September 23, 2025 • 16 mins
This week, Tony talks about how each of us is on our own deer journey, and why we should try to not impose our own hunting beliefs on others.
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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 Foundation's podcast,
brought to you by first Light.
Speaker 3 (00:24):
I'm your host, Tony Peterson.
Speaker 2 (00:26):
Today's episode is all the books, kind of just like
staying in our lane when it comes to deer hunting,
so that we can all have a little more fun
this season.
Speaker 3 (00:34):
It's pretty hard.
Speaker 2 (00:35):
To put yourself in someone else's shoes or, in this case,
I don't know, knee high hunting boots, I guess, but
we should all try because the truth about this stuff
is that if you love deer and all that comes
with hunting them, you kind of have an obligation to
try to treat others with a similar mindset the same
way you'd like to be treated.
Speaker 3 (00:52):
The Golden rule.
Speaker 2 (00:53):
You know, this might seem like wishy washyps, but what
we do affects others, and we do have the power
to ruin other people's hunts with just our words.
Speaker 3 (01:03):
You know, let alone our actions.
Speaker 2 (01:05):
I think we can do better, and that's what this
podcast is all about. A couple of weeks ago, I
finished up a workout and walked into the locker room
and changed up, walked out to the steam room. I
generally keep my earbuds in when I'm in there because
(01:27):
just often enough, someone, usually an older fellow who doesn't
seem to have a lot on his plate for the day,
will want to talk politics. The earbuds protect me a
little bit from random strangers striking up a conversation that
I don't really want to get into. You know, talking
about some political thing that happened with strangers in a
tiny room that is one hundred and sixty degrees is
about as appealing to me as it would be to
(01:48):
pass a gulf ball sized kidney stone while hornet stick
me in the nostrils. No thanks, any huski. When I
sat down, there were two people in there. One of
them happened to be a woman that I used to
see quite a bit and who always said hi, but
who I never actually talked to in my life. I
immediately noticed that she looked kind of unhealthy, skinny, and
thought to myself, man, she looked super deconditioned. I figured
(02:12):
she'd just taken some time off and hadn't been working out,
which seemed pretty logical in my brain. But then we
started talking and she almost immediately offered up the reason
why she hadn't been to the gym in months. It
turns out the weekend of Mother's Day, way back in May,
she was driving along on a highway with her two
year old son when a car that was supposed to
stop at a stop sign didn't, and she got t
(02:34):
boned on the driver's side by a vehicle going fifty
five miles an hour. The impact pushed her car into
someone's yard, where it was headed straight for a power
pole when a septic mound slowed them down enough to stop.
Now that collision broke both of her arms and her
sternum and her collarbone, and she had a fresh semicircle
scar on her cheek where she received thirty stitches. She
(02:58):
said her son ended up bruised up but fine. Now
was only because two days before that she had moved
in from directly behind her to the middle seat. She
then said that the scariest part was that when she
was two, her dad died in a car accident in
a very similar way after hitting a telephone pole. Think
of that what you will, But it dawned on me
(03:18):
that I had filled in her story for why she
looks so skinny and honestly just not super healthy, and
had chalked it up to kind of being lazy and
just not going to the gym for months. That realization
did not make me feel great. It's pretty hard to
imagine not only having two broken arms, but a busted sternum,
which has to be horrible amongst a bunch of other injuries. Now,
(03:41):
around that same time, I got a phone call from
a young hunter I know who was trying hard to
kill a public land buck without help from anyone, who
seemed less concerned with the process of finding and shooting
a deer than shooting the wrong deer. Now, as you
probably know about me, I don't give a shit if
you shoot a giant or a spike, or a dough
(04:02):
or a button buck. I don't know where anyone is
on their hunting journey outside of a couple of close friends,
and it's not up to me to decide what is
worthy of someone else's tag. That young hunter on the
public land quest tiptoed around this, But a big reason
for all the anxiety was the shit storm that shooting
a small buck and posting it on Instagram would draw.
(04:22):
My solution to that was to just hunt for whatever,
shoot what you want, and don't post it. But that
isn't a reality for a lot of hunters these days,
which is a shame. I can tell you this. I
know that hunter situation and shooting a small buck on
public land would be as big of a feat as
shooting a really big deer on some of the heavily
managed properties I've hunted, but that doesn't seem to matter.
