Ep. 700: Foundations - Don't Make Unspoken Deals with the Deer

Even those mustachioed, flannel wearing bowsman nights that seem to only hunt with rifles for mountain or plains dwelling critters, they're thinking about white tails this week and that is no small feat. Trust me. Most of the time, us whitetail hunters at Meat Eater are kind of just relegated to the kiddie table while the big wigs plan their next amazing spearfishing trip or something cool like that. Not this week, though, it's all about deer. That's what I'm

going to talk about today. But first I need to sell you guys some stuff. We have a ton of good first light gear on super sale this week and a whole lot of other whitetail necessities. You can head to the Meat Eater's store at the meat eater dot com and see the deals which are going to net you a healthy discount. Or you can head over to my Instagram at Tony J. Peterson and check out the link in my bio. If you do that, I might

not get fired, so that one has my vote. But even if you do want to see me fired and laying sod or flipping burgers somewhere and are still interested in buying some whitetail gear, head on over to the site and check it out. Okay, that's enough salesy stuff. It's time to talk about deer. And I know I said I was going to talk about some cool whitetail facts last week, but something recently reminded me of a

topic that I just need to cover. I think it'll help you kill more dear, which is what I was originally gonna do, and I wanted you to have that help with So there's that and here's this. One of the reasons I hate being in the public eye is well dealing with the public. That's not a humble brig to let you know how famous I am. It's just the truth. I'm an introvert mostly, and I don't like

talking to strangers. I guess in that way, I wasn't a great candidate to get into a white van with no windows promising free puppies when I was eight, No, thank you, mister. I'm also not that great at relationships. Really, I kind of just suck as a person overall, but specifically on the relationship front. I learned something recently that has been kind of a revelation for me. You see, when we deal with friends and family in very low level hunting celebrities and we our spouses, we are often

looking for them to do something for us. Now, sure, there are selfless people out there who really only do things out of the goodness of their hearts, but mostly most of us are looking for mutually beneficial arrangements with the people around us. That probably sounds worse than I mean it to. It's not that we are all quid pro quo transactionists. I mean, we aren't all politicians, so our desires are often more benign and innocent, or so

we think. There's a concept in relationships called covert contracts. This is a term coined by the author doctor Robert Glover, who wrote the book No More Mister Nice Guy. I'll explain what a covert contract is in a second, but let me first tell you what an overt contract is. This is a healthy agreement between two people, that is, you know, debated on, worked out whatever, negotiated, and then they agree. An easy example would be if you would rather hold a police taser to your nuts than spend

a minute with your in laws. So you tell your wife that you'll do Thanksgiving with her lunatic family if she'll do Christmas with the perfect angels who raised you. If she agrees to those terms, that's an overt contract. Simple right. It's a compromise where you both get something you want and you both sacrifice a little bit. Another overt contract would be if you meet someone who owns land that you want to hunt, like I did recently.

Maybe the owner wants to hunt, maybe they love venison, but he doesn't know what he's doing, so you agree to provide stands and safety harnesses, cameras, and a whole lot of know how to the situation. He gets to learn about deer and deer hunting. He will likely get some venison, and you, or in this case me, gets a new place to hunt. Now, as long as everyone sticks with it, the deal is pretty simple and it's beneficial all involved. The flip side of an overt contract

is a covert contract. These are bad. This is when you make a deal with someone in your head and then get angry with them for not reading your mind and honoring the deal. Does that sound kind of nuts? It's not, because we all do it. Let me give you an example. My wife recently got mad at me for not replacing the sink in our kitchen. You might think, well, shoot, man, get that sink replaced, since it's obviously broken or not functioning correctly. But I would say, hold on, mister smarty pants.

