00:00:01 Speaker 1: Welcome to the Wired to Hunt Foundations podcast, your guide to the fundamentals of better deer hunting, 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 Tony Peterson. 00:00:20 Speaker 2: Hey everyone, welcome to the Wired to Hunt Foundation's podcast, which is brought to you by first Light. I'm your host, Tony Peterson. In today's episode is all about reframing your thought process around whitetail hunting failures, looking at this whole thing in a different light. A couple of weeks back, when I was making the long drive from Nebraska to my part of Minnesota, I listened to a Theovon podcast where each added with a retired Las Vegas police officer. At one point, that police officer stated that he was trying hard to course correct his language in real time, and one example he gave was that he doesn't consider issues in his life to be problems, but instead challenges. Now that might seem dumb or some wou shit that my would post on Instagram, but it's not dumb. The way we view ourselves in our world at large matters, and it certainly can alter our courses deer hunters, which is what I'm going to talk about right now. It's almost as if whatever is running this simulation we are in really wants to mess with me. While I was in Nebraska a couple of weeks ago, I checked my Moultrie app to see what would likely be no deer pictures. But there was a deer picture, and it was a picture of a good one. The buck. You know, he looked like he'll go about in the mid one thirties. He walked right past the stand of mine in northern Wisconsin, and two days later he walked by another camera I have on the same property. Those cameras are mostly out there to show me what spikes and four key's my daughters will target this fall. But every summer, without fail, a deer that really gets my attention walks by them, and then that deer disappears, because that's what they always do. But I'm not going to forget about it, and I'll think about him a lot and how I can be there on that thirty acres if he manages to walk through during the season. Now, is that a problem or is it a challenge? Well, let's think about this what is the difference between a problem and a challenge. For starters, a challenge refers to some task or situation where determination, skill and effort can help you overcome it, Like I don't know, if you enter a hot dog eating contest and you really really want to win, I don't know why they use that as an example. Problems, on the other hand, are generally viewed as negative or undesirable issues that require a solution, like if you were in a hot dog eating contest and you eate twenty nine hot dogs and now your stomach is about to explode, and maybe you're in danger of an embarrassing bathroom related situation that is growing more urgent by the second. The nature of problems and challenges differs, as does our perception of them. Let me give you an example here. My dad, who introduced me to hunting and fishing, and who put up with a lot from me for a long time, has all almost always viewed deer hunting through the problem lens. It was almost always something negative that flavored his whole deer hunting meal. And while he killed plenty of deer, including a few good ones, he wouldn't really even give himself credit for those moments because there was always something he could have done better. Now, as you can imagine, I adopted a similar mindset when I was first starting out. I couldn't kill anything, and that was a problem in my mind. But the problem of not killing deer isn't all that easy to resolve for many of us, which is why some of us get paid to produce podcasts on this very topic. Now, this is a home game issue a lot of times. But what I mean by that is is easy to believe certain things about our hunting when we are used to them going a certain way. If you mostly don't kill the size of bucks you'd like to kill, you will generally expect that outcome. Now. I certainly did for a long long time, and it wasn't until I started to travel a little to hunt that hunting became sort of a default challenge. Showing up somewhere for a few days to try to fill a tag in foreign country just feels like a challenge, an opportunity, and not just a problem that needs to be solved. And what was bonkers was that it became easier for me to fill my tags on the road than at home. And it wasn't solely because I was hunting better properties or chasing after dumber deer I wasn't, and they weren't. In fact, most of them were on public land, which by default should have been more difficult, you know, to kill than at home on private But it didn't work out that way. Most of the difference, at least, this is what I believe to be true, came from an unintentional mindset shift on those over the road hunts, and the lessons I learned there in my early years followed me home. But I'm not a fully changed man, as you can probably guess by how I talked about that random big woods buck that walked by my camera a few weeks ago, and who I expect to not walk by again throughout the whole season, because you see, I'm looking at that like it's a problem, the old you know, where did you come from? Where did you go? Cotton eyed buck? Thing? That always seems to that trick that deer lives out there somewhere, he uses my land some, although it doesn't seem to be too frequently. That deer is killable by someone, and it won't be me, most likely if I look at it solely like it's a problem. If I look at it like a challenge, I might try to find better ways to get him into range, like trying to get permission to hunt more land around me. I did this last year, and while it was only ten acres, that's a good addition when you're only