Ep. 862: Foundations - The Hunting Gifts That Just Keep On Giving

to the baking, to the decorating to the music. While I like the pheasant hunting and the late season deer hunt what there are a few things Christmas and the whole idea behind it can teach us about deer hut, which is what I'm going to talk about right now. Christmas is a weird holiday, but I guess all of them kind of are. What you might not know is that Christmas and its early real beginnings are tied to stargazing,

which is a topic I like a lot. Now we know the name for Christmas comes from well, Christ, so there's no denying the religious implications there. Depending on where you land on that spectrum, this season might be one that is tightly linked to religion and spirituality. For others it might be mostly or entirely about what Christmas has morphed into. But before that, the whole stargazing thing really shaped a celebration around December twenty first, which is the

winter solstice. That's the day when the top half of the earth is tipped as far away from the Sun as it'll get all year long, meaning that the hours of daylight versus dark are skewed more heavily in favor of vampires than all of us well on undead folks. I guess Europeans, long before the arrival of Jesus paid

close attention to this date. And you would have two if you didn't have a thermostat on your wall that controls the temperature of your dwelling, and you couldn't just go to your local super target for a box of lucky charms if you were snacky. People like the Norse, celebrated Yule on that date in recognition of the return of the sun. Fathers and sons would go out and gather a giant log through on the fire, and they'd

feast until that log burned down to coals. This could take as many as twelve days, which is a long ass feast. They believed that the sparks from the fire represented new calves or piglets that would be born in the spring. This coincided with the time of year when they'd slaughter their cows so as not to have to feed them all winter long, and it was often the only time when they had an abundance of fresh meat.

They also made their own wine and beer, which, as you can guess, was a popular addition to those winter solstice festivities. In other places, like Germany, they went a little bit of a different route, where they honored a pagan god named Odin, who was known to fly through the sky and decide which folks would prosper or which ones would perish. Believing this, a lot of those crazy Germans stayed inside during this time of the year in Rome,

they honored Saturn, the god of agriculture. They also celebrated the birthday of Mithra, who was the god of unconquerable sun. This happened on December twenty fifth, if you can believe that shit. When you get into Christianity, you find out that the history of December twenty fifth and the reason we celebrate it is a little murcurier than you might guess.

With church officials about sixteen hundred years ago making the big decision around when and why they would celebrate Christmas, part of which meant they placed it close to the winter solstice in kind of a marketing effort to ensure peace. People got on board with the whole thing because they

were already used to partying that time of year. Then you have several centuries of kings and Puritans and a whole bunch of folks taking Christmas one way or another until it was declared a federal holiday here in the States in eighteen seventy. This was also around the time when Christmas was more like marti Gras than a time to get together with family and celebrate being thankful for the good stuff in life. Now, Christmas is big business, over twenty five million trees a year are sold. That's

live trees, by the way, not fake ones. People spend a lot of money on Christmas, with the average individual adults spend at around nine hundred bucks a year. Overall, Christmas generates nine hundred and sixty some billion dollars, which, if your math challenged, is damn near a trillion dollars, which is bonkers. The whole thing is pretty crazy, but

it's a good reminder of a few things. The first is that we just kind of focus pretty heavily on gifts, which if you have little kids, you know what I mean. My daughters are old enough now where there isn't an avalanche of toys and plastic shit that we will break

or throw away after a while, which is nice. We've transitioned as a family from focusing super heavily on you know, mostly meaningless gifts to experiences, which is why I just pay for a trip to Florida every year and absolve myself of really having to shop a whole lot, or by presence, a whole lot. I think the lesson in there is an important one, and I think it ties

to deer hunting. Now, this is a slippery slope for a fellow like me, because I work for a company that owns several companies that would very much like to sell you, guys, lots of stuff. We'd like you to buy lots of First Light clothes and Dave Smith decoys and FHF Binal harnesses and Phelps grunt calls. Hell, if you could go buy a few Meat Eater shirts and maybe meteaor Trivia Home Edition, that would be great too.

