Ep. 1041: Learning from our Top 6 Whitetail Failures

00:00:01
Speaker 1: Welcome to the Wired to Hunt podcast, your guide to the whitetail woods, presented by first Light, creating proven versatile hunting apparel for the stand, saddle or blind. First Light Go Farther, Stay Longer, and now your host, Mark Kenyon.

00:00:19
Speaker 2: Welcome to the Wired to Hunt podcast. This week on the show, I’m joined by Tony Peterson to discuss our top six failures in the deer hunting woods and the lessons that we and you can learn from them. All Right, welcome back to the Wired to Hunt podcast, brought to you by Moultrie. This week on the show, we’re talking failure. We are talking about what we all can learn from the inevitable failures, challenges, speed bumps that we’re all going to face as whitetail deer hunters. It’s gonna happen. It’s going to happen most of the time, right. I mean, if you hunt, I don’t know, a week, two weeks, three weeks, a year, you might get one successful hunt, one hunt where it all comes together. All the rest might be you know, quote unquote failures. So what can we learn from those days when things don’t go right? What can we learn from those moments when we make the wrong decision or somehow things just go wrong. That’s what we’re going to discuss here today. My guest is, you know co host extraordinary Tony Peterson. The two of us are going to get on here shortly and walk through each of our top three failures over the course of our recent deer hunting history. And we’re going to talk through what happened, what went wrong, and then what we learn from it and how we grew as deer hunters and how I think hopefully all of you can learn from our mistakes and maybe take some of these examples we share and apply them to your own deer hunting experience. Is so that you can not only learn from these experiences, but also you know, be able to process failures in your own hunts in a way that can lead to success down the road. So that’s the game plan. This is a lighthearted, fun conversation as much fun as I guess you can have while talking about deer hunting failure. So thanks for being here and without any further ado on conversation on failure with Tony Peterson. All right, joining me now, mister Tony Peterson, welcome back to the show.

00:02:38
Speaker 3: Thanks for having me, buddy.

00:02:40
Speaker 2: We uh it’s I guess I shouldn’t really say welcome back to the show because you’re on the show every week, but just in a different version of the show. But it’s it’s been a little while since you and I have got on here together and talked, so I’m glad we’re doing it. And I got to give you credit because what we’re going to talk about here today is something you have brought up in conversations between the two of us, like for a number of I don’t know, for a year or two, we’ve kind of talked about this idea of someday doing like a full deep dive into failure and different examples we have from our lives. And I’m actually planning on talking to some other people about this too, and I think it’s useful and I want to hear your thoughts on this, Tony. But I think that today we are being flooded on social media and on YouTube and on TV, and I guess this isn’t unique to today because we’ve been flooded with this kind of stuff in the past, but now it just seems like the amount of media that we just get jammed on our throats is at another level, we’re just constantly barraged by success and how good everybody else is and how great everybody else else’s lives are and hunting seasons are, you know, and it can become easy to assume that everyone else is just knocking out of the park and that I am horrible. But the reality is that everybody’s failing most of the time, right.

00:04:03
Speaker 4: I mean, the numbers don’t lie, buddy, like me, I think about I think about that a lot, like what you just talked about, how how easy it is to sort of internalize everybody else’s success and just wonder what the hell’s going on with ourselves. And one of the things that one of the things that like frames that up for me. So my tournament partner, my fishing partner, tournament partner, he’s like very plugged into kind of the local regional scene, and so when we fish together, I don’t I don’t pay attention to that stuff anymore.

00:04:36
Speaker 3: I’m just not into it like I was. And so like, I don’t know who.

00:04:39
Speaker 4: Won this tournament last week and what they were using that kind of stuff, I don’t care. But when I go fishing with him, he has all of that stuff rattling around in his brain. He pays attention to that a lot. And so if we’re out there and you know whatever, we’re throwing frogs for large mouths in the summer in a tournament, he’ll think, well, this guy won throwing chatterbaits on a sand drop over here on pool nine and we’re on pool eight throwing frogs, and like he has that going in and there. I mean, there could be an argument that that is beneficial in some way, if you’re like, well, this guy won doing this, maybe we should try this. But I think mostly it’s just like a distraction, and I think it’s I think it mostly just sort of bogs us down mentally, and when I go I don’t have that stuff, and so I’m just like, what are they showing? What are the fish showing me? Now I’m not catching them this way, then I’ll try to catch them this way or whatever. And I think in hunting we do that a lot, like we are affecting so much like, well, this guy’s style, he’s killed four big bucks this year doing this, and this guy and whatever, and it’s like you kind of just got to run your own race. And that’s like a hard thing to do because you feel like, you know, the hunting industry is sort of predicated on the you know, us giving you the answer or Zach Ferrenbau giving you that whoever, it’s like, man, the only one who’s going to find the answer for how for you to be really successful out there and enjoy it.

00:05:55
Speaker 3: It’s just you.

00:05:56
Speaker 2: Well, and not only that, but sometimes the answer that has helped me the most during a tough hunting season is when I talk to someone like you or Andy or Zach or anyone else about what I’m struggling with, and then they say, oh, yeah, I’m struggling with the same thing, or oh yeah, I had the same thing happened to me last year or last week, or oh yeah, I’ve screwed it up in that kind of way too, right. Sometimes I don’t want the answer. I just want to know that somebody else got the problem wrong too, and that that sometimes just alleviates the concern enough for you to refocus on doing what you just said when you’re not so mixed up in this Oh gosh, I’m the only one in the world who can’t get this thing done. So just having that partner in the boat with you, you know, somebody who can ride along with you, or who you can relate to, or who can say like, yes, I’ve been there before and I got through it, or I figured it out or I got better. That is h That’s no small thing. And I think that’s kind of what I’m hoping we can help with here today is a little bit of not just that reassurance, but also also provide a pathway out of the thicket, right, if that makes any sense, Because I think I’ve found myself lost in the thicket many times and have been able to navigate myself out a time or two, but it’s it’s not always been easy. And so I thought maybe the two of us could walk through a handful of our greatest failures, like our most just disastrous, foot in mouth, screw the pooch, mess it all up, experiences from our deer hunting lives, and talk through, you know, what we did wrong, how it all happened, what we learned from it, and then maybe how we’ve tried to, you know, take something from that or change based on that, or kind of navigate things differently in the future. And I’m hoping that you know, someone’s going to listen to this now and and you know when they have something get messed up in September or October or November, they will remember this conversation and remember that, oh, yeah, Tony did the same thing, or Mark struggled with that same thing. I can get through this, or I can figure this out, or I can not make the same mistake that Mark man. That is my big hope for all of this is that the many times that you and I have screwed up can somehow help somebody else.

00:08:24
Speaker 4: That’s an important I mean, it will. And you brought up a really good point. You know, like if you talk to Andy May during the hunting season, he’s not like, yep, I’m out.

00:08:33
Speaker 3: There crushing it, killed another giant.

00:08:36
Speaker 4: He’s always like, I struggled with this, or I’m looking for this right I don’t have him here. But it’s not like it’s not like he’s dwelling on his failures. He’s just like, I just have to work through these problems I have right now, these new set of conditions and variables that were handed to me in this season and this weather and this hunting pressure and on and on, and I have to figure it out. And so he’s when you know, you talk to him, he’s like mostly working on problems.

00:09:04
Speaker 3: Yeah, you know, which is like in a weird.

00:09:06
Speaker 4: Way, is like if anybody could be focusing on their wins, it’s him, But he’s not. And the reason he gets those wins is because he’s fixing those problems, like he’s actively trying to find a solve for them. And that is like that I know that seems like intuitive to people, but it’s generally not. Okay, well I’m not seeing deer off this field head stands, so I pick up my rattling antlers, and now I solve the problem. Like it’s generally like a bigger solve than that, right, And that’s that’s what those guys do.

00:09:34
Speaker 2: Yeah, So when I when I throw out the word failure for you, what is the first experience that came to your mind when I when I pitched this idea to you and you had to start thinking about your top failures? What uh? What came to the top of the list.