(04:44):
Nor does it matter that this hunter has exactly one
bow kill on the old resume so far. That alone,
to me, would be a green light to go try
to earn a high odd shot without focusing on trophy
potential too much. But you can't argue there isn't social
pressure to shoot bigger deer. I'll never forget one of
the first public land bucks I arrowed, which was an
eight pointer down in Nebraska that came into a decoy.
(05:07):
That hunt was fun, it was a lot of work,
and after a few days of close put no cigar,
that buck came in and I shot him poorly.
Speaker 3 (05:16):
The blood trail was a grind.
Speaker 2 (05:18):
I ended up making a follow up shot and it
all worked out in the end. But it was one
of those core memory hunts that contained a hell of
a lot of good moves on my part and a
couple of really bad ones. That deer taught me a lot.
And I wouldn't say it is a straight up good memory,
but it is a very valuable one to me. Now,
I was in the hunting industry as a freelance writer
(05:39):
at the time, and I had a lot of industry contacts.
I sent the kill photos to the bow company that
had sent me the bow I used, and they posted
a picture on their Facebook page. The very first comment was, dang,
that buck is tiny. Mind you, it was a buck
that wasn't a giant, but it was a pretty solid
two year old deer that was out to his ear.
Speaker 3 (06:00):
Meant a lot to me.
Speaker 2 (06:01):
It was a throwaway comment on social media with a
picture in a most zero context. An instant judgment thing,
you know, is something that we have all done in
our lives, and a lot of us still do it.
We probably always will because of human nature. But we
should think about this and we should think about how
we view our own hunting. I rarely run across hunters
(06:23):
who will admit their hunting is easy, just like I
very rarely run across people who admit that their dogs
aren't well behaved. Think about this, though, how hard you know?
Do you think that your hunting is? Because I can
bet you you know, if I wanted to, I could
pick apart a lot of your arguments and evidence for
why your hunting isn't actually that hard simply by comparing
(06:47):
it to how hard I think my hunting is.
Speaker 3 (06:49):
But would that make me right?
Speaker 2 (06:51):
Well on the surface, maybe if you hunt private land
and I hunt public maybe, But if that private land
is in Tennessee and my public is in Iowa, not
so simple. It's still may be true, but it's getting
a little muddy anyways. Now, what if you hunt with
a crossbow and I hunt with a compound. Now I've
got you because your weapon is without question easier to
(07:14):
use than mine.
Speaker 3 (07:15):
Check mate. But maybe not.
Speaker 2 (07:19):
What if you have a job that demands long hours
is a physical nightmare, And not only do you just
not have a ton of free time to hunt, you know,
like I do, you're also wore out when you do
have that free time, you know, And then you got
me just pounding on a keyboard and drinking coffee while
I plan a whole falls worth of time in the
woods in multiple states. Who really has the advantage here.
(07:41):
Let's take that a step further. Maybe you have killed
a dozen deer with a bow in your career, while
I've killed over one hundred. Would it be cool for
me to judge your success based on mine or disregard
how lucky I've been to hunt as much as I
have and rack up such an amazing and awe inspiring resume.
Speaker 3 (07:59):
I mean, it pales in comparison to.
Speaker 2 (08:01):
Some people I know, But those folks have a lot
more money than me because their grandpa started a business
and created generational wealth. So even though they have more
and bigger deer on their walls, mine just somehow become
better because I'm not rich and I earn them. That's
a solid way to live until I acknowledge how many
people would kill to have the opportunities I've had, and
if I conveniently forget that, there are quite a few
(08:23):
people out there who are more concerned with finding a
job or keeping their jobs than they are about killing
deer that some stranger would approve of. This shit all
gets super muddy in a hurry, And you know what
(08:45):
it means that we can't really understand other people and
the lives they are living. Some folks, you know, they
make bad choices, and some folks just have bad choices
made for them. Some folks are born with a huge
head start, others not so much. That might not seem
like it has anything to do with deer hunting, but
it absolutely does. The trends of greater society bleed into
(09:08):
deer hunting in so many different ways. You and I
are losing hunting opportunities every single year to other hunters
because we've been othered really well in this space, and
if you live across the state line from me, you
are lesser than I am. We can defend stuff like
that easily because we want to be right and we
want to have easier hunting for ourselves. But let's not
(09:30):
pretend that we aren't totally okay with removing hunting opportunities
from our fellow hunters because we can generalize them and
shit on them very easily. Now, that might not be
an exact replica of how divided we are as people
right now. But it's close enough and it isn't doing
us any favors.
