Latest / Wired To Hunt Podcast / Ep. 624: Foundations - Where, Why, When, Who Freakin' Cares

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Ep. 624: Foundations - Where, Why, When, Who Freakin' Cares · 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, and now your
• 0:10
  Speaker 1: host Tony Peterson. Hey everyone, welcome to the wire to
• 0:15
  Speaker 1: Hunt Foundations podcast, which has brought to you by First Light.
• 0:18
  Speaker 1: I'm your host, Tony Peterson, and today's episode is all
• 0:20
  Speaker 1: about taking advantage of your best hunting situations and apologizing
• 0:24
  Speaker 1: to no one. Okay, this is this is a weird episode,
• 0:40
  Speaker 1: so bear with me. The idea for it actually came
• 0:44
  Speaker 1: from listening to the Exodus podcast a couple of weeks ago. No,
• 0:48
  Speaker 1: those fellows over there at that company not only makes
• 0:50
  Speaker 1: some pretty sweet trail cameras and some other outdoor gear,
• 0:53
  Speaker 1: but they also have a great podcast as well. And
• 0:56
  Speaker 1: in the episode I listened to, they actually talked about me,
• 0:59
  Speaker 1: which was flatter ring and pretty sweet. But they also
• 1:02
  Speaker 1: got onto the topic of where they hunt and the
• 1:05
  Speaker 1: bucks they target, and it got me thinking. So now
• 1:08
  Speaker 1: you get to hear I guess what I was thinking.
• 1:23
  Speaker 1: Perspective is important. You younger listeners might not quite grasp
• 1:28
  Speaker 1: that yet, but but listen, trust me. As you get
• 1:31
  Speaker 1: older and you get a little better at spotting the
• 1:33
  Speaker 1: bs and a lot less tolerant of it, you start
• 1:36
  Speaker 1: to realize a few things. One of those is that
• 1:39
  Speaker 1: perspective is so important. Nuances to my old boss, Ben O'Brien,
• 1:45
  Speaker 1: who has moved on to things beyond the mediator world,
• 1:48
  Speaker 1: often used to talk about how he was pro nuance.
• 1:51
  Speaker 1: Ben's a smart guy, and he has dug into enough
• 1:54
  Speaker 1: issues to know and probably believe the old saying about
• 1:57
  Speaker 1: their being three sides to every story. You his mind
• 2:00
  Speaker 1: and the truth if you will. And why do I
• 2:03
  Speaker 1: say this, Well, there's many reasons. Life has an annoying
• 2:08
  Speaker 1: habit of showing you how good life really is, or
• 2:11
  Speaker 1: sometimes how bad it can be. I've mentioned this briefly
• 2:14
  Speaker 1: on a few different episodes. But the people who I
• 2:17
  Speaker 1: look up to more than most in this world, they're
• 2:20
  Speaker 1: not the ones that are known for their hunting skills.
• 2:22
  Speaker 1: They happened to be a couple of my wife's relatives
• 2:25
  Speaker 1: who lost the genetic lottery. When they conceived their second child.
