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I T E dot com. All right, so I'm joined, uh with Brent Reeves, I'm with Tony Peterson, I'm with Mark Kenyon, and we're gonna we're doing a little white tail tutorial here, a white tail bow hunting tutorial, and we're gonna there's a lot of stuff we're gonna skip. I'm just gonna warn everybody up top. We're not talking about scouting. We're not talking about uh cooking, what else? Are we not talking any of that stuff. We're not talking about how to you know, what kind of camper
you want? You know, we're not counting about how to get permissions, none of that stuff. I'm not talking about food plots. I could go on all day about what we're not talking about. Long least we're not talking about the problem I'm currently having, which is black bears destroying your cameras. What we're talking about is you're in the you're in the you're in the white tail woods with your bow. We're talking about how to make your arrow go where it wants and what to do after you
let the arrow fly. So we're talking about everything that happens between oh my god, here he comes or she oh my god, here it comes to I found it, and everything that fits between those two moments.
Okay, sounds good, a man.
Love it all right? Saddle up, white tail hunters at that little joke.
Yep, we got it.
Get your spurs on this. This is a white tail special. We've got a bunch of avid white tail hunters in the room. And when you say white tail hunters that I feel like it almost kind of means like you're bow hunting white tails, right, That's the first impression I Geah, if I say he's a big time whitetail hunter, you know, I picture a bow hunter, right, because because that you can hunt for such a long period of time.
Is there anyone you know of who would consider themselves a diehard white tail hunter? But just do it with a firearm.
I couldn't think of one. No, I think of Doug duran as a Doug Durren is a very enthusiastic, dedicated hunter of white tails.
Who's antagonistic to bow hunters.
Well he does, it's not these antagonistic buners. He's had a lot of late nights, yeah, looking for he's had a lot of late nights looking for people's deer. Yeah, did they hit with a bow? And I don't think he's had that many late nights looking for the ones that he shot with his gun?
Coming through our family deer camp is ninety five percent gun hunters like me and a nephew. There only two out of However, that math figures out that the bow hunt okay.
But I do feel like that, like that was my family too, And I guess they would identify as like, I love deer hunting. But the number of days they actually did it, you know, it was four days a years.
Yeah, week.
So they're enthusiasts, but I don't know if they were practitioners.
Yeah, I think we still have the goalpost for what an avid Yeah, we sort think an avid whitetail hunter.
Sure, this this this episode is meant to be full of very practical information. But we're going to indulge this for one more second, and I'll point out when I was a boy, if you didn't hunt with a bow, if you were a big time whitetail hunter, you had ten days. So that'd be like saying, that'd be like if you went on an annual vacation to Florida for spring break week, you wouldn't say you're a big time Floridian right, yeah, yeah, be like, dude, you go there
once a week. You go there for a week every year, right, So if you didn't bow hunt, you couldn't be a big time whitetail person because they'd be like, Okay, you had a ten day season.
But I mean if you compared that to whitetail hunting, that would be like if you put a sandbox in your backyard and all summer long you pretended like you were at the beach building sand castles, you know, and like working on your beach umbrella.
No, that's true. You could be a big time Florida guy.
You could be a off season, off season.
Florida That's what I'm saying. That the reason I don't think that the criteria for being an avid whitetail hunter is the amount days in the field necessarily good.
Point Yep, it's where your head's at.
Yeah, you did speak about this whole sand castle thing in the backyard.
With a lot of experience, Tony, I could see myself just getting cold up. I'm maybe a couple of bad decisions away from being a beach bum like saltwater fishing, and I could see it.
All right, stay focused, white tails.
I have a piece of insulation lodged in my back of my throat, so you have to pardon me for my a lot.
Can we get more contact to that.
I went open my.
Head at crawlspace late last night trying to identify a source of a leak, oh, and caused me to get insulation lodged in my throat. Let me ask you this. Let me ask you guys this. I'll go out on a limb and say, most people wind up that they don't shoot their bow as much as they thought they were gonna before season starts.
For me, yeah, you know, almost everybody.
Snow melts, and I'm like, man, I'm gonna shoot this bow every day, you know, and like and then August, I'm like man, I really ought to be shooting.
That bow and the US.
It's not easy to how do you know an you're ready? What's ready? I mean, how many people do you know? This is a complicated question because do you have you ever known anyone in the end said I better not hunt, I'm not ready.
Oh we were just talking about this yesterday, and Tony, we're just saying how we never feel like we are ready. There's always more we could have should have done. But you need to put yourself in as best a position as possible so that even though you feel like you're not ready, you are, you know, ten times more ready than you were last year, at least, or more than
the average. And I think that might be a function of us being we have very high standards for what ready should look like, and the reason we're able to do half decent.
Is because of that.
I think there's always more you could do, right.
That's what I was going to say. How much is that is due to anxiety and fat in a hunt getting ready for it? And is the time approaches you just get more angst about getting out there and and maybe checking the spot that you didn't get to check too And oh, man, that's eating me alive because I didn't get to go check that once.
Oh No, when I talk about ready, I'm trying right now. Just talk specifically about how do you know when you're ready as a marksman, just the marksman with a bow, as an archer, arch archman. Yeah, there's no there's no word.
I can tell you my before the season, I will shoot. I know, I have to shoot enough to where I can walk back to forty or fifty yards and every shot I take is gonna hit the vitals on a three D deer target in my backyard. And then I always when I hit that level where I can different distances, you know, maybe shoot like I don't. I don't shoot a lot, like twelve arrows a day, but where every one of them I'm like, very confident that's going right
where I need it. And then I start shooting broadheads, and if they're doing that, then I start to feel like that.
Okay, okay, so mixed distances out to fifty yards every arrow in the vitals on a three D target.
Yeah.
Like, I don't want to make this sound like I'm super methodical, because I'm not. But I do a lot of early summer not a lot. My early and midsummer
shooting is always like twenty yards. Just get back into the groove, muscle memory kind of thing, get the bow settled in, and then as I start to hit August, I'll start to back out a little bit and just start working in twenty five, thirty, thirty five, forty whatever, and then walk back range twenty seven yard shoot And I don't I don't do volume shooting, Like I go out and I'm like, you know, let's say I'm shooting four arrows, I'll just do three rounds, but I want
to get to the point where I never miss, Like I'm never like, oh that one went in the shoulder, that one went in the guts. And when you start to get to that point out to like forty or I can shoot to fifty in my yard, then it's
like okay, now now it's broadhead time. And if the broadheads follow suit and I'm matching up arrows and everything's going good, then I'm like, I feel really good because I'm not going to shoot a white till fifty yards, you know, Like I know when I'm at that point, when I'm on my standing their twenty yards away, then feeling pretty good.
