Ep. 545: Foundations - A Weird Way to Become a Better Deer Hunter

If you're filming I don't know, like a how to video, for example, it's pretty cut and dry. You have your key points, maybe a script and you film the stand up in the cover video. Or maybe you do podcasts and you have something worth talking about for twenty minutes, or you have a great guest to chat with for an hour or two. But you never really have to be vulnerable if you don't want to, and most of

us in this industry don't even writing. If you write how two articles, I don't know, how to kill bucks in the cattails or whatever, you can stay pretty surface level. But to be a good writer, eventually you also have to make yourself available to the audience in a way that isn't always fun, but it can be cathartic and valuable.

So that's what I'm gonna do today. Listen, no one probably really wants to hear what I'm gonna say later in this episode, but first I'm going to lay the groundwork for why I think it needs to be said, or at least why I need to say it. And I want to do something I've never done on this podcast, which is tell you why I got sober and how that made me a better deer hunter in a roundabout but very welcome way. Nine years of go, I had two babies at home, which is a lot of babies.

I was struggling as a freelance writer. I was struggling as a hunter. I thought I had overcome most of my buck fever because for a few years I killed at least one good buck, but my old tendencies crept back in and my hunting suffered, and honestly, I was

suffering too. I was drinking a lot. I always did ever since I started when I was like twelve or thirteen, but it had gotten worse, as addiction does, and I kept a stash at Jim Beam or Wild Turkey at the ready in the garage because I knew I was going to need it, and I did need it every night. And believe me when I say this, if you're hiding alcohol from your loved ones, you're pretty far down the rabbit hole. And my friends, I was pretty far down

that rabbit hole. But I was functioning, and I was getting work assignments and stuff. I was taking care of babies, and I was trying to fill my Minnesota tag. It was past the gun season into late November, rerutally cold and not looking that great. But I did what we all do, which is head out for a hunt because I had the time. And even when the odds are low and you're gonna be staring down and freezing northwest wind all night, it's still pretty good to get into

a tree. What I didn't expect after hanging my stand on a small property in the suburbs of the Twin Cities was I started seeing deer almost right away. They were holed up in a low area ringed by cat tails and saw grass and dogwoods and willows, swampy stuff. And I was in the market for any deer, any deer at all. So when a spike buck broke from the cover and headed my way. I stood up and got ready. He like, I don't know most young dumb bucks do. You never saw me, even at maybe like

three or four yards when I drew. He never looked up, And he also didn't make it very far. And it was a weird wind because I was happy about filling my tag and having a delicious deer to eat. But I knew business wise spikes didn't do me much good and I'd have to do with the usual small buck shaming bullshit that comes with it. But after gutting that buck and cleaning my hands in the snow, I started the long drag back to my truck. Actually that's not true.

I started a short drag back to my truck, which was maybe four yards away at most. I had to go through a snow covered slew, but it should have been pretty easy, and yet it wasn't. Now, I was bundled up for a cold sit, so I was way overdressed for the task. But I was also really, really out of shape, and I didn't realize how out of shape I was until I was halfway back to my truck, sitting on the ground next to that young buck, looking

up at the sky. And listening to the last remnants of rush hour traffic on the highway that bordered the property. There's a line in a tool song that goes repugnant as the creature who would squander the ability to lift an eye to heaven conscious of his fleeting time here. I don't know what the Reverend Maynard meant when he wrote that, but I think of it often. It brings me back to that view of the sky at night, while I sat there, sweating my ass off and facing

a reality that I did not want to face. It hit me. Then I could keep drinking and would probably die or at the very least be a really bad father. Or I could quit, which I knew I needed to do, and I could try to get my life in order. So I did what everyone in my position does, which is set a date in an arbitrary timeline. I said that on January one, I was going to start fresh. I was going to give it a year, so that way, if I didn't make it, I wouldn't really have failed,

because it was only a year. And let me tell you, it was embarrassing to tell people I quit. Drinking had been such a part of my identity for so long. That it felt like I was admitting something horrible about myself when I told people that I was finished. That was a stupid way to feel, I know now, but at the time I didn't know that when you need to quit, your friends and family know it, though, and don't kid yourself on that front. They aren't dumb and a lot of them will be really happy for you.

