Ep. 622: Foundations - Always and Never

be a deer hunter's biggest enemy. I'm a firm believer that, you know, one of the things that holds us back as a species and as individuals is that we cling too tightly to what we believe. It's easier than being wrong, of course, but it's also easier than having to think through issues and explore ideas. We love shortcuts, and our history is one that is tightly interwoven with intellectual ordcasts

that promised to do the thinking for us. That might seem crazy, but it wasn't all that long ago that we thought stupid stuff like piles of straw produced baby mice, and then if we sailed far enough into the ocean, we just fall right off the edge of the earth. Deer hunters have many many outdated We're just not I guess black and white ideas that hurt us too, and in this episode, I'm gonna talk about a lot of them. If you listen to this podcast enough, you know that

I love space. I just think it's pretty amazing what we're learning, and really amazing what we could learn humans. As long as we have been humans have been star gazers. It really wasn't until probably about the nineteen fifties, when there was a TV in every living room that this really started to die, at least in develop nation anyway. Plenty of people still like to go to places with little light pollution and look up at the sky, which is one of the most underrated benefits of a remote

hunt in my opinion. You know, I'm sure it's great to bavy out for Elk at nine thousand feet on the side of a mountain somewhere for obvious reasons, But sitting there in the darkness, looking up at the sky while listening for a bugle, it's pretty damn special because of our fascination wonder with a night sky. Well, probably the day skuy too, but mostly the night sky. We've

gone through some wild beliefs as humans. Take Mars, for example, that red planet out there that Elon might get us too, if he'd ever stopped messing around with Twitter and focus on one thing. Anyway, Go back, I don't know, say about five thousand years, and people thought that Mars was a god. They saw a reddish light in the sky that didn't quite look like normal stars, and that was pretty special to them. They also noticed that every couple

of years it would be really visible and observation. They added all kinds of un do significance too. Of course, sometime a few centuries ago people started figuring out the whole telescope thing, and Mars was a natural target for some of those close up observations that early work. And while people started getting a better look at the red planet, the idea that since it was a planet and Earth was a planet that happened to be teeming with life, people assumed Mars too must have been full of life.

That's where Martians come from. Now. In the nineteenth century, an Italian astronomer spent some time looking at Mars from a telescope in Milan, and he decided to drop a map of the planet. He names some motions and some continents, and also thought he saw some intelligently constructed canals. Now that was good enough for the masses, and it was generally believed that Mars had not only a life, but intelligent life, and not only that, but a lot of it.

Now about thirty five years later that Tesla Fella, the original guy I even said that he had communicated with Martians on his radio, and Tesla was well known for his scientific discoveries and contributions. It's also, at least on this one thing, totally full of shit. Now fast forward and you get the NASA image of the face on Mars, which is a rock with some shadows that kind of look like a face. You probably remember it. You get a meteorite discovered in Antarctica that had some markings on

it that kind of looked like bacteria. The rock, which scientists trace back to Mars. Somehow lead some to believe that there must have been bacteria on Mars, which later investigation proof totally inconclusive. These days, we have probes flying around Mars, flying on Mars in the form of a little helicopter and roaming around Mars on tracks. They're currently leaving samples on Mars and can tainers examples of dirts and whatever else rocks to pick up with probes in

the future. So people can actually study real samples of Martian dust and rock. We now know that Mars was sort of earth like a couple of billion years ago, with an atmosphere and plenty of liquid water. And there's still so much we don't know because we've obviously never been there. The things we believe today will inevitably be

proved wrong as science gets more sophisticated. Now, what the hell does that have to do with the deer Well, I'll bet you if you could go back in time to about night when orson Wells wore the world's radio drama played out, that a hell of a lot of people would have told you flat out, of course, there's life on Mars. Hell, there's intelligent life on Mars, lifelike humans,

in fact, humanoid things. Now those people were wrong, of course, And in deer hunting, we do this all the time, and we are wrong all the time, and the worst part is we often don't know it because it's stuff that's just generally believed, and that's I don't know. That's where the real danger and our deer hunting beliefs come from,

and it starts with us filling into blanks. Those folks back there living on the cusp of the Second Grade War had very very little evidence of anything on ours, let alone civilizations, but they had been told, you know, for centuries that it was a certainty. Pop culture came in, even if it was the old school radio pop culture, and made them believe it even more. In the deer hunting, you know, we've had a lot of ideas for a