So when I get to the point where I can, I have that feeling, and then what I'll do is start practicing specific situations like I'm beyond I have that that threshold of confidence, and now I'm gonna actually get the saddle out and start shooting in the saddle at different distances, or I'll try kneeling and shoot, or I'll get to all sorts of wonky angles and start guessing distances.
And when you're doing that and you're starting to have confidence with that, then I'm like, Okay, I can handle whatever might whatever the real world might throw at me.
I was gonna ask you guys about that, how much time do you do you? Tony? Ever move up and start shooting from an elevated position.
So I do. I can shoot from my deck, and so it's pretty easy if I want to. I don't. I've spent so much time bow hunting out of tree stands. Like I know, I think I probably know where you're going with this. No, I don't think about that, Like I have a kind of just like I know where I'm aiming on white tails, and I know what I'm gonna do. Uh, It's pretty second nature to me. So I don't really need to reinforce that with tons of elevated shooting or sitting on you know, on my knees
or whatever. It's different. I actually go through a way different process when I'm coming out west because that's just a different deal. But it's I think for a lot of newer hunters, that's like a crazy important element to build in, like figure out how to shoot somehow set up a stand, figure out how to shoot off a deck, an elevated platform something, because it's just coming like you're going to take that shot.
But I think just as important as the elevation thing, and sometimes maybe more important, it's it's the the positions you're shooting from that are different. Like how many times the deer hunter have you stood perfectly upright and shot. Usually you're sitting down, or you're leaning in a saddle, or you're swung around and shooting behind you, and we never most folks never practice that. And so doing that so even though I don't have a tree, actually I
can actually get up into. I just have like a support pole in the back of my barn that I saddle into, so I'm not significantly higher on a little bit of a hill, but The biggest thing I try to do is practice shooting standing, leaning, turning, angled, high low,
just because that's so different. You have a different structure, you have a different platform for your feet, you have totally different muscles that are being activated in those different positions, and that you know, you know, what's the first time you do that to be with the deer.
And that was a big learning curve for me when I both hunted forever and then my son got into it in his early teens. He wanted to start hunting, so we obviously were shooting in the backyard. So I hung a stand up and showed in the difference between shooting at a thirty yard target level and then thirty yard an elev from elevated position, and the amount of the technique of bending at the keeping the tea and bending at the waist and all that was really reinforced
in me. It helped me a lot. When I was supposedly teaching him what to do, he was really teaching me seeing it, putting that practical application. It was so I've I still got that that elevated stand back there, and I still shoot. I know it.
Do you guys ever, do dress rehearsals.
So I'll shoot out of your hunting.
Suit, because man, I tell you, you shoot all summer and your T shirt yep. And then all of a sudden you got your freezing your ass. You now you got a net gat around which you've never found. You've never found your draw point. You know, you never found your hand position with a net gate around. There's a big old hood on that. All of a sudden you pull back and you're like, what the hell is that? You
got binos? Maybe gloves? Yeah, you never thought about the fact that now you got a gloved hand or not a gloved hand. You realize the string is actually sort of like pressed into and folded into a heavy jacket, which surprises you.
I mean, I I just shot some photos for a piece I did for for us shooting shooting like that, and I had to set up and shoot out of a saddle, and I you know, I'm still wearing shorts and a T shirt, but I've got my bino harness on. And no I didn't. I didn't do that because it was so hot. But I was out of a saddle like two feet off the ground.
Huh.
And even then, you know, so when when you're asking about, you know, shooting at an angle or whatever. People will hear that and go, I have to shoot at an angle just to understand my like where I'm holding, point impact, aero trajectory, all that stuff. But also it puts you in a position to be like get used to the safety harness, get used to the movement like Mark kind of alluded to on a little platform, you know, because a lot of people don't spend very much time in
a tree stand, you know, you think about it. You know, even the avid hunters they spend a fair amount of time, but your average hunter is not going to be in a tree stand for that many hours in any given season. And now you have to do this thing that takes a lot of a lot of concentration, a lot of form in a little tiny environment that you're just not
that used to. And so you're also you're not just conditioning yourself for how to shoot, you know, like how to hit something, but you're conditioning yourself like how to work around these like parameters that you're gonna you're gonna be in.
Maybe the most important dress rehearsal I go through, though, is not at home before the hunt. It's actually when I'm in the tree at the beginning of the hunt. So every time I get up into the tree or get into my blind or get into my position, I get you unpacked settled. The very first thing I do then at that point is I envision the scenarios that might happen. I envisioned, Okay, deer I think could come through here and I could have a shot there, and a deer might come through and it might have a
shot there. And then I like role play that scenario. So imagine, Okay, if a deer comes through here, like I hope he does, how do I have to get my bow? How will I move? What do I need to And I'll literally do it. I'll practice doing the thing. I'll practice drawing back as if I'm going to shoot right there, and then I test. I'm testing to see, like does my elbow hit a limb here? Am I going to hit against my tree here?
Like?
Can I do that? Can I make that movement quietly, smoothly? And I'll do that for every possible scenario, so that I've I've done it all. I'm not surprised in any kind of way from that perspective at least, And that's That's been a very important thing for me.
Mark, when you're doing that heavier accidentally just hit the relief.
Not yet, but knock on wood.
The part of my dad's routine is he would, you know, climb up, pull his gear up, get situated, pick a leaf, shoot the leaf, and then start hunting.
Yeah.
Yeah, every time.
I don't know a lot of folks unless there was a squirrel.
The squirrel. Yeah, well, I mean when we were growing up, we had an era with a judo point in the quiver every everywhere you went, and you might shoot at a squirrel. Like when I was younger, I shot at squirrels out of my sho you're staying a lot like my dad. I drove my dad nuts. He would spend all that time sharpening a broadhead, you know, like strapping that bear razor head, and then I'd shooted at a
squirrel into the dirt and he'd have to start over. Ah. But yeah, I mean that was that used to be really common now. I mean, can you imagine if you gave people that advice now, just leave that arrow with all your scent on it.
Yeah, there's there's a I think there's a difference in approaches and Mark had brought this up. That Mark, you spent a lot of time when you're bow hunting for white tails. You spend a lot of time where you'll have a particular deer in mind. Yeah, you'll know how the deer moves. You know, you'll kind of have a plan. You'll you'll have a couple of spots picked out where
you might get an opportunity on the deer. And then with you Tony last fall, you don't know who's around and you're kind of hunting on the fly in the situation where you're in like on the fly on public land place, going to some places you hadn't had experience with before, and that approach necessitates unusual circumstances that can happen in the tree, Like like you're saying, you get up in the tree and you go like, okay, I
got this shot in that shot, in this shot. But you can also probably plant it out a little bit throughout the year sure where you'd want to set up what it might look like as opposed to every night, perhaps every night being in a new situation where you're not able to put a lot of thought into it, and you get up there and you might realize well here I am. I'm not going to move again. But man, yep, that tree is not where that particular tree over there is blocking my best shooting lane.
