Ep. 674: Foundations - How to Know if Your Hunting Standards Are Out of Whack

on and on. The world of white tails tends to take I don't know, a nice little breather during Turkey season and then you know about through June, but once we get past the midpoint of the summer, it seems like it's just pedal to the old whitetail metal. This is also a time when a lot of hunters decide what their standards are for the upcoming season, both with

deer and any Western trips they might take. And I think a lot of us get this wrong for a lot of reasons and I have a few ideas on how to keep your standards in line with your hunting reality, which is what I plan to talk about right now. A few years ago, my brother in law and I got into a boat and headed out onto a lake in north central Minnesota. It was pouring rain, and our goal was just to catch some walleyes. Now, most of you probably know that I'm not much of a walleye guy.

I don't really understand chasing a fish that bites with a timid little tap tap tap and fights like it has never been to the gym. Ever, I prefer sportier fish, if I'm putting it very nicely, I don't mind fishing for walleyes if I have someone who wants some filets, and that was what we had going on that day. It also just happened to be a miserable early June day. But my brother in law and I both have young kids, so we take any chance we can to go out on the water, even if we know we're going to

get soaked. Well, no one told the walleyes that day that it was crappy because they were eating. I mean, we ran out all of our bait and we brought in a limited piece, which on the lake we were fishing on isn't really all that easy. We also happened to see a bunch of other people out, mostly in really nice deep V type of boats, trying to catch

the same walleyes in the same rain. Later we learned that there was a walleye tournament going on on the lake, and the results of that tournament showed us that we'd have been right there in the money and potentially in the running to take home a trophy for our man caves. My brother in law commented on that multiple times, saying we should have been in the tournament. I mean he actually regretted that we weren't. But we weren't, and so

we didn't have the same rules. We got to go out on the water when we wanted to, We got to leave when we wanted to. We weren't subject to a schedule that would lead to disqualification if we didn't stick to it. We didn't have to launch from a specific spot in a specific order and potentially erase another boat to our best location. We weren't in the tournament,

so our day on the water didn't really compare. It was just a good day of fishing and I've run across a hell of a lot of people who fishes specific lake their whole lives, probably because I live in a state where everybody has a cabin on a lake somewhere. Those people think they'd be able to beat the best tournament fishermen in the country on their lakes. And the reason is their lake is their lake, and who's going to know it better than them? Except that's pure silliness.

The pros are a pros for a reason, and they'll whoop up on most average fishermen, even when those average fishermen have four decades of experience on a specific lake or river or reservoir. They're just better overall, and that shows over time. It just does. Now, that doesn't stop a lot of folks from fantasizing about winning fishing tournaments on their home lake, or worse, actually believing that they would. This is because they won't actually go out and test

their beliefs in actual competition. Reality doesn't have to meet fantasy, and that's a comfortable spot to live in. A similar thing happens with a lot of hunters, except that when you hunt, reality is going to meet your fantasy over and over and over again. Every season until you're dead. Hunters set their standards by whatever whims and inputs are available than they actually go hunting. When they do, their standards often prove to be a bit too lofty, but

maybe not in the ways you're thinking. Now. Sure you know someone with two years of experience setting his sights one hundred and eighty class buck or nothing, Or someone who has logged some serious couch time for a few decades who decided that he's going to only shoot three hundred inch or bigger bulls in Colorado and over the counter unit. Those are both pretty easy examples of people who are inclined to outdrive their hunting headlights, so to speak.

But it's usually not that egregious, and it's not as simple as deciding on a class of animal and then just sticking to it. It's about whether you're enjoying the hunt and feel good about the challenge you've set for yourself. This is tricky, and it gets worse because we often take one example of our hunting and import the standards

from that hunting into other endeavors. The easiest way to look at this is to take someone who has a sweet white tail spot close to their home This person might not have much trouble encountering a few one forties or one fifties over the season and always gets a shot or two if he puts in the standtime in

late October or early November. That same hunter on the road on a public land hunt, for example, would be wise to understand and acknowledge the advantages of his home state property, but most of us don't quite get that until we hit the road. The same goes for adopting standards based on hunting industry perceptions. The elk world is

