Ep. 500: Foundations - It's Time For a Little Deer Hunting Self-Reflection

love bow hunting for all kinds of critters. Western bow hunting is some of my favorite kind of hunting to do, and while there are plenty of differences between I don't know hunting elk and hunting white tails, the one that I disliked the most is that a lot of western bow hunting is not really a year round thing. Now you've got the fitness aspect and you've got shooting, of course, but it's far as like dedicated hunting activities. It's much more kind of in the moment than deer hunting is.

Because white tails, on the other hand, that can be like a year round obsession that allows you to do something every week in order to be more successful this coming season. This is something we should all acknowledge as our season's closed and we reflect on last year and start to think about what we want out of this year, which is the entire crux of this week's show. For a lot of us, the dear season is over. For others, it's circling the drain and we'll wrap up soon enough. Now.

I know for many of you this is a sad time. It's going to be like months, nine months, something like that before you can hunt again. For others, it's probably somewhat of a relief. To me, it's a lot of both. If you're doing things correctly, you've probably put a lot of work into your white tail season, and work is usually not that much fun. It is rewarding, which is super important, but fun not so much. Having a break from that work and the early alarms, it's something that

can provide some relief. I used to feel guilty about feeling that way, but I don't anymore. It's kind of like what my wife wants to go off for a girl's weekend somewhere and drink Margarite's with her friends and have pillow fights or whatever they do. I love her and all that jazz, but I'm not sad to see those tail lights heading down the street, knowing I've got a weekend to myself. With deer season, that relief that it's over is mixed heavily with sadness that it is

indeed over. When you get to a certain age, you become real cognizant of passing time. I think this might happen to all of us, but it certainly happens when you have kids. They're just constant reminders that time is flying by and there's nothing you can do about it. What that means to all of us is that the amount of deer seasons we have left is a finite resource. There might be many, or there might be a few, and we will never know how many we are dealing

with until it's too late. If you can't tell. So far, this isn't the most upbeat Foundations episode, but it'll get cheerier, I promise. But for now, I want all of us to recognize the true gift that we have with deer hunting. While many folks are weekend warriors whose life wouldn't be greatly affected if the white tail ceased to exist tomorrow,

that's probably not you. It's definitely not me. This stuff is important to us, and there's something about being wired for it kind of just changes your perspective it should also prompt each of us to look at deer hunting for what it is, for what it means to us, and for how we can make next season even more enjoyable than the past season was. That's what I really want to drive home with this episode. To be honest, this is because there's something that a lot of us

do in the immediate aftermath of the hunting season. We think back to the successes and the failures of the season, and we fall in love with the idea of doing something different next year. We think things like I'm gonna scout more, I'm gonna shoot my bowl a lot more, I'm going to figure out what the big deal is

about tree saddle so that can be truly mobile. But then we get sucked into seasonal depression as winner hangs over us without a few weeks or months passed by, and then we focus on the upcoming fishing opportunities and maybe when the turkeys will be gobbling. In short, we kind of just forget. It's kind of like when you get tore up from the floor up as a younger person or hell, at whatever age, and the room is spinning and your late night taco bell splurge is threatening

to make a violent escape from your body. When you say, hey, God, it's me again. If you can keep me from dying, I promised to never do this again. In the following morning, you dig in your heels even more as you pray for a merciful death, and you say to yourself, there's not a chance that this ship happens again. But guess what. The misery fades and we forget and suddenly at someone's birthday or whatever, and bam, you're hollering at your d D in the drive through that you want extra hot

sauce with your cholupa. We are masters at falling in love with ideas but then reverting to our old patterns and behaviors. We do this in our relationships, We do this with our jobs, with tequila on random Saturday nights, we do it with fad diets and workouts, and we definitely do it with deer hunting. When it comes to the ladder, the best thing you can do is take a deep dive in your recent deer hunting season and make a realistic plan to change things up for the

coming year. Now, I'll give you a few examples from my life where I've gone into deep reflection mode and come out the other side of better hunter. The first and one of the biggest things that happened to me involved shooting. I always think back to the shots I took throughout the season. How many worked out perfectly? I mean, how many went right through the lungs or the heart and did exactly what I always hope happens. How many didn't? Were there any guts shots? Were there any shoulder shots?