Yeah, you know, but.
That's that's why I love that. Okay. So when you think about the hunt we did that first night that Chris gil and I went out, I had a pond that I had scouted out and there wasn't a tree there that was more than like six inches in diameter.
So we were up there and it was super windy that night, and then I think, what was it three days later or two days later when we figured out that little deal where you hit that spike And then now you're sitting on the ground on an edge of a you know, twenty foot drop down to a dry river bed in a totally different kind of setup. And that's that's that hunting makes you just like I have to figure out what works here now because this is
the spot they're at. So I can't I can't like choose that awesome, perfect tree with all these branches for cover and then sort of curate a white tail spot around it, which is like a pretty common thing. Now, Like you go in there and you're like you're just working with what it gives you.
I love that we had that same kind of thing happened to Clay and I in Mississippi last year. We got into we took we took the boat down there was it was deer hunting down there. We went to a spot that had only a few cameras on it, but there's a lot of deer on it, but it had been hunted z. So we went from day one trying to figure out where we needed to go, and
we just kind of eased into each place. You know, there was a lot of sign here in this in this area right here, so we just stayed back a little bit and on the third day we finally kept moving up and moving up and moving.
Up, hanging stands all the time.
Yeah, rehanging hunting out of Sadad is going from tree to tree to tree. And finally on the third day we finally did it. You know, I killed that deer like you U with a rifle, but.
You were you essentially stalked, you slowly stalked the spot.
You wanted to be in, yep, exactly. And it would weather conditions prevented us from from continued to hunt with a bow because it was twenty five miles an hour of sustained winds gusting up to forty that day, and it was just miserable and there was just no way I could shoot a bow further than I don't know that I would have trust myself to shoot further than fifteen or twenty yards with the high wind. With the high wind like that, Yeah, so we I switched to
a rifle and luckily we got it done there. So, but we just incrementally worked our way closer and closer, not because we had we had four days to do it, and we started on the third day. We finally got close enough to make it happen and where you wanted to be.
What do you guys think is the number one reason people miss deer don't hit them?
Right?
Missimer wound him. Let's talk physical first and then we'll talk mental.
It's all mental. Yeah, there's no we can skip the first part, buddy.
Yeah, it's a mental it's always mental and lack of experience going through that mental turbulence.
Like so many hunters especially now get into hunting and they see folks like the three the four of us out there shooting deer or passing on younger bucks, and we shoot big deer, and then they come in and they're they're seventeen years old, and they think that they should hold out for a big buck for their first year or something like that, and so they never go through what many of us did, where for years and years and years we shot the first year we saw
and we got experience going through that incredibly wild ten seconds right, And even after all of the experience that I like, at least the two of us have talked about this a lot, We've had a lot of experience going through that, and we still screw it up mentally sometimes in those moments. So how can someone who's done it four times expect to get it just right?
And so just.
Going through that many, many, many times to try to learn how to control yourself mentally in that moment is the biggest thing that a lot of people just never go through.
So I think the easiest way to frame this up is like imagine you're just imagine you've shot enough right, and you put out a full sized deer target at twenty yards, climb into a tree whatever, shoot from the ground. How many times do you think you'd have to shoot at that before you missed it completely? Target practically. I mean, you might go thousands and thousands of shots. Now that thing has a heartbeat and it walks in and it's
not a physical thing. I mean everybody said, oh, I misjudged the range, or I hit an unseen limb, or he ducked the string or like the you know, the greatest hits, right, but it's always between your ears and you just didn't do the basic stuff to execute your shot. You know, we run and it's all panic, right like people I used to do. I suffered from buck fever
so bad for so long. I mean it forced me to totally reinvent how I shot and everything because I was like I have to quit or I have to do something different because it was like ugly and so once I kind of got my stuff figured out, and I like how Mark talks about it, like training yourself, you know, to go through your internal you know, here's my checklist, bubble level whatever. I had to dumb down my whole setup and work with how I just naturally shoot.
I naturally shoot really fast. I shot a lot of traditional archy growing up, and I don't know if that's why, but I'm like, I don't take a long time to aim like, it's just I can't do it. It's the same thing like people will ask me about wing shooting like pheasants. I'm like, I can't give you any tips because I can never remember what happens.
Count it down for me. So you hit full draw on your hit in your punch and the trigger at what full draw?
One too?
For sure? Very often really yeah, in like a two count. Yeah, yeah, I mean it's quick, you know. I've even had camera men say that, like Holy god, you know. But so I had to dumb down my setup for that. But I would do when I when I started to kind of get my shit together a little bit, I started doing seminars on how to beat buck fever because I kept reading about like traditional advice and I was like,
my path was just vastly different. And you know, you'd have a lot of people show up sometimes as I would Dear Classic or wherever, and then I would say, right at the beginning of the seminar, I'd say, hey, how many of you guys and gals get buck fever? And there'd be like three hands raised, and I'd be like, well, why are the rest of you here? And you just want to hear me talk, you know, So it's not something it's just not something that people really want to
talk about. And I don't think they understand the depths it goes, you know. And when you're talking a game of variables like bow hunting, you just don't have to be off by very much, like one little part falls like that cascading failure thing, and now you're going to miss that deer at twenty yards that you would never miss in a thousand shots target shooting.
Now, I think there might be two different parts of this equation, or two different versions of this. There's something that I would think of as buck fever, and then there's something that I would think of as like target panic, and I think they're different. Oh okay, yeah, so so I would I would define buck fever as breaking down, as the animals approaching, like you are physically breaking down, shaking, nervous.
So I did I have target panic then?
So I used to have buck fever. I don't have that anymore. Like when I see like I'm like in business, it's like business time, like you just know what you're doing, You're doing the thing.
It's fine.
But oh yeah, yeah, oh my god, oh my god.
Yeah that's here he goes.
That's me. That's me on the inside.
I remember having the feelings sometimes of like oh no.
Now, uhh yeah, when I a couple of years that I hunted. That's how I knew I had to stop hunting deer with a recurve because I started to be like, oh ship, like here he comes, I come. Now, I know I'm gonna have to shoot at him, and this sucks because I'm probably gonna screw it up.
But target panic is more like what or at least how I experienced. Target panic is how I think you had in the past, where I would rush through that final part of it. So as soon as I would draw back, as soon as my pen at the vitals, I didn't have conscious control of my release at that point. It was as soon as the was on the vitals, it was gone, like the arrow was sent surprise and and and I've that led to a lot of rush shots,
like I hit. I mean, I was used. It was usually usually fine, but sometimes it's a little back back, it's a little bit forward, or when you're not fully in control of that, there is this increased possibility for things to go wrong in a situation where already so many variables are out of your control, and that is not acceptable.
