Welcome to the Wired to Hunt Foundations podcast, your guide to the fundamentals of better deer hunting, presented by first Light, creating proven versatile hunting apparel for the stand, saddle or blind. First Light Go Farther, Stay Longer, and now your host, Tony Peterson.
Hey, everyone, welcome to the Wire to Hunt Foundation's podcast, which is brought to you by first Light. Today, I'm going to talk about something that plagues so many hunters, even if they might not want to admit it. Sometimes inspiration falls right into your lap, or at least pops up in your email. An old acquaintance of mine recently sent me a note about how much he's struggling with bow hunting. He feels like he can't get over the hurdle that separates being a deer shooter adder type of
guy to a deer shooter type of guy. His frustration was palpable, and there were a lot of clues in his message that spawned the idea for this whole podcast. He admitted to not being super good at bow hunting, but also targeting mature four and a half year old plus bucks. That's a bad combo that happens a lot. It's also what this whole episode is kind of really all about. There used to be a progression to hunting that allowed someone to start small and worked their way
up to the deer. Not only was it a good way to develop some serious woodsmanship skills, it's also something guys my age were romanticize and remember in a nice glow of nostalgia. It doesn't always jive with reality. It always started with rabbits and squirrels, and as a young man with a bolt action Remington twenty two, in a real bloodlust in my heart, I spent a lot of time roman the woods with that rim fire, trying to
remove bushytails from the trees. I also got to carry a pump twenty gage for bunnies, and if you think I didn't love that shit, you're off your rocker. Some of my best memories of my childhood involved hunting small game, mostly with my dad. I remember rallying around a squirrel family with a pocket full of shells one time, which is a rage against the machine reference for you young lads listening on that morning, my dad put me in a tree stand, probably without a safety harness, and told
me to work on my squirrel accuracy. I think that's where a lot of my problems started, because even though I was surrounded by bushytails, I couldn't hit a squirrel well to save my life. I literally had squirrel fever. And I'll never forget him walking in to pick me up, and he asked me how many I got, because he had spent all morning listening to me shoot. The body count was one, and it wasn't even a clean kill until I got down and sent that poor bushytail to
the great big oak tree in the sky. Another time, while rabbit hunting a lot a stretch of abandoned railroad tracks, I looked down in the grass and saw a cottontail pulling his best If I stay real still, maybe he won't see me move. But I did see him, and I don't know if you know what a well aimed, loaded lead shot does to a bunny that is about six feet off the end of your shotguns barrel. But the disappointment in my dad's eyes when he tried to pick up what was left of that poor rabbit was
pretty obvious. I probably knew it at the time without really knowing it, But the whole stage was being set for me to become a deer hunter then. Now, at that time, twelve was the minimum age, and it took me forever to get there. We hunted everything we could but deer until that season. And then I gradulated to the big leagues. And let me tell you something, I was a born natural. Just kidding, I was definitely born unnatural.
That's probably not the right way to say it, but if there wasn't a word for being really, really bad at deer hunting, I'd have definitely been in the running for some hardware for my trophy case. Those first couple of years, I could barely lay eyes on a deer, and if I did and it got within twenty yards, it definitely got shot at, and it always walked or ran away totally unscathed. My daughter's recently asked me if I've missed more deer than I've shot, and I honestly
couldn't answer. I'd say maybe, because just in those first four years alone, I racked up a string of whiffs that should have got me sent back down to the miners, or worse, sent down to carry the mobile hot dog heater thing while hiking up and down the concrete steps, yelling at people. It was brutal and it was the source of my first white tail meltdown. When I was fifteen, the thing I wanted so much was so close, yet so very very far away. I told my dad I
was done. I was going to become a gun hunter. Now I was going to start killing deer. He said, okay, let's get some slugs and figure this thing out. But he didn't, and I didn't really want to go that route. I wanted to arrow a deer. If you're wondering if I really have any character flaws, I'll tell you this. I'm a pretty stubborn fella. I don't know why. It mostly doesn't serve me very well. But in some ways, if I set a course for myself, it takes a hell of a lot to get me to steer in
a new direction. So I kept hunting, you know what. I eventually started to hit a few deer. Then I started to hit a few correctly, and over time the young bucks and even some two year old started to die with enough frequency where I got a little cocky. My progression to that point in my life had involved a whole lot of small game, a whole lot of upland birds, quite a few turkeys, a fair amount of deer well rounded. I was for sure and totally clueless about what I was getting into when I said it
was time to kill a pope and young buck. When I made that move, what I didn't realize was that I was turning back the time to old Tony or I guess young Tony. Anyway, it was like I was twelve again, and while I could always get my bow drawn, I definitely could not get the pin anywhere close to
where it needed to be meltdown. Number two happened again on a night I've talked about on this podcast before, where in the span of maybe ten minutes, I missed a solid one hundred and fifty class year and then a really nice eight pointer that was close enough that I probably could have dismounted from my stand and very
briefly wrote him like a rodeo bowl. In fact, that probably would have been more effective than what I actually did, which was see him pee my pants, a little shoot over his back, and then pray to the deer guys that lightning would take me out of this life that I definitely wasn't meant to live. As all stories go, I finally did kind of get my shit together and I killed a couple of big bucks in consecutive seasons.