Speaker 3 (09:47):
Now.
Speaker 2 (09:47):
That mindset also demands some level of cognitive dissonance to maintain.
I had a conversation with an outfitter from Nebraska one
time who bitched about non residents killing all of the
young deers so there weren't any left for them residents.
Never mind the fact that the outfitter has over ten
thousand acres of ground locked up, which keeps non paying
residents and non residents out of some really awesome stuff,
(10:12):
Or never mind that the state's resource there is being
hoarded to produce as much income as possible for that person.
The argument about booting non residents in that case was
that the value of the hunt for residents was reduced.
But how do you measure that against one person paying
to keep over fifteen square miles of good ground out
of the hands of everyone who isn't willing to fork
over a lot of money to set foot on it. Now,
(10:35):
I'm not saying non residents should have equal access to
the animals that residents do, anymore than we should just
shut down all the outfitters out there. I don't believe
either thing I just use those points to illustrate how
easy it is to feel justified in our actions when
it comes to hunting, actions which definitely impact our fellow hunters.
Speaker 3 (10:54):
It's hard to put yourself in someone.
Speaker 2 (10:55):
Else's shoes, you know, or, in this case, like I said,
hunting boots. The world is full of people who are
miserable projecting onto other people because it's easier to try
to blow out someone else's candle than to try to
get ours to burn a little brighter. I don't know
why I think this, but I just do, And as hunters,
I just think we can do better, and I think
we should try. So how do we do this well?
(11:18):
We can try not to be pricks to each other.
That's about as simple as I can put it, and
I guess maybe that's as simple as it needs to be.
It's kind of like something I heard once in the
fitness world where someone said they could write the shortest
and most true dieting book ever, the only line in
it would be burn more calories than you consume, or
something to that effect. In a nutshell, some stuff actually
(11:41):
has an easy solve, but that's generally only true if
you don't take into account human nature, which is pretty
hard to not account for when you're talking about humans.
So the next best thing is to step outside your
comfort zone and try something new. You know how much
I love to preach about hunting somewhere different, some foreign
deer ground somewhere, because I do think it's one of
the best.
Speaker 3 (12:00):
Ways to level up as a hunter.
Speaker 2 (12:02):
I believe that, But I also believe that it's sort
of the antidote to becoming overly xenophobic and myopic when
it comes to deer hunting. The more you go to
different places and meet different people and put yourself in
a situation where you have to figure things out on
the fly and you have to learn or you'll fail spectacularly,
the easier it is to start to understand other people's
(12:23):
or in this case, other hunter's perspectives. I know that's
easy to say but hard to do. A great example
in my own life is that I can't understand why
so many vertical bow hunters immediately by a crossbow when
they become legal. But that's kind of the same thing,
you know, I feel when I get into my buddy
Adam's truck and he plays the worst country music known
to mand. He's not my decision to make for someone else,
(12:46):
and I just like different things. I get why people
want an easier weapon. It kind of only makes sense.
Some people don't enjoy shooting bows a whole lot, or
have the time or whatever. Some people just want more
confidence that when it does walk in, they're actually going
to kill it. I can't really fault anyone for that,
even though that's my initial impulse quite often. I also
(13:09):
can't really fault someone for liking the music they do,
because the hell of a lot of the people in
this world would absolutely hate the music I love, and
I understand that. I think it's better to recognize that
people find value in their own taste of music, just
like the guy who shoots a crossbow can walk into
the woods for the same reason I do and walk
out feeling the same way, and evenings spent hunting deer
(13:30):
really does for me. I had a recent conversation with
a hunting buddy who lives where I grew up, and
he told me a few stories about people I used
to know from my hometown who are into the trophy
deer thing in a major way. He said it made
him not want to talk to hardly anyone about deer hunting,
and I get that, but I don't think it has
to be that way. And I think, as woo woo
(13:51):
as this sounds, it starts with all of us as individuals.
We can come together to try to keep public lands
in the hands of the general public in an amazing way.
I think we can make the decision to recognize that
we are hunting rabbits with antlers, and it's cool if
someone wants to do it in a way that doesn't
appeal to us. I think to put a fine point
on this, I'll tell you what I've said to a
(14:11):
few random strangers over the years, including some lady at
Target a few years ago who was losing her mind
over a mispriced item. It clearly wasn't the checkout lady's fault,
and she was trying to sort it out.