Then Steve Ranella could finally move his wife and kids out of that tiny walk up apartment they share with three other impoverished families and get a place of their own. New hunting gear is great, but does it outweigh new hunting experiences? No, it does not. But I think the best way to look at this is to think about what you need to help you have new experiences. You see a lot of us hunt a certain way, and we want gear that will make that certain way easier

or more effective. Let's say you have a lease and you only hunt that eighty acre lease, So that's what you need to have set up for yourself year after year. So maybe you need a new ladder stand for that ridgetop trail that all the deer take when they skirt your plot, or maybe you need a new, i don't know, sweet brush cutter to clean some shooting lanes and access trails. That's a very linear thought process and honestly makes a

lot of sense. But what about if you're that lease hunter and you have it figured out so well that you usually tag out on opening week, or you know, if you wait till the rut to sit for a few days, you have a very good chance of filling your tag. What if either style or whatever you have leaves you wanting some more, well, maybe a mobile setup gear there, or maybe a tent or some other camping gear.

Is there something that you can buy that would talk you into going hunting in a way that you don't usually go now, I know that might sound dumb, but I think the value in that is hard to measure, and I think it's worth thinking about it at the very least. Let's take hunting in your home state, for example. The breakdown of the season in most places goes like this. Archery season opens up and runs for a certain amount

of time. You know, sometimes there's a youth season or something else mixed in there, But then the general firearm season opens up after that muzzleloader that's mostly the arc of the season in a lot of places. Now you're listening to this show, so it's a fairly safe bet you probably bohunt some But do you muzzleloader hunt? Maybe a new smoke bowl for Christmas, even if you have to treat yourself to it is a ticket to an entirely new season and an entirely new type of hunting.

I can't speak for everyone, but when I started muzzle order hunting, I almost rediscovered how fun deer hunting can be. That's a good thing, and it's possible through just a Christmas gift. What about something like a gilly suit? I don't know if you've ever hunted out of one, But if there is anything that makes you feel more like a badass than a gilly suit, I don't know if

I've found it yet. Maybe it's the close association to snipers in the armed forces and what we all know to be generally true about someone who earns that title. I mean, who wouldn't want to be that disciplined, in that schooled in the art of camouflage, patience, not to mention, you know, being that calm and collected when it's time

to squeeze off a shot. Plus a gilly suit is just like a secret passageway you can take to hunting spots you just normally wouldn't hunt, and experiencing the woods in a way that you normally might not experience it. That's a good gift right there, my friends. Maybe it's as simple as a new trail camera. I have quite a few of the Moultrie Edge two cameras up in the woods right now, and I can safely say that most folks I know wouldn't hate finding one in their stocking.

Sell cameras are just fun, and they've gotten pretty affordable and reliable in the last few years. They are also just a ticket to little drips of excitement all year long, even during Turkey season. Okay, that's enough of the commercialization side of Christmas and this time of the season, which is something we kind of just can't help but lean into. It's a byproduct of what we are as a species. I think, maybe not, I don't know, but there are

other aspects of this holiday season we should consider. For starters, you have the whole tradition thing. I'll admit that this didn't bother me a whole lot when I was a fellow who occasionally drank like I don't know half a lead a jim beam every day of his life. Sitting around at one of my wife's relatives houses for another ham dinner while her uncle's told me, I don't know the hunting stories I've heard several thousand times was made just a little more palatable when I was some shade

of shmammered. Today I just raw dog those holidays, and it's a little tougher to stomach. But not every tradition has to be about going to grandma's house for whatever, because that's what you always do. This is also a time of year when an awful lot of folks have time off of work and the kids have time off of school. If you're at the stage of life where everything is just soaked up by schedules and activities and you finally get a little breathing room, starting an outdoor

tradition of your own can be a wonderful thing. I'm thinking about that this year with my daughters. I've killed several deer myself on Christmas even Christmas, and I've started taking my daughters out during this late season to freeze a little and maybe earn a shot at something. This year, we might do a short Christmas hunt Wisconsin. Maybe we'll

stay at home. I'm not really the start of tradition kind of guy, but I really like the idea of my daughter associating Christmas with more than just gifts and overeating in all of the non hunting parts of this time of year. If they come to associate Christmas Break with trying to arrow a late season do with their dad, maybe that'll stick, and it won't just quickly become a memory, but will instead be a part of what we do every year until life just decides for whatever reason, it

can't happen anymore. You see this a lot in the Upland world around Thanksgiving and Christmas, where the extended family will get together and go walk some slews to see if they can knock some pheasants out of the sky. Now, that type of hunting can be very conducive to social gatherings, but deer hunting isn't quite that way. Some folks will get together and do late season bow drives, which is something I've done a handful of times, but not to the point where I've ever seen a deer actually get

