January 6, 2026 • 15 mins
This week, Tony takes a look back at his last season to try to pull lessons from the successes and failures, and he describes why we should all take a little time to reflect on our most recent hunts.
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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.
Speaker 3 (00:21):
The Wire to Hunt Foundations broadcast, which is brought to
you by First Light. I'm your host, Tony Peterson, and
today's episode is all about reflecting on the past season
and trying to learn from it.
Speaker 2 (00:35):
Look, I know it's not over everywhere.
Speaker 3 (00:37):
A lot of Southern hunters definitely have some season left,
and there are a few late season opportunities still going
on up here in the arc there. But for a
lot of us, the season is either actually over or
over enough to be considered pretty much as wrapped up.
This is a good time to relax a bit, but
to also think about the past season and what happened
to you, what went well, what didn't, what you learn.
Speaker 2 (00:57):
This is not just.
Speaker 3 (00:57):
About how to kill deer, but how to enjoy the
whole more, which is what I'm going to talk about
right now. This particular week is just a weird one
for me. Every single year. Not only does it signify
that I can stop making the three hour drive to
the part of our state that has some wild roosters
(01:19):
to hunt every single chance I get, but the deer
season is just about pretty much over. I am going
to take my daughters on a dome mission sometime this
month in southwestern Wisconsin, but I'm not gonna hunt, and
that's a candy Land deal, so it sort of doesn't
feel like the kind of hunting where you get a
real fix, if that makes any sense. Although my daughters
don't care, and I guess I really shouldn't care either.
(01:41):
It's a good opportunity, but it is bittersweet to see
another season end, and not just because having the option
to hunt deer is generally always better than not being
able to hunt deer. But I also don't know anyone
who gets after it pretty hard who also isn't just
ready for a little off season.
Speaker 2 (01:56):
I am. I just feel conflicted on it.
Speaker 3 (01:59):
I'm also inflicted on the fact that it just seems
like life is screaming by so fast lately. I've had
a lot of conversation with folks who feel the same
way as if the whole thing got put on double
speed when we weren't looking, and now the years are
disappearing in the rearview mirror at a rate that just
doesn't seem right. It's in that spirit that I want
to talk about my first lesson from this season, which
(02:20):
I think is an important one. I didn't hunt with
my girls as much as I'd like to be fair.
That happens every season. It always makes me feel guilty,
and by all accounts, they had a great season from
the perspective of shooting bucks. They teamed up to kill
three between Minnesota and Wisconsin, which is a lot for
a pair of thirteen year olds, I guess, but we
(02:40):
all know it's not just the killing that makes the season,
especially when the killing happens barely quickly without a lot
of effort, which is what happened with both of their
Minnesota bucks. Now, we did have some really cool sits
where we saw lots of critters, and both of my
daughters got to see legitimately nice bucks for the areas
we hunt, which is always fun as a dad. When
(03:01):
I look back on last season, I'm reminded of the
low grade fighting between my wife and I over getting
my daughters into the woods. More She's on the path
that most of the suburb dwellers here are leaning into,
so I don't blame her for it. But for me,
I think we are just way overdoing the activities with
our kids. I can't help but think that my daughters
would have had, you know, better memories from more time
(03:24):
in the woods than they will from another basketball tournament
out of a dozen or so per season. But I
know I'm shouting into the void on that one. At least,
it seems like it still doesn't make me feel great
to know that every season I find myself wishing I'd
figured out just a little bit better how to hunt
with them more. Just pull them out of school more,
just make it happen. Now, if there was a way
to bottle up that feeling and save it for nine
(03:45):
months so I could get a fresh dose, you know,
on the onset of the twenty sixth season, I would
because otherwise I'll forget it to some extent and things
will probably play out in a similar fashion. I do
feel better about how my daughters handled themselves on the
season's hunt this year, though I made them take a
step up in responsibility with their gear so that I
didn't have to think of everything, and they would have
(04:07):
to keep a little bit of, you know, more ownership
over their enjoyment and success in the field.
Speaker 2 (04:12):
That's a good thing.
Speaker 3 (04:13):
But I also know that for sure when it comes
to the upcoming season, I'm going to get those girls
in tree stands more. They will be old enough to
hunt solo, and I want them to get the experience
of being in stands more often and blinds less often.
