Welcome to the Wired to Hunt podcast, your guide to the White Tail Woods, 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, Mark Kenyon.
Welcome to the Wired to Hunt podcast. This week on the show, I'm joined by my right hand man, Tony Peterson to discuss his biggest wins, misses and mistakes, lessons learned,
and book recommendations from the twenty twenty three season. All right, welcome back to the Wired to Hunt podcast, brought to you by First Light and their Camo for Conservation initiative, which I've always been a big fan of because what it does it sends a portion of all sales of First Light's whitetail Camo gear to the National Deer Association. And I've always been a big fan of the National
Deer Association. But I have some news related to the NDA. Tony, I'm now, I guess extra biased towards us helping the NDA because I am now on the board of directors for the National Deer Association.
Nice.
Yeah, so hopefully going to be able to do some more good stuff for the NDA. Between First lights, donations, and hopefully I can offer an idea two and we'll keep on keeping on when it comes to making sure the white tails and white tail hunt's good in this country.
Right.
That's cool man, Yeah, so that's exciting news. In other news, last week, Tony, I did something that I don't do often, which is a solo podcast, and you do it every week on Foundations, But I did a solo one last week in which I just went through the nerdy thing that I do and my wife do here at home for our day to day life, which is every year we do this annual review where we talked through kind of all of our highlights from the last year, any
possible low lights. We kind of review our goals from the last year and then start planning for twenty four, planning for the next year. So we talked through, you know, different goals, different ideas, trips, all that kind of stuff. So I did that last week on the show and kind of talk through how I do that, why I do that, and specifically how you could do that for
your hunting season. And since you left me all by myself last week and didn't have to go through that process, I thought this week I should force you to do that a little bit today with me. Are you game for that?
So hold on, I'm being vilified for you going rogue. You can get a hold of me multiple ways, and you didn't try to get me on there. You decided you're just it's your show, You're gonna do it. And now I'm at fault somehow.
Yeah, so now you really are sounding like my wife?
Yeah, well it felt like we got married there. I was like, Wow, that was a weird shot to take at me, Mark.
So, regardless of that very legitimate feedback, are you game for the idea?
Sure? Man?
Okay, first off, though, good, good Christmas break, a holiday vacation, all that stuff.
It was good. I've been you know, I talked to a bunch of my random buddies and it feels like three fold days of holiday stuff in a row is a lot. Oh yeah. Like I had a conversation with my wife last night where most of the Christmas stuff's obviously put away now, but I just noticed this one random thing and I was like, hey, can that go?
Like we don't need it anymore? And then we got to do an argument about like Christmas spirit and you know, the typical married stuff but I was like, I was like, I wouldn't probably have a tree, or like, if it were just up to me Christmas, we like a hell of a lot different than it does.
Are you really are you really that scroogey? You really wouldn't do a tree?
I man, I would if the girls wanted it. Yes, I would probably do it. But I mean, I think I don't know if we've talked about this or not, but I feel like there are times I just walk through my house and you know, I'm sure it looks different if you're looking at this background here and in my basement where I have a lot of deer heads and fishing rods and boat presses and all that crap.
But like, generally in my house, in the space that I spend most of the time, there's nothing that I bought and brought in there other than like maybe some furniture, you know, Like I look at the walls and I'm like, I don't know where this painting came from, or that thing or whatever.
It's all nobody would Nobody would know that you lived there, right unless they went to the missal basement.
No, no way, Yeah, same here.
But isn't that the bargain like we make like that's in exchange for them letting us go do crazy stuff all over the state, in the country, do our thing. We grant full dominion of the home and the rest of the life, right.
I don't think we grant it, buddy. I think it's a good point taken from us.
That's a good point. We we're lucky to get our little thing in.
I think it's like what's going on with space and the moon right now, where everybody's trying to get up there and claim these resources, and whoever gets there first and plants their flag wins, and I think we just get into a house and we're like, I don't know, I'll throw some euro amounts up or whatever. Here's my books, and then all the other real estate starts to get claimed real fast.
It took all of four minutes, in fifty four seconds of your first podcast episode of twenty twenty four for you get a space reference in. That's good, that's real good.
I'm not done yet, Buddy.
Oh Man. Yeah, so I hear you, I hear you, and all that stuff. I do like Christmas, but but it does get to be a lot. This year was like a marathon for us too. We had three days of full Christmas stuff of family and then friends, and then two additional days of my family coming to visit us, and then another friend thing. So I ended up being like almost seven days straight. That's that's a lot. That's enough, mm hmm. But but yeah, so you survived it. It
was good. Do you do any kind of goal stuff or annual review stuff or anything like what I'm talking about here? Is that a part of your life at all?
You know?
Not?
I do some goals. I don't, you know, do like a formal review of my year? I mean personally, because you know what we do for a living. I mean, I'm creating content around what I did all year, you know, so I'm kind of like reminded of the things that I'm like, man, that was really fun or that kind of sucked or whatever. So it's it's like a soft way to review just just through my professional life and kind of helps guide me toward, you know, what do I want to do this year with some of that stuff.
But as far as like, you know, what goals do I make? I don't. I don't make a lot of hunting goals, but I do make goals around like running or lifting, or like what I want to do that way, and it all it all kind of just blends together, you know.
Yeah, what's the like when you look back on twenty three with those goals that you talked about, not necessarily hunting, but you're running and all that other kind of stuff. Is there anything that you either really crushed or really failed on? Does anything stand out?
There's So my goal for a couple of years has been seven hundred miles, to run seven hundred miles in the year, because that's just like a nice one for me, not to beat myself up, but it keeps me motivated. And what happened I think I think it was in twenty twenty I tore a muscle in my calf. I was out photographing turkeys and just just had a little tear in this muscle in my calf. Took me out of the game for a little bit, got back in
at whatever, No big deal I did. I retore that this year in Oklahoma packing Steve's buck out, and it made it a real struggle to get back to that goal because I just I had to take weeks off and so that kind of stuff. If I if I have something like that, happened where I'm like, this goal pretty should be pretty easy. I didn't really need to
take that goal that seriously. But as soon as little thing, a little wrinkle in the plan comes up, and now you're like, Okay, I don't know if I'm going to get there, And so it kind of made me look at like how do I How am I going to ensure that I stay healthy enough and not do stuff like that to take myself out. So I didn't I increased. I'm gonna I'm shooting for eight hundred miles this year
just to give myself a little bit more. But also I'm like I'm looking at like my overall fitness and going, how how do I avoid anything like that? Because every once in a while, you know, I mean, you do this stuff long enough and whatever, like you're gonna have something that happens that takes you out of the game somehow. You know, I had that happen one time with my shoulder with bow hunting and or you know where I thought it was going to take me out. It didn't.