00:09:52
Speaker 4: So I think I think about a lot of my hunting success and failure in like whole seasons now instead of just being like that time that I missed two Giant Bucks in a row or something like that, Like those those failures are I’ve come to accept that I am going to fail that way enough where it’s just like going to be a part of my journey. But the things that I learned from So the first thing I thought of when you brought this up when you texted me, is how in twenty eighteen, I had a good season. I didn’t kill any really big bucks, but I killed a bunch of deer in different states, killed some public land ones. Like had an okay season, but I felt like I was like scrambling, Like I felt like I was always kind of redlining, then like pushing it, like gott to find new deer, Gotta find this, Gotta find that, not being patient. And I went into twenty nineteen and I’m like, I have to you have to be more patient, like do the deer work and then let the deer, let it breathe, let it happen for you. And that season, I had a really good season like I had. I killed big bucks in a couple of different states on public land, killed them at home, killed an elk like I had.

00:11:05
Speaker 3: I had one of.

00:11:06
Speaker 4: Those seasons where you’re like this is awesome. You know, three or four Pope and young Bucks like that kind of thing. But what really struck me was I got laid into October of that year and like, these these lessons that I take like, I’m like, I always have to remind myself of them, like I forget them pretty quickly.

00:11:23
Speaker 2: It’s incredible how quickly we forget them.

00:11:25
Speaker 3: Dude, totally.

00:11:26
Speaker 4: And I went into I had had a Wisconsin buck tag and I had a North Dakota tag left that I had. I had driven all the way to western North Dakota. My truck broke down. I didn’t get to hunt, so I was just sitting on this tag, but it was like, I’m not going back out there, so it was kind of just like one of those lost tags.

00:11:42
Speaker 3: Well.

00:11:42
Speaker 4: I had found this spot in Wisconsin that I was like, if you put your time in, I think you’ll kill a good one here, and I ended up doing that. I ended up sitting on this little funnel I found between these swamps and.

00:11:53
Speaker 3: I killed a good buck, saw a really good buck.

00:11:56
Speaker 4: And then I had that North Dakota tag left and I was like, you know what, I’m gonna to that eastern side of North Dakota. I’m just gonna find something. And because of the timing, I’m gonna go find a couple of good pinch points that I think I can kind of identify and walk in there, and I’m just gonna ride it up because I only had like four days and I saw almost no deer every day except maybe one good buck. I saw a buck every day, and then on the fourth day, I killed a good buck, and it was just like a sort of one of those moments where you’re like you know the recipe, like like you know how to do this, but it’s so easy for that second guessing to come in, especially when you know how it is. When you’re gonna go, I’m gonna go do all day sits on a chunk of public land I’ve never seen before, and cross my fingers. The second guessing by like ten o’clock in the morning, especially because it’s cold and windy, because it’s always cold and windy out there, is like all of those voices are like get out, go find it, Go find something else, go do something else. But it’s like a self preservation thing because you’re like, I don’t have what it takes to sit here dark to dark, But if you can find that and tap into that, if you’ve done that work leading up to it, I just think that’s what’s that’s what kills big deer or just you know, like puts you in a good spot to have good encounters.

00:13:13
Speaker 3: And that year.

00:13:14
Speaker 4: Going from a year where I felt like I was scrambling to one where I was forcing myself to wait, like when I found something good, like put in your time and then you see the results, You’re like, that’s like a reinforcement. They’re like a reinforcing thing big time.

00:13:27
Speaker 2: So so hold on the I feel like you’ve skipped over the failure part pretty quickly and just really focused on how great your twenty nineteen was.

00:13:33
Speaker 4: No so because I felt like I was failing the whole time in twenty eighteen and I didn’t. I mean, I killed deer and I had an okay season, but I just like personally felt like I didn’t do it right because I was scrambling.

00:13:46
Speaker 3: Yeah.

00:13:47
Speaker 2: So that’s what I want to better understand though, is what led to that feeling like this idea of scrambling, What does that look like? What does that actually mean? Because I think understanding that is probably the best way any of us could ever hoped to have a twenty nineteen like you had, right, so that we’d learned not to do what twenty eighteen was? So what do you mean?

00:14:06
Speaker 4: So everything I’m going to talk about today, all of my failures are basically me fighting my own nature, like basically me what I want to do versus what I know I need to do to have success. And so I felt, and you know, you kind of like go through different stages when you’re hunting. But I felt like, for a while, like I got this thing all figured it out. I cover a ton of ground, I find good spots, I drop pins, I go in there and I hunt, and I move, and I move and I move. That works sometimes, but once you start dealing with more hunting pressure, a little bit cagy or deer, once you start dealing with a wider variety of weather, seasonal timing, it’s like you you can’t just walk them down, right. And so I was forcing something to happen because I wanted to hunt that way. And I’m like, di, I believe this right. So it’s to me that’s no different. Where that played out for me was on a whole bunch of different properties public private, in a bunch of different states. For the For most hunters, the closest parallel would probably be like I have my three stands, and I want to kill one out of this field edge stand because I know, like I believe that they’re going to come out here eventually instead of going and doing the mobile thing or whatever. And so what you want to do is you want to take that route that’s comfortable and like easy for you, right, but really you have to probably if that doesn’t work, you probably have to do the thing that you don’t really want to do. Like I would rather go in season scout with a stand or a saddle and find some fresh sign and post up on it versus putting three dark to dark sits in a row on a pinch point that has very low activity. And recognizing the difference between those two is super important. So for me, it’s like this kind of thing being patient is no different than almost every part of my life that’s good for me, Like I have to for myself to do it like I because I don’t want to. I don’t want to go for a run, I don’t want to sit dark to dark for a week, Like that’s not fun generally, but it’s often the thing that I’m like I have if I want to aerow a big one or I want to see deer doing what I expect them to do. I have to do that part and that’s hard.

00:16:20
Speaker 2: When you got to that twenty nineteen season, were you did you have like a clear was it like a clear shift you had to make, like you could you see this at that point? Could you look back at that moment and say, Okay, twenty eighteen, I was forcing the issue, trying to bounce around too much. In twenty nineteen, I am going to be patient and stick with it and stuff. Was that like did you know it at that moment or did you go through the year and kind of figure this out and have that aha moment as it went along?

00:16:53
Speaker 4: I mean I went into it intentionally trying to do better that way and it But so what I hate about this kind of stuff is it makes it sound like I figured it out. I struggle with this all the time, you know, I mean I really do, and you can go so this is this is the other problem too, is I say this now?

00:17:12
Speaker 3: And that was the answer for me.

00:17:13
Speaker 4: Then last year in Wisconsin, I was like, I’m going to go ride out this spot that I know deer are going to go through, and I’ve got a camera in there and bucks are cruising through there and if I put in my time, I will kill one. And I wrote it out for three and a half days and never saw a deer, and so I went too far the other way and ended up going to kill one in a different way. Like that I totally didn’t expect. But it’s like you’re always trying to find that balance, right, And to me, that’s like put in the work to find that spot, and then your backup spot for the next wind or the next conditions or whatever, and then put your faith in that, you know, as long as you can stand it. And if they finally show you that you’re being too patient in a place that’s just dead, you got to restart the whole thing again. So it’s like it’s a it’s such a moving target. But it’s like I think that if you looked at our hardwiring, like for most of us is to be less patient is to allow, you know, the second guessing to talk us into leaving at ten o’clock in the morning and going to check this camera or moving to this stand or whatever, instead of putting our faith in something and being really patient with it.