I'm actually really excited to work on some of that
stuff in the off season on the properties where I
can hunting two states kind of hard, I guess with
(04:34):
them also makes me want to keep going to other places.
Speaker 2 (04:38):
The writing is basically.
Speaker 3 (04:39):
On the wall for most traveling hunts, especially for the
folks who aren't wealthy, and I'd really like my daughters
to hunt for a few new critters in some really
cool places before that's kind of, you know, completely off
the table. I don't know yet if that'll just be
a turkey trip to Nebraska or maybe some type of
trip out west for something. But this year they're going
to a new state to hunt for something. Now this season,
(05:00):
I also learned, or I probably should say relearned a
few things about myself as a white tail hunter. That
Nebraska rut hunt I did reminded me of just how
nice it is to get my hands on a property
and get to really work just that property with cameras
and then a whole bunch of well scouted out setups.
It wasn't the hardest hunt of the season, but that's
just fine. Sometimes. I really enjoyed the process of looking
(05:23):
at a new piece of ground where I could trim
shooting lanes and run a whole bunch of cameras and
just work it and learn it and then see how
everything came to fruition. It was a good reminder of
a lot of things, but also how important it is
to have a plan if you're going to hunt a
place for a limited amount of time and that time
happens to be the rut. I really don't feel like
that hunt taught me too much other than sort of
(05:45):
reinforcing a load deer density strategy and maybe helping me
be more patient that way. But a few other hunts
have my wheels just turning. One was the early season
hunt in Minnesota here with my daughter, when we drove
to southern Minnesota and it was hotter than hell, sat
on a pond, or at least as close as I
dared for the first night and had encounters with four bucks,
(06:05):
but they all did what I secretly hoped they wouldn't.
And the next night, when when we returned to sit closer,
the farmer who owns the place decided to chop all
the corn for silage, the corn that the deer were
using to get to that pond. Now I had played
it safe, got close, and then got shut out. I
only had two days to hunt with her, so I
(06:26):
should have just gone in and sat right on top
of the water as best I could, But I didn't,
and it cost us. The next time I'm convinced a
buck or multiple bucks are going to use a spot
like that, whether I'm with the girls or not, I
am going to go for broke, but also just make
sure I have a backup spot in case I blow
the whole thing up. There is a dance between being
(06:47):
too cavalier and being too cautious that is so easy
to screw up, and most of the time I think
we are just too cautious, And even though I rarely
am when it comes to a lot of my public
land stuff, I keep finding myself playing it a little
with the girls that I probably need to. I think
that lesson is one that we can all learn from,
and it's important to remember how much recency bias or
(07:07):
I guess you know, the successful hunts bias our memories
and our future plans. Think about how often you didn't
hunt because you wouldn't think it would be good, and
then think about when you did hunt because it should
be good, but you sat somewhere that you knew was
a little dicey. Those decisions, like all of our decisions,
have repercussions, and they can help us make better plans
(07:27):
in the future. I think all of us be wise
to pay attention to when we feel the need to
go for broke versus the timing or conditions that talk
us into being super cautious. When it comes to the latter,
(07:49):
there are a few follow up questions we should probably
ask ourselves, like was I overly cautious because I had,
you know, only a few stands in blinds to choose from?
Or I just don't I don't have a reliable mobile setup.
Even if you remotely believe either to be true, it
would be a good idea to learn from that and
alter your course for next season. Another lesson that I
(08:10):
learned from this season is how easy it is for
me to miss something crucial. I found a spot this
past summer on some public land in Wisconsin that got
me really interested, so I scouted it and then I
hunted it a few times in the early season. I
had encounters with doughs every sit, which is no small
victory over there, but I never saw a buck, and
I mostly didn't want to shoot a dough there, even
(08:30):
though I had a tag. There just aren't that many
deer over there right now where we hunt, so I
just didn't feel like I needed to shoot a dough
just because, so I limited myself to bucks. I also
hung one camera above a creek crossing as I left
one morning after hunting, just to see what I was missing,
and man, I was missing a lot. I had a
couple of dough groups that got pretty consistent, and then
(08:51):
some bucks as the rut ramped up. Now, I never
got a really big deer on camera there, but I
had a couple of year typical two year old type
of deer that I would have loved scene coming in.
