December 24, 2024 • 17 mins
On this week's show, Tony talks about the Holidays and how this is a good time of year to think about hunting gear, maybe start a new tradition, and to just be grateful for the opportunity to step into the world of the whitetail.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
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.
Speaker 2 (00:20):
Hey, everyone, welcome to the Wired to Hunt Foundations podcast,
which is brought to you by First Light. I'm your host,
Tony Peterson, and today I'm going to get into the
Christmas spirit, which is very very loosely kind of has
something to do with deer hunting.
Speaker 1 (00:33):
Absolutely.
Speaker 2 (00:34):
I think if the world was just full of dudes,
Christmas would probably die out in about three years at least.
That's my very unscientific theory based off of living with
a house full of women who are very very into Christmas.
My wife and daughters love the whole thing, from the presence,
to the baking, to the decorating to the music. While
I like the pheasant hunting and the late season deer
(00:54):
hunt what there are a few things Christmas and the
whole idea behind it can teach us about deer hut,
which is what I'm going to talk about right now.
Christmas is a weird holiday, but I guess all of
them kind of are. What you might not know is
(01:16):
that Christmas and its early real beginnings are tied to stargazing,
which is a topic I like a lot. Now we
know the name for Christmas comes from well, Christ, so
there's no denying the religious implications there. Depending on where
you land on that spectrum, this season might be one
that is tightly linked to religion and spirituality. For others
(01:36):
it might be mostly or entirely about what Christmas has
morphed into. But before that, the whole stargazing thing really
shaped a celebration around December twenty first, which is the
winter solstice. That's the day when the top half of
the earth is tipped as far away from the Sun
as it'll get all year long, meaning that the hours
(01:58):
of daylight versus dark are skewed more heavily in favor
of vampires than all of us well on undead folks.
I guess Europeans, long before the arrival of Jesus paid
close attention to this date. And you would have two
if you didn't have a thermostat on your wall that
controls the temperature of your dwelling, and you couldn't just
(02:19):
go to your local super target for a box of
lucky charms if you were snacky. People like the Norse,
celebrated Yule on that date in recognition of the return
of the sun. Fathers and sons would go out and
gather a giant log through on the fire, and they'd
feast until that log burned down to coals. This could
take as many as twelve days, which is a long
(02:41):
ass feast. They believed that the sparks from the fire
represented new calves or piglets that would be born in
the spring. This coincided with the time of year when
they'd slaughter their cows so as not to have to
feed them all winter long, and it was often the
only time when they had an abundance of fresh meat.
They also made their own wine and beer, which, as
you can guess, was a popular addition to those winter
(03:05):
solstice festivities. In other places, like Germany, they went a
little bit of a different route, where they honored a
pagan god named Odin, who was known to fly through
the sky and decide which folks would prosper or which
ones would perish. Believing this, a lot of those crazy
Germans stayed inside during this time of the year in Rome,
(03:26):
they honored Saturn, the god of agriculture. They also celebrated
the birthday of Mithra, who was the god of unconquerable sun.
This happened on December twenty fifth, if you can believe
that shit. When you get into Christianity, you find out
that the history of December twenty fifth and the reason
we celebrate it is a little murcurier than you might guess.
(03:48):
With church officials about sixteen hundred years ago making the
big decision around when and why they would celebrate Christmas,
part of which meant they placed it close to the
winter solstice in kind of a marketing effort to ensure peace.
People got on board with the whole thing because they
were already used to partying that time of year. Then
you have several centuries of kings and Puritans and a
whole bunch of folks taking Christmas one way or another
(04:09):
until it was declared a federal holiday here in the
States in eighteen seventy. This was also around the time
when Christmas was more like marti Gras than a time
to get together with family and celebrate being thankful for
the good stuff in life. Now, Christmas is big business,
over twenty five million trees a year are sold. That's
(04:29):
live trees, by the way, not fake ones. People spend
a lot of money on Christmas, with the average individual
adults spend at around nine hundred bucks a year. Overall,
Christmas generates nine hundred and sixty some billion dollars, which,
if your math challenged, is damn near a trillion dollars,
which is bonkers. The whole thing is pretty crazy, but
(04:52):
it's a good reminder of a few things. The first
is that we just kind of focus pretty heavily on gifts,
which if you have little kids, you know what I mean.
