00:00:01 Speaker 1: Welcome to the Wired2Hunt 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. Welcome to the Wired2Hunt podcast. This week in the show, I'm joined by Tony Peterson to discuss our top 10 greatest whitetail lessons learned from our worst hunters. 00:00:31 Speaker 2: Hunting fails. That means the big bucks we've missed. All right, welcome back to the Wired Ton podcast brought to you by Moultrie. Today I'm joined by Tony Peterson. one of my good friends, my right-hand man here at Wired to Hunt, and one of the best DIY whitetail hunters that I know. And we are going to be discussing some of our very most important whitetail lessons learned over the course of our lifetimes. And those lessons learned from our toughest moments, those moments in which we came so close to success, but instead failed because we missed. So we're going to share 10 different examples of misses that we've had on big bucks and then break down the lessons that we learned from those mistakes. Now, some of these fails, some of these mistakes, some of these lessons learned are related to actually the miss itself, shooting, how to execute in those moments. But then also some of these lessons learned, some of these mistakes are actually related to larger hunting strategy, larger hunting, kind of philosophical questions, even decision making, all of that. So what we discussed today is is relevant to becoming a better hunter in many, many different ways. This is just, this is not just about shooting. This is about making good decisions, strong deer hunting strategies, how to make the most of your season in so many different ways. So that is the game plan for today. Before we get to that very briefly, I want to let you know that today, September 24th, 2026, we are kicking off whitetail week at meat eater. That means there's going to be even more Whitetail articles, films, shows, podcasts, social media, all sorts of stuff over at TheMeatEater.com, The Meat Eater YouTube channel, our social media pages. Wherever you interact with Meat Eater stuff over the next week from September 24th through, I think, October 4th, it's Whitetail everywhere. We are just going to be celebrating the greatest big game animal in the world for this whole period. I'm stoked about it. It's going to be great. There is also The ultimate whitetail giveaway is what we're calling it. There is something like more than $ 23, 000 in prizes that you can enter to win. Stuff like a SIG rifle and binos, Moultrie cameras, First Light gift card, new First Light whisper down jacket and pant, all sorts of stuff. Tethered saddle setup, really good stuff. You can learn more about that and enter at firstlight.com. So that's my quick plug. Let's get to the chat with me and Tony Peterson. I think this is an important one for all of us to listen to now that whitetail seasons are kicking off. We're all going to be faced with some tough situations. Mistakes will happen. How do we learn from them? How do we grow from them? Here we go. All right, here with me now on the line is my right-hand man, Mr. Tony Peterson. Welcome to the show, Tony. 00:03:33 Speaker 3: Thanks for having me, buddy. 00:03:35 Speaker 2: It's that time of year when this show comes out. It's going to be September, I don't know, mid-September-ish. So either hunting seasons are already open for people or will be any day now. I got to ask, do you feel ready for it? 00:03:52 Speaker 3: Man, I feel pretty good about this year, dude. I've put in a fair amount of work, done a lot of scouting, got a bunch of setups out there. I was really excited for the Wisconsin opener and the Minnesota opener because they're happening on different weekends this year. My Wisconsin opener plans with the girls got changed. I got to go to a funeral. It's a bad deal. So I'm going to try to maybe pull them out of school or something. But just generally, with what I have planned for September, I'm pretty stoked, dude. Good. 00:04:21 Speaker 2: Me and Dan... talked on the last episode I was on about our plans and all of our hopes and dreams and things we've got going on for this for this upcoming season but we also had a really good time ragging on you for not being able to figure out the technology to be able to join us for that one so so I'm glad to hear you're feeling ready because we were we were discussing and wondering if you did or not or if your hunting season prep was as poor as your podcast prep. 00:04:52 Speaker 3: I love that because every time you guys do something like that, I just look around my trophy room at all the big public land bucks on the walls, and it makes me happy. 00:05:01 Speaker 2: That's good. And I just look at all my books. 00:05:04 Speaker 3: Hey, I've got to tell you something. One of my buddy's kids drew a bear tag in Wisconsin. And I make fun of you a lot for butterflies in, in, in, on lots of different platforms. I was going to say many different ways, many different times. 00:05:22 Speaker 2: Yes. 00:05:23 Speaker 3: But I actually saw some butterfly behavior when I was getting those bear bait buckets ready to go to hike them into the swamp. I don't know if you've ever seen like the butterfly rut. Have you ever watched that? It's incredible. I saw these, it was like a little butterfly cyclone. And I was like, man, that's super cool. And I was watching it and it just, They were doing crazy maneuvers, and then all of a sudden one of them would peel off and land, and then another one would peel off and land. And I went home and I looked it up, and it's like a display of their prowess to fly all over and do these cool maneuvers, and a bunch of dudes will be up there flying, and there'll be one female. Part of it is they release a pheromone, so there's like a scent component involved in it too to show her that they're ready. But part of it is just them posturing up and doing the butterfly version of like, badass shit. And then she just chooses somehow flies off and that guy knows. And it's like this crazy behavior that, you know, it's probably happened around me 5,000 times and I've never noticed it, but I just happened to be sitting there and I'm like, Oh my God, like that's super cool. So in some ways I'm with you on the butterfly thing, buddy. 00:06:33 Speaker 2: You know, we could have a whole podcast about the butterfly rut. Maybe we'll save that for November. I'm sure that for people would love that. 00:06:41 Speaker 3: What butterflies teach us about mature bucks. 00:06:44 Speaker 2: Uh-huh. But in all seriousness, you did have a better idea than that, which is our topic for today's episode. With, you know, with seasons kicking off right now or very soon for many people, you know, I've been thinking like, hey, what's a good way that you and I could, you know, come together to kick off the season with something like very actionable, something very, you know, information-packed, experience-packed that anybody could listen to, whether they are a new deer hunter or have been doing this for a thousand years. And they could say, all right, this is something that can be either a good reminder for me or give me some new ideas to consider or prepare me for something I've yet to experience myself. What could that be? And you and I bounced a couple ideas around and you struck on a topic that I thought would be both painful and very helpful, which is kind of this idea of the greatest lessons that we've learned from missing big bucks, right? I think we hear from people a lot of times talking about what they learned from killing all these big bucks, but what about our mistakes? What have we learned from the times we really screwed it up? Do you, do you feel like that is, and we've, we've, we've kind of explored the edges of this sometimes in the past, but do you think you learn more from your wins or your losses? 00:08:04 Speaker 3: Uh, Probably the losses just because they happen so much more often. I mean, just generally, but I also think, you know, I guess I don't know where, where you went with this topic. We'll find out. But what I find, and I do this all the time is people want to know about big bucks, right? Like they want to know where do they bed? What do they do? Why do they leave sign here and not there? Whatever. Yeah. And we focus so heavily on big buck behavior, but, most of the success that we find, or at least a huge portion of it is just our decision-making, right? Like it's, it's, it's an exercise where we think we have to learn about the deer, but we really need to also be learning about ourselves. And I think when you talk about missing big bucks, you can use those, those times, those events as, you know, as a way to learn about yourself or not. And if you don't, you're probably in trouble. And it's not that much fun to face because it is a failure. It's a big failure, especially if you do it on film. That really sucks. But even just doing it when you're out there and nobody's watching really sucks too. So that's kind of the approach I took with it. And I think you can learn a lot about yourself and how to proceed by paying attention to these kind of failures. 00:09:21 Speaker 2: And I think I would piggyback on that and I'd say that by learning about yourself, you then better position yourself for more deer hunting success. 00:09:30 Speaker 3: Right. 00:09:30 Speaker 2: Right. To your earlier point, the assumption is that I need to learn about deer. I need to learn about deer sign, deer behavior, deer movement, whatever. But sometimes it's learning about this thing or learning about how you deal with challenges or deal with adversity or deal with a tough decision. That sometimes, as you mentioned, is more important than anything. So Why don't you kick things off? Give me your first example, your first lesson learned tied to a miss, and then let's kind of see how we can generate some work. widely applicable, you know, lessons that, that anybody could take from this stuff. 