• 2:29
  Speaker 1: Their son, Jake, was born with mitochondrial disease. This isn't
• 2:35
  Speaker 1: a terribly common disease, but it is terrible. Period. Within
• 2:39
  Speaker 1: the first two years of his life, it was evident
• 2:41
  Speaker 1: he wasn't advancing on a normal toddler type schedule, and
• 2:45
  Speaker 1: by the time he should have been in kindergarten playing
• 2:47
  Speaker 1: with his peers, he was using a walker to barely
• 2:50
  Speaker 1: get around. By the time he should have been in
• 2:52
  Speaker 1: second grade, he was on a feeding tube and then
• 2:56
  Speaker 1: a breathing tube full time in a wheelchair. Basically, he
• 3:01
  Speaker 1: needed twenty four hour care and often, well pretty often
• 3:05
  Speaker 1: an ambulance to take him in to the hospital for
• 3:07
  Speaker 1: respiratory issues or worse. Jake's life and subsequently the life
• 3:12
  Speaker 1: of his loved ones, was dominated by the effects of
• 3:16
  Speaker 1: that mitochondrial disease. How a few days before Christmas last year,
• 3:20
  Speaker 1: his heart stopped. While medics eventually got it going, the
• 3:24
  Speaker 1: brain damage had been done. The outlook was not good,
• 3:28
  Speaker 1: and it got worse as the scans and the tests
• 3:31
  Speaker 1: rolled in. When they took Jake off a life support,
• 3:34
  Speaker 1: he passed away a few minutes later at the age
• 3:37
  Speaker 1: of fourteen. The weight of his death on his family's
• 3:42
  Speaker 1: pretty heavy, real heavy stuff, my friends. It's hard to
• 3:45
  Speaker 1: imagine a much worse hand to be dealt, although such
• 3:49
  Speaker 1: hands are dealt every day in this world, and no
• 3:52
  Speaker 1: one can say why. But it doesn't matter. If it
• 3:55
  Speaker 1: could be explained to be honest. When you see the
• 3:58
  Speaker 1: dice roll a certain way for full and there's no
• 4:00
  Speaker 1: escaping the gravity of those situations. It makes me feel
• 4:03
  Speaker 1: an inch tall when I bitch about missing a deer
• 4:06
  Speaker 1: or not having a very good hunter or a very
• 4:08
  Speaker 1: good season. It makes me feel like a great a
• 4:11
  Speaker 1: piece of ship for all the complaints to be honest,
• 4:15
  Speaker 1: and that's what this episode is about. When those fellows
• 4:17
  Speaker 1: over at Exodus, Jake and Chad broke down this year
• 4:21
  Speaker 1: on their podcast the way I mentioned at the beginning,
• 4:24
  Speaker 1: they got into the topic of how it almost seemed
• 4:27
  Speaker 1: shameful to shoot a buck anywhere but on public land
• 4:30
  Speaker 1: these days, and they both agreed that was pretty stupid.
• 4:35
  Speaker 1: You know what I do too, even though I'm as
• 4:39
  Speaker 1: guilty of pushing the public land message, I don't know
• 4:44
  Speaker 1: more than just about anyone short of the hunting Public
• 4:46
  Speaker 1: crew out there. But those guys, they're smart dudes that
• 4:50
  Speaker 1: they are. They were right. It doesn't matter where you
• 4:53
  Speaker 1: shoot your dear, you should be just happy to have
• 4:56
  Speaker 1: places to hunt. Now. I know that's an easy a
• 5:00
  Speaker 1: thing to say, but it's harder to live that life
• 5:03
  Speaker 1: in practice. This is because the jealousy thing is so real,
• 5:07
  Speaker 1: and so is the reality that all of our egos
• 5:09
  Speaker 1: are just a little more fragile than we'd like to
• 5:12
  Speaker 1: admit to our friends, let alone thousands of strangers who
• 5:15
  Speaker 1: listened to you ramble on for seventeen or eighteen minutes
• 5:17
  Speaker 1: a week. It's also easy to be judging. Well, maybe
• 5:23
  Speaker 1: not for you, but for me. It's a freaking breeze.
• 5:26
  Speaker 1: I recently saw a thread on both site about an
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  Speaker 1: industry fellow who claimed to have killed his six white till.
• 5:33
  Speaker 1: I don't know the guy, but I do know his reputation,
• 5:36
  Speaker 1: and I personally feel like he hasn't done US Hunters
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  Speaker 1: any favors, and I don't want to say his name.
• 5:41
  Speaker 1: So that was an easy one for me, though I
• 5:43
  Speaker 1: could think without training the old gray matter too hard
• 5:47
  Speaker 1: that I don't know, maybe he shot it illegally or
• 5:49
  Speaker 1: with a ton of advantages. I mean, he does, after all,
• 5:53
  Speaker 1: have a track record of some citations. But here's the thing,
• 5:56
  Speaker 1: I don't know anything about him. I don't know anything
• 5:58
  Speaker 1: about his dear I know I don't like what he
• 6:02
  Speaker 1: stands for kinda although in the eyes of plenty of people,
• 6:05
  Speaker 1: he and I have similar jobs. And probably look similarly
• 6:08
  Speaker 1: do she. That's a bummer for me, But what am
• 6:12
  Speaker 1: I gonna do about it? I don't know if the
• 6:15
  Speaker 1: guy has any real hunting skill or not. It's easy
• 6:18
  Speaker 1: again for me to think, well, I know he asked
• 6:20
  Speaker 1: quite a bit of land, and I would have worked
• 6:22
  Speaker 1: with and I held a lot of money to work with.
