Latest / Wired To Hunt Podcast / Ep. 850: Foundations - Give Yourself a Little Deer Hunting Grace

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Ep. 850: Foundations - Give Yourself a Little Deer Hunting Grace · Wired To Hunt Podcast

0:01
Speaker 1: Welcome to the Wired to Hunt Foundations podcast, your guide
0:05
Speaker 1: to the fundamentals of better deer hunting, presented by first Light,
0:09
Speaker 1: creating proven versatile hunting apparel for the stand, saddle or blind.
0:14
Speaker 1: First Light Go Farther, Stay Longer, and now your host
0:19
Speaker 1: Tony Peterson.
0:20
Speaker 2: Hey everyone, welcome to the Wired to Hunt Foundation's podcast,
0:23
Speaker 2: which has brought to you by first Light. I'm your host,
0:25
Speaker 2: Tony Peterson, and today I'm going to talk about learning
0:27
Speaker 2: to move on from your deer hunting mistakes. All right,
0:34
Speaker 2: before I get into this, I need to do this
0:36
Speaker 2: because I'm bound by the reality that I need a
0:38
Speaker 2: job to buy food for my kids, and I don't know.
0:41
Speaker 2: There is the reality that phishing lures are really expensive.
0:44
Speaker 2: So employment is a good thing for me. Right now,
0:47
Speaker 2: we have an enormous Black Friday sale going on. You
0:51
Speaker 2: want hunting, You're at a steep discount.
0:53
Speaker 3: This is it.
0:54
Speaker 2: I know you've heard it before, you're going to hear
0:55
Speaker 2: it again, but this is a good one. In fact,
0:57
Speaker 2: it's the biggest sale of the year here at Meat Eater.
0:59
Speaker 2: I want to find some good hunting gear. Go check
1:02
Speaker 2: it out at the media dot Com. At least take
1:04
Speaker 2: a look around, you might find something you absolutely have
1:07
Speaker 2: to have, and if you do, it's very likely you're
1:10
Speaker 2: not going to pay full price for it. All Right,
1:12
Speaker 2: this episode is one I really don't want to do,
1:15
Speaker 2: but I'm going to. I'm having a weird season, and
1:18
Speaker 2: it's mostly weird because I don't feel like I hunted
1:20
Speaker 2: very well. I mean a lot of mistakes this year,
1:22
Speaker 2: and some of them really bother me. I'm going to
1:24
Speaker 2: talk about that, but also the reality of us all
1:27
Speaker 2: out there doing our thing and making huge mistakes, and
1:30
Speaker 2: of course how to get past them. It's hard for
1:38
Speaker 2: us today to realize how crazy it is that companies
1:41
Speaker 2: like SpaceX and rocket Lab can put dozens of rockets
1:44
Speaker 2: in their payloads into space in any given year. Hell,
1:47
Speaker 2: SpaceX is on track to launch like two hundred times
1:50
Speaker 2: next year. It wasn't that long ago that there was
1:52
Speaker 2: no reliability in getting anything out of Earth's gravity well,
1:55
Speaker 2: and if we did, it wasn't guarantee that whatever we
1:58
Speaker 2: sent up would function at all. The history of our
2:00
Speaker 2: space race with Russia, in our space program in general,
2:04
Speaker 2: is rife with mistakes. One of the first occurred when
2:07
Speaker 2: NASA decided it was time to send something to Venus
2:09
Speaker 2: to take a look around way back in nineteen sixty two.
2:13
Speaker 2: Back then, we were trying real hard to make Russia
2:16
Speaker 2: look like total amateurs when it came to rocket technology,
2:19
Speaker 2: so we poured some serious years into developing interplanetary technology.
2:23
Speaker 2: So on July twenty second of that year, the big
2:26
Speaker 2: brains at NASA sent the Mariner one probe toward Venus.