Well, and there's a good lesson in there, right because how how you miss tells you partially what you're doing wrong. So my my failure starting out, even the twelve years old bow hunting, I started right out of the gate where I would draw and come down on my target and I would get some part of deer in my site window I'm punching that trigger. So I never shot under a deer. Literally, it was every time I would miss him high, and if I got one, it would
be because I miss misjudged the artisan. He was a lot farther than I thought. And so when that nailed right, I had a little buck come in once I'm one
of the first bucks I killed. I had he started coming in a little six pointer and I drew and I shot square into a little tiny sapling about six feet in front of my tree stand, just bong, and he spooped out and just in like desperation mode, I knocked another arrow, and you know we didn't I didn't have a rangefinder then I was like fifteen, and I drew and shot and that arrow just went right into his heart and he ran up the hill and fell all the way back down, and I was like, oh
my god, looking back on it, now, all that was was that deer picked a horrible spot to run to when I just panicked, and didn't you know, I shot exactly like I always do. I just had an extra fifteen yards for that old alumina marrow to fall into his heart, into his pocket.
Yeah, it feels like there's a magnet in their paunch that pulls arrows in that.
Yeah, that does seem common.
Yeah.
Uh with the target panic, how did like I understand overcoming it through repetition, but then I feel like there's like a thing that needs to be refreshed. I Uh. When I was at Tony last year, I hit a spike that I lost, and then reviewing it in my mind.
In reviewing it in my mind, I'm like, I knew exactly what happened, and it reminds me of that you might go to bed last night, or like you might go to bed at night like I did last night, thinking, Okay, next time I get really annoyed at my kids, I'm gonna handle it more professionally. Right today, I'll get annoyed at one of them about something and I'll handle it unprofessionally, and then the minute, a couple of seconds after I handle it unprofessionally, i'd be like, so the gun I
just said last night, I wasn't gonna do that. And so with shooting, you're like, there's no way I do that anymore. I'm never gonna let an arrow fly. I'm gonna have the hair picked out. And even when you're like, oh, here comes a deer. When he gets here, I'm going to pick out a hair and shoot that hair, and then all of a sudden you're you're drawing your bow back and whatever commitments you made yourself. It's just something so powerful.
Yeah, yeah, but part of it is just the repetition and the mechanics. Like for me, you know when Mark talks about like target panic, what I did was started well. I went to a single pin site, which was huge for me because I couldn't in the moment of truth. I couldn't gap. I couldn't like, I couldn't keep it together enough to put the yellow pin high or the red pin low. I had to just dumb it down. But also I specifically taught myself to draw at the target so instead of coming down even if you come
down just a little bit. That was the death of me. So I would draw at the target and what that actually did for target, right, And then what that did for me was I off and drew and had to come up. And that was that's a different thing for me because when I get that target acquisition, when I'm coming up, the pin finds its spot for me. And it was just like a you know, enough arrows gets you sort of like where you're going to take to
that to the woods. But there's still so many times where you don't do that.
Like still when I pull back my pin when I come to arrest right pre shot, my pin is always to the left or where it needs to be, and I always need to consciously move it to the right, like I like, I don't like to, like there's something in my head that doesn't want to obscure the area. So and so I'm looking and the pin's always to the left, and I always got to like then like hop it over to where it belongs.
Regardless of which way of the animal's face.
Because you're a left handed shooter, yeah, and you're totally regardless, it doesn't matter, always.
Left, just left.
You're shooting multipin sight, right. Yeah, so you're looking around that rack of pins. So if you did a if you did vertical pins and had that had equal spacing on both sides through your aperture where your pins are perfectly centered in the middle coming from the bottom, you wouldn't do that, I bet.
You think so.
Yeah, it's something about obscure in the thing.
You went to it this year? Yeah, single pin this year and that what do you say? And worked from me?
You see this with a lot of new hunters. A lot of new hunters hit too far left, too far right, shoulders, guts right, And it's because they will. I mean, imagine how little you have to move your head to get just a slightly different view through your site window. So you're already looking through your peep you're already looking through your aperture to that deer, and if your just natural inclination is to see just a little bit more of that deer, you've changed your point of impact by six inches.
And it's you would never know. You would never do that on a target because you don't care. It would never your brain would never take over and do that. But on a deer people do it a lot and So that's like back to our earlier point. If you're a chronic shoulder or a gut shooter, that's that could be very well.
The reason why Yeah, well, I'll point out the buck eye just referenced. Uh, the buck eye just referenced.
It was to the left. Yep.
It was the left where it belonged.
Yep.
And I bet you had he been the other had he come from the other direction, it probably would have probably hit him.
In the shoulder.
Yep.
And you know what, I'll bet that maybe this is totally this is just speculation on my part. But you've shot a lot of stuff through a rifle scope with like a perfect view, you know what I mean. So your brain is used to in that moment, which mirrors a lot of stuff you've shot, you know, the same emotions, the same kind of like adrenaline rush, whatever that you've shot with a rifle. But you've had a very clear
sight window. Yeah, and when you pull out a bow, you're you're kind of obscuring half of that sight window, and your brain is used to seeing the whole thing.
Well, go ahead, Mark, I was just gonna say just to kind of rewind us to half a step to your your issue or your question around actually dealing with target panic in the idea, like we know what we should do, but then when it actually happens, you don't do it. You mentioned mechanics being one thing that can help.
I had to introduce a new mental mechanic of sorts to force me into actually executing on the right thing, because again, my issue has always been it's like a roller coaster, and like, as soon as I draw back, I'm at the top of a roller coaster, and then I'm flying down that hill. And so what I had to do was introduce speed bumps into it. And so I followed this the shot iq program. That's kind of
the model that I turned to and helped me. And the way that I've done it, and the way this program recommends you do it is by tying in actual verbal cues to physical actions, and you drill that into your psyche through repetition over and over and over again until you have a certain degree of conscious control of
each step in the process. So instead of being at the top of the roller coaster and then just it's gone, I'm at the top of the roller coaster and then I'm three cords of the way and there's a pause. And then I'm halfway down, there's a pause, and I'm making when I'm doing this right, I'm making a conscious decision to take each step down the roller coaster, keeping
me from pins on, shot off. So it's when I draw back, no matter what, I'm going to do this right, and I'm literally saying this, and then I have to address the target. So that's just dropping the pin right in the bo Tell me what you're saying. That's what I'm saying, start, start from the scratch. I draw back.
I'm a big buck. Also, Nick there, I am, Hey Mark, but I don't see you. You don't see me.
As literally as I'm drawing back, I'm saying, no matter what, I'm going to do this right. So that's that's like locking in, so trying to like take a degree of conscious control, no matter what, I'm going to do this right. Then it's address the target. So that means drop the pin on the vitals. Now address the trigger. So that's me locking on my finger around the release and then here we go. And when I see here we go,
that's when I can begin my pull. And each one of those verbal cues triggers the physical.