• 6:24
  Speaker 1: Those two things. Well, actually, just the money thing, they
• 6:27
  Speaker 1: can get you to buck, maybe not six of them.
• 6:31
  Speaker 1: It'll get you a hell of a lot faster than
• 6:33
  Speaker 1: I don't scouting and whatever else will. But the real
• 6:37
  Speaker 1: question is why should I care? Shouldn't I be happy
• 6:43
  Speaker 1: for him? Or at least I don't know, agnostic about it.
• 6:46
  Speaker 1: It's harder than it looks, and honestly is fairly muddied
• 6:50
  Speaker 1: up when you consider the representation of our industry and
• 6:52
  Speaker 1: his legal issues. Fine, maybe that guy sucks and he
• 6:56
  Speaker 1: deserves to be judged, But what about some other random
• 6:59
  Speaker 1: hunter who happens to arrow a giant? What's the first reaction?
• 7:05
  Speaker 1: Mine is often to assume, which is a bad idea,
• 7:09
  Speaker 1: that they must have a great place to hunt. Many do,
• 7:14
  Speaker 1: But does that really take away anything from their kill?
• 7:17
  Speaker 1: And why does it make me feel better to find
• 7:20
  Speaker 1: out it's some blue collar man or woman who happened
• 7:22
  Speaker 1: to knock on the right farmer's door, or better yet,
• 7:25
  Speaker 1: get a little lucky on some state land. Why does
• 7:28
  Speaker 1: that matter? It shouldn't, but I forget that all the time.
• 7:33
  Speaker 1: It's hard not to get jealous. I had a conversation
• 7:36
  Speaker 1: with a buddy of mine recently where he mentioned that
• 7:39
  Speaker 1: it seems like everyone has more money than him, even
• 7:43
  Speaker 1: though he knows that's not true. He's just perceiving the
• 7:46
  Speaker 1: world that way. And I think a lot of us
• 7:48
  Speaker 1: do this in so many different ways. When I go
• 7:51
  Speaker 1: up to the lake where we have our travel trailer,
• 7:55
  Speaker 1: I see bass boats that would cost sure grand new.
• 7:59
  Speaker 1: Now I see wake boats that cost double that, and
• 8:03
  Speaker 1: I always think, where the hell do these people get
• 8:06
  Speaker 1: their money, and why can't I have some of it?
• 8:10
  Speaker 1: And then I realized, well, I have a bass boat.
• 8:13
  Speaker 1: It's certainly not new, but a hell of a lot
• 8:18
  Speaker 1: of people in a little aluminum deep v boats have
• 8:22
  Speaker 1: commented on how much they liked the look of that boat.
• 8:25
  Speaker 1: I'm sure the folks I see paddling around in canoes
• 8:28
  Speaker 1: kayaks might trade me for a day or maybe a
• 8:30
  Speaker 1: summer too. When I was younger, and I couldn't kill
• 8:34
  Speaker 1: a deer despite hours and hours and hours of effort.
• 8:38
  Speaker 1: I always sort of hated the guys who wrote for magazines.
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  Speaker 1: I softly despised. I don't like the Real Tree crew,
• 8:45
  Speaker 1: or the Monster Bucks crew, or the premost guys, or
• 8:47
  Speaker 1: whoever was making the videos. I saw where they were
• 8:51
  Speaker 1: routinely killing bucks way bigger than I ever saw, literally
• 8:56
  Speaker 1: ever saw in my life hunting or not hunting. But
• 8:59
  Speaker 1: why because I was jealous. I wanted what they had.
• 9:06
  Speaker 1: I don't actually want to wake boat, for example. In fact,
• 9:09
  Speaker 1: I hate them, but I wish I got a forward one.
