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, Tony Peterson and I are reviewing our twenty twenty four year in the outdoors to look for trends and patterns that can lead us to planning a better twenty twenty five. All right, welcome back to the Wired to Hunt podcast, brought to you by First Light and their Camel for
Conservation initiative. If you're not familiar, a portion of every sale of first Light spector Camel pattern goes to the National Deer Association to help them with their mission to improve the future for deer and deer hunters. Stuff there and the future is what we're talking about here today in the podcast. But we're doing that by looking to
the past. Today me and TONI are going to be talking through our twenty twenty four mostly focusing on our hunting seasons, but also extending back past that to other
outdoor activities and adventures. The prep for our hunting seasons, all sorts of stuff like that, and we're talking through the highs and the lows, and then what takeaways we can get from that, Because by looking at the best moments of our year and the worst moments of our year, the hope is that we can identify, you know, if there's any consistencies there, are there any particular things that keep on showing up in the good parts or keep showing up in the bad parts, And can that help us,
you know, better plan our next year, make sure we're leaning into the good stuff, make sure we're learning from the less good stuff. That's the hope today, And the hope is that by us kind of working through this ourselves, you guys can learn some stuff too. Maybe you're gonna hear things that you can relate to. Maybe you're gonna hear some thoughts that maybe would be worth you kind
of chewing on a little bit. Maybe there'll be some ideas that we have for changes we want to make next year, or things we've struggled with this past year that we're going to continue working on in twenty twenty five that might be relatable, useful, or eye opening for you. That's the hope as we kick off this new year, as we look forward to what should be a terrific
twelve more months around the sun. So I am wishing you all a very happy new year and a great start to this one, and I hope this podcast is a useful way to do that. So, without any further ado, let's get to my chat with Tony as we review our twenty twenty four and look forward to the next year. All right, Joining me on the line now is mister Tony Peterson Today. When this episode is dropping, Tony, we'll be January second, so it will be a new year.
It is twenty twenty five, if you can imagine we're recording this a little bit before that, but in present time when folks hear and see this as twenty twenty five, how do you feel about the new year?
Tony?
Is it gonna be a good one?
Boy? I hope, so, buddy, I hope. So sure, I hope.
So all right, that's what I want to hear. I want to hear optimism because that's kind of what I want to do today, is think about this upcoming year by way of reflecting on last year. So I think we've done something kind of like this in the past where you've done kind of a season in review, and I think I've talked on an episode I can't remember
if it was with both of us. It was just one of the ones where it's just me ranting to the audience, But I think I've talked about how I do a little bit of a year in review process and try to plan out the year. So I thought maybe we'd do that together and look back on twenty twenty four, not just the deer hunting season, but maybe the larger year in our outdoor experiences, and look at
three things. Look at the best moments of our last year in the outdoors, the worst moments of our year in the outdoors, and then finally, what patterns or trends or takeaways there might be when we look at those things together. Because as I've started to do this, I've started to see, like, oh, interesting, when I look at all the best moments in my year, they all have
this thing or that thing. Or when I look at all my worst moments, they all kind of have to do with this thing or that thing, and that might help inform me making my plans for the next year. When I think about what I want to do in twenty five or how I want to approach things in twenty five. Maybe I can learn some shit from what
went well or what went wrong last time around. So that's the plan for this quick beginning of the new year, looking forward by looking backward episode sound good, absolutely buddy cool. So twenty twenty four looking back. If you were going to put like a a grade, like a school grade on your twenty twenty four in the outdoors, so not just deer, not just this fall, but across the board, your outdoor year, how would you grade it? If you had to real quick like gut check, what your thought
would be. What do you think?
Man?
If I'm not teasing out the white tail hunting, I would say probably like a solid B.
And uh, okay, that's pretty good. That's a pretty good year. Is that? How would you say that relates? Or how how does that stack up as far as maybe the last ten years? Does this is that kind of an average or is this a below average above average?
Do you know? It's hard for me.
It's hard for me to do this and not focus on the white tail side of things, which was just not I would give that not a bee, But man, I had a lot of really good fishing with my daughters. I had a lot of uh, we had a good Turkey season. We did a lot of stuff. Just my personal deer hunting kind of sucks. So it drug my grade down. So I would say, like, pretty it's pretty consistent, you know, like we have a lot of fun in the outdoors.
Yeah, okay, what if what if I made you grade just your deer season.
I would say in the first semester B plus the second semester maybe like a D minus if I was.
Gonna break it out. No, I mean, it was a tough year.
It was a it was a weird year deer hunting. Uh, you know, so, but those happen. You know, sometimes you have years where it's like you can almost do no wrong, and then sometimes you have years where you're like it just will not break my way.
Yeah yeah, man, you're you're singing a tune. I can relate to this year because if I were to do this exercise myself, I would give my broader year, you know, pretty close to an A. It was an A except for deer season, and deer season was like a C minus or a D. I don't know. It felt rough. So so yeah, both of us had a weird fall that brought down the rest of our year. I don't know what we take away from that. Maybe we shouldn't
be maybe we shouldn't be hosting the White Tail podcast. Well, well, like you said, you know, you're gonna have years like that. And I've tried to remember in the years that, like you said, things are going really well, you have to appreciate those moments because they're not guaranteed every year, and you have to remember in the years where it's just not happening like this two shell pass. Sometimes you can do everything right and still it doesn't fall your way.
And that's an important thing to remember.
Out there, well right, And you can also just have I mean, I stacked up three bad shots in a row that really just changed the arc of my season. You know, I bookended them with good shots, but in the middle of that and that that's too many, you know,
like that's that changes your whole season. In addition to just the randomness of the rut this year in the southeast winds and the foggy weather and just the weird the weird fall of it all, you know, I mean, it just sometimes just sometimes goes weird.
