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September 30, 2025 16 mins

This week, Tony talks about some overlooked ways to develop confidence in ourselves as deer hunters, and how that can be the key to killing more big bucks.

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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 Wire to Hunt Foundation's podcast,
which is brought to you by First Light. I'm your host,
Tony Peterson, and today's episode is all about sneaky ways
you can use to build more confidence in the woods
and why that matters so much.

Speaker 3 (00:32):
To big buck success. Okay, okokok.

Speaker 2 (00:42):
Before I get into this, I have to say something
that is going to surprise the crap out of you.
We have another sale going on here at Meat Eater. Now,
if you can't tell, there was a little sarcasm there,
but the truth is we do have a hell of
a lot of good stuff marked way down right now.
And if you haven't been paying attention, we are stuck
in a weirdy. I mean, we're getting a job is
really tough. The value of the dollar hasn't been moving

(01:03):
in our favor for a while, and well there's just
a lot of uncertainty when it comes to money, but
you also need some decent gear to get you through
the deer season or the next ten deer seasons.

Speaker 3 (01:12):
And that's where we come in.

Speaker 2 (01:14):
If you head on over to the mediater dot com,
you'll see that some of my favorites from our first
light line are marked way down. Favorites like the Core System,
which is a perfect mid season through the rut and
after in a lot of places lineup that consists of
a jacket, bibbs, and a vest. The whole line is
thirty percent off right now until October fifth, and the

(01:35):
white Tail three h eight pants are twenty percent off
as well, which is pretty sweet too. I've worn those
pants a lot in the last year and they become
my go to for a lot of outdoor activities besides
deer hunting. Actually really love them. Go check them out
at the mediater dot com. Now, enough of that, this
episode is all about confidence, but might not go the
way you expect it to. I've had a few experiences

(01:55):
this season already that really drove this home for me,
and what I want to talk about is how you
can develop confidence in your deer game in a variety
of ways, all of which should help you kill bigger
deer more consistently. Who doesn't want that? I know you do,
so buckle up because I'm about to get into it.

(02:16):
Picture this if you will. It's pouring rain. I've just
come off a couple of weeks on the road filming
like a good little employee, and now I need to
pack up for the first hunt of the year. As
has been the tradition since my daughter started deer hunting,
I didn't need to worry about a weapon for myself
because I was just going to be a guide for
one of my girls. And before we made the two

(02:36):
hour drive to my buddy's house on the eve of
the Minnesota opener, I checked off my list.

Speaker 3 (02:41):
One by one.

Speaker 2 (02:42):
Camo check, licenses, check, butcher kit, check, food, buy nos
boots right on down the line, check check, check check.
We hit the road in the evening and ended up
at my buddy's house at around I don't know, pretty
close to ten o'clock at night, and when I unpacked
my truck to stage up for the morning hunt, I
realized something.

Speaker 3 (03:02):
My hunting pack wasn't in my truck.

Speaker 2 (03:05):
It was laying in my garage where instead of packing
it in my truck, I had left it. In it
where my bios I saw pruner, headlamps, range finder, and
the biggest kicker of all our hunting licenses.

Speaker 3 (03:18):
Driving back home.

Speaker 2 (03:19):
Wasn't an option, so the best I could figure was
that we'd go in and get her a license reprint
at a shop, because in Minnesota you can't just print
deer tags at home. I felt really really stupid because
what I had done was really really stupid. We went
into the weekend with four sits at most to work with,
and I'd cost us one right off the bat. Now

(03:41):
when I told my daughter, she wasn't too upset, because
getting up at four point thirty isn't super appealing to
thirteen year old girls anyway. I eventually took my idiot
self to bed, where I spent some time lying there
thinking about how I'm never on my a game at
the beginning of the season. When I woke up in
the morning, I tiptoed passed the pullout couch where my
daughter was sleeping, and I had a couple of cups
of coffee. When it was time to wake her up,

(04:03):
I walked downstairs and realized that my hunting pack was
leaned up against the couch. I immediately said, are you
effing kidding me? My daughter had unpacked my pack thinking
it was hers, and the entire night while I was
bemoaning my seriously defunct mental skills, she didn't think once
to check the pack she had carried downstairs, a pack

