and
• 47:41
  Speaker 2: it was the fact that I thought I knew one
• 47:42
  Speaker 2: of these spots where this buck was bedded, and all
• 47:45
  Speaker 2: of that. On one morning, I remember like sitting at
• 47:47
  Speaker 2: my computer looking at all these conditions. I wasn't planning
• 47:50
  Speaker 2: on going down to Ohio to hunt, but I'm looking
• 47:52
  Speaker 2: at all this stuff and I'm thinking, like, man, this
• 47:54
  Speaker 2: all would set up so perfectly to get really close
• 47:57
  Speaker 2: to that bed. You know, I could sneak in through
• 48:00
  Speaker 2: the standing cornfield, which would be really hard to do quietly,
• 48:03
  Speaker 2: except for on a windy, rainy day, and except for
• 48:07
  Speaker 2: like on a day when I really knew exactly where
• 48:09
  Speaker 2: I wanted to get to, I could probably sneak through
• 48:11
  Speaker 2: that cornfield and get like just above this zone. I
• 48:14
  Speaker 2: bet you, with this wind direction, it would make sense
• 48:16
  Speaker 2: for him to actually be betting there and using this
• 48:19
  Speaker 2: particular location on that kind of day. So I was like,
• 48:22
  Speaker 2: you know what I'm gonna I'm gonna go for it.
• 48:25
  Speaker 2: So I like just like bailed on work for the
• 48:28
  Speaker 2: rest of the day. I left in the middle of
• 48:29
  Speaker 2: the day, bombed down to southern Ohio, drove like four
• 48:32
  Speaker 2: and a half hours, got there just in time to
• 48:35
  Speaker 2: sneak in do the whole thing, very high anticipation, Like
• 48:39
  Speaker 2: I thought, like, man, I'm doing the thing. I'm making
• 48:42
  Speaker 2: this plunge right into the heart of this buck's territory
• 48:45
  Speaker 2: because I had this like feeling and everything's lined up
• 48:48
  Speaker 2: and YadA, YadA, YadA, and I do the hunt and
• 48:50
  Speaker 2: it's all perfect, and then I don't see him nothing crickets,
• 48:53
  Speaker 2: don't see a single deer, And I just remember thinking like, ah,
• 48:56
  Speaker 2: what an idiot like you came in here the middle
• 48:58
  Speaker 2: of October. It's the lull. You know, you probably just
• 49:01
  Speaker 2: screwed it up. He wasn't gonna be moving all that
• 49:03
  Speaker 2: much anyways, What an idiot. The next morning, I started
• 49:09
  Speaker 2: to drive home, and then on my drive home, I'm
• 49:14
  Speaker 2: going through all this indecision like we've been talking about,
• 49:16
  Speaker 2: and now I'm like arguing with myself, Well, you know,
• 49:18
  Speaker 2: you came all the way down here. You did everything right.
• 49:21
  Speaker 2: Your execution seemed really good, your wind was really good.
• 49:24
  Speaker 2: You didn't bump anything that you know of. You know,
• 49:27
  Speaker 2: maybe he just didn't happen to you know, you couldn't
• 49:29
  Speaker 2: quite see down to the bed, so he could have
• 49:31
  Speaker 2: been there, or we could have embedded off one of
• 49:32
  Speaker 2: these other points. You know, you weren't necessarily completely wrong.
• 49:36
  Speaker 2: You got to give it another chance. So I get
• 49:38
  Speaker 2: part way home and then decide to turn around and
• 49:40
  Speaker 2: drive back for one more hunt. And this time like,
• 49:44
  Speaker 2: all right, I'm just gonna I'm gonna hunt a slightly
• 49:47
  Speaker 2: different I think, if I remember correctly, the wind is
• 49:49
  Speaker 2: shifted a little bit, so I wasn't gonna hunt that
• 49:50
  Speaker 2: same spot. But I had another zone prepped where I
• 49:53
  Speaker 2: could hunt on just kind of the other side of
• 49:55
  Speaker 2: this betting area, in a place that I still thought
• 49:58
  Speaker 2: was one of this possible kind of exit routes to
• 50:01
  Speaker 2: a food source. And I slip in there. It still
• 50:04
  Speaker 2: had stuff, was still wet, still nice kind of windy day,
• 50:07
  Speaker 2: so I could sneak into this zone close. I was
• 50:09
  Speaker 2: being a lot more aggressive than I had in the past,
• 50:12
  Speaker 2: and get set up, sit in the tree, feeling good
• 50:16
  Speaker 2: about it. You know, I've had this whole thing worked
• 50:18
  Speaker 2: out in my head. Gets to the last I don't know,
• 50:21
  Speaker 2: ten to fifteen minutes of daylight, and I hear a
• 50:24
  Speaker 2: twig snap and I look in this direction and then
• 50:26
  Speaker 2: the holy shit, there he is. He did the thing
• 50:43
  Speaker 2: like it worked out exactly how I thought it was.
• 50:46
  Speaker 2: And here's a one sixty class, just a mammoth of
• 50:50
  Speaker 2: a bodied buck, you know, at thirty yards something like that,
• 50:55
  Speaker 2: thirty five yards, just the closest I've ever into a
• 51:00
  Speaker 2: buck like that that I can get a shot at
• 51:02
  Speaker 2: at this point in my hunting career. And it's here,
• 51:05
  Speaker 2: like everything worked out. I did it all right, He's
• 51:09
  Speaker 2: right there. And then in that moment, it was like,
• 51:12
  Speaker 2: holy shit, now I need to pull off the last thing.