But it's like a it's a hell of a reminder man, Like this is we're on thin ice sometimes with this stuff that we don't you know, like if you might never be forced to face it, but you might. And so I'm just looking at it that way, like how how do I how do I ensure that I can I can hit these goals and you know, keep up doing the things I want to do and go elk hunting and everything else.
Yeah, you take it for granted until all of a sudden it's not. The ability is not there, whether it because of an injury or whatever. I had that you know, that wrist injury this summer. It was the first thing that's happened to me in a long time that took me out of being able to do the things I want to do. Couldn't shoot my boat, couldn't row the boat, couldn't you know, do some of those things that usually
I just be like off doing all the time. And so for the first time this year, and I guess coming into the new year, a I'm having like I'm coming to grips with not my mortality, but just like, hey, stuff's changing, Like you're approaching like middle life where stuff can just not work the way it used to or injuries more likely, like unless you're really thinking about it and doing the kind of stuff you're talking about, like staying up on your fitness and all that kind of stuff,
and staying flexible or whatever the thing is you're worried about messing up. You kind of have to work for it. You can't just assume it's all just gonna do it like it did back when you were twenty. So, yeah, like a lot of my fitness related goals now or just to keep me in the game, like I want to be able to go backpacking with my kids and rafting and fishing and shooting my boat and all that kind of stuff without cont only fearing about, well, am I going to tear my calf or tear my whatever
or roll my ankle or whatever it is. So with that eight hundred miles a year, what's that I'm not good at math? In my head? What's that factor out to a weekly average?
Well, weekly, I don't know, forty miles a week or something? Well, actually play thirty No, no, no, no, not forty miles a week. That's way too much. I don't know. I'm really really bad at math.
What do you usually run? Like, what do you what are your What I'm getting is how much are you actually running a week? Now?
So, right, now. Well, the first week of January, I ran twenty one miles. But I shoot. I use a running app, and I know from my trends because I've probably done this for like eight years now. I'll do a lot of miles in the winter. I'll do not so many miles in Turkey season. I'll do a lot of miles in the summer, and then in the fall it really tapers off. So I always try to shoot for a big January, a big February, big March, because I know, I know how this is going to pace out.
And then in the summer, I just like running outside a lot, and so I know I'll kick it back up in June, July and August. So I don't. I don't go like I have to do this this week.
When I when I was doing a thousand miles a year, it was like, I think it was almost three miles a day that you have to do two point eight seven or something, I remember exactly, And so I was like almost too aware of that, like I would think about it all and then you know, if you go on vacation or you go on a hunt, you're like, I've been I haven't ran in eight days and then you do the math and you're like, Okay, now I'm
twenty five miles hind or whatever. Yeah, it's it's rough, and so I don't I don't you know, I don't break it down by the week, but I'm real aware of how my progress is going for the month.
Yeah, it's interesting the way you're doing that with your mileage goal. In the way I'm trying to achieve my running goal is by putting a big stick, you know, in my future that being a race that I've got to make sure that I'm ready for. I haven't gone the weekly or yearly kind of tally, but this year I think I haven't. I haven't told my wife this year, but I think I'm going to try to run a
marathon this year. And the thing keep the thing keeping me from doing that to this point has been the fact that I don't want my training to take any more time away from the family than my half marathon training has. But I'm thinking, like I'm trying to figure out if I can figure out a way to be ready for a race like this. I just want to finish without getting injured. I'm not trying to like do it fast, but but if I can do that in a way that's not significantly different than the amount of
running I was doing leading up to this. I think I want to try to do that, So that's my big fitness goal twenty four.
Let me ask you this, how do you figure that you're going to be able to do a marathon with roughly the same amount of training as a half marathon.
Well, I'm just not going to, like, if there's certain training plans where I guess I'm going to train lightly for it, I'm not going to like go buy the book. But it seems like from some of the talking I've done, like I don't need to train to crush a marathon right where I'm doing like twenty mile runs all the
time or twenty five mile runs all the time. You know I can do you know, I can make sure that I'm doing the occasional extra long training run, so making sure I can do my sixteen miles or eighteen miles a few times. So there'll be a few days, you know, over the course of a few months where I'm gone three hours instead of two, but not so much that the family notices is basically what I'm getting at.
So there'll there'll be a few more long runs, but not so much that I'm an absentee parent anymore than I was before.
Right, are you what's the longest run you've ever done? Is it?
There's a half?
Yeah?
Yeah, yeah, So, I mean it's a dramatic. It's a dramatic bump bump man.
More power to you. I I kind of toyed with that idea for a while. But if when you run thirteen miles, I'm like, or you know, thirteen point one miles, I'm like the idea of doing that again twice?
Yeah, Like no, See, my thing with it is and this is kind of I think one of the maybe a thing that's helped me from a hunting perspective too, is that I can do almost anything for a long time at like a modern pace, Like I could hike forever. I think that I can run forever. Not forever, but I think I can run. I think I just go and I'm just determined enough as long as I'm not like trying to beat some kind of pace or or race someone like individually, Like I can hike all day.
We do like big hikes and stuff. That's something I've done before. I've hiked, you know, twenty miles or something of that in a day, so I can do like a heavy loaded pack hike. Can't be that much easier than a no pack very slow job, is my mental math I'm trying to convince myself of.
At least it sounds good. Sounds good, buddy, on any of those runs, did you ever did you ever have that experience where you just chafed the crap out of your nipples.
