Welcome to the Wired to Hunt Foundations podcast, your guide to the fundamentals of better deer hunting, presented by first Light, creating proven versatile hunting apparel for the stand, saddle or blind. First Light, Go Farther, Stay Longer, and now your host Tony Peterson.
Hey everyone, welcome to the Wired to Hunt Foundation's podcast, which is brought to you by first Light.
I'm your host, Tony Peterson.
And today's episode is all about the lottery game preference points and you know what we can guess will be the future of getting tags for deer hunting. This is an issue that's pretty much always top of mind for me, especially as we say goodbye to the garbage month that is January and we slide our way into February, which also kind of sucks, but at least it's a little closer to Turkey season, drawing tags, playing the lottery game preference points.
It's all around us in the hunting space. Now.
I know what a lot of you are thinking, Well, I never leave my home state, so I don't care. But hold your horses there, my little buckeroos. If you think this issue isn't coming for you your homestate, you're probably wrong. It's also just the reality that if you want to hunt something extra anywhere, even in your home state, you should probably at least be aware of what's going on in the hunting license space.
So that's what this episode is all about.
As is often the case, when I sit down and do these podcasts, I get distracted the instant. The words just don't spill from my brain onto the computer. So I did what anyone in my position would do, and I went and applied for a Kansas non resident spring
turkey tag. This April, I turned forty five. And while I hope I'm in a turkey blind on my birthday with my daughters then, which I probably will because I'm almost always in a turkey blind on my birthday, I'm also just more acutely aware of our lost opportunities as hunters.
Now.
My natural inclination here is to go into a rant about how quick we are to take away hunting opportunities from each other and justify it however.
We need to.
But I'm going to spare you that if you listen to this podcast with any level of frequency, you know how much of a mistake I think that is.
Instead, I'm feeling a sense.
Of loss over our hunting opportunities. This comes from many sources. The news about states tightening up their non resident allocations while following the predictable path of raising prices on the license and the preference points and the application fees. That's a good reminder, and you don't have to look too hard to find those stories. But it's way more than
that though. I recently went through some of my photos, of which I have nearly one hundred thousand, most of which are from hunting in some form, although there are a hell of a lot of fishing and general wildlife images mixed in there. But one picture caught my eye recently and it hit me kind of hard. In it, one of my best friends can be squatting to one side of a dead meal deer which is hanging from
a tree. On the other side of the deer is me in the same pose, holding the small four by four rack up so it looks a little better for the camera. And I think about that hunt all the time, about how we were so clueless then on how to spot and stock. The opportunities were many, and our standards were super low. Now that little buck wasn't the original target of the stock It was this spike buddy that I spotted first as we hiked our way out of the north to Quota bad Lands while the early September
sun baked the whole landscape. I hit the dirt instinctively, and so did my buddy, who was behind me on the trail. The route before us was good enough, and I started crawling. It wasn't until I was within about fifty yards of that spike that I saw yet a bigger buddy with him, who happened to be on a course that would bring him even a little closer. It was unreal and only got better when my arrow actually hit him and we went from being mule deer hunters
to finally being mule deer killers. It was one of those formative moments in hunting that creates a before and after feeling. We used to not be able to seal the deal. Now we can if you get my drift. At that time you had to apply for that tag, but it was a sure thing. You could also buy an archery antelope tag as a kicker. As you can
probably guess, things aren't so simple there now. One loope tags for non residents are long gone, and the meal deer tags are a half decade investment in applications and points at least now. To be fair, the whole thing went south there largely due to winterkill, which in the interest of the resource, makes a tag reduction so much
easier to swallow. It just makes sense. No one resident or not wants to see fragile game populations reduced to a point where they can't rebound, simply because we like hunting more than we like sitting out from hunting. That memory is fresh in my mind from that specific hunt, even though anyone born on that day could be taking their driver's license test this year. Time is a constant, and with it comes change. As you get older, you pine for the world that was, while casting a suspicious
side eye to the world that is. And when it comes to hunting, this is an expected reaction. We want to protect our opportunities. And if there is one thing that makes hunting harder generally, it's change. If there is one thing that's coming from most of our hunting though, it's also change. But that's really kind of fodder for another topic. What I want to focus on today is that while things are changing, there are still a lot
of opportunities out there. Many require us to focus on a draw, you know, building a few preference points, or just understanding what licenses are available to us. If you think you'll be immune to this because you never leave
your home state to hunt, you're probably wrong. If you say, no way, man, I only hunt white tails and we get three buck tags a year here, and that's not going away to that, I say, sure, maybe, But to believe that our deer populations are a constant, and that tag allocations, especially relatively generous tag allocations, are a constant, it's probably a mistake. The truth, no matter where you live, is that we just keep making more people, and those
people keep taking up more space. So do we That space we take up comes from somewhere, and animals are rarely the benefactors when we gobble up real estate. Now, if a whole shit will do people stop hunting for whatever reason, it might all level off with the available hunting space per hunter kind of thing. And we are losing hunters in some categories, but not at the rate world in the gate urban sprawl and the loss of
hunting ground. And even if that were true, the loss of hunters would become an issue on other fronts, not the least of which is funding for conservation and a collective voice against the folks who would rather we buried our heads in the sand and eight animals raised in captivity for the purpose of consumption. We will probably all have to play the lottery game at some point in our hunting careers, and if not us, our kids for sure.