• 9:13
  Speaker 1: I don't want to shoot a high fence deer without
• 9:14
  Speaker 1: defences on a primo managed piece of ground either. I
• 9:18
  Speaker 1: just want the offer, maybe the invite. I want to
• 9:21
  Speaker 1: be able to look people in the eye and tell
• 9:23
  Speaker 1: them I could have hunted someplace really sweet, but I'm
• 9:26
  Speaker 1: gonna go grind it out on public. Why does that matter?
• 9:31
  Speaker 1: It doesn't. But it's a way of thinking. It's a
• 9:34
  Speaker 1: stuck in the Rutt mindset, which is kind of damaging.
• 9:38
  Speaker 1: It's like, right now, if you take five seconds to
• 9:41
  Speaker 1: read about the economy, you'll be bombarded with negativity. Inflation
• 9:46
  Speaker 1: has the cost of all the essentials in our life
• 9:47
  Speaker 1: away way higher than a couple of years ago. The
• 9:50
  Speaker 1: stock market isn't trending in a direction that produces tons
• 9:53
  Speaker 1: of millionaires unless you're really good at shorting stocks. Demand
• 9:57
  Speaker 1: for housing is abating, people are putting more money on
• 9:59
  Speaker 1: credit cards. On the surface, not so great. Underneath the surface,
• 10:04
  Speaker 1: also not so great. Many people, especially young people, will
• 10:09
  Speaker 1: look at this as another grand kick to the old
• 10:11
  Speaker 1: nut sack from the boomers who control the whole machine,
• 10:14
  Speaker 1: or some other such excuse which doesn't hold a whole
• 10:16
  Speaker 1: lot of water. It's a prime breeding ground for negativity
• 10:21
  Speaker 1: and the mindset that once broke, always broke, or that
• 10:25
  Speaker 1: you never get ahead in this world. But the folks
• 10:28
  Speaker 1: who have weathered through a few bare markets are actually
• 10:30
  Speaker 1: looking at it like it's an opportunity to follow the
• 10:32
  Speaker 1: old oracle of Omaha into some discounted shares of solid companies.
• 10:37
  Speaker 1: Maybe they're buying into the whole market, maybe some I
• 10:40
  Speaker 1: bonds or some other inflation protected asset. The mindset is,
• 10:45
  Speaker 1: it's probably not as bad as it seems, if I
• 10:47
  Speaker 1: can make a few good decisions from here until this
• 10:50
  Speaker 1: thing starts to turn around, and these folks who own
• 10:54
  Speaker 1: their mindset and can make a few disciplined decisions will
• 10:57
  Speaker 1: probably end up pretty happy with themselves when the whole
• 11:00
  Speaker 1: thing balances out and starts turning black again. In more
• 11:03
  Speaker 1: often than it turns red, because the way we think
• 11:07
  Speaker 1: about this stuff matters so much. If you have a
• 11:10
  Speaker 1: bad attitude, you're stuck on public land while so many
• 11:14
  Speaker 1: people are growing and naming deer on sweet little pieces
• 11:16
  Speaker 1: of paradise where the bucks never look up in trees
• 11:18
  Speaker 1: and the genetics are hands selected by the big man
• 11:21
  Speaker 1: in the sky himself to produce I don't know, top
• 11:23
  Speaker 1: end typicals and gnarly points everywhere non typicals. I'll bet
• 11:29
  Speaker 1: someone would still change places with you. Even if you're
• 11:31
  Speaker 1: just pounding out on public land and you don't have
• 11:33
  Speaker 1: that dream scenario. Think about that. You might not get
• 11:38
  Speaker 1: to hunt that. I don't know, easy babysat deer. That
• 11:41
  Speaker 1: would make a great TV show, kind of buck. That's okay.
• 11:46
  Speaker 1: Some people look into spots like that. Some people work
• 11:49
  Speaker 1: their asses off somewhere else to buy into that world.
