March 4, 2025 • 17 mins
This week, Tony discusses how comfortable we all are in lying about hunting to protect our egos, but that maybe we should consider being a little more honest with ourselves and others.
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Episode Transcript
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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 Foundation's podcast,
which is brought to you by first Light. I'm your host,
Tony Peterson, and this episode is all about honesty and
kind of the dumb lies we tell around deer hunting
and why we should all try to stop. I know
this is a weird one, folks, but the idea, oh,
I guess it was spawned by like a not too
revolutionary thought, which is basically the sheer fact that we
(00:41):
are constantly fed so much bullshit in our daily lives
that lying is just an accepted form of communication. Our
politicians are absolutely full of shit, but so are our bosses,
our co workers, and so many of the people we
interact with on a daily basis.
Speaker 1 (00:54):
Us too.
Speaker 2 (00:54):
Really partially, that's just how kind of like our social
interactions have involved. It's really kind of bond when you
think about it, And you know, deer hunting didn't escape
this either, like the deer hunting realm.
Speaker 1 (01:05):
Is full of this.
Speaker 2 (01:05):
But I think we should acknowledge this, maybe try to
lie a little less, which is what I'm going to
talk about right now. The term Ponzi scheme gets thrown
around a lot, but some people really don't seem to
know what it actually means. We know that Bernie Madeoff
ripped off a bunch of high rollers and celebrities a
(01:27):
while back, and it was big news. We know that
some people claim bitcoin is, but it's really not a
Ponzi scheme. It's more of a greater fools theory type
of thing, at least right now. You know, until you
can broadly buy your groceries or whatever with bitcoins, it's
sort of like you got to sell it to somebody
who will pay more for it than you will. A
(01:47):
Ponzi scheme is different, and it started with a guy
whose name might not surprise you. Charles Ponzi. Old Chuck
was an Italian immigrant who back in the nineteen twenties, when,
if you know anything about our financial history, was a
time when people were doing pretty well. The old Roaring
twenties thing and all, oh the thirties would be a
(02:09):
different story. But in the twenties there was some money
to be thrown around and to be made, and one
guy who figured out how to make a bunch of
it was Charles Ponzie. He was a Grade A world
champion at lying, which is a prerequisite to running a
Ponzi scheme. Now, he came up with an idea to
get New Englanders interested in investing into get this postage
(02:33):
stamp speculation. Now, before I explain it further, for all
of you young folks out there wondering how to catch
the next big thing that might ten thousand ex your
money in a few years, ask yourself if you understand
what a highly speculative investment is. If you don't learn
about it before you part with any of your money.
Remember also, if someone comes to you with an amazing
(02:56):
investment opportunity that they are literally offering to get I
used some money they could take for themselves, And then
ask yourself, why would they do that? If you can't
come up with a good reason, like they are literally
my dad and he loves me very much and wouldn't
do that. Consider that the opportunity might not be as
clear cut or as beneficial to you as you might
think anyway. Ponzi promised investors a fifty percent return on
(03:21):
their capital in ninety days, which I hate to do
this again, but I feel an obligation to say. There's
no real, big free money out there. If someone tells
you they are in a dividends stock or ETF that
churns out even eight or ten percent a year, it's
probably not very safe. You can get ten percent a
year in the S and P five hundred, but you
(03:42):
have to give it many years to average the ups
and the downs. It won't be an instant year to
year guaranteed ten percent, let alone fifty percent in three months.
