Ep. 865: Foundations - How to be More Realistic with Your Deer Goals

This goes for every aspect of life, and it doesn't have to be something you get shoved down your throat by Instagram influencers or Special Forces operators shaming you for not being a total badass every second of your existence. It can be a simpler deal. It can be just really good for your hunting and for your hunting mental health as well. I know you're sick of hearing about

goal setting, and I get it. I'm not going to talk about the usual shit here, because you already know you should set goals to lose weight, make more money, and climb Mount Everest by the time you're thirty or whatever. I think this topic kind of sucks because it's been taken over by people who are either wired differently from most folks, or have more free time than most folks, or have more money than most folks. A lot of

them have all three. I also think this is a topic that can open the door to being a preachy, self righteous kind of prick too, and as easy as it is for me to fall into that trap, I don't want to. I want to talk about realistic hunting and realistic goals and how to use them to enjoy your time in the White Tail Woods more. Now, goals can be great or they can be not so great. Might work a job where your company is owned by a private equity firm that exists solely to flip companies.

Their goals are to make the company appear like it's a growth machine and that it will be more and more profitable over the next several years. If you have a lot of equity in that company, or are set for some type of big payout when it sells. Those

goals might seem totally just and wonderful. But if you're one of the lower level employees who gets laid off to make the bottom line look better, or you're a surviving employee who has to do your job and that other person's job for no extra pay, the goals over

your head aren't so great. Maybe your goal at the healthcare company you work for is to deny a certain amount of claims per day or week or quarter, while your customers have the goal to just beat cancer and not bankrupt themselves in the process, or maybe just get their child in the type of wheelchair that will help them be more mobile and live some semblance of a normal life. On both sides of that e the people

have vastly different goals that require vastly different outcomes. This is a nuanced thing, and as someone who makes his living off of a pursuit that an awful lot of people view as a sacred pastime that shouldn't be overly corrupted by NonStop commercialization, I get it. Believe me, I get it. I think this is a very nuanced topic, and I don't want to dwell on all of the negative stuff. I want to focus on the positives and in that realm. Setting goals for yourself has some real

tangible psychological benefits for starters. It has been proven that setting goals pushes people to be more persistent and to focus more. This comes partially from a higher level of intrinsic motivation, and motivation is generally always good, my friends. Another aspect of setting goals that I think is super important is that it has been proven to heighten test enjoyment. There are other benefits, but I think this one matters

the most. In hunting, think about it this way. Maybe you own a little property, or you lease a property where you have some autonomy, or you hunt Gramma's farm and have free rain over the whole thing. A simple goal like hm, planting a dozen apple trees in the spring is great because if you make that goal, it'll

motivate you to research trees. That part is more fun than it sounds like, because suddenly you realize there's a lot to learn about planting in a certain zone versus a different one, and which trees will survive your winters and which ones won't. You'll learn about the kinds of trees that produce the kinds of apples that doer really like, or maybe some other trees that produce the kinds of crab apples that grouse or turkeys really like. I think the secret sauce to a better life is to keep

learning new stuff and to be interested in things. This is an easy way to keep going along that kind of path, but it's only just the beginning. You're gonna have to find a nursery to tell you the kinds of trees that you want for your property. Then you have to decide if you need to cage them so the bears are deer don't destroy them. All of this stuff is just steps toward a goal, but it's so much more when the trees come in and you go out and you plant them, you can watch your progress

in real time. I grew up in a farming community, and while I drove a few tractors for brief periods of time in my younger days, I mostly did grunt work on farms, like hanging and cleaning out grain silos. The farmers who planted the fields and chisel plowed the fields and harvested the crops from the fields. They work their asses off, but also many times I heard them say that they really enjoyed the process of seeing how much progress they can make you during spring or fall

field work. If you've ever watched someone combine a cornfield, you can probably relate to that task. Enjoyment is important, and setting the simple goal of adding a dozen apple trees to your ground can not only help you kill some deer in the future, it can help you enjoy the world of deer right now or soon. Anyway, this probably seems like forehead slapping, simple stuff, but it's not. We often screw up our goals or just don't understand

what good ones really are. Take the most common goal in our space, which is I want to shoot a certain size of buck. Maybe it's a number that just appeals to you, like I don't know, one hundred and thirty or one hundred and forty inches, Or maybe it's based on your past success, like well, I shot a certain size buck last year and he was my biggest one, so I want an even bigger one this year. Look, those are great, but what do they really mean? For