I haven't had the chafing, so we'll see you haven't. No, oh man, nope, So we'll see. If that's something that pops up a mile twenty in a run, well, it's TBD. But that's the thing I'm floating around on my head right now.
Because I'm just envisioning you finishing the race with like the blood spots on the front of your chest, and.
God, that would be bad. That would be bad. I don't know. We're getting ahead of ourselves. I want to talk about twenty three with you before we get to twenty four. But somehow here we are. So so I said last week, I reviewed my twenty three season and
we've done. You know, we talked about our twenty three season more this past year than we did in the last like three or four years, which I think has been good because people people enjoy getting to follow, you know, I think it's useful for people to hear how we are trying to take the things we talk about every week on the podcast and actually put them into action, right, And so I was hoping we could better illustrate that
this year, which I think we did. But looking back now, if you were to start a list, like a two column list, here, on your left you've got your big wins, and on your right side of the column, you've got misses or mistakes or you know, low lights, whatever you're gonna call them, namely a few things that would be on that list for you, Like what stands out as far as like the highlights or things you're most proud of,
or the things you did really well this year. What's on that side of the column for you.
I was real happy with the way I shot this year, you know, shot quite a few and I felt really good about that. I also felt it just you know, we've talked about this. We talked about this a few times last year. But you know, for the last couple of years, I haven't done a ton of public land hunting.
I've been I've had just a different couple falls because of the filming with Meat Eater and everything, and last year doing the Oklahoma thing and then doing the North Dakota thing again and kind of getting back into the swing of public land hunting that was that was my most enjoyable stuff. And then doing the muzzloader hunt here in Minnesota. Just that for me, those were highlights, right.
I mean, obviously hunting with my kids was really fun, and getting my daughter that decoy buck was really cool.
Like I think about that a lot, Yeah, but personally for my own hunting, where I'm like, Okay, what's the arc of the next year, look like I wanted to contain a lot more of the public land stuff where I'm like, I'm kind of feel like I slipped back into that groove of having to scout right in the moment, get mobile, react and just kind of you know the things we talk about all the time, you know, those
are muscles you gotta work. And I felt I felt like I was missing something for myself, Like I'm a this drives my wife absolutely crazy, but I'm just like I don't like doing the same stuff over and over again, you know, Like I don't I know that people are like my dream is to have this land and build it up, and and I get that one hundred percent.
But for me, I know what that would be for me, Like I wouldn't I wouldn't enjoy it as much as some people because I don't want to go to the same box blind or like, I don't want to get myself into a position where I'm like I know, if I stay out of there until Halloween and I go in there, it's probably over. Like I don't want to I don't want to make a deal where I'm going to have good hunting but I don't get to hunt as much or I don't need to scout as much.
And so I just when I look at like the highlights from last year, the things that really meant something to me, just just getting into that process again and trying to find deer on public land and dealing with that whole aspect, I just it just does something for me.
Is there anything that you think you got better at? Like is there anything that you have known like, hey, I've got to work on this, or this is an area of focus, and then you actually executed on it, Like I know you did things that were more fun you did the thing you liked, But was there a thing that actually, like a change you made or a shift in mindset or anything like that actually paid off.
I think what I'm getting what I think one of the things that happened to me last year that I actually like felt kind of tangibly was I'm getting just so much more confidence in calling my shots and being like this is I'm going to do this whether it works out or not. I feel like this is the best and not and not second guessing myself, you know.
I mean I went through you know, and a lot of people do right where you go through like, well, you know, what if the conditions or what if somebody came through here, what if I'm not set up right? And I'm kind of like, yeah, I'm kind of I kind of feel myself getting to a point where if I if I feel like I'm putting in the effort to figure out a spot or figure out a location, I'm like, Okay, here's my plan today, and if this
doesn't work, this is what I'm gonna do tomorrow. And if that doesn't work, this is what I'm gonna do. And I feel like I'm just getting to a point where I'm just believing in that process more and being like, don't like, don't overthink it, like if you if you're you know, the spidy senses are like, this is where he's gonna be tonight or in the next two days. Figure this out and forget about those other options, forget about everything else, and then if it doesn't prove to
be true, Okay, that's fine, move on. But I just kept finding like it it kind of kept being true.
Yeah, that's a really good feeling when you when the second guessing is is not the loudest voice in your head, when you're instead sitting there like, hey, I feel confident in this thing, and I have an idea and I have a plan. B if that doesn't work out, I'm I'm sure I'm not to the same point you are
because you've got a decade on me. But I definitely can see like the change in that for myself over the over the last decade and just how much more confident I am out there and how much more comfortable I am with like, Okay, this is what's in front of me, this is my plan and why I think this will work, and I feel very confident in why this is something that should work, but if not, I'll shift,
I'll shift. But yeah, like that sense of I don't want to say certainty because I don't think you're ever certain out there, but just confidence and like and comfort maybe with what's happening and why you're doing it. That is a really reassuring feeling out there versus you know, ten fifteen years ago when I was out there, like should I be doing this or this or this or ah, I don't.
Know, dude, it's important, man. And I think like on that line too, if you're like, this is this is where I think it's gonna happen, not not how necessarily, but if you're like I'm hunting this farm or I'm hunting this property and you're like, the signs pointing here, the conditions are pointing here, then you go, Okay, I have that thing I believe in, and so now it's like, okay, if the conditions aren't ripe for it tonight, it's like I don't I don't mind backing off and doing something
else then, And it sort of gives you a little leeway with a lower confidence hunt. If you know, like in your back pocket, you're like, okay, I'm when it when it breaks right, I'm going right there and that's where I want to be the most. Then I don't like I noticed this a lot of my public land hunts,
because I'll find a few places like that. But you know, as well as I do, like front's roll in, people walk in, trucks are parked there, whatever, And if that's like all you're hanging your hat on, then it's it messes with you bad. Or if you you know, if you have a four or five day hunt, you look at the forecast, you know, like like when we went to Oklah it was eighty five degrees when I got down there, and I'm like, I'm gonna kill them on water, and a cold front came in, which happens to me
all the time, and the entire plan changed. But I had I had run across some mast while scouting and some other stuff, and so it was like, even though that thing might not work, I found another thing that I feel just as good about. I just might have to tweak it a little bit or whatever. But you just like when you when you get into that state, it's sort of like you don't have a bad sit because even if you go do a backup one because you're playing it safe or you couldn't get in there
for some reason. You're like, I still have that, and I'm still doing something at a certain level up to it. And I just I think that that feeling of just going in there and being like I believe in this enough for that, and then the backup enough for that, it's just it's a game changer for you.
