Latest / Wired To Hunt Podcast / Ep. 866: Our Top Lessons Learned From One Heck Of a Year Outdoors

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Ep. 866: Our Top Lessons Learned From One Heck Of a Year Outdoors · Wired To Hunt Podcast

• 0:01
  Speaker 1: Welcome to the Wired to Hunt podcast, your guide to
• 0:04
  Speaker 1: the White Tail Woods presented by first Light, creating proven
• 0:08
  Speaker 1: versatile hunting apparel for the stand, saddle or blind. First
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: Light Go farther, stay Longer, and now your host, Mark Kenyon, Welcome.
• 0:19
  Speaker 2: To the Wired to Hunt podcast. This week on the show,
• 0:23
  Speaker 2: Tony Peterson and I are reviewing our twenty twenty four
• 0:27
  Speaker 2: year in the outdoors to look for trends and patterns
• 0:31
  Speaker 2: that can lead us to planning a better twenty twenty five.
• 0:38
  Speaker 2: All right, welcome back to the Wired to Hunt podcast,
• 0:42
  Speaker 2: brought to you by First Light and their Camel for
• 0:45
  Speaker 2: Conservation initiative. If you're not familiar, a portion of every
• 0:49
  Speaker 2: sale of first Light spector Camel pattern goes to the
• 0:52
  Speaker 2: National Deer Association to help them with their mission to
• 0:56
  Speaker 2: improve the future for deer and deer hunters. Stuff there
• 1:01
  Speaker 2: and the future is what we're talking about here today
• 1:04
  Speaker 2: in the podcast. But we're doing that by looking to
• 1:06
  Speaker 2: the past. Today me and TONI are going to be
• 1:10
  Speaker 2: talking through our twenty twenty four mostly focusing on our
• 1:15
  Speaker 2: hunting seasons, but also extending back past that to other
• 1:19
  Speaker 2: outdoor activities and adventures. The prep for our hunting seasons,
• 1:23
  Speaker 2: all sorts of stuff like that, and we're talking through
• 1:26
  Speaker 2: the highs and the lows, and then what takeaways we
• 1:29
  Speaker 2: can get from that, Because by looking at the best
• 1:32
  Speaker 2: moments of our year and the worst moments of our year,
• 1:35
  Speaker 2: the hope is that we can identify, you know, if
• 1:37
  Speaker 2: there's any consistencies there, are there any particular things that
• 1:40
  Speaker 2: keep on showing up in the good parts or keep
• 1:43
  Speaker 2: showing up in the bad parts, And can that help us,
• 1:45
  Speaker 2: you know, better plan our next year, make sure we're
• 1:48
  Speaker 2: leaning into the good stuff, make sure we're learning from
• 1:50
  Speaker 2: the less good stuff. That's the hope today, And the
• 1:53
  Speaker 2: hope is that by us kind of working through this ourselves,
• 1:57
  Speaker 2: you guys can learn some stuff too. Maybe you're gonna
• 1:59
  Speaker 2: hear things that you can relate to. Maybe you're gonna
• 2:01
  Speaker 2: hear some thoughts that maybe would be worth you kind
• 2:04
  Speaker 2: of chewing on a little bit. Maybe there'll be some
• 2:06
  Speaker 2: ideas that we have for changes we want to make
• 2:09
  Speaker 2: next year, or things we've struggled with this past year
• 2:11
  Speaker 2: that we're going to continue working on in twenty twenty
• 2:13
  Speaker 2: five that might be relatable, useful, or eye opening for you.
• 2:19
  Speaker 2: That's the hope as we kick off this new year,
• 2:21
  Speaker 2: as we look forward to what should be a terrific
• 2:24
  Speaker 2: twelve more months around the sun. So I am wishing
• 2:28
  Speaker 2: you all a very happy new year and a great
• 2:32
  Speaker 2: start to this one, and I hope this podcast is
• 2:35
  Speaker 2: a useful way to do that. So, without any further ado,
• 2:38
  Speaker 2: let's get to my chat with Tony as we review
• 2:41
  Speaker 2: our twenty twenty four and look forward to the next year.
• 2:48
  Speaker 2: All right, Joining me on the line now is mister
• 2:52
  Speaker 2: Tony Peterson Today. When this episode is dropping, Tony, we'll
• 2:56
  Speaker 2: be January second, so it will be a new year.
• 3:02
  Speaker 2: It is twenty twenty five, if you can imagine we're
• 3:04
  Speaker 2: recording this a little bit before that, but in present
• 3:07
  Speaker 2: time when folks hear and see this as twenty twenty five,
• 3:11
  Speaker 2: how do you feel about the new year?
• 3:12
  Speaker 3: Tony?
• 3:12
  Speaker 2: Is it gonna be a good one?
• 3:14
  Speaker 3: Boy? I hope, so, buddy, I hope. So sure, I hope.
• 3:19
  Speaker 2: So all right, that's what I want to hear. I
• 3:20
  Speaker 2: want to hear optimism because that's kind of what I
• 3:23
  Speaker 2: want to do today, is think about this upcoming year
• 3:28
  Speaker 2: by way of reflecting on last year. So I think
• 3:31
  Speaker 2: we've done something kind of like this in the past
• 3:34
  Speaker 2: where you've done kind of a season in review, and
• 3:37
  Speaker 2: I think I've talked on an episode I can't remember
• 3:39
  Speaker 2: if it was with both of us. It was just
• 3:41
  Speaker 2: one of the ones where it's just me ranting to
• 3:43
  Speaker 2: the audience, But I think I've talked about how I
• 3:45
  Speaker 2: do a little bit of a year in review process
• 3:47
  Speaker 2: and try to plan out the year. So I thought
• 3:49
  Speaker 2: maybe we'd do that together and look back on twenty
• 3:53
  Speaker 2: twenty four, not just the deer hunting season, but maybe
• 3:55
  Speaker 2: the larger year in our outdoor experiences, and look at
• 4:00
  Speaker 2: three things. Look at the best moments of our last
• 4:04
  Speaker 2: year in the outdoors, the worst moments of our year
• 4:08
  Speaker 2: in the outdoors, and then finally, what patterns or trends
• 4:14
  Speaker 2: or takeaways there might be when we look at those
• 4:16
  Speaker 2: things together. Because as I've started to do this, I've
• 4:19
  Speaker 2: started to see, like, oh, interesting, when I look at
• 4:21
  Speaker 2: all the best moments in my year, they all have
• 4:23
  Speaker 2: this thing or that thing. Or when I look at
• 4:26
  Speaker 2: all my worst moments, they all kind of have to
• 4:27
  Speaker 2: do with this thing or that thing, and that might
• 4:30
  Speaker 2: help inform me making my plans for the next year.
• 4:33
  Speaker 2: When I think about what I want to do in
• 4:34
  Speaker 2: twenty five or how I want to approach things in
• 4:36
  Speaker 2: twenty five. Maybe I can learn some shit from what
• 4:39
  Speaker 2: went well or what went wrong last time around. So
• 4:42
  Speaker 2: that's the plan for this quick beginning of the new year,
• 4:48
  Speaker 2: looking forward by looking backward episode sound good, absolutely buddy cool.
• 4:55
  Speaker 2: So twenty twenty four looking back. If you were going
• 4:58
  Speaker 2: to put like a a grade, like a school grade
• 5:02
  Speaker 2: on your twenty twenty four in the outdoors, so not
• 5:06
  Speaker 2: just deer, not just this fall, but across the board,
• 5:09
  Speaker 2: your outdoor year, how would you grade it? If you
• 5:11
  Speaker 2: had to real quick like gut check, what your thought
• 5:14
  Speaker 2: would be. What do you think?
• 5:15
  Speaker 3: Man?
• 5:16
  Speaker 4: If I'm not teasing out the white tail hunting, I
• 5:19
  Speaker 4: would say probably like a solid B.
• 5:23
  Speaker 2: And uh, okay, that's pretty good. That's a pretty good year.
• 5:27
  Speaker 2: Is that? How would you say that relates? Or how
• 5:29
  Speaker 2: how does that stack up as far as maybe the
• 5:32
  Speaker 2: last ten years? Does this is that kind of an
• 5:34
  Speaker 2: average or is this a below average above average?
• 5:37
  Speaker 3: Do you know? It's hard for me.
• 5:40
  Speaker 4: It's hard for me to do this and not focus
• 5:42
  Speaker 4: on the white tail side of things, which was just
• 5:45
  Speaker 4: not I would give that not a bee, But man,
• 5:48
  Speaker 4: I had a lot of really good fishing with my daughters.
• 5:51
  Speaker 4: I had a lot of uh, we had a good
• 5:53
  Speaker 4: Turkey season. We did a lot of stuff. Just my
• 5:57
  Speaker 4: personal deer hunting kind of sucks. So it drug my
• 5:59
  Speaker 4: grade down. So I would say, like, pretty it's pretty consistent,
• 6:02
  Speaker 4: you know, like we have a lot of fun in
• 6:03
  Speaker 4: the outdoors.
• 6:04
  Speaker 2: Yeah, okay, what if what if I made you grade
• 6:07
  Speaker 2: just your deer season.
• 6:10
  Speaker 4: I would say in the first semester B plus the
• 6:16
  Speaker 4: second semester maybe like a D minus if I was.
• 6:21
  Speaker 3: Gonna break it out. No, I mean, it was a
• 6:24
  Speaker 3: tough year.
• 6:24
  Speaker 4: It was a it was a weird year deer hunting. Uh,
• 6:28
  Speaker 4: you know, so, but those happen. You know, sometimes you
• 6:31
  Speaker 4: have years where it's like you can almost do no wrong,
• 6:35
  Speaker 4: and then sometimes you have years where you're like it
• 6:37
  Speaker 4: just will not break my way.
• 6:39
  Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, man, you're you're singing a tune. I can
• 6:43
  Speaker 2: relate to this year because if I were to do
• 6:46
  Speaker 2: this exercise myself, I would give my broader year, you know,
• 6:52
  Speaker 2: pretty close to an A. It was an A except
• 6:54
  Speaker 2: for deer season, and deer season was like a C
• 6:58
  Speaker 2: minus or a D. I don't know. It felt rough.
• 7:02
  Speaker 2: So so yeah, both of us had a weird fall
• 7:05
  Speaker 2: that brought down the rest of our year. I don't
• 7:06
  Speaker 2: know what we take away from that. Maybe we shouldn't
• 7:09
  Speaker 2: be maybe we shouldn't be hosting the White Tail podcast. Well, well,
• 7:14
  Speaker 2: like you said, you know, you're gonna have years like that.
• 7:16
  Speaker 2: And I've tried to remember in the years that, like
• 7:19
  Speaker 2: you said, things are going really well, you have to
• 7:21
  Speaker 2: appreciate those moments because they're not guaranteed every year, and
• 7:25
  Speaker 2: you have to remember in the years where it's just
• 7:27
  Speaker 2: not happening like this two shell pass. Sometimes you can
• 7:31
  Speaker 2: do everything right and still it doesn't fall your way.
• 7:36
  Speaker 2: And that's an important thing to remember.