2:30
Speaker 2: Its job was to gather info on the planet and
2:32
Speaker 2: help us learn better how to send more stuff into
2:35
Speaker 2: space for scientific research. This might seem a little mundane
2:38
Speaker 2: these days, but it was a different story back then. Hell,
2:41
Speaker 2: that was only fifty nine years after Orville and Wilbur
2:45
Speaker 2: Wright took the first man flight ever in their little airplane,
2:48
Speaker 2: which was get this, powered by a twelve horsepower gas engine.
2:52
Speaker 2: We moved the tech needle a long ways in those
2:55
Speaker 2: six decades, and sending a crude robot to another planet
2:58
Speaker 2: in our Solar system.
2:59
Speaker 3: Was a huge, huge deal.
3:01
Speaker 2: The whole thing costs eighty million dollars, which in today's
3:04
Speaker 2: money would be ten x that. It only took a
3:07
Speaker 2: few seconds after the highly anticipated launch that it became
3:10
Speaker 2: clear the rocket wasn't headed to Venus, but was far
3:13
Speaker 2: more likely to crash into one of the busier shipping
3:15
Speaker 2: lanes in the Atlantic Ocean. Instead of letting that happen,
3:18
Speaker 2: the flight director had to do what flight directors hope
3:21
Speaker 2: they never have to do, which has essentially hit the
3:24
Speaker 2: self destruct button and blow that sum bitch up. When
3:27
Speaker 2: they started to do a post mortem on what went wrong,
3:30
Speaker 2: they ended up realizing that someone who had written code
3:32
Speaker 2: for the guidance program had misplaced a hyphen, a simple
3:37
Speaker 2: bit of punctuation, and suddenly years of work and an
3:40
Speaker 2: unfathomable amount of money went literally up in smoke. Imagine
3:45
Speaker 2: being the engineer who wrote that code when the word
3:48
Speaker 2: got out. I can't prove this, so I'm just filling
3:50
Speaker 2: in the blanks here, but I'm guessing he finished out
3:53
Speaker 2: his career doing some landscaping or something non rocket science related.
3:57
Speaker 2: I need stories like this in my life, and maybe
3:59
Speaker 2: you do too. One thing I've noticed with a lot
4:01
Speaker 2: of folks who reach out to me about deer hunting
4:03
Speaker 2: is how they want to share their successes with me
4:06
Speaker 2: after a long road of mistakes. Sometimes it's people who
4:09
Speaker 2: have actually overcome the worst of them and have killed
4:11
Speaker 2: a good one, And sometimes it's people who are stuck
4:14
Speaker 2: in the mistake zone and they don't see a way out.
4:17
Speaker 2: I have good news and bad news on that front.
4:20
Speaker 2: The mistake zone doesn't ever really leave you. If you
4:23
Speaker 2: think the best of the best do this stuff and
4:25
Speaker 2: don't make mistakes, you're way wrong. They do all the time.
4:29
Speaker 2: They just make a few more of the right decisions
4:31
Speaker 2: and a lot of folks, and they don't let the
4:33
Speaker 2: mistakes derail them for their mission. I have a hard
4:36
Speaker 2: time with this. Last season, I danuear killed every buck
4:39
Speaker 2: that walked by me. Public land, private land, you name it.
4:42
Speaker 2: The season just went well. This year, it feels different,
4:46
Speaker 2: even though on paper, I've had a decent season. My
4:49
Speaker 2: daughters have killed two deer and a bear, which is great.
4:52
Speaker 2: I'm up to four deer as of this writing, and
4:54
Speaker 2: for most folks four deer in a season would be
4:57
Speaker 2: a pretty good one.
4:58
Speaker 3: But here's the thing.
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Speaker 2: I didn't do my job very well on a couple
5:01
Speaker 2: of them, and that bothers me so much. If I'm
5:04
Speaker 2: being totally honest, most of my mistakes this year have
5:07
Speaker 2: been while filming hunts, which happens. There's a different level
5:10
Speaker 2: of pressure there, and it doesn't do a head case
5:12
Speaker 2: like me much good. I started out in North Dakota
5:15
Speaker 2: this year and missed a giant buck right away, simply
5:18
Speaker 2: because I guessed what distance he'd be when he walked
5:21
Speaker 2: through and didn't realize he was much closer when I
5:23
Speaker 2: finally settled in to shoot. It was dumb, dumb, dumb,
5:26
Speaker 2: but I've missed big bucks before. What sucks when you
5:29
Speaker 2: do that is hunting your ass off for several days
5:32
Speaker 2: after and then deciding that a doe would be just
5:34
Speaker 2: a fine option to wrap up a trip, because venison
5:37
Speaker 2: in the cooler is better than not in my opinion.