Let me tell you something. I thought I had the whole thing tied up with a nice bow after that. What I didn't expect was to get a job in the hunting industry and suddenly have a whole lot of pressure to be good at this stuff. My deer hunting life has been a lot like trying to go up a super steep driveway that is covered in mostly ice.
You know, I can throw it and four low and try, but the odds are pretty good that my best efforts will eventually leave me at the bottom of the hill, sideways in the road, with nothing to show for it but elevated blood pressure and the desire to set the world on fire. That meltdown was so bad that it forced me to switch up how I shot, how I practiced, what I thought about, and pretty much reinvent myself as a deer hunter. That's not that easy to do, my friends,
But so far this mostly worked. Now I'm too conditioned to failure to believe another meltdown isn't coming, But for now it feels like I might not regress anytime too soon. I'll think about this. That's a pretty abbreviated version of thirty one years of bow hunting, and I still struggle all the time, And I mean all the time. Do you know why? Because bow hunting white tail deer, specifically
mature bucks, is really, really hard. It's not easy for anyone, at least if they are hunting pressure deer.
Oh.
Sure, we have ways to hack the system, and if you have the right land, you can all but ensure an opportunity are free. But most folks don't have that option. Most folks are like you and I, where they work and have kids and are under constant strain of life. They have small spots to hunt, or share farms with other folks, or trek across public land all season. For most of us, this stuff is really difficult. There's a
silver lining. If you've been a passenger on the old Big Bucks struggle bus for a while, you can get over it. Unfortunately, you might not like the remedy. You might not like the cure a whole lot. I'm going to be blunt about this in a way that for some reason in society we look down on We just don't value honesty over hurting people's feelings. And I'll admit there's always room for tact. There's also always room to just lay things out and not pull your punches. So
here it goes. If you're struggling with killing a mature buck, whether it's your first or maybe you sporadically make it happen, but there's no consistency to your game, here's the deal. You're probably not good enough at hunting to make that your goal. Now. I know, goals are subjective and you're free to do what you want to do, but keep that in mind, especially if you find yourself having a
meltdown over not achieving that specific goal. If you're super content with your hunting, great, If you're not, you can't understand why deer hunting is so frustrating and not all that much fun. Listen up, you're not good enough at it to set your goals where they are. They're just too high and you either need to live with that or make a real change. Now. A lot of hunters, I think they realize that, and they do what we
just kind of often do in life. They look for a quick fix, like maybe if you ask Andy May to look at your screenshot of your property, he'll tell you how to hunt. And if you do you know you'll have andy may results not quite though, or maybe if you buy a sweet decoy or some new calls, or you go all out on the salad game and decide the best way to kill big Bucks is to be in a new tree stand every night. Give that
a shot. Whatever floats your boat. But this strategy is like trying to reason with your physical fitness, trying to rationalize why you don't really need to do cardio or why it's not that big of a deal to eat ice cream every night. The formula for getting in shape is real simple and it hasn't changed a lot in a long time. You can make bargains, but you don't make the rules. They are there, like the laws of physics, and whether you agree with them or not, you're still
beholding the gravity and the law of thermodynamics. So are you good enough for your goals? This is a tricky one because if you don't set challenging, somewhat hard to achieve goals, and how are you going to grow as a person and as a hunter. The downside of this is we often focus our goals on a simple metric, which is antler size. Sure, we say we target mature bucks, that's just weasel words, and we all know it. If a deer comes in with one hundred and sixty inches
of antlers on his head, he's getting shot. Whether he's a baby or a grandpa, dear, Mostly what we target is actually antler size, and that's just the reality of it all. But simply killing one hundred and forty inch or when you've only ever killed two and a half year olds, isn't the only way to go about this. Like, I don't know how good of a shot are you not at the range, but on real deer. If you think you have the younger bucks and does mastered, so
it's time to target the big boys. Ask yourself when you shoot those other deer, do you really always do your job correctly or mostly always? How many of them have you shot? When you're sitting in a stand and you see one hundred inch two year old coming down the trail and the weather is perfect and your heart rate spikes, do you want to shoot him? Be honest if you do, but you're worried he isn't big enough, Ask yourself who is not big enough? For strangers on
social media? You're hunting buddies If you have good buddies. They'll give you some shit, but they'll also be real happy for you. If someone on social media disapproves of the deer you shot, you have some options like not posting your kills, which is pretty simple. If you just have to post it, just be happy about it and let folks know that you are happy about it. Some people will still be pricks about it, but that's because