Yeah, I hear you in that. What about the flip side, though, Like, what's what's the thing? Is there anything still this year that gave you the eh feeling that gave you like the that left a bad taste in my mouth, or a regret, or you left something on the field that you you know, no looking back, you could have done differently, you could have em better, or anything like that.
Yeah. So my Wisconsin hunting, you know, I kind of take it for granted that I'm gonna take my girls over there. It's gonna be pretty easy. They'll kill a couple deer and then I'll do my thing. And my biggest regret from last year was, even though I knew that winter was rough, I was like what I saw in the spring and the early summer over there, I was like, man, these deer came through really well. Heard from a forester who said they came through really well.
And so my plan I got lazy thinking there were enough deer there to work with. And then once we started hunting, even when I was running trail cameras over there and not seeing very many deer and not seeing the fawns that you should, I still in my head I was like, this is not going to be a heavy lift this year, Like you don't need to devote a bunch of energy to scouting over here, Like you kind of got this thing figured out. And then you know, my daughter killed a deer. My other one didn't got
into the rut. She finally killed one, and then it was my turn. And I felt like when I was hunting over there, even though I did kill a deer, I felt like I was way behind because I believed something that wasn't true and it kept me. It kept me from doing what I needed to do. And so when I actually got into the woods for myself, I was like, I knew it. I'm like, you're not working with nearly as many deer as you thought, and this is going to be just way tougher than you expected.
And I and I live through it, and I was like, that was so dumb, Like you had all the evidence all year long that what you were believing going into spring wasn't true. And I chose to believe this fake thing because it made my life easier until I had to face the reality of hunting, and then it got a hell of a lot harder because that was what I was actually dealing with.
What could you have done differently though?
Scout? I just needed to scout more. I mean I just took it for granted that I was going to have way more dear to work with, and so some of my old reliable stuff was going to work. And you know, I'm real confident during that time period if you have multiple all day sits in a row, somebody's coming by, you know, like if you have enough spots. And I just didn't. I did way more scouting after
I killed my buck. Let me put it that way, just because I was like, don't, don't do this to yourself again, like this will be an easy trap to fall into. And so it was just a matter of just putting myself in more high odd spots more often that I didn't do.
What did you learn that additional scouting or did you did anything light up for you and when you did do that post kill scouting.
Yeah, I did. I'm I'm really starting to into this when I I do this in the big woods a lot. If I shoot a deer and I still have some time to play around, because you know how it is by the time you get to like your fifth or sixth shoot of the season, or you know it's two and a half months into it, if you kill one when you're on the road, You're like, I just want to go home. I want to go see my kids.
I'm sick of doing this, but I'm starting to go if you have a day or two that you can play with, go walk, get out there and just go look in the moment, see that sign And dude, I ran cameras, I covered some ground and I just I just looked for what I was missing. And what I found was I was missing a lot and it was just dumb. It was just it was just purely because I went into it think it was going to be easy and I wasn't going to have to figure out
in the moment what I needed to do. But you know, when you're dealing with a low, low deer density, it's all about finding just any deer first, like where's that little tiny concentration? How do you work off of it? And so after I killed that buck this year, I spent you know, almost two days just walking and I found some stuff and ran some cameras and I was like, okay, they were they were close or you know, there there were deer, good deer close that I was just missing
because I was working off of old information. And it was just a it was just like a good reminder of how easy it is to just sort of be a little lazy and expect the rut's going to deliver to you, and it just it's it's never that easy.
Yeah, So coming in twenty four, do you have is is that it is that the thing that you want to work on more is like more and more scouting or is there anything else that you're thinking this season that's like on your to do list as a big shift or a big focus or an area like hey, I gotta I gotta start working on this next thing, Like what's that next focus point for you this year?
So I'm gonna a couple of things I'm focusing on for this year. I'm definitely gonna do probably three states for just public land. I want to I want to do a new state that I haven't hunted. I'm kind of looking hard at Missouri because I've scouted it a few times, so I've never actually deer hunted down there. I want that part. I don't I don't know what states exactly it'll be. I should draw Iowa this year, so one of them will be Iowa. Uh, that's going
to be real important to me. My one daughter, my daughter who killed that decoy buck, has been talking a lot about doing that more and so, and I killed my buck with the decoy this year over there too, and so I'm kind of like, I've never even hardly considered them a viable option for most of my deer hunting. I mean, you know me, like, I'm not I'm not a big caller, I'm not a big sense guy whatever.
But seeing the way that DSD dough worked twice last year and how fun it was, I'm like, is there more ways I can kind of build this in and have some fun with it and just try to like learn more, Because that's that's one of the things I love about turkey hunting, when you start to figure out the decoy game, especially if you both bohunt them a lot. It's it's like really a game changer for the entire experience. Like it's I know it's that sounds like duh, but
it's it's big. Like a lot of people, especially a lot of people who only gun on them, don't quite get there, like to understand how important certain decoy setups and how you're gonna do them throughout the season. And I just like, I feel like I'm kind of missing that with white tails too, And it's this thing that I could involve into my world a little bit more, and so I'm kind of looking at that too.
M Okay, So three new states are not new states, but one new state, three public land hunts, more decoy what's what's like the what's like on your bucket list still that you haven't done white tail related? That's like the golden goose you're chasing, all right, Maybe maybe there's not a thing like that, but is there anything? Like you've been doing this a long time, Tony, You've done the public thing a long time. You don't really need to prove that to yourself anymore or anybody else.
I do.
So like I'm talking more, I'm talking more overarching here and maybe okay, so maybe that's the case, but like, what's the next thing you're chasing? Like we always have like personal somethings that we're chasing. Do you have anything like that? Like is that like do you want to kill a giant or do you want to kill an X or a Y or every state that has public landway, is there anything like that that's like in the back of your mind?