• 51:14
  Speaker 2: I did everything right, but now I actually have to
• 51:16
  Speaker 2: pull off a shot. And I was also though, trying
• 51:19
  Speaker 2: to self film it, and so now I'm scurrying to
• 51:24
  Speaker 2: try to get a camera spun her arm, and I'm
• 51:26
  Speaker 2: trying to spin around the tree and moving the camera
• 51:29
  Speaker 2: to be a film while I could also get a shot.
• 51:31
  Speaker 2: And this whole time that's happening, the buck is moving
• 51:34
  Speaker 2: across the one opening that I had, and I just
• 51:38
  Speaker 2: remember in this moment finally getting spun around the camera
• 51:40
  Speaker 2: on the target and I can see the buck, and
• 51:42
  Speaker 2: I remember thinking, oh, no, you're not going to get
• 51:44
  Speaker 2: a shot. Like he's moving, he's not stopping, he's moving across,
• 51:50
  Speaker 2: and this is your one chance, after all of these years,
• 51:53
  Speaker 2: after doing all of these things, right, I remember in
• 51:56
  Speaker 2: my mind just thinking like, you have to get a shot.
• 51:59
  Speaker 2: And he's moving, and he's moving kind of in towards
• 52:02
  Speaker 2: a down tree. I remember there's like a downtree and
• 52:05
  Speaker 2: branches extending out, and he's gonna be behind that downtree soon.
• 52:08
  Speaker 2: And so what did I do? I just shot. I
• 52:14
  Speaker 2: just got a shot off before I couldn't get a
• 52:16
  Speaker 2: shot off right, and that shot hit the buck, but
• 52:20
  Speaker 2: it hit him back. And you know later in reviewing
• 52:24
  Speaker 2: the footage of it, I did get footage of it.
• 52:25
  Speaker 2: You know, it hit he was behind those tree branches,
• 52:30
  Speaker 2: and I honestly can't remember if I glanced off a
• 52:33
  Speaker 2: branch or just hit back, but it was in that zone.
• 52:37
  Speaker 2: And to make a long story short, couldn't find him
• 52:40
  Speaker 2: that night, searched for him the whole next day, brought
• 52:43
  Speaker 2: out a dog, couldn't find him the whole next day.
• 52:46
  Speaker 2: Day three had a different friend who had a dog
• 52:48
  Speaker 2: come down searched all that day, could not find the buck.
• 52:53
  Speaker 2: And you know, that was the first time that I'd
• 52:56
  Speaker 2: hit a buck and not found it, and you know,
• 52:59
  Speaker 2: just devastating for that reason. Devastating for like what felt
• 53:03
  Speaker 2: like making so much great progress and then to not
• 53:05
  Speaker 2: be able to finally get that thing to come together
• 53:07
  Speaker 2: in the end, devastating, you know, for all of these
• 53:11
  Speaker 2: reasons and many more. And then couldn't find the deer.
• 53:17
  Speaker 2: Fast forward two months, three months something like that. I
• 53:20
  Speaker 2: come back during shed season and I find him right
• 53:24
  Speaker 2: in the zone that I swear we walked all around
• 53:27
  Speaker 2: when we were out there searching with dogs. So did
• 53:30
  Speaker 2: we just miss him and he'd been dead there all along? Maybe,
• 53:33
  Speaker 2: or maybe he just took longer and then came back
• 53:35
  Speaker 2: to his bedroom and debt. I do not know, But
• 53:38
  Speaker 2: that was like my first major what felt like a
• 53:42
  Speaker 2: major success but ended up being a major failure and
• 53:45
  Speaker 2: like massive heartbreaking situation. And what I learned from that,
• 53:50
  Speaker 2: among many many different things, was like I learned a
• 53:53
  Speaker 2: lot of confirming things, like Okay, it paid off to
• 53:56
  Speaker 2: like do that scouting and find out where the bedroom
• 53:58
  Speaker 2: was and find some of those things that off. It
• 54:00
  Speaker 2: paid off to trust my gut to go in and
• 54:02
  Speaker 2: do a hunt, even though it was mid October and
• 54:04
  Speaker 2: the rules said don't hunt in the middle of October
• 54:07
  Speaker 2: because they don't move as much. But actually, as we
• 54:10
  Speaker 2: all know, that's not necessarily the case. So that was
• 54:13
  Speaker 2: something that was confirmed to me, like I stuck with
• 54:16
  Speaker 2: the thing, even though the first hunt didn't worked out.
• 54:18
  Speaker 2: I pivoted and adjusted, so all those things confirmed, like, Okay,
• 54:21
  Speaker 2: I'm making progress, I'm figuring these things out. But then
• 54:24
  Speaker 2: ultimately an end, I put so much pressure on myself
• 54:29
  Speaker 2: to get the shot. I put so much into that,
• 54:33
  Speaker 2: like that the most important thing was to get a shot.
• 54:35
  Speaker 2: That I took a shot that I probably shouldn't have
• 54:37
  Speaker 2: first and foremost, you know, I forced a shot. I
• 54:40
  Speaker 2: rushed a shot that really, you know, with him moving
• 54:44
  Speaker 2: and with me trying to fiddle with all that other stuff,
• 54:46
  Speaker 2: I did not put myself in a position to get
• 54:49
  Speaker 2: the right shot, and I was not experienced enough or
• 54:56
  Speaker 2: I'm not sure what the right words other than that,
• 54:58
  Speaker 2: but I didn't make the right decision moment, and that
• 55:01
  Speaker 2: was a massive failure that I have continued to struggle
• 55:03
  Speaker 2: with in all the years since. As we've all talked about, right,
• 55:06
  Speaker 2: those things never end up, you know, not being a
• 55:09
  Speaker 2: challenge in one way or another. But that was the
• 55:11
  Speaker 2: first big one on many of those different fronts. The
• 55:14
  Speaker 2: still sticks with me to this point.