5:40
Speaker 2: So when I went to do just that, I was
5:42
Speaker 2: sitting in a very awkward position, and I had told
5:45
Speaker 2: myself roughly I don't know a thousand times during that
5:47
Speaker 2: sit that I needed to check and recheck my site's
5:50
Speaker 2: bubble level because I was bound to cant my bow.
5:54
Speaker 2: That's exactly what I did, and the shot was ugly.
5:57
Speaker 2: It was pure luck to catch an artery and she
6:00
Speaker 2: piled up seventy yards away. My buddy Tim Kent calls
6:03
Speaker 2: those happy accidents, and I think that's about all you
6:06
Speaker 2: need to say about that. So I tried to shake
6:08
Speaker 2: off two bad shots and go to Iowa and kill
6:11
Speaker 2: something on public land down there. The buck that I
6:14
Speaker 2: ended up decoying in wasn't the giant I was hoping for,
6:17
Speaker 2: but he put on a hell of a show, and
6:18
Speaker 2: I wanted to go see my kids and stop sleeping
6:20
Speaker 2: in a tent for a few days. The shot was
6:23
Speaker 2: close from the ground and by all accounts, a done deal.
6:27
Speaker 2: When my arrow ticked a little willow branch and spiral
6:29
Speaker 2: toward that buck, I had half of a second of terror,
6:33
Speaker 2: followed by what is now several weeks of dread. That
6:36
Speaker 2: arrow smacked right into his guts, and it did not
6:39
Speaker 2: look good.
6:40
Speaker 3: Now.
6:40
Speaker 2: When we slowed down the footage, it did show me
6:43
Speaker 2: a better angle than my brain remembered, and it showed
6:45
Speaker 2: me far more penetration than I assumed. In fact, I've
6:48
Speaker 2: had a couple of times on film where I've thought
6:50
Speaker 2: there is no way I got much penetration. But when
6:53
Speaker 2: you can go back and watch it frame by frame,
6:56
Speaker 2: you can see the arrow go in way farther than
6:59
Speaker 2: you think instantly back out.
7:01
Speaker 3: It's kind of interesting. Anyway.
7:03
Speaker 2: Well, we gave that buck seven hours, but when we
7:05
Speaker 2: found him, we probably could have given him maybe half
7:07
Speaker 2: an hour.
7:08
Speaker 3: The exit wound was behind his.
7:09
Speaker 2: Off side shoulder, and he took a two inch cut
7:11
Speaker 2: to the gut's liver.
7:12
Speaker 3: In one lung.
7:14
Speaker 2: My broadhead had also broken a blade, which tells me
7:17
Speaker 2: it was probably open on impact, and that is not good.
7:21
Speaker 2: That's also topic for a different podcast. I started this
7:24
Speaker 2: year with a perfect shot on a do in Minnesota,
7:27
Speaker 2: and then had three dreadful shots on film, and then
7:29
Speaker 2: I came home and killed a buck in Minnesota that
7:32
Speaker 2: had a great big hole in his heart when I
7:34
Speaker 2: was done with him. So two perfect shots, but they
7:36
Speaker 2: don't make up for the other ones, and that sucks.
7:39
Speaker 2: I also managed to let a great Wisconsin Big Woods
7:42
Speaker 2: bucket right on top of me before I knew he
7:44
Speaker 2: was there, and watched as he winded me at ten
7:47
Speaker 2: yards when I was just about to shoot him. You
7:49
Speaker 2: don't get public land opportunities in the big woods like
7:51
Speaker 2: that very often, which made it even worse when I
7:54
Speaker 2: took my daughter in there and we had the very
7:56
Speaker 2: same thing happen with like one hundred and thirty inch year.