00:10:04 Speaker 3: So the, the first one that I put down that I think is the most important, cause it's sort of the bedrock for the rest of them is that most of our excuses for missing are bullshit. And yeah, And I say that as somebody who's used them all many times and has, you know, put that nice warm blanket on of, oh, I must've hit a limb. You know, the deer must deduct it, right? Like it's never, it's never, I just melted down and I, I made a mistake, right? Like I, I didn't, I didn't do what I needed to do. And I think, I think it's, you know, we're protecting our egos, right? Like sometimes there's a legitimate, issue, right? Like sometimes you genuinely misjudge the range. Sometimes you genuinely do hit something in the way that you just didn't see, you know, low light situation, or he came in on the opposite side of your stand or whatever, like that stuff happens, but you have to be really honest about it. Like if he walks in at 20 yards and you just punch it because you're, you know, buck fever, you red lining, it's okay. Like that happens, but not not recognizing that and covering that up. Like what else are you making excuses for in your deer hunting? You know, like we, we love to blame all the pressure on public land, but not the fact that we don't scout enough, right? Like we love to blame the DNR for allowing too many bucks to get killed or our gun season to be at the wrong time. It's like, we need to learn to work within the framework of what we have, right? Like if you, if you are making excuses like that, you're probably, you're probably making them all over in your deer hunting and just not doing what you need to do. So I think like that was the first one that I really started with. Cause I'm like, that's a hard truth to face, but it's an important one. 00:11:53 Speaker 2: So what's the opposite of that? So, so if, if that's the mistake we don't want to make, making excuses for our misses, making excuses for our bad hunt or our bad season or our bad trip, like how do you do, how do you, how do you live the alternative? 00:12:09 Speaker 3: Pay attention to when you settle, like pay attention to when you're inclined to not face that truth. Right. So let's, let's say not shooting, right? Let's say the season opens and in Michigan where you're hunting or wherever for whoever, and you've got your place to hunt your lease, your grandma's farm and you, you know, opening day hits and it's a East wind or it's a, it's a North wind and you're expecting South. And you're like, I don't have any place to hunt. I don't have anything set up. It's like right there, you couldn't anticipate that you needed more setups. Like how many times, how many years has this happened where you're like, man, I'm sitting in the same three spots or I'm waiting for the conditions to line up so I can sit that one spot. Cause I like it. And it's like, yeah, that spot might be great, but it's not going to produce every day. It's not going to be a all season long thing probably. And there's so many, there's so many moments like that, or you go do, you know, put up five stands, right. And you get into one. And you look around and you're like, I can't shoot there and I can't really shoot there. It's like, yeah, you were in there in August. You had your pole saw and you're like, I did good enough. And those moments, like for me personally, when I used to make a lot of excuses, it was because I settled for something. Right? Like when you feel like you're like, ah, this is good enough. Right? I talked to Steve about that a lot last year when we were hunting Nebraska. It's like, well, this was good enough. I could see deer. And say, no, you settled for a good view, but not to be on the spot the deer go. And I think that just kind of bleeds into everything, you know? 00:13:43 Speaker 2: So true. That's one of my, and maybe we'll jump to this in a minute, but I've definitely experienced that same thing. And time and time again, that comes to life in my hunts in different ways. Like that simple nugget of truth there is a part of so many hunts. And are you going to Are you going to focus on those little things? Are you going to focus on getting it just right? Or are you going to settle for the easy, the comfortable, the convenient, the known? And it takes time, I think, and experience to figure that out. But the sooner you can, the more you're going to enjoy your hunts and feel good about your experiences out there too, I think. Because I don't know about you, but I always know it. Like in my heart of hearts, I know when I settled. And so I'll be sitting there in the tree or sitting at home or driving home or whatever. And it'll be like gnawing at me in the back of my mind. I knew what I did. Maybe I don't want to admit it to myself, but I'm like, oh yeah, you quit or you settled or you should have done this thing. And I hate living with should haves. 00:14:50 Speaker 1: Right. 00:14:51 Speaker 3: Yeah, for sure. I mean, like you said, you know, you just know generally. Like very, very rarely is there just a total mystery that comes your way in the deer world. And you're like, I have no, I have no idea why this happened or why I'm not seeing deer or whatever. It's like, usually you have an idea. Yeah. 00:15:09 Speaker 2: So, so I want to jump on then with another one that's, that's kind of related to how we think about things or interpret why things happen. And this one, this one kind of was illustrated for me on a hunt on opening day, like 10, 12 years ago, something like that. hunting one of my favorite early season setups. It's a location that I had kind of finally perfected. It had been a spot that I thought would be a good early season location. And then over a couple of years was kind of trying to, you know, manicure it, kind of massage it, figure out how do I make this spot better? How do I set up? So the access is really, really good for an early season evening. How do I make sure that there's a better food source than anywhere else for an early season hunt? How do I make sure that You know, there's not just one good thing going on here, but maybe two or three good things going on here to take advantage of some natural movement and then enhance it. I really thought I was kind of figuring out how to layer these things. And so I was very excited for that first hunt. It was a little bit of a cold front. It was like, I don't remember exactly, but probably was one of those October 1st where it's, you know, maybe 60. So it feels pretty nice and cool after a bunch of 70 degree days. And I was on a little tiny food plot. that was on the edge of a really thick nasty bedding area and then surrounded by a standing cornfield so it was this perfect little transition from terrific bedding this tiny green food source and then transition to a big food source after that and it was one of those sits that you dream of opening day slipped in perfect wind perfect temperature perfect setup i got in clean you know, didn't think anything smelled or heard or saw me. And then within minutes, here's deer moving. All right. I could see deer moving back and kind of the transition area from the bedding. And then over the course of the next few hours, just more and more and more deer. And then eventually they started filtering out bonds and dough, started feeding in the food plot and then moving off to the cornfield and some young bucks. And then bam, I don't know, like the last hour of daylight or so I turned and looked over my right shoulder and and here's a bachelor group of bucks right there. They had slipped in on me and were already approaching in range. There was three of them, if I remember correctly, and one of them was a nice, solid, mature eight-pointer, one of the good, solid, older bucks in that area. It all happened fast. He moved in. They were just kind of walking steadily at a steady pace from behind me, moving past me. for a whole bunch of different, you know, back to excuses, there's a whole number of different things that I may or may not have done wrong. But I think that the most simple version of what I did wrong is I just rushed it. And I took a shot at the steer and shot right underneath him. And then he ran off. And now it's, you know, an hour of daylight or 45 minutes of daylight left or whatever. And I had the perfect opportunity. I had a mature buck in range. I get up. Chipshot easy shot at him in this perfect setup that I had planned around for months and I whiffed it. And I remember in those minutes after that, just assuming the worst. And this is the lesson that I want to speak to, which is avoiding worst case thinking. So in this moment, I immediately jumped to the worst case possibility, which is that I just blew my chance. I am a horrible deer hunter. I missed, I ruined my chances tonight. This was like one of these once every five year situations where everything lines up perfect for opening day. And yeah, yeah, you just, you screwed the pooch. And I remember thinking my night's done. My best chance of October is done. You know, what an idiot. And I kind of dwelled in that misery for five minutes or so. And that was a mistake. What I was reminded of though, about 25, 30 minutes later though, is that oftentimes while we jump to worst case assumptions and worst case conclusions, when we make mistakes as hunters, oftentimes that's our mind playing tricks on us. Oftentimes things aren't as bad as we think they are, or they can change very quickly, or there's alternate opportunities. There's different ways things can go. And on that given night, I was, this was illustrated for me because like a half hour after I missed this great buck, which I thought was like the one and only great chance I would have. And I spooked every deer around and there was deer cascading back into the, back into the woods and, you know, disastrous encounter with almost no daylight left, you know, 45 minutes left. Well, sure enough, 30 minutes later, from a totally different direction, a different, pretty darn nice buck came out, came right out into that food plot. And I got a shot at another, you know, three and a half, probably three and a half year old buck, which at that time was like, it was an awesome deer for me in Michigan. And I was thrilled and I had a great shot at him and I killed my opening day buck. And An hour earlier, I would have thought there was no way in the world that