The thing about a Ponzi scheme is that it has
to grow forever because the money that it needs to
return that fifty percent in three months has to come
(04:04):
from somewhere, and it sure as hell isn't going to
come from flipping stamps for a huge profit. So new
investors have to show up with their money, and that
has to go to the early in our investors. Now,
when Ponsi was really humming along, he was bringing in
two hundred and fifty K a day, which would be
about like three million or so today. Not bad for
(04:26):
a day's work right, Well, it didn't take too long
before the growth of new investors didn't outpace the needs
of existing investors to get paid out. Predictably, he went
to prison and a whole bunch of folks lost their
life savings. His devious nature and attitude out lying ruined
a lot of people. We generally despise dishonest people, at
(04:48):
least we present that image, but when it comes to
political tribalism, which just folks we like, we can overlook
a lot of obvious bullshit. In the outdoors, we do
this as well, with fishing and probably being the activity
that is most tightly linked to outright lying. No one
catches a big pre spawn smallly and actively tries to
underestimate the size, just like any of the trout dorks
(05:11):
here at meat Eater when they catch a cutty out
west generally won't round down the length of it when
they type out their Instagram caption to go along with
the photos of themselves with a fly rod in their mouth,
so you know that not only are they better than you,
but also probably smarter and with just a little bit
more impressive manhood than the pond scum who would catch
a trout on a spinning rod. Is there harm in
(05:33):
those lies? I don't know, not really. I mean, who
cares if some Randos trout was closer to eighteen inches
than nineteen it doesn't matter. The same could be said
for rounding up the score of your bucks, antlers. Does
it really matter that your buck is closer to one
twenty than one thirty? Not really? But I will also
say maybe the reason I say that is that, at
(05:57):
least in my opinion, I hear this a lot, which
is way too frequently. Someone will say something like, oh,
that little one hundred and twenty inch buck or that
scrubby one hundred and fifteen inch deer. While there are
folks out there who look at deer that size as small,
they are in a tiny, tiny little minority. What's worse
is that most of the folks making hunting content seem
(06:19):
to be in that tiny, tiny little minority, but general
hunters find their way in there as well. To the
rest of the hunters. Maybe that skews the perception a bit.
I know a lot of really really good hunters, and
I know very few people who pass up bucks that
are bumping up on the pope and young minimum. I
also know a hell of a lot of weekend warriors,
(06:41):
and none of them are passing those bucks up. Those
are big bucks to them, because one hundred and twenty
inch deer generally are not small deer. They just aren't.
One thing I know is that we are most likely
not going to start getting more honest about the size
of bucks we want to shoot or the size of
bucks we actually shoot. But I think that's a shame.
(07:02):
I shoot a lot of little bucks for a lot
of reasons, and a lot of people tell me that
they really like that about me. Some tell me they
hate me for that, but that's fodder for another podcast.
I don't think we will collectively change on that front
a whole bunch. But let me give you another example
that I've probably talked about on here before. Several years ago,
while hunting in western North Dakota with a couple of buddies,
(07:23):
I crested a rise one evening and spotted a mule
deer dough browsing away below me. I was a mule
deer hunter in those days, which meant any meal deer
was on the menu. Because I was not very good
at getting close to them. Well, I got close enough
to that one at least to shoot at her, and
like I did a lot then and still do more
than I'd like, I shot over her back pere buck
(07:45):
fever or I guess doe fever, whatever, But she let
me get another arrow knocked, and this time I shot
under her, which doesn't happen to me very often, but
surprisingly isn't much more fun than air bawling high, which
is what my third arrow did before. So that MULEI,
who must have been drinking a little bit too much
of that polluted fracking wastewater out there, took off.
Speaker 1 (08:07):
Now.
Speaker 2 (08:07):
Earlier in that trip, my buddy and I were driving
back from a morning of spotting and stocking when we
saw some antelope in what looked like an approachable spot.
I pulled over, I let him out, and kept driving.
I knew it would take him a while to get
to the goats because they were pretty far off the road,
so I got quite a ways away and parked so
that I could see them milling around in the distance.
(08:27):
But I knew I wasn't going to spook them with
my presence. Eventually I saw them all get nervous and
start to peel away. I did not, I might add
watch any of them tip over after catching an arrow
to the lungs when they bolted, I drove back down
to wait for my buddy, who, when he finally hiked
all the way out, was sweating and not in a
great mood. He mentioned that he blew the stock. That
(08:50):
was that happens pretty often when you're bow hunting antelope.