Direction you copyright there.
No, that's this all Joel Turner from Shot. I Q the actual words, even the words. Yeah, he helped me with us and and I do not get a one hundred percent all the time, but it has definitely helped me regain a level of control and has improved things and against it's the speed bumps. Just getting a little bit of a stop gap in there from that free fall can help.
I'm gonna take this through the approach of I come home and I see a bunch of my tools are like out in the road and out in the yard. I'm going to say to myself, I'm gonna get this right.
Yep.
Then I call my kids all into the grange and I'm gonna say, here we go. Please, all right, let's move post shot.
Okay, that's the longest twenty minutes ever. Here we're gonna do.
We're gonna break up post shot until you guys are gonna I'm gonna give you each an assignment. You can pick who gets what assignment.
Dude, I feel like you gave me a couple of assignments last fall. Okay.
Assignment number one is like it just looks perfect and you hear a crash. Okay, someone can have that. Okay, someone can have man, I don't even know if I hit that thing. Okay, and someone can have that wasn't good. You guys can fight amongst yoursel I'll take whatever's lived.
I'll take the I don't know if you hit it one.
I don't even know if I hit it.
Yeah, because I my dad was he patented that shit. There's a copyright on it. It's my dad.
Well, based on some phone calls I've gotten from you, you've done a few of those.
I've been there. But it was like there was a time period and so.
This is like a so you're taking out you know if I hit it?
Yeah, okay, yeah, you want me to go.
And well, here's an added dimension. It's dusk.
Oh yeah, it's not neon. It's never noon, you know. Yeah, I've been on. I've went on one of those last year. Not with a buddy of mine who's just kind of getting into it. Although, to be like, to be totally fair to that situation, he was like, I smoked it, oh okay, and then it became after some questioning, it became I'm not sure. And then it became a total miss. When we went out und the arrow.
It's amazing how not uncommon that is.
Right, I mean, I'm sure I'm sure there's some white tail guides listening to this, and there's some people who've been around the block with this stuff who are like, who can just totally understand the post shot thing of just total confusion, like it just the brain happened, no idea, felt like I did everything right, like deer ran off reaction was this no clue?
You know?
And so often with that, you know, like it doesn't do you any good typically until you just go find that arrow, like you know, because you can be like, where was he standing? All you standing right by that birch tree or whatever, and then you go over there there's no tracks, and then fifteen yards away there's big digging tracks, you know what I mean, Like it's just
or what did he run by? When he left? Right by brush that teeter tree out there, and you go over there and the blood trail is, you know, ninety degrees in a different direction.
In literary criticism, that's called an unreliable narrator.
Yeah, well, there's some unreliable narrators in the deer Woods. Buddy, let me tell you I'm and I came from some of them, man. But it's always just kind of just like feeling out, trying to get every detail because you know the Poe shot thing, and we've been we've all been through this a million times. You have to trust your initial instinct like did he kick his did he meal kick? Did he not? Did he wheel this way or that way? Like what did your brain register right away?
And that will be right like forty percent of the time.
Not what you think happened forty five minutes later, but what you initially.
Thought happened, not what you talked yourself into because you heard that crash or all the squirrels started barking down the ridge, or you know, the full moon came out. Whatever. Like however, you know black magic, you want to introduce into it, you have to go what did it feel like? And then like what were the initial reactions? But it doesn't it really doesn't matter till you go try to find that arrow. And what really sucks is when you can't find the arrow and then you're.
Like, do you wait it all on a I don't even know if I hit that thing. It's getting dark?
Are you?
Are you cool? Just climbing down and going looking for the arrow. Yeah okay, oh yeah, I wouldn't so that personally.
Oh really okay, every everything Marks, but Mark's got his own assignment, Mark Mart.
That ain't good.
Yeah, So I'll give my thought on this. When we get to my piece.
I'll go right away. Now, I will say this. I will be real stealthy, and I will not push it in any way. So if my in my head or if somebody one of my buddies is like, I know you was standing there and we like, I'll go investigate that. And if I start getting vibes like this is going to turn into something we got to do some real detective work on, then typically I'll pull out because there's no that's only like a net game.
Can you quickly explain what we're talking about? The people pull out for what reason?
Oh, because we don't want to push it, right, because you you just don't know. You know, Yanni hit that buck last year in Wisconsin, that sucker ran off a little ways better down he thought it was over, got up like they're that stuff happens, yeah.
And like he might have would have otherwise probably just died, but you spooked it, right, And then it ran another three hundred yards and now you can't find themn thing right, and there's just nothing.
The thing, the hardest thing to do with people is to blood trail with impatient people.
It's almost everyone right.
It's like a you know, when you like when we were looking for your buck, the good one you shot in Oklahoma, you like fall into that cadence where there's like a leader a follower, a leader a follower, but the pace is kind of dictated by like it's it's always like way slower and more methodical than you think. Even when you're on like there's blood here, blood here, blood here, you're kind of like there's like a little governor on people who know what they're doing, just because
you might come up. You might you know, like the potential fifteen yards down that you might run out of blood, you know, so you're just like you just fall into this sort of cadence where you're like, there's nothing good that comes from us. We're running down this or all of a sudden just starting to grid search or go look ahead, like you just got to dial it back.
In a lot of people and this is just probably mostly because they don't get to do it very much, and they haven't been through all those different scenarios where you've had that those real late nights, the Doug Durn thing where it's like you've been on another nightmare, one that didn't turn out, or the coyotes got it the
next morning. And so when I say go look for that arrow, and then if you don't get it right away, or it's like you feel that poll to just go a little bit farther down the trail, that's when you got to just check yourself and go, I'm gonna get out. We're gonna go get a sandwich, We're gonna go get like good lights, batteries, we're gonna set up for this, and we're gonna have a discussion outside of that zone where that deer might still be, and just figure this
plan out. And then cause there's you might you might go back, your buddy might relax, or you might just be like man kind of felt like maybe it was too far back or just like something, or if it's just something you usually do, like we talked about, if you're a lot of times too far left, too far right, you could go if even though I can't remember, I don't know that if I did screw up and hit him.
That's probably or what did it sound like? It's kind of like the sound of that arrow is kind of jiving with the mistake I make a lot, God, so did I got shoot him? And so you just always err on that side of don't go push it, you know, like,
just do not do that. And I know, I mean we talk about that all the time, but it really hits home when you're on one of those or you know, you're like, it's probably you talk yourself into it, and then you jump that sucker and now he's on the neighbors across the neighbor's fence, and now it's like it's become a thing that it didn't have to become. And it never almost never becomes a better thing by accident, you know what I mean. You never like, well, I'm
gonna look for the arrow. Oh there he is.
You know, it's like, yeah, oh, it's much more common to go look and I'd be like, oh, right, right.
I guess I got the crash and you.