could have happened. But I was reminded on this particular night that oftentimes the worst cases that we jump to are not necessarily true. And there's plenty of other good things and good opportunities and new chances that can arise if we just stay positive, stay at it, and give the world a chance to unfold in front of us. And that's played out for me in so many other types of deer hunting scenarios too, right? Like imagine you are, and all of these things have happened to me. Let's say you are out there and you're walking to your tree stand for an afternoon hunt and you spook a shooter buck on your way in. And then you're like, oh gosh, I just ruined the hunt because I spooked this big buck. But then two hours later, that buck circles back through or a different buck shows up. Or what about when you are sitting on stand and a doe comes walking in with you know, two hours of daylight left or an hour of daylight left, and then she wins you or sees movement and she starts blowing, right? And then she blows and blows and blows. And then you think, well, tonight's done. My hunt's ruined. She just alerted everything for a mile around. But if you stick it out and give it a chance, sure enough, sometimes stuff still does happen in a good kind of way, despite that. Or I don't know, hunting public land and another hunter comes walking through and you think, oh, geez, my night's ruined. But then it still works out. Or a neighbor kills your target buck and you think your season's over, but then a surprise deer shows up. There's so many different ways this can play out. And maybe I'm just a head case and I'm the one, maybe I'm unique in jumping to these worst case conclusions, but I think it's a pretty common thing for a lot of folks. When you build something up, when you work really hard towards something, when you're trying really hard and then it doesn't go as planned, there's a human tendency for a lot of people to jump to, ah, that's it. Ah, that's, you know, that's done. And, and I've had to work hard over the last like 15, 20 years to continuously catch myself when I do that and remind myself, well, not so fast, buddy. Like there's, there's, there's many other ways go. If you are willing to stay positive, stay at it and believe in this different set of possibilities, it might still unfold. So I don't know. Does that, does that resonate with you at all? 00:22:29 Speaker 3: Yeah, it does, buddy. I mean, it's real easy to go negative. I mean, real easy. I mean, in fact, my second point was give yourself a break. Like literally what you're talking about, if you hunt enough, you know, you're going to miss, right? A lot of times you're going to miss the big one for many reasons, which I'm sure we'll get into. And it's like, it just happens. The best thing you can do is knock another arrow and start paying attention. Because what are you going to do? And you talked about that, how I really believe, or I'm coming to believe more and more about deer hunting, that it's just a series of failures and eventually sometimes it works out if you keep going. And we see a curated version of deer hunting that really doesn't mirror what most people are going through. We see a 21-minute show now and it'll have three big bucks killed. It's just not it's not what's going on for most people. Most people have to go through, take their lumps, screw up, screw up, screw up, but keep, keep putting in the time, keep being patient and eventually it'll happen. And I always, I think about that, like, so your example of that, that opening night buck, that's, that's like a very relatable thing. That buck comes in, you just screw up, you just miss him. And then all you're thinking about is you not doing your job correctly and What's the impact on the spot? What's the impact on that buck? And every, everything your brain can conjure up is a negative. 00:24:05 Speaker 2: Yeah. 00:24:05 Speaker 3: And it's like, it's not that big of a deal. Like it just, you did it once you put yourself in that position. Once he came by, it's not like you can't do that again. You have an entire season ahead of you, but it's very easy to hunt. Like you don't, once you make that mistake. And man, I had, when I, When I hit a point in my career where I had killed a whole bunch of little bucks, some two-and-a-half-year-olds, and I was like, I just want that next level up. That just deep chest, big buck. Yeah. It was like they had a force field around them. If they came in, I was going to miss that shot. And it was probably... I don't know if it was the hardest section of my deer hunting life. It was definitely... a time period where it was harder to handle than almost any other time period. Maybe when I started out, how hard that was at first for the first several seasons, maybe that was different just to, just to start killing them consistently with a bow. Cause that was, that was a long time too. Yeah. But that, that time period when you're like, that's what I want and that's what I'm going to shoot and you can't hit them. It is, it is so easy to go dark. And you know, what I realized was, The season before I started, I killed my first big one. And when I did that, it has happened every single year for me since, at least once. The season before that, I missed two big ones on the same sit 10 minutes apart. And they were big. They were really good deer. And it was entirely my fault. Like I just, I fell apart on one. I fell apart on the other. This late October sit, beautiful opportunities. And dude, I wanted to set fire to my bow. I wanted to quit. And it was stupid because, you know, like I said before, like you did when you're sitting on that opening nightstand, it's like, if you put yourself in that position once it's you'll, you'll do it again. If you keep going, you know, it's, we think that this is like the, I mean, part of the reason we lose our shit when we shoot at them is because we think it's so rare that it won't happen again. And we want to possess them so bad. You know, like I see this, I see this all the way through hunting and fishing. I mean, I've taken a lot of new hunters, pheasant hunting, and you know, they want that first rooster so bad that you'll have a big rooster get up in front of them and they'll whiff with both barrels or however, you know, if they're shooting a semi out or whatever, maybe more. And it's like, then the next one's going to come. Like you're going to, you're going to flush another one, but it gets in their head and they start missing. And it's like, man, if we can do that with a bird, we certainly can do it with a, 200 pound whitetail that has a nice rack, you know, like it's, it's just tough, but you just have to give yourself a break. It's, it's going to happen and it's not that important. 00:27:13 Speaker 2: And I think another thing is that when you do give yourself a break, When you're able to forgive yourself or realize, hey, it happens. It's not the end of the world. It's all right. That does two things, I think. Number one, it allows you to relax a little bit back into a normal state of mind. And then I think that opens things up enough to then believe in the possibility of you being able to do it right or for good things to happen again. And once those two things happen, like when you're relaxed and then you have some level of belief or confidence in what you're doing again, that's when you can actually hunt. You cannot hunt effectively when you are tight and anxious and upset and negative. You're not going to be focusing right. You're not going to be able to execute correctly. You're not going to be able to stick it out. There's all these different things that are required to consistently have deer hunting success that just won't happen consistently anymore if you're feeling all those things. But if you relax a little bit, believe in what you're doing. Again, you have confidence that, Hey, this could happen. Uh, then all of a sudden you're, you're in it, you're present, you're focused, you're enjoying yourself. You're able to see the deer slipping in behind you. You're able to hear it. You're able to refocus, recenter and be like, all right, I screwed up once. That's all right. Now let's, let's get it done this next time and be able to take advantage of that next opportunity that day or later that week or whatever it is. Um, so it's got all these like trickle down effects. from those simple kind of like mental switches, I think. 00:28:44 Speaker 3: For sure. For sure. 00:28:45 Speaker 2: Um, so, so that was your second one. Give yourself a break. Was there anything else on that one or do you want me to jump to the next? 00:28:51 Speaker 3: Nope, go ahead. 