So many southeast winds. That was so many that was weird.
We're still getting them.
Yeah, I can actually use them right now now at this part of the year, I could use a southeast wind. But it didn't help me in November, that's for sure. Do you want to start then? Do you want to start with the good of the band? If we break down like our highs and lows or best and worst? Would you rather start on one of the other.
Let's start with the lows so we can end with the highs, should we?
Sure? I like that? Uh? You want to leave us off? What what stands out for you is a low or a worst moment or worst thing of the year.
You know, or challenge.
I talked about this a little bit already, probably on here too, But you know I missed a big one in North Dakota. Uh, just totally misjudge. The rain wasn't at range, I wasn't. I wasn't in the moment the way I needed to be. It was dumb, right, didn't
bother me that much. But then I made a terrible shot on another deer That bothered me because I knew I knew what I had to do to make the shot in that moment because I thought about it ten million times before I took the shot, and I just reverted back to just get that arrow out the door, and I caught an artery and she died quick. But
it was dumb like it. It was totally preventable. And then I did the same thing down in Iowa, where I knew, like the window that I had to shoot through was tight, but I didn't think it would matter.
And then it got me. And you know, I got the deer, but it was an ugly shot and just three in a very short period of time on public land that could have been a I could have strung together a really nice, you know, couple deer and had good shots, and that just I just didn't do it, and it bothered me so much.
Yeah, it's hard to get that funk out of the system when it goes that way. Even though you got the deer, like you said, on two of them, it's still I know the same feeling. I felt the same way at times too, where it almost the how it went matters more than the end result.
I mean, I think that's a I think that's something you get to when you do this stuff enough, right, is like you're kind of the end result is cool, but all of the other stuff's really what matters. And for me, I just making bad shots. You know, sometimes they just happen, right, Like sometimes there's just something where you're like, man, I just didn't see that little twig
or something and it just didn't break my way. But when it's like preventable and you knew it and you still did it wrong, and then that stuff kind of feeds. You know, We've we've talked about this before, but like when you have those little nagging thoughts in your head at that moment of truth and your confidence has taken a hit, suddenly it becomes not very much fun until you start stringing together those double lungs again.
Yeah. So, like you said, we've talked about this a lot over the years, and you went through a thing, I don't know, a decade ago or fifteen years ago or whatever it was, where you had some serious target panic issues and you push through it and you've come out the other side. And I've publicly talked about my target panic issues and how I've had I've tried various ways to get better at that and get through it. And I'll tell you I've had a level of what's
the right word. It's more than frustration, like a level of Oh, I was supposed to have this fixed, Like I said, I had this fixed, I had I had a solution, this was supposed to do it, and then I still make mistakes. And that's that, Like when you talk about like chipping away on the inside at yourself. That's hard to like keep on pushing there, like God, dang it, Like I thought I had this figured out. Now I'm dealing with it again two years later, and
now here it is again. So you just had a situation where you kind of had a batter run here. How have you been processing that? How all of you been shaking yourself out of that?
You know what's weird about is I started this year with a perfect shot, you know, on a doe in Minnesota, smoked her, made three bad shots in a row, and then I shot a buck in Minnesota.
Perfect right through the heart.
And so I don't feel there are times where I feel like I slipped back to major buck fever and kind of rush in the shot. I really feel that if I'm out west and an elk walks in or something like, I really have to try to not lose my shit then. But for me, the thing that like this year specifically was I know exactly what I did wrong on every shot. I just didn't do my job right. And so it's not like I feel like I have
a bunch to work on there. It's just like I made dumb mistakes like I shouldn't do that, you know, So like the fix isn't I'm not searching for like a you know, Joel Turner type of fix here. I'm like, I know what, I know what was broken in my process there. Yeah, you know, and that's that sucks even well maybe not more, it's a different kind of suck.
Yes, yeah. So okay, so the shooting, the bad shots, that whole situation, that is a fair that's a fairly negative bummer right of a moment. Do you want to go back and forth or do you want to go through your whole list? Do you have a sense of what you would prefer? Do you want to get all off chest?
You know, I don't care. I mean that to me, that's really for my personal hunting.
Uh.
That was that was it, Like that's what brought me down, the rest of it's pretty pretty good.
I'm not not going to complain too much.
All right, Well, then I'll lead with my big negative one this year, which was my head was not in the game right this year in the fall, and I wasn't sure if I want to talk about this or not, but Giannis convinced me that I should. So you know a little bit about this, Tony, but I'll kind of share that this fall, I had some weird stuff going on and it led to me just like not being
in it. From mid October on, in the short version of the story, is started having chest pains, shortness of breath, radiating, burning, all this kind of stuff going around in the chest region, which that's all sorts of red flags flying. And this started happening right about when you and I got back from Louisiana, right after I shot my buck in Michigan, shot a buck in southern Michigan, like the I can't remember the fourteenth or thirteenth or fifteenth somewhere in that ballpark.
Felt great, got this deer on the ground, and then like the next day or two, started having this stuff going on, and to really shrink down, which was like six weeks of stuff into as short of a story as I can tell here, had this stuff going on started like noticing it and kind of worrying about it. And then as soon as you like google anything about like what is this, what is this? Why am I feeling this way? Then it makes you more worried about what it is, and you're focusing on it more, and
then you start noticing it more. And so had like a regular physical and they, you know, gave me some stuff to think about, but they didn't really think there was anything that you could do right away rather than going on like having like more extensive tests and stuff. So they said, well, if if this thing happens or that thing happens, then we need to go and get
it checked out further at the hospital or something. So as soon as she tells me about these things I need to pay attention to, like all of a sudden that I start noticing them. Every time I'm in the tree stand, You're sitting there with nothing to do but watch for deer and sitting there quietly, and when you're when I'm not doing something else, and then all of a sudden, you're noticing this stuff even more. So, especially
when I hunted, I noticed this stuff. And so for day after day, night after night, I'm feeling this stuff and worrying about it, and it seems to be getting worse, and you know, it just very very uncomfortable, very disconcerting, and very stressful. And I'd be out there hunting and not really able to enjoy what I'm doing because the whole time out there are big parts of it. I'm thinking about it or worried about it or trying to like is this is this real? Is this in my head?
