Latest / Wired To Hunt Podcast / Ep. 1005: Foundations - Off-Season Big Buck Reality Checks

Transcript

Ep. 1005: Foundations - Off-Season Big Buck Reality Checks · Wired To Hunt Podcast

0:01
Speaker 1: Welcome to the Wired to Hunt Foundations podcast, your guide
0:05
Speaker 1: to the fundamentals of better deer hunting, presented by first Light,
0:09
Speaker 1: creating proven versatile hunting apparel for the stand, saddle or blind.
0:14
Speaker 1: First Light Go Farther, Stay Longer, and now your host
0:19
Speaker 1: Tony Peterson.
0:20
Speaker 2: Hey everyone, welcome to the Wired to Hunt Foundations podcast.
0:23
Speaker 2: I'm your host, Tony Peterson, and this week I'm talking
0:25
Speaker 2: about giving ourselves a reality check when it comes to
0:27
Speaker 2: deer hunting in big box and how that might not
0:30
Speaker 2: always make us better deer hunters, but it certainly will
0:33
Speaker 2: make our hunting for deer better. This time of year
0:42
Speaker 2: mostly sucks to be a deer hunter, but it's okay.
0:45
Speaker 2: There are things we can do. And one of those
0:47
Speaker 2: is something that occurred to me recently while trying to
0:49
Speaker 2: plan out my hunt schedule for this fall. The different
0:52
Speaker 2: deer hunts I want to do are all not based
0:55
Speaker 2: around how big of a buck I think I can kill,
0:58
Speaker 2: but how realistic I need to be about six sess
1:00
Speaker 2: and what that would look like in the realm of
1:02
Speaker 2: making me happy wherever I am. Now, this might, like,
1:05
Speaker 2: I don't know, sound like a weird way of justifying
1:07
Speaker 2: my own brand of trophy hunting or something. But it's
1:09
Speaker 2: just a condition you get into when you hunt enough.
1:11
Speaker 2: It's also something I'm going to talk about right now.
1:22
Speaker 2: Every summer I drive down to southwestern Wisconsin to fish
1:25
Speaker 2: a tournament with a buddy of mine. It's a frog
1:27
Speaker 2: only deal that I've talked about before, you know, but
1:30
Speaker 2: for those of you who don't know, it just means
1:32
Speaker 2: you can only use spro frogs or in other words,
1:35
Speaker 2: the tackle selection. You know, it's pretty simple, you know,
1:38
Speaker 2: maybe a pick a brown one or a green one,
1:40
Speaker 2: or a white one, or a yellow cerment maybe op
1:43
Speaker 2: for popping frogs, or one of their frogs that has
1:45
Speaker 2: a couple of small Colorado spinner blades and not rubber legs.
1:48
Speaker 2: But no matter what, it's just frogs all the way down.
1:52
Speaker 2: I love that tournament because it's so simple. It's not easy.
1:56
Speaker 2: It's really tough, especially because it's a team tournament with
1:59
Speaker 2: a heavy local angler. Reality, and fishing against someone on
2:02
Speaker 2: their home water is always a challenge, let alone lots
2:05
Speaker 2: of someone who pair up and fish their home waters together. Now,
2:09
Speaker 2: the first year we fished it, which according to the
2:11
Speaker 2: trophy on the shelf behind me, was in twenty twenty,
2:14
Speaker 2: we won, and that day we just had a really
2:16
Speaker 2: solid large mouth opportunity just like kind of stacked up
2:20
Speaker 2: in this backwater lake. It had the right duck weed
2:23
Speaker 2: and deadfall combination, a little bit of current to keep
2:26
Speaker 2: it from getting stagnant, and about a trillion bait fish
2:29
Speaker 2: schooled up in there. It's different down south, but here
2:32
Speaker 2: in the North Country, if you can scraunge up a
2:33
Speaker 2: whole bunch of fish that are anywhere between three and
2:36
Speaker 2: four pounds, you can almost always get paid in a tournament,
2:39
Speaker 2: and if it really goes well, you can take first,
2:41
Speaker 2: like we did that year. But after that year it's
2:44
Speaker 2: been a different story. Last year we had an area
2:47
Speaker 2: with some pretty decent fish in it, but we weren't
2:49
Speaker 2: the only ones to find them. We also had a
2:51
Speaker 2: couple of big fish shake off, which is something that
2:54
Speaker 2: happens when you fish the slop, just like you're eventually
2:57
Speaker 2: going to miss some bucks if you hunt the rut
2:58
Speaker 2: long enough. I don't care who you are. Now. In
3:01
Speaker 2: a tournament like that, you start with eight hours to fish.