(04:24):
that was twice the size of the day pack she
brings along and about thirty pounds heavier. Now we had
a lively conversation, ended up hunting that evening and almost
killed a great buck, and managed to salvage the weekend.
The whole ordeal was a good reminder of why I
make lists, try to get my gear game as solid
as possible, and generally try to be somewhat ordered in

(04:47):
disciplined when it comes to hunting. Why you might ask, well,
dear listener, it's because nailing down some of the little
details always gives me more confidence. And Plus, it really
sucks settling into a ground blind in northern Wisconsin, for example,
and reaching for your range finder to pre arrange some landmarks,
only to realize that your bino harness is in the

(05:07):
passenger seat of your truck right next to your thermocel.
Now I didn't think I needed a paternity test with
either of my daughters before that, but I was pretty
sure they were mine after. Anyway, I believe confidence is
maybe your number one acid in the deer woods.

Speaker 3 (05:21):
I actually really do.

Speaker 2 (05:22):
It flavors everything about our hunts, and that flavor might
be like chocolate moose Tracks ice cream, or it might
be like a stale clump of kale. You know that dusty, gross,
leafy abomination that Steve Varnella told me recently he likes
and intentionally grows in his garden.

Speaker 3 (05:38):
Of course, confidence is.

Speaker 2 (05:39):
Best gained from killing big Bucks, but that's really a
chicken or the egg thing, or I don't know, maybe
a cart before the old hay burner thing, as many
people have pointed out to me over the years in
mostly unfriendly and hurtful ways. I don't lack confidence with deer,
but I did for a long time, and the second
guessing that I could get into was almost enough to
burn my smooth brain right out. But you kill enough

(06:02):
of them in enough places and in enough different conditions,
and you start to understand when you're on them and
how it will all go down, or it's likely to
go down anyway. Now, if you're not there, then you
have to back up. A couple of steps, though. The
most logical one is scouting. I had a hunter I
know who is on a quest to kill a public
land Bobuck messaged me about a loaded oak tree.

Speaker 3 (06:24):
It was just dropping bomber acorns.

Speaker 2 (06:26):
And the picture that came along with it was of
the ground that was absolutely.

Speaker 3 (06:31):
Littered with tracks and deer poop.

Speaker 2 (06:33):
Now, if you scout and find something like that during
the open season, then your confidence is bound to be
sky high. That in the moment, scouting is almost a
necessity if you haunt public land, especially outside of the rut.
If the deer aren't showing you where they are right now,
you're not going to be where they are right now.
I don't know how to put that any other way.

(06:55):
You can step back from that in season scouting thing, though,
and get into the off season scouting thing now. While
you can't really do much about that right now for
obvious reasons, the truth is that the more scouting most
of us do, the more confidence we will have learning
the ground, like really learning the ground.

Speaker 3 (07:11):
That's a huge deal. This isn't because you solve the.

Speaker 2 (07:14):
Problem of where the deer are now and how you'll
kill them, Even though that is definitely you know a
potential result of off season scouting too, But it's more
than that, because learning the ground as well as you
can helps you make educated guesses on where the deer
should be throughout all kinds of different conditions and changing variables.
I think about this a lot, and it is something

(07:36):
that just comes into almost every hunt I have, regardless
of where I'm at. Rarely do I go out and
have a mirror image haunt of as sit I had
the year before. Now, that happens in some spots, almost
always private and at least somewhat controlled spots, And it
happens on small spots sometimes because the deer are often
only going to use a small property in a few

(07:56):
different ways.

Speaker 3 (07:57):
But even that is in the guarantee.