The sink and the faucet and pretty much all parts of it work just fine. It looks good too, at least to my eye. But for whatever reason, I don't know, probably some past head trauma or maybe bad jeans, my wife decided she wanted a new sink. She also decided she wanted me, the least handy guy you'll ever meet, to replace it. So she made a deal with me that I'd never agree to and then got mad at me for not living up to it. Isn't that wacky? Well I do that stuff to her too. It's a

two way street that makes marriage super fun kids. A good thing about it, if there is, is that if you're aware that you make these covert contracts with people, you can stop, or you can at least not get mad at them when they don't live up to an unspoken,

invisible agreement that they had no clue existed. Acknowledging that will also make you a better communicator, which is awful important if you don't want some blonde suburb dweller with a weird new sink fetish to take half of your hunting land and maybe your new boat and a divorce. Covert contracts are bad in marriage and friendships, really all relationships. This applies to the relationships that we have with our favorite game animals too, like the I don't know regal

and Majestic Lemur. Just kidding, it's the Cape Buffalo. Don't feel bad. I don't like myself either, of course, it's the white tail. We make deals with him all the time, and you know what that rap bastard often does. He breaks them. Then we get mad at him, and we become even worse hunters, until we spiral so far down the into the abyss of depression that we start thinking about doing something much easier that takes no skill at all,

like golf. Let me give you some examples of times I made covert contracts with deer that will probably be

awfully relatable to most of you. How about like all the work you do in the preseason, like the winter scouting, the summer scouting, the trail camera work, the glassing, the stand hanging, the cutting trails, planning, food plots, whatever you say to the white tail gods, I've done all of this work, and I've put in all this effort, and now you should deliver unto me one I don't know, one hundred and thirty seven inch eleven point with nice

G two's and a twenty inch inside spread. But instead you see does and fawns and little bucks and no deer that could remotely be rounded up to one forty. The deal is broken, and you become sad, or maybe you say again to the great deer gods in the sky that you have a busy schedule. You have three little kids at home, a wife who really wants a new sink, and a job where your boss is one of those micromanaging losers who have there's no hobbies and lives to make everyone think he works so much harder

than everyone else. Your vacation time is a precious commodity, So you say, I'm going to take the first week of November off. I won't get much time to hunt before that, but if I put in all days sits for a week, then I'll certainly get the good end of this deal, which is that a big buck will come by and I will shoot him. He might, but he also might not, And even if he does, there's a lot that can go wrong. Before you're high five and your buddy at the end of a short blood trail.

The contract again is broken. In a relationship. When that happens, it's a recipe for resentment and anger and the idea that you should get back at them somehow. This stems from fear of rejection and low self esteem. I'd say a lot of us in our relationship with deer come at it from a place of fearing real rejection and having low confidence that we will get our shit together

and kill a good buck or any deer. If that happens to be the phase you're in, you don't want to be mad at the deer for not doing what you expect them to, because in that case, you're just gonnahunt less and you're gonna enjoy hunting less and it's not gonna go too well. The only deal they make with us is that they'll be out there somewhere trying their hardest to never ever cross paths with us. So we need to reframe our thinking. The deer don't owe

us anything. The basis for that no More Mister nice Guy book I mentioned at the beginning is that there are guys out there who try to be fake nice to women and treat them like princesses, believing that if they do, the ladies won't be able to help themselves and they'll reward them in a very few specific not safe for work ways. This rarely works because even though women are really crazy about their sink demands, they aren't dumb.

They'll see this disingenuous nice guy act and they go, I know what you're looking for and it's not gonna happen. Then the nice guys get mad and they say women only want mean dudes, which is dewan fellas who are direct and honest about their intentions. The deer, just like those savvy ladies, know what you're after. There's no divine hand on the scale watching you hunt and deciding you've put in the requisite work and you deserve a big buck. It's about you putting yourself in a position to be

where they are while they don't know you're there. That's about it. We aren't owed anything from the woods, and the sooner we accept that. The sooner we can take the act of hunting white tails for what it is, a really cool, super challenging opportunity that might break our way if we keep a good attitude and we keep putting in the effort. Even though this isn't as easy as it sounds. Take that out of state trip you

want to go on with your buddies. For example, we make a covert contract with whatever state that is good and a jack oft the license prices and sell us a super expensive non resident tag and take advantage of us because we have no voting power. But in return, they're going to give us a nice buck, simple, straightforward. But you aren't being sold a possession ticket with a

buck already attached to it. You're being sold an opportunity, one that solely promises you the chance to come to whatever state and try to see if you can get the deer to walk in front of you without knowing you're there. A lot of hunters focus on the end result, or what they think should be the end result, and totally dismiss the reality that it's a licensed hunt, not a guarantee that you'll kill a certain class of animal, because most people won't and for some that breeds resentment