They would have been just fine for me. Now, when
I killed my buck on a different property. I went
over to pull that camera, and I realized a couple
of things. The first is that there are some apple
trees along the trout stream in that property that deserves
(09:13):
some attention in the early season. I don't know why
it never occurred to me that they could even be there,
but they are, and I'm not going to forget them
this year. I also realized that the trail camera that
I had hung was on a trail that split about
ten yards below the spot I actually chose, so I
had monitored one trail instead of both. And if you're
(09:34):
wondering why, the only thing I can say is because
I'm stupid.
Speaker 2 (09:37):
I guess.
Speaker 3 (09:38):
I don't know how I missed that when I hung
the camera, but I did, and it actually explained some
of the travel that the images showed, which I didn't
understand at the time. I think it was like a
low faith do it because you can set a camera
kind of thing that I just didn't care.
Speaker 2 (09:53):
That much about.
Speaker 3 (09:55):
That was stupid because the travel on both trails looked
to be about the same, so I might have actually
down by half the amount of recon I could do
instead of just simply pointing my camera downhill. Instead of uphill.
I could have captured both of those trails. If there's
a lesson there is to try to get your cameras
in the best spots possible instead of just getting so
(10:15):
much tunnel vision that you don't even look around a
little bit. I also found a few trees on that
trail which were way better for a quick hang and
bang with my saddle than the ones I had actually
set up. And when I went in there to hunt,
I hate when I do stuff like that to myself,
But I also checked my work a lot, so maybe
I'm not more of a mistake machine than most of us.
(10:36):
I don't know, but I know that that spot had
a lot of promise and it delivered on some fun sits,
and it left me with a lot of questions and
the feeling that I had done about I don't know
ten percent of what I needed to in order to
kill a buck there. And speaking of killing bucks, I'd
say maybe the most pertinent lesson I got from last
season was this, you can kill bucks incredibly easy with
(10:58):
the right setups, or you can get your ass absolutely
kicked for years while doing almost everything right. I killed
a super easy buck in Minnesota on water in September
when it was hot and they were just coming to
get a drink.
Speaker 2 (11:11):
They were just gonna get there.
Speaker 3 (11:13):
Then I killed a super easy buck in Nebraska that
was cruising through a very obvious pinch point.
Speaker 2 (11:18):
Simple stuff.
Speaker 3 (11:19):
But the last buck, the one in Wisconsin, that was
a totally different thing. I had literally talked myself into
believing that I'd never get a big one over there.
It's like I could never get all that close no
matter what I did. And what I mean by that
is that year after year it felt largely like I
reset to zero and had to start over. That's a
(11:40):
hard mode to operate in because if you feel like
you're not making progress, it's really hard to give it
a real effort. But that's the only way to do it.
And even though I felt like I wasn't really phoning
it in, there was always just like this nagging sense
that it wasn't meant to be. I had that same
feeling for a long time when I just started bowhunting,
you know, about killing any deer. Then I had it
(12:03):
about killing anything bigger than a year and a half old.
Then I had it about killing a big buck. I
guess in some ways, a lot of us live with
that throughout much, if not all, of our hunting careers.
Speaker 2 (12:16):
It's a tough pill to swallow.
Speaker 3 (12:17):
When the old ego says it shouldn't be this hard,
but the deer decided that it will be. That buck
I killed over there was just such a good reminder
that even in places where it's just difficult to hunt
for a variety of reasons, it's still possible. You just
need the time to scout and to hunt, and you
need to listen to the deer. What the deer this
year told me was that they weren't going to hang
out in the big old swamps where the wolves liked
(12:39):
to howl, but they were going to leave. But they
also weren't going to leave the country. They along with
the coyotes, just shifted their core areas for a while,
which did a couple of things that I hope I
never forget. The first was that they moved closer to
human habitation, even the big bucks, which tells you how
much you know they respect the wolf's ability to eat them.
(13:01):
The second was that when they opted to mostly move
out of the big cover, they got concentrated in smaller,
easier to hunt cover. The third was that if it's
the rut, you just have to get your ass out
there and keep trying. I know that's kind of anti climactic,
but that Wisconsin buck and his buddies were absolutely doing
their thing, and they were not nocturnal.
Speaker 2 (13:22):
They were just not where I wanted them to be.
Speaker 3 (13:24):
I kept pushing hunts to happen in places where I
thought they might show up because of the magic of November.
