Latest / Wired To Hunt Podcast / Ep. 721: Foundations - Deer Hunting Single-Point Failures
Transcript
- 0:01Speaker 1: Welcome to the Wired to Hunt Foundations podcast, your guide
- 0:05Speaker 1: to the fundamentals of better deer hunting, presented by first Light,
- 0:09Speaker 1: creating proven versatile hunting apparel for the stand, saddle or blind.
- 0:14Speaker 1: First Light, Go Farther, Stay Longer, and now your host
- 0:19Speaker 1: Tony Peterson.
- 0:20Speaker 2: Hey everyone, welcome to the Wired to Hunt Foundation's podcast,
- 0:23Speaker 2: which is brought to you by first Light. I'm your host,
- 0:24Speaker 2: Tony Peterson, and today's episode is all about all of
- 0:27Speaker 2: the things that can go wrong when we hunt and
- 0:29Speaker 2: how to eliminate as many of them as possible. Before
- 0:41Speaker 2: I get into this, I want to let you know
- 0:43Speaker 2: that the Meat Eat or Trivia board game it's finally available.
- 0:47Speaker 2: This is a game where conservation literally wins every time,
- 0:51Speaker 2: and that holds true when you buy it as well,
- 0:54Speaker 2: since one dollar from each purchase goes directly to conservation. So,
- 0:59Speaker 2: if you've been listenstening and thinking that the crew at
- 1:01Speaker 2: Meat Eater is comprised of a bunch of dim witted,
- 1:03Speaker 2: slack jawed First Light flunkies who really don't know the
- 1:06Speaker 2: difference between a quail and an ostrich, now is your
- 1:09Speaker 2: chance to show your stuff to your family or your
- 1:12Speaker 2: deer camp brothers and sisters or your bar buddies, head
- 1:16Speaker 2: over to the medeater dot com check it out. While
- 1:18Speaker 2: you're there, keep a lookout for other deals too. I
- 1:21Speaker 2: know we have a lot of sales here at Mediator,
- 1:24Speaker 2: but our Black Friday sale is a monster. There's a
- 1:27Speaker 2: ton of different products marked way down. So whether you're
- 1:30Speaker 2: having a little treat yourself moment or you need to
- 1:32Speaker 2: get a little Christmas shopping done, you might find something
- 1:35Speaker 2: at the site that is perfect for either, and it
- 1:38Speaker 2: might just be way way marked down. Okay about this
- 1:43Speaker 2: episode now. While our Southern hunting brothers and sisters might
- 1:47Speaker 2: still be experiencing lots of rut, anticipation, and excitement, many
- 1:51Speaker 2: of us are looking at the reality of the situation
- 1:53Speaker 2: as it is now. The rut, for the most part,
- 1:56Speaker 2: is functionally over. Sure, you can chase the second run
- 1:59Speaker 2: in a couple of or you could spend your time
- 2:01Speaker 2: setting I don't know, unicorn traps probably have similar results.
- 2:06Speaker 2: This week, it's a time for reflection and a time
- 2:09Speaker 2: to think long and hard about what went wrong on
- 2:11Speaker 2: your hunts. So buckle up, my little ombres, because it's
- 2:15Speaker 2: time to think about failure. All right, you guys, know
- 2:24Speaker 2: that I'm a space nerd. I fly that flag loud
- 2:26Speaker 2: and prout, and even though Mark tries to make fun
- 2:29Speaker 2: of me for it, we all know that space is
- 2:31Speaker 2: ten billion times more interesting than pollinators or whatever weird
- 2:35Speaker 2: shrub fetish the old mustachioed madman has. I don't remember
- 2:39Speaker 2: when it was, and I'm too lazy to dig through
- 2:42Speaker 2: my archives, but at one point I released a Foundations
- 2:45Speaker 2: episode that was based around the building of the James
- 2:47Speaker 2: Web Space Telescope and how they got into space, which
- 2:52Speaker 2: was no small feet. It took a huge team of
- 2:54Speaker 2: people way too smart to spend their free time sitting
- 2:58Speaker 2: in a Camo diper seventeen f feed up in a tree,
- 3:01Speaker 2: trying and mostly failing to kill a deer. One of
- 3:04Speaker 2: the interesting things about the process for building that telescope,
- 3:08Speaker 2: which has allowed us to image galaxies that are as
- 3:10Speaker 2: far away as about thirteen point four billion light years,
- 3:14Speaker 2: or to frame that up, take thirteen point four billion
- 3:17Speaker 2: times six trillion if you want to know how many
- 3:19Speaker 2: miles away that is. This telescope, which is a one