It wasn't until I got back from camp after whiffing
that dough three times and the wild turkey was flowing
that I told my story about how bad I had
flamed out. And after I wrapped up my story, that
buddy admitted that he too had whipped three times on
those antelopes, and that he was too embarrassed to talk
(09:12):
about it at first. Now you might be thinking a
couple of things. First off, that my buddy and I
need to hit the range more, and you'd be right.
I can fall apart with the best of them, and
(09:32):
so can my friends. But you might also be thinking,
why lie about that? And you'd be right. But let
me ask each and every one of you something. Have
you ever just flat out missed a deer for no
other reason than you just didn't aim? You just didn't
do a good job of executing your shot, and instead
of killing a gimme deer at twenty yards, you screwed
it up. And that is that. If you can honestly
(09:56):
answer no to that question, my advice to you is
to keep hunting. That's coming for you, buddy. If you
can answer yes to that question, think about the story
that you tell around it. Does it go something like, man,
I was sitting there as the light started to fade,
and I heard a stick snap, so I stood up
and got ready, and sure enough, here he comes right
down the trail, right on my good side, totally oblivious
(10:19):
to me. And when he got to my best opening,
I drew, squeezed my eyes shut tight as can be,
and shot without aiming at all. Then he ran out
of my life, and I realized that not only am
I not a good hunter, I'm actually pretty bad at
this stuff. Or did you find a way to make
yourself look better. Maybe he came in super quiet and
(10:40):
didn't give you time to range, so you just guessed
and it wasn't right, guess wrong, or more likely, he
managed to duck the string matrix style, so that while
you actually did do everything right, because you're very good
at this, you were just dealing with a deer that
had unparalleled arrow dodging skills. Maybe you hit an unseen twig,
(11:01):
which is such a great excuse that it might be
the most common. And we've all been there. And the
reason we can coct a story like that is because
we are driven at least partially by ego. It's okay,
it's all of us, and I'm including myself in that
big time. It's just something worth acknowledging. It's also just
not fun to be a dumbass. Trust me, I've missed
(11:24):
a lot of animals on film. I know all about it.
Some of my biggest mistakes in the woods have literally
been viewed by hundreds of thousands of people. Maybe that's
why I'm tired of the lying involved in hunting. But
it's also because we all screw up way more than
we let on. Most of the time, when big bucks
(11:46):
or any dear we want to shoot get close to us,
we screw it up or at least don't seal the deal.
I think we'd be healthier as a group if we
were all more honest about our mistakes. I think it's
kind of like this, which is going to be extrain example,
but I'm going to use it anyway. Remember not too
long ago, like before and around Christmas, when the mystery
drone thing was blowing up out in New Jersey and
(12:08):
kind of all along the East Coast and actually kind
of in the world. Honestly, it was a big topic.
And if you talk to people about UFOs and you're
kind of honest and receptive to it without being judgy,
you often suddenly hear stories about weird shit that people
saw in the sky that doesn't quite make sense. A
lot of people have stories they don't want to tell
for fear of judgment or social stigma. But why does
(12:30):
it matter if you saw something in the sky that
you can't quite explain as conventional aircraft? When you start
talking about your failings as a hunter, people often relax
and chime in with their own stories because they know
most of us fail most of the time. There are
a lot of lies in hunting around not wanting to hunt. Two,
(12:51):
the most influential folks in our space and in our
lives are the ones who present the image of the
terminator level determined hunter. Nothing we'll stop them, nothing can
keep them from scouting or hunting, or shooting their bows
or tinkering with their gear. They are single minded in
their pursuit and will stop at nothing. But those folks
(13:11):
don't scout or hunt, or shoot their bows or tinkle
with their gear every chance they can. They want you
to believe that. So when you sleep in because you're
tired from work or wrangling the kiddos and you just
couldn't muster the motivation to go, sit on stand that.