People are on your side. If it seems hard to believe, and if they aren't, at least in this capacity I'm talking about right now, then you might want to boot them out of your life. I thought it would be really difficult to quit. I thought i'd relapse and have a moment of weakness, or more likely dozens of them. But I also woke up feeling pretty good, or at least not that bad, and at the urging of my wife,

I started going to the gym. No, I'm not being facetious when I say that, I actually think that might have saved my life. I was two d and twenty pounds, with the fat, alcoholic face and self conscious every time I walked into the gym. I didn't really know how to work out. I didn't really know where to start, but I got on the treadmill, I hit the weight room and I just put my head down and tried not to think about how much more comfortable most of

the other people in the gym looked. It sucked, my friends. I hated every second of it. But I like not drinking, and I liked the feeling of the first five king iran or jogged slow jogged. I like the fact that within a few months I was down to a hundred and nine two pounds. It felt like some divine hand had waved a magic wand and given me a different life when it felt like it had a real future to it. Now you probably think I might be a little bit over the top here, but I'm being honest.

I'm also probably focusing too much on the highlight reel because it wasn't easy. There were moments that made me want to drink bad, getting a nasty graham from a stranger who found a reason to hate me because of something I said or wrote, and then they want to tell me all about it and tell me how horrible I am. That would do it when my wife would nag me, or the girls just wouldn't stop crying no matter how tired I was. You name it. The triggering

events are out there waiting for you. But I stuck with it, and I can't really say why now. I'm just real glad I did. And I was really glad when that first hunting season came along and I was sober and leaving at home a happier family than I thought I could ever have. I started that season out on a solo trip to North Dakota to Arrow of Velvet Buck, and when I got out there, I had it right for a tree near a crossing that had produced a really good buck for me the year before.

But the river was too high, and there was a stand in there from a guy who straight up poached the spot from me. It wasn't looking good. The bucks were mostly on the other side of the river, and that dimmed my prospects further. But one little bachelor group of four bucks was still on my side, and they crossed to a pinch point that put them in play.

When I sat up there for opening night, I had the nervous anxiety of a new season when I keep falling apart, when I keep my ship together, I didn't know. But when I saw those bucks crossing that stage flat and heading my way, I knew. I was going to find out, and it happened fast. When they hit that pinch point, the buck I really wanted slipped through first without stopping. The second buck did stop, and when he tipped over on the river bank, I was hit with

a huge wave of relief. Now I nearly stepped on a rattlesnake that night getting that buck back to my truck, and it was a lot of work. It was a late, late, late night before I had a back and cooling off next to my tent. But I felt good, really good, and the whole season went that way. I'm going to brag about it just for a little bit to really frame this up. I followed that North Dakota buck up with one of my oldest books I've ever killed in my life at home in Minnesota a deer that field

dressed at two pounds. In September, on the same weekend, I also killed my first bear. I went to South Dakota after that and killed my biggest mule deer on public land. Then I went to Nebraska and killed my biggest white tail ever on public land. I wrapped up that year on a TV hunt for bow Hunter, where I erote a great bucca do and a pig on film in Texas. It was honestly a dream season that I will likely never repeat again, but I don't care.

The lesson I learned along the way that season was that getting my act together made me physically way healthier, which affects hunting in so many positive ways. And with that, your mental health is going to get better, to surprise, surprise, and when that happened, it's a huge boost to your hunting enjoyment, which is a huge boost usually to your hunting success. Now, I didn't quit drinking and start working out to be a better hunter, but it allowed me

to be a way better hunter. It was, and I'm not joking here, the best side benefit to anything I've ever done in my life. It made the work so much more tolerable and made me less likely to make excuses and not do the work. And don't kid yourself here, guys and gals, hunting is mostly work, white tail hunting anyway, and we try to shortcut it. We try to do things that will make it so we have to work less. But for the most part it's just, I don't know,

effort in and rewards out. That's the beauty of what we love to do. And no, you don't have to work your ass off. Like I said last week in last week's episode, you do you and you hunt how you want. I'm just telling my story and I want to get the point across that the positive changes I made in my life to directly made me more successful as a hunter. They directly made me enjoy my time