3:04
Speaker 2: You're constantly looking at the time and trying to factor
3:07
Speaker 2: in how to use it to the best of your abilities.
3:10
Speaker 2: You generally start out the morning you know with the
3:12
Speaker 2: idea that you're fishing to win, because well you are.
3:17
Speaker 2: But as the morning progresses, you start to realize that
3:19
Speaker 2: winning is looking less realistic by the cast. Now, if
3:22
Speaker 2: you have a few decent fishing alive, well that hope
3:25
Speaker 2: stays alive. But when it's fifteen inch fish after fifteen
3:28
Speaker 2: inch fish, you start to acknowledge that your odds aren't
3:31
Speaker 2: looking great. Oftentimes you either go swing for the fences
3:34
Speaker 2: in a big fish area, or you try to piece
3:36
Speaker 2: together something that will get you a check, even if
3:38
Speaker 2: it doesn't get you the first place trophy. Now I
3:41
Speaker 2: can't speak for all anglers, but for me, the reality
3:44
Speaker 2: of my odds of winning and what success really looks
3:46
Speaker 2: like to me change almost by the hour, and sometimes
3:49
Speaker 2: almost by the cast. It's not unlike how I view
3:52
Speaker 2: deer hunting these days. I always go into the season
3:56
Speaker 2: and planning to kill the biggest deer I believe to
3:58
Speaker 2: be really possible in whatever state a property I'm hunting.
4:01
Speaker 2: But that might last a week, it might last seven
4:03
Speaker 2: weeks until the rut wraps up, or on some trips,
4:06
Speaker 2: it might not last the first full day of scouting
4:09
Speaker 2: when I realized the deer density is super low, or
4:11
Speaker 2: the weather is going to be a huge challenge, or
4:14
Speaker 2: I figure out that the hunting pressure is a lot
4:16
Speaker 2: higher than I anticipated. This happens in weird ways too.
4:19
Speaker 2: They're mostly unique to my job, but also probably not
4:22
Speaker 2: as different from a lot of folks as it might
4:24
Speaker 2: seem at first. A couple of years ago, I drew
4:27
Speaker 2: an eye with deer tech, and I set out to
4:28
Speaker 2: kill one on public land. What I didn't see coming,
4:32
Speaker 2: but that changed the whole arc of my trip, was
4:34
Speaker 2: that my cameraman is just really uncomfortable with the tree
4:37
Speaker 2: stand game. Now, if your primary plan hinges on hang
4:40
Speaker 2: and bang mobile hunts to be right on top of
4:42
Speaker 2: the action, and you suddenly realize it's not even a
4:45
Speaker 2: feasible option and you better figure out how to shoot
4:47
Speaker 2: something from the ground, that changes literally everything. The odds
4:51
Speaker 2: of waiting out a one thirty plus deer drop like
4:53
Speaker 2: a headshot goose. That situation might never affect you, but
4:58
Speaker 2: a couple of sick kids in lay October or November, Mike,
5:02
Speaker 2: Or you might have a boss who decides ringing every
5:04
Speaker 2: last bit of your soul out to increase the quarter
5:06
Speaker 2: four profits is far more important than you sitting in
5:09
Speaker 2: a tree for a week during the rut, So you
5:11
Speaker 2: don't walk into that office with a hatchet and an
5:13
Speaker 2: unhealthy dose of homicidal rage, where if you hear one
5:16
Speaker 2: more person mentioned margins or EBITA or scalability or total
5:20
Speaker 2: addressable market, you're going to start hacking away at the
5:23
Speaker 2: C suite team. Things change, and one of the hardest
5:27
Speaker 2: parts about life is how difficult it is to accept
5:30
Speaker 2: and adapt to those changes. A buddy of mine works
5:33
Speaker 2: in it, and he's real successful, and we recently had
5:37
Speaker 2: a post peasant hunt conversation about social media and technology
5:41
Speaker 2: in our modern world, and we both agreed that we
5:43
Speaker 2: both hate quite a bit of the technology that governs
5:46
Speaker 2: our lives these days. But then he said something. He said,
5:50
Speaker 2: we hate it, meaning he and I because we've already
5:53
Speaker 2: aged out. It's not for us, it's for the younger generations.