and anger. Now I get that I'm distilling this way down because there are a million variables that go into an out of state trip or any hunt for that matter, But the truth is that it's easy to be resentful of an unfilled expensive non resident tag, all that time and money down the drain with nothing to show for it except some extra miles on your truck. That's a bad way to look at it, and it isn't going

to help your cause. If you ever decide to travel for white tails or any other critter, don't make a covert contract with a fishing game agency, because they will let you down and they won't know. And I promise you this, they won't care because they don't make a deal that you'll kill an animal, only that you'll get to hunt. You've heard me say this a lot, but it bears repeating. Your attitude about hunting is important. It might be the most important aspect of the whole thing

for many of us. Much of it involves just thinking about things a little bit differently. This is where hunting with newcomers can help you find a new equilibrium. When I help with my daughters, they are pretty interested in every animal that we see. They appreciate the newness of it all and the wonder of the woods. They really do. I don't, not as often as I should, and that's

a problem. I've seen roughly three million squirrels doing squirrel things while sitting on stand, so it's not that interesting to me to see a squirrel, but to them it is a doe walking into the other end of the field. Is mildly interesting to me, but it's a big deal to them. They are interested and curious, and that's a good way to go about stuff. It's a hedge against resentment and bitterness a sort of mind hack, if you will.

If you go into the woods with a specific expectation about how things are going to go, you are almost always setting yourself up for disappointment. You know, unless you're on a stupid good property that no one else hunts, predictable positive outcomes are few and far between. Instead of looking at a sit where you blanked as being a total failure and a waste of time, ask yourself, why weren't they there? What does it mean? Or better yet, what can you learn from that big old goosegg of

a sit? Did it reaffirm your suspicions that you've burned out a spot? Did you think they'd be eating soybeans? But clearly there in the woods nomin on some acorns or something else where? Will you go tomorrow to redeem yourself? Instead of making a covert contract with the deer gods who simply laugh at your follies, make an overt contract with mother Nature. You'll put in the work and keep after it, and she will eventually give you what you

came for. It really can be that simple. If you're willing to put in what is necessary over and over and over again, you will be successful. That might not mean you'll kill booners every year, because let's be honest, if you're listening to this podcast, the one hundred and

seventy inches are pretty safe from you. But you might kill a good one, or you might just have the season where you're around more deer than ever, where you go into the woods and see deer behavior and have those streaks where you know when you slip into the woods you're going to be around deer. I don't think there's anything more fun than the anticipation of going in just knowing and believing in your heart of hearts that

you're going to see a bunch of deer. In fact, it makes me feel a little bad for the people who have such good hunting that they see tons of deer every time they go, only get real excited when a buck they've named and watched for seven years shows up. They'll never know what it's like to string together several clunkers where you'd actually pay to have a squirrel to watch, and then suddenly stumble into something where you see five

or six and one sit. It's probably similar to what I hear happens when people get giardia and they ruin their skivvies with embarrassing frequency until they get the right meds and it clears up and they feel like the world is once again a loving and special place. That is straight out of a diarrhea free Disney movie. Real hunting is unpredictable, and that means it's going to break the wrong way a lot. But the wrong way is really in the eye of the beholder. Sure it sucks

to suck, but that's a temporary condition. If you use those CITs to figure something out and motivate yourself to keep going to live up to your side of the contract. So do that. Make a deal with the White deal gods or Mother Nature or whoever, and then stick to it. Now, they might flake out and leave you disappointed at the end of the season, but if you keep working on your end, the odds of them not delivering get lower and lower until it's almost and I mean almost, a

certainty that something good will happen and you'll get your chance. Also, I mean this with sincerity. Think about those COVID contracts you've made with the folks you care about the most. They are a relationship killer and a fast tracked of misery for all involved. Do that and come back next week because I'm going to talk about how complex deer really are and why that kind of matters and why it kind of doesn't. That's it for this week. I'm

Tony Peterson. This has been the Wired Hunt Foundation's podcast, which is brought to you by First Light. As always, thank you so much for listening, for all your support, for heading over there checking out or a white tail week and the sales we got going on all that good stuff. While you're there, if you want some more white tail content, or you want to watch some videos, listen to some podcasts, whatever, it's all there. Look around. You're going to find stuff that you didn't even know

Media Too was producing. Maybe you want to cook a little bit and you're going to find a recipe. It's all there. Go check it out the dot com. Hmm