You know you're different from them, But a lot of
that is wrapped up in outright lies. And for your part,
(13:31):
if you do sleep in for some reason, don't you
want to tell your hunting buddies it was for a
very very good reason, as opposed to just being worn
out by life and life's demands. Of course you do.
It's okay to be realistic. We're not curing cancer here.
We're hunting rabbits with antlers. And if you don't want
to hunt someday or sometime or whatever, you don't have
to lie about that. It doesn't matter, because all of
(13:54):
us sometimes just don't want to go, and sometimes we
just don't go when we could. Also, there's no need
to lie about the deer we pass up either. I
don't know why this one bothers me so much, But
I have an inkling, and you know how it goes.
Someone in your circle will casually mention that they passed
up a young one hundred and thirty incher. This is
(14:14):
often something you hear about after telling someone you shot
a one hundred and ten incher, by the way, But
when someone volunteers up information on all of the bucks
they could have killed, I always wonder how much of
it is true. Did that young one hundred and thirty
inch buck walk by at fifteen yards and offer up
multiple good shot opportunities or did he stay in the
(14:36):
thick stuff at forty five yards and not really offer
up any kind of actual shot. That happens a lot,
and if the ego has a little too much say
in how the story gets out, it'll clip out many
of the pertinent details that would change a for sure
filled tag situation to a cool encounter with almost no
actual shot opportunity. We want people to know how dedicated
(14:58):
we are to the big deal and how easy it
would be to kill the kind of deer that almost
everyone else would shoot and mount. But most of it
is b s. Kind of like if Mark told you
that he keeps getting hit on by supermodels, but then
you find out that one time he was in the
same city as one. Sure, buddy, Sure. I think that
(15:20):
we should try to be more honest about what we
have happen and how we screw up when we are
out there hunting deer or hell catching fish, or hunting
turkeys or whatever. I think that the more we are
honest about ourselves in that way, the more we will
find out that a hell of a lot of our
hunting brothers and sisters are in the exact same spot.
(15:40):
I think that might matter more than ever, as we
were exposed to NonStop propaganda in our lives, and we
are exposed to strangers who all seem to be living
the dream and have amazing spouses and all make a
couple million bucks a year while saving orphan penguins and
Antarctica or whatever bs they want to pedal so they
can make money off of you while reveling in your
(16:01):
I think if we talk more about the misses and
the times we just got caught snoozing when the big
boys strolled through, or the times when the alarm went
off and we just weren't feeling it and realized that
another two hours of sleep was more important in the
moment than heading out to the woods to probably not
kill a big buck. Maybe we can't change the hunting
community as a whole, but we can take that role
(16:22):
on individually in our friend group or when we find
ourselves chatting about hunting with whomever in our lives. That
would be a start and kind of a relief for
a lot of people to hear that not only are
they not alone in their screw ups, but there are
other people who are so comfortable with it they don't
feel the need to hide it to lie about it.
I don't think that'd be a bad thing, and I
(16:43):
think a lot of us would really benefit from being
on both sides of that. So let's all be a
little more honest, shall we, And let's come back next
week because I'm going to talk about the spring Woods
deer trails and why my scouting efforts now often yield
good stand sites come full That's it for the week.
I'm Tony Peterson. This has been the Wired to Hunt
Foundation's podcast, which is brought to you by First Light.
(17:05):
Thank you so much for your support. I cannot tell
you how much it means to me and to us,
all of us here at Mediator really, without you, guys,
we are nothing. You show up for our sales, you
show up and watch our our films obviously, you listen
to our podcast, you read the articles. We truly appreciate it,
so thank you for that. If you want more content,
(17:26):
you know where to find the mediat dot com. We're
dropping new films, new podcasts, new articles every single day.
You can go check out Clay and his Son's bear
Hunt and I think Montana that they just dropped a
whole bunch of good stuff up there the Mediator dot com.
