Ep. 991: Foundations - How We Can All Ensure a Better Future for the Next Generation of Whitetail Hunters - Wired To Hunt Podcast

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, and today's episode is a little thought experiment
on what the future of deer hunting could look like
and what we can do as individuals to usher it
in a direction we believe is best. I'm gonna be
honest with you. I'm pretty stressed out at life, at
this job, at a lot of stuff. And one of

(00:40):
the things that has always helped me level myself off
is hunting. But hunting has me worried too, and I
hate that part. It's not good when our escape suddenly
become a source of major stress for us. I'm guessing
you can relate, and I'm guessing you might feel like
you don't have any agency over the future of hunting.
Maybe you don't, maybe we all really don't, and maybe
that's not true. Either way, It's what I'm going to

(01:02):
talk about right now, what is going on with people.
I know it's a joke sort of to talk about
how COVID kind of broke us as a society, but
it seems like things have been pretty rough since then.
I'm sure if we could go back in time to

(01:23):
the pre COVID days, there was plenty of stuff to
bitch about then too. Who knows, But what I do
know is that I have more conversations now than I
ever have with people who just seemed to be stressed
to the gills and who are wondering what to do
with their lives to find a better baseline. This is
something we just kind of accept in our jobs and
often in our relationships, because neither are all that easy

(01:44):
just to give up or change. Although that brings up
the point of hard stuff being worth it. Maybe I'll
dive into that shit some other times. But we used
to have coping mechanisms for the stuff. We'd walk into
the woods and we'd haunt deer or pull the old
lab out of crate and go try to find some
roosters to flush something in the outdoors. Something that narrowed

(02:05):
down our aperture down to us, you know, like a
single pursuit and allowed us to give ourselves to something
immersive for a few hours, where we could eventually surface
on the other side, tired and content recharged, so we
could go wade through the shit of everyday life. Now
a lot of us are finding that hunting isn't really
the escape it once was, and that is messing with us.

(02:26):
It's like a trusted dog that suddenly snaps at you.
Your brain knows what once was, you know what was
comfortable and predictable, and then suddenly it becomes something that
will never be the same. There's always going to be
a little doubt there, a little hesitancy. Even if it
truly was a one off event, you won't know that
and your brain won't let you forget it. With deer hunting,

(02:46):
it should just be fun, you know what. Scratch that.
Deer hunting should be something that is worth doing always.
It should be something that when you do it, you
are unsuccessful a lot, and you're okay with that. But
it can easily not be that. And when we slip
into that territory, it's like that family dog growling and
lashing out at us. There are a lot of telltale

(03:08):
signs of someone who has been bit by the deer
hunting dog. So to speak, all of us have either
talked to someone who shot a buck they regret because
it's too small, or we've been that person. I've done both,
and now I just don't care. If I see a
deer and I want to shoot it, I just shoot it.
And if people want to judge me for that, great,

(03:29):
I truly believe that says more about them than me.
The mental gymnastics we play on that front are often gross,
and this happens a lot. What is there that says
you are supposed to only shoot mature bucks? Who cares?
And by the way, that mature buck thing is kind
of bullshit because we can't age deer the way we

(03:49):
think we can. And if we truly cared about shooting
mature bucks so they can pass on their jeans, we'd
let them go until they were ten and not shoot
them when they are five and coincidentally have their big
set of antlers. That's just trophy hunting in a slightly
more palatable package, which was the point all along. The
people pushing that message recognized how ugly trophy hunting is

(04:12):
in a peer form to the masses, so they rebranded
it very successfully. Now that's how an awful lot of
people talk about their hunting and how they set their goals.
But there are a hell of a lot of people
out there who probably should find a different path because
that type of trophy hunting is largely unavailable to them
or secretly unappealing. And listen again, I don't care what

(04:34):
you do if you want to grow and name bucks
and farm deer and emulate the biggest names in the
deer game donuts for donuts, but understand that a lot
of people will never get there, and a hell of
a lot of other people don't want to turn their
deer hunting into that type of game. And honestly, a
lot of those people will kill smaller bucks than the
name the buck crowd, but they will become better deer
hunters for it. What I worry about with this is

(04:57):
that the messaging around a lot of deer hunting and
a hell of a lot of trophy hunting is shaping
the future generations of hunters. I've been thinking about that
a lot lately with my daughters. In a recent conversation
with the dude at the gym sort of buried the
blade right up to the handle. For me, I hadn't
seen him all fall, but when I did, he strolled
right up to me to talk about deer hunting. We've
chatted in the past about hunting quite a bit, and

(05:19):
I truly believe he's just a hardcore outdoorsman who's raising
a few daughters himself and just loves the outdoors. So
when I asked him how his season went, he said
it was almost non existent. He had a lot of
work this fall, and he did a lot of work
on a cabin they bought, and his daughters are at
the age where, at least if you live in the suburbs,
they'll be in endless activities. He then said he did