- 3:24Speaker 2: of a kind. And I mean, after all, you couldn't
- 3:28Speaker 2: just send the blueprints to China or some other manufacturing
- 3:31Speaker 2: nation and expect them to turn these suckers out. It
- 3:33Speaker 2: literally is a one of a kind thing. This thing
- 3:37Speaker 2: was decades in the making, and it's a piece of
- 3:40Speaker 2: finely tooed scientific instruments that could fail in so many
- 3:45Speaker 2: different ways. That's not even addressing the big one, which
- 3:49Speaker 2: is just getting it into space. Rockets and their highly
- 3:53Speaker 2: flammable rocket fuel occasionally explode long before delivering their payloads
- 3:58Speaker 2: into space. Now, when something like the James Web Space
- 4:01Speaker 2: Telescope gets into space, it's not a time to cheer
- 4:05Speaker 2: too loudly just yet. Due to the size of it
- 4:08Speaker 2: and the design, this thing had to be folded up
- 4:11Speaker 2: and built to unfold and unfurl while it took a
- 4:14Speaker 2: million mile journey to its final destination in space. There,
- 4:18Speaker 2: it had to finish unfolding and unfurling, and then calibrate
- 4:22Speaker 2: several mirror panels while also cooling off to a temperature
- 4:25Speaker 2: that will allow it to image infra red light without
- 4:28Speaker 2: any interference. I can't imagine the anxiety of being involved
- 4:32Speaker 2: with that, mostly because the entire thing was built with
- 4:36Speaker 2: three hundred and forty four single point failures. If any
- 4:40Speaker 2: of those three hundred and forty four failures happened, the
- 4:43Speaker 2: results were pretty severe and would disrupt the mission. In
- 4:48Speaker 2: this case, from the super thin sunshield spreading out like
- 4:52Speaker 2: wings to the honeycomb shape primary mirror that is coated
- 4:56Speaker 2: with gold and looks pretty bad ass. Things had to
- 4:58Speaker 2: go perfectly right. If one of those three hundred and
- 5:02Speaker 2: forty four had gone wrong, it's very likely that we
- 5:05Speaker 2: would have launched a ten billion dollar paper weight into space.
- 5:09Speaker 2: This is the nature of single point failures, but doesn't
- 5:13Speaker 2: address them completely. A failure at one point might not
- 5:16Speaker 2: necessarily mean a direct end to the functionality, but it
- 5:20Speaker 2: would mean that other single point failures were about to happen.
- 5:23Speaker 2: That's the old casgating failures concept. I know this sounds
- 5:27Speaker 2: like a giant roll of the dice with a lot
- 5:28Speaker 2: of taxpayer money involved, but the truth is the team
- 5:31Speaker 2: that designed this deep space observer left as little two
- 5:35Speaker 2: chance as possible. They weren't just crossing their fingers that
- 5:39Speaker 2: it would work. They built in redundancies when they could,
- 5:43Speaker 2: and were very diligent about testing and retesting the whole
- 5:46Speaker 2: thing in a lab before shooting it off into space.
- 5:49Speaker 2: It worked even when the odds seemed like they were
- 5:51Speaker 2: way way stacked against the whole project. This, my friends,
- 5:57Speaker 2: is kind of like the odds of going out on
- 5:59Speaker 2: any given city and killing a big buck or a
- 6:01Speaker 2: medium sized buck, or if it's anything like my season,
- 6:05Speaker 2: a dough. There are single point failures in deer hunting,
- 6:10Speaker 2: and they all have an opportunity to take us from
- 6:12Speaker 2: deer hunting heroes to zero's real fast. Let me tell
- 6:16Speaker 2: you about two that recently happened to me to frame
- 6:19Speaker 2: this whole thing up. A couple of weeks ago, I
- 6:22Speaker 2: drove to the great state of North Dakota to try
- 6:24Speaker 2: to arrow a public land buck. The spot I walked
- 6:26Speaker 2: into is one that I hunted for a few days
- 6:29Speaker 2: in twenty nineteen. Now I sat there for those days
- 6:32Speaker 2: and I killed a great buck. You know, it's a
- 6:35Speaker 2: pinch point along a river, and it's prime spot for
- 6:38Speaker 2: bucks traveling during the rut. I figured, with the massive
- 6:41Speaker 2: cold front we had and the general lay of the land,
- 6:44Speaker 2: it would sort of be a done deal before too long.