00:28:53 Speaker 2: All right. So the next one is, is I think we're going to be doing this a lot. There's going to, we're going to say things that are going to be tied to what each of us have in mind. You mentioned how in a lot of these hunts, we see that deer and that opportunity and we want to possess it so badly, right? Um, my lesson here is to not force things. And this is something that has happened with like shot execution. And this is something that happens like just on hunt decisions too. Um, but for me, it was really hammered home on one particular hunt. Um, this was a different scenario where it was a specific buck that I had been after for multiple years and it had all sorts of encounters with him, all sorts of close calls, like one of those kind of, um, you know, classic Mark Kenyon cat and mouse games where I had seen this buck and back and forth, back and forth, back and forth. It was like this big, tall eight pointer. Um, and finally I thought like, I'm taking a big swing. I'm diving into the bedding area. I'm going to go to this spot where it's going to be hard to get to, but I'm going to get there super early in the morning before they come back. And if I remember right, it was late October, maybe super early November. I'm not exactly sure, but somewhere in that, you know, that window. And sure enough, an hour after daylight, something like that, I see a doe kind of slowly nipping her way back towards me. And there he was like locked on her right behind her. And for an hour or so, they just slowly milled their way in my direction. Um, I think I spotted them when they were probably a hundred and some yards away and for an hour, you know, they maybe didn't cover 50 yards, but he was just right there with her and she'd take a couple of steps and he'd stand behind her and then he, she'd take a couple of steps. And so I had a whole hour just to watch and think about, okay, this is going to happen finally. I really hope it's going to happen. She's just got to pull them this way a little bit more. Um, you know, three years of following this deer. 00:30:51 Speaker 3: This is it. 00:30:51 Speaker 2: Finally, I made the right move. I got into the right spot. Uh, this is it. And as that, you know, next 15 minutes progressed after that first hour, she finally is slipping into range. And she comes through this one spot where of course, like there's all these different ways she could have came. She came through the thickest one spot that it didn't have many good options for shooting. And now I'm starting to get a little bit panicky in my, in my head as she slips in there, I'm seeing like, Oh no, like, how am I going to get a shot? And I'm, I'm now trying to readjust in my saddle. Like, okay, If he follows her right there, maybe that's a hole I can get a shot through, maybe not. And so in this minute, 60 seconds, two minutes, whatever it was, as she passes through her own range, but through this gnarly thick stuff, I remember thinking, this is going to be your only chance. You have to get a shot. This is it. All of this has led up to this moment. You have to find a way to get a shot through here. And so I'm bending, leaning back in my saddle, trying to find different heights or angles for my tree where I can find, can I find a little pocket like this I can shoot through? And he finally walked through and he steps into like this little tiny pocket. And I'm like, this is it. I got to take it. And I let it rip. And of course I missed him. And in the, you know, subsequent minutes and, you know, hours after that, I was kicking myself doing all the things we've just talked about. And I'm thinking through, you know, what would have been worse in this moment? How I'm feeling right now when I thought I had to force the shot, had to make it happen and then missed him. is that worse or would have just watching him pass through and admitting to myself, man, this is not a good shot. This is not a good opportunity. Um, there will probably be better options down the road. Let's just make sure we don't screw it up. Now let's wait till the right opportunity and just let him walk. Um, that would have been a bummer. 00:32:43 Speaker 3: I'm sure. 00:32:44 Speaker 2: I'm sure I would have been like, ah, man, I was so close, but didn't work out. Instead, I'm miserable with myself because I missed. I could have wounded him. It could have been even worse. What I realized is that that was just a very important reminder of the fact that you can never get an arrow back. You just don't need to force a shot. It is always better to not have the shot, to not have the opportunity, than to force something and have it go bad. That has been, unfortunately, reminded I've been reminded of that several times because it's so human. It's so tempting. Like you just said, like you'd think like, here's this thing that I've worked so hard for. And it's, it's so close. Like I got to make it happen now. Cause it's going to be gone. That chance is going to be gone any second. And when we go back to like our reptile brains and we just go, go, go. And it almost never works out. Right. 00:33:36 Speaker 3: So that is, that is almost exactly what I had written down for my third point, which was, rushing the shot almost never works out. Yeah. And so to, to maybe take a different path than what you just said. So you looked at that situation, you watched him come in forever. Uh, you got into the mode where you're like, I got to shoot. I got to find a way to shoot. 00:34:00 Speaker 2: Right. 00:34:01 Speaker 3: It's, and it's like a thing that we do. It's a hard thing to get past that and let that deer go and not take an opportunity when you get it. You know, we've also heard you know, take the first good shot you get, right? Because you don't know what's going to happen. I'm generally on board with that, generally. But what I've realized after hunting deer a lot is you really need to learn how to read the situation and decide when your shot is going to happen. And if you feel yourself trying to make something happen, it's almost never going to work out. And it's like, it's a really tough thing. It's kind of like if you can stand at the range and shoot 50 yards all day and have a fairly tight group, you know, that buck standing in the bean field at 50 yards and you've been hunting for a month straight, it's hard to go. That's not my shot. Right. Cause you're like, I could make it. I could take that and I could make it, but what are the odds? Like, what are the odds that's going to work out the same thing when you just find yourself scrambling to get a shot off? It, Part of it is because sometimes those encounters happen real fast. Sometimes we don't hear them coming. Sometimes it's the rut and they trot right in. Like, you just never know. But a lot of times, in my experience shooting at all kinds of deer, you generally have more time than you think. And especially in situations, you know, I think about, you know, deer coming and feeding on acorns or deer that are just kind of staging up or deer that are not, you know, actively looking for does. they're kind of just doing their thing. They generally have a slow vibe where they'll, they'll, you know, hang out around you, you know, it's, you know, if you're in the place they kind of want to go to. And when you, when you try to make something happen, shooting wise, it's almost always going to go south. And that's like, that's an, that's easy advice to, to give, you know, but it's like a hard, you, you have to go out and you have to like, you have to learn that. And the only way to learn it is to, is to make bad mistakes. But a lot of misses happen because we just, we don't read the situation real well. And we're like, I gotta get that arrow off my wrist. Like I gotta get a shot off here. And it's just usually a recipe for a miss or a wound or just something that's just not a double lung. Let me put it that way. Yeah. Yeah. 00:36:35 Speaker 2: Once that, snowball starts rolling down the hill. It is very hard to cat to catch it again. 00:36:40 Speaker 3: Right. 00:36:41 Speaker 2: Stop it. Um, but yeah, you almost have to experience the negative side of that a handful of times and realize just how shitty that is to then be able to have the, the, I don't know the, that pain in the back of your mind to catch you, you know, next time around bit. 00:37:00 Speaker 3: Whoa, whoa, whoa. 00:37:01 Speaker 2: Like it went really South last time that happened. Um, And maybe that's enough to catch you the next time that snowball starts rolling because it's, you know, it's happened to me a number of times and I still am tempted. I still have this moment where I'm like, ah, and now hopefully more times than not, I can catch myself when it's, you know, one of those kinds of moments are unfolding. And, you know, over the last two years or whatever it's been, you and I have talked about, you know, how I've switched a lot of my general shooting and kind of how I determine my maximum range and my shooting setup. It's went from, How do I maximize opportunities? That's what it used to be. It's like, how can I shoot further? How can I get more shots? Uh, how can I get the biggest cut? Now it's more so like, how do I minimize the bad stuff? So it's, let's bring in the range. Let's, let's make sure I only take chip shots because I just, I'd rather kill fewer deer, but have fewer bad things happen. Like I would rather minimize the negative because that's so crappy. I'd rather just try to get better hunting and get closer shots. I'd rather, you know, make a setup that's, that's simple, that, that, takes stock of my common failings and my common mistakes and tries to account for those beforehand so that I'm not in the moment having to make all these different decisions or think through all these different things when all of these things are going on that we're talking about, right? We are human beings that aren't perfect in so many different ways. How can you set yourself up for. 00:38:27 Speaker 3: Dealing with that? 00:38:28 Speaker 2: Yeah, crazy, right? But yeah, this idea of forcing things, I think, applies to hunting outside of just shooting too, right? And it gets trickier outside of shooting because I think there's this fine line to walk that the only way I've been able to figure out is through personal experience. But there's two approaches you could take to any kind of deer hunt, right? You could go and you could force it You could try to force something because it's the way you want it to go or it's the way you think it's supposed to go or you think this is your only chance. You force an idea or force a move or force into a spot. And sometimes that's a mistake, but also sometimes it's a mistake not to try the hard thing or do aggression. I guess there's this tension between forcing things that aren't right versus being aggressive at the right times, right? And then the flip side of that is being passive all the time, being conservative all the time, and just hoping things will come to you. And I think it's a mistake to go either way too much or too far in either direction and learning how to pick your moments, to pick your spots, to pick your pockets, to walk that line and then know when you can step on one side or the other. That is a very tricky thing. That's like a whole other conversation. Um, but it's something that I think about when I consider like, how do we try to force things as deer hunters? And it seems to me to be shots and then like ideas, like strategy, like sits. 00:40:03 Speaker 3: Dude, I, I talked to Steve and Pat about this on our Nebraska hunt a lot last year because we had three guys