(05:40):
get to hunt a friend's place in Wisconsin, where he
was told that he couldn't shoot any bucks unless they
were one fifty plus. He said the landowner invested huge
money into having someone create and plant food plots and
put out tower blinds and essentially said there were too
deer on the property that could be shot this year.
So this guy said it sucked, But that's that's the
deal when you hunt someone else's property. And I'm not

(06:02):
blaming the landowner for setting his own rules. You make
the money, you buy the land, you call the shots.
I have no problem with that, But what bothered me
was my gym buddy said that he took the landowner's
thirteen year old son out two Now. I said, was
he restricted to one fifties as well? And he said
not by his dad? But the kid was even more
into trophy hunting than his dad. And I said, well,

(06:25):
how the hell can that be? And he said, he
watches a couple of guys on YouTube who kill multiple
giants every year, like one eighty to two hundred inch
types of giants, big money deer, if you get my drift.
And I thought, that kid is never going to learn
how to hunt, and he's probably never going to learn
how to enjoy hunting, because the minute a giant isn't
available to hunt, then the hunt is off. And what

(06:47):
does that mean? I don't know, but I'm worried about
the deer hunting landscape that my generation is leaving for
the next. I'm filling in the blanks right now because
I don't know that kid at all, but I think
I can make a few predictions. He's going to always
have an amazing spot to hunt because his family has money.
He's going to focus on, you know, trophies pretty tightly

(07:09):
above everything else, which probably means he might not be
overly generous with his opportunities. If he sticks with it.
He might not, though I don't know, because even on
super good ground, the neighbors can kill your buck, and
a whole year of trail camera work and planning can
go up and smoke the minute someone else sends an
arrow or a bullet or across bow bolt flying not.
If there aren't any deer that someone views as worthy

(07:30):
to hunt, then there isn't a reason to hunt, which,
if you look at it that way, seems insane to
someone like me, but is very very common. If that
happens enough, then it's not crazy to think that kid
could eventually just decide hunting isn't worth it anymore. And
I don't want to sound like I'm picking on that kid.
I kind of view that like I view you know,

(07:50):
the dog that bit me on the ass a couple
of weeks ago in the hotel. It wasn't the dog's fault,
if you get my drift, And that's where a lot
of the responsibility lie. I think we are the ones

(08:12):
who are creating the deer hunting culture and the broader
hunting culture which we are handing off to the next generation.
What are we doing with that responsibility. I recently had
a conversation with one of our other forward facing personalities
who is having trouble with the sales east side of
our business. I said I didn't have an answer for them,
but for me, I figured out a long time ago

(08:33):
that I have to hunt and portray hunting in a
way that feels right and real to me. I don't
know how to put that any other way, but I
know when I do a hard public land hunt, it
makes me feel less gross to do the other parts
of this job. But that's not just the job. I
don't know why this is, but there are certain parts
of hunting that I think are just important. I think
you should burn some calories to kill an animal, because

(08:55):
even though it doesn't make a difference to that animal,
for some reason, I think it should make a difference
to us. I think that if you have the means
in the time, which most of us do, then butchering
our own animals just kind of closes the loop in
an important way. Here's the thing, though, what I think
doesn't really matter. I can pass on those things to
my daughters and the folks I hunt with and their
kids and my audience, and I hope that's the right thing.

(09:18):
But I also have to recognize that everyone draws their
own lines in the sand. If you don't want to
butcher your own deer, who am I to say that
you should? Just like? It would be crazy for me
to force someone to listen to the kind of music
I like or eat the kind of food that I like. Whatever,
it's none of my business, and that's a good thing
to recognize. What I think is a better approach is
to ask all of us to consider what we have

(09:40):
influence on and what that means for our interactions, and
what could stick that either should or shouldn't. There are
hunting methods we can pass along, strategies, tactics, ethics, standards,
and a lot of esoteric things we just kind of
pull from the cosmos and decide to deserve a thumbs
up or a thumbs down. There are things we are
largely mobilized together that we all generally accept as good

(10:01):
or bad, but those aren't so simple either. The non
resident hate thing is the one thing that I harp
on all the time, and it fits nicely right here.
We can justify lobbying to shut down non resident opportunities
and are well within our legal rights to do so.
We can cloak those arguments in many things and convince
ourselves that we are for the resource and that's that.

(10:23):
But you're also actively removing hunting on opportunities from your
fellow hunters. Sugar coated all you want, but if you
advocate for that, you're pretty much doing the same thing
that the anti hunters want to do. We just happen
to be way more successful at it, to be honest,
and while you might get easier hunting when the rat
bastard hunters who live in a different state get booted out,

(10:44):
there will come a time when you will need them
and they won't be there for you. That will create
a net loss of opportunities for future generations. Should we
never consider tightening things up or changing our management structure
while standing on the throats of other hunters. I'm not
saying that, but I'm also not comfortable knowing that when
we take away opportunities from each other, they don't come back,

(11:05):
and that thing we lobby to take away will never
be there for some kid just learning to hunt now
in a different state. If you don't want hunting to
truly become a rich man's sport, then don't remove affordable opportunities,
because the well healed will always find a way to
do what they want. They'll just lease the land you
used to hunt, buy outfitter tags, whatever. I've bitched about