- 6:47Speaker 2: And honestly, the first year I saw after a few
- 6:50Speaker 2: hours of sitting was a very solid eleven pointer he
- 6:54Speaker 2: walked into twenty six yards, and when my cameraman finally
- 6:56Speaker 2: had a clear view, I realized I was about to
- 6:59Speaker 2: kill a big, big public land buck on my very
- 7:01Speaker 2: first sit. It was one of those shots where the
- 7:04Speaker 2: buck was totally relaxed. He was just munching on acorns,
- 7:08Speaker 2: and I had all the time in the world. Now,
- 7:10Speaker 2: I remember my pin being right on his vitals, and
- 7:12Speaker 2: when I hit the release, it should have been all over,
- 7:16Speaker 2: but what it sounded like was a very loud twang,
- 7:19Speaker 2: and I watched a very healthy deer run away. I
- 7:22Speaker 2: still don't know for sure what went wrong, but upon
- 7:25Speaker 2: many many replays of the whole thing, it's clear that
- 7:28Speaker 2: my string caught on something. And listen, I was all
- 7:32Speaker 2: bulked up because it was really cold and super windy,
- 7:36Speaker 2: and I just didn't have the clearance I needed for
- 7:38Speaker 2: that shot angle. That's a single point failure. It was sad,
- 7:43Speaker 2: but it got a lot sadder as I was recapping
- 7:46Speaker 2: the miss with the camera, and halfway through the cameraman's
- 7:50Speaker 2: eyes bugged out and he said, big buck right there.
- 7:53Speaker 2: I turned around and found out that he was not
- 7:55Speaker 2: lying ten yards away looking at me was a really
- 7:59Speaker 2: good buck. He wanted to get past us, but he
- 8:02Speaker 2: wasn't sure since he knew there were two dudes in
- 8:05Speaker 2: the tree right next to him. When he looked away,
- 8:07Speaker 2: I drew, and when he started to move, I did
- 8:09Speaker 2: something really, really dumb. I quietly murped him in my head.
- 8:16Speaker 2: I thought he was leaving, so I tried to buy
- 8:18Speaker 2: myself an extra two seconds to aim and shoot. But
- 8:21Speaker 2: he was super close, and he was on edge, and
- 8:24Speaker 2: he wasn't having none of that shit. Single point failure
- 8:28Speaker 2: number two, dumb, dumb, dumb. The ones that come directly
- 8:33Speaker 2: from our brain and influence our actions through an encounter
- 8:36Speaker 2: are the hardest to address, So I'm going to get
- 8:38Speaker 2: to them later. Right now, I want to address some
- 8:41Speaker 2: of the single point failures that just don't need to happen.
- 8:45Speaker 2: I've been hunting cold weather white tails since I could hunt,
- 8:48Speaker 2: and when that big eleven point came in, I just
- 8:51Speaker 2: bulked up and closed. I had never worn before. I
- 8:53Speaker 2: drew on stand, but I didn't really check my string clearance.
- 8:56Speaker 2: I didn't think I needed to do. You know how
- 8:59Speaker 2: dumb that was, Because I do. That's a single point
- 9:02Speaker 2: failure you can address so easily. Another one might be
- 9:06Speaker 2: just how loud your stand and stick set up is,
- 9:10Speaker 2: or if you aren't going mobile, how loud your setups
- 9:12Speaker 2: are in general. Do you have a ladder stand that
- 9:15Speaker 2: always pops super loudly when you climb in. Does it
- 9:18Speaker 2: have those loose d clip things holding a ladder together
- 9:21Speaker 2: that are always making noise? Have you climbed in there
- 9:25Speaker 2: when it's sixty degrees and when it's ten degrees because
- 9:28Speaker 2: there might be a difference. One of the things I
- 9:31Speaker 2: did this year when I had to hunt with Steve
- 9:33Speaker 2: Ranella down in Oklahoma was it I bought a bunch
- 9:36Speaker 2: of extra random stuff like toe ropes. I didn't know
- 9:39Speaker 2: if he or the camera guys would have the right
- 9:41Speaker 2: stuff for tree stand hunting, so I picked up some
- 9:43Speaker 2: extra stuff just in case that you always need on
- 9:46Speaker 2: every hunt. And the toe ropes I bought, they all
- 9:49Speaker 2: have little metal carabiners on them. And you know what
- 9:52Speaker 2: happens when you're swinging ropes with little metal carabiners on
- 9:54Speaker 2: them around, They ping off other metal pieces of gear.