ripe with this, and I think it sucks. Unless if you're in a premier unit or have paid really really good money for a landowner tag or outfitted hunt, you're most likely in for a rude awakening on an elk hunt, especially if you're not all that experience in mountain hunting for elk. The truth is, getting any elk into shooting

range in a lot of situations is so difficult. Never mind that you've watched three hundred and thirty inch bulls march across open meadows while bugling their heads off on YouTube shows for years and on network TV and DVDs before that. Sure easy elker out there, but they are

expensive and probably not available to most of us. So if you hear someone say something like, I don't know, we let a bunch of two fifties and two sixties go while waiting on a good one, you're hearing someone who is either full of shit or hunting someplace that's

real good. If you see people carrying elk quarters over their shoulder in a perfectly lit social media image, you can rest assured that the elk is dead by a side by side and the price tag on its head might get you a full year of tuition at a state universe. And the white tail world is full of this stuff too, And I don't really need to dive into this because I've covered it a ton. No game animal is easier to hack, and no game animal is easier to produce larger specimens with than our good old

buddy the whitetail. This leads to a skewed view of the whole thing and convinces a lot of folks that the whole thing is generally easier than it is. That's a trap, though. The truth is we are all on our own hunting journey and it doesn't matter at all if the most popular whitetail hunter in the country happens to own four thousand acres of deer ground in Middle America, or if the most popular Western hunting personality is spend a couple hundred thousand dollars a season to kill big,

unpressured bowls. What matters is how you hunt and what would mean something to you, What challenges you set for yourself as we lead into the season, and how they make you feel when you succeed and when you fall flat on your face and fail. Let me give you an example from my life. As I record this, I'm waiting to see what tags I'll end up with for

the season. I know all that I have a bear tag for Wisconsin, and I'm kind of a shitty bear hunter, so my standards are probably going to be an illegal yogi. This goes from my daughter as well, and she'll get first crack at them. There's no real reason for me to trophy hunt bears when I'm not very good at the whole thing and probably won't have a ton of time to do it. I just want to enjoy the process and give myself a chance at success.

adjust what would make me happy. Now, if the conditions are hot as hell and the pressure isn't absurd, my standards might go up because that favors the possible of having a mature buck come into a tank or a pond. In that case, the young bucks are safe now. On the other end of the spectrum, I've got northern Wisconsin. I haven't had them too much time in the last two seasons to hunt the big woods, and I miss

it a lot. I miss it so much that I'm going to hunt public land in a place with low deer numbers and high hunter numbers instead of going to southwestern Wisconsin to hunt private land where there are fewer deer hunters and a ton of deer, including a high

percentage of big bucks. It sounds dumb, I know, but I don't care about putting myself in a spot to have the best chance to kill big deer because I just want to hunt certain places, and one of those places of the big Woods and my standards there, They're going to start awful small and could stay that way depending on the action. The big Woods is often pretty stingy in my experience, so there might not be an

antler buck that is safe in my vicinity. But that'll depend on my scouting and how much time I'm going to get to hunt, and what I feel like when some deer do walk down the trail pass one of my setups. I'm also at a place where I don't feel like I have a lot to prove. You might not be there yet, and that's important to acknowledge. You might use that as a motivator to set high standards and then chase them all season. Now. I know that

sounds like I'm being negative, but I'm not. Drive is important, and it leads to discipline and patience and sometimes the kind of success that brings you to a new level as a hunter and as a human. That's a good thing. Some people thrive on big challenges and it lifts them up. Others meet a big challenge and it treats them like a sucker punch to the old schnas their eyes start to water, their lips start to quiver, and they slouch their way home while muttering under their breath about how

stupid life is. Okay, that's an exaggeration, but people are individuals, and what drives someone to be better might not be what drives you to be better. Or what some people enjoy others might view as pure torture. The high standards that cause one person to scout more and hunt harder might cause another to stay home and rake leaves since it's nearly unachievable and therefore not really worth it. So what kind of person are you? Be? Honest or better? Yet?

What kind of person are you? On each kind of hunt you might do? Do you like the season long challenge of targeting a rare age class of buck in your woods? Or maybe a hunt a southern state with a stupid long rifle season and not a destination food source in sight, and you're only on public land and

you need to target any illegal deer. Maybe you've only aired a few deer, and while your ego wants big bucks and nothing else, your experience and skill level and time available and hunting situation says that does and young bucks are probably a much more realistic goal, and they're still challenging. Maybe you're like me, and for some reason, every dear you see looks delicious and makes you kind of want to shoot it, and you can't really describe why.