00:18:20
Speaker 2: Yeah, And it is, though, so difficult to know what the right call is in the moment, you know, as you talked about, like, sometimes the right answer is the move, Sometimes the right answer is the stick it out. And for a lot of years I would find myself asking those same questions and not having enough of my own personal lived experience to answer it from my gut, and instead I was thinking like, Okay, what would John Eberhart say I should do here? And what did I read in this one book or in this one magazine about how to handle this situation? And you know, you drive yourself crazy trying to think about what the right answers you know, quote unquote right answers are for any one of these situations. The only way I’ve been able to work myself out of that over the years has just been trying all these things in all the different ways, over and over and over again, over years and years and years and years, until there’s finally that real lived experience that leads to you know, having that gut feeling that you can trust, or that intuition that you can trust, or just knowing like, Okay, I’ve been down this path before, I’ve seen how it goes. This is when I need to shift or this is when I need to start listening to that voice that says do the uncomfortable thing. And so there’s I guess what I’m getting at here is that some folks listening should not feel bad if they find themselves in the tree stand this fall and are like, I don’t know, I don’t know if I should do the thing Tony said in twenty eighteen or in twenty nineteen, Like that is part of the struggle, is that you have to go through ten, fifteen, twenty years of riding this out and making the wrong choices most of the time, occasionally getting it right and learning what worked that time, and then having go the complete opposite way a year or two later. And that is just part of this process and that and this isn’t what this isn’t a failure I was planning on talking about. But I think just you have to repeatedly fail in all these different ways, over and over and over and over and over again to ever get to the point where you can occasionally make the right decision on purpose and feel like, oh, yeah, I kind of knew what I was doing here. That is just part of this. Like maybe the most important part of deer hunting is just failing in all of these different ways repeatedly so many times. That’s the only way to truly get to a point where you can ever make decisions.

00:20:50
Speaker 4: Like you talked about well, right, and I mean when you talk about the indecision like that, everybody has that, right, Like I think about and I’ll talk about this later, but I think about how often I’m like, this is just going to be it. I have it figured out, and I go and I don’t. I don’t see deer. I don’t see the deer. I want to whatever. But I think I think the lesson for me anyway, is like everybody deals with the second guessing, everybody deals with the indecision. But if you can err on the side of being patient, right, So let’s say it’s nine o’clock in the morning and you’re like, they just they didn’t come through. They’re not going to come through. It’s like I was going to sit all day, but now I’m thinking it’s probably better on the other valley or the other bench point or whatever. And it’s like, now you’re talking yourself out of doing the thing that you felt was the best decision originally, and you’re going to go make a bigger impact. Right if you if you walk into that stand in the morning to sit all day, and at ten o’clock in the morning, you’re like, I’m going to move now. You have twice the impact on that land at least, right, and so you’ve you’ve already cut your odds down there. And it’s like when you can learn and I talk about this all the time, but like when you can learn to be like, I’m going to just quiet that voice down a little bit. I’m going to give it another hour, or I’m going to give it till noon, or I’m going to do I’m just I’m going to condition myself for this.

00:22:12
Speaker 3: Right.

00:22:12
Speaker 4: It’s like, you know, Yannie’s going to run a hundred mile or here in a little bit, but he didn’t start out running one hundred mile marathons, right, you got it. You have to start somewhere and you have to condition yourself to make that a little bit harder of a choice and just tamp down that and go, yeah, Like we make the wrong decisions all the time, but you have to trust it, like you have to. You have to just trust yourself and go I felt like this was the best decision. You know, the wind switches or something, mate, you know, that might make the decision for you. But are you looking for that excuse? That’s there’s the difference there, you know, or are you just taking it and going man, supposed to be out of south all day and now it’s blown straight out of the north. Well there there you go, Like, that’s that’s beyond your control and you just have to take that. But if it’s just you going, man, I thought they were going to be cruising all over him here and they’re not. It’s like, oh, it’s only been light for three hours or whatever, you know, like just let it breathe a little bit.

00:23:04
Speaker 2: Yeah, that’s a really good point, And I feel like that’s that’s a pretty good transition to one of my failure stories. This was a a hunt that was a multi year hunt that definitely taught me a lot, and it’s a deer that I never ended up getting. It was this buck that I was chasing in southern Michigan, called him Holy Field, and I learned a lot about this deer because it was a buck that was relatively like in the earlier ish years of my kind of pursuit of trying to kill mature bucks, and I was still at that phase where I was definitely living off of what other people said you should be doing right that I kind of alluded to earlier. And I was in that phase of my hunting life where I was afraid to make mistakes, where I was constantly worried about not screwing it up. If I do that, I’ll blow it up. I do that, it’s probably my only I’ll probably make one mistake and then he’ll be gone. If I go over that line, it’s probably gonna screw stuff up. If I pushed too far in here, it’s definitely gonna be you know, it’s too risky. And so I was incredibly risk averse while hunting that deer, and so for that reason, I saw him a lot, but it was always out of range. So one of the biggest mistakes in that hunt was simply treading too lightly, never being willing to take a swing a true swing. I was hunting to see deer, not hunting to kill a mature buck, and I was trusting things I had read and heard and not trusting my own eyes enough. Secondly, another thing within that hunt is a lot of times that I was seeing this buck. I was seeing him on a neighboring property, and I just kept lamenting to myself like, oh, man, if only I could hunt there, if only I could hunt there, I could kill this buck. But I never did anything about it because I was I don’t know, too nervous to ask permission, too lazy, or like didn’t want to get uncomfortable and go bother this other person to see if I could ever hunt there. And so not only was I not aggressive enough on the places that I could hunt, but then also a lot of the time where I watched this deer, I never even tried to explore the possibility of getting to hunt there. And later, though I would, I would learn from that mistake, and I did ask permission, and I got permission, and then ended up being able to hunt that whole area for years later. And if I had gotten permission, I probably could have maybe could have killed this buck if I was hunting in this zone where he was at all the time. So that was another big mistake. The third big mistake I made on this buck was that despite doing all those things, despite being incredibly passive, despite not doing the little extra uncomfortable work to get permission to hunt him where he really lived, despite all of that, I still did put in a ton of time on the edges, waiting and trying and doing everything I thought I could do. And I was hunting all day in the rut, doing what you were talking about. I was telling myself, you got to put in a little bit more time, you got to stick it out. So I’m sitting there at like eleven thirty on maybe first week of November give or take, in that ballpark, and I’m sitting on the edge of what should be some pretty good stuff. And I’d had high hopes in the morning. But then you know, as it gets to that, you know, late morning early afternoon time period, when nothing’s been going on for three four hours, you start to lose some of that focus, You lose some faith. You start thinking like, ah, probably nothing’s going to happen. And I had my phone out and I eventually was reading a book on my phone. So I had been hunting this year for three years. I think this is the third year I’ve been trying to get this one buck. I’d you know, been struggling for all these years, seeing him never can close the distance. I’m out there like eleven to thirty. All of that led to this moment I hear like a snap, I look up for my phone, look over my left shoulder, and this buck I’ve been chasing for all this time is standing twenty yards away, looking right up at me, because I had spun and looked to look back at him, and so he’s looking at me at twenty yards and I’m holding my phone reading some stupid novel. And I mean we’ve all been in some version of that scenario, just the worst, the worst, feeling felt like such an idiot. And then of course he spun and ran, and you know, I finally had him in range. And I didn’t even know it because I had not been able to keep the faith and keep the focus and keep my eye on the prize during that period of times. So like I came so close, I did a lot of the right things. I was in the right place, I was in the right I stuck it out to the right part of the day, and just was not mentally there. I was physically there, but not mentally there. And eventually that deer disappeared. Never saw them again. And I don’t know what happened, but I know that three or four years of my hunting life in Michigan had been devoted to trying to figure out this Buck, and for all of those reasons, I never pulled it off. And so in the subsequent season after that one, like I mentioned, I knocked on that door eventually and did get permission and have had success in there. I learned that you can’t always be so risk averse. You can’t always just live life on the edges like they do on the Outdoor Channel and expect to have success in kind of real world pressured situations. Sometimes you really do need to rip off the band aid and swing for the fences. If you ever want to get one of these pressure bucks, you can’t just watch them. You actually have to go try to kill them. And then finally, yes, it’s important to be there, but you have to be there both mentally and physically. You can’t just be like checking the box of being out there and then not actually be a part of the moment when it’s when it’s presented to you. So that one, that whole multi year saga with that Buck, it’s uh, it’s it’s one of the most that that whole story sticks with me more than most other Bucks because of the fact that he did get away, and he didn’t get away just because of some random thing he got away because of all of these different things I did wrong over many years. I’ve got one of the shed antlers, and every time I see that shit antler, I’m reminded of one of those things.