Go check it out.
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 Foundation's podcast,
which is brought to you by first Light. I'm your host,
Tony Peterson, and this episode is all about honesty and
kind of the dumb lies we tell around deer hunting
and why we should all try to stop. I know
this is a weird one, folks, but the idea, oh,
I guess it was spawned by like a not too
revolutionary thought, which is basically the sheer fact that we
(00:41):
are constantly fed so much bullshit in our daily lives
that lying is just an accepted form of communication. Our
politicians are absolutely full of shit, but so are our bosses,
our co workers, and so many of the people we
interact with on a daily basis.
Speaker 1 (00:54):
Us too.
Speaker 2 (00:54):
Really partially, that's just how kind of like our social
interactions have involved. It's really kind of bond when you
think about it, And you know, deer hunting didn't escape
this either, like the deer hunting realm.
Speaker 1 (01:05):
Is full of this.
Speaker 2 (01:05):
But I think we should acknowledge this, maybe try to
lie a little less, which is what I'm going to
talk about right now. The term Ponzi scheme gets thrown
around a lot, but some people really don't seem to
know what it actually means. We know that Bernie Madeoff
ripped off a bunch of high rollers and celebrities a
(01:27):
while back, and it was big news. We know that
some people claim bitcoin is, but it's really not a
Ponzi scheme. It's more of a greater fools theory type
of thing, at least right now. You know, until you
can broadly buy your groceries or whatever with bitcoins, it's
sort of like you got to sell it to somebody
who will pay more for it than you will. A
(01:47):
Ponzi scheme is different, and it started with a guy
whose name might not surprise you. Charles Ponzi. Old Chuck
was an Italian immigrant who back in the nineteen twenties, when,
if you know anything about our financial history, was a
time when people were doing pretty well. The old Roaring
twenties thing and all, oh the thirties would be a
(02:09):
different story. But in the twenties there was some money
to be thrown around and to be made, and one
guy who figured out how to make a bunch of
it was Charles Ponzie. He was a Grade A world
champion at lying, which is a prerequisite to running a
Ponzi scheme. Now, he came up with an idea to
get New Englanders interested in investing into get this postage
(02:33):
stamp speculation. Now, before I explain it further, for all
of you young folks out there wondering how to catch
the next big thing that might ten thousand ex your
money in a few years, ask yourself if you understand
what a highly speculative investment is. If you don't learn
about it before you part with any of your money.
Remember also, if someone comes to you with an amazing
(02:56):
investment opportunity that they are literally offering to get I
used some money they could take for themselves, And then
ask yourself, why would they do that? If you can't
come up with a good reason, like they are literally
my dad and he loves me very much and wouldn't
do that. Consider that the opportunity might not be as
clear cut or as beneficial to you as you might
think anyway. Ponzi promised investors a fifty percent return on
(03:21):
their capital in ninety days, which I hate to do
this again, but I feel an obligation to say. There's
no real, big free money out there. If someone tells
you they are in a dividends stock or ETF that
churns out even eight or ten percent a year, it's
probably not very safe. You can get ten percent a
year in the S and P five hundred, but you
(03:42):
have to give it many years to average the ups
and the downs. It won't be an instant year to
year guaranteed ten percent, let alone fifty percent in three months.