My daughters are old enough now where there isn't an
avalanche of toys and plastic shit that we will break
or throw away after a while, which is nice. We've
transitioned as a family from focusing super heavily on you know,
(05:13):
mostly meaningless gifts to experiences, which is why I just
pay for a trip to Florida every year and absolve
myself of really having to shop a whole lot, or
by presence, a whole lot. I think the lesson in
there is an important one, and I think it ties
to deer hunting. Now, this is a slippery slope for
a fellow like me, because I work for a company
that owns several companies that would very much like to
(05:34):
sell you, guys, lots of stuff. We'd like you to
buy lots of First Light clothes and Dave Smith decoys
and FHF Binal harnesses and Phelps grunt calls. Hell, if
you could go buy a few Meat Eater shirts and
maybe meteaor Trivia Home Edition, that would be great too.
Then Steve Ranella could finally move his wife and kids
out of that tiny walk up apartment they share with
three other impoverished families and get a place of their own.
(05:58):
New hunting gear is great, but does it outweigh new
hunting experiences? No, it does not. But I think the
best way to look at this is to think about
what you need to help you have new experiences. You
see a lot of us hunt a certain way, and
we want gear that will make that certain way easier
or more effective. Let's say you have a lease and
(06:18):
you only hunt that eighty acre lease, So that's what
you need to have set up for yourself year after year.
So maybe you need a new ladder stand for that
ridgetop trail that all the deer take when they skirt
your plot, or maybe you need a new, i don't know,
sweet brush cutter to clean some shooting lanes and access trails.
That's a very linear thought process and honestly makes a
(06:39):
lot of sense. But what about if you're that lease
hunter and you have it figured out so well that
you usually tag out on opening week, or you know,
if you wait till the rut to sit for a
few days, you have a very good chance of filling
your tag. What if either style or whatever you have
leaves you wanting some more, well, maybe a mobile setup
gear there, or maybe a tent or some other camping gear.
(07:04):
Is there something that you can buy that would talk
you into going hunting in a way that you don't
usually go now, I know that might sound dumb, but
I think the value in that is hard to measure,
and I think it's worth thinking about it at the
very least. Let's take hunting in your home state, for example.
The breakdown of the season in most places goes like this.
(07:25):
Archery season opens up and runs for a certain amount
of time. You know, sometimes there's a youth season or
something else mixed in there, But then the general firearm
season opens up after that muzzleloader that's mostly the arc
of the season in a lot of places. Now you're
listening to this show, so it's a fairly safe bet
you probably bohunt some But do you muzzleloader hunt? Maybe
(07:48):
a new smoke bowl for Christmas, even if you have
to treat yourself to it is a ticket to an
entirely new season and an entirely new type of hunting.
I can't speak for everyone, but when I started muzzle
order hunting, I almost rediscovered how fun deer hunting can be.
That's a good thing, and it's possible through just a
Christmas gift. What about something like a gilly suit? I
(08:21):
don't know if you've ever hunted out of one, But
if there is anything that makes you feel more like
a badass than a gilly suit, I don't know if
I've found it yet. Maybe it's the close association to
snipers in the armed forces and what we all know
to be generally true about someone who earns that title.
I mean, who wouldn't want to be that disciplined, in
that schooled in the art of camouflage, patience, not to mention,
(08:46):
you know, being that calm and collected when it's time
to squeeze off a shot. Plus a gilly suit is
just like a secret passageway you can take to hunting
spots you just normally wouldn't hunt, and experiencing the woods
in a way that you normally might not experience it.
That's a good gift right there, my friends. Maybe it's
as simple as a new trail camera. I have quite
(09:07):
a few of the Moultrie Edge two cameras up in
the woods right now, and I can safely say that
most folks I know wouldn't hate finding one in their stocking.
Sell cameras are just fun, and they've gotten pretty affordable
and reliable in the last few years. They are also
just a ticket to little drips of excitement all year long,
even during Turkey season. Okay, that's enough of the commercialization
(09:28):
side of Christmas and this time of the season, which
is something we kind of just can't help but lean into.
It's a byproduct of what we are as a species.