00:29:47
Speaker 4: Do you think that you at that point in your life for giving Big Bucks too much credit?

00:29:54
Speaker 3: For sure?

00:29:55
Speaker 2: One?

00:29:56
Speaker 3: So, dude, I think that.

00:29:59
Speaker 4: I think the two worst things that the Outdoor Channel type of content did to us was convinced everyone they could just look at a deer an agent no matter what. And it made them seem like it made Big Bucks seem like they were just.

00:30:16
Speaker 3: Unreachable most of the time.

00:30:19
Speaker 4: Yeah, And I mean part of that is a symptom because people who are hunting in Candyland want you to think they’re hunting hard deer, so everybody paints their hunting as harder than it really is. But it’s just they’re actually more forgiving than you think, Like I think anyway.

00:30:34
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, And it’s like it’s not insane that that’s not saying it’s easy to kill mature bucks, right, I mean, ninety nine percent of the time you still fail, right, But there’s somewhere, like the truth lies somewhere in the middle. You can hunt in Wisconsin or Minnesota or Michigan where there’s tons of hunters and these bucks are very highly educated and pressured and it’s very challenging. But that does not mean that make one mistake and that buck’s gonna move ten miles down the road and you’re never gonna see him again. I think that’s what I worried about a lot. I was like, if this buck ever smells me one time, or if this buck crossed my path and walks across my footprints and I didn’t perfectly have my scen you know, taking care of her whatever, like one thing is going to be the end, and that buck will be gone. I’m never gonna see him again. I lived and breathed that way of hunting for a good like five to eight years. Maybe I don’t know something like that. Where I was, I was walking on eggshells at all times, and that did two things. Number One, that kept me from doing the aggressive things that I need to do to actually get a chance of these bucks. More often than not, I was like, just like as I described, But then number two, it made every time I did screw up feel so devastating. I felt like, oh my, I’m done, Like I just screwed it up. I all this time, I put in this year out the window. You know, it just made every little thing so nerve wracking. It made like walking into the tree stand, it made like every time that the wind swirled, it felt like such a big deal, like, oh my god, this is it, this is going to be the end, and what’s supposed to be a fun and enjoyable experience instead felt like mentally just like rot with stress, because it just seemed like everything was riding on this little tiny edge that you had to walk and it was going to be all tumbling down if you made one tiny little mistake. And to your point, it’s just not the case most of the time, right.

00:32:34
Speaker 4: Right, I mean, I think you think about how many times you’ve been out there and had you know, that dough wind you and bust out of there and snort a million times, and then ten minutes later somebody else walks in and resets the scene. We I think that generally we default to way too cautious. And you know, like there’s a difference, right because you know, if you if you’re in a state where crossbows are legal, for example, and you hunt public land enough, you see dudes walking around with crossbows trying to shoot one.

00:33:02
Speaker 3: Like the rifle hunting. You know, that’s not what I’m.

00:33:05
Speaker 4: Talking about here, And to be fair, you see vertical bull hunters do that too, Like you see hunters try that, and it’s just a it’s a rough strategy, right, big impact, low odds. But if you’re doing if you’re if you’re trying to do things you know you’re trying to be smart about it, you’re still going to get busted. You’re gonna walk in and you’re gonna have deer snort at you. They’re gonna be eating the acorns when you get there in the morning whatever. Like that stuff isn’t as it’s not as big of an impact in the moment it feels huge, but overall it’s not as big of an impact as we often think. And we’ve been so conditioned to be cautious over and over and over again. And it’s like like we talked about with the patient’s thing versus going nuts, like there’s always a balance, right, But the lesson with you there, I think that’s like most important is if you start giving big bucks that much credit, you’re in trouble because you’re just they’re just going to be this un attainable thing, and you’re going to you’re not going to hunt correctly if you’re neurotic and you’re and you’re pissed at yourself because you’re making all these little mistakes that really don’t matter that much and that everyone makes because nobody walks into the woods in the dark and makes no noise. Yeah, you know, like nobody goes and hunts a whole season and doesn’t get winded by somebody at some point.

00:34:20
Speaker 3: It just happens.

00:34:21
Speaker 2: It happens, and so yeah, to your point, it’s it’s number one, you can’t keep yourself from making the right moves because you’re so worried about making the wrong moves. And then secondly, you got to give yourself some grace, like forgive yourself because it’s not the end of the world. We’re not saving lives out here. We’re not rocket scientists. We’re just trying to you know, as you say, kill a rabbit with antlers, So chill the f out right, So what’s your what’s your next example?

00:34:52
Speaker 4: So this is something, this is another thing that I am just reminded of every single season of my life, and I have to like work at it.

00:35:02
Speaker 3: But it’s sort of a two parter.

00:35:04
Speaker 4: It’s hunting on memories and not listening to what the deer are telling me right now. So I can come up with elaborate scenarios in my head of how I’m going to drive to South Dakota or North Dakota, or hunt somewhere in Minnesota or wherever draw that tag in Iowa, and this is how I’m gonna kill a deer, And in my head, I will think about that over and over and over again. I’ll be like, Oh, we’ll convince myself that’s what’s going to happen, you know, because last year I went there and I threw a decoy out and they came in and I killed one or whatever. I never go back to places like that and have the same hunt ever. I mean, it’s just even even on my private stuff in Wisconsin and Minnesota, unless it’s like a pond or something, I very rarely kill deer doing the same thing two years in a row. And I know that’s a little bit different from a lot of people in there, you know, if you got a lease or permission ground or whatever. But even then when you go in and you’re like it’s going to happen like it did last year, or like it did two years ago when I killed that big one.

00:36:05
Speaker 3: It probably won’t.

00:36:07
Speaker 4: Because of all of those things that have just changed, Right, Like you might have killed that buck three seasons ago because one of the oak trees in the area was dropping, or a doe came in a little bit early, or some kind of outlier thing. Right, maybe the neighbors had beans instead of corn. Maybe the neighbors let somebody hunt who hunted every day and you didn’t know it because it was a high school kid or something, and that pushed the deer onto your side. Like you have to kind of go in with that blueprint, like, yeah, this could happen just like it always has, but it probably won’t. Like you still have to factor in what the deer is showing you and what the sign is showing, and we and we really like to find that confirmation bias stuff. They’re like, well, I had a camera in the same spot and the big one’s going through once a week. Or I walked out here and here’s those that scrape line again on the field edge, Like duh, of course they’re going to be doing this. But it’s like if they’re not really showing you that, Like if you’re like, I’m forcing this thing and I want this to happen, but the deer aren’t showing you that there’s a problem there. And for me, I mean, the easiest example for me on this one is I go back to those river bottoms in North Dakota, and I can sit up there on a glassing now, but I can go I kill the buck out of that tree. I killed the buck out of that tree. I killed the buck on the ground over there. And it’s never the same tree, you know, like it’s just not It’s never the same ground blind, it’s never the same crossing for some reason. It’s always a little bit different, even in a scenario that shouldn’t really change that much.

00:37:36
Speaker 3: And so many times I’ll go.

00:37:39
Speaker 4: Into a hunt and think like, I’m gonna run this play again because it worked. And I will, you know, be walking out to a pond or a water tank or a crossing or something and see a whole bunch of rubs or see this, you know, banging scrape or something and be like, huh, I should probably pay attention to that. But I know what my plan is going to be, and I know it’s going to work. And almost inevitably I end up having to come back to that sign and work deer in a way that I just didn’t expect. And so it’s like this is one of those like gray area things again, because you want to go in and run something you know worked, right, we all do.

00:38:16
Speaker 3: But how long do you give it?

00:38:18
Speaker 4: Like how long do you ignore that you’re seeing deer do something that you just usually don’t or you didn’t expect, Like why are they over there? Why are they running that fence line now and not just coming straight down through here, through the past or whatever. And for me, just like really keeping an open mind, and if the deer tell me something, listening to it is like me fighting my nature of just wanting to run something that has produced for me in the past.