So what does this mean for you? Well, let me start by saying that most hunters won't travel to hunt, but every hunter who has the means probably should. Now, if you're concerned with being a better hunter, which, if you're listening to me ramble on, is somewhat of a safe bet, then there isn't much of a better way to have a hell of a good time hunting while leveling.
Up your game. That's just kind of an objective truth.
Now, it's also true that if you don't take advantage of some of the opportunities you have now, then you might find yourself remorseful about that at some point in the future. The easiest way to look at this is with elk. Go find a white tail hunter of the age I don't know, say, twelve to fifty five, who doesn't dream at least a little bit about hunting elk in the mountains. Now, think about how many of them
never will. Most I'd say, meal deer aren't quite to draw elk are, but the path in the situation for them is exactly the same. Really, all Western critters are following that path, and Western hunters are more than happy to keep everyone else out. And while I blame them a little for that, I also don't. It's like, in the last ten years everyone figured out that living in places with mountains and trout streams and clean air is actually really nice, and a whole shitload of people with
urban money decided to go kind of rural. That's a threat to a way of life that many many Western outdoorsmen and women are living through right now, and there doesn't seem to be a real end in sight. So maybe the game appeals to you just because it means you might get to hunt a critter you know you won't get to hunt maybe more than a handful of times in your life. And with that critter comes hunting in an environment that is pretty damn unique to you
and pretty damn special. It's hard to argue with that, But maybe a thousand dollars elk tag after five years of.
Waiting is a bridge too far. What can you do at home or in a neighboring state plenty?
Probably where I live in Minnesota, I can get to North Dakota and South Dakota, Nebraska, and I have a Missouri, Illinois, Wisconsin without putting really too many miles on my truck. Every one of those states will sell me some type of non resident license for deer, turkeys or ducks, or upland game or something. Some I have to build points for others I can order up on my phone in a matter of a few minutes. All are tickets to
something I can't do at home. You know what you're thinking, why would you go hunt the same turkeys or deer in Wisconsin that you could hunt Minnesota. To that, I say, they aren't the same animals, or at least it's not the same hunt, And that's the point. They live somewhere else, often in habitat that might be similar to my home
ground or nothing like it at all. Sure, one hundred inch eight point round a property here in the suburbs is built pretty much like one hundred inch eight pointer in the big Woods of Wisconsin, but the similarities for the hunt are so different What I like about the prospect of hunting somewhere else first and foremost is that it's exciting to think about doing something different that Kansas turkey tag I applied for today. It's going to take me to a state I've only hunted once for deer
and once for turkeys. But better, it's going to take me to some public land in an area I've never hunted or even driven through.
I don't think. So what's waiting for me there?
I don't know, but I hope there are a few gobblers around, and if they are tough, I don't care all care scout deer and see what I can do about bringing home the main ingredients for turkey nuggets, which are my daughter's favorite meal. Process for applying for that tag, it was so simple I could hardly believe it. I'll say this about modern technology. It is on a constant march to making things easier and easier for us to spend our money in the interest of applying for a
turkey tag. That's kind of awesome, especially if you're old enough to remember walking into some random Walmart somewhere and trying to buy a non resident tag from an eighteen year old in some random Missouri town who probably couldn't spell its first name if you spotted him half the letters. Some states could follow suit there, which you figure out pretty quickly if you try to apply for a non resident license and say I don't know Wyoming as a
random example. The process varies by state and often by critter, but it's something worth researching, even if you think you'll never actually go. I don't know how many times I've talked to someone roughly my age who has little kids and wishes they could take I'm hunting for turkeys and deer, but they can't see beyond our own states restrictions. Yet there are multiple states within a short drive that will sell youth tags dirt cheap and don't have minimum age restrictions.
The fun part about some of this stuff is just forgetting what you think you know about hunting opportunities and doing a little research on what is out there and available to you. My little girls started hunting deer in Wisconsin before they started hunting in Minnesota for this very reason, and a hell of a lot of people looked at me a little funky when I told them my nine
year old daughters were successful deer hunters. Maybe the non resident tag option is just too much for you in whatever state, but maybe there's a youth opportunity there's priced for the bargain bin and is definitely worth some research during February when you don't have anything else to do. And there's another way to look at this, which I
think is important. Any slight inconvenience to getting a tag or buying a preference point can be enough of a deterrent to throw your hands in the air and say.
To hell with it.