I think, maybe not, I don't know, but there are
other aspects of this holiday season we should consider. For starters,
you have the whole tradition thing. I'll admit that this
didn't bother me a whole lot when I was a
(09:49):
fellow who occasionally drank like I don't know half a
lead a jim beam every day of his life. Sitting
around at one of my wife's relatives houses for another
ham dinner while her uncle's told me, I don't know
the hunting stories I've heard several thousand times was made
just a little more palatable when I was some shade
of shmammered. Today I just raw dog those holidays, and
(10:11):
it's a little tougher to stomach. But not every tradition
has to be about going to grandma's house for whatever,
because that's what you always do. This is also a
time of year when an awful lot of folks have
time off of work and the kids have time off
of school. If you're at the stage of life where
everything is just soaked up by schedules and activities and
you finally get a little breathing room, starting an outdoor
(10:34):
tradition of your own can be a wonderful thing. I'm
thinking about that this year with my daughters. I've killed
several deer myself on Christmas even Christmas, and I've started
taking my daughters out during this late season to freeze
a little and maybe earn a shot at something. This year,
we might do a short Christmas hunt Wisconsin. Maybe we'll
stay at home. I'm not really the start of tradition
(10:56):
kind of guy, but I really like the idea of
my daughter associating Christmas with more than just gifts and
overeating in all of the non hunting parts of this
time of year. If they come to associate Christmas Break
with trying to arrow a late season do with their dad,
maybe that'll stick, and it won't just quickly become a memory,
but will instead be a part of what we do
(11:17):
every year until life just decides for whatever reason, it
can't happen anymore. You see this a lot in the
Upland world around Thanksgiving and Christmas, where the extended family
will get together and go walk some slews to see
if they can knock some pheasants out of the sky. Now,
that type of hunting can be very conducive to social gatherings,
but deer hunting isn't quite that way. Some folks will
(11:38):
get together and do late season bow drives, which is
something I've done a handful of times, but not to
the point where I've ever seen a deer actually get
shot during one. Hell, I don't know if I've ever
seen a deer get shot at either. But that isn't
the only reason to be out there, and it might
not even crack the top five if we are being
real honest about this stuff. So maybe you can treat
yourself to a new president that will take you on
(11:59):
an outdoor adventure. Sure, and maybe you can drum up
some kind of new hunting activity that just happens around Christmas.
That's a pretty good start, in my opinion, which leaves
the last point I want to make. We should be grateful.
This isn't lip service here, my friends. I'm saying it
because I believe it. I mean it. If you hunt
(12:19):
someone else's land, you should be very very grateful for
that experience. That is a gift that keeps on giving,
and it's an important one. In fact, I've been hunting
with my daughters on a property by our house. There's
mostly off limits for most of the year, but the
landowner green lights me to take them in December when
the gun seasons are over. It's hard hunting and often
(12:40):
not very productive as far as filled tags are concerned,
but man, am I happy to have it, and I
let him know it too. Do you have someone in
your life who lets you hunt their land, let them
know that you appreciate it, even if it's your favorite uncle,
And it's just a given that he's going to let
you roam his land anytime you down well, please, he's
(13:01):
still paying those property taxes. He still has the power
to keep you out if the mood strikes. A simple
hedge against that is to let him know how much
it means to you. But that's not the best reason
to reach out and tell him. The best reason is
because it's just the right thing to do. Think about
it this way. If you have a situation like that
and someone else, some other hunter, could take it from
(13:23):
you to hunt it for themselves, how long would it
take before that happened. Not long? I bet that's because
it's a big deal, and it's important to a lot
of people to have a hunting spot. And it's important
to a lot of people to have a spot that
only they can hunt so they can structure things exactly
how they want to and make it easier to kill
(13:44):
the kind of deer they want. That's the trend of
this whole deer hunting thing right now. And it's not
wrong or right. It's just our path as humans, just
like how we took a peg and holiday and watch
it more over and over for thousands of years, to
the point now where it's a gigantic mundy generator for
big business. With the reality of more and more people
(14:04):
trying to manage for mature deer, we have the side
effect of fewer people having spots to hunt. If someone
is gracious enough to provide you a spot, even a
landowner who leases their ground to you, it's still something
that you should probably appreciate, even if it's just a
buddy who lets you out with the kids, I don't
know for the youth turkey season, or the landowner who
(14:25):
doesn't let you hunt but lets you park in their
field drive and access a different property through their place.
Maybe someone just let you blood trail a deer on
their land this year because the buck you shot hopped
the fence before he croaked. Deer hunting, especially bow hunting,
and especially if you're mostly a trophy hunter, is largely
an individual pursuit, or at least it often feels that way,
(14:47):
but it really isn't, or you know, that's often rarely
true anyway, someone probably helped you out somehow this season.