long long time. We've had a massive influence from deer hunting pop culture at least, you know, which is kind of like our redneck version of pop culture that directly relates to hunting rabbits with antlers, And we have taken much of that as gospel, so much so that many of the things that we believe can't be attributed to any one person. So many of these things that are part of the old zeitgeist, if you will, they're just dangerous because they've been here so long and they've sunk

pretty deep in. And here's why, what you don't see through your own observations and don't learn through your own experiences is always suspect, and even worse, some of the stuff we do see for ourselves and experience for ourselves is subject to our own fill in the blank biases. Now, this is natural. I'm not trying to shoot on anyone here. If you only have encounters with little Bucks and does, you're going to have to live vicariously through somebody else

who encounters Big Bucks. Everybody does this with all kinds of the parts of hunting, and honestly, life's sort of just part of the human experience. What is dangerous about that, however, is when it leads to always and never. Any time I hear someone say always and never as it pertains to hunting advice, I get to feeling like I just ate a big wallefe filet and I'm now about to

die or come close to it. If you're confused by that, it's okay, I'm allergic to fish, which is the kind of information I should have told you before making that statement. Always and never are your enemies. They're almost as bad and damaging. The hunting success is sharing a property with a bunch of hunters who don't know how to hunt. I honestly believe that. So let's go through some of these statements, because I want to drive this home, and

I'll start with an easy one. The Bucks never moved when it's this hot, this or some version of it is uttered probably hundreds of thousands of times throughout any given November. I've talked about this one a lot, and it drives me crazy because how hot is too hot? How About I don't know what's hot in September versus November. How About in the upper peninsula of Michigan versus the swamps Louisiana. What's hot up there? What's hot down there?

Are there temperatures so hot that a buck won't go get a drink or maybe pick a shady corner of a soybean field to eat, or sniff the butt of a dough as she chops by on I don't know, November ten, maybe, but I'll bet those temperatures almost never ever actually happen. What about wounded deer always going to water or never ever ever going uphill. Go talk to someone who owns a good tracking dog and ask them

how often wounded deer break those two rules. How About, on a more individual level, how often have you heard someone say I never rattled to these bucks because they get hunted too hard, Or I always snort, we'se at mature bucks, or I don't know, I never had a full moon. Deer always bet on south facing exposure during blah blah blah, or if a doe bust me and snorts, I leave because I'm never going to see another deer after that, or whatever. They're always turns on this piece

of public land, so it's never worth going. When we lock ourselves into statements like those which are tied to beliefs, we lose. It's plain and simple. This happens with outdoor pursuits all of the time. I saw this so much when I was fishing bass tournaments. You know, somebody saying, I never throw a frog when it's in a cold front because the bass will have lockjaw. When the Smalley's are looking down for crayfish, they are canna ignore the

top waters. I never throw white or sharp true lures in clear water, and I always throw gold and muddy water, on and on. Listen. Part of that's tied to confidence and experience with whatever. But I can't universally be true and listen. The most dangerous part about always and never is that they very well may be rooted in truth. If you have a badass place to hunt and no one else is gonna mess with your deer, never hunting

on a full moon might be a good idea. Assuming that that the deer will always stay better during hotter weather might work in your favor there. Whether it's true or not, it might be the good call for your hunting situation. Many of our truths are just personal, and this brings me back to what I said in the beginning about your own observations. In this way, you're kind of like a little white tail scientists. You're out there trying to prove something wrong, not prove something right. So

I don't know. For example, if someone tells you that only mature bucks respond positively to a snort wease, you might never ever snort wease at a two year old because you damn well know it's not gonna work. But do you know that if you never try it, you're proving them right. If you try it and that two year old comes in that science, I guess I don't know.

Something like it. If you believe that the October low will never ever put a good buck in front of you, and you don't spend any time in a tree during that part of October, guess what you're saying That never statement is true. But what if you go out and you hunt and you find a white oak that is dropping like mad and the bucks are all over it.

What if you find a banging river crossing that is close to a staging area of real cover and the deer think they are safe to use it, even when a lot of hunters would tell you that the bucks will always be bettered all day long during that time of the season. And maybe they're right about their dear, but are they right about yours? How would you find this out? Tearing these always and never statements to shreds is one of the biggest benefits of traveling to hunt.