00:38:44
Speaker 2: Have you ever ran an old program all the way to the end and failed because of Have you ever had one that you refuse to pivot on that doomed you?

00:38:56
Speaker 4: I probably had tons of those. I have definitely, I’ve definitely done that on the road. And in fact, when I think about situations like in Nebraska or South Dakota or North Dakota where I went out and didn’t fill a tag, it was because I did that generally, you know, And the times that I did fill a tag was almost always even if I ran an old program for three days and just pivoted on it or four days, find something different and kill. So yeah, I’ve definitely done that, and I’ve done it. The thing that stings the most is when I do it here in Minnesota. I do it in Wisconsin, especially if I’m hunting private land, and I’m like.

00:39:35
Speaker 3: How hard can this freaking be?

00:39:37
Speaker 4: And then I do you know, You’re like, oh, it’s going to be the last week of October. They’re going to be community scrape here and they’re going to be coming through here. And then you know, for whatever reason, things have changed, and I don’t go do what I need to to figure them out. I do what I want to because I think it’s.

00:39:52
Speaker 3: Going to work.

00:39:54
Speaker 2: Now. I know, every situation is different, every hunt has its own unique circumstances. But let’s just for the sake of someone trying to get a rough idea. If we were to look at like a ten day hunt, just because tends an easy number to look at, and if you were to go into a ten day hunt and you have like one main set of strategies that’s your program. It’s how you really think you’re gonna get it done. If you had to generalize and give me like a drop dead moment through your ten day hunt, at what point would you be, you know, everything else being equal? Would you say, like, buy, you know, sixty percent of the way through you got to pull the emergency cord and do something different or is it fifty percent or is it eighty percent or ninety? Like how much time would you recommend giving someone in order to pull the more emergency cord but then also have time to make something of it? You know what I mean?

00:40:45
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean that it it’s variable on what they’re showing me.

00:40:50
Speaker 3: You know. I would like my default would be five days through.

00:40:53
Speaker 4: If I don’t have something going on, I better figure something else right halfway through that. On a four day hunt, I’d probably look at it the same way like if I’m two days in, I don’t have something going on, but it it really depends on what I’m seeing, right, because sometimes you know how it is, like sometimes you’re like you’re just you’re close enough where you’re like, I’m not gonna move, Like it feels like they’re just gonna get here, right, and that river bottom stuff out west is a prime example, Like you always see them, so you’re like, oh, they crossed there again, but they probably get here. So that’s an easy program to hold on to. The hard ones are when you go into like a low deer densy thing like that big woods Wisconsin stuff where you’re just not going to see very many and you’re like, well, I killed one on this crossing, you know, two years ago, Like how much time do I give it? And in those situations I probably tend to give it too much time before I pivot, just because it’s like, I know, the task of going out and finding a concentration of deer might take me longer than I have left. But at the same time, the thing that the thing that happens to me almost every single season that kind of reinforces this whole idea of you don’t want to hunt on memories solely, or you don’t want to lean too heavily on that is how often I go somewhere with that idea in my head and they just blatantly show me they’re using something else, or they you know, blatantly show me that they’re laying down a ton of sign here for a reason, you know, or you walk into a spot and you’re like you jumped a bunch of deer and you’re like, okay, you’ve got to factor that in pretty quickly, right, Like if you know how it is, like if you go out and you find the right concentration to sign that’s just humming, and you’re like, well, I was going to go another three quarters of a mile down here, but I probably should check that out. You probably should check it out, you should probably hunt it. And that’s we have a hard time with that. So we try to, like I think a lot of hunters look at it and go I have my plan and if it’s not working, I’m going to spruce it up with the decoys and the calls and whatever else. And I’m because I believe in what I want to do there instead of going to look. But there’s so many times when you’re out there where I think about this a lot. Where you know, people access tree stands often on field edges. Right, So you’re walking along and you see that field edge sign, which is like encouraging, but who cares kind of you know, like it’s cool, but generally like, yeah, I expect to see some rubs and scrapes on.

00:43:13
Speaker 3: A field edge where there’s lots of deer.

00:43:15
Speaker 4: But think about how often, Let’s say it’s like October twentieth and you’re walking along and you’re gonna go sit that cut cornfield and you see that rub on the edge and you’re like, dang, that’s a nice rub. And then you look down in the woods and you see another one, and it’s like, most people aren’t gonna peel off and go check that out. But that is a huge sign, right like that that’s telling you something that not only was he up here what you expect, but now I know he walked down there and did it or somebody did who I’m really interested in? And what’s the next one look like? Or why why that way? What’s down there?

00:43:50
Speaker 3: You know?

00:43:51
Speaker 4: And I think again, it’s sort of that indecisiveness, the second guessing thing where you’re like, well, if I walk down in there, I’ll probably blow them, or I don’t have like a I don’t have a good plan for that, So I’m just gonna take it. I’m gonna be safe, and I’m gonna go to that tree stand that I wanted to go to anyway, but I’m gonna put that big buck decoy out because if this dude comes out here, he might see it. But you already walk through there. You know, Like it’s hard to do. But I think that when you when you learn that it’s okay to try that stuff, and I think that, I think that’s what like a lot of the hang and bang public land hunts teach you, is like it’s just okay to try stuff like you have to, like you have to get your ass in a tree somewhere and just try something out. So you’re generally gonna do that in a place where you’re like there’s enough sign here to get me to commit to this.

00:44:38
Speaker 3: When you’re on a piece of private ground and you have.

00:44:41
Speaker 4: Your stands hung since you know the end of July, and you have your whole plan out, and you’re like, I’m not gonna I’m gonna be very light on my presence. I’m gonna tread lightly, and then I’m gonna hit this hard during my rut caation. It’s like that’s fine, that works a lot, But it’s also like if you’re walking out there for that fun hunt on October fifteenth, and you might want to shoot it dough or whatever, and then you see that bang and rub line, you have the opportunity to go figure that out, and it’s a hard thing to do, but it’s important.

00:45:09
Speaker 3: Yeah.

00:45:11
Speaker 2: Yeah, that’s that’s actually really good, really good lead into another one of my failures, which kind of piggybacks not only off what you were just sharing, but also my first failure in which you know, I talked about for a long time. I failed repeatedly because I was living off of other people’s rules and other people’s best practices.

00:45:33
Speaker 3: Right.