What's going on? That the physical? She was like, well, you know, it could just be this or that. Uh So, end of October, ended up going to the er in the middle of the night because I had like really serious, what seemed really serious to me stuff going on. Can't sleep all night, it's middle of the night, and so go to the er and I'm like, this stuff's not going away. I don't know what it is. But when you read about some of these things, like, hey, you
got to take this stuff serious. So I do. They do all sorts of tests they hooked me up to you know, I got IVS and I got X rays and I've got this test and that test and all this other stuff and kind of freaking out like holy shit, what is going on with me? I'm in the hospital, and you know, after being there all night. It's like October thirty first or October thirtieth or something like that's right there, like the when it should be like the
sweet about the hunting season. And I'd gone to Illinois a couple of days before that, and it got like really bad down there, and that's why that trip flopped. I went down. I was like, I feel like, shit, I'm not enjoying this at all. You know, this like long drives, it would happen too more often too, So like taking long drives, I'd be like focusing on this, and the hospital visit comes out the end of it.
And there was nothing that they could find wrong with the heart or the lungs, which are like the big worries, but they couldn't really figure it out. So they said, you know, here's here's here's a possible thing. Here's a possible thing. Keep monitoring it. We can't find anything like super like the horrible, horribly scary stuff isn't showing up for us right now. But we still don't know, so maybe check go to your primary care physician or whatever.
But otherwise, here's some heartburn meds. Maybe that'll take care of it, good luck. And so then the rut starts, and now you know, not sleeping very much because of the rut, traveling all around, go to Kentucky, do this public land hunt. The stuff still continues, but now I'm not sleeping, I'm stressed about general life stuff, work stuff,
hunting stuff. And then this stuff kind of keeps building and simmering underneath the underneath the surface of it all, and I'm trying to like battle it out and say I can tough it through, like this is it's nothing, I'm fine? Or what is it? Hopefully the doctors said it wasn't something, you know, bad, super serious bad in the moment, so it's probably nothing. Keep doing your stuff, but again, wouldn't go way. Kept lingering was exactly like
a mental toll on me. And this seemed like the more I was, the more you think about, of course, the worst it would get.
And you're not a guy who's prone to overthinking, are you, Mark?
Yeah? Exactly. So fast forward through the first two weeks of the rut. I'm doing my best, hunting hard, doing all that kind of stuff, but again, just like not not enjoying myself, not feeling right. I remember like coming home one night and my wife was just like, why are you sell eared of them? Like, I just want to feel like a normal person again. I just don't feel normal. I feel like, you know, I don't know,
just was not great. Then we get to, you know, a shitty rut, as I've talked about on the podcast, kind of like you like, really weird hunting situations. Nothing going my way, no deer to hunt in all the places I typically hunt and have permission, like all the mature bucks have disappeared. Get to gun season northern Michigan. Go up there with my kids. Should be a great weekend, very exciting to be up at the family deer camp.
Should be a peak moment of the year. And for all sorts of reasons, like just was like kind of stressed out about stuff and kids and everything, and also this thing is like popping up, and it's getting worse and worse throughout the day first day there, over the night the next day, and like like I thought, like I thought, maybe we had been trending down. Why is this shit happening again? Why what is this feeling? Why
isn't this going away? And so the midday on the sixteenth of them I remember, I think it was it was getting like painful, and I remember stepping outside of the cabin and just like walking around trying to drink a bottle of water and like remember trying to do like some deep breath to like calm down, because I could tell I was like getting like kind of freaked out by why this was happening again and why I was getting worse and like what just again, Like this
is like frustration, not understanding what this is, why I'm feeling this way, why I feel like shit? And then my fingers started getting numb, and then I started getting like dizzy and woozy, and then it went up my arms. And then Josh, my buddy, our mutual friend, Josh Hilliard, came out of the cabin just could see what I was doing, and I was like, it's like, dude, something's going on. Like I'm all of a sudden like couldn't stand up straight and told my like I'm going numb.
Then it went like up my arms, my neck, my face, everything started going like as if you'd stuck nova cane in me. And I'm like, I think I need to go to the doctor. Something's going on. I don't know what's going on? Ah, So he like gets me in the seat of the car and then now in this moment, I'm like, holy shit, whatever this thing is that the doctor couldn't figure out, Like it's happening, Like there's something
really insane going on right now. It felt like I'm having a heart attack or a stroke or whatever it is. Something really I've never experienced my entire life was happening. And I get to the point when in the car, in the front sea of the car, and my arms get like this like across my chest and completely lock up, like I can't move my fingers, I can't move my arms, I can't move anything. I'm like paralyzed, and I'm like can't do anything except for try to focus on breathing
and kind of get out words to Josh. I'm like called, like take me to the hospital. Something that bad. It's happening. And so that ended up being like the scariest moment probably in my life. I thought, literally I was having a heart attack or a stroke or something. Pretty much thought I was dying. Told Josh like take care of my kids please, like you know, that's what I thought was going on, and takes me to the hospital had an EMT meet us on the way there and go
through the whole nine yards. And this is a very long winded story of a six week window of my life that just happened to coincide with like the peak of our white tail season and all the stuff we do and made for a very unfun, challenging, stressful, confusing time period. Go to the hospital, they grun all these tests and everything, and there was there's two main things that you know, so I guess, stop this long, boring story.