• 11:53
  Speaker 1: If you won't or can't, that's okay. Ask yourself, what
• 11:58
  Speaker 1: do you have that's still pretty sweet. Do you have
• 12:01
  Speaker 1: land that you can hunt any time? That's pretty good,
• 12:05
  Speaker 1: It really is. And even if we often bitch about
• 12:08
  Speaker 1: public land and look down on it at least until
• 12:10
  Speaker 1: we kill something on it and can brag away, the
• 12:13
  Speaker 1: truth is it's better than living where you have no
• 12:16
  Speaker 1: public land hunt. That's pretty simple, right. It's kind of
• 12:20
  Speaker 1: like having a I don't know, a cheap fourteen ft
• 12:22
  Speaker 1: aluminum boat with a twenty horsepower tiller steered motor on
• 12:26
  Speaker 1: It is better than fishing from shore. Having a spot
• 12:30
  Speaker 1: to go to where you can at least theoretically kill
• 12:33
  Speaker 1: a deer or two is a lot better than not
• 12:36
  Speaker 1: having any place to go hunt better. Yet, with that land,
• 12:41
  Speaker 1: you have the option of putting in some sweat equity
• 12:43
  Speaker 1: to influence your results in a positive way. That's kind
• 12:46
  Speaker 1: of a bonus, isn't it. So What if your wife's
• 12:49
  Speaker 1: cousin works in finance and has money to buy I
• 12:52
  Speaker 1: don't know, fifteen thousand dollar landowner tag out west to
• 12:55
  Speaker 1: hunt elk that bugles so much they sometimes pass out
• 12:58
  Speaker 1: from the effort. What if you can't afford and over
• 13:01
  Speaker 1: the counter elk hunt in a trampled unit, even if
• 13:03
  Speaker 1: you lived on peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for ten days,
• 13:06
  Speaker 1: and someone spotted you the gas money to get there.
• 13:09
  Speaker 1: Find something else. Maybe the mountains are out of reach,
• 13:13
  Speaker 1: but a couple of days across the state line with
• 13:15
  Speaker 1: your buddies for some turkeys or small game or white
• 13:17
  Speaker 1: tails or whatever that could be in the cards. Maybe
• 13:21
  Speaker 1: you'll never get to fish the ocean, but maybe you
• 13:24
  Speaker 1: have some pretty sweet little trout streams near your house
• 13:27
  Speaker 1: that you can fish any damn time you please. That's
• 13:30
  Speaker 1: not nothing, and it doesn't do us any good to
• 13:34
  Speaker 1: focus on the asshole who can afford to fish in
• 13:36
  Speaker 1: the ocean. It doesn't do us any good to keep
• 13:38
  Speaker 1: up with the hunting jones is because they probably aren't
• 13:41
  Speaker 1: any happier than you are, or maybe they are, and
• 13:44
  Speaker 1: it's on you to be a little bit happier about
• 13:46
  Speaker 1: what you do have. That's what I'm trying to do.
• 13:51
  Speaker 1: If you have a bad ass spot to hunt deer
• 13:53
  Speaker 1: and never really see a reason to pick up your
• 13:55
  Speaker 1: bow unless he's a one eighty year better good for you.
• 13:59
  Speaker 1: Help every once in a while you take somebody out
• 14:01
  Speaker 1: to hunt dos or shed hunt or something, because that's
• 14:03
  Speaker 1: a gift worth sharing. But The same goes for the
• 14:06
  Speaker 1: public land hunter scraping by in an attempt to shoot
• 14:09
  Speaker 1: a dough or a forky. It could always be worse.
• 14:12
  Speaker 1: You could not hunt or not have a place to hunt,
• 14:16
  Speaker 1: or have an accident at work that breaks both of
• 14:18
  Speaker 1: your arms the day before the bow season opens up,
• 14:21
  Speaker 1: or worse, an accident at home that breaks both of
• 14:23
  Speaker 1: your arms because you're doing something stupid like spraying hornets
• 14:26
  Speaker 1: on the eaves of your house and the ladder falls
• 14:28
  Speaker 1: over when you get stung right between the eyes. Or hell,
• 14:32
  Speaker 1: you find out that you and your wife happen to
• 14:34
  Speaker 1: carry a rare, recessive gene and occasionally, in that situation,
• 14:37
  Speaker 1: when you make a child together, that child will live
• 14:40
  Speaker 1: a short life with a horrible disease. Perspective, my friends,
• 14:44
  Speaker 1: things could always be worse. So maybe we shouldn't be
• 14:47
  Speaker 1: trying to make things worse for ourselves or others. Maybe
• 14:51
  Speaker 1: we should just be happy for the fortunate souls who
• 14:53
  Speaker 1: happened to be born into a family that just happen
• 14:55
  Speaker 1: to start buying southern Iowa ground in the nineteen fifties
• 14:58
  Speaker 1: and now sits on a couple of sections of the
• 15:00
  Speaker 1: best deer dirt out there. We should be happy for
• 15:04
  Speaker 1: the hard worker who saves up for the trip to
• 15:06
  Speaker 1: the mountains to hear a real bugle at least once,
• 15:10
  Speaker 1: or the person who talks his buddies into paying for
• 15:12
  Speaker 1: at least to experience the deer hunting the way he
• 15:14
  Speaker 1: and his buddies want to experience it. Life isn't fair,
• 15:19
  Speaker 1: It isn't equitable in its distributional wealth and of opportunity.