Maybe that person is easy to identify because they taught
you how to shoot a bow, or they're the ones
who said go on and hunt the back eighty just
let me know if you shoot something. Whatever, our success,
(15:08):
the kind that results in a grip and grin where
we post it for the world to see how awesome
we are, is generally built upon the backs of others,
even if we did most of the heavy lifting. That's
something I think about a lot with as many generous
friends as I have, and how often it occurs to
me that some experience I had for myself or with
(15:28):
my daughters was made possible largely through the generosity of
someone else. That's a big deal, and there isn't a
better time of year to show that appreciation than around
the holidays, when everyone gets together and celebrates for whatever
reason they have to celebrate. So throw down some eggnog
until you're ready to fistfight your cousins, Eat ham and
(15:49):
turkey and mashed potatoes until they have to roll you
away from the table, and monitor your vital signs to
make sure you won't die. Stuff those stockings, swipe that
credit card over and over again. Listen to those hunting
stories that the old guys just like telling and act
like you've never heard them before. Laugh at the punchlines,
think about this season and what it means to you.
(16:10):
Buy that ticket to a new kind of hunting. Start
a new tradition with the kids, even if it's just
a midday squirrel hunt, just because it's fun. And then
thank some people. Let them know how important the world
of the white tail is to you and how lucky
you feel to be able to step into it. Then
come back next week because I'm going to talk about
something Mark talks about a lot, which is setting goals,
(16:32):
but I'm going to do it in a fun, relatable,
non butterfly way. That's it for this week. I'm Tony Peterson.
This has been the Wired to Hunt Foundation's podcast. As always,
thank you so much for listening and for all of
your support. We've had a great year here at Meat Eater,
but none of it would be possible without you guys,
so we truly appreciate all of your support. If you
(16:54):
need some more hunting content, you know where to go,
whether you need articles, maybe a recipe, you want to
listen to some podcasts, maybe you just want to watch
my daughter shoot a spike buck in northern Wisconsin. Whatever.
The mediator dot com has tons of content. We're putting
new stuff up daily, Awesome podcasts there by Clay Brent Reeves, whatever,
(17:18):
tons of hunting shows. It's all there. Go check it
out at the mediator dot com
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.
Speaker 2 (00:20):
Hey, everyone, welcome to the Wired to Hunt Foundations podcast,
which is brought to you by First Light. I'm your host,
Tony Peterson, and today I'm going to get into the
Christmas spirit, which is very very loosely kind of has
something to do with deer hunting.
Speaker 1 (00:33):
Absolutely.
Speaker 2 (00:34):
I think if the world was just full of dudes,
Christmas would probably die out in about three years at least.
That's my very unscientific theory based off of living with
a house full of women who are very very into Christmas.
My wife and daughters love the whole thing, from the presence,
to the baking, to the decorating to the music. While
I like the pheasant hunting and the late season deer
(00:54):
hunt what there are a few things Christmas and the
whole idea behind it can teach us about deer hut,
which is what I'm going to talk about right now.
Christmas is a weird holiday, but I guess all of
them kind of are. What you might not know is
(01:16):
that Christmas and its early real beginnings are tied to stargazing,
which is a topic I like a lot. Now we
know the name for Christmas comes from well, Christ, so
there's no denying the religious implications there. Depending on where
you land on that spectrum, this season might be one
that is tightly linked to religion and spirituality. For others
(01:36):
it might be mostly or entirely about what Christmas has
morphed into. But before that, the whole stargazing thing really
shaped a celebration around December twenty first, which is the
winter solstice. That's the day when the top half of
the earth is tipped as far away from the Sun
as it'll get all year long, meaning that the hours
(01:58):
of daylight versus dark are skewed more heavily in favor
of vampires than all of us well on undead folks.
I guess Europeans, long before the arrival of Jesus paid
close attention to this date. And you would have two
if you didn't have a thermostat on your wall that
controls the temperature of your dwelling, and you couldn't just
(02:19):
go to your local super target for a box of
lucky charms if you were snacky. People like the Norse,
celebrated Yule on that date in recognition of the return
of the sun. Fathers and sons would go out and
gather a giant log through on the fire, and they'd
feast until that log burned down to coals. This could
take as many as twelve days, which is a long
(02:41):
ass feast. They believed that the sparks from the fire
represented new calves or piglets that would be born in
the spring. This coincided with the time of year when
they'd slaughter their cows so as not to have to
feed them all winter long, and it was often the
only time when they had an abundance of fresh meat.