Three things were identified. Number one, what was going on in that moment when I thought I was dying was not that I had a heart attack or a stroke, Thankfully, it was none of those things. They tested for cloths, they tested for any kind of cardiac issues or any kind of anything like that. None of those things happened. What it was was that my CO two levels had
plummeted to almost zero. They were able to check what my excuse me, my CO two levels were in that moment, and it was like two or something, and it's supposed to I don't know what it's supposed to be, supposed to be way way higher than that. And so what that happens that's caused by basically hyperventilation, which is breathing
too deeply, too fast or something. I'm not I can't remember exactly what the thing is, but I was basically having a stress related panic attack or something in that moment, which led to this thing with my breathing, which led to this feeling, which apparently is a common thing for folks having some kind of thing like I was having. And so that was what caused this thing on that Sunday or Saturday, whatever day that was. And then I go to another series of doctors, they do these different tests.
What they found or what they believed was causing the original issue was this condition that apparently leads to like inflammation of the cartilage and muscles across my sternum up and down my sternum. So like a muscular skeletal issue had caused or has been causing this initial pain I'm feeling my chest, and you google this stuff and it's like, yeah, people think they're having a heart attack with this thing. It's like common, it's a common thought that people have
and worry that people have with this condition. And so what the doctors think was going on was that I had this original thing which has been going on and is still ongoing, which then led to me thinking about it, focusing on it, worrying about it, being stressed about it, which then you know, she's like, well, do you have any stress in your life otherwise? Are you not sleeping otherwise? Are you working too much otherwise? Are you go go
going otherwise? I'm like, well, yeah, NonStop right now. So basically what the doctors think is that I had this original chest issue in pain, which was musculo skeletal, and then the hunting season relayed stress, travel, relayed stress compounded on top of me stressing and worrying and thinking about this chest pain and shortness of breath and all this stuff, and then led to this snowballing and snowballing and snowballing to where I would be having this concern about why
is my chester why can't I breathe right? And that leads to actual physiological changes related to that stress, which do lead to more chest tightness, chest pain, breathing issues,
which then led to more of that. And so that was going on for like six weeks and led to me having this incident where I thought I was dying and went to the hospital and just led to a really aft up fall where I was not able to enjoy it a lot of it, was not able to really be in it the way I usually am, didn't have the hootspa and excitement, was worried about my health.
So I was like, I don't know if I want to travel across the country to go to this other state or do this other thing because I just want to get this shit figured out and feel normal again. I don't know, man, it just led to a really really weird fall that on the bright side, I think I'm coming out of it now that I understood what's going on. We're able to do some stuff that has reduced that original pain and that that condition I think
is improving. And then I've also been able to kind of work on shilling out a little bit, dealing with
some of that stress. I think a lot of that stress has left now that I have some answers, you know, uh, exploring some mindfulness practices, UH, some woo woo ship and uh and maybe that's what I've needed to So yeah, that's been the big negative for me this fall, which which probably has led to some of the lack of quote unquote success, but also there's the other weirdness going on where I just haven't had anything to hunt some of my spots, et cetera, et cetera. Yeah, that's that's
what's going on. That's what I've dealt with.
So can I tell you something that that reminds me of? Yeah, because I knew you were going through that obviously. I kind of forgot about this when I quit drinking very shortly after I had a lot of pain on my right side and I went through MRIs and all kinds of shit because I was like, oh great, I quit drinking.
Now my liver is gonna crap out on me. And they finally figured out that I had torn the cartilage underneath my ribs, and it was sounds like kind of similar to what you were talking about with your chest, where it's like this thing happens and they're like, ah, we don't know, and then all of a sudden they're like no answers, no answers, and your brain starts to spiral. Yeah shit, you just don't see coming.
No, no, not at all, really really weird. Really Yeah, I don't know if I've still fully processed all of like the stuff that's coming out of that just it made me feel very old like or more mortal, do you know what I mean? Like this is the first time in my life where I was like, holy shit, like I thought I was gonna croak? Am I doing stuff? Right? Am I taking care of myself?
Right?
Do I need to re examine how I'm taking care of myself in other ways?
You know?
I don't know. It was just a whole whole bunch of stuff that you know made me and made me already and will I'm sure make me think more in the future about a lot of different things. But how I do stuff.
Yeah, it makes me feel bad because when when you started your story, I remember the other part of my fall that sucked, but I don't want to talk about it now because yours is way worse.
I still want to hear about it. It's all all issues are valid on this podcast, Tony.
I'm glad you got that sorted out, because I know that was weighing on you real heavy, or at least you got to some clarity on it, some visibility into it.
It is. It is really hard to.
It's sort of hard to understand something like that if you haven't gone through it or faced it, or you know, had those little kids at home and think about your own mortality. I mean that's a that's a heavy mental lift that really when when stuff like that happens, it
really makes like the size of the buck. Like some of the stuff seemed really stupid that we kind of fixated Ourial, you know, and I so what I was going to say too, is so we you and I started out, you know, the Louisiana trip, and then we just went gangbusters right back to back to back whatever, just trying to you know, you have like eight weeks of just chaos, right, And I got through all of that.
I found a really good concentration of bucks on public land in northern Wisconsin, like I had something going on.
Took my daughter in there.