• 15:23
  Speaker 1: But if you're up walking and talking and capable of
• 15:27
  Speaker 1: climbing into a tree stand and holding a bow up
• 15:29
  Speaker 1: to shoot it, you're probably doing all right. If you
• 15:33
  Speaker 1: have a little cabin to go to for the firearms
• 15:35
  Speaker 1: season where some good friends and a few year relatives
• 15:37
  Speaker 1: will be and you get to play some cards and
• 15:40
  Speaker 1: eat some chili and drag out a few deer, I'd
• 15:42
  Speaker 1: say you're pretty damn lucky, and I'm happy for you.
• 15:46
  Speaker 1: I'm happy for all of us. Honestly, those of us
• 15:49
  Speaker 1: who love to deer hunt, we already have a leg
• 15:53
  Speaker 1: up on the rest of the population. I truly believe that.
• 15:56
  Speaker 1: Do you know how exciting it is to see a
• 15:58
  Speaker 1: good buck walking down the trail when you know he's
• 16:00
  Speaker 1: going to eventually be in range and you're eventually going
• 16:03
  Speaker 1: to shoot at him. That's what Daddy likes. And the
• 16:06
  Speaker 1: folks who don't know that feeling, they're everywhere and they
• 16:10
  Speaker 1: don't even know what they're missing. We do, you and
• 16:15
  Speaker 1: I the hunters, So really, no matter where you hunt,
• 16:19
  Speaker 1: why you hunt, or whatever, I'm actually happy for you
• 16:24
  Speaker 1: white tail hunting successfully. And by that I mean in
• 16:27
  Speaker 1: a way that is rewarding. Whether you slay booners every
• 16:30
  Speaker 1: year or couldn't kill a button buck on a high
• 16:32
  Speaker 1: fence corn pile with a week's worth of effort, it's
• 16:35
  Speaker 1: the goal, and it doesn't matter where we do it
• 16:38
  Speaker 1: or what the final score is. Whether we notched a
• 16:42
  Speaker 1: deer tag on private land or the most heavily hunted
• 16:44
  Speaker 1: piece of public land out east somewhere, doesn't matter. It's
• 16:48
  Speaker 1: all good and we should all be happy we still
• 16:51
  Speaker 1: have some fellow hunters out there fighting the good fight
• 16:54
  Speaker 1: and living for the same reasons we live for. That's
• 16:59
  Speaker 1: all I have for this up episode. This has been
• 17:00
  Speaker 1: the Wire to Hunt Foundations podcast, brought you by First Light.
• 17:03
  Speaker 1: I'm Tony Peterson, and I sincerely want to thank you
• 17:06
  Speaker 1: for the support and if you need more white tail wisdom,
• 17:09
  Speaker 1: head on over to the mediator dot com slash wired
• 17:11
  Speaker 1: and check out my latest articles, along with articles from
• 17:14
  Speaker 1: Mark and Beau Martinic and Alex Gilstrom in a whole
• 17:17
  Speaker 1: bunch of white Tail Killers. And you can also view
• 17:20
  Speaker 1: a ton of how to videos on our wire to
• 17:22
  Speaker 1: Hunt YouTube channel, where Mr Kenyon and myself break down
• 17:25
  Speaker 1: all kinds of deer hunting strategies.