Ever, my, my, the things that just eat away at me are always different environments. So you know, the big Woods thing is I'm I'm I'm like I have that sort of on pause since my daughter started hunting, because that's most of my time over there is for them, and so it's like, I don't I kind of know I don't have enough time to do what I need to because even when I had more time, I couldn't
get it done. And so I'm like, where I'm at now is it's sort of like just in a holding pattern for me, but that that won't go away, Like killing a big one in the big Woods on public land is it's just always there. This this thing I did with the muzzloader hunt in western Minnesota and the cattails in that environment that I I'm you know, like I'm only familiar with it through pheasant hunting and a little bit of rabbit hunting, and just like a very you know, I've only spent five days in my life,
well maybe six days of my life deer hunting. That stuff that's like under my skin because I see, you know, I told you this, We talked about this on the podcast. But the one day that I was down there with my muzzleloader and I and I followed those tracks and jumped all those deer in the in the cattails, those deer were as unkillable as they're gonna be. And now you would think that's an open environment and that wouldn't be the case. But when you're in cattails, I'm six
to two. Those cattails are way over my head, and I'm like when you walk in there and they're bedded there before first light and you go, you know, you jump, you jump them right there, and you have a gun, and it's like, unless you have buckshot, that would be the only chance you might have there. And I just I go, how do you figure? Like how do you
solve for this? Like how do you And that's that's like the stuff that I love is like it's not you know, it's fun to go back to some places you like the Western River bottoms I love, and it's it's fun to do that kind of stuff. But when you get into an environment that says you can't do this easily here, like trust me on this. They're here and you're not going to get them that. I love that, and so I kind of look at it that way, like, you know, I'm not like I got to kill a
one seventy or something like that. That just it doesn't matter to me as much. But doing it right in these environments where I just walk in and I'm like, I don't I don't have a strong basis here and I have limited time, and you know there's a lot of hunters using this stuff. I love that.
Yeah, I can, I can relate. I'd say that's that's where a lot of my just a lot of my interest is like the the experiential aspect, like, man, I want to kill one in this kind of way, and I'm going to try to figure out this kind of place. I when to figure out this kind of adventure and now right now, like the thing I talked about this last week a little bit, I need like some new adventure in my hunting, like I want to shift it
up again. And I'm not sure what that's going to look like yet, but but I have some ideas and and and just like give it.
What's an example, Like what's one thing you're thinking about.
Well, I'm gonna hold off on the on the one I'm really really thinking about, but I'm like an example of one I have talked about in the past that's probably not next year, but like a backpacking, backcountry whitetail hunt, like that kind of thing, like something that's like truly different or you know, like going in. I mean, yes,
that kind of thing is the general idea. I'm thinking of a rafting white tail trip something like that that's just you know, different than the usual get on like park the truck by the road, hike in, hunt for the afternoon, hike back out, go to your tent, or go to your house, or go wherever. I just think so much of And I love that, right, I love my everyday deer hunting, But I also like, you just want new and I want to grow, and I want to try new things, and I want to see what's
at the at the boundaries. Of this whole thing and what else is out there? And one of the coolest things about white tails, and some of my adventure seeking is outside of white tails too. But a really cool thing about white tails is they are almost everywhere, in almost every different type of habitat, and you can hunt them in so many different ways. It's very easy to get like locked into the usual, which is like, well, we're in hunt them from a tree in the Midwest
in farm ground, right. It's especially for those of us that live in this area, it's very tempting to just get sucked into that basic template. And so I still want to do some of that, of course, but I want to continue to explore outside color, outside of those lines some and so this year one of my goals is to do that. I've got I've got one very very different idea, which which we'll talk about a later date. But uh, but in the meantime, I'm still thinking of
like what a what a second option might be. So so yeah, that's that's the kind of stuff that's on my mind right now. I do want to do when it comes to this year, I want to I got a question for you related to one of my ideas for a project this year and it goes like this, you know, the Working for Wildlife to it. Right, You've heard me doing this whole thing last year, right, traveling around volunteering on public lands, doing various habitat projects, encouraging
volunteers to come out. So we're gonna do that again this year. But I want to figure out a way to tell that story through a film. And my idea is to do this, Go do more projects, but find one of these projects where we can do a Working for Wildlife event. Go out there and improve wildlife habitat volunteer and public land, but then come back and do a hunt or a fishing trip or whatever, Come back and do a thing on that piece of ground and showcase like you do the work and then you reap
the rewards down the line. Like that's possible. My worry though, is like how do you do that without spot burning? Like how do you do that without ruining the place? You know, because by doing a project like that, you're people are going to be out there like we're gonna be talking about, hey, we're on this piece of public land. Or is there way I can do that without talking
about the place. I mean, this is something that you and I and really anyone now with a social media account has to think about, which is, we want to share what we're doing, we want to talk about what we're doing, We want to enjoy these places, but at the same time, you don't want to unnecessarily, you know, drive more people to a sensitive location that ends up making it worse for wildlife, worse for hunting, et cetera,
et cetera. How do you do that? Like, that's what I'm trying to figure out that I don't know how to do that, but I think there's got to be a way.
I think you would have to. I think the easiest way to do that, or maybe the most responsible way to do that, would be to find some category of project in a region and you know, planting trees or whatever whatever it is, something like that, and then find a different property that had had that ten years ago or twenty years ago, or you know what I mean. It wasn't the same thing, but it was the same concept of here here is like a look into the future of it instead of just going right back. But
even then people would figure it out. So I don't know, I don't know if I want to touch this one because I feel like you're going to get yourself into trouble with the audience here, Mark.
Or what about this? What if what if the place where we go do the volunteer work. What if I do go back and hunt, but I shoot a tony buck, I shoot a spike on day one, and it's so I shoot a deer, but it's not the kind of deer that's going to drive a thousand people to go try and hunt there. Is that effective?
I think you should absolutely do that because I think you think that's going to be easy, and I want to see you do it. Just go shoot a quick little buck, Mark, no problem.