Maybe you just love the feeling of settling your pin and watching your fletching disappear into hide and ribs and vitals. If that's the case, maybe your goal should involve some antler list dear, maybe several. If you're a big fan of venison, what you set your standards at, whether we're talking white tails or elk or antelope or whatever, it's

up to you. It's your journey, and it's not over just when you settle on the exact type of animal that would provide an amazing challenge but also a realistic chance for you to succeed. It goes beyond that, because this stuff is mostly a moving target. My friends, the standards you set five years ago will probably be different today for several reasons. You've grown and changed as a hunter. Somehow that's a given. But maybe you've moved to a new city or a new state and that's a big change.

Maybe five years ago you didn't have any kids and you had lots of time, and now you have two little, adorable twin girls who demand a lot of your time, and you have to be back home during some of the best parts of the season for dance recitals and trigger treating or whatever. Should your hunting standards stay the same when your life is vastly different. I don't think so.

I think you should do your best to set some goals it will work for you right now, and then you should reflect on how well you did not at hunting, although that's important too, but on how well you set your specific goals and then how well you followed through on trying to meet them. Maybe you really regret not

shooting that cow elk on day one year hunt. Maybe that basket rack six pointer feeding in the beans on opening night who gave you a stupid easy shot and was full of delicious venison was your best chance you had to fill a tag all season. Does it bother you that you let him walk? Do you feel good about your decisions? The key here is honesty with yourself. If it didn't nag at you at all to do what you did, then your standard's probably pretty spot on.

If you didn't have much fun hunting and you regret a lot of your decisions, it's probably time to recalibrate. A lot of times this happens because we set our standards just too damn high, and that can suck the fun right out of this whole thing. Or real quick only you can decide if this is true in your case or not. If it is, it's time to figure

something better out. If you don't like eating tags, or you don't feel you have enough time to be a real trophy hunter, or you just don't have it in your heart to pass up a young buck even though you feel social pressure to do so, it's time to be real. It's time to decide for yourself what to do and why to do it now. I know some of this stuff really doesn't become relevant until the season opens, or I don't know, sometimes when you're halfway through the season,

but it's worthwhile to think about it now. As the bucks really start to show their racks and the western hunt plans all kind of start to come together. Now is as good of time as any to start the process of thinking about yourself as a hunter in an honest way and decide what it'll take for you to get to a spot where you'll look back on this season with fond memories and not the sting of regret, which I might add can be from taking the easy

way out and not challenging yourself at all. If you've shot one hundred and twelve year and a half old bucks on opening weekend and they just don't really do it for you anymore, I don't know, it might be time to go from sixty inches to one hundred inches. Sometimes we rebel against trophy hunting so much that we put ourselves in a position where there isn't much of a challenge at all. And while some folks love that and that's great, others don't and they might not even

realize it. So again, let me say this, hunting is your journey, yours alone. Figure out what you want out of it, and then work toward that goal. Do this in spite of what everyone else in the hunting community seems to be doing, because their journey doesn't matter to you at all. And I mean that it doesn't matter at all, who does what with their hunting season Because you're on your own and that's the way it should be.

Embrace it and enjoy it, and come back next week because I'm going to talk about how to really break down on an ambush site to understand how to hunt it most effectively. That's it for this week. I'm Tony Peterson. This has been the Wire to Hunt Foundation's podcast, which is brought to you by first Light. First Light happens to be making some really killer stuff right now, like

their Trace lineup. So if you're out there sweating your apple bag off while scouting deer, hanging stands or doing whatever, maybe dropping some cameras out there, check out the Trace lineup. So breatheable, so lightweight, awesome. Hot Weather cameo. As always. Thank you so much for listening to the podcast and for all your support. I can't tell you how much

we all appreciate it here at meat Eater. And if you haven't got enough hunting content in your life, head on over to the medeater dot com and you can check out all kinds of video series one off videos. You can read tons of articles about every kind of facet of the outdoors that you can possibly imagine, and of course we have so much white tail content there as well.