Speaker 3 (14:24):
But this woman was just so over the top about it.
It was gross.
Speaker 2 (14:28):
So I said to her, we know a woman who
had a baby that was born with cancer. I didn't
even know that was a thing until it happened to
someone in our little world. Imagine that for a second.
Anyone who has had a child knows that the fear
you have one that is always riding shotgun with all
the positive thoughts, is what if something is wrong, like
(14:49):
really wrong. So this woman looked at me and she
said so, and I said so, this isn't that big
of a deal, not big enough to act this way.
Speaker 3 (14:58):
It's not that important.
Speaker 2 (15:00):
And I can tell you that I've said this very
thing to a few people in my life. None of
them looked at it like they wanted to hear it.
But it doesn't make it untrue. I know that I
go on these rants from time to time, and I'm sorry.
I just think that we are damn lucky to do
what we do and we should just try to treat
each other with some decency. This feels important to me
(15:21):
when the example from our favorite politicians all the way
down to rando strangers on the internet is to just
be nastier and nastier by the day. So that's all
I want to say on this and next week I'm
going to talk about something I think helps people kill
more big Bucks than anything. And I think if you
listen to it and you follow the advice I'm going
to give, you will kill more big Bucks.
Speaker 3 (15:42):
It might take a few years, but it will work.
And it's not magic.
Speaker 2 (15:46):
It's damn close when you really put it under the microscope.
Speaker 3 (15:50):
That's it. I'm Tony Peterson.
Speaker 2 (15:51):
This has been the Wire to Hunt Foundations podcast, which
is brought to you by First Light. As always, I
want to thank you for all of your support. It
means the world to us here at meat Eater that
you guys just show up for us. Without you guys
were nothing, So thank you for that. If you want
more hunting content, which you probably do right now because
we are in the thick of it, you know, maybe
you need a recipe, Maybe you want to read an
(16:13):
article on some kind of news story that's coming out
about a poacher or some law change or something. Maybe
you just want to listen to a guy like Brent
Reeves tell some stories with his beautiful voice on this.
Speaker 3 (16:27):
Country life podcast.
Speaker 2 (16:28):
Whatever, go to the meeteater dot com check it out.
We drop new podcasts, new videos, new articles every single
day there.
Speaker 3 (16:37):
Thank you,
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,
brought to you by first Light.
Speaker 3 (00:24):
I'm your host, Tony Peterson.
Speaker 2 (00:26):
Today's episode is all the books, kind of just like
staying in our lane when it comes to deer hunting,
so that we can all have a little more fun
this season.
Speaker 3 (00:34):
It's pretty hard.
Speaker 2 (00:35):
To put yourself in someone else's shoes or, in this case,
I don't know, knee high hunting boots, I guess, but
we should all try because the truth about this stuff
is that if you love deer and all that comes
with hunting them, you kind of have an obligation to
try to treat others with a similar mindset the same
way you'd like to be treated.
Speaker 3 (00:52):
The Golden rule.
Speaker 2 (00:53):
You know, this might seem like wishy washyps, but what
we do affects others, and we do have the power
to ruin other people's hunts with just our words.
Speaker 3 (01:03):
You know, let alone our actions.
Speaker 2 (01:05):
I think we can do better, and that's what this
podcast is all about. A couple of weeks ago, I
finished up a workout and walked into the locker room
and changed up, walked out to the steam room. I
generally keep my earbuds in when I'm in there because
(01:27):
just often enough, someone, usually an older fellow who doesn't
seem to have a lot on his plate for the day,
will want to talk politics. The earbuds protect me a
little bit from random strangers striking up a conversation that
I don't really want to get into. You know, talking
about some political thing that happened with strangers in a
tiny room that is one hundred and sixty degrees is
about as appealing to me as it would be to
(01:48):
pass a gulf ball sized kidney stone while hornet stick
me in the nostrils. No thanks, any huski. When I
sat down, there were two people in there. One of
them happened to be a woman that I used to
see quite a bit and who always said hi, but
who I never actually talked to in my life. I
immediately noticed that she looked kind of unhealthy, skinny, and
thought to myself, man, she looked super deconditioned. I figured
(02:12):
she'd just taken some time off and hadn't been working out,
which seemed pretty logical in my brain. But then we
started talking and she almost immediately offered up the reason
why she hadn't been to the gym in months. It
turns out the weekend of Mother's Day, way back in May,
she was driving along on a highway with her two
year old son when a car that was supposed to
stop at a stop sign didn't, and she got t
(02:34):
boned on the driver's side by a vehicle going fifty
five miles an hour. The impact pushed her car into
someone's yard, where it was headed straight for a power
pole when a septic mound slowed them down enough to stop.