We had one hundred and thirty inch or like forty yards, I mean like cool. And so when when when I got out of that and we got out all of our travel, I was like, I'm going over there. I scrapped my whole plan for the rut and I'm like, I'm going to go focus on this area of public, not hunt my private and work those deer. And I got over there and on my first morning had a pretty good eight pointer come in that I almost killed. He was ten yards away and I just started to
draw and he busted me. Just came into one place where he was going to get a little bit of my wind. But I was like, you know, day one for that area, really like that's a good encounter. Like
I go all season and don't have that. And that night I hunted, didn't see anything, and left and I drove a route that I've driven I don't know, dozens and dozens and dozens of times, maybe hundreds at this point between the trout fishing and everything else and just looking for deer, and I took a slightly different rut. I went two miles on a highway when I usually go on the gravel. I got out on that highway in the rain, and I had a guy coming up
behind me pretty quick. Just looked at every viewer mayor looked back up and there was a deer coming out on the highway and I was like, there's nowhere to go. Just smoked or day one. So the first chance I had to hunt for myself, it was over and I you know, and I'm over there in northern Wisconsin and you're just like, man, this stuff can go south. And where I'm going with that is like everything was fine right, Like I didn't I didn't go in the.
Ditch or anything.
I mean, it really sucked, I had a knife or it was just you know, not a fun experience. Right then you're then you're you're done. But it's like it reminded me like when everybody when I told people, I'm like, I just smoked the deer, the first question is are you okay? And you forget this kind of like you forget how quickly something can go wrong, you know, and how the other thing that I that your story with what you went through for you know, multiple weeks of
like am I freaking dying here? Like are like are my kids gonna not have a dad in a very short amount of time? Like like those like heavy things you don't ever consider until they're right in your face.
It's like.
When we should just treat each other better, you know
what I mean, Like when that's happening. And then if you would have gone out and killed a two and a half year old just to be happy, a whole bunch of strangers would have shot on it for the size of it without having a clue what you just went through and so I think it's a good reminder when we see people out there wherever, like like you don't know what they're going through, you know, like have you have no clue what's like happening in their day to day life. Like, I think that's a good reminder.
Yeah, that's such a great reminder. And and also be kinder to ourselves. Two. I think because I found myself, like for example, in Kentucky, just like beating myself up a bunch about you know, not not getting on the deer or not being close enough or didn't make their eye. You know, you should have moved there, You should have
moved there. At midday, I'll sit there for like hours thinking about I should have done this, or you know, you should have done that thing, or you could have done this thing but you didn't, or God, you should have we should have approached it this way, or you know, things go wrong and then you you know, you're pissed off about it or frustrated about it, or thinking about it. Ah, well, here's another thing that didn't go my way, or what's such and such gonna mean for the future or whatever.
And you know, anytime, anytime where I'm overly focused on the end goal. It always leads to bad stuff. It always leads to stress and not enjoying it. And uh, you know, especially given the stuff I was going through this year, I probably should have cut myself a little bit slack, maybe, But instead I was like, maybe doubly hard on myself in some ways because I, like Jesus, like, just get do something right, right, And man, I don't know.
I mean back to your point about i'ast shoot a two and a half yeo to shoot whatever you want, or this whole year without having like a mature buck to hunt, I've been wrestling with you know, why am I obsessing over trying to find a mature buck? Maybe I just need to just shoot anything to have fun. Or maybe I just need to chill the heck out and stop stressing about it and just start taking my kids hunting and enjoy that, because that's the one thing
that's super fun. But instead, I because I haven't killed the mature buck yet, I've pushed off taking my kids more and more and more because I'm still trying to kill mature buck. And so now I'm in December and haven't hunted with my kids at all because I've been feeling like I'm obligated to kill a big buck and and then you know, not doing the thing that really would bring me the most joy or that is the most fun or that actually you know, matters in the
long term. So those are the kinds of things and questions that I've been wrestling with again this year as I you know, continue to evolve, I guess as a hunter and trying to understand, you know, what I want this to look like for me and what my goals are and will be in the future. This is definitely another step this year of very examining that stuff.
Right, It's a good reminder. I mean, and you said something before. I just I wrote about this for a Foundation's episode that I think probably came out this week, that this episode will drop about goals and how often in hunting we kind of screw them up.
Like the goal.
It's it's like so easy to be like, well, I want a buck bigger than one I've ever killed, or I want a one forty, or you know, you talked about like the end result sort of tainting the whole process and focusing too much on that. And you know, I felt that with my I would tag this year where it was like I was really looking forward to that, and I had about seventeen things go wrong in a in a very short period of time, and was like, now I just I kind of just want to kill
one and get out. And I had I just looked at it wrong, you know. And when you when you get one of those premiere tags like that that.
You've been waiting on.
Or any you know, whenever there's like a heightened level of pressure, you know, to do well, then all of a sudden, it can be real not fun in a hurry. And it's it's a hard thing to remember, but it's it happens, and when it happens, it sucks bad.
Yeah, I don't know what the solution is that I've thought a lot about that. It's like, man, every time I put these like increased expectations on a hunt or a place or a season or whatever, it always comes down to that like self induced pressure that you put on yourself or the situation, and that al was always you know, I remember when it used to be just like really fun to get up in the morning, go hunt and see what the hell you're gonna see? Right, man,
this gonna be great. I'm gonna go out there and who knows what's gonna happen. And if it didn't go your way, no big deal, Let's go hunting again next time when I want to go. Now, it's like, I mean, what's what's a little bit said for me? Is that I I caught myself and recognized this in myself. You know, years ago, a couple of years ago, we were talking about this, and still it's really hard to break those
bad habits. I still find myself, you know, executing what feels like a military mission right and beating myself up about it, and you know, I've yet to figure out how to shake that. Maybe that's just part of it. If if you're gonna try to do anything well, which we are trying to do things well, you inherently have to have that along the way. But maybe there's a middle ground that is where I'm constantly trying to find things and you know, find that sweet spot. But yeah,
you kind of I don't know. I don't know exactly where that right spot is, but I do know that the obsession and the obsession by the media and us in the past, and all the Instagram stuff and YouTube and everywhere, like constant big buck, this big buck, that big buck, this like that is definitely I can't be you and I can't be the only ones feeling this way. Like there's gotta be a lot of other people who are feeling this, and I want to find some way to to change that a little bit in whatever small
way we can. I don't know what that looks like yet, but but man, we got to bring the got to keep the joy in deer hunting and get off of this obsession with like did you get your big one this year? Because that's I don't think that's helping many people, right.