The thing about a Ponzi scheme is that it has
to grow forever because the money that it needs to
return that fifty percent in three months has to come
(04:04):
from somewhere, and it sure as hell isn't going to
come from flipping stamps for a huge profit. So new
investors have to show up with their money, and that
has to go to the early in our investors. Now,
when Ponsi was really humming along, he was bringing in
two hundred and fifty K a day, which would be
about like three million or so today. Not bad for
(04:26):
a day's work right, Well, it didn't take too long
before the growth of new investors didn't outpace the needs
of existing investors to get paid out. Predictably, he went
to prison and a whole bunch of folks lost their
life savings. His devious nature and attitude out lying ruined
a lot of people. We generally despise dishonest people, at
(04:48):
least we present that image, but when it comes to
political tribalism, which just folks we like, we can overlook
a lot of obvious bullshit. In the outdoors, we do
this as well, with fishing and probably being the activity
that is most tightly linked to outright lying. No one
catches a big pre spawn smallly and actively tries to
underestimate the size, just like any of the trout dorks
(05:11):
here at meat Eater when they catch a cutty out
west generally won't round down the length of it when
they type out their Instagram caption to go along with
the photos of themselves with a fly rod in their mouth,
so you know that not only are they better than you,
but also probably smarter and with just a little bit
more impressive manhood than the pond scum who would catch
a trout on a spinning rod. Is there harm in
(05:33):
those lies? I don't know, not really. I mean, who
cares if some Randos trout was closer to eighteen inches
than nineteen it doesn't matter. The same could be said
for rounding up the score of your bucks, antlers. Does
it really matter that your buck is closer to one
twenty than one thirty? Not really? But I will also
say maybe the reason I say that is that, at
(05:57):
least in my opinion, I hear this a lot, which
is way too frequently. Someone will say something like, oh,
that little one hundred and twenty inch buck or that
scrubby one hundred and fifteen inch deer. While there are
folks out there who look at deer that size as small,
they are in a tiny, tiny little minority. What's worse
is that most of the folks making hunting content seem
(06:19):
to be in that tiny, tiny little minority, but general
hunters find their way in there as well. To the
rest of the hunters. Maybe that skews the perception a bit.
I know a lot of really really good hunters, and
I know very few people who pass up bucks that
are bumping up on the pope and young minimum. I
also know a hell of a lot of weekend warriors,
(06:41):
and none of them are passing those bucks up. Those
are big bucks to them, because one hundred and twenty
inch deer generally are not small deer. They just aren't.
One thing I know is that we are most likely
not going to start getting more honest about the size
of bucks we want to shoot or the size of
bucks we actually shoot. But I think that's a shame.
(07:02):
I shoot a lot of little bucks for a lot
of reasons, and a lot of people tell me that
they really like that about me. Some tell me they
hate me for that, but that's fodder for another podcast.
I don't think we will collectively change on that front
a whole bunch. But let me give you another example
that I've probably talked about on here before. Several years ago,
while hunting in western North Dakota with a couple of buddies,
(07:23):
I crested a rise one evening and spotted a mule
deer dough browsing away below me. I was a mule
deer hunter in those days, which meant any meal deer
was on the menu. Because I was not very good
at getting close to them. Well, I got close enough
to that one at least to shoot at her, and
like I did a lot then and still do more
than I'd like, I shot over her back pere buck
(07:45):
fever or I guess doe fever, whatever, But she let
me get another arrow knocked, and this time I shot
under her, which doesn't happen to me very often, but
surprisingly isn't much more fun than air bawling high, which
is what my third arrow did before. So that MULEI,
who must have been drinking a little bit too much
of that polluted fracking wastewater out there, took off.
Speaker 1 (08:07):
Now.
Speaker 2 (08:07):
Earlier in that trip, my buddy and I were driving
back from a morning of spotting and stocking when we
saw some antelope in what looked like an approachable spot.
I pulled over, I let him out, and kept driving.
I knew it would take him a while to get
to the goats because they were pretty far off the road,
so I got quite a ways away and parked so
that I could see them milling around in the distance.
(08:27):
But I knew I wasn't going to spook them with
my presence. Eventually I saw them all get nervous and
start to peel away. I did not, I might add
watch any of them tip over after catching an arrow
to the lungs when they bolted, I drove back down
to wait for my buddy, who, when he finally hiked
all the way out, was sweating and not in a
great mood. He mentioned that he blew the stock. That
(08:50):
was that happens pretty often when you're bow hunting antelope.