they are miserable with their own lives. Leave them alone and let them suffer until they get their act together. Celebrate your success. Those people aren't your problem. If you have the world of younger Bucks and Doze totally dialed and you are honestly ready for the big leagues but have struggled mightily, think about this. Where are you going wrong? Are you not seeing the big bucks well? Are they there or are you hunting a place where the age
quality is lacking. If they are there and you can't see them when you're hunting, then it's probably all about scouting and hunting smarter. That's it. Got to put in the work and really think through your setups. Try to learn why your efforts aren't producing the sightings or are you seeing the big ones getting shots at them? But not quite able to make the right connection. This is a big one and it happens to just about every bow hunter who doesn't grow up with a thousand acres
a premale ground to hunt in Iowa. This stage can wreck you as a hunter and as a human. It's just rough. So what do you do? The only way out is through, and for me it involved a lot of target practice and a lot of inner monologue where I told myself to focus on the shot, watch the deer's body, plan for the moment when I'll draw the moment went I'll shoot. Am I gonna stop him? Am I gonna shoot him as he naturally comes through. What I'm not gonna do is stare at those antlers and
think about how much I'm worried that I'm going to face. Now, this seems easy enough, but even if you do keep your kind of head in the game and plan out the shot, most of those encounters are still going to result in failure. That failure is going to tell you what to do differently next time. That's how I look at it. It's kind of like getting kicked in the mental nards while getting stung by wass on your eyeballs. But it is a stepping stone. Did you shoot too high,
too low? Seven feet behind this tail? Where did you go wrong? What went wrong? What would you have done differently? What will you do differently next time? Do you consider it a win to have a deer like that that close to you? Because you should. Most hunters don't get that in any given season. Listen, I know that's thin gruel to live on, but it's not nothing. You did it once, you can do it again. And this time, instead of punching the trigger on your release before you
settle your pin, settle your pin. It's a difference of one two seconds. But it's also the difference between another meltdown or that sweet, sweet feeling of finally doing things right. And remember this, You're not alone. This thing we do with white tails so damn fun, it's so damn hard. I promise you that. Just about every hunter you look up to, and many others you've never heard of. But
who are the best of the best, all struggled. They shared a seat with guys like you and me on the struggle bus at one point or another, maybe for a season or two, maybe for a decade or two. The journey to becoming a content somewhat consistent. Big buck killer is a long personal one for almost everyone. It can be a lot of things, both good and bad, and it will be just that. But it's also a
progression of sorts. If you treat it right now, you don't need to murder a million squirrels and cottontails when you're in grade school to work your way up to it. You do have to look around and ask yourself, where are you in your journey now? Did you get a little too far ahead of yourself because of the social
pressure to not shoot young bucks. Did you take a few wins and use them as conclusive evidence that it's time to skip ahead by about forty seven steps in the process, or are you getting there you know, naturally in a way that feels pretty good. Where are you on this journey? And what does it mean for you to set certain goals? I don't take the easy way out, but don't put yourself in a position where this thing you are supposed to love becomes just a source of
stress and anxiety and disappointment. There's plenty of life to do that for you. You don't need it from deer hunting, So find your path, walk it at the pace you need, and eventually you'll get to a point where the challenge is real but also doable. That's a wonderful place to be, even if it's just always kind of a temporary place to be. So get out there, my friends. Make something good happen in the woods. Come back next week because I'm going to talk about gambling kind of. That's it
for this week, my friends. I'm Tony Peterson. This has been the Wired to Hunt Foundation's podcast. As always, thank you so much for listening. I can't tell you how much all of us here at meat Eater truly appreciate your support, but we do. It means the world to us, so thank you for that. If you want some more white tail content, if you want to listen to Clay
talk about you know, stone points. If you want to go check out the meat Eater trivia podcast, maybe the buck truck series that the Element guys put out, I don't care, whatever it is. Go to the meeteater dot com and you will find so much hunting and fishing content, cooking content too. If you want to make some backstraps or something really hum go there, check it out. Get your fixed. You know, if you feel the need to maybe treat yourself to something nice. The Meat eater Stor
is right there. There's a whole lot of good stuff in there that's often on sale, so go check out it as well. Thank you so much again. It