But they didn't show up, and they almost never do,
so I had to go looking for them. In a way,
I guess this brings me all the way back to
that lesson on being too cavalier versus too cautious. For
my Wisconsin Rut hunt, I was being pretty cautious because
(13:46):
I thought I had to preserve a couple of spots
where I figured eventually I just catch one cruising.
Speaker 2 (13:51):
But those spots were dead.
Speaker 3 (13:52):
And if I'm being honest, which I don't really want
to be, at least one of them is just a
dud for reasons I can't name. I don't know why
they won't cruise through there when I'm there, but they won't,
and I need to do something different about it. I
don't know what that is yet, but I know that
it was a high confident spot for me last year
and this year, and it has delivered me a total
(14:14):
of one button buck sighting and enough hours to tell
me that it's just wrong. So it's back to the
drawing board with that spot or that property. But that's okay.
That's what this time of year is good for. We
can get our heads right and give our past season
some real thought. That's what you should do, and you
should be as honest as you can about it, because
the more we take stock in our successes and our failures,
(14:37):
and the more we kind of mentally inventory the plans
that worked and the ones we were sure would work
but didn't, the more likely we are to try something
different next season that will work. I think this is
good for all of us, whether we only hunt one
spot and we think we have it pretty much dialed,
or you kind of free spirit type of person who
saddles up in a new tree for every sit of
(14:58):
the season. Give yourself some time to reflect, see if
you can pull a few lessons out of the last
season to learn from, and come back next week because
I'm going to dive into a white tails biology to
break down how they survive. Winner and further highlight how
freaking awesome these critters really are.
Speaker 2 (15:16):
That's it for this week. I'm Tony Peterson.
Speaker 3 (15:18):
This has been the Wire to Hunt Foundation's podcast, which
is brought to you by First Light. As I always,
thank you so much for all of your support. We
couldn't do it without you, and I mean that from
the bottom of my heart. All of us here at
meat Eater are so grateful to have such a loyal
and awesome audience, So thank you for that. If you're
bored out of your mind and you need some more content,
(15:38):
I'm talking podcasts, films, articles, how too stuff, news stories.
The mediater dot com has you covered. Go check it out.
We drop new content literally every single day. You're not
going to run out of stuff. Go check it out
of the mediator dot com and thank you once again.
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.
Speaker 3 (00:21):
The Wire to Hunt Foundations broadcast, which is brought to
you by First Light. I'm your host, Tony Peterson, and
today's episode is all about reflecting on the past season
and trying to learn from it.
Speaker 2 (00:35):
Look, I know it's not over everywhere.
Speaker 3 (00:37):
A lot of Southern hunters definitely have some season left,
and there are a few late season opportunities still going
on up here in the arc there. But for a
lot of us, the season is either actually over or
over enough to be considered pretty much as wrapped up.
This is a good time to relax a bit, but
to also think about the past season and what happened
to you, what went well, what didn't, what you learn.
Speaker 2 (00:57):
This is not just.
Speaker 3 (00:57):
About how to kill deer, but how to enjoy the
whole more, which is what I'm going to talk about
right now. This particular week is just a weird one
for me. Every single year. Not only does it signify
that I can stop making the three hour drive to
the part of our state that has some wild roosters
(01:19):
to hunt every single chance I get, but the deer
season is just about pretty much over. I am going
to take my daughters on a dome mission sometime this
month in southwestern Wisconsin, but I'm not gonna hunt, and
that's a candy Land deal, so it sort of doesn't
feel like the kind of hunting where you get a
real fix, if that makes any sense. Although my daughters
don't care, and I guess I really shouldn't care either.
(01:41):
It's a good opportunity, but it is bittersweet to see
another season end, and not just because having the option
to hunt deer is generally always better than not being
able to hunt deer. But I also don't know anyone
who gets after it pretty hard who also isn't just
ready for a little off season.
Speaker 2 (01:56):
I am. I just feel conflicted on it.
Speaker 3 (01:59):
I'm also inflicted on the fact that it just seems
like life is screaming by so fast lately. I've had
a lot of conversation with folks who feel the same
way as if the whole thing got put on double
speed when we weren't looking, and now the years are
disappearing in the rearview mirror at a rate that just
doesn't seem right. It's in that spirit that I want
to talk about my first lesson from this season, which
(02:20):
I think is an important one. I didn't hunt with
my girls as much as I'd like to be fair.