You got the man that looked perfect and I heard a crash.
It's the hardest twenty minutes ever. That's what you do. Twenty minute twenty minutes is what I shoot for. Thirty is what I shoot for. Twenty I think.
That's where you come from.
Okay, twenty will be good enough. And then at fifteen I'm standing at the bottom of the tree and go find and go find the arrow and it's just absolutely painted and it looks just like you want it to look. But what I will do, regardless of my excitement level, I have taught myself in the story office. And to tell you, it was the day that I did it.
When I heard that crash took I had my compass in my hand and I shot an as with to it from where I was sitting in that tree, so I knew the direction because it's the world is a different place when you're fifteen feet closer to the planet and you get down there, and which tree was was I am? You know, once you get out there and you can't see the sand. But I get out there
and I find the arrow. If I'm finally waiting twenty minutes, and it's just blood, blood, blood, blood, and you and like to Tony, like what Tony's talking about, you just start walking faster and faster. Oh, I can see it,
I can see it. And if you ain't careful if it stops, if that hole plugs up, or if it rubs up against a tree and it doesn't drip on the ground that you don't see when it goes by, and all of a sudden there's no blood and you turn around looking, you've already walked five yards past it, and then you got to go all the way back. If you can find it again.
Then you gotta wonder if you didn't step on what was there exactly?
Now I've ruined it. So this blood trail on this deer went, it's like a sling shot straight away from where I shot it. And then it started very kind of back to the left. And in my mind, I'm thinking I heard him, heard him crash over here, But maybe maybe that's not Maybe that was just excitement, because
the blood's going here. Well, the blood starts, it gets sixty yards away from the tree now in the bottoms there where there's thickets, and I can't see the tree I'm in now, So I'm in my mind I'm assuming I have got this bloodline is straight, but I've actually made a big curve to the left, and the blood trail starts going up this bluff and it stops. But where I missed where and I get to the top of the bluff, I can't find blood anywhere, I can't
find a deer, I can't find anything. But where I missed was when that deer got to the edge of that bluff, he fell and rolled down the other side. And where I heard him crash was where I heard him crash, But it was eighty yards difference from where I lost That blood trailed right there and was actually back closer to the deer standing from where I shot
him at I got you. So when I and how I found him was I walked back to the base of that tree and took asthmus, and I walked that asthmus that I shot out there and walked right up to that sound you heard and to the sound I heard, and that was him because I thought maybe if if that was him, maybe he bedded, you know, and I would jump him up at least know which way he was going. But I mean, but he was dead as a hammer.
That's a good idea on that compass deal.
Yeah, it cats come in handy a lot.
I remember being kids and it would be a big thing. It was the old man that sends you back up in the tree yep, yep, and you'd have a surveyor's tape yep. And he wanted to where did you first see it?
Yep?
Where was it when you shot? Okay, where do you think it last saw it was? And mark all this stuff, you know, and start laying out like a crime scene, you know what I mean, because he's trying to pry as much out of an unreliable narrator as he could, you know, like visually on the ground.
You know what I mean. Well, it became painfully obvious how they're not. They may leave in a straight line, but that don't mean they're going to stay in one, you know. And I'm gonna believe that there would have went on top of that bluff and lay and fell over dead. But he fell over before you got the top and rolled down to that other spot over there. You know. If I hadn't done that, you know, we could still be out there looking for it.
You're like fighting, you're fighting this this dual thing where you have real information, which is like the spore, and then like this information you're making up, like you're filling
in the blanks. And so I think that's like the the most dangerous stuff on blood trails is always and never stuff and then talking yourself into like, we got to go because there's a whole lot of coyotes around here, or we got to go because it's kind of warm, and maybe you know, like when you're when you're when you're talking yourself into going and you're filling in the blanks instead of working off the actual information that tends to break bad a lot.
Well, the only reason you're coming up with those things to do is because you want to get there and put your hands on right right, so.
You're gonna take over on your thing about this Ian to tell you a funny story. One time we were out and hit a bowl elk and then drew back and kind of like went off to a rock area just to lay.
Down and wait.
And the whole time we're I can't wait forty five minutes. The whole time, I'm like kinda smell elk, I can smell elk, and in are going back wound up like setting up like right next to that thing. No waited forty five minutes.
Oh my god, that I pointed that out, because that's usually not how that goes, all right, So Mark take it where it's just like that ain't good.
Yeah, So in that scenario, everything that we've talked about so far is even more important. So the very first thing I'm going to do in that situation is try to collect as much information as I possibly can to ensure that the narrator is as useful as possible, at least.
Even if it's you.
Yeah, even if let's put it the it is me, which, hey, this has happened. So so in a situation where like I saw the hit, I knew it wasn't great. Now I know, man, my job from here on out is going to be extra difficult.
Let's put a finer point to it. It's way back, yeah, way back. Not in the hip, it's in that narrowest little waste part.
Yeah when it sounds like yeah.
So So in that scenario number one, I see that happen. Then I'm watching that deer and very very carefully trying to see where's the last place I saw, like marking any possible visual waypoint in my mind. And then I try to take it a step further two ways. One I will oftentimes like after the deer disappears out of you, the first thing I'm thinking about is in my mind
trying to think through okay, what did I hear? What I see and trying to like have an internal dialogue and very clearly like okay, he went that way, saw him by that big oa. Try last, and something I haven't done but I should do and would recommend is actually pull out your notes app in your phone and actually write this down right then in the moment, write down everything you can remember while it's fresh, before your
mind starts playing tricks on you. Another thing I have done, I will take a picture from the tree stand of where I shot it, so I know what the view looks like from up there with my phone, and then I will take a picture of the last place I saw him, and then like even like circle in the photo, like there's where he was. In my mind's eye, it's fresh, it just happened. I can see what it looks like right now, I'll zoom in and get a picture of
that that way. You know, just like you said, when you're down there on the ground, it's like you know your dad in the surveyor's tape, similar thing, But you can do this on your own right, so then when you're on the ground, you can be like Okay, is this the tree? Look at the picture. Oh yeah, this is the oak tree. Here's that little sapling he was standing by. This is that sapling. You can orient yourself on the ground. Cause again, I know that my job
is going to be extra challenging. I need every single possible data point. So I'm doing these things, collecting all that data that I can from the tree already. If I know it's a far back hit right away, I know, hey, this steer is going to need time. I will with any shot. And maybe I'm overly conservative here, but even if I heard it crash, I always will wait an hour.
The only.
Time that would not be the case would be if I can literally see the deer dead. But if I can't see it dead, I just think it's off there somewhere. I'll at least wait an hour. God, that's a lot of discipline, try to It just seems like there's so many ways that can go wrong. There's no way it can get more right. Like, if he's dead, he's not going to be more dead if I get down there
at thirty minutes. If he's dead, he's dead. As long as it's not crazy hot and I'm not worried about the meat going bad, Like that would be the only time I'd like rush down there if that was case. But like, assuming that's not a concern, the only thing that could happen is it could be worse. Maybe he crashed, but he's actually not dead and I spook him. So when it goes out, it comes down to checking the arrow.