• 55:17
  Speaker 4: I mean, if you are gonna if you were going
• 55:20
  Speaker 4: to make a top ten or top five list of
• 55:23
  Speaker 4: ways in which deer hunters, particularly bow hunters, screw up
• 55:27
  Speaker 4: rushing the shot would be like always up there.
• 55:31
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, it is just this.
• 55:33
  Speaker 4: One of the hardest things to do is pump the
• 55:36
  Speaker 4: brakes when you're like, there's the one I'm going to
• 55:39
  Speaker 4: shoot at, Like I have to get a shot because
• 55:41
  Speaker 4: they're so rare, the encounters are so rare and they
• 55:45
  Speaker 4: get within range of you. It is very hard when
• 55:48
  Speaker 4: you switch over to that I'm taking a shot to
• 55:51
  Speaker 4: not take it if the whole thing falls apart.
• 55:54
  Speaker 2: So like there's like like some other force, like something
• 55:59
  Speaker 2: takes control and it's like like a tractor being sucking
• 56:01
  Speaker 2: you in, Like you lose autonomy in some way, and
• 56:05
  Speaker 2: like it's like a ball rolling down a hill. Like
• 56:07
  Speaker 2: once that gravity takes over, it's really hard to stop
• 56:11
  Speaker 2: that thing once it's.
• 56:11
  Speaker 3: Rolling, real hard. Yeah, I don't know. I mean, I
• 56:17
  Speaker 3: mean I don't even know.
• 56:18
  Speaker 4: You get better about that stuff, but it's not like
• 56:21
  Speaker 4: that thing ever goes away. No, you know, like that
• 56:24
  Speaker 4: that is always a possibility and it's so rarely works out.
• 56:30
  Speaker 2: Yeah, And I mean you and I have have spent
• 56:33
  Speaker 2: years and years talking on this podcast about the many
• 56:36
  Speaker 2: examples of ways that you and I have had that
• 56:38
  Speaker 2: situation happen, and ways we've gotten better at it, ways
• 56:42
  Speaker 2: we've tried to deal with it, ways we've I think
• 56:45
  Speaker 2: the most effective things for me has been like recognizing
• 56:48
  Speaker 2: my shortcomings and like just recognizing, Okay, like there's some
• 56:54
  Speaker 2: things you can do to get better, and then there's
• 56:56
  Speaker 2: some things you just need to recognize that you're not
• 56:58
  Speaker 2: good at some of these things, and you need to
• 57:00
  Speaker 2: account for that ahead of time. So like, for example,
• 57:03
  Speaker 2: I'm not going to take long shots anymore because I
• 57:06
  Speaker 2: just know, like I'm too susceptible to making some tiny air,
• 57:10
  Speaker 2: I'm too susceptible too rushing the shots. So I'm going
• 57:13
  Speaker 2: to know that ahead of time and just say, hey, Mark,
• 57:16
  Speaker 2: you're not going to be the guy that gets to
• 57:17
  Speaker 2: shoot deer at fifty yards. You're just not because for me,
• 57:21
  Speaker 2: I'm not willing to risk all the bad things happening.
• 57:25
  Speaker 2: I would much rather have fewer shot opportunities, but fewer
• 57:28
  Speaker 2: bad things happen wounded deer, miss deer. So I've pulled
• 57:31
  Speaker 2: in my shooting range. That's probably been like some of
• 57:34
  Speaker 2: the best things. I've dumbed down my gear. I've decreased
• 57:37
  Speaker 2: my range. I have, you know, tried to find ways
• 57:40
  Speaker 2: in how I set up shots and how I prepare
• 57:43
  Speaker 2: and how I set up locations to minimize those errors,
• 57:47
  Speaker 2: knowing full well that like this very well might be
• 57:49
  Speaker 2: the number one way that people fail. Like once you
• 57:51
  Speaker 2: get to a certain point where you're pretty good at
• 57:53
  Speaker 2: deer hunting and you know how to get within a
• 57:55
  Speaker 2: range of deer, I gotta believe that most hunters at
• 58:00
  Speaker 2: that point I have a whole lot of deer that
• 58:02
  Speaker 2: they screwed up on that. Yeah, that's the number of reason,
• 58:05
  Speaker 2: number one reason.
• 58:06
  Speaker 3: Why I have done the same thing.
• 58:08
  Speaker 4: Man, I want them at like twenty yards looking away
• 58:13
  Speaker 4: from me, I mean, like already kind of pass me.
• 58:16
  Speaker 4: I'm the same way, Like I don't I don't need
• 58:18
  Speaker 4: to be shooting deer forty fifty yards away. I want
• 58:21
  Speaker 4: them close. And I did the same thing, like I
• 58:24
  Speaker 4: need to work with myself. I dumb that shit down,
• 58:27
  Speaker 4: and I try to give myself really high odd shots
• 58:30
  Speaker 4: because it's so easy to screw up.
• 58:32
  Speaker 2: And and you know, I don't I could be wrong.
• 58:36
  Speaker 2: I don't think we're unique in that, and I do
• 58:40
  Speaker 2: think and you can tell me if you think I'm
• 58:42
  Speaker 2: wrong here, Tony. But I think that our industry, the community,
• 58:48
  Speaker 2: the marketing machine of the hunting world tries to tell
• 58:53
  Speaker 2: hunters that, oh no, all you need is a better
• 58:56
  Speaker 2: bow or a better arrow, or more practice or this
• 59:00
  Speaker 2: new technique or this shooting style or this answer, and
• 59:04
  Speaker 2: all of those things can help, and you should do
• 59:06
  Speaker 2: all of the stuff you possibly can to get better
• 59:08
  Speaker 2: and more effective. I'm not saying you shouldn't do those things,
• 59:11
  Speaker 2: but it is much more unpopular to do what we're
• 59:14
  Speaker 2: talking about. Why don't we hear more about restraint, Well,
• 59:20
  Speaker 2: because it's not worth any money.