• 7:38
  Speaker 4: Out there, well right, And you can also just have
• 7:42
  Speaker 4: I mean, I stacked up three bad shots in a
• 7:45
  Speaker 4: row that really just changed the arc of my season.
• 7:49
  Speaker 4: You know, I bookended them with good shots, but in
• 7:51
  Speaker 4: the middle of that and that that's too many, you know,
• 7:55
  Speaker 4: like that's that changes your whole season. In addition to
• 7:58
  Speaker 4: just the randomness of the rut this year in the
• 8:00
  Speaker 4: southeast winds and the foggy weather and just the weird
• 8:03
  Speaker 4: the weird fall of it all, you know, I mean,
• 8:05
  Speaker 4: it just sometimes just sometimes goes weird.
• 8:08
  Speaker 2: So many southeast winds. That was so many that was weird.
• 8:13
  Speaker 3: We're still getting them.
• 8:14
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I can actually use them right now now at
• 8:17
  Speaker 2: this part of the year, I could use a southeast wind.
• 8:19
  Speaker 2: But it didn't help me in November, that's for sure.
• 8:23
  Speaker 2: Do you want to start then? Do you want to
• 8:24
  Speaker 2: start with the good of the band? If we break
• 8:26
  Speaker 2: down like our highs and lows or best and worst?
• 8:28
  Speaker 2: Would you rather start on one of the other.
• 8:30
  Speaker 4: Let's start with the lows so we can end with
• 8:31
  Speaker 4: the highs, should we?
• 8:33
  Speaker 2: Sure? I like that? Uh? You want to leave us off?
• 8:36
  Speaker 2: What what stands out for you is a low or
• 8:38
  Speaker 2: a worst moment or worst thing of the year.
• 8:42
  Speaker 3: You know, or challenge.
• 8:44
  Speaker 4: I talked about this a little bit already, probably on
• 8:46
  Speaker 4: here too, But you know I missed a big one
• 8:48
  Speaker 4: in North Dakota. Uh, just totally misjudge. The rain wasn't
• 8:54
  Speaker 4: at range, I wasn't. I wasn't in the moment the
• 8:56
  Speaker 4: way I needed to be. It was dumb, right, didn't
• 8:59
  Speaker 4: bother me that much. But then I made a terrible
• 9:03
  Speaker 4: shot on another deer That bothered me because I knew
• 9:07
  Speaker 4: I knew what I had to do to make the
• 9:08
  Speaker 4: shot in that moment because I thought about it ten
• 9:10
  Speaker 4: million times before I took the shot, and I just
• 9:13
  Speaker 4: reverted back to just get that arrow out the door,
• 9:16
  Speaker 4: and I caught an artery and she died quick. But
• 9:20
  Speaker 4: it was dumb like it. It was totally preventable. And
• 9:23
  Speaker 4: then I did the same thing down in Iowa, where
• 9:27
  Speaker 4: I knew, like the window that I had to shoot
• 9:29
  Speaker 4: through was tight, but I didn't think it would matter.
• 9:32
  Speaker 4: And then it got me. And you know, I got
• 9:34
  Speaker 4: the deer, but it was an ugly shot and just
• 9:37
  Speaker 4: three in a very short period of time on public
• 9:39
  Speaker 4: land that could have been a I could have strung
• 9:41
  Speaker 4: together a really nice, you know, couple deer and had
• 9:45
  Speaker 4: good shots, and that just I just didn't do it,
• 9:48
  Speaker 4: and it bothered me so much.
• 9:52
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's hard to get that funk out of the
• 9:55
  Speaker 2: system when it goes that way. Even though you got
• 9:58
  Speaker 2: the deer, like you said, on two of them, it's
• 10:00
  Speaker 2: still I know the same feeling. I felt the same
• 10:02
  Speaker 2: way at times too, where it almost the how it
• 10:08
  Speaker 2: went matters more than the end result.
• 10:11
  Speaker 4: I mean, I think that's a I think that's something
• 10:14
  Speaker 4: you get to when you do this stuff enough, right,
• 10:17
  Speaker 4: is like you're kind of the end result is cool,
• 10:23
  Speaker 4: but all of the other stuff's really what matters. And
• 10:27
  Speaker 4: for me, I just making bad shots. You know, sometimes
• 10:31
  Speaker 4: they just happen, right, Like sometimes there's just something where
• 10:33
  Speaker 4: you're like, man, I just didn't see that little twig
• 10:36
  Speaker 4: or something and it just didn't break my way. But
• 10:39
  Speaker 4: when it's like preventable and you knew it and you
• 10:42
  Speaker 4: still did it wrong, and then that stuff kind of feeds.
• 10:44
  Speaker 4: You know, We've we've talked about this before, but like
• 10:47
  Speaker 4: when you have those little nagging thoughts in your head
• 10:51
  Speaker 4: at that moment of truth and your confidence has taken
• 10:53
  Speaker 4: a hit, suddenly it becomes not very much fun until
• 10:57
  Speaker 4: you start stringing together those double lungs again.
• 11:00
  Speaker 2: Yeah. So, like you said, we've talked about this a
• 11:03
  Speaker 2: lot over the years, and you went through a thing,
• 11:06
  Speaker 2: I don't know, a decade ago or fifteen years ago
• 11:08
  Speaker 2: or whatever it was, where you had some serious target
• 11:10
  Speaker 2: panic issues and you push through it and you've come
• 11:12
  Speaker 2: out the other side. And I've publicly talked about my
• 11:16
  Speaker 2: target panic issues and how I've had I've tried various
• 11:19
  Speaker 2: ways to get better at that and get through it.
• 11:22
  Speaker 2: And I'll tell you I've had a level of what's
• 11:29
  Speaker 2: the right word. It's more than frustration, like a level
• 11:33
  Speaker 2: of Oh, I was supposed to have this fixed, Like
• 11:35
  Speaker 2: I said, I had this fixed, I had I had
• 11:37
  Speaker 2: a solution, this was supposed to do it, and then
• 11:39
  Speaker 2: I still make mistakes. And that's that, Like when you
• 11:42
  Speaker 2: talk about like chipping away on the inside at yourself.
• 11:46
  Speaker 2: That's hard to like keep on pushing there, like God,
• 11:50
  Speaker 2: dang it, Like I thought I had this figured out.
• 11:51
  Speaker 2: Now I'm dealing with it again two years later, and
• 11:53
  Speaker 2: now here it is again. So you just had a
• 11:55
  Speaker 2: situation where you kind of had a batter run here.
• 11:58
  Speaker 2: How have you been processing that? How all of you
• 12:00
  Speaker 2: been shaking yourself out of that?
• 12:03
  Speaker 4: You know what's weird about is I started this year
• 12:06
  Speaker 4: with a perfect shot, you know, on a doe in Minnesota,
• 12:10
  Speaker 4: smoked her, made three bad shots in a row, and
• 12:13
  Speaker 4: then I shot a buck in Minnesota.
• 12:14
  Speaker 3: Perfect right through the heart.
• 12:16
  Speaker 4: And so I don't feel there are times where I
• 12:20
  Speaker 4: feel like I slipped back to major buck fever and
• 12:22
  Speaker 4: kind of rush in the shot. I really feel that
• 12:24
  Speaker 4: if I'm out west and an elk walks in or
• 12:25
  Speaker 4: something like, I really have to try to not lose
• 12:28
  Speaker 4: my shit then. But for me, the thing that like
• 12:32
  Speaker 4: this year specifically was I know exactly what I did
• 12:35
  Speaker 4: wrong on every shot. I just didn't do my job right.
• 12:38
  Speaker 4: And so it's not like I feel like I have
• 12:41
  Speaker 4: a bunch to work on there. It's just like I
• 12:43
  Speaker 4: made dumb mistakes like I shouldn't do that, you know,
• 12:46
  Speaker 4: So like the fix isn't I'm not searching for like
• 12:48
  Speaker 4: a you know, Joel Turner type of fix here. I'm like,
• 12:51
  Speaker 4: I know what, I know what was broken in my
• 12:53
  Speaker 4: process there. Yeah, you know, and that's that sucks even
• 12:57
  Speaker 4: well maybe not more, it's a different kind of suck.
• 13:00
  Speaker 2: Yes, yeah. So okay, so the shooting, the bad shots,
• 13:08
  Speaker 2: that whole situation, that is a fair that's a fairly
• 13:11
  Speaker 2: negative bummer right of a moment. Do you want to
• 13:16
  Speaker 2: go back and forth or do you want to go
• 13:17
  Speaker 2: through your whole list? Do you have a sense of
• 13:19
  Speaker 2: what you would prefer? Do you want to get all
• 13:21
  Speaker 2: off chest?
• 13:22
  Speaker 4: You know, I don't care. I mean that to me,
• 13:23
  Speaker 4: that's really for my personal hunting.
• 13:26
  Speaker 2: Uh.
• 13:27
  Speaker 4: That was that was it, Like that's what brought me down,
• 13:32
  Speaker 4: the rest of it's pretty pretty good.
• 13:34
  Speaker 3: I'm not not going to complain too much.
• 13:37
  Speaker 2: All right, Well, then I'll lead with my big negative
• 13:41
  Speaker 2: one this year, which was my head was not in
• 13:49
  Speaker 2: the game right this year in the fall, and I
• 13:54
  Speaker 2: wasn't sure if I want to talk about this or not,
• 13:56
  Speaker 2: but Giannis convinced me that I should. So you know
• 14:00
  Speaker 2: a little bit about this, Tony, but I'll kind of
• 14:02
  Speaker 2: share that this fall, I had some weird stuff going
• 14:05
  Speaker 2: on and it led to me just like not being
• 14:10
  Speaker 2: in it. From mid October on, in the short version
• 14:15
  Speaker 2: of the story, is started having chest pains, shortness of breath, radiating, burning,
• 14:26
  Speaker 2: all this kind of stuff going around in the chest region,
• 14:29
  Speaker 2: which that's all sorts of red flags flying. And this
• 14:34
  Speaker 2: started happening right about when you and I got back
• 14:36
  Speaker 2: from Louisiana, right after I shot my buck in Michigan,
• 14:40
  Speaker 2: shot a buck in southern Michigan, like the I can't
• 14:43
  Speaker 2: remember the fourteenth or thirteenth or fifteenth somewhere in that ballpark.
• 14:47
  Speaker 2: Felt great, got this deer on the ground, and then
• 14:49
  Speaker 2: like the next day or two, started having this stuff
• 14:52
  Speaker 2: going on, and to really shrink down, which was like
• 14:56
  Speaker 2: six weeks of stuff into as short of a story
• 14:58
  Speaker 2: as I can tell here, had this stuff going on
• 15:02
  Speaker 2: started like noticing it and kind of worrying about it.
• 15:05
  Speaker 2: And then as soon as you like google anything about
• 15:07
  Speaker 2: like what is this, what is this? Why am I
• 15:09
  Speaker 2: feeling this way? Then it makes you more worried about
• 15:12
  Speaker 2: what it is, and you're focusing on it more, and
• 15:14
  Speaker 2: then you start noticing it more. And so had like
• 15:18
  Speaker 2: a regular physical and they, you know, gave me some
• 15:20
  Speaker 2: stuff to think about, but they didn't really think there
• 15:23
  Speaker 2: was anything that you could do right away rather than
• 15:27
  Speaker 2: going on like having like more extensive tests and stuff.