I like to wait to check the arrow because again, worst case scenario, what if he crashed but it's not dead. You go walk thirty yards out, it's crunchy, You go check that arrow, and all of a sudden he's up and running. I just don't want that to happen. I don't I want zero chance of that happening. So I wait. If I know I hit this deer back, I might not even go check the arrow at all.
So this is.
This is exactly. This is very close to a scenario I had last fall at Doug's place. So speaking to Doug with guys with archery shots and not hitting getting perfect hits. So I had a shot at a buck and I probably rushed the shot a little bit and he spun on the shot and the shot hit back. And so wait at an hour, thought about going to check the arrow, and I'm having a hard time remembering if I did. I'm pretty sure that I did not go to the tree to check the arrow at all.
I remember we talked on the phone afterwards, but I went back and immediately knew you hit a deer back. My view is like a ten to twelve hour wait, no matter what. Again, it goes back to what's the worst come out come.
Like any shot is an hour a punt shot. You're going to give it ten.
Yeah, just because that deer is going to die like that deer. A deer does not survive a shot in that region. But unfortunately, the reality is that is not a fast thing. It might, you might get lucky, but most of the time it is not a fast thing. But what you can count on usually is that that deer does not want to travel far. That deer wants to get to its first point of safety and it wants to lay down and it does not want to move again. And so the only silver lining here is
that that's the case. So you hit a deer back, there's a pretty darn good chance he's going to bed down quickly and he's not going to leave that bed unless you bump him. So that's why it's it's almost always better to give that deer a good amount of time, at least ten to twelve hours, and then you can know with relatives certaintly certainty that deer is going to be somewhere kind of close. Just don't screw it up.
Give it to me. Let's say we're not out in like prairie country, but we're in mixed egg land, and you're we're in mixed egg land with a lot of betting covers scattered around how many yards away?
One to two hundred yards, you think? So first good security cover. Usually they'll they'll bed down. And so I was on the edge of really thick cover, and I knew that he could be within seventy yards. Got it like, I don't think he went far, And so I knew he.
Might go seventy yards from that point of like feeling that scared and feeling that hurt, he might go seventy yards and feel safe enough to lay down.
Like I've seen deer get hitting that paunch, they bound off like one or two bounds, stop, kind of hunch up, and then just slowly walk away, And as soon as they hit cover, they bed down.
Yep.
Yeah, and so many people though have this pull like I just need to see, I just need to know. I just want to find it and it'll go. It's the worst, but nothing good comes of that. So I am I am going to if if I feel very confident because of the terrain and the habit, that I can get to the arrow site without spooking it, then yes, I will go there and collect all the information that you talked about, get as much information as I possibly can to arm me with, you know, the ability to
make as good of a decision as possible. So wanting to see, like trying to confirm if maybe you're not sure if it was liver or stomach or something, then I'm looking at the arrow, I'm looking at the blood. I'm looking at that kind of thing. But if I saw far back like we know that's what it is, then I'm backing out and I'm doing two things, waiting three things. I'm waiting that long predetermined time. Number two,
I'm trying to get some help. And number three, if it's legal in your state and you have someone who has a dog, get the dog. There's no downside of getting a dog. They are like magic. They are an incredible asset and tool, and if you can do it, there's no reason not to do it right. Twelve hours passes. Now I'm going to return to the site of the where the shot was. I have all of this information. I have my photo of the last place that saw him.
I have the photo of the shot site, I have my arrow, I have the blood at the sight of impact. And now doing everything Tony talked about, and you know, Brent talked about slowly trying to follow that blood if at all possible, if you have the dog, staying out
of the dog's way. A big thing is like a mistake many people make with a subpar shot, is that maybe they thought, well, maybe it was liver, maybe back a lungs, and they want to believe the best case scenario, and then they start walking around and looking and they mess up the whole area. And then six hours later like, well, now I got to call a dog, and they call the dog, but you messed up the first four hundred
yards of circumference around the area of impact. What I've learned with a I've got one of my best buddies as a dog, and so he's done this hundreds of times. And now he comes out with me just for practice, and so I've gotten to see this many times myself. The best thing you can do is that the first hint of eh, I'm not like I've lost blood, not feeling good about this. If you have that tool in your toolbox, grab it because it can. It can cure
so many woes. If you have that tool, Yeah, there are a lot.
Those dogs are a lot better at it.
Than we are.
Yeah, So of course, like if you can follow blood, absolutely, but if you're reaching that question mark point and you're thinking dog, no dog, dog, no dog, I would always lean towards dog. So now we've waited, we have the information, we're on the trail. Now it's just slow. Do not be impatient, Do not rush ahead mark last blood. Always, don't rush into the well. Let's just start around the corner.
Just follow all those protocols that force you to go slow, that force you to be methodical about it, and more often than not, with that far back hit deer, if you do all of that within one hundred and two
hundred yards, you're gonna find it. Bet it up not that far away, and you have your happy endingg And it worked out as best as it can out of a bad outcome good because I was nervous forer me there as we all are, and that that that thing that's that process is exactly the process we followed, and we found a great, big giant buck on Missus Duran's farm. And it was a happy ending and a little stressful in between. But you never want that situation to be
the situation you're in. But once you find yourself there, you have to just do everything you possibly can to end it well. And that's easier than done.
We're gonna be one last thing, now, go ahead, you had something.
Well, I was just going to weigh in on like a couple quick things there. The thing that we do a lot of times, especially if you're talking about shooting one in the evening right as it's getting dark, is you've got your head lamp with you, and it's easy to just start down that trail with like the wrong stuff. You know, you've got what you have with you. So I started keeping like a blood trailing box in my truck.
It forces me to leave go back, like no matter what if I'm not like I smoked him and he's seventy yards away. It forces me to take that moment to get out of the woods. And at the very least, I'm like, I got to go arm up with the right lights batteries. And then the other thing. I think a big mistake people make on a blood trail as they think they need a lot of help. And I kind of equate it to pheasant hunting with a young dog.
If you go out into the cattails and there's just you and you have a dog, that dog will set the pace because it knows how to work the cover and it's figuring things out. So you're pacing yourself to that dog. But you get one more person in there, or two more people in that slew, Now everybody wants to be in front because everybody wants to shoot that rooster. Yeah, so then that dog is like shit, they're walking up
on me. They're forcing that dog to go faster. So then you get that stuff where that dog gets out works back because they're moving past them, and it changes the entire dynamic of the process. Now you think about a blood trail, now, grid searching is different. Like if you run out of blood and every eyeball you even gets better. But when you get just two people on a blood trail, a real blood trail where you're following actual spore you just fall into. Uh, I found this,
he found this time to do circles. He found this. But if you have three, where's that third guy go? He starts walking.