I mean, well, I can tell you you know, I was looking at what I kind of want to do this year for hunts, and I definitely want to hunt a new state somewhere. I'm going to go public land hunt. It might be Kansas, might be somewhere else. I'm not sure yet. But I really realized that when I went over to wiscont to Wisconsin with my daughter, where I was like, we just got to get a little buck to come in here, and she's gonna be super happy.
And we hunted private land where I had a bunch of cameras out didn't have much for deer going on and then I said, you know what, she's she's good enough. I probably wouldn't have done this with her sister, but she's good enough. Where I was like, let's go scout public land and just like, just see, I have a spot that I really like and there might be something there.
In the minute we pulled up there, I could see rubs in the woods and a scrape on this little loggin road coming out and I said, we're we're gonna go in here and we're gonna do something fun. And the minute we started hunting there, instead of being like, well, I don't have any pictures on this camera this in the last forty eight hours and the wind's wrong for this spot and this, as soon as we walked in there, I was like, now I'm having fun. Like now there's
a mystery. I don't care who's living here. I can tell there's good ones here, but there's just a concentration of deer and now we're gonna figure it out. And we blanked that night, and then we went back in the next morning with a new plan and we kind of walked her through on X and like, here's what we're gonna do. We're gonna get up early, We're gonna go in there and maybe, just maybe, And it almost worked, and it was like, Okay, this is this.
Is what I like.
I need those reminders because it's easy in a lot of situations to be like, well, I'm I'm not excited about this, like you said, because I don't have any deer to shoot. It's like, okay, well on that private place where your standards are this high, whatever, that's fine.
You don't have anything there, is it better to not hunt, Like can you go find that somewhere else, or can you go do something else, or like what can you do to make sure that you keep that going instead of just being like, I hunt this forty acres and there's no shooters, so I'm not going because I think that's I think we are on a like a.
Dangerous path with that.
And you hear that a lot where people are like, I'm not going in until that buck shows up, and when he does, then I will hunt him. Yeah, And it's like that's just so it's so different than some of the ways you can do it.
Yeah, And I'll tell you one of the most fun hunts I had in this area where I have been, you know, struggling to find a buck to hunt was when I was like, you know what, nothing's working. I'm not find him anywhere. Let's just do something crazy. Let's go in and hunt this other area that I never
go to that shouldn't have deer. But I'm gonna still hunt my way in there and sneak in and hunt the ground and slip around and sneak into some bedding areas and just do some crazy stuff just to switch it up, because can't hurt at this point, just being willing to adventure a little bit, try different things, or another thing I haven't done but I keep on threatening to do and I want to do, is like just go up north and track deer in the snow. Try
that again. Just drive around, find a track, go for a hike, see if you can walk down a deer. And I'd be thrilled to shoot any buck like that. But we put these like self created restrictions on ourselves or feel like we're obligated to stick with an original goal or whatever, and allow that to kind of paint ourselves into a corner, which is which is a mistake.
Probably, dude, we just can't help but trophy hunt, we can't help it. It's so it's just like so ensconced in our like DNA.
I can tell you, I mean kind of fast forwarding a little bit into like the good stuff. Like the things that were the highs and the best moments were the moments when I wasn't worried about that, Like the times when I was able to pull myself away from that were the best moments of a year, Like you know, going doing the couple hunts that I have been able to do with my sons so far, super fun. Best moments of my hunting season, uh, hunting with my son
for turkeys this spring. We got a turkey together that was a highlight, absolutely incredible. The you know, another thing that stands out, and this is I guess I'm kind of skipping to some of the takeaways or trends and patterns I saw, but but really almost all of the best moments of my year in the outdoors were those excuse me, were those in which I was with people right right. It was like the times that I made time to do something with someone in my life that
I care about the are the absolute best. They were not the times when I had the best chance to kill a big, huge buck. It was the time when I was with my dad at deer camp, and we're with Josh and his kids and my kids at deer camp. It was our spring turkey camp where a bunch of my hunting budies all get together for a long weekend and chase turkeys and do a bunch of dumb stuff and have a good time. That's a highlight. And again
it gets it gets harder and harder. I think for a lot of us who are trying to kill a bunch of mature bucks, you end up spending a bunch of long days on the road and you hunt by yourself.
Here in our case, maybe a camera guy's with us, but we do a bunch of those kinds of trips where you know we're on a mission, you're with your camera guy, you or I know guys who do this like We've got plenty of friends who do this kind of thing, who are like lone wolf superstar deer hunters who feel like they've got to kill four bucks a
year or five bucks a year. They travel from place to place, and when you do that, you oftentimes sacrifice time with buddies for more time in the woods, or more time to go to more state or whatever it is. And I keep on seeing over the last couple of years paying attention to this that those are almost always the times when I'm overstressed and not having fun, and the times when I am like, hey, I'm gonna enjoy
my time with my friends. You I'm gonna hunt hard and do some good stuff at the same time, I'm gonna have lunch with my friends, or hey, I'm gonna take my kids out for some of these haunts like those end up being the best, So I gotta get better leaning into those.
It's tough, buddy, but I'm right there with you, man. I mean, if I if I look back at this year and just think about, like, what were the real highlights. The first one was Turkey season when my daughter's doubled up on this hunt.
That was just we had.