I I'll follow a tony methodology and uh and we'll report back here next year. I don't know that's one of my ideas, but I want to figure out a way to do it responsibly. But I think, like I think it's a it's an idea that I want to get out there, which is the idea of giving back to the landscape more right, getting out there doing this, doing good things, and then it being a reminder like, hey, you can also benefit from it, Like you can go out there and you don't have to benefit from it,
do it just for the sake of doing it. But also, hey, like it's pretty cool to get out here, and it's super satisfying to enjoy the fruits of your labor. I think anyone who owns private land knows that. Right, you go out there, you do the work, planning your food plots or improving timber or whatever, and then you get to go out there and hunt and do your thing. Well, that's possible to some degree on public land too, for folks,
for sure. I mean, even if it's just you going out there SOLbo and picking up trash.
So yeah, if anybody who's listening is down in Oklahoma and they want to do that, I recommend it. I've never been in a place that had more garbage in the woods really, yeah, just weird. I mean some of it, some of it was floodplain stuff, you know, but a lot of it. I was just like, and maybe it's just more part of it. Might be because then you get into a drier climate, stuff sticks around longer a lot of times, so maybe that was part of it.
But I was like, man, there's a lot of just trash here we're hunting specifically, I hate that.
I got to the point though, with so we try to. Like when we're out hiking around doing whatever, the kids and stuff, we try to pick up things and you know when you can clean up. And we were on a hike over Christmas break and we passed like what looked like dirty toilet paper and my three year old like ran to pick it up, and no, no, no, don't touch it. Don't touch it. We can't pick that up, and he got so magic, No, we have to pick
up the trash. You say, we have to pick up the trash, Like, no, that might be like something really gross. Don't touch that.
Same rule as apply if you find like one glove in the woods, just leave it.
Yeah, yeah, anything anything like that dangerous? Yeah, man? So any other any other big plans thoughts? Uh for twenty four other than the new state? The decoy in public land? You're gonna go back to your buddy's lease anymore? Or you you done with that?
I'm not sure or not lease.
I guess he owns it right, well, but it's farm.
Oh, I'm not sure. So I didn't hunt it this year. I'm you know, I'm going a turkey hunt it. It's it's always there. I don't know, it's just if I go down there to southwestern Wisconsin, and I hunt that place. It's awesome, but I just want to be in the north woods. Man. I don't know how to describe it. The you know, my odds are killing a one forty on that southwestern place or like at least a decent buck or so high compared to you know, northern Wisconsin.
But I just love the environment. Man. So I don't know, I don't know I'm I'm looking at. I mean, you know how this goes. This is a this is definitely a dumb complaint. But when you do what we do, I'm always like, should I film in Minnesota or Wisconsin? Which you know, Minnesota is my home state, but I Wisconsin I just hunt a lot too, is right there and whatever. And you know how it is when you're like, you don't save something for yourself and it changes your
entire season. And so I'm like, I don't I don't know what I'm gonna do with Minnesota and Wisconsin this season as far as filming. And it like you talking about you know, a back like a backcountry hunt for white tails or something. I've had this hunt in the back of my mind. I've got this old town kayak. It's a badass fish in kayak, but it'd be good
for getting into a hunting spot too. And I have this chunk of public land in Minnesota that I think I could go in and kill a pretty good one on if I brought my buvy stuff and camped and paddled in there and did that kind of adventure type hunt. And I'm I'm kind of like, should I do that this year? You know? You know? The downside is like, Okay, I'm probably gonna draw Iowa. Something else will come up for work, and I'm like, I don't. I don't know
if I want to hang my hat on. But it's just like one of those things that you think about a lot where you're like, I really just should just carve it out and say I'm just doing it, just to do it, get it out of the way, because you know how it is like some of this stuff you start thinking about and you're like, I've been thinking about doing this for ten years and haven't. It's like, come on, man, just do it.
Yeah, and you blink and it's like you're, however old, and you've been saying you want to do it someday forever and all of a sudden, You're like, what can I do it anymore?
Yeah? Well do you want to? And I mean that's you know, something that I thought of when you were talking about like just twenty four goals and just you know, setting them, maybe the marathon goal, that kind of stuff. I had a conversation with Eddie Claypool, you know, who's a phenomenal hunter several years ago, and he told me, you know, because he was one of those guys who got after it so hard, like Western game, white tail,
you knit turkeys. I mean, I would have conversations with Eddie Claypool and I'd be going to Nebraska to turkey, and he'd like, oh, where are you going? And I'd be you know, like we trust each other, we're friends. So i'd be like, oh, I'm this WMA and and he'd be like, yeah, just walk in here, and usually the birds are back in this corner. And I'm like, I could not bring up a place and he doesn't
live there, he lives in Oklahoma. But I could not bring up a place where he wasn't like yeah I've been in there, or I killed a deer here or whatever. But he told me, and this was several years ago. But he's like, believe me when I say this, you will lose the drive eventually, Like figure out a way to keep yourself motivated to get out there, to keep doing it, because as you get older and you do more stuff, and you know, family wears on you and
you get tired and you know, the usual stuff. He's like, you don't think it'll happen, but it will. And I've thought about that, you know, hundreds of times in my life because there's a guy who was like, live in it, and he's telling you, like he's in the future and he's like, hey, trust me on this. You won't be as motivated to do this when you get to my age. And I just look at it and I go, how can I stay Like, how can you like push that away or keep that at bay for a while.
Yeah. I don't know the answer to that, other than continuing to walk that careful line between chasing it now but also not doing the opposite of that, which is the ten years from now or fifteen years from now we say, oh man, we did a lot of epic hunts, but I missed my kids this thing, and I missed my kids that thing, and I didn't get to do this stuff with my son or my daughter's or whatever. It's like, how do you balance that drive to do it all with knowing that we don't get our kids
childhoods back either, or our marriage back or whatever. Like that's the constant balance, right.
