Ep. 678: Foundations - It's Always Time to Learn Something New

friends in the outdoors. Man, I've had the good fortune to get to know a few people who are pretty successful in life that they all happen to be tied to the outdoor industry is neither here nor there, because these folks probably would have been successful no matter what. They just happened to have some shared interest with folks like me and you, and they figured out how to do something in the outdoor space that just hadn't been

done before. Mister Ranella the most obvious example. And you know, if you follow the dog side of things, I would put Tom dockin right there. I'm fortunate to know several people like those guys, and you want to know what I think is their secrets to success curiosity. They're interested in learning, and I think that's a powerful thing in life, so powerful that I think we should all consider pushing ourselves to stay curious and to learn new things, which

is what this whole episode is about. Listen. I'm not saying this is the best reason to have kids, but the truth is, if you want to answer a lot of questions, have some kids. My daughters are at the age where they ask a lot of questions, and it's both pretty awesome and somewhat maddening. We recently watched a movie called sixty five, which is a Hollywood thriller type of sci fi movie that is built on a pretty

wild premise. I'm not going to spoil it for you, but the plot is, you know, it's constructed upon an idea that is very hard for eleven year old girls to grasp. As an adult, you just kind of recognize these plot points as a reason to put some characters in a challenging environment. But for youngsters it's different. They take things more literally, and this movie takes you right to the age of dinosaurs, and that brings up a

lot of questions. So many in fact that I was about ready to not watch the movie after a while because I didn't write it, I didn't have any more background information than anyone else, and I recognized it for what it really was, just entertainment. But the idea around the movie is big, and that fosters questions from kids because they are curious, and like I said, I love that,

even though sometimes I get annoyed by it. We recently spent some time in northern Wisconsin looking for bears and bucks and frogs and snakes and catching a few trout. So I got to answer a bunch of questions there and ask a few of my own. And one of the things we like to do when we go over there is to fish for brook trout, and since they are one of the few kinds of fish that I can eat without immediately dying, we actually tried to keep

a few of them on this trip. We ended up with five keepers, which was about right to throw on the grill for the girls and I. And as I cleaned those fish, we looked at their organs and what was in their stomach, because the girls were curious and so was I. You know, the water was low, the bugs didn't seem to be hatching much, so I wanted to know what those little brook trout were munching on.

Turns out they were eating some bugs and some tiny minnows, which is, I don't know, kind of always interesting to see when you slice open their innards. That was a good curiosity. It was more fun than dealing with that movie, although I can't really say why that matters much more to me than I don't know questions based in the Mesozoic era around a bunch of giant lizards held about on eating some actors I don't know. Anyway, When we

weren't trout fishing, we were in the woods. And if there is an environment more ripe for curiosity from six gray girls or forty three year old boys, I haven't seen it yet. We managed to find a garter snake hotspot, which consists of two rock piles on a property I own that harbors a high population of those very common serpents. It also, much to one of my daughter's delight, had quite a few shed snake skins strewn about in the rocks. So we learned about snakes why they outgrow their skins.

Then we saw something that made me curious. There's a property we drive by over there that always has deer in it, and I mean always. I don't know what's so special about it, but it is an overgrown pasture with some apple trees and a nice pond, and just kind of different habitat than most of the big wood stuff around there. So in a way, I guess I

just answered my own question about what's different about it. Anyway, while coming back from that stream on one of those days when we went trout fishing, we all turned our attention to that property and we saw, not surprisingly, a mature dough standing there in the early afternoon with her face buried in some shrubbery. When I pulled up my camera, which was fitted with a five hundred milimeter lens, I saw that she was greedily eating ripe raspberries, and I

mean that old girl was mowing down. And as we watched this, I realized something. I've never seen a deer eat raspberries. If you had asked me if they do, I would have probably said that seems pretty likely, but I didn't actually know that. And what was even cooler than that, however, was that while we were watching the dough eat some raspberries, we noticed more movement in the brush. That's when we saw three tom turkeys pecking away at

the backside of the same raspberry bush. Again, if you had asked me if wild turkeys eat raspberries, I just said I don't know. Probably they probably do, but I'd never seen it before. I've seen turkeys nom away on a lot of stuff, including crab apples, but never berries. In fact, I shot a hen in the fall one time years ago after busting up a flock in southeastern