• 15:29
  Speaker 2: So they said, well, if if this thing happens or
• 15:31
  Speaker 2: that thing happens, then we need to go and get
• 15:33
  Speaker 2: it checked out further at the hospital or something. So
• 15:36
  Speaker 2: as soon as she tells me about these things I
• 15:37
  Speaker 2: need to pay attention to, like all of a sudden
• 15:39
  Speaker 2: that I start noticing them. Every time I'm in the
• 15:42
  Speaker 2: tree stand, You're sitting there with nothing to do but
• 15:44
  Speaker 2: watch for deer and sitting there quietly, and when you're
• 15:48
  Speaker 2: when I'm not doing something else, and then all of
• 15:49
  Speaker 2: a sudden, you're noticing this stuff even more. So, especially
• 15:53
  Speaker 2: when I hunted, I noticed this stuff. And so for
• 15:56
  Speaker 2: day after day, night after night, I'm feeling this stuff
• 15:59
  Speaker 2: and worrying about it, and it seems to be getting worse,
• 16:03
  Speaker 2: and you know, it just very very uncomfortable, very disconcerting,
• 16:13
  Speaker 2: and very stressful. And I'd be out there hunting and
• 16:16
  Speaker 2: not really able to enjoy what I'm doing because the
• 16:19
  Speaker 2: whole time out there are big parts of it. I'm
• 16:21
  Speaker 2: thinking about it or worried about it or trying to
• 16:23
  Speaker 2: like is this is this real? Is this in my head?
• 16:25
  Speaker 2: What's going on? That the physical? She was like, well,
• 16:28
  Speaker 2: you know, it could just be this or that. Uh So,
• 16:31
  Speaker 2: end of October, ended up going to the er in
• 16:36
  Speaker 2: the middle of the night because I had like really serious,
• 16:40
  Speaker 2: what seemed really serious to me stuff going on. Can't
• 16:43
  Speaker 2: sleep all night, it's middle of the night, and so
• 16:46
  Speaker 2: go to the er and I'm like, this stuff's not
• 16:49
  Speaker 2: going away. I don't know what it is. But when
• 16:52
  Speaker 2: you read about some of these things, like, hey, you
• 16:53
  Speaker 2: got to take this stuff serious. So I do. They
• 16:55
  Speaker 2: do all sorts of tests they hooked me up to
• 16:58
  Speaker 2: you know, I got IVS and I got X rays
• 17:00
  Speaker 2: and I've got this test and that test and all
• 17:01
  Speaker 2: this other stuff and kind of freaking out like holy shit,
• 17:04
  Speaker 2: what is going on with me? I'm in the hospital,
• 17:07
  Speaker 2: and you know, after being there all night. It's like
• 17:10
  Speaker 2: October thirty first or October thirtieth or something like that's
• 17:13
  Speaker 2: right there, like the when it should be like the
• 17:15
  Speaker 2: sweet about the hunting season. And I'd gone to Illinois
• 17:20
  Speaker 2: a couple of days before that, and it got like
• 17:22
  Speaker 2: really bad down there, and that's why that trip flopped.
• 17:24
  Speaker 2: I went down. I was like, I feel like, shit,
• 17:27
  Speaker 2: I'm not enjoying this at all. You know, this like
• 17:30
  Speaker 2: long drives, it would happen too more often too, So
• 17:33
  Speaker 2: like taking long drives, I'd be like focusing on this,
• 17:38
  Speaker 2: and the hospital visit comes out the end of it.
• 17:41
  Speaker 2: And there was nothing that they could find wrong with
• 17:44
  Speaker 2: the heart or the lungs, which are like the big worries,
• 17:47
  Speaker 2: but they couldn't really figure it out. So they said,
• 17:49
  Speaker 2: you know, here's here's here's a possible thing. Here's a
• 17:53
  Speaker 2: possible thing. Keep monitoring it. We can't find anything like
• 17:56
  Speaker 2: super like the horrible, horribly scary stuff isn't showing up
• 18:01
  Speaker 2: for us right now. But we still don't know, so
• 18:04
  Speaker 2: maybe check go to your primary care physician or whatever.
• 18:07
  Speaker 2: But otherwise, here's some heartburn meds. Maybe that'll take care
• 18:11
  Speaker 2: of it, good luck. And so then the rut starts,
• 18:16
  Speaker 2: and now you know, not sleeping very much because of
• 18:19
  Speaker 2: the rut, traveling all around, go to Kentucky, do this
• 18:22
  Speaker 2: public land hunt. The stuff still continues, but now I'm
• 18:26
  Speaker 2: not sleeping, I'm stressed about general life stuff, work stuff,
• 18:30
  Speaker 2: hunting stuff. And then this stuff kind of keeps building
• 18:33
  Speaker 2: and simmering underneath the underneath the surface of it all,
• 18:38
  Speaker 2: and I'm trying to like battle it out and say
• 18:41
  Speaker 2: I can tough it through, like this is it's nothing,
• 18:43
  Speaker 2: I'm fine? Or what is it? Hopefully the doctors said
• 18:47
  Speaker 2: it wasn't something, you know, bad, super serious bad in
• 18:51
  Speaker 2: the moment, so it's probably nothing. Keep doing your stuff,
• 18:54
  Speaker 2: but again, wouldn't go way. Kept lingering was exactly like
• 18:58
  Speaker 2: a mental toll on me. And this seemed like the
• 19:01
  Speaker 2: more I was, the more you think about, of course,
• 19:06
  Speaker 2: the worst it would get.
• 19:08
  Speaker 4: And you're not a guy who's prone to overthinking, are you, Mark?
• 19:12
  Speaker 2: Yeah? Exactly. So fast forward through the first two weeks
• 19:18
  Speaker 2: of the rut. I'm doing my best, hunting hard, doing
• 19:20
  Speaker 2: all that kind of stuff, but again, just like not
• 19:23
  Speaker 2: not enjoying myself, not feeling right. I remember like coming
• 19:27
  Speaker 2: home one night and my wife was just like, why
• 19:29
  Speaker 2: are you sell eared of them? Like, I just want
• 19:31
  Speaker 2: to feel like a normal person again. I just don't
• 19:33
  Speaker 2: feel normal. I feel like, you know, I don't know,
• 19:37
  Speaker 2: just was not great. Then we get to, you know,
• 19:41
  Speaker 2: a shitty rut, as I've talked about on the podcast,
• 19:44
  Speaker 2: kind of like you like, really weird hunting situations. Nothing
• 19:47
  Speaker 2: going my way, no deer to hunt in all the
• 19:51
  Speaker 2: places I typically hunt and have permission, like all the
• 19:53
  Speaker 2: mature bucks have disappeared. Get to gun season northern Michigan.
• 20:00
  Speaker 2: Go up there with my kids. Should be a great weekend,
• 20:03
  Speaker 2: very exciting to be up at the family deer camp.
• 20:06
  Speaker 2: Should be a peak moment of the year. And for
• 20:11
  Speaker 2: all sorts of reasons, like just was like kind of
• 20:12
  Speaker 2: stressed out about stuff and kids and everything, and also
• 20:18
  Speaker 2: this thing is like popping up, and it's getting worse
• 20:20
  Speaker 2: and worse throughout the day first day there, over the
• 20:24
  Speaker 2: night the next day, and like like I thought, like
• 20:26
  Speaker 2: I thought, maybe we had been trending down. Why is
• 20:28
  Speaker 2: this shit happening again? Why what is this feeling? Why
• 20:31
  Speaker 2: isn't this going away? And so the midday on the
• 20:36
  Speaker 2: sixteenth of them I remember, I think it was it
• 20:40
  Speaker 2: was getting like painful, and I remember stepping outside of
• 20:43
  Speaker 2: the cabin and just like walking around trying to drink
• 20:46
  Speaker 2: a bottle of water and like remember trying to do
• 20:49
  Speaker 2: like some deep breath to like calm down, because I
• 20:52
  Speaker 2: could tell I was like getting like kind of freaked
• 20:54
  Speaker 2: out by why this was happening again and why I
• 20:56
  Speaker 2: was getting worse and like what just again, Like this
• 20:58
  Speaker 2: is like frustration, not understanding what this is, why I'm
• 21:02
  Speaker 2: feeling this way, why I feel like shit? And then
• 21:06
  Speaker 2: my fingers started getting numb, and then I started getting
• 21:09
  Speaker 2: like dizzy and woozy, and then it went up my arms.
• 21:14
  Speaker 2: And then Josh, my buddy, our mutual friend, Josh Hilliard,
• 21:18
  Speaker 2: came out of the cabin just could see what I
• 21:20
  Speaker 2: was doing, and I was like, it's like, dude, something's
• 21:24
  Speaker 2: going on. Like I'm all of a sudden like couldn't
• 21:26
  Speaker 2: stand up straight and told my like I'm going numb.
• 21:29
  Speaker 2: Then it went like up my arms, my neck, my face,
• 21:32
  Speaker 2: everything started going like as if you'd stuck nova cane
• 21:36
  Speaker 2: in me. And I'm like, I think I need to
• 21:39
  Speaker 2: go to the doctor. Something's going on. I don't know
• 21:40
  Speaker 2: what's going on? Ah, So he like gets me in
• 21:53
  Speaker 2: the seat of the car and then now in this moment,
• 21:57
  Speaker 2: I'm like, holy shit, whatever this thing is that the
• 21:59
  Speaker 2: doctor couldn't figure out, Like it's happening, Like there's something
• 22:03
  Speaker 2: really insane going on right now. It felt like I'm
• 22:05
  Speaker 2: having a heart attack or a stroke or whatever it is.
• 22:08
  Speaker 2: Something really I've never experienced my entire life was happening.
• 22:12
  Speaker 2: And I get to the point when in the car,
• 22:15
  Speaker 2: in the front sea of the car, and my arms
• 22:17
  Speaker 2: get like this like across my chest and completely lock up,
• 22:22
  Speaker 2: like I can't move my fingers, I can't move my arms,
• 22:24
  Speaker 2: I can't move anything. I'm like paralyzed, and I'm like
• 22:29
  Speaker 2: can't do anything except for try to focus on breathing
• 22:33
  Speaker 2: and kind of get out words to Josh. I'm like called,
• 22:36
  Speaker 2: like take me to the hospital. Something that bad. It's happening.
• 22:41
  Speaker 2: And so that ended up being like the scariest moment
• 22:44
  Speaker 2: probably in my life. I thought, literally I was having
• 22:47
  Speaker 2: a heart attack or a stroke or something. Pretty much
• 22:48
  Speaker 2: thought I was dying. Told Josh like take care of
• 22:51
  Speaker 2: my kids please, like you know, that's what I thought
• 22:55
  Speaker 2: was going on, and takes me to the hospital had
• 23:01
  Speaker 2: an EMT meet us on the way there and go
• 23:06
  Speaker 2: through the whole nine yards. And this is a very
• 23:09
  Speaker 2: long winded story of a six week window of my
• 23:13
  Speaker 2: life that just happened to coincide with like the peak
• 23:16
  Speaker 2: of our white tail season and all the stuff we
• 23:18
  Speaker 2: do and made for a very unfun, challenging, stressful, confusing
• 23:24
  Speaker 2: time period. Go to the hospital, they grun all these
• 23:27
  Speaker 2: tests and everything, and there was there's two main things
• 23:30
  Speaker 2: that you know, so I guess, stop this long, boring story.