Speaker 2 (07:59):
What in season and especially out of season scouting does
show you the landscape as it is and should be
for a few years. It shows you oak trees and
deer trails and old sign and fence crossing, and the
factors you might have to plug into the algorithm to
make a good haunt happen Right now when it's fifteen
degrees warmer than this time last year, and the field

(08:19):
is corn and not soybeans, and you know right on
down the line. Confidence in knowing the land helps tamp
down the panic when the land or what's on the
land isn't what you expected from last year or the

(08:41):
last five years. It's also a huge benefit when you
hunt new ground for so many reasons. But you can
go further back than that, even you see there are
a lot of different ways to build confidence in yourself
as a deer hunter that go beyond killing big bucks
and scouting like a fiend. That story I told at
the beginning of the show about my daughter in the pack,
the reason that sucked for me is that I was

(09:02):
so confident I had done what I needed to facilitate
her first hunt of the season. Suddenly realizing that I
hadn't really sucked quite a few years ago. Now, one
of the editors of Field and Stream magazine reached out
to say they wanted to do a story on my
public land process, and he wanted to come out and
hunt with me somewhere. It was a really cool opportunity,

(09:23):
but also one of the strangest assignments I've ever gotten,
simply because I was already a writer for them, so
we'd be doing a story on me as a personality,
while also having me write parts of it. Anyway, one
of the things I realized during the build up of
that article and then through the eventual hunt was that
I have a process for a lot of parts of
deer hunting that I often don't really think about. For example,

(09:44):
I try to never ever go out in the feel
without having several pieces of gear in my truck or
in my pack, flagging tape, a good cushion, saw pruner,
just the stuff that I may or may not need
at any given moment in the field, but especially for
the times when my plan a becomes a dumpster fire
and I need to figure something out fast. Having that

(10:05):
stuff always with me gives me confidence when things just
don't go my way from the jump, and they often don't,
but to take it a step further. The second hunt
I had for myself this year involved me taking a slow,
slippery walk through a beautiful brook trout stream that winds
its way through thousands and thousands of acres.

Speaker 3 (10:24):
Of big woods.

Speaker 2 (10:25):
I had sticks, a saddle, and a low but you know,
growing expectations as I got deeper into the north Woods.
When I picked out my tree, I had one set
of sticks secured to it when two fawns walked into
monch acorns, which on a blind hang and bang sid
is always a confidence booster. I eventually got my platform

(10:45):
up and settled into that tree, but not without going
through a familiar process. I knew where my toe rope
was because I always have it in the same pocket.
I knew where my release was, where my strap on
bowhanger was, and right on down the line to my glove.
The week before, I hadn't put my gloves in the
pants pocket I usually do, and I went to pull
them out of my pack.

Speaker 3 (11:07):
My left glove fell like a wet maple leaf to
the ground.

Speaker 2 (11:10):
I did go on to kill a buck that night,
which is always pretty rad on your first sitt of
the season. But the whole thing was a reminder of
why I try to stay organized.

Speaker 3 (11:18):
Now.

Speaker 2 (11:18):
A drop glove isn't likely to cost you a deer,
but I don't know why risk it. I guess, so
let's follow this path for a second. When I got
saddled up in that tree on public dirt and Wisconsin,
I arranged the two trails I could clearly see.

Speaker 3 (11:33):
Then you know what I did.

Speaker 2 (11:34):
I drew my bow and I aimed at them, and
then I aimed behind me, and then I drew my
bow and I aimed off to my off side.

Speaker 3 (11:41):
This is a good habit to get into.

Speaker 2 (11:44):
Generally, but in this case was important because the tree
I had chosen was crooked as hell, so I had
to sort of tiptoe my way onto the corner of
my saddle platform. Just a little, I don't know, eight
or ten degree difference in the slope of your platform
can change everything, just as hanging a new stand will
off and put you in a position where you thought
you'd be shooting a certain way, but you realize you can't,

(12:04):
or we'll need to shoot in sort of uncomfortable situations.
The easiest way to quiet the fear around this is
to pretend the deer is coming down the trail, draw slowly,
and then aim at a leaf or something else along
the trail. Just run through the scenario as best you can.
I do this almost always when I get into a stand,
at least in the evening, since I usually don't want