They also made their own wine and beer, which, as
you can guess, was a popular addition to those winter
(03:05):
solstice festivities. In other places, like Germany, they went a
little bit of a different route, where they honored a
pagan god named Odin, who was known to fly through
the sky and decide which folks would prosper or which
ones would perish. Believing this, a lot of those crazy
Germans stayed inside during this time of the year in Rome,
(03:26):
they honored Saturn, the god of agriculture. They also celebrated
the birthday of Mithra, who was the god of unconquerable sun.
This happened on December twenty fifth, if you can believe
that shit. When you get into Christianity, you find out
that the history of December twenty fifth and the reason
we celebrate it is a little murcurier than you might guess.
(03:48):
With church officials about sixteen hundred years ago making the
big decision around when and why they would celebrate Christmas,
part of which meant they placed it close to the
winter solstice in kind of a marketing effort to ensure peace.
People got on board with the whole thing because they
were already used to partying that time of year. Then
you have several centuries of kings and Puritans and a
whole bunch of folks taking Christmas one way or another
(04:09):
until it was declared a federal holiday here in the
States in eighteen seventy. This was also around the time
when Christmas was more like marti Gras than a time
to get together with family and celebrate being thankful for
the good stuff in life. Now, Christmas is big business,
over twenty five million trees a year are sold. That's
(04:29):
live trees, by the way, not fake ones. People spend
a lot of money on Christmas, with the average individual
adults spend at around nine hundred bucks a year. Overall,
Christmas generates nine hundred and sixty some billion dollars, which,
if your math challenged, is damn near a trillion dollars,
which is bonkers. The whole thing is pretty crazy, but
(04:52):
it's a good reminder of a few things. The first
is that we just kind of focus pretty heavily on gifts,
which if you have little kids, you know what I mean.
My daughters are old enough now where there isn't an
avalanche of toys and plastic shit that we will break
or throw away after a while, which is nice. We've
transitioned as a family from focusing super heavily on you know,
(05:13):
mostly meaningless gifts to experiences, which is why I just
pay for a trip to Florida every year and absolve
myself of really having to shop a whole lot, or
by presence, a whole lot. I think the lesson in
there is an important one, and I think it ties
to deer hunting. Now, this is a slippery slope for
a fellow like me, because I work for a company
that owns several companies that would very much like to
(05:34):
sell you, guys, lots of stuff. We'd like you to
buy lots of First Light clothes and Dave Smith decoys
and FHF Binal harnesses and Phelps grunt calls. Hell, if
you could go buy a few Meat Eater shirts and
maybe meteaor Trivia Home Edition, that would be great too.
Then Steve Ranella could finally move his wife and kids
out of that tiny walk up apartment they share with
three other impoverished families and get a place of their own.
(05:58):
New hunting gear is great, but does it outweigh new
hunting experiences? No, it does not. But I think the
best way to look at this is to think about
what you need to help you have new experiences. You
see a lot of us hunt a certain way, and
we want gear that will make that certain way easier
or more effective. Let's say you have a lease and
(06:18):
you only hunt that eighty acre lease, So that's what
you need to have set up for yourself year after year.
So maybe you need a new ladder stand for that
ridgetop trail that all the deer take when they skirt
your plot, or maybe you need a new, i don't know,
sweet brush cutter to clean some shooting lanes and access trails.
That's a very linear thought process and honestly makes a
(06:39):
lot of sense. But what about if you're that lease
hunter and you have it figured out so well that
you usually tag out on opening week, or you know,
if you wait till the rut to sit for a
few days, you have a very good chance of filling
your tag. What if either style or whatever you have
leaves you wanting some more, well, maybe a mobile setup
gear there, or maybe a tent or some other camping gear.
(07:04):
Is there something that you can buy that would talk
you into going hunting in a way that you don't
usually go now, I know that might sound dumb, but
I think the value in that is hard to measure,
and I think it's worth thinking about it at the
very least. Let's take hunting in your home state, for example.
The breakdown of the season in most places goes like this.