- 9:59Speaker 2: Why we think we need constantly improve on good old
- 10:02Speaker 2: no metal rope is beyond me. Why I use that
- 10:06Speaker 2: stuff when I know better is also beyond me. Now
- 10:11Speaker 2: that might not be a single point failure in the
- 10:13Speaker 2: realm of a ruining a hunt type of thing, But
- 10:16Speaker 2: why risk it sitting a spot with the wrong wind.
- 10:20Speaker 2: Now that's a single point failure, that's a big one.
- 10:24Speaker 2: But it isn't as simple as the wind blowing right
- 10:26Speaker 2: to where you think the deer will be. Of course,
- 10:28Speaker 2: that will derail your plans most likely, but too perfect
- 10:32Speaker 2: of a wind probably will too, at least in certain
- 10:35Speaker 2: setups that aren't on movement funneling locations. If the deer
- 10:39Speaker 2: have the option to get the wind in their favor
- 10:41Speaker 2: when they travel, they almost always will. Now, if that's
- 10:45Speaker 2: the case on your perfect wind setup, your wind actually
- 10:48Speaker 2: might not be as good as it seems. You probably
- 10:51Speaker 2: know plenty of issues we often have with gear and
- 10:55Speaker 2: with where we choose to hunt based on conditions. But
- 10:58Speaker 2: do you know what the source of most of our
- 11:00Speaker 2: hunting single point failures is our brains, which have a
- 11:05Speaker 2: tendency to function it less than optimal when a deer
- 11:08Speaker 2: we want to shoot makes its presence known. The problem
- 11:11Speaker 2: with this is that we feel like we need to
- 11:13Speaker 2: make something happen. That little mirp that I gave that
- 11:17Speaker 2: second North Dakota buck, it was a huge single point failure.
- 11:21Speaker 2: It literally cost me that deer, and I have no
- 11:24Speaker 2: one to blame but my own dumb ass. I'll never
- 11:27Speaker 2: forget my good buddy telling me a story about hunting
- 11:29Speaker 2: with a cousin of his, Like fifteen years ago. My
- 11:33Speaker 2: buddy was running a camera and his cousin was running
- 11:35Speaker 2: a bow. So as soon as they saw a good
- 11:37Speaker 2: buck walking their way in the woods, my buddy started filming.
- 11:41Speaker 2: What surprised him was hearing his cousin shuffle around and
- 11:45Speaker 2: then suddenly bang his rattling antlers together. That buck looked up,
- 11:48Speaker 2: said ah, hell no, and turned around. Now let me
- 11:52Speaker 2: explain this. That buck was walking in naturally, he probably
- 11:57Speaker 2: knew there weren't two big bucks about to square eye
- 12:00Speaker 2: sixty yards in front of him. You got the hunter
- 12:02Speaker 2: panicked and try to make something happen. Single point failure,
- 12:06Speaker 2: and man, that's a doozy closing time. Not when the
- 12:11Speaker 2: bars are shutting down, but when it's time for you
- 12:13Speaker 2: to seal the deal on a deer or where a
- 12:16Speaker 2: hell of a lot of single point failures come into play.