• 23:36
  Speaker 2: Three things were identified. Number one, what was going on
• 23:40
  Speaker 2: in that moment when I thought I was dying was
• 23:42
  Speaker 2: not that I had a heart attack or a stroke, Thankfully,
• 23:45
  Speaker 2: it was none of those things. They tested for cloths,
• 23:48
  Speaker 2: they tested for any kind of cardiac issues or any
• 23:50
  Speaker 2: kind of anything like that. None of those things happened.
• 23:53
  Speaker 2: What it was was that my CO two levels had
• 23:56
  Speaker 2: plummeted to almost zero. They were able to check what
• 23:59
  Speaker 2: my excuse me, my CO two levels were in that moment,
• 24:03
  Speaker 2: and it was like two or something, and it's supposed
• 24:06
  Speaker 2: to I don't know what it's supposed to be, supposed
• 24:07
  Speaker 2: to be way way higher than that. And so what
• 24:09
  Speaker 2: that happens that's caused by basically hyperventilation, which is breathing
• 24:15
  Speaker 2: too deeply, too fast or something. I'm not I can't
• 24:18
  Speaker 2: remember exactly what the thing is, but I was basically
• 24:21
  Speaker 2: having a stress related panic attack or something in that moment,
• 24:26
  Speaker 2: which led to this thing with my breathing, which led
• 24:31
  Speaker 2: to this feeling, which apparently is a common thing for
• 24:34
  Speaker 2: folks having some kind of thing like I was having.
• 24:38
  Speaker 2: And so that was what caused this thing on that
• 24:41
  Speaker 2: Sunday or Saturday, whatever day that was. And then I
• 24:47
  Speaker 2: go to another series of doctors, they do these different tests.
• 24:51
  Speaker 2: What they found or what they believed was causing the
• 24:54
  Speaker 2: original issue was this condition that apparently leads to like
• 24:59
  Speaker 2: inflammation of the cartilage and muscles across my sternum up
• 25:03
  Speaker 2: and down my sternum. So like a muscular skeletal issue
• 25:06
  Speaker 2: had caused or has been causing this initial pain I'm
• 25:09
  Speaker 2: feeling my chest, and you google this stuff and it's like, yeah,
• 25:11
  Speaker 2: people think they're having a heart attack with this thing.
• 25:13
  Speaker 2: It's like common, it's a common thought that people have
• 25:17
  Speaker 2: and worry that people have with this condition. And so
• 25:19
  Speaker 2: what the doctors think was going on was that I
• 25:21
  Speaker 2: had this original thing which has been going on and
• 25:23
  Speaker 2: is still ongoing, which then led to me thinking about it,
• 25:27
  Speaker 2: focusing on it, worrying about it, being stressed about it,
• 25:30
  Speaker 2: which then you know, she's like, well, do you have
• 25:32
  Speaker 2: any stress in your life otherwise? Are you not sleeping otherwise?
• 25:35
  Speaker 2: Are you working too much otherwise? Are you go go
• 25:37
  Speaker 2: going otherwise? I'm like, well, yeah, NonStop right now. So
• 25:42
  Speaker 2: basically what the doctors think is that I had this
• 25:44
  Speaker 2: original chest issue in pain, which was musculo skeletal, and
• 25:47
  Speaker 2: then the hunting season relayed stress, travel, relayed stress compounded
• 25:53
  Speaker 2: on top of me stressing and worrying and thinking about
• 25:56
  Speaker 2: this chest pain and shortness of breath and all this stuff,
• 25:59
  Speaker 2: and then led to this snowballing and snowballing and snowballing
• 26:02
  Speaker 2: to where I would be having this concern about why
• 26:06
  Speaker 2: is my chester why can't I breathe right? And that
• 26:08
  Speaker 2: leads to actual physiological changes related to that stress, which
• 26:13
  Speaker 2: do lead to more chest tightness, chest pain, breathing issues,
• 26:18
  Speaker 2: which then led to more of that. And so that
• 26:22
  Speaker 2: was going on for like six weeks and led to
• 26:24
  Speaker 2: me having this incident where I thought I was dying
• 26:27
  Speaker 2: and went to the hospital and just led to a
• 26:31
  Speaker 2: really aft up fall where I was not able to
• 26:36
  Speaker 2: enjoy it a lot of it, was not able to
• 26:39
  Speaker 2: really be in it the way I usually am, didn't
• 26:44
  Speaker 2: have the hootspa and excitement, was worried about my health.
• 26:48
  Speaker 2: So I was like, I don't know if I want
• 26:49
  Speaker 2: to travel across the country to go to this other
• 26:51
  Speaker 2: state or do this other thing because I just want
• 26:54
  Speaker 2: to get this shit figured out and feel normal again.
• 26:57
  Speaker 2: I don't know, man, it just led to a really
• 26:59
  Speaker 2: really weird fall that on the bright side, I think
• 27:05
  Speaker 2: I'm coming out of it now that I understood what's
• 27:07
  Speaker 2: going on. We're able to do some stuff that has
• 27:09
  Speaker 2: reduced that original pain and that that condition I think
• 27:13
  Speaker 2: is improving. And then I've also been able to kind
• 27:17
  Speaker 2: of work on shilling out a little bit, dealing with
• 27:20
  Speaker 2: some of that stress. I think a lot of that
• 27:21
  Speaker 2: stress has left now that I have some answers, you know, uh,
• 27:28
  Speaker 2: exploring some mindfulness practices, UH, some woo woo ship and
• 27:34
  Speaker 2: uh and maybe that's what I've needed to So yeah,
• 27:39
  Speaker 2: that's been the big negative for me this fall, which
• 27:45
  Speaker 2: which probably has led to some of the lack of
• 27:48
  Speaker 2: quote unquote success, but also there's the other weirdness going
• 27:51
  Speaker 2: on where I just haven't had anything to hunt some
• 27:53
  Speaker 2: of my spots, et cetera, et cetera. Yeah, that's that's
• 27:57
  Speaker 2: what's going on. That's what I've dealt with.
• 28:00
  Speaker 4: So can I tell you something that that reminds me of? Yeah,
• 28:03
  Speaker 4: because I knew you were going through that obviously. I
• 28:07
  Speaker 4: kind of forgot about this when I quit drinking very
• 28:11
  Speaker 4: shortly after I had a lot of pain on my
• 28:13
  Speaker 4: right side and I went through MRIs and all kinds
• 28:18
  Speaker 4: of shit because I was like, oh great, I quit drinking.
• 28:19
  Speaker 4: Now my liver is gonna crap out on me. And
• 28:22
  Speaker 4: they finally figured out that I had torn the cartilage
• 28:25
  Speaker 4: underneath my ribs, and it was sounds like kind of
• 28:29
  Speaker 4: similar to what you were talking about with your chest,
• 28:31
  Speaker 4: where it's like this thing happens and they're like, ah,
• 28:34
  Speaker 4: we don't know, and then all of a sudden they're
• 28:35
  Speaker 4: like no answers, no answers, and your brain starts to spiral.
• 28:40
  Speaker 4: Yeah shit, you just don't see coming.
• 28:43
  Speaker 2: No, no, not at all, really really weird. Really Yeah,
• 28:52
  Speaker 2: I don't know if I've still fully processed all of
• 28:54
  Speaker 2: like the stuff that's coming out of that just it
• 28:56
  Speaker 2: made me feel very old like or more mortal, do
• 29:02
  Speaker 2: you know what I mean? Like this is the first
• 29:04
  Speaker 2: time in my life where I was like, holy shit,
• 29:06
  Speaker 2: like I thought I was gonna croak? Am I doing stuff? Right?
• 29:11
  Speaker 2: Am I taking care of myself?
• 29:12
  Speaker 3: Right?
• 29:13
  Speaker 2: Do I need to re examine how I'm taking care
• 29:15
  Speaker 2: of myself in other ways?
• 29:18
  Speaker 3: You know?
• 29:18
  Speaker 2: I don't know. It was just a whole whole bunch
• 29:20
  Speaker 2: of stuff that you know made me and made me
• 29:24
  Speaker 2: already and will I'm sure make me think more in
• 29:27
  Speaker 2: the future about a lot of different things. But how
• 29:30
  Speaker 2: I do stuff.
• 29:31
  Speaker 4: Yeah, it makes me feel bad because when when you
• 29:33
  Speaker 4: started your story, I remember the other part of my
• 29:35
  Speaker 4: fall that sucked, but I don't want to talk about
• 29:37
  Speaker 4: it now because yours is way worse.
• 29:40
  Speaker 2: I still want to hear about it. It's all all
• 29:44
  Speaker 2: issues are valid on this podcast, Tony.
• 29:46
  Speaker 4: I'm glad you got that sorted out, because I know
• 29:48
  Speaker 4: that was weighing on you real heavy, or at least
• 29:51
  Speaker 4: you got to some clarity on it, some visibility into it.
• 29:55
  Speaker 3: It is. It is really hard to.
• 29:59
  Speaker 4: It's sort of hard to understand something like that if
• 30:02
  Speaker 4: you haven't gone through it or faced it, or you know,
• 30:05
  Speaker 4: had those little kids at home and think about your
• 30:07
  Speaker 4: own mortality. I mean that's a that's a heavy mental
• 30:10
  Speaker 4: lift that really when when stuff like that happens, it
• 30:15
  Speaker 4: really makes like the size of the buck. Like some
• 30:19
  Speaker 4: of the stuff seemed really stupid that we kind of
• 30:22
  Speaker 4: fixated Ourial, you know, and I so what I was
• 30:26
  Speaker 4: going to say too, is so we you and I
• 30:28
  Speaker 4: started out, you know, the Louisiana trip, and then we
• 30:32
  Speaker 4: just went gangbusters right back to back to back whatever,
• 30:35
  Speaker 4: just trying to you know, you have like eight weeks
• 30:38
  Speaker 4: of just chaos, right, And I got through all of that.
• 30:43
  Speaker 4: I found a really good concentration of bucks on public
• 30:47
  Speaker 4: land in northern Wisconsin, like I had something going on.
• 30:50
  Speaker 3: Took my daughter in there.
• 30:51
  Speaker 4: We had one hundred and thirty inch or like forty yards,
• 30:54
  Speaker 4: I mean like cool. And so when when when I
• 30:57
  Speaker 4: got out of that and we got out all of
• 31:00
  Speaker 4: our travel, I was like, I'm going over there. I
• 31:02
  Speaker 4: scrapped my whole plan for the rut and I'm like,
• 31:05
  Speaker 4: I'm going to go focus on this area of public,
• 31:07
  Speaker 4: not hunt my private and work those deer. And I
• 31:10
  Speaker 4: got over there and on my first morning had a
• 31:13
  Speaker 4: pretty good eight pointer come in that I almost killed.