How about flat out misses? How did any of those happen? This exercise over the years has really forced me into a specific spot as a white tail bull hunter. I freaking hate missing dear and I really really hate making bad shots on deer. I don't want it to happen, but I know will. So every year I think about my recent track record and I try to figure out what went wrong. Did I rush my shots? Like last season I missed a nice eight pointer in Wisconsin, absolutely

rushed it, no question. I know that I'm not going to do that again, I swear, Or maybe some other time, did I talk myself into shooting through a little bit too much brush? Were the deer alert or farther away than I should have been shooting? Was it just bad marksmanship or bad shots selection. Whatever the answer is or

the answers are, I'm gonna vout to do better. This will come in two parts, which I'll get into later this spring, but really boils down to quality practice with top notch equipment and shot selection, which doesn't come into play until this season. And shooting is a important one. This is because you can largely control it by your off season actions. If I sound like I'm beating a dead horse here, let me tell you a little bit about the season I had in two thousand and eight.

It was my first year as a freelance writer, right after I got fired from Peterson's Bow Hunting along with the company's staff, so I was starving. I also felt an immense pressure to kill a big bucker three to not only have something to write about, which is how I got paid, but to also prove that I belonged in that role, because I definitely didn't believe that was true. I started this season out on a high note, killing a public land spot and stock antelope on my first

stock of the season. The shot on that speed goat was the farthest I've ever taken on a game animal, and about twice as are as I'm confident to shoot today. But then I shot a lot, and I mean a lot, and I was confident until I wasn't. Then things went south. Then I couldn't hit a deer to save my life, and then when I did, I hit them poorly. I

was unraveling at the seams. And the final straw was a brute of a hundred and thirty class Northern Minnesota buck that posed up perfectly for me, and I still shoulder shot him after putting in a ridiculous amount of stand time. It was my worst season ever, and it prompted me to take a long look at my entire bow set up, as well as my practice style, my consistency,

my overall regiment, and my attitude. I vowed after that season to change a lot, and it largely worked to dig me out of my shooting hole, although I definitely fall back into it once in a while. Now, why do I tell you this, It's just a cautionary tale. Think about your shot on deer last season and be really honest about them. If you feel that something needs to change, then it does and you should plan for that.

I also try to take a deep dive in the other moments when I was really frustrated throughout the season. One particular memory from this past season was when I got to a spot I absolutely love in North Dakota, to glass a big old public river bottom after an evening in a morning session on the spot or I realized that those late September bucks were not going to do what I expected. They were pressured, really pressured, and they weren't about to go into the open during daylight hours.

The game had changed from previous years, and as much as I tried to push a dead program, I knew I'd have to change too. I also knew I'd have to lower my standards if I wanted any venison for my efforts. And while I did get one really good opportunity at a solid buck, the only buck that I felt I had a real chance with, I got beat by the thermals, and this no bullshit knows. It was frustrating to believe I only had one deer to work

with and he busted me. I ended up shooting a dough, which at that time felt kind of like a letdown, but now it feels like something different. I'd rather have that experience and that meet in my freezer than not. What that initial frustration taught me, or I should say, reminded me of, is that hunting is always changing, at least for those of us who don't on a thousand acres in southern Iowa, it's always changing. While I expected a similar hunt to years past because that's what I wanted,

it's not what I got. I did get a hell of a lot more challenge, and I did get forced into hunting where I didn't expect to, both of which were actually good things, even though they didn't feel like it at the time. But what's even better is the deer hunting lesson about how ship is going to go wrong, and you've got to deal with it in real time. There's no way around it. And the more you accept that, the easier the whole thing gets. You just got to

deal with that stuff. Think back to your last season. What really frustrated you, was it, I don't know, bumping into other hunters. If so, could you have worked harder to get away from them? Could you have researched different access points or employed different access options like maybe a kayak or an ebike or something. Did you do enough to get away from people or did you end up only hunting weekends out of choice or necessity. Can you start laying the ground work now at your job or

at home to remedy that for the upcoming season? Or maybe I don't know, did you have a long string of unproductive sits have had? This happened to me in northern Wisconsin, and it sucks. I've gone three weeks over there in the big woods without seeing any dear, and now my friends leaves a mark. It's also largely avoidable if you're willing to do some in season scouting and keep looking for fresh activity. Did you do that or did you default to your favorite stands because they're convenient?

Did you just kind of get sick of hunting the same ground? That happens a lot. And the cure is something I've preached about on here a million times, which is find more ground. You can make that plan right now, and if you stick to it, you'll never ever regret it. This is the time to try when it comes to securing new hunting spots. You gotta try to find those spots now. If you've never hunted public land, go check some out. It's a low risk, low reward proposition right now.