- 12:19Speaker 2: This is one of the reasons I'm pretty sick of
- 12:21Speaker 2: trophy hunting. Honestly, I know we all want to kill
- 12:24Speaker 2: big bucks, but you'll never be good at that unless
- 12:27Speaker 2: you get good at killing does and little bucks. There's
- 12:30Speaker 2: no jump in the line on this one. And I'm
- 12:31Speaker 2: sorry to tell you that the process of ranging a
- 12:34Speaker 2: deer and finding the exact moment to draw, using the
- 12:37Speaker 2: right pin or dialing in correctly, and then if you
- 12:39Speaker 2: have to stopping the deer to execute the shot man,
- 12:43Speaker 2: any of those things can go wrong, and when they do,
- 12:47Speaker 2: most of the time, the whole thing's over. What compounds
- 12:50Speaker 2: that issue is that if you take some time to
- 12:52Speaker 2: figure out how to shoot four ky's and two year olds,
- 12:55Speaker 2: they may let you know some of those single point
- 12:57Speaker 2: failures slide that a mature deer just wouldn't. And on
- 13:01Speaker 2: that note, let me tell you something else. It's often
- 13:04Speaker 2: harder to earn a really good shot opportunity and see
- 13:06Speaker 2: it through on a mature dough than a mature buck
- 13:09Speaker 2: in high pressure areas. A mature dough will just not
- 13:13Speaker 2: tolerate your failures, and she's never going to be out
- 13:17Speaker 2: of her mind crazy with lust like her boyfriend might be.
- 13:20Speaker 2: Remember that in your process to become a better deer hunter. Now,
- 13:25Speaker 2: the more you work through a complex ripe for disaster
- 13:28Speaker 2: situation like trying to shoot a deer with a pointy stick.
- 13:31Speaker 2: The easier it becomes for you to engineer a scenario
- 13:34Speaker 2: where all of those single point failures remain unfailed. That's
- 13:40Speaker 2: not a word. I'm a writer, I swear, although I
- 13:42Speaker 2: am an outdoor writer. So the story kind of tracks.
- 13:45Speaker 2: Of course, long before you get a shot. You might
- 13:48Speaker 2: have set yourself up for a single point failure that
- 13:50Speaker 2: you don't even understand. I've talked about this a few times,
- 13:54Speaker 2: but recently witnessed it in the northern Wisconsin. And I'll
- 13:57Speaker 2: tell you what laziness in general is your enemy. It's
- 14:01Speaker 2: a breeding ground for single point failures. You know, from
- 14:04Speaker 2: hunting easy stands to just not really scouting to you
- 14:07Speaker 2: name it. But one area where it's obvious to me
- 14:10Speaker 2: is in where you park your vehicle. I have a
- 14:13Speaker 2: neighbor to one of my Wisconsin properties who has forty acres.
- 14:18Speaker 2: The front half is a hayfield and the back half
- 14:21Speaker 2: is part high woods and part swamp. I'm just making
- 14:24Speaker 2: an educated guess here, but he's probably hunting the high
- 14:27Speaker 2: woods which borders the Field's a strip of cover that's
- 14:31Speaker 2: maybe one hundred yards wide from the look of it.
- 14:32Speaker 2: On on x now when I was there, hunting my
- 14:35Speaker 2: property next to his. Couple weeks ago. I saw his
- 14:39Speaker 2: truck part right on the edge of that high woods,
- 14:42Speaker 2: right on the edge of the open hayfield during the rut.
- 14:46Speaker 2: Here's the thing about that, Any deer that comes into
- 14:49Speaker 2: that field is going to spook because that truck is
- 14:51Speaker 2: only there when he hunts. Any deer that sees that
- 14:54Speaker 2: truck through the woods, he's probably gonna spook or get edgy.
- 14:57Speaker 2: And sure that might just be alone dough that's coming
- 15:01Speaker 2: through that freaks out a bit or a little spike,
- 15:03Speaker 2: but those negative reactions tend to change the vibe of
- 15:05Speaker 2: the woods. What's worse is that forty acres is roughly
- 15:09Speaker 2: four hundred yards by four hundred yards. If he parked
- 15:13Speaker 2: down the road and walked in, it would maybe tack
- 15:16Speaker 2: on an extra ten minutes, but would almost guarantee a
- 15:20Speaker 2: different better hunt. To me, that's a single point failure.
- 15:24Speaker 2: That's just kind of unacceptable. And yes, he can walk
- 15:28Speaker 2: just fine. He's younger than I am and not suffering
- 15:30Speaker 2: from some degenerative disease or recovering from a nasty skydiving accident. Now,
- 15:35Speaker 2: I recently did a podcast with Mark where we talked
- 15:39Speaker 2: about this quite a bit. And the truth is, while
- 15:42Speaker 2: I disagree with Kenyan on a lot of things, like
- 15:44Speaker 2: the proper facial hair for a man, he's right about
- 15:47Speaker 2: how he thinks through hunting scenarios before he sets up.