• 31:15
  Speaker 4: He was ten yards away and I just started to
• 31:18
  Speaker 4: draw and he busted me. Just came into one place
• 31:20
  Speaker 4: where he was going to get a little bit of
• 31:21
  Speaker 4: my wind. But I was like, you know, day one
• 31:24
  Speaker 4: for that area, really like that's a good encounter. Like
• 31:29
  Speaker 4: I go all season and don't have that. And that
• 31:32
  Speaker 4: night I hunted, didn't see anything, and left and I
• 31:36
  Speaker 4: drove a route that I've driven I don't know, dozens
• 31:42
  Speaker 4: and dozens and dozens of times, maybe hundreds at this
• 31:46
  Speaker 4: point between the trout fishing and everything else and just
• 31:48
  Speaker 4: looking for deer, and I took a slightly different rut.
• 31:52
  Speaker 4: I went two miles on a highway when I usually
• 31:53
  Speaker 4: go on the gravel. I got out on that highway
• 31:56
  Speaker 4: in the rain, and I had a guy coming up
• 31:58
  Speaker 4: behind me pretty quick. Just looked at every viewer mayor
• 32:01
  Speaker 4: looked back up and there was a deer coming out
• 32:02
  Speaker 4: on the highway and I was like, there's nowhere to go.
• 32:05
  Speaker 4: Just smoked or day one. So the first chance I
• 32:08
  Speaker 4: had to hunt for myself, it was over and I
• 32:11
  Speaker 4: you know, and I'm over there in northern Wisconsin and
• 32:13
  Speaker 4: you're just like, man, this stuff can go south. And
• 32:17
  Speaker 4: where I'm going with that is like everything was fine right,
• 32:21
  Speaker 4: Like I didn't I didn't go in the.
• 32:22
  Speaker 3: Ditch or anything.
• 32:23
  Speaker 4: I mean, it really sucked, I had a knife or
• 32:24
  Speaker 4: it was just you know, not a fun experience. Right
• 32:27
  Speaker 4: then you're then you're you're done. But it's like it
• 32:30
  Speaker 4: reminded me like when everybody when I told people, I'm like,
• 32:34
  Speaker 4: I just smoked the deer, the first question is are
• 32:36
  Speaker 4: you okay? And you forget this kind of like you
• 32:40
  Speaker 4: forget how quickly something can go wrong, you know, and
• 32:43
  Speaker 4: how the other thing that I that your story with
• 32:47
  Speaker 4: what you went through for you know, multiple weeks of
• 32:50
  Speaker 4: like am I freaking dying here? Like are like are
• 32:54
  Speaker 4: my kids gonna not have a dad in a very
• 32:57
  Speaker 4: short amount of time? Like like those like heavy things
• 33:00
  Speaker 4: you don't ever consider until they're right in your face.
• 33:03
  Speaker 3: It's like.
• 33:05
  Speaker 4: When we should just treat each other better, you know
• 33:09
  Speaker 4: what I mean, Like when that's happening. And then if
• 33:12
  Speaker 4: you would have gone out and killed a two and
• 33:14
  Speaker 4: a half year old just to be happy, a whole
• 33:17
  Speaker 4: bunch of strangers would have shot on it for the
• 33:20
  Speaker 4: size of it without having a clue what you just
• 33:24
  Speaker 4: went through and so I think it's a good reminder
• 33:26
  Speaker 4: when we see people out there wherever, like like you
• 33:29
  Speaker 4: don't know what they're going through, you know, like have
• 33:31
  Speaker 4: you have no clue what's like happening in their day
• 33:35
  Speaker 4: to day life. Like, I think that's a good reminder.
• 33:38
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that's such a great reminder. And and also be
• 33:43
  Speaker 2: kinder to ourselves. Two. I think because I found myself,
• 33:49
  Speaker 2: like for example, in Kentucky, just like beating myself up
• 33:53
  Speaker 2: a bunch about you know, not not getting on the
• 33:57
  Speaker 2: deer or not being close enough or didn't make their eye.
• 34:00
  Speaker 2: You know, you should have moved there, You should have
• 34:01
  Speaker 2: moved there. At midday, I'll sit there for like hours
• 34:03
  Speaker 2: thinking about I should have done this, or you know,
• 34:05
  Speaker 2: you should have done that thing, or you could have
• 34:07
  Speaker 2: done this thing but you didn't, or God, you should
• 34:09
  Speaker 2: have we should have approached it this way, or you know,
• 34:12
  Speaker 2: things go wrong and then you you know, you're pissed
• 34:14
  Speaker 2: off about it or frustrated about it, or thinking about it. Ah, well,
• 34:18
  Speaker 2: here's another thing that didn't go my way, or what's
• 34:20
  Speaker 2: such and such gonna mean for the future or whatever.
• 34:23
  Speaker 2: And you know, anytime, anytime where I'm overly focused on
• 34:30
  Speaker 2: the end goal. It always leads to bad stuff. It
• 34:34
  Speaker 2: always leads to stress and not enjoying it. And uh,
• 34:38
  Speaker 2: you know, especially given the stuff I was going through
• 34:40
  Speaker 2: this year, I probably should have cut myself a little
• 34:41
  Speaker 2: bit slack, maybe, But instead I was like, maybe doubly
• 34:44
  Speaker 2: hard on myself in some ways because I, like Jesus, like,
• 34:47
  Speaker 2: just get do something right, right, And man, I don't know.
• 34:55
  Speaker 2: I mean back to your point about i'ast shoot a
• 34:57
  Speaker 2: two and a half yeo to shoot whatever you want,
• 34:58
  Speaker 2: or this whole year without having like a mature buck
• 35:01
  Speaker 2: to hunt, I've been wrestling with you know, why am
• 35:06
  Speaker 2: I obsessing over trying to find a mature buck? Maybe
• 35:08
  Speaker 2: I just need to just shoot anything to have fun.
• 35:11
  Speaker 2: Or maybe I just need to chill the heck out
• 35:12
  Speaker 2: and stop stressing about it and just start taking my
• 35:14
  Speaker 2: kids hunting and enjoy that, because that's the one thing
• 35:16
  Speaker 2: that's super fun. But instead, I because I haven't killed
• 35:19
  Speaker 2: the mature buck yet, I've pushed off taking my kids
• 35:21
  Speaker 2: more and more and more because I'm still trying to
• 35:23
  Speaker 2: kill mature buck. And so now I'm in December and
• 35:26
  Speaker 2: haven't hunted with my kids at all because I've been
• 35:28
  Speaker 2: feeling like I'm obligated to kill a big buck and
• 35:33
  Speaker 2: and then you know, not doing the thing that really
• 35:36
  Speaker 2: would bring me the most joy or that is the
• 35:38
  Speaker 2: most fun or that actually you know, matters in the
• 35:40
  Speaker 2: long term. So those are the kinds of things and
• 35:44
  Speaker 2: questions that I've been wrestling with again this year as
• 35:47
  Speaker 2: I you know, continue to evolve, I guess as a
• 35:50
  Speaker 2: hunter and trying to understand, you know, what I want
• 35:53
  Speaker 2: this to look like for me and what my goals
• 35:54
  Speaker 2: are and will be in the future. This is definitely
• 35:58
  Speaker 2: another step this year of very examining that stuff.
• 36:01
  Speaker 4: Right, It's a good reminder. I mean, and you said
• 36:04
  Speaker 4: something before. I just I wrote about this for a
• 36:06
  Speaker 4: Foundation's episode that I think probably came out this week,
• 36:09
  Speaker 4: that this episode will drop about goals and how often
• 36:13
  Speaker 4: in hunting we kind of screw them up.
• 36:16
  Speaker 3: Like the goal.
• 36:17
  Speaker 4: It's it's like so easy to be like, well, I
• 36:19
  Speaker 4: want a buck bigger than one I've ever killed, or
• 36:21
  Speaker 4: I want a one forty, or you know, you talked
• 36:24
  Speaker 4: about like the end result sort of tainting the whole
• 36:27
  Speaker 4: process and focusing too much on that. And you know,
• 36:30
  Speaker 4: I felt that with my I would tag this year
• 36:34
  Speaker 4: where it was like I was really looking forward to that,
• 36:38
  Speaker 4: and I had about seventeen things go wrong in a
• 36:42
  Speaker 4: in a very short period of time, and was like,
• 36:44
  Speaker 4: now I just I kind of just want to kill
• 36:46
  Speaker 4: one and get out. And I had I just looked
• 36:49
  Speaker 4: at it wrong, you know. And when you when you
• 36:51
  Speaker 4: get one of those premiere tags like that that.
• 36:53
  Speaker 3: You've been waiting on.
• 36:56
  Speaker 4: Or any you know, whenever there's like a heightened level
• 36:59
  Speaker 4: of pressure, you know, to do well, then all of
• 37:03
  Speaker 4: a sudden, it can be real not fun in a hurry.
• 37:06
  Speaker 4: And it's it's a hard thing to remember, but it's
• 37:09
  Speaker 4: it happens, and when it happens, it sucks bad.
• 37:12
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I don't know what the solution is that I've
• 37:14
  Speaker 2: thought a lot about that. It's like, man, every time
• 37:16
  Speaker 2: I put these like increased expectations on a hunt or
• 37:19
  Speaker 2: a place or a season or whatever, it always comes
• 37:24
  Speaker 2: down to that like self induced pressure that you put
• 37:26
  Speaker 2: on yourself or the situation, and that al was always
• 37:30
  Speaker 2: you know, I remember when it used to be just
• 37:33
  Speaker 2: like really fun to get up in the morning, go
• 37:35
  Speaker 2: hunt and see what the hell you're gonna see? Right, man,
• 37:37
  Speaker 2: this gonna be great. I'm gonna go out there and
• 37:38
  Speaker 2: who knows what's gonna happen. And if it didn't go
• 37:41
  Speaker 2: your way, no big deal, Let's go hunting again next
• 37:44
  Speaker 2: time when I want to go. Now, it's like, I mean,
• 37:48
  Speaker 2: what's what's a little bit said for me? Is that
• 37:50
  Speaker 2: I I caught myself and recognized this in myself. You know,
• 37:53
  Speaker 2: years ago, a couple of years ago, we were talking
• 37:55
  Speaker 2: about this, and still it's really hard to break those
• 37:59
  Speaker 2: bad habits. I still find myself, you know, executing what
• 38:04
  Speaker 2: feels like a military mission right and beating myself up
• 38:09
  Speaker 2: about it, and you know, I've yet to figure out
• 38:13
  Speaker 2: how to shake that. Maybe that's just part of it.
• 38:14
  Speaker 2: If if you're gonna try to do anything well, which
• 38:17
  Speaker 2: we are trying to do things well, you inherently have
• 38:20
  Speaker 2: to have that along the way. But maybe there's a
• 38:22
  Speaker 2: middle ground that is where I'm constantly trying to find
• 38:26
  Speaker 2: things and you know, find that sweet spot. But yeah,
• 38:31
  Speaker 2: you kind of I don't know. I don't know exactly
• 38:35
  Speaker 2: where that right spot is, but I do know that
• 38:38
  Speaker 2: the obsession and the obsession by the media and us
• 38:43
  Speaker 2: in the past, and all the Instagram stuff and YouTube
• 38:46
  Speaker 2: and everywhere, like constant big buck, this big buck, that
• 38:49
  Speaker 2: big buck, this like that is definitely I can't be
• 38:52
  Speaker 2: you and I can't be the only ones feeling this way.