That happens every season. It always makes me feel guilty,
and by all accounts, they had a great season from
the perspective of shooting bucks. They teamed up to kill
three between Minnesota and Wisconsin, which is a lot for
a pair of thirteen year olds, I guess, but we
(02:40):
all know it's not just the killing that makes the season,
especially when the killing happens barely quickly without a lot
of effort, which is what happened with both of their
Minnesota bucks. Now, we did have some really cool sits
where we saw lots of critters, and both of my
daughters got to see legitimately nice bucks for the areas
we hunt, which is always fun as a dad. When
(03:01):
I look back on last season, I'm reminded of the
low grade fighting between my wife and I over getting
my daughters into the woods. More She's on the path
that most of the suburb dwellers here are leaning into,
so I don't blame her for it. But for me,
I think we are just way overdoing the activities with
our kids. I can't help but think that my daughters
would have had, you know, better memories from more time
(03:24):
in the woods than they will from another basketball tournament
out of a dozen or so per season. But I
know I'm shouting into the void on that one. At least,
it seems like it still doesn't make me feel great
to know that every season I find myself wishing I'd
figured out just a little bit better how to hunt
with them more. Just pull them out of school more,
just make it happen. Now, if there was a way
to bottle up that feeling and save it for nine
(03:45):
months so I could get a fresh dose, you know,
on the onset of the twenty sixth season, I would
because otherwise I'll forget it to some extent and things
will probably play out in a similar fashion. I do
feel better about how my daughters handled themselves on the
season's hunt this year, though I made them take a
step up in responsibility with their gear so that I
didn't have to think of everything, and they would have
(04:07):
to keep a little bit of, you know, more ownership
over their enjoyment and success in the field.
Speaker 2 (04:12):
That's a good thing.
Speaker 3 (04:13):
But I also know that for sure when it comes
to the upcoming season, I'm going to get those girls
in tree stands more. They will be old enough to
hunt solo, and I want them to get the experience
of being in stands more often and blinds less often.
I'm actually really excited to work on some of that
stuff in the off season on the properties where I
can hunting two states kind of hard, I guess with
(04:34):
them also makes me want to keep going to other places.
Speaker 2 (04:38):
The writing is basically.
Speaker 3 (04:39):
On the wall for most traveling hunts, especially for the
folks who aren't wealthy, and I'd really like my daughters
to hunt for a few new critters in some really
cool places before that's kind of, you know, completely off
the table. I don't know yet if that'll just be
a turkey trip to Nebraska or maybe some type of
trip out west for something. But this year they're going
to a new state to hunt for something. Now this season,
(05:00):
I also learned, or I probably should say relearned a
few things about myself as a white tail hunter. That
Nebraska rut hunt I did reminded me of just how
nice it is to get my hands on a property
and get to really work just that property with cameras
and then a whole bunch of well scouted out setups.
It wasn't the hardest hunt of the season, but that's
just fine. Sometimes. I really enjoyed the process of looking
(05:23):
at a new piece of ground where I could trim
shooting lanes and run a whole bunch of cameras and
just work it and learn it and then see how
everything came to fruition. It was a good reminder of
a lot of things, but also how important it is
to have a plan if you're going to hunt a
place for a limited amount of time and that time
happens to be the rut. I really don't feel like
that hunt taught me too much other than sort of
(05:45):
reinforcing a load deer density strategy and maybe helping me
be more patient that way. But a few other hunts
have my wheels just turning. One was the early season
hunt in Minnesota here with my daughter, when we drove
to southern Minnesota and it was hotter than hell, sat
on a pond, or at least as close as I
dared for the first night and had encounters with four bucks,
(06:05):
but they all did what I secretly hoped they wouldn't.