But you might turn something up. If you can't stand that idea, and I know a lot of people can't, you'd better start tapping your network for connections to more deer ground, or maybe start researching some leases, however you go about it. If your frustrations from last year stem from not having enough ground, you know what your job is during the next nine months. Or maybe I don't know.

Did you have some serious fomo after you checked out Kenyan's instagram and saw him hunting all over the country while you were stuck on your gramma's farm for the twenty six year in a row. Could you have traveled somewhere to hunt new deer but didn't? Was it too expensive? Or do you just not have the time or the confidence. All that stuff can be acknowledged and addressed now. It's also something I plan to cover a whole bunch of

future episodes. So you want to have to curse out that lucky bastard Mark for all those sweet hunts in his rock star celebrity lifestyle. Of course, you don't want to just reflect on the frustrating aspects of last season. Humans are really good at focusing on the negatives. In fact, it's a genetic hardware that keeps us alive or I don't know, at least kept us alive when we climbed out of the trees and started roaming around, eating random roots and bugs and waiting to figure out how to

make crude tools and eventually harness fire. We know that now, so we don't have to focus solely on the negatives. We can make the choice to use the negatives to guide us for next year, so hopefully there'll be few of them. But we can and also should look in the review mirror and think about what made us happy. Did you kill the buck you were after, or at least kill a buck that was of a caliber you were interested in? If so, hell yes, good job. What

went into that success? Can you replicate it next season or expand on it? For example, did you finally take the plunge into mobile hunting and kill your buck that way? Then keep at it, learn your gear better, scout more suitable trees this winner, lean into that style. Or did you kill your first buck from the ground or your first buck during the lull? Whatever? What did you learn?

What did that success teach you? Did it teach you that you love killing bucks but have no idea how to butcher them, there's a good offseason topic to study. Or did you not kill a buck but still have a great season? Why were you around deer and most or all of your sits. That's a great way to enjoy your season, even if you end up munching on tag soup after the time runs out, Or did you just stumble across the time of the season, or a

hunting strategy that made you enjoy things more. That stuff happens, and if it calls to you, listen up. There's nothing that says you have to follow a Dan in Fault style strategy to be a great hunter, or more importantly, to enjoy it. But if buck beds and swamps get you going, then by all means listen up, because guys like Dan have a lot of solid advice to offer in that category. But there's something else that makes you happy.

Understand that's what you can lean into for the upcoming season. Now, while I'm sure a guy like Mark actually sits down and writes his goals out, probably in a spreadsheet with encouraging phrases and doodles on it, you don't have to do that. You should spend a little time reflecting on last season and thinking about not only what you feel like you should do, but how you actually can accomplish those things. And that's the hard part. Thinking about goals

is easy, Actually accomplishing them it's difficult. This is one of the reasons why most folks love the idea of eating right, or maybe running marathons, or having a well trained hunting dog, climbing Mount Everest, whatever. But most folks will never do any of those things because they are hard, just like deer hunting is. But those things can be

fun and rewarding as hell, just like deer hunting. So start your phone off, sit back, and do a little old fashioned thinking, run through your past season, or hell, your last five years if you've got them to call upon, and start planning for the new year. This is a good exercise and it brings up something that I want to wrap this episode up with. You think you have time,

but you don't sure. In the space between right now and the next bowl opener, you could grow an entire human baby if you had the right organs and stuff. I don't know, I'm not a doctor. That seems like a lot of time, but if you've ever slipped one past the goal, you know those nine months fly by.

The off season will too, and the windows in which you really need to take advantage of different things in the deerwoods they'll close to You'll see this in upcoming episodes that focus on shadow antlers and hunt trip planning and winter scouting, the ladder of which is the most important time you can spend in a wild except maybe maybe for the time you spend actually hunting. So I don't say this stuff lightly, my friends, I really mean it.

There's work to be done, and while I'm giving you a week to reminisce on past failures and successes, it's nearly time to get back out there, to start fresh, to start the process all over again. That's what next week is all about, and it's going to kick off a long list of episodes dedicated to getting you out there doing what your competition mostly won't be doing. You'll also be learning about the deer when most folks aren't. In other words, you're going to start earning that filled

tag soon, so don't miss out on next week. That's it, my friends, Thank you so much for listening to the Wire to Hunt Foundations podcast. I'm your host, Tony Peterson. If you want more, white Tail Wisdom, check out our YouTube channel, and visit the metator dot com, slash Wired