7:59
Speaker 2: That would have made her her and me very happy.
8:03
Speaker 2: So many mistakes. You know the jokes about anxiety where
8:15
Speaker 2: you're about to fall asleep and suddenly you remember something
8:17
Speaker 2: dumb you did in sixth grade, like maybe you shit
8:20
Speaker 2: your pants in Fayette or something. Well, I knock out
8:22
Speaker 2: something like that about every other time I go hunting,
8:25
Speaker 2: and boy do I think about them a lot at
8:27
Speaker 2: night when all I want is a quiet mind and
8:29
Speaker 2: some deep sleep. And added bonus of this job of
8:33
Speaker 2: mine is that not only do I have to live
8:35
Speaker 2: with those mistakes, but I also have to think about
8:37
Speaker 2: them for a full year before we share them with
8:39
Speaker 2: thousands and thousands of people, many of whom will let
8:43
Speaker 2: me know personally that they could do a much better
8:45
Speaker 2: job than me. And that might be true. Hell, there
8:48
Speaker 2: are a lot of days where I'd give them the
8:50
Speaker 2: job just to see if that was true. The thing is,
8:53
Speaker 2: we are all total f ups. I recently had a
8:55
Speaker 2: conversation with a sheriff down in Iowa who was looking
8:58
Speaker 2: for some stolen kayaks and and to find some dipshit
9:01
Speaker 2: dragging a buck down the middle of the river at
9:03
Speaker 2: like two in the morning, and he mentioned that he
9:05
Speaker 2: listens to this podcast and appreciates the message that we
9:08
Speaker 2: are all struggling. I don't know who would be in
9:11
Speaker 2: a better position to see the general struggle of many,
9:14
Speaker 2: many people than a law enforcement officer these days.
9:16
Speaker 3: But that was nice to hear.
9:18
Speaker 2: In fact, I hope he listens to this, and I
9:20
Speaker 2: hope by the time he hears it, he's killed a buck
9:22
Speaker 2: in that spot where I killed mine, because it turns
9:25
Speaker 2: out we were both on the same deer pattern down there.
9:28
Speaker 2: So here's the thing I want to tell you, and
9:30
Speaker 2: I want all of you to understand. We are all
9:33
Speaker 2: pretending we are better at this than we are. Every
9:36
Speaker 2: one of us. We don't want to admit to our mistakes,
9:39
Speaker 2: and we don't want anyone to know that we have flaws.
9:42
Speaker 2: But guess what, that's dumb. Let me give you an
9:46
Speaker 2: example of a time when this became apparent to me.
9:49
Speaker 2: A couple buddies and I were on a combo hunt
9:51
Speaker 2: for antelopen deer quite a few years ago.
9:54
Speaker 3: This is when we were young and.
9:55
Speaker 2: Going real hard out there, and I don't remember the
9:58
Speaker 2: exact circumstances, but I had nearly empty to quiver on
10:01
Speaker 2: a mule deer and I hadn't touched it. Now, over
10:03
Speaker 2: a glass a wild turkey around the campfire, I told
10:06
Speaker 2: the story of shooting over, then under, then over a deer,
10:10
Speaker 2: and we got a good laugh out of it. And
10:12
Speaker 2: then one of my other buddies piped in and mentioned
10:14
Speaker 2: that he had whiffed not once, not twice, but also
10:17
Speaker 2: thrice on an antelope that day. He had kept that
10:21
Speaker 2: to himself on the off chance that it might make
10:23
Speaker 2: him look like a total idiot. Only when one of
10:26
Speaker 2: his total idiot buddies admitted to a similar oh for
10:28
Speaker 2: three performance did he chime in, this is the world
10:32
Speaker 2: we live in. Deer hunting is full of ego. That's dumb.
10:36
Speaker 2: The trophy obsession is dumb. The fact that we take
10:39
Speaker 2: ourselves so seriously that we lie to cover up our
10:41
Speaker 2: awards is dumb.
10:43
Speaker 3: But we do it.