And the next night, when when we returned to sit closer,
the farmer who owns the place decided to chop all
the corn for silage, the corn that the deer were
using to get to that pond. Now I had played
it safe, got close, and then got shut out. I
only had two days to hunt with her, so I
(06:26):
should have just gone in and sat right on top
of the water as best I could, But I didn't,
and it cost us. The next time I'm convinced a
buck or multiple bucks are going to use a spot
like that, whether I'm with the girls or not, I
am going to go for broke, but also just make
sure I have a backup spot in case I blow
the whole thing up. There is a dance between being
(06:47):
too cavalier and being too cautious that is so easy
to screw up, and most of the time I think
we are just too cautious, And even though I rarely
am when it comes to a lot of my public
land stuff, I keep finding myself playing it a little
with the girls that I probably need to. I think
that lesson is one that we can all learn from,
and it's important to remember how much recency bias or
(07:07):
I guess you know, the successful hunts bias our memories
and our future plans. Think about how often you didn't
hunt because you wouldn't think it would be good, and
then think about when you did hunt because it should
be good, but you sat somewhere that you knew was
a little dicey. Those decisions, like all of our decisions,
have repercussions, and they can help us make better plans
(07:27):
in the future. I think all of us be wise
to pay attention to when we feel the need to
go for broke versus the timing or conditions that talk
us into being super cautious. When it comes to the latter,
(07:49):
there are a few follow up questions we should probably
ask ourselves, like was I overly cautious because I had,
you know, only a few stands in blinds to choose from?
Or I just don't I don't have a reliable mobile setup.
Even if you remotely believe either to be true, it
would be a good idea to learn from that and
alter your course for next season. Another lesson that I
(08:10):
learned from this season is how easy it is for
me to miss something crucial. I found a spot this
past summer on some public land in Wisconsin that got
me really interested, so I scouted it and then I
hunted it a few times in the early season. I
had encounters with doughs every sit, which is no small
victory over there, but I never saw a buck, and
I mostly didn't want to shoot a dough there, even
(08:30):
though I had a tag. There just aren't that many
deer over there right now where we hunt, so I
just didn't feel like I needed to shoot a dough
just because, so I limited myself to bucks. I also
hung one camera above a creek crossing as I left
one morning after hunting, just to see what I was missing,
and man, I was missing a lot. I had a
couple of dough groups that got pretty consistent, and then
(08:51):
some bucks as the rut ramped up. Now, I never
got a really big deer on camera there, but I
had a couple of year typical two year old type
of deer that I would have loved scene coming in.
They would have been just fine for me. Now, when
I killed my buck on a different property. I went
over to pull that camera, and I realized a couple
of things. The first is that there are some apple
trees along the trout stream in that property that deserves
(09:13):
some attention in the early season. I don't know why
it never occurred to me that they could even be there,
but they are, and I'm not going to forget them
this year. I also realized that the trail camera that
I had hung was on a trail that split about
ten yards below the spot I actually chose, so I
had monitored one trail instead of both. And if you're
(09:34):
wondering why, the only thing I can say is because
I'm stupid.
Speaker 2 (09:37):
I guess.
Speaker 3 (09:38):
I don't know how I missed that when I hung
the camera, but I did, and it actually explained some
of the travel that the images showed, which I didn't
understand at the time. I think it was like a
low faith do it because you can set a camera
kind of thing that I just didn't care.
Speaker 2 (09:53):
That much about.
Speaker 3 (09:55):
That was stupid because the travel on both trails looked
to be about the same, so I might have actually
down by half the amount of recon I could do
instead of just simply pointing my camera downhill. Instead of uphill.
I could have captured both of those trails. If there's
a lesson there is to try to get your cameras
in the best spots possible instead of just getting so
(10:15):
much tunnel vision that you don't even look around a
little bit. I also found a few trees on that
trail which were way better for a quick hang and
bang with my saddle than the ones I had actually
set up. And when I went in there to hunt,
I hate when I do stuff like that to myself,
But I also checked my work a lot, so maybe
I'm not more of a mistake machine than most of us.
(10:36):
I don't know, but I know that that spot had
a lot of promise and it delivered on some fun sits,
and it left me with a lot of questions and
the feeling that I had done about I don't know
ten percent of what I needed to in order to
kill a buck there. And speaking of killing bucks, I'd
say maybe the most pertinent lesson I got from last
season was this, you can kill bucks incredibly easy with
(10:58):
the right setups, or you can get your ass absolutely
kicked for years while doing almost everything right. I killed
a super easy buck in Minnesota on water in September
when it was hot and they were just coming to
get a drink.
Speaker 2 (11:11):
They were just gonna get there.
Speaker 3 (11:13):
Then I killed a super easy buck in Nebraska that
was cruising through a very obvious pinch point.
Speaker 2 (11:18):
Simple stuff.