• 59:22
  Speaker 3: Yeah, you know, the marketing budgets don't. That's not that's
• 59:26
  Speaker 3: not what they're going for.
• 59:27
  Speaker 4: But I mean, you know, I remember I don't remember
• 59:32
  Speaker 4: what show this was, but I remember watching a bow
• 59:35
  Speaker 4: hunting show one time, and it was like a twelve
• 59:37
  Speaker 4: year old kid that I think that kid missed a
• 59:41
  Speaker 4: giant and then killed a giant in the same show,
• 59:46
  Speaker 4: And it was like one of those things where I
• 59:49
  Speaker 4: remember being like I would fall apart on those deer
• 59:54
  Speaker 4: every time, and then realizing, well, that kid where he's
• 59:59
  Speaker 4: hunting expects on another giant to come down the trail.
• 1:00:02
  Speaker 4: You know, we watch people hunting in scenarios where it's
• 1:00:06
  Speaker 4: not the dude on public land in Pennsylvania. You know
• 1:00:11
  Speaker 4: that deer that comes along that one sixty in Ohio.
• 1:00:13
  Speaker 4: That deer is not coming along very often, so it's
• 1:00:17
  Speaker 4: easy to lose your shit. But we watch people all
• 1:00:19
  Speaker 4: the time who are like, if I don't kill this one,
• 1:00:22
  Speaker 4: like they'll be more'll be another one, And most of
• 1:00:25
  Speaker 4: us aren't. Most of the time people aren't hunting that scenario.
• 1:00:27
  Speaker 4: So that's that's when that ego that takes over where
• 1:00:30
  Speaker 4: you're like, I gotta possess that thing, like I need
• 1:00:34
  Speaker 4: to possess that deer because this is not going to
• 1:00:36
  Speaker 4: come around again for me.
• 1:00:37
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that shit's tough, man, Yeah it's tough. And when
• 1:00:42
  Speaker 2: I get to my last story, it relates to this too.
• 1:00:45
  Speaker 2: But I think a really important thing to remember, and
• 1:00:47
  Speaker 2: that has been a big part of most of my failures.
• 1:00:50
  Speaker 2: And it goes back to my second and first story.
• 1:00:53
  Speaker 2: Really it's it's in the end, like this stuff doesn't
• 1:00:56
  Speaker 2: matter that much, like whether or not you get a
• 1:00:59
  Speaker 2: buck this year. You've said this. I think it was
• 1:01:02
  Speaker 2: you who said this to me years ago, and it
• 1:01:04
  Speaker 2: stuck with me, and I try to remind myself of this,
• 1:01:06
  Speaker 2: like nobody cares. For so long, I've thought like it
• 1:01:10
  Speaker 2: was important to me, it was important to other people.
• 1:01:13
  Speaker 2: People were judging me based on this stuff. But in
• 1:01:16
  Speaker 2: the end, nobody really cares. Nobody's really paying attention, and
• 1:01:19
  Speaker 2: it really shouldn't matter what other people think anyways. And
• 1:01:22
  Speaker 2: so we put all this pressure on ourselves that really
• 1:01:26
  Speaker 2: does not need to be there, and that just gets
• 1:01:28
  Speaker 2: in the way of us enjoying ourselves and the experience.
• 1:01:31
  Speaker 2: I would say the only pressure that really should be
• 1:01:34
  Speaker 2: there is simply the pressure to execute the shot in
• 1:01:37
  Speaker 2: a way that leads to an ethical kill, Like that
• 1:01:39
  Speaker 2: is warranted, very important pressure that we should recognize and
• 1:01:43
  Speaker 2: I recognize. But the rest of the outside noise that
• 1:01:47
  Speaker 2: just gets in the way and sometimes makes.
• 1:01:49
  Speaker 3: Things worse for sure, for sure.
• 1:01:52
  Speaker 4: I mean, and kind of what we're talking about here
• 1:01:55
  Speaker 4: is really really leads into my last thing. I mean,
• 1:01:59
  Speaker 4: one of the things that I go through these cycles
• 1:02:02
  Speaker 4: in my hunting that bothers me the most is when
• 1:02:08
  Speaker 4: I go on like a big buck.
• 1:02:10
  Speaker 3: Here, or I'm like, I'm only hunting big ones.
• 1:02:14
  Speaker 4: And it because not necessarily because I don't mind hunting
• 1:02:21
  Speaker 4: big deer, but what I feel like I have to
• 1:02:24
  Speaker 4: do to hunt big deer is in as fun for
• 1:02:26
  Speaker 4: me is if I go out and do what I
• 1:02:27
  Speaker 4: actually really enjoy. And so my point with this is
• 1:02:32
  Speaker 4: not it's not a failure to focus on big deer,
• 1:02:35
  Speaker 4: it's a failure to focus on some kind of end
• 1:02:38
  Speaker 4: result that doesn't.
• 1:02:40
  Speaker 3: Give you what you need out of the process.
• 1:02:42
  Speaker 4: And for me, I don't know why I'm wired this way,
• 1:02:46
  Speaker 4: but the most enjoyable hunting I have is when I
• 1:02:48
  Speaker 4: go someplace new and try to figure it out.
• 1:02:50
  Speaker 3: That's just what works for me.
• 1:02:52
  Speaker 4: And it's private, public whatever, Like I just like showing
• 1:02:55
  Speaker 4: up and being like where do I find them?
• 1:02:57
  Speaker 3: How do I get on them?