5:58
Speaker 2: And I thought, Hm, my dad recently drove up to
6:01
Speaker 2: the lake to fish with us, and he used a
6:03
Speaker 2: paper map to navigate his way into the north Country.
6:06
Speaker 2: I thought about how judgmental I was of that. But
6:09
Speaker 2: that's coming for me, and it sucks to realize now,
6:13
Speaker 2: when our hunting changes, we often don't handle it well either.
6:17
Speaker 2: Here in Minnesota, we open our general gun season, you know,
6:20
Speaker 2: the Saturday of the first full weekend in November. That means,
6:24
Speaker 2: on some years, our gun season opens up in the
6:26
Speaker 2: first couple days of November and never really any later
6:29
Speaker 2: than like November ninth. The amount of bitching I do
6:32
Speaker 2: about this as well as a lot of people who
6:34
Speaker 2: would just like to bowhunt. The rut here is gross
6:37
Speaker 2: and totally fruitless. The gun crowd doesn't want to hear it,
6:41
Speaker 2: and they don't want to change the same type of
6:44
Speaker 2: thing plays out very often when anything new or different
6:48
Speaker 2: is introduced. We don't like change, even if we also
6:52
Speaker 2: don't like how things currently are. I guess it's like
6:55
Speaker 2: the devil you know type of thing. But change is inevitable,
6:58
Speaker 2: and so are multiple reality checks throughout our deer seasons.
7:02
Speaker 2: I know a hunter who's a really good dude but
7:05
Speaker 2: doesn't put in a whole lot of effort, who had
7:07
Speaker 2: the kind of season last year that would drive a
7:10
Speaker 2: lesser man to the assisted suicide clinic. This guy has
7:13
Speaker 2: a really really good deer lease and so opportunities At
7:18
Speaker 2: one forty plus bucks, you know, they just usually happen
7:21
Speaker 2: if he puts in enough time. Sometimes they happen multiple
7:25
Speaker 2: times in the same week, sometimes with deer way bigger
7:28
Speaker 2: than one forty. He had some issues last year shooting
7:31
Speaker 2: a vertical bow, so he switched to a crossbow, and
7:34
Speaker 2: he had some issues with that. It wasn't good, And honestly,
7:38
Speaker 2: I'd say there might be like a ten percent chance
7:40
Speaker 2: that pushes him to swear off deer hunting forever. That
7:43
Speaker 2: really won't be known until this season, but I know
7:46
Speaker 2: one thing about it. He set his heart on a
7:49
Speaker 2: big one, had a shit ton of stuff go wrong,
7:52
Speaker 2: and had his heart broken by a couple big ones. Look,
7:56
Speaker 2: we're all free to set our standards as we please,
7:58
Speaker 2: but we should also try to be realistic about who
8:01
Speaker 2: we are as hunters and what we are just willing
8:04
Speaker 2: to put in work wise, and why are specific goals
8:07
Speaker 2: for whatever bucks matter. This generally requires us to confront
8:12
Speaker 2: our own egos, which is very hard but important. It's
8:16
Speaker 2: also important to understand whether our decisions are based on
8:18
Speaker 2: what we actually want to achieve in a season, or
8:21
Speaker 2: whether we are allowing someone else to have a safe
8:23
Speaker 2: for us. I very recently had a conversation with a
8:37
Speaker 2: fello at the gym whose wife had a Silence or
8:39
Speaker 2: Central shirt on. It's not that often in the suburbs
8:42
Speaker 2: I see anyone wearing a shirt that advertises suppressors. So
8:45
Speaker 2: I figured they'd probably be interesting to have a little
8:48
Speaker 2: chat with, and they were, and eventually we got on
8:50
Speaker 2: a topic of bow hunting, which is pretty common in
8:53