• 38:54
  Speaker 2: Like there's gotta be a lot of other people who
• 38:56
  Speaker 2: are feeling this, and I want to find some way
• 39:00
  Speaker 2: to to change that a little bit in whatever small
• 39:04
  Speaker 2: way we can. I don't know what that looks like yet,
• 39:08
  Speaker 2: but but man, we got to bring the got to
• 39:11
  Speaker 2: keep the joy in deer hunting and get off of
• 39:14
  Speaker 2: this obsession with like did you get your big one
• 39:17
  Speaker 2: this year? Because that's I don't think that's helping many people, right.
• 39:20
  Speaker 4: I mean, well, I can tell you you know, I
• 39:23
  Speaker 4: was looking at what I kind of want to do
• 39:24
  Speaker 4: this year for hunts, and I definitely want to hunt
• 39:28
  Speaker 4: a new state somewhere. I'm going to go public land hunt.
• 39:31
  Speaker 4: It might be Kansas, might be somewhere else. I'm not
• 39:32
  Speaker 4: sure yet. But I really realized that when I went
• 39:37
  Speaker 4: over to wiscont to Wisconsin with my daughter, where I
• 39:41
  Speaker 4: was like, we just got to get a little buck
• 39:44
  Speaker 4: to come in here, and she's gonna be super happy.
• 39:46
  Speaker 4: And we hunted private land where I had a bunch
• 39:49
  Speaker 4: of cameras out didn't have much for deer going on
• 39:52
  Speaker 4: and then I said, you know what, she's she's good enough.
• 39:55
  Speaker 4: I probably wouldn't have done this with her sister, but
• 39:56
  Speaker 4: she's good enough. Where I was like, let's go scout
• 39:58
  Speaker 4: public land and just like, just see, I have a
• 40:01
  Speaker 4: spot that I really like and there might be something there.
• 40:03
  Speaker 4: In the minute we pulled up there, I could see
• 40:06
  Speaker 4: rubs in the woods and a scrape on this little
• 40:07
  Speaker 4: loggin road coming out and I said, we're we're gonna
• 40:10
  Speaker 4: go in here and we're gonna do something fun. And
• 40:13
  Speaker 4: the minute we started hunting there, instead of being like, well,
• 40:16
  Speaker 4: I don't have any pictures on this camera this in
• 40:18
  Speaker 4: the last forty eight hours and the wind's wrong for
• 40:21
  Speaker 4: this spot and this, as soon as we walked in there,
• 40:24
  Speaker 4: I was like, now I'm having fun. Like now there's
• 40:27
  Speaker 4: a mystery. I don't care who's living here. I can
• 40:29
  Speaker 4: tell there's good ones here, but there's just a concentration
• 40:32
  Speaker 4: of deer and now we're gonna figure it out. And
• 40:33
  Speaker 4: we blanked that night, and then we went back in
• 40:35
  Speaker 4: the next morning with a new plan and we kind
• 40:37
  Speaker 4: of walked her through on X and like, here's what
• 40:39
  Speaker 4: we're gonna do. We're gonna get up early, We're gonna
• 40:41
  Speaker 4: go in there and maybe, just maybe, And it almost worked,
• 40:45
  Speaker 4: and it was like, Okay, this is this.
• 40:47
  Speaker 3: Is what I like.
• 40:48
  Speaker 4: I need those reminders because it's easy in a lot
• 40:52
  Speaker 4: of situations to be like, well, I'm I'm not excited
• 40:56
  Speaker 4: about this, like you said, because I don't have any
• 40:57
  Speaker 4: deer to shoot. It's like, okay, well on that private
• 41:00
  Speaker 4: place where your standards are this high, whatever, that's fine.
• 41:05
  Speaker 4: You don't have anything there, is it better to not hunt,
• 41:08
  Speaker 4: Like can you go find that somewhere else, or can
• 41:10
  Speaker 4: you go do something else, or like what can you
• 41:12
  Speaker 4: do to make sure that you keep that going instead
• 41:14
  Speaker 4: of just being like, I hunt this forty acres and
• 41:16
  Speaker 4: there's no shooters, so I'm not going because I think
• 41:18
  Speaker 4: that's I think we are on a like a.
• 41:22
  Speaker 3: Dangerous path with that.
• 41:23
  Speaker 4: And you hear that a lot where people are like,
• 41:27
  Speaker 4: I'm not going in until that buck shows up, and
• 41:30
  Speaker 4: when he does, then I will hunt him. Yeah, And
• 41:32
  Speaker 4: it's like that's just so it's so different than some
• 41:35
  Speaker 4: of the ways you can do it.
• 41:37
  Speaker 2: Yeah, And I'll tell you one of the most fun
• 41:39
  Speaker 2: hunts I had in this area where I have been,
• 41:43
  Speaker 2: you know, struggling to find a buck to hunt was
• 41:46
  Speaker 2: when I was like, you know what, nothing's working. I'm
• 41:48
  Speaker 2: not find him anywhere. Let's just do something crazy. Let's
• 41:50
  Speaker 2: go in and hunt this other area that I never
• 41:53
  Speaker 2: go to that shouldn't have deer. But I'm gonna still
• 41:55
  Speaker 2: hunt my way in there and sneak in and hunt
• 41:58
  Speaker 2: the ground and slip around and sneak into some bedding
• 42:01
  Speaker 2: areas and just do some crazy stuff just to switch
• 42:04
  Speaker 2: it up, because can't hurt at this point, just being
• 42:07
  Speaker 2: willing to adventure a little bit, try different things, or
• 42:10
  Speaker 2: another thing I haven't done but I keep on threatening
• 42:13
  Speaker 2: to do and I want to do, is like just
• 42:17
  Speaker 2: go up north and track deer in the snow. Try
• 42:20
  Speaker 2: that again. Just drive around, find a track, go for
• 42:24
  Speaker 2: a hike, see if you can walk down a deer.
• 42:25
  Speaker 2: And I'd be thrilled to shoot any buck like that.
• 42:29
  Speaker 2: But we put these like self created restrictions on ourselves
• 42:34
  Speaker 2: or feel like we're obligated to stick with an original
• 42:36
  Speaker 2: goal or whatever, and allow that to kind of paint
• 42:41
  Speaker 2: ourselves into a corner, which is which is a mistake.
• 42:44
  Speaker 4: Probably, dude, we just can't help but trophy hunt, we
• 42:48
  Speaker 4: can't help it. It's so it's just like so ensconced
• 42:52
  Speaker 4: in our like DNA.
• 43:04
  Speaker 2: I can tell you, I mean kind of fast forwarding
• 43:07
  Speaker 2: a little bit into like the good stuff. Like the
• 43:09
  Speaker 2: things that were the highs and the best moments were
• 43:11
  Speaker 2: the moments when I wasn't worried about that, Like the
• 43:14
  Speaker 2: times when I was able to pull myself away from
• 43:16
  Speaker 2: that were the best moments of a year, Like you know,
• 43:20
  Speaker 2: going doing the couple hunts that I have been able
• 43:22
  Speaker 2: to do with my sons so far, super fun. Best
• 43:25
  Speaker 2: moments of my hunting season, uh, hunting with my son
• 43:29
  Speaker 2: for turkeys this spring. We got a turkey together that
• 43:32
  Speaker 2: was a highlight, absolutely incredible. The you know, another thing
• 43:37
  Speaker 2: that stands out, and this is I guess I'm kind
• 43:40
  Speaker 2: of skipping to some of the takeaways or trends and
• 43:42
  Speaker 2: patterns I saw, but but really almost all of the
• 43:45
  Speaker 2: best moments of my year in the outdoors were those
• 43:49
  Speaker 2: excuse me, were those in which I was with people
• 43:53
  Speaker 2: right right. It was like the times that I made
• 43:56
  Speaker 2: time to do something with someone in my life that
• 43:58
  Speaker 2: I care about the are the absolute best. They were
• 44:01
  Speaker 2: not the times when I had the best chance to
• 44:03
  Speaker 2: kill a big, huge buck. It was the time when
• 44:06
  Speaker 2: I was with my dad at deer camp, and we're
• 44:08
  Speaker 2: with Josh and his kids and my kids at deer camp.
• 44:11
  Speaker 2: It was our spring turkey camp where a bunch of
• 44:14
  Speaker 2: my hunting budies all get together for a long weekend
• 44:16
  Speaker 2: and chase turkeys and do a bunch of dumb stuff
• 44:18
  Speaker 2: and have a good time. That's a highlight. And again
• 44:22
  Speaker 2: it gets it gets harder and harder. I think for
• 44:24
  Speaker 2: a lot of us who are trying to kill a
• 44:25
  Speaker 2: bunch of mature bucks, you end up spending a bunch
• 44:28
  Speaker 2: of long days on the road and you hunt by yourself.
• 44:30
  Speaker 2: Here in our case, maybe a camera guy's with us,
• 44:33
  Speaker 2: but we do a bunch of those kinds of trips
• 44:35
  Speaker 2: where you know we're on a mission, you're with your
• 44:38
  Speaker 2: camera guy, you or I know guys who do this
• 44:42
  Speaker 2: like We've got plenty of friends who do this kind
• 44:44
  Speaker 2: of thing, who are like lone wolf superstar deer hunters
• 44:47
  Speaker 2: who feel like they've got to kill four bucks a
• 44:49
  Speaker 2: year or five bucks a year. They travel from place
• 44:51
  Speaker 2: to place, and when you do that, you oftentimes sacrifice
• 44:56
  Speaker 2: time with buddies for more time in the woods, or
• 44:58
  Speaker 2: more time to go to more state or whatever it is.
• 45:02
  Speaker 2: And I keep on seeing over the last couple of
• 45:04
  Speaker 2: years paying attention to this that those are almost always
• 45:07
  Speaker 2: the times when I'm overstressed and not having fun, and
• 45:10
  Speaker 2: the times when I am like, hey, I'm gonna enjoy
• 45:12
  Speaker 2: my time with my friends. You I'm gonna hunt hard
• 45:14
  Speaker 2: and do some good stuff at the same time, I'm
• 45:15
  Speaker 2: gonna have lunch with my friends, or hey, I'm gonna
• 45:17
  Speaker 2: take my kids out for some of these haunts like
• 45:19
  Speaker 2: those end up being the best, So I gotta get
• 45:22
  Speaker 2: better leaning into those.
• 45:24
  Speaker 4: It's tough, buddy, but I'm right there with you, man.
• 45:28
  Speaker 4: I mean, if I if I look back at this
• 45:30
  Speaker 4: year and just think about, like, what were the real highlights.
• 45:35
  Speaker 4: The first one was Turkey season when my daughter's doubled
• 45:38
  Speaker 4: up on this hunt.
• 45:38
  Speaker 3: That was just we had.