It wasn't until I got back from camp after whiffing
that dough three times and the wild turkey was flowing
that I told my story about how bad I had
flamed out. And after I wrapped up my story, that
buddy admitted that he too had whipped three times on
those antelopes, and that he was too embarrassed to talk
(09:12):
about it at first. Now you might be thinking a
couple of things. First off, that my buddy and I
need to hit the range more, and you'd be right.
I can fall apart with the best of them, and
(09:32):
so can my friends. But you might also be thinking,
why lie about that? And you'd be right. But let
me ask each and every one of you something. Have
you ever just flat out missed a deer for no
other reason than you just didn't aim? You just didn't
do a good job of executing your shot, and instead
of killing a gimme deer at twenty yards, you screwed
it up. And that is that. If you can honestly
(09:56):
answer no to that question, my advice to you is
to keep hunting. That's coming for you, buddy. If you
can answer yes to that question, think about the story
that you tell around it. Does it go something like, man,
I was sitting there as the light started to fade,
and I heard a stick snap, so I stood up
and got ready, and sure enough, here he comes right
down the trail, right on my good side, totally oblivious
(10:19):
to me. And when he got to my best opening,
I drew, squeezed my eyes shut tight as can be,
and shot without aiming at all. Then he ran out
of my life, and I realized that not only am
I not a good hunter, I'm actually pretty bad at
this stuff. Or did you find a way to make
yourself look better. Maybe he came in super quiet and
(10:40):
didn't give you time to range, so you just guessed
and it wasn't right, guess wrong, or more likely, he
managed to duck the string matrix style, so that while
you actually did do everything right, because you're very good
at this, you were just dealing with a deer that
had unparalleled arrow dodging skills. Maybe you hit an unseen twig,
(11:01):
which is such a great excuse that it might be
the most common. And we've all been there. And the
reason we can coct a story like that is because
we are driven at least partially by ego. It's okay,
it's all of us, and I'm including myself in that
big time. It's just something worth acknowledging. It's also just
not fun to be a dumbass. Trust me, I've missed
(11:24):
a lot of animals on film. I know all about it.
Some of my biggest mistakes in the woods have literally
been viewed by hundreds of thousands of people. Maybe that's
why I'm tired of the lying involved in hunting. But
it's also because we all screw up way more than
we let on. Most of the time, when big bucks
(11:46):
or any dear we want to shoot get close to us,
we screw it up or at least don't seal the deal.
I think we'd be healthier as a group if we
were all more honest about our mistakes. I think it's
kind of like this, which is going to be extrain example,
but I'm going to use it anyway. Remember not too
long ago, like before and around Christmas, when the mystery
drone thing was blowing up out in New Jersey and
(12:08):
kind of all along the East Coast and actually kind
of in the world. Honestly, it was a big topic.
And if you talk to people about UFOs and you're
kind of honest and receptive to it without being judgy,
you often suddenly hear stories about weird shit that people
saw in the sky that doesn't quite make sense. A
lot of people have stories they don't want to tell
for fear of judgment or social stigma. But why does
(12:30):
it matter if you saw something in the sky that
you can't quite explain as conventional aircraft? When you start
talking about your failings as a hunter, people often relax
and chime in with their own stories because they know
most of us fail most of the time. There are
a lot of lies in hunting around not wanting to hunt. Two,
(12:51):
the most influential folks in our space and in our
lives are the ones who present the image of the
terminator level determined hunter. Nothing we'll stop them, nothing can
keep them from scouting or hunting, or shooting their bows
or tinkering with their gear. They are single minded in
their pursuit and will stop at nothing. But those folks
(13:11):
don't scout or hunt, or shoot their bows or tinkle
with their gear every chance they can. They want you
to believe that. So when you sleep in because you're
tired from work or wrangling the kiddos and you just
couldn't muster the motivation to go, sit on stand that.