If you go elk hunting in Colorado, in and over the counter unit, and you consumed any kind of content built around it, you'll see people who say that you might as well leave your calls at home. You better not bugle, and if you do, you know, if you do, be careful. If you call, call, you better chirp a few times and then shut the hell up. They'll say, you know, the pressured elk never respond to calling. They've been burned too many times, or they always run three

mountain ranges away when they hear a bugle. But do they all elk? I don't know. Maybe in some spots. Maybe not if you find a nice pocket of them in the dark timber with a few aspen veins running through it, that just kind of gets overlooked by other hunters, and maybe that never Bugle advice is great if you're i don't know, a hundred yards from the trailhead, but not so great when you're four miles in and a

hundred yards from an actual bowl. I honestly think the best way to be a successful hunter is to give yourself as many options as possible figure out when to use them. This goes for hunting spots, of course, but calling and hunting techniques since whole host other categories. Keep an open mind and understand that the deer will teach you that always never are rarely true. Take this one for example. I spoke recently with someone who is a

really good white to hunter. This dude gets it done on public land and some of the more heavily hunted states, and he was describing some of his camera strategy. He flat outsid at one point, I never haunt a specific buck until he starts daylighting on my camera and listen his results. They prove that his strategy works. He kills good bucks, but I also wonder couldn't he hunt other places while waiting for a good one to daylight on

one of his cameras. You know, maybe not honey hoole stuff, But isn't it worth it to go even when your cameras are showing only midnight movement? But also, his strategy involves dozens of cameras, and he also scouts a ton and has enough public land to work with that he can wait for the right time to go in on specific bucks. What if you only have two cameras, and

what if they aren't cell cams but traditional cameras. What if you only have a few weekends throughout the season, should you never hunt until you get a buck daylighting? See what I mean? This stuff is very individualized. I remember talking to a fellow who is pretty dang well known in hunting circles, and he said he never goes into the woods until the rut. He only hunts the field edges and the food plots and leaves all their thicker cover and funnels alone until the bucks should be cruising.

And you know what, that's a great strategy if you're running a couple of thousand acres and managed ground. But what about somebody who isn't that always strategy won't make much sense for the public land hunter, who would be probably wasting his or her time sitting field edges with set of the competition out there. Again. The antidote to these confining beliefs his actual experience, trying new things, hunting new places, going out when you believe the hunting shouldn't

be very good. It involves letting the deer show you that what you believe is mostly wrong, or at the very least not always right. I've had so many experiences out there that have done this for me. The first big buck I killed did this when he was the first one in the field one really awesome night in September, a long time ago. The bucks I've seen and killed while hunting in October when it's supposed to be a

low same deal. Killing one of my best year ever on public land when the temperature was in the nineties changed how I thought about things. The little bucks that have come running into my storm wheeze. The deers that have showed up right after a dose snorted five thousand times after winning me, the bucks on public land where so many people have told me there are never good bucks,

there or never bucks of a certain caliber. There the great hunts I've had on ground that people have said they always get shot out by the rifle hunters, or HD killed them all, you name it. There are a ton of always and never statements out there that just don't hold water. But you might be thinking, what does this do for you now? I don't know. I'm not sure, but I am a big believer in thinking through problems.

That's one of the reasons I like running. After a while, your body just goes into autopilot and your brain can do a little heavy lifting on some of the things you'd like to figure out. For me, one of those things is the perpetual problem of how do I get dear close enough in a variety of spots in a

bunch of different states so I can shoot some of them? Now, even if you don't travel all over, it's a safe bet that if you listen to this podcast, you do run into the same problems as me every season, or some of the same problems. How do you get one close enough to shoot? It's so simple and yet so

freaking hard. Sometimes thinking about what might be holding you back, like what you believe about the deer Hunting that isn't just universally true is a great way to expand your repertoire bit it's a great way to uncheckle yourself from yourself and go try some new things. And at the very least it's worth the mental gymnastics anyway if it gets you to start thinking about what maybe you believe

you know that might not be so true. That's literally how humanity has advanced to the point we are today. And while some of these advancements really suck, we also have some pretty decent things going on in life that are a hell of a lot better than huddling around a fire in a cave somewhere, eating raw meat and

using animal skins to cover our giblets. So what are your always and never beliefs about, dear, think about them, and then think about how you go out and prove them wrong this season, and tune in next week because I'm going to talk about how it doesn't matter where you hunt, or what you shoot, or who you follow on the old Instagram. That's it for this week. I'm Tony Peterson. This has been the Wire to Hunt Foundations podcast,

which brought to you by First Light. As always, thank you so much for listening, and if you want more content, you can head on over to the meat eater dot com slash wired and see articles by myself and Mark and Alex Gilstrom and a whole bunch of white tail killers. Or you can check out our wire to Hunt YouTube channel. Let's see the weekly how to content that we dropped