hunting what was essentially a little core area that didn't have very many deer in it. And so it was like, if the wind wasn't right, we weren't going to sit on a stand or a blind. And we talked about how often, like when you're growing up and you're learning how to bow hunt whitetails or hunt deer, you know, you're like, oh, it's October 30th. I can probably get away with this wind on this spot. Or it's November 5th and I can probably get away with it. It's not ideal, but if they come in from this direction, but you know, like, you know, like that's a, that's a Western North wind stand. It just is. And you go out there and it's like Southwest or something. Okay. Well now I'm forcing this because I want to do this. And I find this, you know, I think that's like an easy relatable example, but I find that when, you know, that hunt, for example, when I went down there and scouted that ranch, I was like, we are going to decoy in three bucks and kill them with a doe decoy. Like I was so confident of that. We never used a decoy, you know, and I, And I, I wanted to, I wanted to make that kind of strategy work. But as I got into it and the trail camera started showing me things and started realizing like the forecast and everything, I'm like where we need to hunt and what's going on. That's just as much as I want that. It's just not going to happen. And if I try to make it happen, it's probably going to blow up in my face. And it's hard to do that when you get married to an idea or a strategy or a way of thinking, but you have to be really honest about it. Yeah. Yeah. 00:41:38 Speaker 2: And being able to catch yourself when you're like going down that path. And if you, if you can, and I think that it's a thing where again, having done it enough times, you can start to kind of feel it. You're like, Oh yeah, I'm trying to make things go the way I wanted them to, or the way I planned them rather than taking what's being given to me rather than assessing the situation and adjusting to the, to the, you know, facts of the matter. Um, But that's something you've got to, again, most of this, you have to learn the hard way and then learn how to like notice the signs in yourself. 00:42:10 Speaker 3: Right. For sure. Yeah. 00:42:12 Speaker 2: So what's a, what's your next one? 00:42:15 Speaker 3: Um, I'll do one more kind of from the brain and then I'll do one actionable one. People can take away that I think is a, is really good. But if you think you're going to miss, you're going to miss. If you're, if you're thinking that you might miss or you might screw up that shot, you probably will. So I, this, this really hit home with me when I, when I hunted with a trad bow for a couple of years, because you just had the, the level of practice that that requires is so vastly different from a compound in a, or especially a crossbow, but definitely a compound. And the, the first year that I hunted, I shot a ton and I went out and I killed a way at that time was a really good buck for me. And I killed a doe and I was like, man, I kind of got this figured out. 00:43:02 Speaker 1: Right. 00:43:02 Speaker 3: Like I need close shots, but if they come in, I can make this happen. So I went into the next season really cocky and I didn't shoot as much. And I'll never forget. I sat on this little kind of terrain trap back in the woods on opening morning and I had a decent buck go through and he was at like, I don't remember what range, but it was like right at the end of where I would shoot. So 25 yards or 20 yards or whatever it was with that recurve at that time. And I didn't shoot. And I remember thinking, I really want to kill that buck and I really wanted to shoot him. But I remember being so scared that I was going to make a bad shot that I didn't shoot. And I was like, man, this has sort of been a thing that's been happening to me my whole bow hunting career, where it's like, you know, sometimes you're sitting there and everything's calm and they walk into the beans at 15 yards. And you're like, they're so dead. They're so dead. And they often are right. Yeah. But then you're sitting there and, you know, they come through the woods and they're kind of trotting along during the rut and they're, you know, 33 yards out and you're like, okay, there's my window. I'm going to stop him. But you start thinking like, what if he doesn't stop in time? Or what if he takes a couple of extra steps? Or what if he turns this way? Whatever. What if I don't have time? When you start having those thoughts, like that, it's, that it's like, it's not, I'm going to kill this deer now. It's like, what's going to go wrong or how am I going to screw this up, man? It is like, you're going to screw up, you know? And I, and I've talked about this before. I really, and I, I kind of passed this on to my daughters where I try to get them to understand it too. It's like, I always think about them now is if that was a 3d target standing there, would I miss it? Like, would I not feel super confident that I'm going to hit it right in the 10 ring? And when I start looking at deer that way, you know, you're sitting there and you're like, that's a big deer at 25 yards. You should be able to hit that a thousand times out of a thousand. And you sort of kind of like trick your brain into going like, I absolutely can do this because I do this all summer long on a smaller target. The only difference here is it has a heartbeat. I really want to possess it. But when you can start to kind of get past that thinking and that, you know, part of it too is just shooting confidence, right? But when you can listen to that voice in your head when it's all going down, is it confident? Is it like this deer is not going to make it 100 yards and you're going to be wrapping your tag around its antlers? Or are you thinking something's going to go wrong? And if you're thinking that, it often does. 00:45:45 Speaker 2: Do you think that you can... address that in the moment? Or is this something that only comes from the proper preparation? 00:45:54 Speaker 3: Like you just talked about? I think it's both. I mean, like you said, you know, I'm, I'm the same way, man. My, I want all my shots at 20 yards. No, I don't even want to think about a 40 yard shot at a whitetail anymore. And that was not the case in a lot in a good chunk of my bow hunting career. Right. Yeah. So you can absolutely set up for good shots and you should, right? Like you should set up for the shot. You know, you can make. But you can also sit there and you start watching that buck walk down the trail. You know, that fight or flight response kicks in, which causes the buck fever. You can hear your heart pounding in your ears. You can talk yourself down. I mean, look at them. Look at what you have to work with as far as a vital zone. You know, like that's a big target to hit. Just like it's a big target to miss. People miss bull elk. They miss moose. Like it happens. But when you start thinking about like, all I got to do is hit a, you know, paper plate at 20 yards or even bigger. It's like, you can do that. And I, I, I try to tell myself that a lot. And I also, you know, like when you're sitting out there on a stand, anybody's listening to this. When I have a deer go through that, I don't want to shoot. I'm always looking at it. Like, where would I shoot it? And when, you know what I mean? Like, okay, they came down this trail, but some of them peel off down that little drainage and some of them come my way. They often stop when they hop up the riverbank and look around, whatever. Like, what do deer do? Because when you can start to sort of predict that, it sort of quiets that voice a little bit. Like that voice that's scared you're going to screw it up because you're like, I know what they do here. And, you know, they don't always do it. But the more you watch deer and the more you pay attention to them, it's like, okay, he shook his tail. He's going to walk now. He's going to walk up to that fence and he's going to stop and he's going to look around. And when he hops it, he's going to take 10 rush steps and he's going to put his head down like they all do. when you start, when you start thinking about it that way, I think in the moment you can just, just quiet that voice a little bit and not, not have those thoughts of like impending failure, just dominating your brain. Yeah. 00:47:58 Speaker 2: You know, a lot of that stuff comes from the fact that for a lot of people, they don't actually do this that often. Like you might hunt a bunch, but maybe you shoot your bow at a living animal once a year or something. Right. Um, So I think that, of course, our body is going to go into and our minds are going to go into this crazy fight or flight mode because of the fact that you simply don't get many reps to actually deal with that very unique situation, right? So I think one possible additional solution is just shoot more deer, you know, shoot a bunch of does, do whatever it is that makes you happy and gives you that experience and fills your freezer. That's a great thing. But also, you know, to your point, I think that you can kind of simulate it. other deer, right? As you said that you do, I oftentimes when another deer will come through, I'll oftentimes visualize, okay, this is now when I will draw back. If it's a doe or something and I feel good about my situation, I might even just kind of act it out almost. Just visualize, look at it as a practice rep. Kind of hold my finger up and imagine hovering that pin over the vitals and just take a practice rep. And of course, it's not the exact same thing, but Every time you do that over day after day after day, all that stuff slowly starts to build like a groove that your brain can fall into when the real thing's happening, where it knows what to do. It believes it can do it. And that stuff adds up. 00:49:22 Speaker 3: Oh, dude, I totally agree. And I think that, you know, we've talked about this before, but like the visualization thing that sounds like woo-woo crap is so important. And when you think about, you know, when you have, let's say you're out there and you're hunting your target buck