(07:25):
Archery season opens up and runs for a certain amount
of time. You know, sometimes there's a youth season or
something else mixed in there, But then the general firearm
season opens up after that muzzleloader that's mostly the arc
of the season in a lot of places. Now you're
listening to this show, so it's a fairly safe bet
you probably bohunt some But do you muzzleloader hunt? Maybe
(07:48):
a new smoke bowl for Christmas, even if you have
to treat yourself to it is a ticket to an
entirely new season and an entirely new type of hunting.
I can't speak for everyone, but when I started muzzle
order hunting, I almost rediscovered how fun deer hunting can be.
That's a good thing, and it's possible through just a
Christmas gift. What about something like a gilly suit? I
(08:21):
don't know if you've ever hunted out of one, But
if there is anything that makes you feel more like
a badass than a gilly suit, I don't know if
I've found it yet. Maybe it's the close association to
snipers in the armed forces and what we all know
to be generally true about someone who earns that title.
I mean, who wouldn't want to be that disciplined, in
that schooled in the art of camouflage, patience, not to mention,
(08:46):
you know, being that calm and collected when it's time
to squeeze off a shot. Plus a gilly suit is
just like a secret passageway you can take to hunting
spots you just normally wouldn't hunt, and experiencing the woods
in a way that you normally might not experience it.
That's a good gift right there, my friends. Maybe it's
as simple as a new trail camera. I have quite
(09:07):
a few of the Moultrie Edge two cameras up in
the woods right now, and I can safely say that
most folks I know wouldn't hate finding one in their stocking.
Sell cameras are just fun, and they've gotten pretty affordable
and reliable in the last few years. They are also
just a ticket to little drips of excitement all year long,
even during Turkey season. Okay, that's enough of the commercialization
(09:28):
side of Christmas and this time of the season, which
is something we kind of just can't help but lean into.
It's a byproduct of what we are as a species.
I think, maybe not, I don't know, but there are
other aspects of this holiday season we should consider. For starters,
you have the whole tradition thing. I'll admit that this
didn't bother me a whole lot when I was a
(09:49):
fellow who occasionally drank like I don't know half a
lead a jim beam every day of his life. Sitting
around at one of my wife's relatives houses for another
ham dinner while her uncle's told me, I don't know
the hunting stories I've heard several thousand times was made
just a little more palatable when I was some shade
of shmammered. Today I just raw dog those holidays, and
(10:11):
it's a little tougher to stomach. But not every tradition
has to be about going to grandma's house for whatever,
because that's what you always do. This is also a
time of year when an awful lot of folks have
time off of work and the kids have time off
of school. If you're at the stage of life where
everything is just soaked up by schedules and activities and
you finally get a little breathing room, starting an outdoor
(10:34):
tradition of your own can be a wonderful thing. I'm
thinking about that this year with my daughters. I've killed
several deer myself on Christmas even Christmas, and I've started
taking my daughters out during this late season to freeze
a little and maybe earn a shot at something. This year,
we might do a short Christmas hunt Wisconsin. Maybe we'll
stay at home. I'm not really the start of tradition
(10:56):
kind of guy, but I really like the idea of
my daughter associating Christmas with more than just gifts and
overeating in all of the non hunting parts of this
time of year. If they come to associate Christmas Break
with trying to arrow a late season do with their dad,
maybe that'll stick, and it won't just quickly become a memory,
but will instead be a part of what we do
(11:17):
every year until life just decides for whatever reason, it
can't happen anymore. You see this a lot in the
Upland world around Thanksgiving and Christmas, where the extended family
will get together and go walk some slews to see
if they can knock some pheasants out of the sky. Now,
that type of hunting can be very conducive to social gatherings,
but deer hunting isn't quite that way. Some folks will
(11:38):
get together and do late season bow drives, which is
something I've done a handful of times, but not to
the point where I've ever seen a deer actually get
shot during one. Hell, I don't know if I've ever
seen a deer get shot at either. But that isn't
the only reason to be out there, and it might
not even crack the top five if we are being
real honest about this stuff. So maybe you can treat
yourself to a new president that will take you on
(11:59):
an outdoor adventure. Sure, and maybe you can drum up
some kind of new hunting activity that just happens around Christmas.
That's a pretty good start, in my opinion, which leaves
the last point I want to make. We should be grateful.