• 1:02:58
  Speaker 4: But that's not always conducive to holding out for one fifties, right, Like,
• 1:03:03
  Speaker 4: sometimes you just have to recognize what you're dealing with
• 1:03:05
  Speaker 4: and be like, I'm just hunting deer right now or whatever.
• 1:03:07
  Speaker 4: But to me, I enjoy that more than defaulting to
• 1:03:11
  Speaker 4: a situation where I have a higher odds chance of
• 1:03:13
  Speaker 4: killing a big one. But I don't necessarily have to
• 1:03:16
  Speaker 4: figure anything out. And what I don't know what that
• 1:03:20
  Speaker 4: means for like the average hunter listening to this, But
• 1:03:24
  Speaker 4: there are ways to hunt, and there are things you
• 1:03:26
  Speaker 4: can do that you'll just enjoy it more, you know,
• 1:03:30
  Speaker 4: And it's not necessarily going to be that blueprint for
• 1:03:33
  Speaker 4: killing big bucks that you've been fed by the hunting industry,
• 1:03:36
  Speaker 4: you know, like the you know, I talk about this
• 1:03:39
  Speaker 4: all the time, but like the not hunting during the
• 1:03:42
  Speaker 4: lull and then not hunting during heat waves and not
• 1:03:44
  Speaker 4: hunting during this and not to hunting during that. I'm like,
• 1:03:46
  Speaker 4: that may be a good way to kill a big
• 1:03:48
  Speaker 4: buck in November, but it might be a really good
• 1:03:51
  Speaker 4: way to also have a shitty season where you don't
• 1:03:53
  Speaker 4: hunt very much.
• 1:03:54
  Speaker 3: Yeah, you know, And if if you.
• 1:03:57
  Speaker 4: Don't like being on a tree stand in early October
• 1:04:00
  Speaker 4: when the weather's nice and the leaves are coming down, like,
• 1:04:03
  Speaker 4: I don't know, man, Like it's it's fun to be
• 1:04:05
  Speaker 4: out there and it's fun to figure this stuff out
• 1:04:08
  Speaker 4: and I'm at the stage now I see a lot
• 1:04:10
  Speaker 4: of a lot of my buddies have really good hunting
• 1:04:13
  Speaker 4: spots now, like really good like they own land or
• 1:04:16
  Speaker 4: they lease good land, and they have you know, the
• 1:04:19
  Speaker 4: box blinds and the food pots, and they are just
• 1:04:21
  Speaker 4: losing their fire and you can see it because it's
• 1:04:24
  Speaker 4: like they know how they're going to kill them. There's
• 1:04:27
  Speaker 4: there's not really any mystery left. There's not anything that
• 1:04:30
  Speaker 4: they have to figure out. It's like those cell cameras
• 1:04:33
  Speaker 4: are going to feed you enough intel so you know
• 1:04:34
  Speaker 4: when he's moving and you're going to go in there
• 1:04:36
  Speaker 4: and you're gonna do it, and it's going to be
• 1:04:39
  Speaker 4: you know, can be really fun and some people love it,
• 1:04:42
  Speaker 4: but I can see I can see it in some
• 1:04:44
  Speaker 4: of my buddies where they're like they're struggling with the
• 1:04:47
  Speaker 4: easiest way to kill a big one versus how they
• 1:04:51
  Speaker 4: really kind of need to hunt to get fulfilled by it. Yeah,
• 1:04:54
  Speaker 4: which is which is one of those things that I
• 1:04:56
  Speaker 4: preach a lot where I'm like, go someplace different, don't
• 1:04:59
  Speaker 4: just have one spot to hunt. You don't have to
• 1:05:01
  Speaker 4: leave your state, you know, you like, you don't have
• 1:05:03
  Speaker 4: to travel that far but when you try something new
• 1:05:08
  Speaker 4: in a new environment, it just kind of lights the
• 1:05:10
  Speaker 4: fire again. And it's so easy to not do that
• 1:05:12
  Speaker 4: because that is not a very good way to kill
• 1:05:14
  Speaker 4: big bucks for most people, but it's a good way
• 1:05:16
  Speaker 4: to enjoy deer hunting and sort of find yourself again.
• 1:05:19
  Speaker 4: And I deal with that all the time, Like, you know,
• 1:05:21
  Speaker 4: we we have pressure to kill big ones, right, Like
• 1:05:24
  Speaker 4: if we go five years and don't kill a big one,
• 1:05:26
  Speaker 4: we are not we probably aren't doing this anymore, right
• 1:05:30
  Speaker 4: because just the truth of the matter, And so there's
• 1:05:32
  Speaker 4: always that sort of pressure, and you know that's that
• 1:05:35
  Speaker 4: happens to everybody too, Like everybody wants.
• 1:05:36
  Speaker 3: To kill a big one.
• 1:05:38
  Speaker 4: But when that when that becomes too much, or like
• 1:05:42
  Speaker 4: when that becomes the thing that's the focus, you often
• 1:05:45
  Speaker 4: sacrifice what you actually really.
• 1:05:46
  Speaker 3: Want to get out of it.
• 1:05:48
  Speaker 4: And that's tough, man Like, It's it's a constant sort
• 1:05:51
  Speaker 4: of push pull thing that I deal with all the time.
• 1:05:53
  Speaker 4: And I feel like I'm getting better, partially because I'm
• 1:05:55
  Speaker 4: taking my daughter's hunting so much, so I sort of
• 1:05:57
  Speaker 4: get that hunt any deer fixed through them. But it's
• 1:06:00
  Speaker 4: still something for me where I'm like if I'm kind
• 1:06:03
  Speaker 4: of bumming on a deer season. Usually the answer for
• 1:06:07
  Speaker 4: me is, I'm just gonna go for a long weekend.