(11:28):
this stuff enough and I think it's time to go
a different route for the rest of the show. How
can we try to hand off this thing we love
to new generations of people who might just love it
and nurture it the way we would want them to. Well,
let's start with ourselves. If we handle ourselves the right
way and accept some personal responsibility, that goes pretty far.
I saw a comment recently on an article at the

(11:50):
Mediat's site about taking an out of state trip, and
the comment are essentially spent a paragraph bitching about how
South Dakota has been mismanaged so poorly that there are
no mature bucks there anymore. First off, if you can't
find a mature buck in South Dakota, look inward first. Secondly,
instead of bitching, what are your options? How many buck

(12:12):
taggs do you get per year or use in that state,
in particular, the residents aren't shy about going after non residents,
and I get it, But guess who is next when
you boot the non residence out and the hunting still
is an Iowa quality, Say goodbye to your opportunities because
there will be enough residents who have some money and
power who can lobby to keep you from their critters.

(12:32):
And that shit is coming. Where are the solutions? I
get the desire for a good bitch session, hell I
get paid to bitch, But we have to look for
solutions to this stuff. Does it involve a season structure
change we can advocate for, or maybe a license price
increase that goes directly to opening up more private land
to the public. How about a better system to monitor

(12:54):
that land so we aren't giving landowners a big tax
break or a payment for land that is essentially unreachable
or unusable to the hunting public. There's plenty of shit
like that out there, and it sucks to see. But
maybe it's simpler than all of this though. Maybe it's
about us learning to do more for ourselves, like but
you our own deer, and then passing along that knowledge
to other hunters who might learn to appreciate that process.

(13:17):
Maybe it's about looking hard for all the deer we hit,
not just the big bucks, and then spending some time
pondering why we made a bad shot and how we
can do better next time. I'm in that stage right
now with shooting on film, and it pisses me off
because I feel like I'm going through something I went
through a long time ago and was hoping wouldn't rear
its ugly head again. But life doesn't work that way.
I'm trying to get my daughters to understand why and

(13:40):
when bad shots happen, and how to follow through the
best way possible. Sometimes it's as simple as thinking about
how we talk about this stuff. I remember hunting in
Texas one time, and a guide there referred to every
buck that wasn't a shooter for the ranch as a
shit buck. Not If that dude has kids, do you
think they'll be the kinds of hunters we want representing
us in rear the next generation. I don't know, man,

(14:03):
but you might think, well, we are surrounded by assholes,
and sometimes we are the assholes and that will never change,
and you'd be right. But that's kind of like deciding
that a whole state doesn't have the kind of dear
you deem worthy to hunt and then throwing your hands
in the air and saying, well, it's beyond my control.
I don't know how about lowering your standards or raising
your game to the point where those bucks become in

(14:24):
play because they do live out there. How we do
this stuff, how we speak about it, the messaging we
send out in the world is shaping the future of hunting.
Whether we take responsibility for that or not. It's happening
regardless of our consent. That doesn't mean we have to
accept the responsibility. But I'm willing to bet most of
the folks who listen to this podcast and who consume

(14:45):
quite a bit of what Mediator puts out, feel something
in the direction of trying to do better when we
can look. I hate that this sounds so preachy, Probably
not as much as you do. I just keep bumping
into this world that we've created and realizing once again
that we are real freaking lucky to have deer to
hunt it all, and the chance to slip into the
woods and experience something that most of the population will

(15:06):
never get to experience. That's their loss. Let's not make
it everyone else's loss if we can help it. Let's
think about the white tail world, the hunting world that
we are passing along to the next generation, and try
to shape it into something that will mean to them
what it either used to mean to us or still does,
or what we wish it meant to us. Okay, that's

(15:29):
my ted talk. I'll get off my soadbox now. I'll
get back into something lighter and more strategy friendly next week.
Maybe something on late season hunting and trying to wring
the last hunts out of the year, get something done,
makes something happen, something like that. It'll be lighter than
this one. I promise you that that's it for this week.
I'm Tony Peterson. This has been the Wire to Hunt
Foundation's podcast, which is brought to you by First Light.

(15:51):
Thank you, thank you, thank you so much for all
of your support. It's truly incredible. I've worked in the
outdoor industry a long time and I've never been anywhere
that had an audience like we do here at Meat Eater.
It's truly special. We have nothing without you, guys, so
thank you for that. If you want more content, you
know where to find it. Go to the medeater dot com.
Tons of podcasts, new hunting films all the time, articles

(16:14):
you know how to stuff, newsy stuff recipes, all kinds
of new content going up every day at the mediator
dot com. Check it out and have good holidays.

All Episodes

Ep. 991: Foundations - How We Can All Ensure a Better Future for the Next Generation of Whitetail Hunters

Episode Transcript

Host

Mark Kenyon

Popular Podcasts

Stuff You Should Know

Dateline NBC

The Burden

.css-15opob5{left:0;position:absolute;top:0.8rem;} All Episodes

.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Ep. 991: Foundations - How We Can All Ensure a Better Future for the Next Generation of Whitetail Hunters