Now that collision broke both of her arms and her
sternum and her collarbone, and she had a fresh semicircle
scar on her cheek where she received thirty stitches. She
(02:58):
said her son ended up bruised up but fine. Now
was only because two days before that she had moved
in from directly behind her to the middle seat. She
then said that the scariest part was that when she
was two, her dad died in a car accident in
a very similar way after hitting a telephone pole. Think
of that what you will, But it dawned on me
(03:18):
that I had filled in her story for why she
looks so skinny and honestly just not super healthy, and
had chalked it up to kind of being lazy and
just not going to the gym for months. That realization
did not make me feel great. It's pretty hard to
imagine not only having two broken arms, but a busted sternum,
which has to be horrible amongst a bunch of other injuries. Now,
(03:41):
around that same time, I got a phone call from
a young hunter I know who was trying hard to
kill a public land buck without help from anyone, who
seemed less concerned with the process of finding and shooting
a deer than shooting the wrong deer. Now, as you
probably know about me, I don't give a shit if
you shoot a giant or a spike, or a dough
(04:02):
or a button buck. I don't know where anyone is
on their hunting journey outside of a couple of close friends,
and it's not up to me to decide what is
worthy of someone else's tag. That young hunter on the
public land quest tiptoed around this, But a big reason
for all the anxiety was the shit storm that shooting
a small buck and posting it on Instagram would draw.
(04:22):
My solution to that was to just hunt for whatever,
shoot what you want, and don't post it. But that
isn't a reality for a lot of hunters these days,
which is a shame. I can tell you this. I
know that hunter situation and shooting a small buck on
public land would be as big of a feat as
shooting a really big deer on some of the heavily
managed properties I've hunted, but that doesn't seem to matter.
(04:44):
Nor does it matter that this hunter has exactly one
bow kill on the old resume so far. That alone,
to me, would be a green light to go try
to earn a high odd shot without focusing on trophy
potential too much. But you can't argue there isn't social
pressure to shoot bigger deer. I'll never forget one of
the first public land bucks I arrowed, which was an
eight pointer down in Nebraska that came into a decoy.
(05:07):
That hunt was fun, it was a lot of work,
and after a few days of close put no cigar,
that buck came in and I shot him poorly.
Speaker 3 (05:16):
The blood trail was a grind.
Speaker 2 (05:18):
I ended up making a follow up shot and it
all worked out in the end. But it was one
of those core memory hunts that contained a hell of
a lot of good moves on my part and a
couple of really bad ones. That deer taught me a lot.
And I wouldn't say it is a straight up good memory,
but it is a very valuable one to me. Now,
I was in the hunting industry as a freelance writer
(05:39):
at the time, and I had a lot of industry contacts.
I sent the kill photos to the bow company that
had sent me the bow I used, and they posted
a picture on their Facebook page. The very first comment was, dang,
that buck is tiny. Mind you, it was a buck
that wasn't a giant, but it was a pretty solid
two year old deer that was out to his ear.
Speaker 3 (06:00):
Meant a lot to me.
Speaker 2 (06:01):
It was a throwaway comment on social media with a
picture in a most zero context. An instant judgment thing,
you know, is something that we have all done in
our lives, and a lot of us still do it.
We probably always will because of human nature. But we
should think about this and we should think about how
we view our own hunting. I rarely run across hunters
(06:23):
who will admit their hunting is easy, just like I
very rarely run across people who admit that their dogs
aren't well behaved. Think about this, though, how hard you know?
Do you think that your hunting is? Because I can
bet you you know, if I wanted to, I could
pick apart a lot of your arguments and evidence for
why your hunting isn't actually that hard simply by comparing
(06:47):
it to how hard I think my hunting is.
Speaker 3 (06:49):
But would that make me right?
Speaker 2 (06:51):
Well on the surface, maybe if you hunt private land
and I hunt public maybe, But if that private land
is in Tennessee and my public is in Iowa, not
so simple. It's still may be true, but it's getting
a little muddy anyways. Now, what if you hunt with
a crossbow and I hunt with a compound. Now I've
got you because your weapon is without question easier to
(07:14):
use than mine.