• 1:06:09
  Speaker 4: I'm gonna hunt somewhere else and just like blank, slate
• 1:06:12
  Speaker 4: this thing and just figure something out. And then, you know,
• 1:06:15
  Speaker 4: a lot of times I don't kill, but a lot
• 1:06:16
  Speaker 4: of times I'll come back and be like, Okay, that's
• 1:06:18
  Speaker 4: just what I needed, you know.
• 1:06:21
  Speaker 2: Yeah, And that's that theme is the same theme of
• 1:06:25
  Speaker 2: my last failure too. And I think it all comes
• 1:06:28
  Speaker 2: down to knowing yourself, right, figuring out what that enjoyable,
• 1:06:36
  Speaker 2: how you define enjoyable or fun or satisfying. Like, every
• 1:06:41
  Speaker 2: one of us has a different version, right, And there
• 1:06:44
  Speaker 2: can be multiple answers for each of us too, Right,
• 1:06:47
  Speaker 2: Like I can enjoy going and traveling and figuring it out,
• 1:06:49
  Speaker 2: but then I can also enjoy sometimes doing the behind
• 1:06:52
  Speaker 2: the house easy hunt or whatever the thing is. Right,
• 1:06:54
  Speaker 2: We're all going to have our own different versions, and
• 1:06:56
  Speaker 2: maybe there's multiple. But the biggest thing I've learned is
• 1:06:59
  Speaker 2: like recognizing when you were hunting for yourself versus when
• 1:07:06
  Speaker 2: you were hunting for some outside expectation or goal that
• 1:07:09
  Speaker 2: you are driving towards because you think you should, or
• 1:07:12
  Speaker 2: because you know, the pressure or social media or peer
• 1:07:16
  Speaker 2: pressure or whatever the thing is that's making you hunt
• 1:07:19
  Speaker 2: for not your own satisfying reasons. So you know, my
• 1:07:23
  Speaker 2: story that I'll share briefly is one I've told many times,
• 1:07:26
  Speaker 2: so I won't get into all the details. But the
• 1:07:28
  Speaker 2: one that really hammered this home for me was that
• 1:07:30
  Speaker 2: Iowa trip. You know, I don't know, five years ago
• 1:07:33
  Speaker 2: or whatever it was. When I was there with a
• 1:07:35
  Speaker 2: bunch of buddies in town. Everyone's having a good time
• 1:07:38
  Speaker 2: going out, you know, going out for like a late breakfast,
• 1:07:41
  Speaker 2: lunch together, shooting the breeze, having fun evenings, dinners together.
• 1:07:47
  Speaker 2: If somebody shot, when everyone would go help them track it, hunting,
• 1:07:51
  Speaker 2: some of the share properties with each other, not taking
• 1:07:54
  Speaker 2: it too terribly serious, and enjoying it. It's Iowa, It's
• 1:07:58
  Speaker 2: fun and exciting. But they were focused on enjoying the experience.
• 1:08:01
  Speaker 2: I meanwhile, I had so much of an expectation built
• 1:08:04
  Speaker 2: up in my head that I had to choose. I
• 1:08:06
  Speaker 2: had to shoot a giant. I had to do it
• 1:08:08
  Speaker 2: in the most hardcore di way, running gun mobile hunting,
• 1:08:12
  Speaker 2: badass kind of way. So I wasn't gonna hunt anything
• 1:08:15
  Speaker 2: other than like my own saddle, set up my own way,
• 1:08:19
  Speaker 2: and so because of that, I did everything quote unquote right.
• 1:08:23
  Speaker 2: I hunted, you know, from dawn till dusk, every single day,
• 1:08:26
  Speaker 2: all day, and the result was that I was mostly miserable.
• 1:08:31
  Speaker 2: I did not kill a buck, and I didn't spend
• 1:08:34
  Speaker 2: any time with my hunting buddies, who all had a
• 1:08:36
  Speaker 2: great week together enjoying camaraderie and hunting, while I just
• 1:08:40
  Speaker 2: suffer fested in the tree, beating myself up for not
• 1:08:44
  Speaker 2: having been a good enough hunter. While all the rest
• 1:08:47
  Speaker 2: of them didn't necessarily they weren't necessarily any better or
• 1:08:50
  Speaker 2: any worse than me, or have any more or less
• 1:08:51
  Speaker 2: success than me. But they had a great week right,
• 1:08:53
  Speaker 2: and I instead had a miserable one. I thought after
• 1:08:56
  Speaker 2: all of that, driving home, like what am I doing?
• 1:08:59
  Speaker 2: I This is not why I got into honey. I
• 1:09:02
  Speaker 2: got into honey because yes, I love being out there
• 1:09:03
  Speaker 2: in the field. Yes I love all the things actually
• 1:09:06
  Speaker 2: involved with hunting. But I also enjoyed my friends and
• 1:09:10
  Speaker 2: family while I was out there. I enjoyed the camaraderie.
• 1:09:12
  Speaker 2: I enjoyed all the tradition and ritual around it. I
• 1:09:17
  Speaker 2: enjoyed you know, this isn't like a war. You don't
• 1:09:22
  Speaker 2: have to win the war. You're supposed to be having
• 1:09:24
  Speaker 2: an enjoyable experience. And coming out of that, I realized
• 1:09:29
  Speaker 2: that what you talked about, like finding what your thing is,
• 1:09:32
  Speaker 2: finding the ways to keep the joy, that's what really matters.
• 1:09:37
  Speaker 2: And so for me, in the years since, I've learned
• 1:09:39
  Speaker 2: things that matter to me are the people I'm with.
• 1:09:42
  Speaker 2: It is the places that I'm at, the experiences, the process,
• 1:09:47
  Speaker 2: being out there with my friends and family, teaching learning.