Speaker 2: my world. He mentioned that he had bought his first
8:55
Speaker 2: bow last season and spent his fall hunting public land
8:58
Speaker 2: out of a saddle. He didn't kill anything, but in
9:01
Speaker 2: his words, he could have shot a couple of spikers,
9:04
Speaker 2: but he wasn't about to shoot a spiker. Now that's
9:07
Speaker 2: a perfectly reasonable take, and who am I to argue
9:10
Speaker 2: with it, But I will anyway slightly or at least
9:14
Speaker 2: make a case for whacking that spiker, just purely on
9:18
Speaker 2: the details I know. I can say that hunting the
9:20
Speaker 2: public land around my house is pretty tough. We have
9:23
Speaker 2: nearly four million people living here, and the hell of
9:26
Speaker 2: a lot of them hunt. I also know that that
9:29
Speaker 2: fella has four kids, like young kids, so I'm filling
9:33
Speaker 2: into blanks here a little bit, but I would assume
9:35
Speaker 2: his time is probably somewhat limited shoot a spike, don't
9:40
Speaker 2: shoot a spike, But ask yourself if you're in the
9:43
Speaker 2: kind of situation where shooting a spike might not be
9:45
Speaker 2: a terrible idea. We are all on our own journeys,
9:49
Speaker 2: but I can tell you that one of the things
9:51
Speaker 2: that just consistently makes me happy is when I shoot
9:55
Speaker 2: a deer through the lungs and have a short blood
9:57
Speaker 2: trail and a whole lot of meat to put in
9:59
Speaker 2: my freezer. Other folks are out there for different reasons,
10:02
Speaker 2: and that's great, but I see this kind of thing
10:05
Speaker 2: happen so often where people and by people, I almost
10:08
Speaker 2: always mean dudes, can't reconcile the reality of their hunting
10:12
Speaker 2: success with who they think they are as a person.
10:15
Speaker 2: It's kind of like if you happen to find yourself
10:17
Speaker 2: doom scrolling on Reddit or some other platform and you
10:20
Speaker 2: see a thread dedicated to street fights. The amount of people,
10:25
Speaker 2: and by people, I mean mostly dudes who think they
10:28
Speaker 2: can fight and then actually try is incredible. Not to
10:33
Speaker 2: be fair, alcohol is involved in nearly one of these scraps.
10:36
Speaker 2: And if there is one thing alcohol does, it's convinced
10:39
Speaker 2: us we are something we are not, which is why
10:41
Speaker 2: getting tore up from the floor up is so damn fun, until,
10:44
Speaker 2: of course it's not. The deer hunting equivalent of this
10:48
Speaker 2: is what keeps me in business. A lot of hunters
10:51
Speaker 2: out there, and by hunters, I mean dudes can't quite
10:55
Speaker 2: understand why some folks can kill big bucks consistently and
10:58
Speaker 2: they can't. This is the primary driver behind the sales
11:02
Speaker 2: of all those deer calls and scents and lures and decoys,
11:04
Speaker 2: and you know, it's the primary reason why when baiting
11:07
Speaker 2: is legal, nearly everyone does it, and when it's illegal,
11:11
Speaker 2: a lot of people still do it. We want the shortest,
11:14
Speaker 2: easiest route to success, and a whole lot of products
11:17
Speaker 2: promise that we want to be in the cool kids club,
11:20
Speaker 2: and that club is way more fun if everyone gets
11:23
Speaker 2: to shoot one fifties and not spikers on public land.
11:25
Speaker 2: But it doesn't work that way, and the success ratios
11:28
Speaker 2: in most states show this pretty clearly. You know, up
11:31
Speaker 2: until crossbow started becoming standard in archery seasons, the success
11:34
Speaker 2: ratios in most states were reliable and just about static.