and a forky comes in. When you watch that deer and you're looking at where you would shoot it, when he turns to nibble on this thing or he turns away to scratch his nose with his back hoof, he walks up to the scrape a certain way. When you're looking at where your point of impact would be, especially bow hunting, right? Like where would I need that wound channel to go through to hit both lungs? You realize how much that changes like second by second in those encounters, right? And the more that you see that, and the more that you watch that, the more you realize like, man, I, I need to be in this moment and read this correctly. You know, it's the same thing. Like if you're, you know, if you're in a situation and you have a bunch of does and fawns come out in the field or you're on a river crossing or whatever, and you, and you start ranging them, you know, stand up, range them, do that thing. And you're like, Oh, that does actually 31 yards away. And I would have guessed 25 or whatever. Like, you start to just sort of get into the, like give yourself to the moment and, and you become like a bigger part of it. Like you're, you're like, I'm, I'm going through as many steps as I can right now. And when it actually happens, it, it won't be all a surprise. It won't be the first time I'm doing this. Like you said, even if you haven't killed very many deer, there are things you can do to just get ahead of the curve a little bit. And man, all of it, all of it kind of will help you build your confidence like very incrementally, but still like move it in the right direction. Yeah. 00:51:14 Speaker 2: And, and that stuff, that stuff stacks up big time. It's what ends up making a difference. Uh, so I want to take a pretty hard pivot with, with my next one. And this is, this is a, a miss where I missed a big buck and I learned something that didn't have anything to do with the shot itself, but it had to do with the decisions leading up to the shot. So, a little bit of a departure, but this was a hunt. This was in Iowa and I had done a whole bunch of homework trying to prepare for this. I went and I knocked on like 15 doors, got permission on a super cool place, went there that summer, did the cameras, the scouting, the prep. I showed up and did an October hunt back in late October, November for another hunt. I'd scouted and had like a game plan of what I was going to do and how I was going to do it and where it was going to happen. And it just wasn't working. I don't remember how many days I had hunted, but the game plan wasn't working. The spots weren't working. The setup wasn't as I imagined it was all going to be. And I was getting into that timeline or that part of the timeline where you start to be like, ooh, like I'm running out of time. And I had the momentary wisdom to realize that sometimes you need to try wild new things. Sometimes the plan, kind of as we talked about, you don't always need to force the plan. Sometimes the plan is not the right one. You maybe thought it was going to be, but sometimes you have to be willing to depart from the expected, step away from the game plan, and go and just do something wildly off the wall. Try something unexpected. And so what I decided to do in this moment was, I'd been kind of working my way from plan A to plan B to plan C, And then on this day, whatever it was, seven or whatever, I said, you know what? I'm going to go to the one place that I haven't been yet. There's one area that there's no reason to go to, that nobody else is at, that no one has reason to go to, that I haven't had a reason to go to. But maybe that's the spot that I should go because of the fact that I haven't been ignoring it. Other people are probably ignoring it. So let's just throw a curveball and let's just go see. And so for this hunt, I just went off on a wild hare and went to this wild, far away little corner of this property, kind of ignoring all the really good looking stuff. And I stumbled into Shangri-La. And I had just like a parade of deer come off of this little tiny corner of this little wood lot. And it was like one of those first hunts in my life, one of the only hunts really in my life, where I felt like I was living an outdoor TV show hunt. It was like I stumbled onto Mark Drury's farm or something. There was 50 deer and several big shooter bucks that all came out off of this big chunk of cover into this little tiny back of nowhere field. And then one of them ended up being like a, I don't know, maybe 160 class buck with split G2s and just an amazing deer. And I did what I did in the very first story I mentioned, which is that I rushed the shot and shot right underneath him. And of course, I was beating myself up about that for a little bit. But a few days later, I reminded myself like, hey, you know what? That stunk that you missed that buck. But there is a positive to take from that hunt. And the positive was that I had the momentary good insight to be willing to set all the other plans and the expectations and how I thought things should go. I set that aside. and decided to just try something new, try something wildly unexpected. And oftentimes that can be a very good way to go about things with deer hunting. Like it's great to be prepared. It's great to have plans. It's great to have plan A, B, C, D, E. But sometimes it's all right to just wing it. Just try something new. Just go somewhere different. Just take a different approach. Maybe it's not going to work out, but you're going to learn something. It's going to put yourself in a new situation where you're going to come out of it differently. And then every once in a while, that new thing might be a big eye-opener. And then you all of a sudden realize, oh, wow, that place I ignored, it's actually a honey hole. Or this new technique that I always thought was crazy, but I finally tried it. Oh, it actually works. Experiments are so important, I think, to deer hunting. You got to Try different things. Don't just get stuck in what you've always done or what everybody says you should do or what your family does. Try new crazy stuff. Sometimes it really works out great. 00:56:11 Speaker 3: So did we switch podcasts here? What does this have to do with Missing Deer? 00:56:18 Speaker 2: Again, like I, it wasn't the mist that I learned about. It was, I missed that deer, but that experience, what I learned from it was the idea that sometimes you've got to try these different things. So this is a lesson I learned from missing a deer. It just wasn't about the shooting itself. 00:56:33 Speaker 3: Okay. I got you. I didn't know we were coloring that far outside the lines. 00:56:37 Speaker 2: Oh man, you can, I can experiment with podcasts, Tony. 00:56:41 Speaker 3: I absolutely agree with you that you should try shit like that. Like, I think that that's, I think that the willingness to try stuff like that is what separates great hunters from the rest of the pack generally. Like, I think that people look at it and they go, oh, it's because they have this strategy figured out. How to hunt beds or how to do this or how to do that. I'm like, man, they try stuff that shouldn't work. And when you try stuff that shouldn't work, especially on pressured deer, but it's just all deer. Yeah. Sometimes you find something and every lesson that comes from that will feed the rest of your deer hunting life. 00:57:17 Speaker 2: Yeah. That, that has been one of the biggest unlocks for me as a deer hunter. Like when I realized you don't have to do it this one way, you don't have to follow the prescription. And when I all of a sudden released myself from that and instead was like, all right, let's just try things and then learn from that. And then hunt based on your own experience with these different things you've tried all of a sudden, like, Oh, wow. I didn't think that was possible, but I did it. I didn't think this was a way that you could do it, but I just did it, you know? So now all of a sudden it's like, Hey, let's stand up or hide in a standing cornfield on the ground because you think, man, this might be the spot. I really do think this is the way to do it, but there's no good trees. Previous me would have said, well, if there's no good tree, you can't hunt it. Uh, but I was like, you know, screw it. I'm going to try to just hide in the cornfield. I'm going to lay down. If they come close, I'm going to stand up. If I need to move and then sure enough, kill a deer. Or what about a situation where you see the buck moving on the other side of the river? There's no good trees. And you're like, well, there's no way to kill that buck unless I just hid in this little tuft of grass. There's no way that should work. But hell, I'm going to try it. And then sure enough, it works. There's so many examples now I can point to where 15 years ago, me would have said, oh, that's too risky or that shouldn't work. And I just wouldn't have tried. But since trying all these things, now all of a sudden you're realizing, oh, wow, yeah, you can do it this way and that way and that way. You just got to give it a shot. 00:58:37 Speaker 3: Oh, for sure. I mean, what, what you're saying kind of reminds me of when climbing stands got really popular, you know, when at whatever timeframe that was, everybody had a climber, right? And then you went out and you're like, well, now I got to find a tree that I can climb with it. And so instead of looking for the best spot to hunt, you're like, I'm looking for a climbable tree. And it's like, you're just forcing something to happen that, that it doesn't make sense. Like you should be looking for the best solve for that situation. So like you brought up, you know, sitting in a cornfield. I just had a conversation with somebody who's a pretty new bow hunter about that. And I was like, man, the amount of times, especially on early season deer where they're betting in the beans or they're just, you know, betting in a grassy swale or slew or something, but they're not, you know, not up in the timber a whole lot on the ridges, eating acorns or whatever, when you can hunt them or when you can shoot them. Oftentimes that setup, just getting into a cornfield two rows deep and just clearing out a little spot to shoot is the answer you need. And man, they look at that, they walk right by it. They don't see you. Like you just, you're just gone. And so, so many times that kind of thing happens where you're like, you know, I bought this new saddle. I really want to sit in it. And you're like, just, it, it might be the right solve for one situation and be holding you back the next day. 01:00:05 Speaker 2: Yeah. 01:00:06 Speaker 1: Yeah. 01:00:07 Speaker 2: So true. All right. What is, uh, what is your next one, Tony, that, that obviously must stay right within the constraints of our podcast format today. 