shot during one. Hell, I don't know if I've ever seen a deer get shot at either. But that isn't the only reason to be out there, and it might not even crack the top five if we are being real honest about this stuff. So maybe you can treat yourself to a new president that will take you on an outdoor adventure. Sure, and maybe you can drum up some kind of new hunting activity that just happens around Christmas. That's a pretty good start, in my opinion, which leaves

the last point I want to make. We should be grateful. This isn't lip service here, my friends. I'm saying it because I believe it. I mean it. If you hunt someone else's land, you should be very very grateful for that experience. That is a gift that keeps on giving, and it's an important one. In fact, I've been hunting with my daughters on a property by our house. There's mostly off limits for most of the year, but the landowner green lights me to take them in December when

the gun seasons are over. It's hard hunting and often not very productive as far as filled tags are concerned, but man, am I happy to have it, and I let him know it too. Do you have someone in your life who lets you hunt their land, let them know that you appreciate it, even if it's your favorite uncle, And it's just a given that he's going to let you roam his land anytime you down well, please, he's still paying those property taxes. He still has the power

to keep you out if the mood strikes. A simple hedge against that is to let him know how much it means to you. But that's not the best reason to reach out and tell him. The best reason is because it's just the right thing to do. Think about it this way. If you have a situation like that and someone else, some other hunter, could take it from you to hunt it for themselves, how long would it take before that happened. Not long? I bet that's because it's a big deal, and it's important to a lot

of people to have a hunting spot. And it's important to a lot of people to have a spot that only they can hunt so they can structure things exactly how they want to and make it easier to kill the kind of deer they want. That's the trend of this whole deer hunting thing right now. And it's not wrong or right. It's just our path as humans, just like how we took a peg and holiday and watch it more over and over for thousands of years, to the point now where it's a gigantic mundy generator for

big business. With the reality of more and more people trying to manage for mature deer, we have the side

effect of fewer people having spots to hunt. If someone is gracious enough to provide you a spot, even a landowner who leases their ground to you, it's still something that you should probably appreciate, even if it's just a buddy who lets you out with the kids, I don't know for the youth turkey season, or the landowner who doesn't let you hunt but lets you park in their field drive and access a different property through their place.

Maybe someone just let you blood trail a deer on their land this year because the buck you shot hopped the fence before he croaked. Deer hunting, especially bow hunting, and especially if you're mostly a trophy hunter, is largely an individual pursuit, or at least it often feels that way, but it really isn't, or you know, that's often rarely true anyway, someone probably helped you out somehow this season.

Maybe that person is easy to identify because they taught you how to shoot a bow, or they're the ones who said go on and hunt the back eighty just let me know if you shoot something. Whatever, our success, the kind that results in a grip and grin where we post it for the world to see how awesome we are, is generally built upon the backs of others,

even if we did most of the heavy lifting. That's something I think about a lot with as many generous friends as I have, and how often it occurs to me that some experience I had for myself or with my daughters was made possible largely through the generosity of someone else. That's a big deal, and there isn't a better time of year to show that appreciation than around the holidays, when everyone gets together and celebrates for whatever

reason they have to celebrate. So throw down some eggnog until you're ready to fistfight your cousins, Eat ham and turkey and mashed potatoes until they have to roll you away from the table, and monitor your vital signs to make sure you won't die. Stuff those stockings, swipe that credit card over and over again. Listen to those hunting stories that the old guys just like telling and act

like you've never heard them before. Laugh at the punchlines, think about this season and what it means to you. Buy that ticket to a new kind of hunting. Start a new tradition with the kids, even if it's just a midday squirrel hunt, just because it's fun. And then thank some people. Let them know how important the world of the white tail is to you and how lucky

you feel to be able to step into it. Then come back next week because I'm going to talk about something Mark talks about a lot, which is setting goals, but I'm going to do it in a fun, relatable, non butterfly way. That's it for this week. I'm Tony Peterson. This has been the Wired to Hunt Foundation's podcast. As always, thank you so much for listening and for all of your support. We've had a great year here at Meat Eater, but none of it would be possible without you guys,

so we truly appreciate all of your support. If you need some more hunting content, you know where to go, whether you need articles, maybe a recipe, you want to listen to some podcasts, maybe you just want to watch my daughter shoot a spike buck in northern Wisconsin. Whatever. The mediator dot com has tons of content. We're putting new stuff up daily, Awesome podcasts there by Clay Brent Reeves, whatever, tons of hunting shows. It's all there. Go check it out at the mediator dot com