Speaker 3 (07:15):
Check mate. But maybe not.
Speaker 2 (07:19):
What if you have a job that demands long hours
is a physical nightmare, And not only do you just
not have a ton of free time to hunt, you know,
like I do, you're also wore out when you do
have that free time, you know, And then you got
me just pounding on a keyboard and drinking coffee while
I plan a whole falls worth of time in the
woods in multiple states. Who really has the advantage here.
(07:41):
Let's take that a step further. Maybe you have killed
a dozen deer with a bow in your career, while
I've killed over one hundred. Would it be cool for
me to judge your success based on mine or disregard
how lucky I've been to hunt as much as I
have and rack up such an amazing and awe inspiring resume.
Speaker 3 (07:59):
I mean, it pales in comparison to.
Speaker 2 (08:01):
Some people I know, But those folks have a lot
more money than me because their grandpa started a business
and created generational wealth. So even though they have more
and bigger deer on their walls, mine just somehow become
better because I'm not rich and I earn them. That's
a solid way to live until I acknowledge how many
people would kill to have the opportunities I've had, and
if I conveniently forget that, there are quite a few
(08:23):
people out there who are more concerned with finding a
job or keeping their jobs than they are about killing
deer that some stranger would approve of. This shit all
gets super muddy in a hurry, And you know what
(08:45):
it means that we can't really understand other people and
the lives they are living. Some folks, you know, they
make bad choices, and some folks just have bad choices
made for them. Some folks are born with a huge
head start, others not so much. That might not seem
like it has anything to do with deer hunting, but
it absolutely does. The trends of greater society bleed into
(09:08):
deer hunting in so many different ways. You and I
are losing hunting opportunities every single year to other hunters
because we've been othered really well in this space, and
if you live across the state line from me, you
are lesser than I am. We can defend stuff like
that easily because we want to be right and we
want to have easier hunting for ourselves. But let's not
(09:30):
pretend that we aren't totally okay with removing hunting opportunities
from our fellow hunters because we can generalize them and
shit on them very easily. Now, that might not be
an exact replica of how divided we are as people
right now. But it's close enough and it isn't doing
us any favors.
Speaker 3 (09:47):
Now.
Speaker 2 (09:47):
That mindset also demands some level of cognitive dissonance to maintain.
I had a conversation with an outfitter from Nebraska one
time who bitched about non residents killing all of the
young deers so there weren't any left for them residents.
Never mind the fact that the outfitter has over ten
thousand acres of ground locked up, which keeps non paying
residents and non residents out of some really awesome stuff,
(10:12):
Or never mind that the state's resource there is being
hoarded to produce as much income as possible for that person.
The argument about booting non residents in that case was
that the value of the hunt for residents was reduced.
But how do you measure that against one person paying
to keep over fifteen square miles of good ground out
of the hands of everyone who isn't willing to fork
over a lot of money to set foot on it. Now,
(10:35):
I'm not saying non residents should have equal access to
the animals that residents do, anymore than we should just
shut down all the outfitters out there. I don't believe
either thing I just use those points to illustrate how
easy it is to feel justified in our actions when
it comes to hunting, actions which definitely impact our fellow hunters.
Speaker 3 (10:54):
It's hard to put yourself in someone.
Speaker 2 (10:55):
Else's shoes, you know, or, in this case, like I said,
hunting boots. The world is full of people who are
miserable projecting onto other people because it's easier to try
to blow out someone else's candle than to try to
get ours to burn a little brighter. I don't know
why I think this, but I just do, And as hunters,
I just think we can do better, and I think
we should try. So how do we do this well?
(11:18):
We can try not to be pricks to each other.
That's about as simple as I can put it, and
I guess maybe that's as simple as it needs to be.
It's kind of like something I heard once in the
fitness world where someone said they could write the shortest
and most true dieting book ever, the only line in
it would be burn more calories than you consume, or
something to that effect. In a nutshell, some stuff actually
(11:41):
has an easy solve, but that's generally only true if
you don't take into account human nature, which is pretty
hard to not account for when you're talking about humans.
So the next best thing is to step outside your
comfort zone and try something new. You know how much
I love to preach about hunting somewhere different, some foreign
deer ground somewhere, because I do think it's one of
the best.
Speaker 3 (12:00):
Ways to level up as a hunter.