- 15:50Speaker 2: He's kind of a what can go wrong, probably will
- 15:53Speaker 2: go wrong kind of hunter, and I am too. This
- 15:56Speaker 2: is because there are hundreds of variables during every one
- 15:59Speaker 2: of your hunts that is way beyond your control. What
- 16:03Speaker 2: is in your control are hundreds of other variables that
- 16:06Speaker 2: you should consider with most of your setups. I think
- 16:09Speaker 2: this might be the biggest white tail single point failure
- 16:12Speaker 2: out there, which is not really considering how many things
- 16:15Speaker 2: can go wrong and not making a valiant effort to
- 16:18Speaker 2: at least curb the most obvious ones, you know, the
- 16:21Speaker 2: easiest ones to address, so to speak, because really, becoming
- 16:25Speaker 2: a consistently successful white tail hunter is just kind of
- 16:28Speaker 2: a war of attrition against your own ignorance and bad habits.
- 16:32Speaker 2: If that sounds too harsh, let me put it in
- 16:34Speaker 2: a different way. Personally, I'm always fighting my own laziness
- 16:39Speaker 2: and my own second guessing. I'm constantly pulled toward easy
- 16:42Speaker 2: setups when I know that a little extra work is
- 16:45Speaker 2: almost always a better strategy. Experience teaches you the best
- 16:49Speaker 2: way to do this stuff, but it doesn't totally erase
- 16:52Speaker 2: our desires to shortcut the whole process and just kind
- 16:55Speaker 2: of phone it in. But when we do that, that's
- 16:58Speaker 2: not where the rewards come from, and it's mostly a
- 17:01Speaker 2: recipe for frustration. A better bet that seems, you know,
- 17:05Speaker 2: like less fun because it's more work, is to just
- 17:07Speaker 2: put in the effort, think through what you're doing and
- 17:11Speaker 2: why you're doing it and what can go wrong if X,
- 17:14Speaker 2: Y or Z happens. You don't have to overthink it
- 17:17Speaker 2: to the point of vapor locking your brain, but you
- 17:19Speaker 2: should consider, you know, what are some of the biggest
- 17:22Speaker 2: single point failures you've dealt with, and try to figure
- 17:24Speaker 2: out how to mitigate them. Now, eventually some of the
- 17:28Speaker 2: issues that constantly plag other hunters will be nothing more
- 17:32Speaker 2: than a distant memory for you, and you can work
- 17:34Speaker 2: on more problems. This is a good strategy for life. Honestly,
- 17:38Speaker 2: take care of something little and let that good habit
- 17:41Speaker 2: snowball into something else, because if we go the other way,
- 17:44Speaker 2: the single point failures might stack up into those cast
- 17:47Speaker 2: gating failures, and that is not a fun place to be.
- 17:50Speaker 2: Think about this and think about coming back next week,
- 17:53Speaker 2: because I'm going to talk about muzzle or hunting and
- 17:55Speaker 2: why I think it's the best opportunity for bow hunters
- 17:58Speaker 2: who want a little extra firepower on their side while
- 18:01Speaker 2: they hunt a season that most other hunters just don't
- 18:03Speaker 2: care a whole lot about. That's it for this week.
- 18:06Speaker 2: I'm Tony Peterson. This has been the Wire to Hunt
- 18:08Speaker 2: Foundations podcast, which is brought to you by First Light.
- 18:11Speaker 2: As always, thank you so much for listening and so
- 18:14Speaker 2: much for your support. As I mentioned in the beginning,
- 18:17Speaker 2: Mediator has a monster sale going on right now. Head
- 18:19Speaker 2: on over to the site. You'll see tons of stuff
- 18:21Speaker 2: marked way way down, and if you want more content.
- 18:26Speaker 2: While you're there, you can check out articles written by me, Mark,
- 18:30Speaker 2: guys like Bo Martonic, Alex Gilstrom, Addamore, whole bunch of
- 18:34Speaker 2: really good whitetail hunters. And you can find all of
- 18:37Speaker 2: our other podcasts and a whole bunch of video series
- 18:40Speaker 2: over there at the mediatter dot com. Go check it out.