You know you're different from them, But a lot of
that is wrapped up in outright lies. And for your part,
(13:31):
if you do sleep in for some reason, don't you
want to tell your hunting buddies it was for a
very very good reason, as opposed to just being worn
out by life and life's demands. Of course you do.
It's okay to be realistic. We're not curing cancer here.
We're hunting rabbits with antlers. And if you don't want
to hunt someday or sometime or whatever, you don't have
to lie about that. It doesn't matter, because all of
(13:54):
us sometimes just don't want to go, and sometimes we
just don't go when we could. Also, there's no need
to lie about the deer we pass up either. I
don't know why this one bothers me so much, But
I have an inkling, and you know how it goes.
Someone in your circle will casually mention that they passed
up a young one hundred and thirty incher. This is
(14:14):
often something you hear about after telling someone you shot
a one hundred and ten incher, by the way, But
when someone volunteers up information on all of the bucks
they could have killed, I always wonder how much of
it is true. Did that young one hundred and thirty
inch buck walk by at fifteen yards and offer up
multiple good shot opportunities or did he stay in the
(14:36):
thick stuff at forty five yards and not really offer
up any kind of actual shot. That happens a lot,
and if the ego has a little too much say
in how the story gets out, it'll clip out many
of the pertinent details that would change a for sure
filled tag situation to a cool encounter with almost no
actual shot opportunity. We want people to know how dedicated
(14:58):
we are to the big deal and how easy it
would be to kill the kind of deer that almost
everyone else would shoot and mount. But most of it
is b s. Kind of like if Mark told you
that he keeps getting hit on by supermodels, but then
you find out that one time he was in the
same city as one. Sure, buddy, Sure. I think that
(15:20):
we should try to be more honest about what we
have happen and how we screw up when we are
out there hunting deer or hell catching fish, or hunting
turkeys or whatever. I think that the more we are
honest about ourselves in that way, the more we will
find out that a hell of a lot of our
hunting brothers and sisters are in the exact same spot.
(15:40):
I think that might matter more than ever, as we
were exposed to NonStop propaganda in our lives, and we
are exposed to strangers who all seem to be living
the dream and have amazing spouses and all make a
couple million bucks a year while saving orphan penguins and
Antarctica or whatever bs they want to pedal so they
can make money off of you while reveling in your
(16:01):
I think if we talk more about the misses and
the times we just got caught snoozing when the big
boys strolled through, or the times when the alarm went
off and we just weren't feeling it and realized that
another two hours of sleep was more important in the
moment than heading out to the woods to probably not
kill a big buck. Maybe we can't change the hunting
community as a whole, but we can take that role
(16:22):
on individually in our friend group or when we find
ourselves chatting about hunting with whomever in our lives. That
would be a start and kind of a relief for
a lot of people to hear that not only are
they not alone in their screw ups, but there are
other people who are so comfortable with it they don't
feel the need to hide it to lie about it.
I don't think that'd be a bad thing, and I
(16:43):
think a lot of us would really benefit from being
on both sides of that. So let's all be a
little more honest, shall we, And let's come back next
week because I'm going to talk about the spring Woods
deer trails and why my scouting efforts now often yield
good stand sites come full That's it for the week.
I'm Tony Peterson. This has been the Wired to Hunt
Foundation's podcast, which is brought to you by First Light.
(17:05):
Thank you so much for your support. I cannot tell
you how much it means to me and to us,
all of us here at Mediator really, without you, guys,
we are nothing. You show up for our sales, you
show up and watch our our films obviously, you listen
to our podcast, you read the articles. We truly appreciate it,
so thank you for that. If you want more content,
(17:26):
you know where to find the mediat dot com. We're
dropping new films, new podcasts, new articles every single day.
You can go check out Clay and his Son's bear
Hunt and I think Montana that they just dropped a
whole bunch of good stuff up there the Mediator dot com.
Go check it out.
Host
Mark Kenyon
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