• 45:40
  Speaker 4: We had gotten our butts kicked for a couple of days,
• 45:42
  Speaker 4: and then the weather broke and I called in some
• 45:44
  Speaker 4: birds from so far away that shouldn't even have been
• 45:47
  Speaker 4: in play, and they bull shot Jake's the same time,
• 45:50
  Speaker 4: and we're just stoked. It was just it was cool.
• 45:52
  Speaker 4: My buddy and his daughter got to watch it because
• 45:54
  Speaker 4: they were in a blind not too far away, and
• 45:57
  Speaker 4: then that bear with my daughter was for sure the
• 46:01
  Speaker 4: highlight because we you know, I had my daughters over
• 46:03
  Speaker 4: there a whole bunch, baiting the bears and setting up
• 46:07
  Speaker 4: cameras and blinds and you know, trout fishing in the
• 46:10
  Speaker 4: middle of the day or whatever, and just the whole experience,
• 46:14
  Speaker 4: like culminating with her, like making a perfect shot on
• 46:17
  Speaker 4: a bear was like just it was just cool. And
• 46:20
  Speaker 4: then her sister, the one who's just we just dropped
• 46:26
  Speaker 4: an episode a little bit ago where I was hunting
• 46:27
  Speaker 4: with one of my daughters when she drew a bear tag,
• 46:31
  Speaker 4: you know, two years ago now where we went over
• 46:34
  Speaker 4: and kind of did a combo hunt.
• 46:35
  Speaker 3: She killed a spike.
• 46:37
  Speaker 4: This year, we went out the first weekend we could
• 46:40
  Speaker 4: get over there, which was I think in the end
• 46:41
  Speaker 4: of September, and just sitting with her on the ground,
• 46:44
  Speaker 4: so we weren't in a blind for the first time,
• 46:45
  Speaker 4: Like I'm trying to get them hunting a little more
• 46:48
  Speaker 4: than just sitting in a in a blind.
• 46:51
  Speaker 3: And we were sitting on the ground and.
• 46:52
  Speaker 4: It was getting late and I looked over there and
• 46:53
  Speaker 4: this deer walked out and she we had been talking, obviously,
• 46:56
  Speaker 4: and she's she had killed two spikes and she's like,
• 46:59
  Speaker 4: I hope it's a spike. And she's like, I really
• 47:01
  Speaker 4: want to kill a velvet deer. And it was like
• 47:03
  Speaker 4: September twentieth or something. I'm like, well, you're not gonna
• 47:06
  Speaker 4: kill velvet deer. Sorry, just this is not gonna happen.
• 47:10
  Speaker 4: And then I glassed this deer at like forty yards
• 47:12
  Speaker 4: and I'm like, honey, I think it's a spike, and
• 47:14
  Speaker 4: I think he's in velvet and I could hear her
• 47:16
  Speaker 4: breath just like and he walked out and she shot
• 47:20
  Speaker 4: him and I'm glassing and I'm like, I think that's
• 47:22
  Speaker 4: a velvet spike.
• 47:24
  Speaker 3: And it was.
• 47:25
  Speaker 4: And I'll tell you what, man, she was like, she
• 47:29
  Speaker 4: was real happy with herself. So she's she's gone three
• 47:32
  Speaker 4: for three on spikes in the last three years and
• 47:34
  Speaker 4: she's kind of just.
• 47:35
  Speaker 3: Kind of hanging her hat on that.
• 47:37
  Speaker 4: But those three, you know, and then you know, we
• 47:40
  Speaker 4: did some late season hunting. I'm trying to get them
• 47:42
  Speaker 4: to like suffer a little bit and earn it, and dude,
• 47:45
  Speaker 4: they are like there. It's so fun to sort of
• 47:50
  Speaker 4: vicariously experience this through them now, like with their first
• 47:53
  Speaker 4: tree stand hunt, you know, or both of them killed
• 47:56
  Speaker 4: deer from the ground, not in blinds. This year of
• 48:00
  Speaker 4: them had encounters with deer that we almost killed but didn't.
• 48:03
  Speaker 4: And so even with like the limited time of fall
• 48:06
  Speaker 4: and all the school schedules and our you know, our
• 48:08
  Speaker 4: travel schedule and everything, I was like, man, the thing
• 48:11
  Speaker 4: that really kept me upright this year was just stuff
• 48:16
  Speaker 4: with them, and I mean, and we caught a ton
• 48:18
  Speaker 4: of fit.
• 48:18
  Speaker 3: We had a great year fishing too. So yeah, get
• 48:21
  Speaker 3: out with your kids.
• 48:22
  Speaker 2: Yeah, And that was you alluded to the next The
• 48:25
  Speaker 2: other thing I was going to say, other than the
• 48:27
  Speaker 2: fishing or sorry, other than the kids thing was just
• 48:31
  Speaker 2: the other highlights of me here were when I inserted
• 48:33
  Speaker 2: diversity and adventure into our outdoor experience. Even though you
• 48:38
  Speaker 2: and I are whitetail obsessed and that's like our thing,
• 48:41
  Speaker 2: you know, every time we went fishing as a family,
• 48:44
  Speaker 2: every fishing trip this year we did a lot of it.
• 48:47
  Speaker 2: That was so much fun. And that's as we've talked
• 48:49
  Speaker 2: in the past, it's like a pressure release. It's just
• 48:51
  Speaker 2: kind of straight type one fun. There's not all the
• 48:53
  Speaker 2: pressure and expectations. I thought a lot about like, how
• 48:56
  Speaker 2: can I how can I act the way I act
• 48:58
  Speaker 2: when I fish, but while I'm hunt. Is there any
• 49:00
  Speaker 2: way that we can hunt and feel the way we
• 49:02
  Speaker 2: do when we fish, or is it just inherently different?
• 49:06
  Speaker 2: I don't know.
• 49:07
  Speaker 4: I know how how you gotta get yourself a lab
• 49:10
  Speaker 4: you gotta train it for pheasant hunting, and then you
• 49:12
  Speaker 4: got to follow it around in Because I feel the
• 49:16
  Speaker 4: same way when I'm when I'm pheasant hunting as I
• 49:19
  Speaker 4: do when I'm trying to get a SMALLI to come
• 49:21
  Speaker 4: up on top water. I'm like, this is just pure
• 49:23
  Speaker 4: in the moment.
• 49:24
  Speaker 3: It's kind of like.
• 49:26
  Speaker 4: Kind of like Western hunting, where it's like you're just like,
• 49:31
  Speaker 4: what's happening now, Like what's the input now? Like what's
• 49:34
  Speaker 4: gonna happen now, what's gonna happen in the next five minutes.
• 49:37
  Speaker 4: It's just so in the moment and fun.
• 49:39
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, Like there's got to be ways to to
• 49:43
  Speaker 2: bring that, to cross pollinate that somehow. But yeah, like
• 49:46
  Speaker 2: the absolute highlights of the year some epic fishing experiences
• 49:49
  Speaker 2: with the boys. Really getting to see my kids like
• 49:51
  Speaker 2: really figure it out, especially my oldest, Like he's really
• 49:55
  Speaker 2: into fishing and getting good at it, like proficient and
• 49:59
  Speaker 2: like we can be out there and he's just going
• 50:00
  Speaker 2: at it like we're on one camping trip this summer
• 50:03
  Speaker 2: and three days straight, seven plus hours a day, all day,
• 50:07
  Speaker 2: and that's all he wanted to do. Like I didn't.
• 50:09
  Speaker 2: It was like him saying, no, I want to keep going.
• 50:11
  Speaker 2: I want to keep going. There was no like I
• 50:12
  Speaker 2: want to go home, dad. It's like no, I'm just
• 50:14
  Speaker 2: going to cast and cast and cast. He's just having
• 50:16
  Speaker 2: a blast. That was absolute highlight. And then you know
• 50:21
  Speaker 2: my like my Alaska trip, doing the fishing trip and
• 50:26
  Speaker 2: the keys, like just like seeing new places, going new
• 50:28
  Speaker 2: places outside of my comfort zone, that kind of stuff.
• 50:33
  Speaker 2: And again that's something I think can translate to the
• 50:35
  Speaker 2: white tail world too. Is like breaking out of your
• 50:38
  Speaker 2: usual box, adding adventure, adding new things to it, I
• 50:42
  Speaker 2: think is a great way. Like, you know, I feel
• 50:45
  Speaker 2: a need for a new like white tail adventure in
• 50:48
  Speaker 2: my future. I don't know what that's going to look
• 50:49
  Speaker 2: like yet, but whether it'sn't going or maybe it's doing
• 50:52
  Speaker 2: the track in the snow thing like I talked about,
• 50:54
  Speaker 2: or I've threatened to do a backpacking white tail hunt
• 50:58
  Speaker 2: for years, but something, because those those things always end
• 51:02
  Speaker 2: up being a lot of fun when there's not a
• 51:03
  Speaker 2: lot of expectation on the actual kill. Again, it's like, hey,
• 51:06
  Speaker 2: let's go out there, have an adventure, do all this
• 51:08
  Speaker 2: fun stuff and chase some deer for fun and hopefully
• 51:11
  Speaker 2: it works out. But you know it's not going to
• 51:13
  Speaker 2: be a tragedy if you don't kill one fifty. I
• 51:18
  Speaker 2: think that that's that's a big takeaway, is like adventure,
• 51:23
  Speaker 2: diversity and experience and deal with people you care about
• 51:27
  Speaker 2: those things, Like that's the recipe.
• 51:31
  Speaker 4: Right, Well, I mean you touched on the good point
• 51:33
  Speaker 4: there that we don't We talk about some but when
• 51:37
  Speaker 4: you're you kind of keep arcing back to this thing
• 51:40
  Speaker 4: of like when it doesn't have to be the one fifty,
• 51:43
  Speaker 4: when it doesn't have to be the trophy, when it
• 51:44
  Speaker 4: doesn't have to be the mature buck. Most people aren't
• 51:48
  Speaker 4: going to they're not going to go for a little one,
• 51:54
  Speaker 4: or they're not going to still hunt or something when
• 51:56
  Speaker 4: it's like your home ground that you've been working on
• 51:59
  Speaker 4: and have your hit list and right on down the line.
• 52:02
  Speaker 4: So again it's like you you might have to go
• 52:06
  Speaker 4: find that somewhere else where you don't care. Like the
• 52:11
  Speaker 4: some of the most fun that you can have with
• 52:12
  Speaker 4: white til hunting is going somewhere where you absolutely do
• 52:15
  Speaker 4: not expect to shoot a big one, And you're like,
• 52:17
  Speaker 4: now my standards have recalibrated to this four day hunt
• 52:20
  Speaker 4: somewhere else, and it doesn't have to be an out
• 52:22
  Speaker 4: of state trip, you know, Like I think about this
• 52:25
  Speaker 4: in my home state of Minnesota a lot. I mean,
• 52:27
  Speaker 4: I can hunt way vastly diverse types of habitat and
• 52:32
  Speaker 4: terrain and never leave the boundaries of my state, you know.