Minnesota that was just chock full of crab apples. She even smelled like apples when I cleaned her, kind of like when you shoot an antelope and you butcher it and realize that the meat smells just like sage brus. I don't know why I like that, but I do know. These discoveries with trout and deer and turkeys, you know, they might prove to be actionable at some time in the future. And that's kind of how hunting content is

supposed to work. I, in my divine wisdom, figure something out that not many people know, and then I tell them and they all love me for it. On paper, it goes like that, I guess, But the truth is learning something new is good for all of us on a few different levels. The first is that sure, knowing deeri eat raspberries, it might lead you to some kind of food source that you've never thought of before, and maybe that works out pretty well on a hunt. That's

a good thing, and it's like almost transactional. But it's also good to just learn new stuff for the sake of doing it. It's good for the brain to pack in some new interesting information. I think is a speed She's we're kind of at a crossroads with curiosity and new information. We really don't need to learn very much because we have all the intellectual wealth of our entire

existence packed right into our phones. We don't really need to know how I don't know radiocarbon dating works anymore than we need to know how to do algebra, because we have a device that can, at any moment do all that intellectual heavy lifting for us. But that's also a detriment to our existence, because if you want to do something challenging like kill a bull elk or arrow a mature white tailed buck, or learn to play guitar or run a ten k in under forty eight minutes,

you can learn all about those tasks and pursuits. But Apple hasn't made a product yet that will actually get you to the goal. That's on you, my friends. And it's not the big goals and the big wins and the really paradigm shifting things you learn that matter. Well, they could, but they don't. Usually it's the little stuff that we do that we get better at, that we challenge ourselves with, that makes the whole thing better. Let me give you an example. I'm weirdly obsessed with calling

in turkeys. I love the conversation so much that I have zero interest in killing them any other way than talking them in. And I know you can bushwhack them. I know you can scout them out and put some good decoys and not make a sound and birds will still come in. That doesn't do anything for me anymore. I want to call them. And to call them, you

have to learn to speak like them. But you don't just pick up a new mouth call and suddenly have meaningful conversations with wild turkeys in a bunch of different situations. You have to learn to yelp about seven thousand different ways, and cut and purr and bubble, cluck and gobble and say everything a turkey might say, but you're not done there.

You still have to learn not only how to say those things really well anytime it's necessary, but also understand when the time is right to say one thing and not another. It's a never ending pursuit, and it involves not only messing with a bunch of different turkey calls, but getting in a position to listen to and talk

to wild birds. It's a skill I personally love to work on, and I think it's helped me when I elkon of course, but also when I try to call deer, and I honestly think it's helped me become a better dog trainer, as crazy as that sounds. And it all starts with a little goal of, say, kind of learning how to purr and cluck on command with a mouth call or maybe a slate call. It's simple, right, but it's really not, and it's not just to get a few more beards and fans in the old trophy room.

Being curious about new stuff in the outdoors is your gateway to two things, enjoying it more and getting better and leave me. Those two go hand in hand. This is the driver behind some of the best deer hunters who all have names. You folks know, we think that a rock solid work ethic is the key to scouting

a lot and listen. It's definitely a component, but it's also just wondering what's going on on a certain ridge or the edge of a certain swamp, or where a specific buck who happened to show himself in the field last night spends the middle of his day when the sun is overhead. And what he does on the nights when he doesn't pop into the beans at last light with a few of his velvet antler buddies. What does he do in his day? Where does he live? Does

he eat raspberries at some point? Probably if they are available in your neck of the woods. Asking questions is a start, but it's mostly just a jumping off point to really learning, And the more you learn, the better things get. What do you not know that you're curious about? What skill do you wish you had that you just don't. If you're listening to a guy like me talk about hunting, I'm just gonna go on a limb and say, you probably have a few holes in your game. What are they?

One of the biggest holes in my game that I've talked about quite a bit. Is buck betting. I know I've brought this up a bunch, partially because it bothers me. I need to learn to think about betting differently and infuse that in my scouting efforts. You know, sometimes I stumble across beds while I'm scouting, and I plug that into my strategies, but it's usually a happy accident and

there's not a lot of intention behind that. I need to try to get better at figuring out where to your bed, and that's something that I'm not likely to master anytime soon. Popp into my head quite often when I'm in the woods, and I like that. I like that when we were trout fishing in Wisconsin and we went into a stream that winds its way through thousands of acres of National forest, that I got to see a deer stand up out of a bed and run away. And that's not the first year I've seen there, and

it's not a place I ever considered hunting before. But I'm trying to learn more about betting, and I think that spot has unbelievable access for a morning hunt. See how that's starting to come together. I also think that just about every hunter in the county drives right past that area to get to better quote unquote better hunting grounds. There's a lot to be curious about out there, and there's a lot to learn. I'm also curious about decoying

deer in the early season two. I'm sure a lot of you probably heard, but mediatter recently bought Dave Smith decoys. I've used their turkey decoys for a long time, and honestly, without question, I believe they are the best on the market. Even explain that in detail to my wife when I bought a flock of them right after the girls were born and she saw what they cost. And while they are known for their turkey and goose decoys, the boys at DST also happen to have a couple of deer decoys.