01:00:17 Speaker 3: So, so my last one I think is, is one that I'm certain that some people will disagree with me on and I don't care. This has come through from a lot of deer hunting and I'm to the point now where I would say probably at least 80% of the time I'm going to shoot at a deer. I will draw when they're dead. So what I mean by that is I don't, I'm not going to look at that buck coming down the trail and go, okay, now I can draw cause he's 20 yards out. I want that deer to be right where I'm going to kill him when I draw. And the reason for that is the amount of times, and this kind of goes back to what we talked about at the beginning, but the amount of times where I drew early or I drew at the wrong time and they cut back and they walk around your stand or they stop for whatever reason. Maybe they hear you draw. Maybe it's calm. Maybe they don't. Maybe you drew and a squirrel barked and it stopped them. Or maybe they just stopped. When you do that, then you go into that mode where you're like, now I'm panicking. Because what I expected to last about five seconds is now the clock is ticking. And the instant you hit full draw, that clock is ticking. And you're painfully aware of it. And so I see, you know, you see videos pop up where you'll see people draw and they're at full draw. you know, 10, 15, 20, 30 seconds. And, you know, usually you're seeing the highlight reel. So they made it happen. But when that happens to you, the panic is real. And for me, man, people really, really worry about a deer busting them drawing. I don't really care anymore. I don't want to get busted, but I want to make all my big movements outside of drawing before I draw. And I want that deer to be exactly where I want to kill them or where I'm like that, that deer gets there. I'm drawing and it's dead. I have a six foot lane or whatever. When I started doing that, I, I got busted, you know, like I get busted by deer when I draw and I'm like, I still kill them. Like they just die because once you're at full draw, they're not getting away. So you aim, you know, top third of the heart or whatever, and you're good to go. But the amount of times in my career where, I've drawn at the wrong time. A lot of that has resulted in me missing because it's, it's just puts me in a different situation. It's a hard thing to learn and a lot of people won't do it. But for me, I feel like that's one of the things that has helped me kill a lot more deer. Yeah. 01:03:02 Speaker 2: I have had that happen a few times and it is a nightmare. I remember one in particular where I was stuck at, I think I, I was self filming at the time and I think it was like a minute and 15 seconds. I was stuck at full draw and it was just horrible. 01:03:16 Speaker 3: Right. 01:03:16 Speaker 2: So not only do you have the whole mental thing, but then also just your physical capacity, like when you're already like all shook up and then you're just holding for that long and, and then trying to get a good shot when you finally do get the opportunity, like you're just, you're setting yourself up for bad, bad stuff to happen. Um, so yeah, I would, I would generally say that I'm pretty much in the same camp. I might, you know, I probably have a little bit more wiggle room with it. If there's a tree and they're going to pass behind it just as they walk into that lane, I try to take advantage of those kinds of things. I think that makes a lot of sense to me. 01:03:55 Speaker 3: If you think about it, it's like they're not going to get out of the way of that arrow. If you think about the conventional advice is I think people generally think they need to draw way earlier than they need to. But I, I mean, I can think about a, I can think about a buck that I missed in North Dakota one time on a, on a river crossing where he was coming in clueless. Right. And I drew early and then he just kind of juked a little bit, but not enough to like, I was like, he's still toast. 01:04:34 Speaker 2: Right. 01:04:35 Speaker 3: But I had to move. And so now I'm at full draw and I kind of have to, you know, pivot position a little differently. And now my elbow hits the tree because I've changed the positioning of my body, right? Like I have a bigger profile to move around. And when you think about if you draw that bow and you have to move now, that has become so much harder than quietly just shifting into position and then drawing. And your brain, you know, your brain will go from like, Now I'm going to draw, and that's the thing that has my attention. So you're not thinking, where is your elbow going to be if you have to turn 20 degrees in the stand, or he walks closer, and now you've got to shoot lower, something like that. When that stuff happens to you, it takes your mind out of the shot, and that's when you miss. And so for me, I'm like, I need to just dumb it down every way I can, and if it's like, get into the position I can shoot, wait for him to put himself where he's dead. And then I draw those steps are all kind of compartmentalized and my brain is just easier at handling. And it goes, okay, well that worked out, that worked out, that worked out. Now we're at full draw. I don't care if he's looking at me, like, cause now I just got to put the pin on his lungs and kill him. Yeah. 01:05:54 Speaker 2: And to our earlier discussion, if you are willing to, you know, have that kind of shrunken, max range that you're willing to shoot at. You've got these deer at 20 yards anyways. Like they're not, they're not jumping the string on you at 20 yards. Right. Um, when you draw back, if you do get busted, right. Um, kind of, you mentioned something there, like when you get drawn back and you're stuck and then you're moving around, you're bumping your elbow and stuff. That is a perfect segue into my last lesson here, which is to mind the tiny things, like pay attention to the details. The little things are big and This was illustrated for me in a miss that I have talked about a lot. So I will not kind of belabor the story on this hunt because I've told it so many times. Um, but I'll, I'll give the broad strokes just in case people aren't familiar. This was a hunt, another different hunt, different year in Iowa. Iowa has been a, has been a curse for me. Um, but, uh, this was a situation where I had been hunting with a cameraman and And we had been hunting all week and nothing had been going right. And I had a bunch of kind of just like everything had been leading up to the end. Couldn't kill a deer. Really, really wanted this. This nicely ties in so many of the things we've talked about. Actually, I put so much pressure on myself throughout the week. I'd been trying to just force this thing to happen. I finally went to a new place and we get set. 01:07:19 Speaker 3: Up in the tree. 01:07:20 Speaker 2: We climb, we're setting up like a saddle set up in the tree and we climb in there and As you know, a little bit unique because we're filming here, but as you know, when you have a second person in the tree with you, there's just more stuff. There's more movement. It takes longer. And so my cameraman is getting all set up and I'm trying to get it set up and we're racing towards daylight. It's a morning hunt. And I remember it's just about daylight and my camera guy is all set up finally. And I remember, you know, eyeballing the situation. And something that I do whenever I get into any tree stand, really any setup at all, hunt in a blind or tree stand or on the ground, tying back to the importance of the little things, I try to go and kind of do a walkthrough of if a deer shows up here, can I draw back? Can I get a shot here? If a deer walks behind me, what will I do? Can I spin around? Can I move in this way without my elbow hitting the back of the tree or hitting a branch? Will my bow be able to be fully extended without hitting these leaves or whatever? If I step forward, will the trees underneath my platform rattle the leaves? I try to do all of this stuff. I do like a walkthrough of every possible scenario. And I think this really, really helps because little things are oftentimes what makes a shot go bad and make a hunt go bad. So in this case, I did all of that stuff. But while doing that, what I noticed was that when I tried to shoot in one particular place, my cameraman's backpack, was hanging on the side of the tree there and the top of my bow would bump up against that. And I could not fully extend and shoot my bow comfortably because of the backpack there. So in this moment, I'm like, oh gosh, like I have to, we have to move the backpack. Even though it's like now daylight, anytime now Buck's going to come walking through. I talked to him like, hey, we have to move the backpack. It's just in the spot. It's not going to work right. So he then has to, I grabbed the backpack for him. He has to unscrew the thing or undo the, whatever it was, re-screw in the hanger, put the backpack up. It takes, I don't know, five minutes. The whole time I'm on eggshells imagining that a deer is going to show up at any second. And he sets it back up. He's like, okay, how's that? And I go and I go try to draw back and stuff. And it's not quite right still. Like it's still not quite out of my way enough. But it wasn't too bad. And I thought to myself, well, it's only this one little spot where it really wouldn't be perfect. And that's probably not where it's going to happen. And even if a deer did show up in that one little spot, I bet you I could just lean down a little bit or I could just lean back a little bit or get down. I can make it work. Uh, I just, we don't have time to deal with this anymore. It'll it's good enough. 