hunting thirty to begin with. But that deer has a bigger home range than that, and the starting point might just be, you know, to make some phone calls and knock on some doors to see if I can expand my hunting territory to include some more stomping grounds. That challenge of getting more dirt to work with would solve a few of my problems in general. If that's a no go, which it very well might be since most of the neighbors hunt, then the next challenge is to try to get more information on that buck. More cameras will help, and so will more glassing in the neighborhood. Maybe, since he's the big kahuna on the block, I should start a mock scrape and leave a camera on it, just to see if he'll show up at some point right there. If I look at killing that specific buck as my challenge for the season, it can prompt me to find more ground, scout more, and try a few tactics that I normally wouldn't use. Will it work, I don't know. But if I look at it like that, deer will always do what I expect. That's a problem. I'm very likely to accept my fate on that particular book. He's going to beat me again because he always does. But if I hunt him like I always do, then I'm basically just handing him a win. This reminds me of a hell of a lot of conversations I've had with people who don't live in Elk Country, but who have either haunted Elk a few times or would really like to. They look at the success rates, which here, at least I'm referring to public land over the countertags. Even though over the countertags are like a bunch of dinosaurs staring up at the sky as a giant flaming space rock speeds its way toward what is now Mexico, if you look at the archery success rates on Elk in that situation, it's easy to realize there's a big problem there. You know, like three out of every hundred hunters will fill a tag, and that's not too encouraging. It leads to a lot of defeated wandering in the mountains and half assed efforts after the initial excitement wears off. But what about looking at it differently. The challenge isn't just to kill an elk, but to actually be in that small percentage of hunters who do fill their tags. And there is a difference there. The hunters who do kill, especially the ones who do it consistently, they're not getting lucky. The one off tag fillers might. But there are common traits to the folks who can just kind of get it done. They don't have something you don't, or at least don't have access to. If it feels like they do, they're just doing things differently, and their mindset is almost certainly different. They might challenge themselves to get up super early and be on the mountain in play all day long. That might be all it takes. They don't let themselves go back to camp it ten in the morning, when the thermal shift and any chance to hear a random bugle has pretty much been squashed for like seven hours. That might just be enough. They might challenge themselves to sit next to a water hole all day instead of roaming randomly on the off chance they'll bump into a workable situation, which they most likely won't. Let me bring this back to white tails that Ranchi scattered in Nebraska a couple weeks ago for a rut hunter's fall. There's a spot there that looks like it could be a big buck highway. There's a fence line through a slough that allows for easy ish parallel travel and also a chance for the deer to get a drink of water. It's also a point A to B type of thing that at least on one side, allows them to enter an interesting track of timber that is covered in pounded trails. The spot is awesome, and one of the bucks I've gotten pictures of in there is an extremely wide deer that looks like he might go one fifty or more. And all of that is great, but the spot sucks for access. It just does, and it sucks for stand trees. So I have two problems, how to get in and where to set up at first, when I walked it, I thought those problems were enough to get me to abandon the location. But that's dumb. It's a good spot and it deserves some effort. So instead I'll consider it a challenge to both get into it and set up there. The setup situation is solvable by sitting on the ground. That's not as ideal as getting into a tree there, because if they come through, you're probably not going to know it until they're right on top of you. That's okay. I'd rather be there and haunt than not, you know. The access challenge is different everywhere that we could approach from. Is it also a route deer could take? The best route and by that I mean the one that will require the least amount of effort involves a lot of exposure to a nearby pivot agfield for a morning entry, but it would get you there. There's the possibility of being a little sneakier and crossing an old beaver dam, but that one comes with the possibility that you might go for a little pre hunt swim. Not ideal either. Access is a challenge there, but however I get in there, I can mitigate some of the negative effects by having a really good blind setup and the willingness to sit all day to let the ripples of the early morning intrusion fade away over time. Now that problematic spot is starting to feel like something I'm far more optimistic about. In fact, I'll be a little surprised if one of us doesn't have an encounter with a big deer in there. Think about this another way, are you a really good bowshot? If not, that's a problem. And that problem can rear its ugly head when you really don't want it to, and boy will it. If you look at midsummer practice sessions as a way to fix your shooting problems, it'll affect your individual sessions and come into play on a lot of your individual shot Like if you believe you aren't a great shot and that