We had gotten our butts kicked for a couple of days, and then the weather broke and I called in some birds from so far away that shouldn't even have been in play, and they bull shot Jake's the same time, and we're just stoked. It was just it was cool.
My buddy and his daughter got to watch it because they were in a blind not too far away, and then that bear with my daughter was for sure the highlight because we you know, I had my daughters over there a whole bunch, baiting the bears and setting up cameras and blinds and you know, trout fishing in the middle of the day or whatever, and just the whole experience, like culminating with her, like making a perfect shot on
a bear was like just it was just cool. And then her sister, the one who's just we just dropped an episode a little bit ago where I was hunting with one of my daughters when she drew a bear tag, you know, two years ago now where we went over and kind of did a combo hunt.
She killed a spike.
This year, we went out the first weekend we could get over there, which was I think in the end of September, and just sitting with her on the ground, so we weren't in a blind for the first time, Like I'm trying to get them hunting a little more than just sitting in a in a blind.
And we were sitting on the ground and.
It was getting late and I looked over there and this deer walked out and she we had been talking, obviously, and she's she had killed two spikes and she's like, I hope it's a spike. And she's like, I really want to kill a velvet deer. And it was like September twentieth or something. I'm like, well, you're not gonna kill velvet deer. Sorry, just this is not gonna happen.
And then I glassed this deer at like forty yards and I'm like, honey, I think it's a spike, and I think he's in velvet and I could hear her breath just like and he walked out and she shot him and I'm glassing and I'm like, I think that's a velvet spike.
And it was.
And I'll tell you what, man, she was like, she was real happy with herself. So she's she's gone three for three on spikes in the last three years and she's kind of just.
Kind of hanging her hat on that.
But those three, you know, and then you know, we did some late season hunting. I'm trying to get them to like suffer a little bit and earn it, and dude, they are like there. It's so fun to sort of vicariously experience this through them now, like with their first tree stand hunt, you know, or both of them killed deer from the ground, not in blinds. This year of them had encounters with deer that we almost killed but didn't.
And so even with like the limited time of fall and all the school schedules and our you know, our travel schedule and everything, I was like, man, the thing that really kept me upright this year was just stuff with them, and I mean, and we caught a ton of fit.
We had a great year fishing too. So yeah, get out with your kids.
Yeah, And that was you alluded to the next The other thing I was going to say, other than the fishing or sorry, other than the kids thing was just the other highlights of me here were when I inserted diversity and adventure into our outdoor experience. Even though you and I are whitetail obsessed and that's like our thing, you know, every time we went fishing as a family, every fishing trip this year we did a lot of it. That was so much fun. And that's as we've talked
in the past, it's like a pressure release. It's just kind of straight type one fun. There's not all the pressure and expectations. I thought a lot about like, how can I how can I act the way I act when I fish, but while I'm hunt. Is there any way that we can hunt and feel the way we do when we fish, or is it just inherently different? I don't know.
I know how how you gotta get yourself a lab you gotta train it for pheasant hunting, and then you got to follow it around in Because I feel the same way when I'm when I'm pheasant hunting as I do when I'm trying to get a SMALLI to come up on top water. I'm like, this is just pure in the moment.
It's kind of like.
Kind of like Western hunting, where it's like you're just like, what's happening now, Like what's the input now? Like what's gonna happen now, what's gonna happen in the next five minutes. It's just so in the moment and fun.
Yeah. Yeah, Like there's got to be ways to to bring that, to cross pollinate that somehow. But yeah, like the absolute highlights of the year some epic fishing experiences with the boys. Really getting to see my kids like really figure it out, especially my oldest, Like he's really into fishing and getting good at it, like proficient and like we can be out there and he's just going at it like we're on one camping trip this summer and three days straight, seven plus hours a day, all day,
and that's all he wanted to do. Like I didn't. It was like him saying, no, I want to keep going. I want to keep going. There was no like I want to go home, dad. It's like no, I'm just going to cast and cast and cast. He's just having a blast. That was absolute highlight. And then you know my like my Alaska trip, doing the fishing trip and the keys, like just like seeing new places, going new places outside of my comfort zone, that kind of stuff.
And again that's something I think can translate to the white tail world too. Is like breaking out of your usual box, adding adventure, adding new things to it, I think is a great way. Like, you know, I feel a need for a new like white tail adventure in
my future. I don't know what that's going to look like yet, but whether it'sn't going or maybe it's doing the track in the snow thing like I talked about, or I've threatened to do a backpacking white tail hunt for years, but something, because those those things always end up being a lot of fun when there's not a lot of expectation on the actual kill. Again, it's like, hey, let's go out there, have an adventure, do all this fun stuff and chase some deer for fun and hopefully
it works out. But you know it's not going to be a tragedy if you don't kill one fifty. I think that that's that's a big takeaway, is like adventure, diversity and experience and deal with people you care about those things, Like that's the recipe.
Right, Well, I mean you touched on the good point there that we don't We talk about some but when you're you kind of keep arcing back to this thing of like when it doesn't have to be the one fifty, when it doesn't have to be the trophy, when it
doesn't have to be the mature buck. Most people aren't going to they're not going to go for a little one, or they're not going to still hunt or something when it's like your home ground that you've been working on and have your hit list and right on down the line. So again it's like you you might have to go
find that somewhere else where you don't care. Like the some of the most fun that you can have with white til hunting is going somewhere where you absolutely do not expect to shoot a big one, And you're like, now my standards have recalibrated to this four day hunt somewhere else, and it doesn't have to be an out of state trip, you know, Like I think about this
in my home state of Minnesota a lot. I mean, I can hunt way vastly diverse types of habitat and terrain and never leave the boundaries of my state, you know. And it's not like unique to Minnesota, right, Like you can people think about you know, you and I love to go to North Kota, right you think about how different the western half of that state is versus the eastern, southern,
versus northern. There are some opportunities out there where you don't you don't have to buy that non resident tag and spend a bunch of money and then have that pressure of the non resident trip, because immediately that changes the kind of the vibe of.