00:45:35
Speaker 2: Well, I got a hunting spot in Ohio back in like twenty fourteen, maybe somewhere on that ball twenty thirteen fourteen, give or take, and this was the best zone I’d ever had permission to hunt. And first hunt ever there, I saw the biggest bucke’t ever you know, laid eyes on while I had a bow in my hand, like a true one, you know, sixty kind of buck, just like a giant Ohio buck that was, you know, coming my way, very exciting, like just like a real deal buck. And I hunted that buck that season, never got a crack at him, saw him another time or two. But the next year I came back and I told myself I was gonna do things differently. I was going to be more aggressive. I was going to try to like get into his zone. I wasn’t going to just hunt him on the edges. We’re safe, kind of all the stuff I talked about with that other deer. And so I did a bunch of scouting. I found what I thought were like the spots that man, this buck probably lives in here, Like this could be like one of his bedrooms, you know. I found some beds. I found like where I thought one of his safe places was. Got it kind of dialed in, was feeling really good about things, and really this is a story full of a lot of getting things right. I’ll preface this by and then getting the wrong answer at the very end. So I so I get all of that knowledge, I’m feeling very excited. I go in do the early season hunts doesn’t pan out. I remember thinking to myself that I wasn’t going to go back to hunt till like late October. I was gonna wait till that pre red stuff was really kicking in. And then I think it was mid October, right in that window when a cold front moved through, A rainy cold front kind of day moved through in mid October, and I just remember thinking, and I can’t remember all of the different things that were lining up, but for some reason, there was a whole series of things that were lining up. I think it was the rain, it was the wind direction, and it was the fact that I thought I knew one of these spots where this buck was bedded, and all of that. On one morning, I remember like sitting at my computer looking at all these conditions. I wasn’t planning on going down to Ohio to hunt, but I’m looking at all this stuff and I’m thinking, like, man, this all would set up so perfectly to get really close to that bed. You know, I could sneak in through the standing cornfield, which would be really hard to do quietly, except for on a windy, rainy day, and except for like on a day when I really knew exactly where I wanted to get to, I could probably sneak through that cornfield and get like just above this zone. I bet you, with this wind direction, it would make sense for him to actually be betting there and using this particular location on that kind of day. So I was like, you know what I’m gonna I’m gonna go for it. So I like just like bailed on work for the rest of the day. I left in the middle of the day, bombed down to southern Ohio, drove like four and a half hours, got there just in time to sneak in do the whole thing, very high anticipation, Like I thought, like, man, I’m doing the thing. I’m making this plunge right into the heart of this buck’s territory because I had this like feeling and everything’s lined up and YadA, YadA, YadA, and I do the hunt and it’s all perfect, and then I don’t see him nothing crickets, don’t see a single deer, And I just remember thinking like, ah, what an idiot like you came in here the middle of October. It’s the lull. You know, you probably just screwed it up. He wasn’t gonna be moving all that much anyways, What an idiot. The next morning, I started to drive home, and then on my drive home, I’m going through all this indecision like we’ve been talking about, and now I’m like arguing with myself, Well, you know, you came all the way down here. You did everything right. Your execution seemed really good, your wind was really good. You didn’t bump anything that you know of. You know, maybe he just didn’t happen to you know, you couldn’t quite see down to the bed, so he could have been there, or we could have embedded off one of these other points. You know, you weren’t necessarily completely wrong. You got to give it another chance. So I get part way home and then decide to turn around and drive back for one more hunt. And this time like, all right, I’m just gonna I’m gonna hunt a slightly different I think, if I remember correctly, the wind is shifted a little bit, so I wasn’t gonna hunt that same spot. But I had another zone prepped where I could hunt on just kind of the other side of this betting area, in a place that I still thought was one of this possible kind of exit routes to a food source. And I slip in there. It still had stuff, was still wet, still nice kind of windy day, so I could sneak into this zone close. I was being a lot more aggressive than I had in the past, and get set up, sit in the tree, feeling good about it. You know, I’ve had this whole thing worked out in my head. Gets to the last I don’t know, ten to fifteen minutes of daylight, and I hear a twig snap and I look in this direction and then the holy shit, there he is. He did the thing like it worked out exactly how I thought it was. And here’s a one sixty class, just a mammoth of a bodied buck, you know, at thirty yards something like that, thirty five yards, just the closest I’ve ever into a buck like that that I can get a shot at at this point in my hunting career. And it’s here, like everything worked out. I did it all right, He’s right there. And then in that moment, it was like, holy shit, now I need to pull off the last thing. I did everything right, but now I actually have to pull off a shot. And I was also though, trying to self film it, and so now I’m scurrying to try to get a camera spun her arm, and I’m trying to spin around the tree and moving the camera to be a film while I could also get a shot. And this whole time that’s happening, the buck is moving across the one opening that I had, and I just remember in this moment finally getting spun around the camera on the target and I can see the buck, and I remember thinking, oh, no, you’re not going to get a shot. Like he’s moving, he’s not stopping, he’s moving across, and this is your one chance, after all of these years, after doing all of these things, right, I remember in my mind just thinking like, you have to get a shot. And he’s moving, and he’s moving kind of in towards a down tree. I remember there’s like a downtree and branches extending out, and he’s gonna be behind that downtree soon. And so what did I do? I just shot. I just got a shot off before I couldn’t get a shot off right, and that shot hit the buck, but it hit him back. And you know later in reviewing the footage of it, I did get footage of it. You know, it hit he was behind those tree branches, and I honestly can’t remember if I glanced off a branch or just hit back, but it was in that zone. And to make a long story short, couldn’t find him that night, searched for him the whole next day, brought out a dog, couldn’t find him the whole next day. Day three had a different friend who had a dog come down searched all that day, could not find the buck. And you know, that was the first time that I’d hit a buck and not found it, and you know, just devastating for that reason. Devastating for like what felt like making so much great progress and then to not be able to finally get that thing to come together in the end, devastating, you know, for all of these reasons and many more. And then couldn’t find the deer. Fast forward two months, three months something like that. I come back during shed season and I find him right in the zone that I swear we walked all around when we were out there searching with dogs. So did we just miss him and he’d been dead there all along? Maybe, or maybe he just took longer and then came back to his bedroom and debt. I do not know, But that was like my first major what felt like a major success but ended up being a major failure and like massive heartbreaking situation. And what I learned from that, among many many different things, was like I learned a lot of confirming things, like Okay, it paid off to like do that scouting and find out where the bedroom was and find some of those things that off. It paid off to trust my gut to go in and do a hunt, even though it was mid October and the rules said don’t hunt in the middle of October because they don’t move as much. But actually, as we all know, that’s not necessarily the case. So that was something that was confirmed to me, like I stuck with the thing, even though the first hunt didn’t worked out. I pivoted and adjusted, so all those things confirmed, like, Okay, I’m making progress, I’m figuring these things out. But then ultimately an end, I put so much pressure on myself to get the shot. I put so much into that, like that the most important thing was to get a shot. That I took a shot that I probably shouldn’t have first and foremost, you know, I forced a shot. I rushed a shot that really, you know, with him moving and with me trying to fiddle with all that other stuff, I did not put myself in a position to get the right shot, and I was not experienced enough or I’m not sure what the right words other than that, but I didn’t make the right decision moment, and that was a massive failure that I have continued to struggle with in all the years since. As we’ve all talked about, right, those things never end up, you know, not being a challenge in one way or another. But that was the first big one on many of those different fronts. The still sticks with me to this point.

00:55:17
Speaker 4: I mean, if you are gonna if you were going to make a top ten or top five list of ways in which deer hunters, particularly bow hunters, screw up rushing the shot would be like always up there.

00:55:31
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, it is just this.

00:55:33
Speaker 4: One of the hardest things to do is pump the brakes when you’re like, there’s the one I’m going to shoot at, Like I have to get a shot because they’re so rare, the encounters are so rare and they get within range of you. It is very hard when you switch over to that I’m taking a shot to not take it if the whole thing falls apart.

00:55:54
Speaker 2: So like there’s like like some other force, like something takes control and it’s like like a tractor being sucking you in, Like you lose autonomy in some way, and like it’s like a ball rolling down a hill. Like once that gravity takes over, it’s really hard to stop that thing once it’s.

00:56:11
Speaker 3: Rolling, real hard. Yeah, I don’t know. I mean, I mean I don’t even know.

00:56:18
Speaker 4: You get better about that stuff, but it’s not like that thing ever goes away. No, you know, like that that is always a possibility and it’s so rarely works out.

00:56:30
Speaker 2: Yeah, And I mean you and I have have spent years and years talking on this podcast about the many examples of ways that you and I have had that situation happen, and ways we’ve gotten better at it, ways we’ve tried to deal with it, ways we’ve I think the most effective things for me has been like recognizing my shortcomings and like just recognizing, Okay, like there’s some things you can do to get better, and then there’s some things you just need to recognize that you’re not good at some of these things, and you need to account for that ahead of time. So like, for example, I’m not going to take long shots anymore because I just know, like I’m too susceptible to making some tiny air, I’m too susceptible too rushing the shots. So I’m going to know that ahead of time and just say, hey, Mark, you’re not going to be the guy that gets to shoot deer at fifty yards. You’re just not because for me, I’m not willing to risk all the bad things happening. I would much rather have fewer shot opportunities, but fewer bad things happen wounded deer, miss deer. So I’ve pulled in my shooting range. That’s probably been like some of the best things. I’ve dumbed down my gear. I’ve decreased my range. I have, you know, tried to find ways in how I set up shots and how I prepare and how I set up locations to minimize those errors, knowing full well that like this very well might be the number one way that people fail. Like once you get to a certain point where you’re pretty good at deer hunting and you know how to get within a range of deer, I gotta believe that most hunters at that point I have a whole lot of deer that they screwed up on that. Yeah, that’s the number of reason, number one reason.