This isn't lip service here, my friends. I'm saying it
because I believe it. I mean it. If you hunt
(12:19):
someone else's land, you should be very very grateful for
that experience. That is a gift that keeps on giving,
and it's an important one. In fact, I've been hunting
with my daughters on a property by our house. There's
mostly off limits for most of the year, but the
landowner green lights me to take them in December when
the gun seasons are over. It's hard hunting and often
(12:40):
not very productive as far as filled tags are concerned,
but man, am I happy to have it, and I
let him know it too. Do you have someone in
your life who lets you hunt their land, let them
know that you appreciate it, even if it's your favorite uncle,
And it's just a given that he's going to let
you roam his land anytime you down well, please, he's
(13:01):
still paying those property taxes. He still has the power
to keep you out if the mood strikes. A simple
hedge against that is to let him know how much
it means to you. But that's not the best reason
to reach out and tell him. The best reason is
because it's just the right thing to do. Think about
it this way. If you have a situation like that
and someone else, some other hunter, could take it from
(13:23):
you to hunt it for themselves, how long would it
take before that happened. Not long? I bet that's because
it's a big deal, and it's important to a lot
of people to have a hunting spot. And it's important
to a lot of people to have a spot that
only they can hunt so they can structure things exactly
how they want to and make it easier to kill
(13:44):
the kind of deer they want. That's the trend of
this whole deer hunting thing right now. And it's not
wrong or right. It's just our path as humans, just
like how we took a peg and holiday and watch
it more over and over for thousands of years, to
the point now where it's a gigantic mundy generator for
big business. With the reality of more and more people
(14:04):
trying to manage for mature deer, we have the side
effect of fewer people having spots to hunt. If someone
is gracious enough to provide you a spot, even a
landowner who leases their ground to you, it's still something
that you should probably appreciate, even if it's just a
buddy who lets you out with the kids, I don't
know for the youth turkey season, or the landowner who
(14:25):
doesn't let you hunt but lets you park in their
field drive and access a different property through their place.
Maybe someone just let you blood trail a deer on
their land this year because the buck you shot hopped
the fence before he croaked. Deer hunting, especially bow hunting,
and especially if you're mostly a trophy hunter, is largely
an individual pursuit, or at least it often feels that way,
(14:47):
but it really isn't, or you know, that's often rarely
true anyway, someone probably helped you out somehow this season.
Maybe that person is easy to identify because they taught
you how to shoot a bow, or they're the ones
who said go on and hunt the back eighty just
let me know if you shoot something. Whatever, our success,
(15:08):
the kind that results in a grip and grin where
we post it for the world to see how awesome
we are, is generally built upon the backs of others,
even if we did most of the heavy lifting. That's
something I think about a lot with as many generous
friends as I have, and how often it occurs to
me that some experience I had for myself or with
(15:28):
my daughters was made possible largely through the generosity of
someone else. That's a big deal, and there isn't a
better time of year to show that appreciation than around
the holidays, when everyone gets together and celebrates for whatever
reason they have to celebrate. So throw down some eggnog
until you're ready to fistfight your cousins, Eat ham and
(15:49):
turkey and mashed potatoes until they have to roll you
away from the table, and monitor your vital signs to
make sure you won't die. Stuff those stockings, swipe that
credit card over and over again. Listen to those hunting
stories that the old guys just like telling and act
like you've never heard them before. Laugh at the punchlines,
think about this season and what it means to you.
(16:10):
Buy that ticket to a new kind of hunting. Start
a new tradition with the kids, even if it's just
a midday squirrel hunt, just because it's fun. And then
thank some people. Let them know how important the world
of the white tail is to you and how lucky
you feel to be able to step into it. Then
come back next week because I'm going to talk about
something Mark talks about a lot, which is setting goals,
(16:32):
but I'm going to do it in a fun, relatable,
non butterfly way. That's it for this week. I'm Tony Peterson.
This has been the Wired to Hunt Foundation's podcast. As always,
thank you so much for listening and for all of
your support. We've had a great year here at Meat Eater,
but none of it would be possible without you guys,
so we truly appreciate all of your support. If you
(16:54):
need some more hunting content, you know where to go,
whether you need articles, maybe a recipe, you want to
listen to some podcasts, maybe you just want to watch
my daughter shoot a spike buck in northern Wisconsin. Whatever.
The mediator dot com has tons of content. We're putting
new stuff up daily, Awesome podcasts there by Clay Brent Reeves, whatever,
(17:18):
tons of hunting shows. It's all there. Go check it
out at the mediator dot com
Host
Mark Kenyon
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