Speaker 3 (11:19):
But the last buck, the one in Wisconsin, that was
a totally different thing. I had literally talked myself into
believing that I'd never get a big one over there.
It's like I could never get all that close no
matter what I did. And what I mean by that
is that year after year it felt largely like I
reset to zero and had to start over. That's a
(11:40):
hard mode to operate in because if you feel like
you're not making progress, it's really hard to give it
a real effort. But that's the only way to do it.
And even though I felt like I wasn't really phoning
it in, there was always just like this nagging sense
that it wasn't meant to be. I had that same
feeling for a long time when I just started bowhunting,
you know, about killing any deer. Then I had it
(12:03):
about killing anything bigger than a year and a half old.
Then I had it about killing a big buck. I
guess in some ways, a lot of us live with
that throughout much, if not all, of our hunting careers.
Speaker 2 (12:16):
It's a tough pill to swallow.
Speaker 3 (12:17):
When the old ego says it shouldn't be this hard,
but the deer decided that it will be. That buck
I killed over there was just such a good reminder
that even in places where it's just difficult to hunt
for a variety of reasons, it's still possible. You just
need the time to scout and to hunt, and you
need to listen to the deer. What the deer this
year told me was that they weren't going to hang
out in the big old swamps where the wolves liked
(12:39):
to howl, but they were going to leave. But they
also weren't going to leave the country. They along with
the coyotes, just shifted their core areas for a while,
which did a couple of things that I hope I
never forget. The first was that they moved closer to
human habitation, even the big bucks, which tells you how
much you know they respect the wolf's ability to eat them.
(13:01):
The second was that when they opted to mostly move
out of the big cover, they got concentrated in smaller,
easier to hunt cover. The third was that if it's
the rut, you just have to get your ass out
there and keep trying. I know that's kind of anti climactic,
but that Wisconsin buck and his buddies were absolutely doing
their thing, and they were not nocturnal.
Speaker 2 (13:22):
They were just not where I wanted them to be.
Speaker 3 (13:24):
I kept pushing hunts to happen in places where I
thought they might show up because of the magic of November.
But they didn't show up, and they almost never do,
so I had to go looking for them. In a way,
I guess this brings me all the way back to
that lesson on being too cavalier versus too cautious. For
my Wisconsin Rut hunt, I was being pretty cautious because
(13:46):
I thought I had to preserve a couple of spots
where I figured eventually I just catch one cruising.
Speaker 2 (13:51):
But those spots were dead.
Speaker 3 (13:52):
And if I'm being honest, which I don't really want
to be, at least one of them is just a
dud for reasons I can't name. I don't know why
they won't cruise through there when I'm there, but they won't,
and I need to do something different about it. I
don't know what that is yet, but I know that
it was a high confident spot for me last year
and this year, and it has delivered me a total
(14:14):
of one button buck sighting and enough hours to tell
me that it's just wrong. So it's back to the
drawing board with that spot or that property. But that's okay.
That's what this time of year is good for. We
can get our heads right and give our past season
some real thought. That's what you should do, and you
should be as honest as you can about it, because
the more we take stock in our successes and our failures,
(14:37):
and the more we kind of mentally inventory the plans
that worked and the ones we were sure would work
but didn't, the more likely we are to try something
different next season that will work. I think this is
good for all of us, whether we only hunt one
spot and we think we have it pretty much dialed,
or you kind of free spirit type of person who
saddles up in a new tree for every sit of
(14:58):
the season. Give yourself some time to reflect, see if
you can pull a few lessons out of the last
season to learn from, and come back next week because
I'm going to dive into a white tails biology to
break down how they survive. Winner and further highlight how
freaking awesome these critters really are.
Speaker 2 (15:16):
That's it for this week. I'm Tony Peterson.
Speaker 3 (15:18):
This has been the Wire to Hunt Foundation's podcast, which
is brought to you by First Light. As I always,
thank you so much for all of your support. We
couldn't do it without you, and I mean that from
the bottom of my heart. All of us here at
meat Eater are so grateful to have such a loyal
and awesome audience, So thank you for that. If you're
bored out of your mind and you need some more content,
(15:38):
I'm talking podcasts, films, articles, how too stuff, news stories.
The mediater dot com has you covered. Go check it out.
We drop new content literally every single day. You're not
going to run out of stuff. Go check it out
of the mediator dot com and thank you once again.
Host
Mark Kenyon
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