Ahead, going and checking at one spot right, and then.
You're like, you're like, well, this guy doesn't know the bloodshair like I do, so I want to get ahead of him. And now it becomes a pacing issue where it's just no, boy, no.
And everybody wants to everybody wants to be the guy that finds it right here, here's your deal.
Well, there's just like a It just changes the pace, and not in a in a good way.
The exception is when you're color blind. Yeah, they didn't need a little more help.
No, well, right, which is like you fall over the back and.
Right, we're gonna do one last thing. Uh. The focus is on making the shot, and then the moments after the shot, we're skipping all that other beautiful white tail stuff. I want a hot tip from each of you. Take your pick on post shot. What everything leading up to everything beginning with you pulling your bow back and ending with you saying like, oh my god, there he is meaning he's dead, found him, any kind of hot tip within that area. Just be prepared.
Have the stuff you need to take care of that animal, regardless of the situation that happens between climbing up the tree and finding him at the end. Take this stuff with you that you need to take care to get you to get the animal taken care of, and get you both to the back to the truck. Would be mine.
So load it in there, have it be ready. No surprises, no surprises, No damn. I should have brought my knife.
I wish I had brought my knife. Should have brought some where's my flashlight? Man?
I want to do a pre shot one? Yeah, this has changed, so we're we're a in the white tail space right now. The primary scouting methodist trail cameras very effective in a lot of different ways. Not a substitute for watching deer and so are. The reason that we get buck fever and fall apart bad is there's something we really really want. It means a lot to us,
and we are not comfortable around there. Like I always, I always kind of like equate this to like if missus Peterson got hit by a train tomorrow and I had to go into the dating world and Margot Robbie showed up next to me at the buck, I would not be that smooth, Like, I think my odds would be pretty low to begin with, but I don't think i'd help my case in.
And then then the next day you'd be sitting there being like, I can't even remember why I said what I said.
Right, I just know it didn't work. But so watching deer, that's why I love the long rain scouting thing. Just seeing bucks, it like demystifies what they do. But also when you're sitting in a tree stand and we're we're in this like kind of hit lister mentality, where like I know the bucks that I'm like, I'm gonna shoot because they're worth my tag and this is the effort I put in.
Whatever.
When you have deer around you and you look at them from a perspective of you were going to shoot them. So that little foky comes in, you'd never kill, but you watch him and he walks in and he turns this way, and where where did your point of impact go? Because he scratched his nose with his back hook? Yep, where did your point of impact go? When he kind of he heard that squirrel behind you and he just made that kind of half body turn.
Understood. Yeah, so you're sort of like like, let's play this game, dude. Let's say I did want this buck, So did I really have a shot opportunity?
Right? You know what I mean?
Yeah, all I think about when a deer's coming in that I know I want to shoot as I'm looking at where my point of impact is. And that's like my little internal computer is always going now it's here, now, it's there, here it is. Stop. He try to stop him and he jumps six feet Like thinking about that because we get so conditioned to just well we aim three inches behind the shoulder, halfway up whatever. But they're three d anim and you're you know, like your aerow trajectory,
that wound channel is everything. And if you're thinking about that all the time when you're looking at deer, it just gets you into that mindset of when that big boy starts coming down the trail during the root, You're you're not looking at his antlers. You're not like I gotta get this over with. You're like, where would I
shoot him? Like when he hits this window, you're already your eyes are like there's my point of impact and it's rarely, not rarely, but often not three inches behind the shoulder and halfway up, you know what I mean, Like where do I need to run that arrow through? And that's that's something that has really helped me because I look at deer that way. You know, I don't. I'm not drawing and aiming at the dough with a
fawn walking by, but I'm looking at her. And then when you do that, because you know, most people probably listening to this aren't doing the they're not hunting out of a saddle in a new spot every night, right, They're going to that ladder stand on the food plot. And so when that foky comes down the trail and you know you're on Instagram because you don't care, and he walks through and you don't pay attention to it, Well, when one hundred and forty incher comes down there, he's
doing the same thing that Forky did. Like he's on the same trail and he jumps through the crossing the same way, you know what I mean, And like you're learning that like the minutia of like deer behavior in that spot, and it just changes how you view like the setup to your shot.
Yep.
And I just think I think we don't spend enough time watching actual deer do actual deer things.
God, there's a science behind that, and we used it in law enforcement when we would be clear in the house, just practicing going from stress shooting, and the more you practice, when it becomes second nature in stress level, you always result in stress. In times of stress, you will always resort back to your level of training, whether it's low
or whether it's very high. And that's what makes you know, special forces so good because they constantly train, train, training, training, train about different scenarios, but they constantly train about them all the time. And what Tony is saying is is really the same concept. He's looking and watching, looking and watching,
looking and watching, and then there's that guy. Then he's looking and watching doing it subconsciously just because he's he's amped up, but he's going back to that level of the stress is taking him back to the highest level of training that he's put hisself through. That's that's a really good deal.
So my tip would be something that I say to myself often, like all the time during a hunt or during the hunting season, and that is slow as smooth smooth as fast. I'm constantly trying to remind myself to slow down. For example, when I'm about to head out for hunt, my my uh, my usual default mode is like I'm rushing to get out there, rushing, rushing, rushing.
And then you do that and you realize I walked out to the tree and didn't put my saddle on all right, left my release back of the truck or whatever. So I'm always slow down, be smooth. Same thing when you're walking to the tree, slow down, be smooth. Same thing when I'm setting up sticks in the saddle going out of the tree. I'm always wanting to rush. I'm always worried, Oh God, a deer is gonna come up
while I'm getting ready. And then as soon as you start trying to rush it, you make mistakes, you make a noise, you end up screwing things up. That slows you down more in the long run. You get into the tree, you want to rush into glassing whatever, or rushing into your phone and doing something on Instagram. But again, slow down, do the visualization, practice everything like I talked about, when the shot comes right, again, slow down, slow down.
That's the most important thing for me in the shot processes is slow down, do your thing, don't fly down the roller coaster. After the shot, same thing. The instinct is, I want to go. I want to see the arrow, I want to go find the deer.
I want to hold them.
Slow as smooth, smooth as fast, slow it down. If you don't rush, you've got a much better chance of the happy ending in the end versus rushing down there and then having a nightmare in your hands. So constantly trying and tell myself that.
What and slowest is quiet too and quite important.
You need to add that and do the same well, Mark Canyon, Brent Reeves, Tony Peterson. Thanks for the advice. I'm sure people at home will appreciate it. And when everybody gets up in that gets up in that tree or up in that box blind this white tail season, a couple of things to keep in mind. Thanks guys,