• 52:36
  Speaker 4: And it's not like unique to Minnesota, right, Like you
• 52:40
  Speaker 4: can people think about you know, you and I love
• 52:42
  Speaker 4: to go to North Kota, right you think about how
• 52:45
  Speaker 4: different the western half of that state is versus the eastern, southern,
• 52:48
  Speaker 4: versus northern. There are some opportunities out there where you
• 52:51
  Speaker 4: don't you don't have to buy that non resident tag
• 52:54
  Speaker 4: and spend a bunch of money and then have that
• 52:55
  Speaker 4: pressure of the non resident trip, because immediately that changes
• 52:59
  Speaker 4: the kind of the vibe of.
• 53:01
  Speaker 3: The whole thing.
• 53:02
  Speaker 4: Sometimes it's like a matter of going an hour away
• 53:05
  Speaker 4: to do that big woods hunt where you're just like
• 53:08
  Speaker 4: trying to track one or something and it's just a
• 53:10
  Speaker 4: different field than going out on your lease or your
• 53:13
  Speaker 4: home farm and being like, well, I haven't got a
• 53:16
  Speaker 4: picture of my number one buck in five days, and
• 53:18
  Speaker 4: maybe the neighbors shot him, or he's nocturnal or whatever.
• 53:21
  Speaker 4: It's like you've you've just like reshuffled the deck completely,
• 53:24
  Speaker 4: even if it's just for like a day, it can
• 53:27
  Speaker 4: be so fun.
• 53:29
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I think that's such a great, such a great point,
• 53:31
  Speaker 2: and I just see it and like some of my
• 53:34
  Speaker 2: other buddies too, like just the the worry, the stress,
• 53:38
  Speaker 2: the pressure we put on, Oh is there gonna be
• 53:41
  Speaker 2: a big one, or you know, the hit list. All
• 53:43
  Speaker 2: this stuff that you're talking about, we've just built We've
• 53:47
  Speaker 2: put all this stuff up on a pedestal. We've built
• 53:49
  Speaker 2: up all of this stuff and made it seem like
• 53:52
  Speaker 2: it's all so important and and it's it's I don't know,
• 53:58
  Speaker 2: we're in some ways we're winning a really good thing.
• 54:01
  Speaker 2: And it's like a collective. It's like it's the social
• 54:04
  Speaker 2: media slash, larger media slash, just the way of the
• 54:07
  Speaker 2: world slash. I don't know what, but it is definitely
• 54:13
  Speaker 2: it's definitely something that I think we as a community
• 54:17
  Speaker 2: have got to keep on thinking about. And I know
• 54:18
  Speaker 2: we've been talking about it for years, but it's not
• 54:21
  Speaker 2: fixing itself. And yeah, I guess I'm just living it.
• 54:26
  Speaker 2: You're living it. We're all living it. But you know,
• 54:30
  Speaker 2: even some of my best hunting buddies that have dealt
• 54:32
  Speaker 2: with us themselves when they end up going instead of
• 54:36
  Speaker 2: you know, like, I've got a friend who hunts in
• 54:39
  Speaker 2: a great area. He's got some really good property and
• 54:42
  Speaker 2: for whatever reason, this year, just there weren't the bucks
• 54:45
  Speaker 2: he was after. Like there's some good bucks, but he
• 54:47
  Speaker 2: wants a big five year old or whatever, and they
• 54:49
  Speaker 2: weren't there. And you know, he's a guy who historically
• 54:51
  Speaker 2: get really stressed about this, and times will get really
• 54:54
  Speaker 2: stressed about this, and like the hunting buddies in our
• 54:56
  Speaker 2: group are kind of giving him a hard time of
• 54:58
  Speaker 2: body doesn't have shit to hunt. But same thing is
• 55:00
  Speaker 2: that you're talking about, Like we've created these crazy standards
• 55:04
  Speaker 2: for ourselves because what you're supposed to do or whatever.
• 55:06
  Speaker 2: There's plenty of deer he'd go and hunt, have a
• 55:08
  Speaker 2: good time with probably, but he's convinced himself that he
• 55:10
  Speaker 2: should only be shooting five and a half year old
• 55:13
  Speaker 2: bucks or one sixties or whatever it is. And so
• 55:16
  Speaker 2: because of that he feels like he has a shitty
• 55:17
  Speaker 2: hunting season. But then when he decides to go trapping,
• 55:21
  Speaker 2: like run the trap line instead, or take his son
• 55:23
  Speaker 2: squirrel hunting, like he has a blast, right, Or when
• 55:26
  Speaker 2: he goes out there and you know, has buddies come
• 55:28
  Speaker 2: and hunt around them and sees them shoot something different,
• 55:31
  Speaker 2: like that's a super fun time too, right, So I think,
• 55:35
  Speaker 2: like there's obvious cures here, We're just allowing expectation or
• 55:39
  Speaker 2: something to get in the way.
• 55:41
  Speaker 4: Well, right, And I mean, one thing that I'm kind
• 55:44
  Speaker 4: of hyper aware of right now is the more that
• 55:47
  Speaker 4: you go out and do this random stuff that maybe
• 55:50
  Speaker 4: doesn't have as much weight as drawn that I would
• 55:52
  Speaker 4: take and trying to kill a one fifty. It's sort
• 55:54
  Speaker 4: of the antidote to being super judgy, right, right. You
• 55:58
  Speaker 4: see this, You see this so often with people who
• 56:00
  Speaker 4: are who have like, you know, somebody is hunting in
• 56:03
  Speaker 4: candy Land somewhere and they're like why why would anybody
• 56:07
  Speaker 4: shoot anything less than a one forty or whatever? And
• 56:10
  Speaker 4: You're like, you know, you have no concept of what
• 56:13
  Speaker 4: other people are going through to hunt, or their time
• 56:16
  Speaker 4: or like what's important to them.
• 56:17
  Speaker 3: And I never do this. I made a mistake.
• 56:20
  Speaker 4: And I looked at the comments when they posted a
• 56:24
  Speaker 4: teaser from that hunt with my daughter. They were they
• 56:27
  Speaker 4: were generally very good, but like literally the first comment
• 56:30
  Speaker 4: was not trying to throw shade here, but why would
• 56:32
  Speaker 4: you shoot that little buck when you could wait for
• 56:35
  Speaker 4: a bigger one? And you know, you know me, I'm
• 56:37
  Speaker 4: a nutcase. So my first reaction is like, I'm like, God,
• 56:42
  Speaker 4: I wish you were standing in front of me. I'd
• 56:43
  Speaker 4: kicking the taint so hard. But I'm like, yeah, she's
• 56:48
  Speaker 4: she's an eleven year old girl hunting in northern Wisconsin
• 56:51
  Speaker 4: and she has a couple of days a season to hunt.
• 56:54
  Speaker 3: Like, it's not your tag, you know what I mean?
• 56:58
  Speaker 4: Like, I the the petty part of me wants to
• 57:01
  Speaker 4: look that guy up and be like, how come your
• 57:03
  Speaker 4: wife's not a ten?
• 57:04
  Speaker 3: Why is she a five? Right?
• 57:06
  Speaker 4: Like you know there are tens out there, right? Why
• 57:08
  Speaker 4: are you rolling around with this average woman when you
• 57:11
  Speaker 4: could have a super model if you just tried harder,
• 57:13
  Speaker 4: Like that would make me a huge prick, right yeah,
• 57:17
  Speaker 4: not my not my journey, right, that's his journey.
• 57:20
  Speaker 3: And I just think that.
• 57:21
  Speaker 4: The more you go out and you're like, you know
• 57:23
  Speaker 4: what I'm getting I'm getting out of my farm that
• 57:26
  Speaker 4: I know really well, or I'm going to get out
• 57:28
  Speaker 4: of the box blind on the food plot and I'm
• 57:29
  Speaker 4: going to go still hunt them or whatever. Like whatever
• 57:32
  Speaker 4: you do, this is like to get you outside of
• 57:34
  Speaker 4: your comfort zone a little bit. You start to like realize, okay,
• 57:37
  Speaker 4: like there's more to this, Like I'm seeing this such
• 57:40
  Speaker 4: a myopic thing, you know, Like a lot of people
• 57:43
  Speaker 4: feel that way about baiting, and I can shooit on
• 57:45
  Speaker 4: baiting with the best of them, But when you go
• 57:47
  Speaker 4: do it in different situations, whether it's in Texas or
• 57:50
  Speaker 4: some other place where you get dump corn on the ground,
• 57:52
  Speaker 4: you go okay, like I get it, Like maybe it's
• 57:54
  Speaker 4: not for you, like but you can see why it
• 57:57
  Speaker 4: would be for somebody else or like what Like it's
• 57:59
  Speaker 4: just like sort of dulls those sharp edges you carry
• 58:02
  Speaker 4: with like that chip on your shoulder, and you're just like okay,
• 58:04
  Speaker 4: Like you know, we're hunting rabbits with antlers here, right,
• 58:06
  Speaker 4: Like should I get super pissed off and go after
• 58:08
  Speaker 4: a stranger over this? I don't know, man, Like is
• 58:10
  Speaker 4: it that important?
• 58:12
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I think that's a great I think that's a
• 58:15
  Speaker 2: really good place to end this out is is both
• 58:19
  Speaker 2: being a little bit more I don't know if it's
• 58:22
  Speaker 2: forgiving or kind. I mean you said, like being kinder
• 58:26
  Speaker 2: to others, not being so damned judgy, not you know,
• 58:29
  Speaker 2: all that kind of stuff, and then also being a
• 58:31
  Speaker 2: little bit kinder to ourselves and releasing some of the
• 58:33
  Speaker 2: pressure off ourselves, getting back to having fun, focusing on
• 58:37
  Speaker 2: what's important here. I think if we can do those
• 58:40
  Speaker 2: two broad sets of things going in, twenty twenty five
• 58:45
  Speaker 2: should be a dang good year.
• 58:48
  Speaker 4: Maybe, I hope, so, Buddy, for your sake in mind
• 58:51
  Speaker 4: and everybody who's listening, I hope so, buddy.
• 58:54
  Speaker 2: And on that note, Tony, appreciate you joining me. Let's
• 58:58
  Speaker 2: do our best to make twenty five a good one,
• 59:00
  Speaker 2: and there'll be lots of fun adventures ahead for us
• 59:02
  Speaker 2: to share, and looking forward to hearing from plenty of
• 59:05
  Speaker 2: listeners about their journeys too. So without any more I
• 59:10
  Speaker 2: don't know crazy stories I'm Tony about kicking people and
• 59:13
  Speaker 2: the others. Let's wrap this one up and thank you
• 59:17
  Speaker 2: for joining us, folks, and until next week, stay wired
• 59:21
  Speaker 2: to hunt, all right, And that's it for us today.
• 59:27
  Speaker 2: Appreciate you being here. Thank you for kicking off the
• 59:30
  Speaker 2: new year with Tony and I. It's gonna be a
• 59:32
  Speaker 2: good one. I don't care what Tony says. We're gonna
• 59:35
  Speaker 2: have a terrific twenty twenty five and I'm sure you will,
• 59:39
  Speaker 2: and I'm excited to be sharing it with you. Thanks
• 59:41
  Speaker 2: for being a part of this community, and thanks for
• 59:44
  Speaker 2: staying wired to hunt