shooting will make you better, but you shank a few during a session, the problem is still there and you know it, and you feel like the problem is not being remedied. But what about this? What if you challenge yourself to shoot two hundred arrows a week every week before the season opens. Instead of viewing things in the micro where every shot is a test of your ability and failure is just a high probability, the challenge is to be the kind of archer who can shoot eight hundred to one thousand arrows a month. There is no doubt that that would likely make you a much better shot, and it'll shift the focus from any one individual shot around to a cumulative effort that will increase your skill over time. Let me give you another example here from my life. You guys know I'm into bird dogs in a major way, and I play in the sporting dog side of things a lot. This fall, well probably early this winter, I'm going to challenge myself to do something that a lot of bird hunters think you can't do, which is find some quail to hunt. Seriously, I know that might seem stupid, but if you talk to a lot of folks, especially Southern folks who live in traditional Bob White country, you'll hear plenty of them say flat out that there are no huntable quail populations left. They'll say it as if that's a problem, because to them it is, and understandably so, because quail aren't doing super well in a lot of places. But that doesn't mean there are no quail to be found. That's silly. I killed a turkey in public land in Kansas this spring and spent the whole time there listening to Bob White's call. I also bumped into a couple of them on my recent Nebraska trip too, So the challenge is to go find some quail on public land, put my dog in their vicinity, and hopefully shoot straight. And I think we can do it. They'll just require a lot of e scouting and a lot of driving and a hell of a lot of walking with the dog. But there are worse ways to spend my time, and why I don't really care if I kill a bunch of quail this year or not. I do like the thought of where that challenge will take Sadie and I. I think we'll find some quail, and I bet when we're looking for them, we'll find some prairie chickens or sharp tails, or maybe some roosters. I bet we also find a few places that convince me to drop some way points for deer. Two. If the problem is that there are no quail and we believe that, then we're not going to do anything about it. But bitch, if the challenge is to find quail, then our entire approach changes and the effort will definitely yield positive results and make the whole thing worth it. It's easy to be dismissive of things that are difficult, but the goal isn't just to kill something here, It's to take the ride my friends, and try to level up, because in that effort we generally find the things we are looking for in this whole lifestyle we have based around chasing rabbits with antlers or whatever quarry has gotten under your skin. So what are the problems you're faced with this off season or you're facing this upcoming deer season? How can you turn them into challenges? Is it something like not being comfortable with mobile hunt When you know you need to get out there and leave your favorite ladder stand behind and start poking around in areas of the farm usually don't hunt. It's not a problem. It's a challenge to get really comfortable with your gear. You can do that in the backyard well before the season opens. Is the problem that you never kill big bucks? Okay, challenge yourself to kill one that's bigger than usual, but maybe not a one seventy. How will you go about that? My guess is that it'll involve scouting more, hanging more stands in the off season, and just generally putting in some effort to ring the most out of your time in the woods when you do get out there. Sometimes just reframing what it would mean to be successful matters and instead of focusing on that one stupid big Woods buck that you got on camera a few months ago as your only hit lister, maybe the challenges is just encounter one this season that is probably a year older than your average kill or whatever. Challenge yourself to have a few more good setups this season might be that simple. That alone will get you out there a little bit more to think through your seat and prepare for it. But it'll also put you where the deer live and you might find a trail you didn't realize needed a trail camera on, or you might jump a bachelor group somewhere that gets you thinking about filling that tag on opening day. When we see problems, we often don't see solutions. We just see obstacles that we aren't motivated to overcome. When we see something as a challenge, we naturally start to wonder how to get to a positive outcome, and we can break things down into manageable winds. That matters so much in the way to game, and it's something to think about right now as we tip the balance of summer towards the back half and start to think hard about what this deer season might hold for us. So do that and come back next week because I'm going to talk about how to read trees for the best tree stand setups and why this topic is way underappreciated when it comes to killing all deer, but especially mature bucks. That's it for this episode. I'm Tony Peterson and this has been the Wirre to Hunt Foundations podcast. As always, thank you so much for listening. Head over to the mediater dot com tons of articles. Maybe you need to train your dog get them in shape for the season. Maybe you just want to watch some good hunting films or listen to some other podcasts on our network. It's all there. We drop new content every single day. Go check it out at the mediator dot com.