(12:26):
to move like that at first light in the morning.
So it's just a good way to make sure you
have limb clearance and should be able to quietly get
drawn if a deer comes in where you expect them
to and definitely where you don't expect them to, which
is just what happened to me. With about fifteen minutes
of shooting light left there, I heard a lot of
not squirrel noises coming off the ridge behind me, and
eventually saw an old horse of a doe headed straight

(12:48):
at me. The wind had died almost nothing, so I
wasn't sure if she would get me then or when
she walked up and smelled my sticks and where I
touched all kinds of vegetation at the base of my tree. Well,
she gave everything a real good sniff, gave me the
side eye a few times, and then walked out on
my off side and posed up, quartering away at maybe
ten yards. I wanted to shoot her bad. Killing an

(13:12):
old dough on public land in a place with not
very many deer in a spot I'd never seen before
in my life is a real trophy in my book. Plus,
the freezers are pretty light this time of year, but
I could hear almost non stop thunder rolling in the
distance and knew that if I didn't make a perfect shot,
i'd be blood trailing in the pouring rain, and even
if I did make a perfect shot, I'd be in

(13:34):
for one hell of a drag in the pouring rain.
I had decided before that hunt that it was good
bucks or nothing, and I stuck to it. But I'm
not going to lie and say I wasn't real tempted
to ignore myself imposed rules when that dough posed up.
Little habits like ranging landmarks and going through the process
of drawing and aiming when you get set up, aren't

(13:54):
going to help you kill a buck. I don't know
ninety nine point seven percent of the time you hunt,
but they will give you a little bit of extra
confidence if he does come in and the adrenaline starts
to course through your veins and the whole thing is
about to go down, And this is what you're after.
The thing about confidence is that it isn't black and white.
It's not a binary thing. It's not either or. It's

(14:16):
a slow progression that seems to move kind of like
the stock market. The more you do to foster your
confidence in yourself, the more it'll slowly ratchet up over time.
But just like the stock market, there will be moments
where it'll go the other way.

Speaker 3 (14:31):
You know, in the hunting.

Speaker 2 (14:32):
It's when you make a big mistake or you find
yourself in just like a six sit slump where you
haven't seen so much as a squirrel in almost a week,
and your confidence will take.

Speaker 3 (14:40):
A real hit.

Speaker 2 (14:41):
Done and when it does, it's easy to make more
decisions that will help the whole thing keep retracing, and
that means the climb back up is going to take
more time. But that's hunting, especially bow hunting for white tails.
Losing confidence as a pheasant hunter is one thing, and
it can be not a whole lot of fun, but
it's nothing like believing that you either will never have
a good buck within bow range or you might and

(15:03):
if you do, you are bound to screw it up
in a major way. I guess the last thing I
want to say on this is this developing confidence in
yourself shifts the accountability from the deer to us. Instead
of sitting the same stand we always do in blanking
and then deciding it must be because the moon phase
or something else, we can go figure it out every

(15:23):
time we want to hunt if we have the confidence
to do so, and when they do show up, if
you have squared away some of the little details sit
after sit, and you know exactly where everything is and
what you need to do to make a shot happen.
The whole thing changes. It just moves in your direction
better and doesn't always go right, never will, but believing
it will definitely bends the odds a little more in

(15:45):
your favor, which is a pretty huge deal if you
ask me. So, think about that this season, and think
about coming back next week because I'm going to talk
about some of the recent blood trails I've been on.
And what we should all think about is we set
out to follow the spot to our bucks or maybe
a buddy buck.

Speaker 3 (16:01):
That's it for this episode.

Speaker 2 (16:02):
I am Tony Peterson and this has been the Wired
to Hunt Foundations podcast, which is brought to you by
First Light. I mentioned our Whitetail Week sale earlier. I
got to say it again. Tons of great discounts, you know,
ten to forty percent off a bunch of stuff. A
lot of our best white tail stuff over at first
Light is thirty percent off. Go check it out, and
as always, thank you so much for your support. I

(16:25):
can't tell you how much it means to us. Just
trust me on this. We love you all. Thank you
so much. For it, and if you need more white
tail content or just haunting content, you know where to go.
The meat eater dot com go check it out.
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Mark Kenyon

Mark Kenyon

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