10:44
Speaker 2: And instead we should just accept that we make mistakes.
10:47
Speaker 2: I mean, think about it this way. What other outdoor
10:50
Speaker 2: pursuits do you do where you dwell on one mistake?
10:54
Speaker 3: Fishing? Get out of here.
10:56
Speaker 2: I can make multiple mistakes in fishing on the same cast,
11:00
Speaker 2: and I make a lot of casts, and by that
11:02
Speaker 2: I mean a lot of casts. Pheasant hunting, Get out
11:05
Speaker 2: of here. Do you know how many gift roosters I've
11:07
Speaker 2: missed with both barrels enough to make me realize that
11:10
Speaker 2: my vision of myself as an amazing wingshot is just
11:13
Speaker 2: total horseshit on as many days as it might be true.
11:16
Speaker 2: Turkey hunting, mm mmm. How many times have you had
11:20
Speaker 2: a gobbler walk in to see you move without you
11:22
Speaker 2: having a clue he was there? Ever make a sound
11:24
Speaker 2: with your box call like a wildebeest just caught his
11:27
Speaker 2: nuts and a picket fence? I have ever had one
11:30
Speaker 2: just right in and with with a shotgun.
11:33
Speaker 3: I have.
11:34
Speaker 2: The reason we are all obsessed with white tail hunting
11:36
Speaker 2: and why a hell of a lot of us try
11:38
Speaker 2: to do it in a way that is a little
11:39
Speaker 2: more challenging than it has to be, is because we
11:42
Speaker 2: want the feeling of getting it right. But that feeling
11:45
Speaker 2: comes with a tax, and that tax is that you
11:47
Speaker 2: are going to feel like a complete moron a lot
11:50
Speaker 2: far more than you're going to feel like the kind
11:52
Speaker 2: of guy who can make Andy may look like an
11:54
Speaker 2: amateur in the field. The truth is, you're going to
11:57
Speaker 2: make a ton of mistakes, and you know what, who
12:00
Speaker 2: cares talk about them?
12:02
Speaker 3: Own them.
12:03
Speaker 2: They're a part of the process. If you miss an
12:05
Speaker 2: easy shot, you think you're the only one.
12:08
Speaker 3: You're not.
12:09
Speaker 2: If you set your baseline off of what you consume
12:11
Speaker 2: for outdoor content, or worse, just the success photos in
12:15
Speaker 2: your social feeds. You're going to want to hide the truth.
12:18
Speaker 2: But that's dumb. I've hunted with a hell of a
12:22
Speaker 2: lot of famous hunters in my life, and I can
12:24
Speaker 2: tell you they are not immune to doing really, really
12:27
Speaker 2: dumb shit. They have the luxury of telling you about
12:30
Speaker 2: that or not, but it exists. We're all in the
12:33
Speaker 2: same boat, and do you know how to get over them.
12:36
Speaker 2: It's not to strive for perfection because you won't get
12:39
Speaker 2: there one time, let alone in a general state of being.
12:43
Speaker 3: It's not going to happen.
12:44
Speaker 2: What you do is just keep doing the work, the
12:48
Speaker 2: prep work.
12:48
Speaker 3: The scouting, the shooting, the whatever.
12:51
Speaker 2: Just build up the skills you can and understand that
12:54
Speaker 2: the mistakes are just teaching you something, which I know
12:57
Speaker 2: sounds corny as hell, but it is true.
12:59
Speaker 3: It really is.
13:00
Speaker 2: It's not the success that makes us better, it's the failure.
13:04
Speaker 2: Think about it this way. If you were to go
13:06
Speaker 2: to candy Land, where the bucks are everywhere and they
13:08
Speaker 2: are dumb, and you spend a week hunting there and
13:10
Speaker 2: kill a giant, what will happen to you? Sure you'll
13:14
Speaker 2: be happy to have that grippingrin. You'll be happy to
13:17
Speaker 2: have had a really fun hunt. Nothing wrong with those things.