One is a buck and one is a dough. Now, the buck looks bigger than most of the books I tend to shoot in any given year, but the dough is a small, perfectly crafted replica. I'm curious and I intend to find out if I can use that decoy in a food source in mid September to help me either call in a buck or just shoot a curious dough that might come down to it. Now, I know you're not supposed to use decoys outside of the rut or the pre rut, but I'm curious about it. I'm

curious if that's actually true or not. I want to learn if there is an application for running an ultra realistic dough decoy when it's not late October or sometime in November. And I might be wrong, I might be right. I intend to learn one way or the other, because if it works out, I'll have just another tool in the old kit. So what are you curious about? Maybe it's as simple as learning more about I don't know tree identification. I'm not a big tree guy. I like

the woods for the animals and the experience. But I also realize that knowing the difference between a red oak and a white oak is a pretty straightforward way to have a little better strategy throughout much of the season. Are you in a spot we're learning a little more about the trees in your area on your deer ground might benefit you as a hunter. Or maybe you're curious about a little water hole somewhere and you need to

drop a camera there to answer some questions. Maybe you want a grunt in an early season buck as their bachelor groups start to break up. Are you confident with a grunt two? Are you curious how you can make that happen. Maybe you're a lifelong ladder stand hunter and you're curious about the mobile hunting craze. There's only one way to find out if it's the right move for you. You know, learn how to quickly set up some sticks and a lightweight stand or a saddle. Maybe that's a

skill you should develop if you're curious about it. It definitely won't hinder your chances of killing deer from here until you're in a nursing home. I'll tell you that much. What is something you're curious about? What do you want to learn? I think forcing yourself to stay curious is much better than filling in the blanks, which we humans do all the time. We've done it since we started keeping records, probably way before that, and it's just not

a great way to advance ourselves. It's comfortable, it's easy, but it's the folks who question lots of stuff and who are curious why I don't know. And apple falls out of a tree and hits them on the head versus floating up into the clouds that really moves us as a species and as individuals into a more knowledgeable space. There has to be something this summer, as we wind our way to another fall on another hunting season, that

you want to learn or start learning. It might be as simple as a part of a property that you've hunted for a long time that you just don't quite utilize or quite understand. Or maybe it's getting really used to a saddle, or learning how to shoot your bow in low light at random distances, or I don't know. Instead of blazing through the woods looking for big picture deer sign, you want to learn to slow down and notice the nipped off tops of certain kinds of plants. Well,

what kind of plants are they? Why are the deer eating them now? And when do they eat it? Where do they come from, how do they leave? Where do they go next? Don't think of this as something that comes from me, or a scouting style from somebody like Andy May that you can emulate. Think of it as you fostering your own curiosity in life and taking that

with you into the woods. Like when you read one of Cormack McCarthy's novels and I think you should google half the words that you read to see what they mean, because you've probably never heard them before. When you talk about something that we take for granted, like the sun is ninety three million is miles away from earth, do yourself a favor. Ask yourself, how the hell do we know that? How do we figure something like that out so long long ago? What methods did those people use?

The more you ask why, the more you're likely to try to find an answer. And the more you do that, the more you realize that curiosity is a gift and it often leads to the development of more skills. Instead of googling everything and not learning much, you're learning much and not googling everything that's important in life, and it'll

make you better in the outdoors. It'll make you better at woodsmanship, and that's a huge benefit if you place some value on walking into the woods without fresh venison and leaving with a whole lot of it. So stay curious, my friends, Take a look at your hunting life and your life in general, and figure out a few things you should learn or a few skills you can develop.

Then work on that stuff, work on getting better in your own way, figure it out, figure out how to get better and listen in the next week because I'm going to keep dumping out the contents of my brain and the hopes that you and I together can have our best season. Ever, how's that sound. That's it for this week, my friends. I'm Tony Peterson. This has been the Wired to Hunt Foundation's podcast, which has brought to

you by First Light. As always, I want to thank you so much for listening and for all of your support. I really appreciate it. Mark really appreciates it. Everybody here at me eater really appreciates that. You guys, you know you come and support us in a variety of different ways. It means so much much to us, So thank you

for that. If you want some more white tail content, or you want some more general hunting content, or you want to figure out how to garden or whatever, you can head to the meeteater dot com and see so many different articles, so many different video series, podcasts, tons of content. No matter what kind of outdoors pursuit your interest in. Go over there the meeteater dot com. Check it out.