With our lives full of so much bs with work and families, it's easy to see anything like filling out an app or buying preference points for a few years as a good argument to just give it up and not do it. I have a couple buddies who are like that now, and I can promise you one thing. They aren't any happier in the fall for not going
and traveling to hunt. They know what they're missing, and just like not exercising or taking care of yourself some other way, you can justify it in your head easy enough, but there is a little voice that lets you know
that maybe you should make some different choices. It's easier to give up and I see a lot of that right now here in the Upper Midwest, Like with the wolf situation, the traditional up north deer camp, you know, mostly for rifle hunting, is dying on the vine, and the presence of big deer eating canines is certainly accelerating that drop off.
I talk to people every year who.
Say it's not worth going up to the big woods anymore, and maybe they're right, But is that a good enough reason to not hunt anywhere, to at least not do a little dive into the opportunity that are still available, and it might allow you to keep hunting, even if it's not the hunt you think you want. Is it better to quit altogether because that specific opportunity one a way? I don't think so. And also on that point, it's worth just some time researching opportunities in your home state.
We get stuck doing what we generally always do at home, on our familiar ground, but we forget that pretty much every state opers up more than we engage in in
any given season or in any given lifetime. Maybe you're unaware of some of the ones in a lifetime opportunities in your state, or the fact that you can get an extra buck tag in some corner of your state for some reason, or maybe just go on a dough hunt in some other corner of your state when you thought the whole season was just over because of where
you usually hunt. I'm reminded of this often when I talk about bear hunting, because people ask me about hunting bears in Minnesota a lot, and I've only really done it a handful of times in a very specific location. I just don't have a lot of information, But I know that you can buy a no quota over the countertag in some parts of this state and play the points game.
In the others.
You could literally hunt bears in the suburbs here or do a camping trip in the boundary waters in the northern part of the state. There are licenses to consider tags to try drawing, and there are opportunities out there for us, even in our home state. So what does this all mean. I guess it's part rally cry and part warning for you guys. Things are going to change
and you're not gonna like it always. You can wait for that change to come to you and face the existential hunting crisis of maybe giving up or maybe never hunting that dream. Bull Elk or whatever, or you can try to get ahead of this stuff and be a little bit proactive. This is kind of like what my wife does with shopping for a big purchase. At first, she'll say she's just looking because she likes it or whatever,
but she's not. She's scouting in her own way, and eventually that money will be spent and whatever products she had her eye on will end up in Okay, Maybe this is nothing like that.
Instead, it's free to look.
You can browse hunting opportunities, and an easy way to do it is to think what you might have to work with in some state or some part of the state that isn't your traditional hunt. Isn't your traditional hunting spot? Even do you have a relative who has always told you that you can hunt their place. It's a real
good start in the research process. Do you spend some time fishing with the family somewhere and notice a hell of a lot of public land signage in the area, maybe an area that you just really like spending time in. Start with that. What's there for you to hunt? And how do you go about getting a license? Maybe you just feel like your home state and has gotten a little stale because you know, if you leave your lease alone until Halloween, you'll be able to go in and
kill a buck. Well, do you want to hunt any part of the season other than that or just be a super efficient killer? What do you want here to hunt? Or to just execute a real life, viable plan and fill the one tag you have as quickly as possible. This past September, my daughter killed a bear in Wisconsin, and the amount of people who we've told that story to who have also said they've always wanted to hunt bears is pretty incredible, And every time I'm like, uh,
go hunt them. Yogi is very comfortable on public land, and the process of getting a few preference points under your belt and planning where to get bait it's pretty exciting and it's also not that difficult. But most people will never do it because it's easier to not do that. Eventually, though, those tags might not be available or the fire might just burn out inside of you. Why let that happen
if you don't have to. Wouldn't you rather find yourself about sixteen years down the road, looking fondly at a photo of your much younger self and your much younger hunting buddy posing with a critter you never thought you'd hunt, let alone kill, and think fondly about that, and use it as motivation to keep looking, to keep trying to find a little adventure, than to just be the guy who says I always wanted to do this one thing and I just didn't do that one thing for whatever reason,
and now I can't because eventually the tags will be gone, the critters might be gone, or the willingness to make it happen will be gone before that, I say go, or at least do just a bit of research here in the off season on maybe going and see if that doesn't convince you to well, go do that and come back next week, because I'm going to talk about the deer that change us, the ones we kill, the ones we don't kill, and the ones that just alter our course as hunters. That's it for this week. I'm
Tony Peterson. This has been the Wire to Hunt Foundation's podcast, which is brought to you by First Light. As always, thank you so much for your support. We really truly appreciate you guys showing up watching our videos over at the mediator dot com, reading the articles, you know, listening to this podcast. The main Wire to Hunt podcast. Maybe you skip on over and listen to Bear Grease or This Country Life. Whatever, however, you show up for us,
we truly appreciate it, so thank you for that. And as I kind of mentioned there, if you need more content, you know where to find it The medeater dot com. Tons of good stuff there, go check it out.