00:58:06
Speaker 3: Why I have done the same thing.

00:58:08
Speaker 4: Man, I want them at like twenty yards looking away from me, I mean, like already kind of pass me. I’m the same way, Like I don’t I don’t need to be shooting deer forty fifty yards away. I want them close. And I did the same thing, like I need to work with myself. I dumb that shit down, and I try to give myself really high odd shots because it’s so easy to screw up.

00:58:32
Speaker 2: And and you know, I don’t I could be wrong. I don’t think we’re unique in that, and I do think and you can tell me if you think I’m wrong here, Tony. But I think that our industry, the community, the marketing machine of the hunting world tries to tell hunters that, oh no, all you need is a better bow or a better arrow, or more practice or this new technique or this shooting style or this answer, and all of those things can help, and you should do all of the stuff you possibly can to get better and more effective. I’m not saying you shouldn’t do those things, but it is much more unpopular to do what we’re talking about. Why don’t we hear more about restraint, Well, because it’s not worth any money.

00:59:22
Speaker 3: Yeah, you know, the marketing budgets don’t. That’s not that’s not what they’re going for.

00:59:27
Speaker 4: But I mean, you know, I remember I don’t remember what show this was, but I remember watching a bow hunting show one time, and it was like a twelve year old kid that I think that kid missed a giant and then killed a giant in the same show, And it was like one of those things where I remember being like I would fall apart on those deer every time, and then realizing, well, that kid where he’s hunting expects on another giant to come down the trail. You know, we watch people hunting in scenarios where it’s not the dude on public land in Pennsylvania. You know that deer that comes along that one sixty in Ohio. That deer is not coming along very often, so it’s easy to lose your shit. But we watch people all the time who are like, if I don’t kill this one, like they’ll be more’ll be another one, And most of us aren’t. Most of the time people aren’t hunting that scenario. So that’s that’s when that ego that takes over where you’re like, I gotta possess that thing, like I need to possess that deer because this is not going to come around again for me.

01:00:37
Speaker 2: Yeah, that shit’s tough, man, Yeah it’s tough. And when I get to my last story, it relates to this too. But I think a really important thing to remember, and that has been a big part of most of my failures. And it goes back to my second and first story. Really it’s it’s in the end, like this stuff doesn’t matter that much, like whether or not you get a buck this year. You’ve said this. I think it was you who said this to me years ago, and it stuck with me, and I try to remind myself of this, like nobody cares. For so long, I’ve thought like it was important to me, it was important to other people. People were judging me based on this stuff. But in the end, nobody really cares. Nobody’s really paying attention, and it really shouldn’t matter what other people think anyways. And so we put all this pressure on ourselves that really does not need to be there, and that just gets in the way of us enjoying ourselves and the experience. I would say the only pressure that really should be there is simply the pressure to execute the shot in a way that leads to an ethical kill, Like that is warranted, very important pressure that we should recognize and I recognize. But the rest of the outside noise that just gets in the way and sometimes makes.

01:01:49
Speaker 3: Things worse for sure, for sure.

01:01:52
Speaker 4: I mean, and kind of what we’re talking about here is really really leads into my last thing. I mean, one of the things that I go through these cycles in my hunting that bothers me the most is when I go on like a big buck.

01:02:10
Speaker 3: Here, or I’m like, I’m only hunting big ones.

01:02:14
Speaker 4: And it because not necessarily because I don’t mind hunting big deer, but what I feel like I have to do to hunt big deer is in as fun for me is if I go out and do what I actually really enjoy. And so my point with this is not it’s not a failure to focus on big deer, it’s a failure to focus on some kind of end result that doesn’t.

01:02:40
Speaker 3: Give you what you need out of the process.

01:02:42
Speaker 4: And for me, I don’t know why I’m wired this way, but the most enjoyable hunting I have is when I go someplace new and try to figure it out.

01:02:50
Speaker 3: That’s just what works for me.

01:02:52
Speaker 4: And it’s private, public whatever, Like I just like showing up and being like where do I find them?

01:02:57
Speaker 3: How do I get on them?

01:02:58
Speaker 4: But that’s not always conducive to holding out for one fifties, right, Like, sometimes you just have to recognize what you’re dealing with and be like, I’m just hunting deer right now or whatever. But to me, I enjoy that more than defaulting to a situation where I have a higher odds chance of killing a big one. But I don’t necessarily have to figure anything out. And what I don’t know what that means for like the average hunter listening to this, But there are ways to hunt, and there are things you can do that you’ll just enjoy it more, you know, And it’s not necessarily going to be that blueprint for killing big bucks that you’ve been fed by the hunting industry, you know, like the you know, I talk about this all the time, but like the not hunting during the lull and then not hunting during heat waves and not hunting during this and not to hunting during that. I’m like, that may be a good way to kill a big buck in November, but it might be a really good way to also have a shitty season where you don’t hunt very much.

01:03:54
Speaker 3: Yeah, you know, And if if you.

01:03:57
Speaker 4: Don’t like being on a tree stand in early October when the weather’s nice and the leaves are coming down, like, I don’t know, man, Like it’s it’s fun to be out there and it’s fun to figure this stuff out and I’m at the stage now I see a lot of a lot of my buddies have really good hunting spots now, like really good like they own land or they lease good land, and they have you know, the box blinds and the food pots, and they are just losing their fire and you can see it because it’s like they know how they’re going to kill them. There’s there’s not really any mystery left. There’s not anything that they have to figure out. It’s like those cell cameras are going to feed you enough intel so you know when he’s moving and you’re going to go in there and you’re gonna do it, and it’s going to be you know, can be really fun and some people love it, but I can see I can see it in some of my buddies where they’re like they’re struggling with the easiest way to kill a big one versus how they really kind of need to hunt to get fulfilled by it. Yeah, which is which is one of those things that I preach a lot where I’m like, go someplace different, don’t just have one spot to hunt. You don’t have to leave your state, you know, you like, you don’t have to travel that far but when you try something new in a new environment, it just kind of lights the fire again. And it’s so easy to not do that because that is not a very good way to kill big bucks for most people, but it’s a good way to enjoy deer hunting and sort of find yourself again. And I deal with that all the time, Like, you know, we we have pressure to kill big ones, right, Like if we go five years and don’t kill a big one, we are not we probably aren’t doing this anymore, right because just the truth of the matter, And so there’s always that sort of pressure, and you know that’s that happens to everybody too, Like everybody wants.

01:05:36
Speaker 3: To kill a big one.

01:05:38
Speaker 4: But when that when that becomes too much, or like when that becomes the thing that’s the focus, you often sacrifice what you actually really.

01:05:46
Speaker 3: Want to get out of it.

01:05:48
Speaker 4: And that’s tough, man Like, It’s it’s a constant sort of push pull thing that I deal with all the time. And I feel like I’m getting better, partially because I’m taking my daughter’s hunting so much, so I sort of get that hunt any deer fixed through them. But it’s still something for me where I’m like if I’m kind of bumming on a deer season. Usually the answer for me is, I’m just gonna go for a long weekend. I’m gonna hunt somewhere else and just like blank, slate this thing and just figure something out. And then, you know, a lot of times I don’t kill, but a lot of times I’ll come back and be like, Okay, that’s just what I needed, you know.