Well, and you don't get your own time back either, you know, like you don't get your old health back. Like I really think that this is going to sound stupid, but I just as I get older, and my patience and discipline sure seemed to serve me well for a lot of stuff. And so I I look at that and I go, you don't have to lose your family over a deer, you know, Like, but you also don't have to try to get into a situation where it's so easy that the challenge is gone and you don't
appreciate it anymore. Because when you see that, and I know people don't believe it, but when you see that, it's it's like a tangible thing that happens to people when they get a really, really good spot. It's very easy to just go, well, I don't have to work extra? Why would I? But that when you put yourself in a position to be challenged and work extra it's It usually makes you feel pretty good and it keeps you
kind of going. Man, it didn't happen this year, but next year, I'm going back to do that trip again. Or keep buying those over the counter elk takes till they're gone, you know, like because they're going to be gone.
Yeah, I've got a buddy who I think he'd be okay with me saying this. A couple of friends that now have a situation kind of like that, and they now call themselves box blind bastards.
Are these here the Iowa Buddies?
Yeah, And you know, you get a sweet spot and it gets comfortable and there's nothing wrong with that, Like that's all some people want, which is great. Like if you were happy with that, heck, yeah you got a mate. But you know that might not be what.
Dude, you got to be real honest with yourself, I mean, because because right it could be your thing, and that could be exactly what you want out of your hunting, and that would be a perfect scenario. But you have to be really honest about it, like are you enjoying it? Like, are you enjoying going to the same view and opening the same window when you want to shoot a deer every time, or do you need something else? Like it's so personal.
Yeah, And I mean that's one of the great things about what we do, right, It's like, this can be whatever it is you want to be. You know, it's it's and I suppose that's the case with a lot of different activities. I guess if you want to be a climber, a runner or whatever, you can make your
own goals and your own experience. But that is particularly true with hunting, as long as you don't fall prey to the pressures of like what everybody else thinks, right and so and so I guess to that point, like, man, if you want to be a box blind guy or girl, man, more power to you. That's awesome if that's the thing that gets you stoked and you are excited to go do do it, and you should not be at all
worried about what Tony or I think. But on the flip side, you know the same at the same time, like if that's not going to do it for you, but you're falling into the trap of like, oh man, this feels easy, and then you just keep doing it because it's the easy thing. Well, then maybe you want to reconsider it too. So it comes down to like knowing yourself, knowing what's going to keep you energized and excited about this, and then chasing that well.
And I think one of the things that we see with hunters a lot, you know, like the general hunting population is terrified a change. Like you see this if there's a proposal to move a gun season or a bo season or something for some reason. I mean, you name it, We've seen it a million times. But you also have to recognize that you're going to change over the next two years and five years and ten years.
And so that goal of having that thing, you know, maybe when you have kids and having you know, buying that forty acres and putting those box lines up and giving them that experience is like, you know, closest thing to dying and going to heaven. But you know, when those kids hit teenage years and maybe they're not hunting with you or something like, you might be in a totally different place, you know, or you might do it.
You know, you might do the public land thing and be like, that's that's only my thing and burn yourself right to the ground for five seasons or ten seasons in a row and go. Man, I'm not I'm not looking forward to it anymore. I'm not scouting the way I want to. And like, if you're honest about that, maybe you're going the other way, you know, and and who knows where you'll end up. But if you're open to that stuff, it's it's important to just be honest about it. Yeah.
Yeah, I think there's a lot of truth to that and sampling and testing and seeing where you where that right places for you. So hard pivot here before we wrap up, There's one thing I wanted to ask you about about last year and something I thought it'd be kind of fun to talk about here for a few minutes, which is one of our guilty pleasures Tony, which is reading.
We both do a lot of reading, and I never get to do podcasts where I get to talk about books, and you're the only person I could talk about books with. So do you have a favorite book or two or recommended book or two, or something that stands out? It doesn't have to be a book. It could also be like a film, a documentary, a podcast series or anything like that. But I've got books. Do you have any recommendations? Coming? On twenty three?
I do so, even just what we talked about about changing. And you know, I spent a lot of my life reading a lot of fiction and writing that way. And then you know, probably the last five or seven years, I've mostly been reading nonfiction stuff mostly Like I just I wasn't drawn to just made up stories anymore, but ID up reading. And I think you've read some of his stuff, Andy Weiers books. You know, he wrote The Martian, Artemis Hail Mary. Have you read those?
I've no, I've I've I've read part of The Martian, so I haven't finished Martian, and I own Project Hail Mary, and it's like on my to read list this year, but I haven't got to it yet. But I've read like the first chapter and like, I got to read this, so I was intrigued when he brought that up.
That was probably one of my favorite books the last year. And I'll tell you what if I if I read the synopsis of it, I probably wouldn't have read it. Like I kept I kept getting into it. He has like a very he's a weird style because it's very almost informal writing, Like there's a lot of like this is going to make me sound like a prick. But if if I see something and it has a lot of exclamation points, I'm like, uh, I don't want to
read this, probably just yeah whatever. But that book, I kept reading it and getting into it, and I'm like, I was just like so surprise at how much I just enjoyed, you know, being entertained by it, and it gets you to think about a lot of stuff because he's real science based. But it was like a it was a good lesson for me because I was kind of like, I'm not you know, Cormack McCarthy died, I'm kind of done reading fiction right for the most part. And then I read that and I was like, I
just enjoyed it so much. And I liked all of his books. I read them all last year, but that one, I was like that one actually kind of just like partially because I was like, there's no way this is going to do it for me, so that one and I ended up going through I'm reading a lot of space books, which would not surprise you, and I've been reading a lot of Carl Sagan stuff and man Cosmos.
It was just I don't know, I didn't read it for whatever reason, and then I read it last year, and I was like, it's just so interesting, Like anybody who can take the concepts of astrophysics and all of the math involved in all of the ways in which we know what's happening and explain it to somebody like me, Like you heard me try to do math when you were asking me about how many miles I run at the beginning of the episode, I was off by like
twelve hundred miles. I anybody who can take those concepts because all of that stuff is math and and just make it so digestible and interesting.
He's he was, and he wrote that back in like the eighties or nineties, right, yes, and so like this this holds up still, it's.
In fact later it's probably it does. It's wild to hear some of his predictions and know what we've kind of proven to be true since then. But also he wasn't just like obsessed with space, right, Like it was all about like our place in the universe and how we treat each other. And it was his way of looking at things was so fascinating as far as like what what does society need? Like where are we going?