• 1:09:52
  Speaker 2: Sometimes that means I'm going to be hunting balls to
• 1:09:54
  Speaker 2: the wall all day, and sometimes that means I'm going
• 1:09:56
  Speaker 2: to come in and get lunch with my friends, or
• 1:09:59
  Speaker 2: take my son out, or spend a core part of
• 1:10:02
  Speaker 2: the rut when I should be hunting in a great
• 1:10:05
  Speaker 2: state for big deer and instead be hunting with my
• 1:10:07
  Speaker 2: kids and my dad up north where we're going to
• 1:10:10
  Speaker 2: see a couple spikes. I've learned that that's the stuff
• 1:10:12
  Speaker 2: that really matters. Having balance, having diversity, having camaraderie, enjoying
• 1:10:17
  Speaker 2: all of that is what makes a hunting season successful
• 1:10:21
  Speaker 2: for me today, and I'm a happier hunter because of it.
• 1:10:25
  Speaker 2: And I think I'm going to be just as successful
• 1:10:28
  Speaker 2: quote unquote a hunter too, because I'm going into a
• 1:10:32
  Speaker 2: season and any particular hunt with like a greater reservoir
• 1:10:36
  Speaker 2: of energy and creativity and excitement. And I think when
• 1:10:41
  Speaker 2: you have that, you're going to end up making better
• 1:10:43
  Speaker 2: decisions and performing better out there too, totally.
• 1:10:47
  Speaker 4: I mean, if you really want to fail at deer hunting,
• 1:10:50
  Speaker 4: take it too seriously. Yeah, there are parts you should
• 1:10:53
  Speaker 4: take very seriously. But if you take the whole thing
• 1:10:57
  Speaker 4: so seriously all the time that the fun evaporates, you're
• 1:11:00
  Speaker 4: gonna you're gonna make terrible decisions, yeah, because you're not
• 1:11:03
  Speaker 4: going to be operating from the right place, and it's
• 1:11:05
  Speaker 4: just not going to be enjoyable. It's just it is
• 1:11:08
  Speaker 4: so easy. It's so easy to cross that line. And
• 1:11:14
  Speaker 4: I mean it's sort of again, this is sort of
• 1:11:16
  Speaker 4: an industry standard thing where you sort of paint that
• 1:11:19
  Speaker 4: as the you know, the m O, right, like that's
• 1:11:22
  Speaker 4: that's how you should be, That's how you have to
• 1:11:23
  Speaker 4: be to kill a big public land box. It's like,
• 1:11:25
  Speaker 4: you don't have to do that, thank you don't. And
• 1:11:28
  Speaker 4: if you and if you're not having fun with it,
• 1:11:31
  Speaker 4: you will just not hunt as well. Like it's the
• 1:11:34
  Speaker 4: same thing. It's like confidence too. If you're not confident,
• 1:11:36
  Speaker 4: you're just you're in trouble, you know. And you can
• 1:11:39
  Speaker 4: only get to these places by doing the wrong thing
• 1:11:41
  Speaker 4: a whole bunch and realizing what you need out of it.
• 1:11:43
  Speaker 2: Yep, yeah, yeah, it's it's having those experiences, failing a lot,
• 1:11:50
  Speaker 2: recognizing that's okay, forgiving yourself, trying again, learning and carrying
• 1:11:55
  Speaker 2: on on and on and on, trying to get better,
• 1:11:58
  Speaker 2: but also recognizing this the end of the world. We're
• 1:12:01
  Speaker 2: not you know, we're not solving world peace here. We're
• 1:12:04
  Speaker 2: trying to have a fun and enjoyable experience in nature,
• 1:12:07
  Speaker 2: trying to put some food on the table. Whether or
• 1:12:11
  Speaker 2: not you kill a big buck really doesn't matter. So
• 1:12:14
  Speaker 2: don't stress too much, you know, do the work. If
• 1:12:17
  Speaker 2: your goal is if you have a hard goal, great
• 1:12:20
  Speaker 2: chase that goal, pursue hard things, grow, push yourself, all
• 1:12:24
  Speaker 2: of that. But with that balance, with that understanding that
• 1:12:29
  Speaker 2: it's really easy to go too far, or to do
• 1:12:31
  Speaker 2: things for the wrong reason, or to get in over
• 1:12:33
  Speaker 2: your head, and so it's like you need these little
• 1:12:35
  Speaker 2: reality checks. Ever once in a while, I don't know,
• 1:12:37
  Speaker 2: I haven't quite yet figured out the way to plan
• 1:12:40
  Speaker 2: for that ahead of time. Usually it just like hits
• 1:12:42
  Speaker 2: me in the moment, maybe there's something I should do to,
• 1:12:44
  Speaker 2: Like have an alarm clock set for November fifth every
• 1:12:48
  Speaker 2: year that just says, hey, wake up, idiot, chill out,
• 1:12:51
  Speaker 2: something like that. I need these little reminders, like take
• 1:12:54
  Speaker 2: a deep breath, remember, like there's more to life than
• 1:12:58
  Speaker 2: killing a five and a half year old buck. You'll
• 1:13:00
  Speaker 2: be okay, go get lunch with your dad or whatever.
• 1:13:05
  Speaker 2: Like those kinds of things are just a little bit
• 1:13:07
  Speaker 2: of a shake you out of your craziness that sometimes
• 1:13:12
  Speaker 2: will be helpful.
• 1:13:13
  Speaker 3: Well, I mean totally.
• 1:13:14
  Speaker 4: And you when you talk about drawing, drawing that Iowa tag,
• 1:13:20
  Speaker 4: you're just like absolutely creating a situation where you're very
• 1:13:25
  Speaker 4: ripe to take it too seriously.