13:20
Speaker 2: But now go from that to a week on public
13:23
Speaker 2: land where you're lucky to see a few deer on
13:25
Speaker 2: any given day. You get busted, You hear a lot
13:28
Speaker 2: of snorting. You hang and hunt and hang and hunt
13:30
Speaker 2: and hang and hunt, and you look for sign and
13:32
Speaker 2: you work the people and the deer. Which week will
13:36
Speaker 2: make you a better hunter? You know the answer to this,
13:39
Speaker 2: It's the one that's full of real challenge, because real
13:42
Speaker 2: challenge produces.
13:43
Speaker 3: Failure as a byproduct.
13:45
Speaker 2: If you haunt a place with tons of big bucks
13:47
Speaker 2: that never look up into trees and don't live off
13:49
Speaker 2: the wind to detect danger, you're not learning how to
13:52
Speaker 2: be better at this.
13:52
Speaker 3: Stuff can be great, can be fun. It's not teaching
13:56
Speaker 3: you much. Now. I know that's an extreme example.
13:58
Speaker 2: Now, But if you go out on a list or
14:00
Speaker 2: grandma's farm and make mistakes, they sting a lot. But
14:03
Speaker 2: so what everyone is out there screwing up and so
14:06
Speaker 2: are you. What do they teach you?
14:08
Speaker 3: Though?
14:09
Speaker 2: Maybe you reach for your boat at exactly the wrong
14:11
Speaker 2: time and he saw you. Maybe you didn't clear out
14:14
Speaker 2: your entrance road as well as you know you should,
14:16
Speaker 2: and you made a lot more noise than you needed
14:18
Speaker 2: to on the way in. What does that teach you?
14:21
Speaker 2: And maybe you're hard on yourself over your mistakes, and
14:24
Speaker 2: I get that, I really do. I'm my own worst critic,
14:27
Speaker 2: which is saying something, because boy do I have some critics.
14:30
Speaker 2: I'm sure you're harder on yourself than you need to be,
14:33
Speaker 2: And honestly, you should give yourself some grace, give yourself
14:37
Speaker 2: a chance with this stuff. You're trying something super difficult,
14:41
Speaker 2: and that means the mistakes are just built into the code.
14:44
Speaker 2: They're there waiting for you. And while it sucks so
14:47
Speaker 2: much to watch a dear slip from your grip because
14:49
Speaker 2: of a dumb decision, you know for sure that you
14:51
Speaker 2: shouldn't have made. It's done, and it might keep you
14:55
Speaker 2: from doing it again. We all leaven extra hyphen in
14:58
Speaker 2: the code. Sometimes when that happens, we want to self destruct.
15:02
Speaker 2: But you gotta pick up the pieces. You gotta keep
15:04
Speaker 2: working the process, and you don't beat yourself up too much.
15:08
Speaker 2: You're doing fine if you're learning and growing as a hunter.
15:11
Speaker 2: I mean that because I believe it to be true.
15:14
Speaker 2: So do that for yourself and come back next week
15:16
Speaker 2: because I'm going to talk about how to kill more
15:18
Speaker 2: deer by understanding the connective tissue of different properties and
15:23
Speaker 2: how to read the land on a bigger level. That's
15:28
Speaker 2: it for this week. I'm Tony Peterson. This has been
15:30
Speaker 2: the Wired to Hunt Foundation's podcast. As always, thank you
15:33
Speaker 2: so much for your support. If you're listening to this
15:35
Speaker 2: in the week that it drops, you can head on
15:37
Speaker 2: over to the mediat dot com and see one hell
15:40
Speaker 2: of a Black Friday sale, so much good stuff on
15:43
Speaker 2: sale there, or you just want to head over there
15:46
Speaker 2: and maybe find a new podcast to listen to, like
15:48
Speaker 2: Brent Reeves This Country Life, or maybe test your knowledge
15:52
Speaker 2: on media or trivia, maybe find a recipe, maybe you
15:54
Speaker 2: read an article, whatever, There's so much good stuff over
15:58
Speaker 2: there at the mediat dot com. Go check it out,
16:00
Speaker 2: and once again, thank you so much for your support.