But what do we actually need? And that I think that was why he was so popular, you know, and I think that's why it holds true to this day.
See, I've got a similar fascination with those kinds of questions, but not with space. I'm interested in right now just like the impacts of AI and where that's going right now. That seems like we are on the precipice of this massive shift in so many different things. So that's been an area of like curiosity for me this year. I've read a bunch. I've got a book on that called The Coming Wave that I can't recommend yet because I'm just working through it still, but very interesting to this point.
It's written by one of the founders of DeepMind, which is one of the AI companies at Google bought you know, seven eight years ago or whatever, so they're the ones behind Google's big AI push. So interesting, interesting stuff.
Have you had a chance to talk to Steve Ranella about AI yet?
I have not. You guys get into that.
In Oklahoma, we had an interest conversation about it. In typical Ranella fashion. He's like, Ah, it's not gonna be anything kind of thing. Yeah, it's not gonna not gonna ruin society. It's not gonna enslave humans. It's just this total dismissive.
Uh well, I'll be sure to bring it up. What I see him next and see, uh see where his head's at on that one.
So what was what was your favorite then? Because you just started that one? So books, Yeah, if you looked at last year, what was the one where you were like, oh my god, I can't recommend this enough.
Probably it would be two books, the two books that I and the Trick is like one of them I think could be for anyone who listens to this podcast. One of them. You'd have to be like, very committed to learning about this kind of stuff. So the easy recommendation and and folks in our world have seen this recommended a bunch but wild New World by Dan f Have you read that one.
I haven't read that one, but I've read his other books.
Okay, yeah, so you know he's great. He's one of Steve's longtime friends. He's been on Steve's podcast. So his latest book takes a look at the history of wildlife and people in North America since people came to North America. So it basically starts like Pleistocene type animals, everything that happened there the near I think it's fair to say a catasgraphic extinction event that occurred in North America relatively
soon after folks showed up here. And then it follows from that all the way through you know, Europeans showing up and everything that happened there, and then kind of wraps up almost to where we are now, just kind of following that constant push and pull and tension and dependency but also destructive relationship we have with wildlife here. So really interesting and I think super relevant to anyone who hunts or fishes, you know, kind of coming to
terms of that. It's sometimes very ugly history, but it's other times inspiring history. So that's great book. I can't recommend that one enough.
Yeah, he's pretty good, Yeah.
Very good. Second recommendation is one that I pushed on you years ago. We've talked about it since and then I pushed it on you, and I had actually not finished it when I had pushed on you, and then I finally finished it this year, which is the Song
of the Dodo by David Klemen. And so you know, as you know since you read it, but I'll mention I think I even talked about this once earlier, back in twenty three, I brought it up, but I'm going to talk about it again because I just thought it was such a profoundly interesting book and well written book. You know, it basically looks at kind of how species, like it examines evolution and extinction. If I had to simplify it, it really dives into how species evolve and how
species go extinct. And it uses the example of islands, and the study of islands, called island biogeography is basically this this field of study. And what's interesting about this is that you can see evolution and extinction happen much more quickly and much more clearly on islands because of
the fact that these are isolated populations. And so it uses all these different examples, and David travels around the world exploring these kinds of things, meeting with people learning about this kind of stuff, and he goes all the way back into the history of like how we kind of figure this out in the first place, So it talks about Darwin and Wallace and the people who kind of figured out the theory of evolution, and then goes all the way through relatively currently, how we've also been
trying to figure like why are species going extinct? And how is this happening? And what are the different forces that you know, not not like the high level forces like not habitat destruction, but like what happens to the genetics of a population or what happens when you isolate a population. I don't know, nerdy geeky in the in the weeds kind of stuff, but he does it in a way that's that's pretty darn compelling. And what's what's really I think what makes us particularly relevant is right
this whole idea of like studying extinctions on islands. It does not just apply to like physical islands like Maui or something. We are also creating islands all over the world on the mainland because we are continuing to create these isolated pockets of wildlife habitat surrounded by people in development. So like Central Park is an island, Yellowstone is an island. The piece of woods behind my house is to a
degree an island surrounded by agriculture all around it. So we're creating all these pseudo islands and now those island effects that have real ramifications on wildlife populations. We're creating those kinds of things all over the world, and species
are disappearing because of it. So if you care at all about wildlife and having critters around and understanding why we have fewer critters on average seventy percent fewer animals on average, species across the country have gone down seventy percent, not the country, world since nineteen seventy. So, like, there's this biodiversity crisis, and this is something I'm spend a lot of time diving deep into. This is one of the best books on it and can't recommend it enough.
But it is big and it requires a commitment to like dive into it, but I think it's worth the time.
Yeah, that book, That book is really good. It's just a real heavy lift.
Yeah, Like there's there's a lot to unpack. I did this thing where I don't know if you've ever done this, but I have got the physical book and the audio book and I bounce back and forth between the two.
You've ever done that. Yeah, it's been, like I don't know, for like books that take a while to get through, it's been a good way to like make time with them, go for long drive, cover a bunch of ground with it, and then like you're you're deep into it because you listen to it, but it's easier to listen and then you can, you know, pick it up here and there nights, you know, in the week, and then jump in, do a long drive over the weekend or something cover some ground.
I don't know, it's it's been something I've started to do more often. It seems a little silly to pay extra money for a second copy of the same book, but I'm a fan of books, so I guess I feel like it's a donation that I'm okay making to the author's fine. Yeah, But but with that said, we've got to wrap this one up because I've got to run off through a snowstore and pick up my son and can't be late for that. So thanks man for talking books with me. We're talking goals. You know, it's
gonna be a good year. I'm excited about it.
Me too, buddy, me too.
All right. Well, appreciate everyone tuning in for a bit of a random show here today. But as we start these every new year, I kind of feel like it's nice to just kind of ease into the year, have some fun talk about what we're thinking about and where things are headed, and kind of get ourselves rejuvenated for this next push. So that said, appreciate you being here, and until next time, stay wired to hun