most of us? They mean that we want to hunt exactly the same way as we always have and we just want a bigger deer to walk down the trail than what usually does, and we want to shoot that deer and we want to post pictures of it on Facebook. But if that goal doesn't really get you to do anything different, is it a good one? Maybe? I mean, I guess even little changes happen, Like if you're used to shooting the first buck that comes down the trail and now you're going to pass that deer for a

bigger one, that's different. It's not a bad thing. But if the goal is just to kill a bigger deer than usual, but it doesn't prompt any action on your part, is it a good goal? I don't think so. I think the best deer hunting goals are the ones that keep us accountable to some type of task throughout the year, and not just something that comes into play the moment we sit our butts down in a stand for the first time all season. An easy to understand goal here that no one will do is to try to kill

your first dear with a traditional bow. If you've never tried that, I can promise you that you'll shoot more than you ever have, or you'll regret it a hell of a lot by the time the season comes. It's a goal that will keep you honest at the range in the off season and will push you to focus your efforts on earning close shots on deer throughout the season. I've only spent two years of over thirty with a trad bow in my hand, and I can tell you that those years stuck with me in a way that

just never goes away. That was a goal that kept me working towards something, and it was fun, and it was frustrating, and it was unbelievably rewarding when it worked out. Now, let's take a different goal, something like killing your first year on public land. Imagine what that will do for you throughout the year. It'll likely get you to winter

in summer scout more, which is always a good thing. Honestly, any reason to scout more is like a cheat code to becoming a better deer hunter and also just enjoying your time in the woods more. But you also might need to learn how to really use I don't know, like a mobile tree stand system or a saddle system. Maybe it'll get you on X a hell of a lot more so that you really figure out that digital

scouting game. Maybe it'll take you out of state for the first time, which will create an opportunity to learn a whole bunch of stuff about hunting that you're just not going to get by hunting close to home on a familiar property. I want to switch gears now and try to be a little more realistic, because there's a thing that happens this time of year. People set big goals and then they don't see them through, and then they fall to the wayside, and we just revert to

our old ways. If you don't believe that, go join a gym right now. New Year's deals are all the raged to boost gym memberships because they know we are all a little heavier than we were when we started the holidays, and we are all a little more depressed than usual since a lot of us haven't seen the sun since December. And really, why would we set up most work days so that in the winter we go to work in the dark and come home in the dark, with the only available hours of daylight sold to some

company that looks at us purely as a number. But that's how it is. So we join a gym and decide we are going to finally get sext as hell and bring ourselves back to our fighting weights and blah blah blah. If you do this and you stick it out until about Turkey season, you're definitely going to notice something. The crowds really start to thin out by about March.

The enthusiasm for those big fitness goals and lifestyle changes just dies on the vine over time because they are difficult goals to achieve and most of us aren't cut out for them. Those folks would have been better off never ever stepping on a scale and never joining a spin class, and instead just setting very realistic goals that won't make them dead sexy in a month, but will make them feel slightly better about themselves over the course

of say three or four months. So instead of saying I want to lose forty pounds and that's it, it's better to say, well, I can only bench press one hundred pounds right now, but by March, I want to be at one hundred and twenty. That's not a big ask, It's doable and is a real measure of progress for real people. It's simple, straightforward, and will allow you to feel good when you throw extra five pounders on each

side and eventually a ten pounder on each side. To most people, if you told them that goal, they'd look at you like you just said you wanted to finally kill a spike, because you've only ever shot button bucks in your life. But the truth is it's your journey and your goal, and if you achieve it, which you probably will because it's realistic, then you're going to want another goal. What's next one hundred and forty pounds? Great, that's going to keep you moving in the right direction.