The whole thing.
Sometimes it's like a matter of going an hour away to do that big woods hunt where you're just like trying to track one or something and it's just a different field than going out on your lease or your home farm and being like, well, I haven't got a picture of my number one buck in five days, and maybe the neighbors shot him, or he's nocturnal or whatever. It's like you've you've just like reshuffled the deck completely, even if it's just for like a day, it can be so fun.
Yeah, I think that's such a great, such a great point, and I just see it and like some of my other buddies too, like just the the worry, the stress, the pressure we put on, Oh is there gonna be a big one, or you know, the hit list. All this stuff that you're talking about, we've just built We've put all this stuff up on a pedestal. We've built up all of this stuff and made it seem like it's all so important and and it's it's I don't know, we're in some ways we're winning a really good thing.
And it's like a collective. It's like it's the social media slash, larger media slash, just the way of the world slash. I don't know what, but it is definitely it's definitely something that I think we as a community have got to keep on thinking about. And I know we've been talking about it for years, but it's not fixing itself. And yeah, I guess I'm just living it.
You're living it. We're all living it. But you know, even some of my best hunting buddies that have dealt with us themselves when they end up going instead of you know, like, I've got a friend who hunts in a great area. He's got some really good property and for whatever reason, this year, just there weren't the bucks he was after. Like there's some good bucks, but he wants a big five year old or whatever, and they
weren't there. And you know, he's a guy who historically get really stressed about this, and times will get really stressed about this, and like the hunting buddies in our group are kind of giving him a hard time of body doesn't have shit to hunt. But same thing is that you're talking about, Like we've created these crazy standards for ourselves because what you're supposed to do or whatever.
There's plenty of deer he'd go and hunt, have a good time with probably, but he's convinced himself that he should only be shooting five and a half year old bucks or one sixties or whatever it is. And so because of that he feels like he has a shitty
hunting season. But then when he decides to go trapping, like run the trap line instead, or take his son squirrel hunting, like he has a blast, right, Or when he goes out there and you know, has buddies come and hunt around them and sees them shoot something different, like that's a super fun time too, right, So I think, like there's obvious cures here, We're just allowing expectation or something to get in the way.
Well, right, And I mean, one thing that I'm kind of hyper aware of right now is the more that you go out and do this random stuff that maybe doesn't have as much weight as drawn that I would take and trying to kill a one fifty. It's sort of the antidote to being super judgy, right, right. You see this, You see this so often with people who are who have like, you know, somebody is hunting in candy Land somewhere and they're like why why would anybody
shoot anything less than a one forty or whatever? And You're like, you know, you have no concept of what other people are going through to hunt, or their time or like what's important to them.
And I never do this. I made a mistake.
And I looked at the comments when they posted a teaser from that hunt with my daughter. They were they were generally very good, but like literally the first comment was not trying to throw shade here, but why would you shoot that little buck when you could wait for a bigger one? And you know, you know me, I'm a nutcase. So my first reaction is like, I'm like, God, I wish you were standing in front of me. I'd
kicking the taint so hard. But I'm like, yeah, she's she's an eleven year old girl hunting in northern Wisconsin and she has a couple of days a season to hunt.
Like, it's not your tag, you know what I mean?
Like, I the the petty part of me wants to look that guy up and be like, how come your wife's not a ten?
Why is she a five? Right?
Like you know there are tens out there, right? Why are you rolling around with this average woman when you could have a super model if you just tried harder, Like that would make me a huge prick, right yeah, not my not my journey, right, that's his journey.
And I just think that.
The more you go out and you're like, you know what I'm getting I'm getting out of my farm that I know really well, or I'm going to get out of the box blind on the food plot and I'm going to go still hunt them or whatever. Like whatever you do, this is like to get you outside of
your comfort zone a little bit. You start to like realize, okay, like there's more to this, Like I'm seeing this such a myopic thing, you know, Like a lot of people feel that way about baiting, and I can shooit on baiting with the best of them, But when you go do it in different situations, whether it's in Texas or some other place where you get dump corn on the ground, you go okay, like I get it, Like maybe it's not for you, like but you can see why it
would be for somebody else or like what Like it's just like sort of dulls those sharp edges you carry with like that chip on your shoulder, and you're just like okay, Like you know, we're hunting rabbits with antlers here, right, Like should I get super pissed off and go after a stranger over this? I don't know, man, Like is it that important?
Yeah, I think that's a great I think that's a really good place to end this out is is both being a little bit more I don't know if it's forgiving or kind. I mean you said, like being kinder to others, not being so damned judgy, not you know, all that kind of stuff, and then also being a little bit kinder to ourselves and releasing some of the pressure off ourselves, getting back to having fun, focusing on
what's important here. I think if we can do those two broad sets of things going in, twenty twenty five should be a dang good year.
Maybe, I hope, so, Buddy, for your sake in mind and everybody who's listening, I hope so, buddy.
And on that note, Tony, appreciate you joining me. Let's do our best to make twenty five a good one, and there'll be lots of fun adventures ahead for us to share, and looking forward to hearing from plenty of listeners about their journeys too. So without any more I don't know crazy stories I'm Tony about kicking people and the others. Let's wrap this one up and thank you for joining us, folks, and until next week, stay wired to hunt, all right, And that's it for us today.
Appreciate you being here. Thank you for kicking off the new year with Tony and I. It's gonna be a good one. I don't care what Tony says. We're gonna have a terrific twenty twenty five and I'm sure you will, and I'm excited to be sharing it with you. Thanks for being a part of this community, and thanks for staying wired to hunt