01:09:58 Speaker 1: Right. 01:09:58 Speaker 2: I settled as we talked about the beginning, right? I settled for good enough. And that tiny little thing ended up being the tiny little thing that sent me, uh, you know, sent me downhill with this story because of course the one place I don't want a buck to show up is the one place where he did show up and presented a shot opportunity and, And I drew back, and as I'm trying to get a shot, I'm trying to maneuver around this backpack. I'm trying to crouch down underneath it. My top of my cam is hitting the backpack. I miss the deer. And that was one of those situations where two of our topics today had something to do with this. Number one being, I settled. I did not mind that tiny thing. And the second thing is that I had put so much pressure on myself. I had so much building up this entire week. I probably was a mental head case in that moment too. So between those two things, I had an amazing opportunity to slip through my fingers. And coming out of it, what I reminded myself, I was like, okay, I did like a 95% good job of minding the tiny things. I did the walkthrough, I made adjustments, I did all that stuff. But still that last 5% or the last 2% still matter. And then number two, as we've talked about many times since this hunt, I have learned to lower the pressure, to lower the temperature on these hunts for all the reasons we've talked about today. This stuff is not life or death. This is not the end of the world. We don't have to have worst case thinking. We don't need to put so much pressure. We don't need to force these shots. Just have a good time out there. Enjoy it. And that's going to put you in a better headspace that will lead to better execution on the shots, better decision making, and make you not only a happier hunter, but I think a much more effective one too. And that, I think that story for me sums up so many of the lessons here today. And so much of what I hope will help me this year and hope other, other people too. 01:11:56 Speaker 3: Totally. And I, I just want to, I want to hit on a quick point there because I think it's super valuable. So you talked about it. There's a different level of challenge when you're filming a hunt, right, man. One of the things that that just drives home for me when we're filming whitetail hunts is if my attention is divided, which is so much easier to have happen when you have somebody in the tree and you have to think about, is that deer in frame? Can they get on them? You realize how, you know, that's like a unique example, but it's across the board. If you're not focused on that shot and just doing what you have to do to execute that shot and follow through, you're in trouble. And that's, to me, you know, I went through a long period of buck fever and kind of got it under control, generally shoot pretty well when I'm out there just hunting on my own. But when I started filming a lot again, I was like, Oh man, I'm like backsliding. 01:12:56 Speaker 1: Why? 01:12:57 Speaker 3: And it's like, because you're not focused. Like you're always to, to a certain extent, you always have a little bit of your attention being sucked away by that other thing. And most people listening to this, they don't have to worry about that, but anything that's there, like you said, that pack, right? Like, Maybe, maybe you don't have a cameraman in the stand hanging a pack above you, but you have a limb that you could have trimmed on that one side of your stand. Or, you know, maybe you were practice shooting and you heard your bow kind of, you know, maybe it clicked a little bit when it came to full draw or your cams rolled over or something. And you're like, ah, that's probably not that big of a deal. 01:13:33 Speaker 2: Yeah. 01:13:33 Speaker 3: In your backyard. Right. 01:13:35 Speaker 1: Yeah. 01:13:35 Speaker 3: But now when you're like, oh, I'm going to have to draw and it's going to make that noise and it's pin drop quiet, little stuff like that, that's going to pull your attention away. it's a great way to miss. 01:13:45 Speaker 2: Yeah. And it, and again, like it, it applies to so many different parts of the hunting year. 01:13:52 Speaker 1: Right. 01:13:53 Speaker 2: I think that this whole conversation, and I know it's expanding outside of the original plan for this, but so much of what leads to mistakes on shots is, is like a metaphor for what leads to mistakes in a hunting season. And that's why I think this is a, this is a particularly interesting one for me because of like, there's, there's all these like similar things. There's like these core things in our like mind, like putting pressure on ourselves, focus, uh, belief, uh, preparation, paying attention to details. Like this is like foundational human things that then come to life in different ways. It could be in a shot. It could be in a decision. It could be in how we make, you know, our choices about where we hunt, when we hunt, how we hunt, like, There's some ways that deer hunting can feel so complex and complicated and challenging and difficult. And then other ways where it's, it's very simple. Um, and it kind of comes down to some, some very basic human things. If you figure out a few basic things about deer and then you can kind of figure out yourself, you'll be all right. And, and maybe that's what I'm taking away from this conversation here today. 01:15:08 Speaker 3: I mean, I totally agree that the deer are actually pretty simple. It's us that, make things complicated. 01:15:17 Speaker 2: That's the truth. So tell me this, Tony, before I let you go. For people that want to get more of this, who want to kind of think about deer hunting from some different perspectives, I would highly recommend they listen to your weekly show on Wired Hunt, the Foundations podcast, where you have free reign to go wherever your strange little mind takes you. And you explore deer hunting and other related topics in wildly different ways than most anyone ever would. You have this freedom to go down weird wormholes in strange and interesting ways that I think is so cool. So if people aren't already listening, give us a quick preview of what you do on foundations and maybe some of the things that might be coming up this season that you're thinking about. 01:16:05 Speaker 3: Man, I really try to address... people first. I think like, I think, you know, and I'm not saying I haven't done a million episodes on how to read sign and why bucks do this and do that. But I think, I think at least at this point in my life, I'm looking at how do I think what holds me back in my head? Right. And then how do deer think not what do deer do, but like what, what would be the reason behind a buck's behavior? Just like, what's the reason behind my behavior? And when you start peeling back those layers, and that's what a lot of foundations is, it's like, why are you doing this? Like, why do you think that doing this is the best way? Or why not try this? What's holding you back? And what do you believe about deer that's probably not always true? Which is a lot of stuff, right? Like, we internalize a lot of deer hunting advice that doesn't have anything to do with our situations. And that, and that generally steers us in a not very productive direction. And so foundations is like, I kind of try to strip away a lot of the BS or like a lot of the things that like muddy the waters and get people to think about themselves individually and the deer individually. Like, what do you know about your deer? What can you learn? What can you learn about yourself? Because those two things are going to be a thousand times better than me sitting there going, well, I really like rubs because of this. Like, I know, I know there's value in that. 01:17:35 Speaker 2: Right. 01:17:36 Speaker 3: But there's not as much value as actually learning, like, why do you do the things you do? And why do they do the things that they do? And how can you just meet up with them and kill them? 01:17:47 Speaker 2: Yeah. Well, I hate to say this because you rag on me so much that it pains me to have to shower you with praise. But I would highly recommend, if anybody's listening to this today and you are not already consistently listening to Foundations with Tony... You really should. It is one that I turn to. I hate to admit it, but when I'm like driving out on a hunting trip or something, every once in a while, I will reach for my angry, psychotic, strange friend, Tony, and listen to him on the Foundations podcast as I'm heading to Iowa or Nebraska or some trip. And it's always good. So Tony, I appreciate the work you do. 01:18:30 Speaker 3: I appreciate that, buddy. And I would also say on that note, before we wrap up here, Your thought process with whitetails and my thought process, they don't hardly ever touch, right? I look at the way that you think about it. It's vastly different. from me. And I think when you talk about, you know, you've interviewed more whitetail experts than anyone probably in the country. We look at, you know, Andy May and we're like, oh, what does he do, right? What does Zach Faribault do? What does, you know, Bill Winkie do to kill these bucks? But the lesson when you spend time with those guys is not necessarily like I put a food plot here or I scout this way. It's like, how do they think? And I think that exposing yourselves to people who think differently from you, but who end up, they're focused on the same journey, right? It's just a different route. I think that that's so important. 01:19:29 Speaker 2: Yeah, I agree 100%. So thank you, Tony, for doing that work and for taking time for this chat. 01:19:36 Speaker 3: Awesome. Thanks, buddy. 01:19:38 Speaker 2: And for all the rest of you, we'll let you go with that. We appreciate you tuning in. If your season has kicked off, good luck out there. Have a lot of fun. Hopefully some of the things we shared here today will stick with you and help out down the road. And until next time, stay wired to hunt.