01:06:21
Speaker 2: Yeah, And that’s that theme is the same theme of my last failure too. And I think it all comes down to knowing yourself, right, figuring out what that enjoyable, how you define enjoyable or fun or satisfying. Like, every one of us has a different version, right, And there can be multiple answers for each of us too, Right, Like I can enjoy going and traveling and figuring it out, but then I can also enjoy sometimes doing the behind the house easy hunt or whatever the thing is. Right, We’re all going to have our own different versions, and maybe there’s multiple. But the biggest thing I’ve learned is like recognizing when you were hunting for yourself versus when you were hunting for some outside expectation or goal that you are driving towards because you think you should, or because you know, the pressure or social media or peer pressure or whatever the thing is that’s making you hunt for not your own satisfying reasons. So you know, my story that I’ll share briefly is one I’ve told many times, so I won’t get into all the details. But the one that really hammered this home for me was that Iowa trip. You know, I don’t know, five years ago or whatever it was. When I was there with a bunch of buddies in town. Everyone’s having a good time going out, you know, going out for like a late breakfast, lunch together, shooting the breeze, having fun evenings, dinners together. If somebody shot, when everyone would go help them track it, hunting, some of the share properties with each other, not taking it too terribly serious, and enjoying it. It’s Iowa, It’s fun and exciting. But they were focused on enjoying the experience. I meanwhile, I had so much of an expectation built up in my head that I had to choose. I had to shoot a giant. I had to do it in the most hardcore di way, running gun mobile hunting, badass kind of way. So I wasn’t gonna hunt anything other than like my own saddle, set up my own way, and so because of that, I did everything quote unquote right. I hunted, you know, from dawn till dusk, every single day, all day, and the result was that I was mostly miserable. I did not kill a buck, and I didn’t spend any time with my hunting buddies, who all had a great week together enjoying camaraderie and hunting, while I just suffer fested in the tree, beating myself up for not having been a good enough hunter. While all the rest of them didn’t necessarily they weren’t necessarily any better or any worse than me, or have any more or less success than me. But they had a great week right, and I instead had a miserable one. I thought after all of that, driving home, like what am I doing? I This is not why I got into honey. I got into honey because yes, I love being out there in the field. Yes I love all the things actually involved with hunting. But I also enjoyed my friends and family while I was out there. I enjoyed the camaraderie. I enjoyed all the tradition and ritual around it. I enjoyed you know, this isn’t like a war. You don’t have to win the war. You’re supposed to be having an enjoyable experience. And coming out of that, I realized that what you talked about, like finding what your thing is, finding the ways to keep the joy, that’s what really matters. And so for me, in the years since, I’ve learned things that matter to me are the people I’m with. It is the places that I’m at, the experiences, the process, being out there with my friends and family, teaching learning. Sometimes that means I’m going to be hunting balls to the wall all day, and sometimes that means I’m going to come in and get lunch with my friends, or take my son out, or spend a core part of the rut when I should be hunting in a great state for big deer and instead be hunting with my kids and my dad up north where we’re going to see a couple spikes. I’ve learned that that’s the stuff that really matters. Having balance, having diversity, having camaraderie, enjoying all of that is what makes a hunting season successful for me today, and I’m a happier hunter because of it. And I think I’m going to be just as successful quote unquote a hunter too, because I’m going into a season and any particular hunt with like a greater reservoir of energy and creativity and excitement. And I think when you have that, you’re going to end up making better decisions and performing better out there too, totally.

01:10:47
Speaker 4: I mean, if you really want to fail at deer hunting, take it too seriously. Yeah, there are parts you should take very seriously. But if you take the whole thing so seriously all the time that the fun evaporates, you’re gonna you’re gonna make terrible decisions, yeah, because you’re not going to be operating from the right place, and it’s just not going to be enjoyable. It’s just it is so easy. It’s so easy to cross that line. And I mean it’s sort of again, this is sort of an industry standard thing where you sort of paint that as the you know, the m O, right, like that’s that’s how you should be, That’s how you have to be to kill a big public land box. It’s like, you don’t have to do that, thank you don’t. And if you and if you’re not having fun with it, you will just not hunt as well. Like it’s the same thing. It’s like confidence too. If you’re not confident, you’re just you’re in trouble, you know. And you can only get to these places by doing the wrong thing a whole bunch and realizing what you need out of it.

01:11:43
Speaker 2: Yep, yeah, yeah, it’s it’s having those experiences, failing a lot, recognizing that’s okay, forgiving yourself, trying again, learning and carrying on on and on and on, trying to get better, but also recognizing this the end of the world. We’re not you know, we’re not solving world peace here. We’re trying to have a fun and enjoyable experience in nature, trying to put some food on the table. Whether or not you kill a big buck really doesn’t matter. So don’t stress too much, you know, do the work. If your goal is if you have a hard goal, great chase that goal, pursue hard things, grow, push yourself, all of that. But with that balance, with that understanding that it’s really easy to go too far, or to do things for the wrong reason, or to get in over your head, and so it’s like you need these little reality checks. Ever once in a while, I don’t know, I haven’t quite yet figured out the way to plan for that ahead of time. Usually it just like hits me in the moment, maybe there’s something I should do to, Like have an alarm clock set for November fifth every year that just says, hey, wake up, idiot, chill out, something like that. I need these little reminders, like take a deep breath, remember, like there’s more to life than killing a five and a half year old buck. You’ll be okay, go get lunch with your dad or whatever. Like those kinds of things are just a little bit of a shake you out of your craziness that sometimes will be helpful.

01:13:13
Speaker 3: Well, I mean totally.

01:13:14
Speaker 4: And you when you talk about drawing, drawing that Iowa tag, you’re just like absolutely creating a situation where you’re very ripe to take it too seriously.

01:13:27
Speaker 3: And that’s that’s a big problem.

01:13:28
Speaker 4: I mean, there are a lot of people out there sitting on a lot of Iowa points who are scared to draw because they don’t want to. They don’t I mean, it’s true, they don’t want to burn that tag and they know that there’s going to be pressure on that to go kill a big one. And so again, you can kind of condition yourself to this stuff like if you go, you know, wherever you live, if you travel in state to some part of the state you don’t hunt very much, it’s a way easier situation to allow yourself to not kill in right, or if you end up going somewhere that isn’t no for producing booners left and right, you know, like put yourself into a hard environment where killing any deer would be great. Now, all of a sudden, you have a different focus, right because that big buck thing you see that happen so often, especially with traveling hunts or the thing with trail cameras now is you know, if there’s a one to eighty in your section and everybody’s getting videos of it, it can do the same thing on your home ground hunt, where like it’s that deer bust and it’s like, man, you just sometimes you have to, like we talked about before with like reining in your shooting range. Sometimes you have to just work with yourself and go like, man, if I know that I’ve never traveled to hunt anywhere, and if the first tag I draw is an Iowa tag that I’m only gonna I’m gonna put six seven years into it or whatever, I know me, I’m gonna spin out and lose my shit.

01:14:51
Speaker 3: But if I just drove up north.

01:14:53
Speaker 4: For a long weekend and hunted the national forest up there, maybe try to kill a couple of grouse during launch or whatever, there’s like a stepping star there.

01:15:00
Speaker 3: Without the pressure.

01:15:02
Speaker 4: You’re still doing the process, You’re still you’re still putting yourself in an unfamiliar environment, but you don’t have that pressure of that seven hundred dollars dear tag that you waited six years to draw and everybody’s expecting you to kill a big one. You have to kind of think about that stuff because if you just jump into that, people do that all the time with an elk tag, right first time elk hunters almost always get totally overwhelmed, almost always get their asses handed to them, and almost always go out with too high of expectation, you know, just because it’s I’m only going to do one elk hunt. I want to kill a three hundred inch bowl and it’s like, brother, you better be looking for a calf, like yeah, you know, because that’s just what’s going to be delivered to you.

01:15:41
Speaker 3: Maybe if you work really hard.

01:15:44
Speaker 2: Yeah, speaking of failure, I’ve got an elk tag for the first time in like eight years. And uh, and yeah, I’m probably gonna be that guy who’s going to be really excited if I just happen to see a calf because it’s gonna be a little bit of a readjustment period. I’m sure it’ll be fun, but but it will be fun. And I think that’s the important thing to remember, is keeping it fun, keep learning, know yourself, know when to push it, no one to step back, know when to shake yourself out of the madness, and keep your eye on the prize. And I can tell you one thing. I know I’m going to fail this season most of the time. But if you keep on trucking and you focus on the fun, focus on the process, it’s all worth it.

01:16:29
Speaker 3: It absolutely is.

01:16:30
Speaker 2: Buddy well Tony, thanks for joining me for this one.

01:16:34
Speaker 3: Thanks for having me man.

01:16:36
Speaker 2: And to all of you listening, thanks for being here. And until next time, stay wired to hunt.