July 22, 2025 • 16 mins
This week, Tony explains how we should view the various aspects of scouting and hunting as challenges, and not focus on what we perceive to be nearly unsolvable problems.
Connect with Tony Peterson and MeatEater
Tony Peterson on Instagram and Facebook
MeatEater on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, and Youtube Clips
MeatEater Podcast Network on YouTube
Shop MeatEater Merch
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
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 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
(00:41):
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
(01:02):
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
(01:23):
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
(01:43):
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
(02:05):
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
(02:27):
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.
(02:52):
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
(03:14):
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
(03:35):
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
(03:57):
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.
(04:18):
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
(04:39):
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
(05:01):
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.
(05:22):
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
(05:45):
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.
(06:07):
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
(06:29):
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
(06:52):
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
(07:15):
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
(07:35):
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
(07:57):
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
(08:17):
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
(08:38):
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
(09:00):
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.
(09:22):
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
(09:46):
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
(10:08):
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
(10:31):
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
(10:52):
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?
(11:13):
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.
(11:34):
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,
(11:57):
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.
(12:18):
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
(12:39):
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
(13:00):
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
(13:22):
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
(13:43):
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
(14:04):
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
(14:26):
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
(14:48):
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
(15:09):
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
(15:30):
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
(15:52):
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
(16:13):
drop new content every single day. 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 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
(00:41):
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
(01:02):
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
(01:23):
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
(01:43):
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
(02:05):
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
(02:27):
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.
(02:52):
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
(03:14):
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
(03:35):
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
(03:57):
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.
(04:18):
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
(04:39):
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
(05:01):
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.
(05:22):
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
(05:45):
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.
(06:07):
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
(06:29):
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
(06:52):
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
(07:15):
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
(07:35):
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
(07:57):
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
(08:17):
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
(08:38):
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
(09:00):
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.
(09:22):
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
(09:46):
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
(10:08):
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
(10:31):
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
(10:52):
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?
(11:13):
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.
(11:34):
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,
(11:57):
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.
(12:18):
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
(12:39):
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
(13:00):
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
(13:22):
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
(13:43):
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
(14:04):
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
(14:26):
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
(14:48):
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
(15:09):
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
(15:30):
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
(15:52):
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
(16:13):
drop new content every single day. Go check it out
at the mediator dot com.
Host
Mark Kenyon
Popular Podcasts
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
24/7 News: The Latest
The latest news in 4 minutes updated every hour, every day.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com