11:38
Speaker 2: Most real deviations from the norm either involved tightening up
11:41
Speaker 2: tag availability or opening things up to more tags. But
11:45
Speaker 2: even then, the numbers don't change a whole lot. Usually
11:49
Speaker 2: most people just aren't very successful at tier honey. But
11:52
Speaker 2: we don't see those people on Instagram and model our
11:55
Speaker 2: personal standards around that. That's probably a shame too, because
12:00
Speaker 2: if we focused more on how hard it is for
12:02
Speaker 2: most people to kill deer, we'd probably be a lot
12:04
Speaker 2: happier to see, you know, an eighty seven inch two
12:07
Speaker 2: year old step into the field, instead of being pissed
12:10
Speaker 2: that it isn't one of our target bucks we have
12:11
Speaker 2: on camera that happens to spend ninety nine percent of
12:14
Speaker 2: his time on the land, we don't get to hunt.
12:16
Speaker 2: This is all shit I've talked about a million times.
12:19
Speaker 2: It might not seem all that pressing right now, but
12:21
Speaker 2: I can tell you it's always on my mind, and
12:24
Speaker 2: it flavors the way I do a lot of my
12:25
Speaker 2: off season planning. You see, we paint this picture about
12:30
Speaker 2: escouting and shed hunting and running cameras year round and
12:33
Speaker 2: all the things we are supposed to do. Is deer
12:35
Speaker 2: hunters as a means to an end. You do this
12:39
Speaker 2: and this and this and this, you kill mister big
12:41
Speaker 2: buck guy. Very simple connections there, my friends, And to
12:45
Speaker 2: some extent it's kind of true, but for me it's different.
12:49
Speaker 2: I know the more I eScout for a trip, the
12:52
Speaker 2: more likely I am to have realistic expectations. I'm more
12:55
Speaker 2: likely to have a better plan going in. And that
12:58
Speaker 2: doesn't mean you know the plan is always going to work,
13:00
Speaker 2: but it means I'll have a better idea if I
13:02
Speaker 2: feel it's going to produce some encounters. Changes. Everything makes
13:06
Speaker 2: me feel better, makes me work harder. And the more
13:08
Speaker 2: I scout in person and the more I run cameras,
13:11
Speaker 2: the more I can go into next season with a
13:13
Speaker 2: good idea of what I can realistically accomplish and what
13:16
Speaker 2: I can realistically expect my success to look like. Think
13:20
Speaker 2: about that for a second, because it matters. Most of
13:23
Speaker 2: us these days put out some cameras in the summer,
13:25
Speaker 2: base our goals on what they show, and then mostly
13:28
Speaker 2: get disappointed in the fact that those bucks don't play
13:30
Speaker 2: the game very well. The current model of deer hunting
13:33
Speaker 2: that is pushed from the industry on down is one
13:35
Speaker 2: of absentee scouting to build a hit list via digital means,
13:39
Speaker 2: and then picking and choosing the best times to hunt,
13:42
Speaker 2: you know, in order to encounter those target deer. That
13:45
Speaker 2: is a great and I mean a great way to
13:48
Speaker 2: disappoint yourself and discover a real disconnect between what is
13:51
Speaker 2: possible and what is plausible in your hunting look. We
13:55
Speaker 2: often focus on taking inventory of the deer herd to
13:58
Speaker 2: see who's worthy of wearing our tags, but we don't
14:01
Speaker 2: take inventory of ourselves very well. And that's kind of
14:04
Speaker 2: a problem. And I'm not saying don't do the buck
14:06
Speaker 2: inventory thing if that's what blows the wind up your
14:08
Speaker 2: camo skirt. What I'm saying is, you know, think about
14:12
Speaker 2: your last season or your last ten seasons. Have you
14:14
Speaker 2: been happy with the results generally? If yes, carry on
14:17
Speaker 2: my wayward white tailor. But if you haven't been generally happy,
14:21
Speaker 2: there's a reason, maybe lots of them. Was the one
14:24
Speaker 2: season you were pretty happy because you happened to kill
14:27
Speaker 2: a one forty, then great if that's what it takes,
14:30
Speaker 2: but only happens once a decade, you better put in
14:33
Speaker 2: a lot more work, learn about deer a lot more,
14:36
Speaker 2: or figure out how to get on a way better property.
14:39
Speaker 2: Were your best seasons, not necessarily the ones where you
14:41
Speaker 2: always killed a good one, but instead where you had
14:44
Speaker 2: really cool opportunities all season long, or at least encounters,
14:48
Speaker 2: there's something there that should inform you how to scout,
14:50
Speaker 2: to set up, and what you should try to do
14:52
Speaker 2: once the season opens up. Were your worst seasons, the
14:55
Speaker 2: ones you held up for a target buck and pass
14:57
Speaker 2: smaller deer, then maybe it's time to be realistic about
15:00
Speaker 2: your commitment to trophy hunting and why that matters so much.