• 1:13:27
  Speaker 3: And that's that's a big problem.
• 1:13:28
  Speaker 4: I mean, there are a lot of people out there
• 1:13:30
  Speaker 4: sitting on a lot of Iowa points who are scared
• 1:13:31
  Speaker 4: to draw because they don't want to. They don't I mean,
• 1:13:34
  Speaker 4: it's true, they don't want to burn that tag and
• 1:13:37
  Speaker 4: they know that there's going to be pressure on that
• 1:13:38
  Speaker 4: to go kill a big one. And so again, you
• 1:13:40
  Speaker 4: can kind of condition yourself to this stuff like if
• 1:13:43
  Speaker 4: you go, you know, wherever you live, if you travel
• 1:13:47
  Speaker 4: in state to some part of the state you don't
• 1:13:49
  Speaker 4: hunt very much, it's a way easier situation to allow
• 1:13:54
  Speaker 4: yourself to not kill in right, or if you end
• 1:13:57
  Speaker 4: up going somewhere that isn't no for producing booners left
• 1:14:02
  Speaker 4: and right, you know, like put yourself into a hard
• 1:14:04
  Speaker 4: environment where killing any deer would be great. Now, all
• 1:14:08
  Speaker 4: of a sudden, you have a different focus, right because
• 1:14:10
  Speaker 4: that big buck thing you see that happen so often,
• 1:14:13
  Speaker 4: especially with traveling hunts or the thing with trail cameras
• 1:14:17
  Speaker 4: now is you know, if there's a one to eighty
• 1:14:19
  Speaker 4: in your section and everybody's getting videos of it, it
• 1:14:22
  Speaker 4: can do the same thing on your home ground hunt,
• 1:14:24
  Speaker 4: where like it's that deer bust and it's like, man,
• 1:14:28
  Speaker 4: you just sometimes you have to, like we talked about
• 1:14:30
  Speaker 4: before with like reining in your shooting range. Sometimes you
• 1:14:33
  Speaker 4: have to just work with yourself and go like, man,
• 1:14:35
  Speaker 4: if I know that I've never traveled to hunt anywhere,
• 1:14:40
  Speaker 4: and if the first tag I draw is an Iowa
• 1:14:43
  Speaker 4: tag that I'm only gonna I'm gonna put six seven
• 1:14:45
  Speaker 4: years into it or whatever, I know me, I'm gonna
• 1:14:49
  Speaker 4: spin out and lose my shit.
• 1:14:51
  Speaker 3: But if I just drove up north.
• 1:14:53
  Speaker 4: For a long weekend and hunted the national forest up there,
• 1:14:55
  Speaker 4: maybe try to kill a couple of grouse during launch
• 1:14:57
  Speaker 4: or whatever, there's like a stepping star there.
• 1:15:00
  Speaker 3: Without the pressure.
• 1:15:02
  Speaker 4: You're still doing the process, You're still you're still putting
• 1:15:04
  Speaker 4: yourself in an unfamiliar environment, but you don't have that
• 1:15:07
  Speaker 4: pressure of that seven hundred dollars dear tag that you
• 1:15:09
  Speaker 4: waited six years to draw and everybody's expecting you to
• 1:15:12
  Speaker 4: kill a big one. You have to kind of think
• 1:15:14
  Speaker 4: about that stuff because if you just jump into that,
• 1:15:16
  Speaker 4: people do that all the time with an elk tag,
• 1:15:18
  Speaker 4: right first time elk hunters almost always get totally overwhelmed,
• 1:15:22
  Speaker 4: almost always get their asses handed to them, and almost
• 1:15:26
  Speaker 4: always go out with too high of expectation, you know,
• 1:15:30
  Speaker 4: just because it's I'm only going to do one elk hunt.
• 1:15:32
  Speaker 4: I want to kill a three hundred inch bowl and
• 1:15:35
  Speaker 4: it's like, brother, you better be looking for a calf,
• 1:15:37
  Speaker 4: like yeah, you know, because that's just what's going to
• 1:15:40
  Speaker 4: be delivered to you.
• 1:15:41
  Speaker 3: Maybe if you work really hard.
• 1:15:44
  Speaker 2: Yeah, speaking of failure, I've got an elk tag for
• 1:15:46
  Speaker 2: the first time in like eight years. And uh, and yeah,
• 1:15:49
  Speaker 2: I'm probably gonna be that guy who's going to be
• 1:15:52
  Speaker 2: really excited if I just happen to see a calf
• 1:15:54
  Speaker 2: because it's gonna be a little bit of a readjustment period.
• 1:15:57
  Speaker 2: I'm sure it'll be fun, but but it will be fun.
• 1:16:00
  Speaker 2: And I think that's the important thing to remember, is
• 1:16:03
  Speaker 2: keeping it fun, keep learning, know yourself, know when to
• 1:16:07
  Speaker 2: push it, no one to step back, know when to
• 1:16:11
  Speaker 2: shake yourself out of the madness, and keep your eye
• 1:16:15
  Speaker 2: on the prize. And I can tell you one thing.
• 1:16:18
  Speaker 2: I know I'm going to fail this season most of
• 1:16:21
  Speaker 2: the time. But if you keep on trucking and you
• 1:16:25
  Speaker 2: focus on the fun, focus on the process, it's all
• 1:16:28
  Speaker 2: worth it.
• 1:16:29
  Speaker 3: It absolutely is.
• 1:16:30
  Speaker 2: Buddy well Tony, thanks for joining me for this one.
• 1:16:34
  Speaker 3: Thanks for having me man.
• 1:16:36
  Speaker 2: And to all of you listening, thanks for being here.
• 1:16:39
  Speaker 2: And until next time, stay wired to hunt.