This is the thing about goals, too, It's that things aren't over when you accomplish them. There's a movement out there called FIRE, which stands for financial independence Retire Early. It's where usually high earners, but not always, say they want to meet some crazy retirement goal at a young age, and they scrimp and save and they sacrifice and they

obsess over investing to meet that goal. But a lot of the folks who suddenly find themselves there at that finish line realize that they are sort of loss being able to retire at thirty five with a couple million dollars in the bank. The goal itself was the end of the quest, but life doesn't end. Then we're not living in a movie or a video game, so you have to ask yourself what's next, and they struggle with that since that whole idea was such a big part

of their existence. This is why I like goals like I'm gonna plant twelve new apple trees on my land this spring, because inevitably you'll realize that you're gonna want to hunt those apple trees, or maybe while you're out there planting them, you realize that a little kill plot on the corner of your land would be great for when we get a random south or east wind during late October or throughout the rut. There's next year's goal

right there. Or maybe it's something slightly different, like cleaning out the shooting lanes for your rifle hunts at deer Camp up norm or maybe just fixing the window on the shack that always lets the mosquitos in whatever find something to work toward, and then write those goals down. I know that sounds dumb, and if you told me to do it ten years ago, I would have told

you to go kick rocks in the street. But I'm older now and maybe it's just my bad memory from so many years of pickling my brain with whiskey and poor decisions. But when I write something down, it's just harder for me to ignore. I do this every Monday.

When I sit at my stupid desk and I think about the stupid work I have to do for the week, I also write down all of the stupid life stuff I have to do, like renew my license tabs, or get new tires for my truck, or get the sled out of the backyard pond that the old blonde buzzkill has been bitching about for months. When things are written down,

they hold us accountable. That's important. And maybe you're thinking, well, what do I do, Grab a notepad and pen and write shoot one one hundred and fifty inch buck and then I wait eleven months to hopefully cross it off. Nope, that would be dumb, and I'm a little offended you even asked. Instead, think about what you could do this month that would help you achieve that goal. Is it clearing out your entrance and exit trails? Great, write that down.

Is it scouting the river bottom on the public land you really like to hunt, but in a way where it takes you to a few of the areas you don't really go, but you suspect big Bucks might use great write that down. Maybe you fall apart at the shot because you're not confident enough in your shooting. Fine, how many eras a week do you need to shoot to be better this year than you were last year.

Write down a weekly goal, then hit that goal. I know this sounds dumb, but the thing about being a successful hunter who really enjoys the whole process is well engaging in the whole process with some gusto. I know I say this all the time, but it's because I believe it. A guy like A and D May could explain to you exactly how he kills big Bucks with scary consistency, But that's not going to make you a

whole lot better as a hunter. That's on you. Now, if you scouted with the same discipline as him, we're talking about something different. That action matters, and it's how you find big deer and eventually kill some of them. Now, if you were as concerned with a perfectly tuned bow and arrows and accuracy as him, and you went through the steps to get there, you'd be a better hunter

who had more fun out in the field. We are obsessed with trying to shortcut the process, because the process is hard, but the reality is that the process is what makes it so damn fun and rewarding the process is a big thing, and setting a goal around just killing a good deer doesn't acknowledge that fact, and it

has to be acknowledged. One of the best ways to do that is to start to just piece it out so that you look at what you want to get out of hunting this year, and you take those pieces that are there, and you look at the ones you could work on to make that goal happen. It has to be about taking what you currently do and trying to make parts of that a little better, or finding something that's just a little offshoot to what you currently do and working on that. That's kind of really it.

You don't need huge overarching goals because they don't really stick anyway. A goal to win or scout for a few hours each week or every other week is probably more impactful to most of us than deciding it's booner or bust this year. And that's it. So what are your goals going to be? I'll give you a few

of mine. This winter, I'm going to expand a little kill plot on my Wisconsin ground so that I can hunt more wind directions with my daughters because we have limited time to hunt together, and often when we do have time, the wind doesn't blow just from the north or west. I'm also going to hunt a new state this year. I don't know which one yet, but I just want to see some new ground and keep getting in on this non resident thing before it's too late.

I haven't decided for sure yet either, but I do want to try to take my dog on a real hunting trip somewhere for something. Might be turkeys, might be antelope, but it will be something. That's what I have so far. I'm sure there'll be more, and I haven't broken those goals down yet, but I'm going to. So think about your goals, think about ways to keep yourself out there

and doing your thing in the woods. Make it real by writing it down, and come back next week because I'm going to talk about how unfair life is, but that shouldn't matter to us as deer hunters. That's it for this week. I'm Tony Peterson. This has been the Wired to Hunt Foundation's podcast, which is brought to you by First Light. As always, thank you so much for listening. For all your support. If you want more white tail content or just hunting content in general, head on over

to the mediator dot com. Tons of podcasts, tons of videos, articles, recipes, you name it, you can find it there. Go check it out at the mediator dot com