in the woods more. They made me love my time and attend in some random state trying to arrow public land dear more, and my time with a backpack weighed down by pounds and pounds of my favorite protein. I'm telling you, it all got better. My attitude got better. Was a game changer. So what does this mean to you? I don't know. I'm not sure honestly. Maybe nothing, maybe a whole lot. But I want to say is this. Sometimes we look in the wrong spots for things we

think will help. That's easy enough to see in the hunting world. When you walk down the aisles of a Cabela's or a Shields or wherever, you'll see rows and rows and rows of products destined to put bucks in your lap, and they call for your fat ass dirty dollar, which is my second tool reference in this podcast. But maybe what you need to do to be more successful as a deer hunter. Maybe that's not sitting on a

shelf in Cabella's with a price tag on it. Maybe it's not something you can hold in your your hand. Maybe it's not something you can order off Amazon. Maybe it's not something you can plant in the ground with the promise that as long as the rain comes and the sun shines, the deer two will be there when you need them. I think it's good for us to reflect on our lives and what we could do differently

to maybe enjoy them more. Maybe we need to just reframe our goals or what we think would make us happy, and then really target them. I've seen this with white tails a lot, where people think the biggest dead buck is the key to all of it. And believe me, I've never been sad to shoot a big buck. But I've been not as happy as I should be or thought I would be, for a variety of reasons, like I just didn't feel like I earned it. And I've been real, real happy to shoot little bucks and doze

and just wake up and see the sun rise. While the potential for a deer encounter makes every minute on stand something worth enjoying. So I'm kind of honestly a little bit lost here is to what the message really is with this podcast. I don't think anyone needs to get into shape to enjoy hunting, like the popular Western hunting message, and I don't think hunting by itself is the best reason to try to become a better version

of ourselves. But you can't deny that it's tied to our identity and our existence, and it's not something that is divorced from our non hunting decisions. What we do off the field affects what we do on the field. I guess I could say is a really shitty sports metaphor.

So maybe take some time to think about what you're doing off the field, and if there's something you feel like you could do to make yourself a little happier, a little more present, maybe do that, maybe to give yourself a real sense of accomplishment and whatever facet of life the opportunity to do so is available to you. And if it's not, or you think it's not, maybe figure out how to open the door to just such

an opportunity and see where it takes you. Now, it might not be easy, just like killing a big buck is usually not easy, but it'll probably be worth it, or at least it's worth it to think about, because if you could do something non hunting related that seems really difficult, you'll be able to do something hunting related that is really hard, like I don't know, killing a

big buck. Like I said last week, If you're so inclined, make a big goal, my friends, but treat it like a daily challenge, the one step at a time thing. Set yourself up to struggle but to hopefully win. To grab life by the delicates every morning, and squeeze until he's on his knees. If that's dumping the gym, being down the drain and saying enough is enough, I'm absolutely

pulling for you. If it's just to be more present with your kids, even when work has left you depressed and dreading another day dealing with your asshole boss, or maybe dealing with the general public, or maybe complaining patients, or maybe your students parents who think their little shitbird kids can do no wrong. Whatever it is you've got this, Maybe it's just to shoot a few more times per week, or hang a few more cameras. Maybe the goal the

one thing that would make you happier. It's just to scout a new property or hell by that non resident and tag for wherever. So you force yourself to take the trip you never thought you could afford or never thought you'd take because you didn't have enough confidence in your skills to bring your hunting game on the road. You probably do, and if you don't, the best way to get it this is to just go go full

on Nike and just do it. Maybe that first trip will be a disaster, but you'll be better for having taken it, and you'll go again. Whatever you do, try to be honest with yourself about how to make this life a little better. It might be hard, but the decisions you make to achieve those ends will provide something extra that is a sweet little bonus. My friends. You'll become a happier, better deer hunter and you don't have to buy a single stupid get rich quick product to

do it. That's it for this week, my friends. I'm Tony Peterson and this has been the Wire to Hunt Foundations podcast, which is brought to you by First Light. As I always thank you, thank you, thank you so much for listening and for all of your support, all of us here at meat Eater, we sincerely appreciate it.

We really do, and if you want more white tail content, head on over to the meat eator dot com slash wired to check out our weekly articles, or go visit our wire to Hunt YouTube channel to see our weekly how to videos