15:04
Speaker 2: I'll say this again for the folks in the back
15:06
Speaker 2: of the room, nobody cares what you shoot. They don't.
15:09
Speaker 2: And if the only thing that would make you really
15:11
Speaker 2: happy this season is arrowing up open young buck in Georgia,
15:14
Speaker 2: where seeing a one point thirty is newsworthy, stick to it.
15:17
Speaker 2: But if you feel a sense of guilt or loss
15:19
Speaker 2: when you let that one hundred inch or walk during
15:21
Speaker 2: a killer morning during the rut, maybe it's time to
15:23
Speaker 2: be realistic about your hunting. I guess I want to
15:26
Speaker 2: say one last thing to frame this up. Should also
15:29
Speaker 2: allow yourself to change with your conditions. Maybe when you
15:33
Speaker 2: got out of college and didn't have a wife and
15:35
Speaker 2: kids and lots of time, you could target mature deer
15:38
Speaker 2: and kill them somewhat regularly. But if life changes and
15:42
Speaker 2: that free time disappears, there's no shame in taking a
15:45
Speaker 2: step back and realizing that time kills big bucks, and
15:48
Speaker 2: without it, well you just mostly won't target what you
15:53
Speaker 2: can realistically kill. If you need to, no one cares
15:56
Speaker 2: about it. And if that would make you happy and
15:58
Speaker 2: make your season seem like a success, that is a
16:01
Speaker 2: huge win. It's also true that for most of us,
16:05
Speaker 2: lowering our standards some would actually get us into the
16:07
Speaker 2: woods more. I mean, think about how many times you
16:10
Speaker 2: didn't want to hunt, or you talk to someone who
16:13
Speaker 2: wasn't going to go simply because they didn't, you know,
16:15
Speaker 2: have pictures of good bucks, or didn't believe a good
16:17
Speaker 2: one would show up given the conditions. I can tell
16:20
Speaker 2: you that, you know, while that might be a good
16:22
Speaker 2: decision and the interest of purely killing a big buck
16:25
Speaker 2: at some point, it's also certainly not going to make
16:27
Speaker 2: you a better hunter or make hunting a lot more enjoyable,
16:30
Speaker 2: since well you're not hunting as much. I just like
16:34
Speaker 2: to think about this tough this time of year. It's
16:37
Speaker 2: kind of like a low lift fix. It doesn't mean much,
16:40
Speaker 2: but it's something, and it's nice to sort of get
16:42
Speaker 2: your head right on this stuff because that generally pushes
16:45
Speaker 2: us in a positive direction with our hunting. I don't
16:48
Speaker 2: think that's ever bad. And plus, what else are you
16:51
Speaker 2: going to do? Right now? That's it for this week.
16:54
Speaker 2: I'm Tony Peterson. This has been the Wire to Hunt
16:56
Speaker 2: Foundation's podcast. Thank you so much for listening and for
16:59
Speaker 2: all your support. You know, here at met eater right now,
17:01
Speaker 2: all we do is talk about how did we do
17:03
Speaker 2: last year as a business, And I can tell you
17:05
Speaker 2: one thing that keeps coming up. Without the audience, without
17:08
Speaker 2: you guys supporting us, we don't have a business. We
17:10
Speaker 2: don't have anything. So thank you so much for showing
17:13
Speaker 2: up for us, for listening to this podcast. Maybe you
17:16
Speaker 2: headed over and you checked out Jordan Siller's Killer Blood
17:19
Speaker 2: Trails podcast, which is so good. He's doing such a
17:21
Speaker 2: good job with that. If not, go check it out.
17:24
Speaker 2: If you need something else to entertain you, teach you
17:26
Speaker 2: a little bit about the outdoors, whatever, Go to the
17:29
Speaker 2: meeteater dot com New films, new articles, new podcasts, new
17:34
Speaker 2: all kinds of stuff dropping every day. Thank you.