Speaker 2 (12:02):
I believe that, But I also believe that it's sort
of the antidote to becoming overly xenophobic and myopic when
it comes to deer hunting. The more you go to
different places and meet different people and put yourself in
a situation where you have to figure things out on
the fly and you have to learn or you'll fail spectacularly,
the easier it is to start to understand other people's
(12:23):
or in this case, other hunter's perspectives. I know that's
easy to say but hard to do. A great example
in my own life is that I can't understand why
so many vertical bow hunters immediately by a crossbow when
they become legal. But that's kind of the same thing,
you know, I feel when I get into my buddy
Adam's truck and he plays the worst country music known
to mand. He's not my decision to make for someone else,
(12:46):
and I just like different things. I get why people
want an easier weapon. It kind of only makes sense.
Some people don't enjoy shooting bows a whole lot, or
have the time or whatever. Some people just want more
confidence that when it does walk in, they're actually going
to kill it. I can't really fault anyone for that,
even though that's my initial impulse quite often. I also
(13:09):
can't really fault someone for liking the music they do,
because the hell of a lot of the people in
this world would absolutely hate the music I love, and
I understand that. I think it's better to recognize that
people find value in their own taste of music, just
like the guy who shoots a crossbow can walk into
the woods for the same reason I do and walk
out feeling the same way, and evenings spent hunting deer
(13:30):
really does for me. I had a recent conversation with
a hunting buddy who lives where I grew up, and
he told me a few stories about people I used
to know from my hometown who are into the trophy
deer thing in a major way. He said it made
him not want to talk to hardly anyone about deer hunting,
and I get that, but I don't think it has
to be that way. And I think, as woo woo
(13:51):
as this sounds, it starts with all of us as individuals.
We can come together to try to keep public lands
in the hands of the general public in an amazing way.
I think we can make the decision to recognize that
we are hunting rabbits with antlers, and it's cool if
someone wants to do it in a way that doesn't
appeal to us. I think to put a fine point
on this, I'll tell you what I've said to a
(14:11):
few random strangers over the years, including some lady at
Target a few years ago who was losing her mind
over a mispriced item. It clearly wasn't the checkout lady's fault,
and she was trying to sort it out.
Speaker 3 (14:24):
But this woman was just so over the top about it.
It was gross.
Speaker 2 (14:28):
So I said to her, we know a woman who
had a baby that was born with cancer. I didn't
even know that was a thing until it happened to
someone in our little world. Imagine that for a second.
Anyone who has had a child knows that the fear
you have one that is always riding shotgun with all
the positive thoughts, is what if something is wrong, like
(14:49):
really wrong. So this woman looked at me and she
said so, and I said so, this isn't that big
of a deal, not big enough to act this way.
Speaker 3 (14:58):
It's not that important.
Speaker 2 (15:00):
And I can tell you that I've said this very
thing to a few people in my life. None of
them looked at it like they wanted to hear it.
But it doesn't make it untrue. I know that I
go on these rants from time to time, and I'm sorry.
I just think that we are damn lucky to do
what we do and we should just try to treat
each other with some decency. This feels important to me
(15:21):
when the example from our favorite politicians all the way
down to rando strangers on the internet is to just
be nastier and nastier by the day. So that's all
I want to say on this and next week I'm
going to talk about something I think helps people kill
more big Bucks than anything. And I think if you
listen to it and you follow the advice I'm going
to give, you will kill more big Bucks.
Speaker 3 (15:42):
It might take a few years, but it will work.
And it's not magic.
Speaker 2 (15:46):
It's damn close when you really put it under the microscope.
Speaker 3 (15:50):
That's it. I'm Tony Peterson.
Speaker 2 (15:51):
This has been the Wire to Hunt Foundations podcast, which
is brought to you by First Light. As always, I
want to thank you for all of your support. It
means the world to us here at meat Eater that
you guys just show up for us. Without you guys
were nothing, So thank you for that. If you want
more hunting content, which you probably do right now because
we are in the thick of it, you know, maybe
you need a recipe, Maybe you want to read an
(16:13):
article on some kind of news story that's coming out
about a poacher or some law change or something. Maybe
you just want to listen to a guy like Brent
Reeves tell some stories with his beautiful voice on this.
Speaker 3 (16:27):
Country life podcast.
Speaker 2 (16:28):
Whatever, go to the meeteater dot com check it out.
We drop new podcasts, new videos, new articles every single
day there.
Speaker 3 (16:37):
Thank you,
Host
Mark Kenyon
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