Ep. 883: Foundations - Why Honesty in Deer Hunting Matters

that lying is just an accepted form of communication. Our politicians are absolutely full of shit, but so are our bosses, our co workers, and so many of the people we interact with on a daily basis.

of thing, at least right now. You know, until you can broadly buy your groceries or whatever with bitcoins, it's sort of like you got to sell it to somebody who will pay more for it than you will. A Ponzi scheme is different, and it started with a guy whose name might not surprise you. Charles Ponzi. Old Chuck was an Italian immigrant who back in the nineteen twenties, when, if you know anything about our financial history, was a

time when people were doing pretty well. The old Roaring twenties thing and all, oh the thirties would be a different story. But in the twenties there was some money to be thrown around and to be made, and one guy who figured out how to make a bunch of it was Charles Ponzie. He was a Grade A world champion at lying, which is a prerequisite to running a Ponzi scheme. Now, he came up with an idea to get New Englanders interested in investing into get this postage

stamp speculation. Now, before I explain it further, for all of you young folks out there wondering how to catch the next big thing that might ten thousand ex your money in a few years, ask yourself if you understand what a highly speculative investment is. If you don't learn about it before you part with any of your money.

Remember also, if someone comes to you with an amazing investment opportunity that they are literally offering to get I used some money they could take for themselves, And then ask yourself, why would they do that? If you can't come up with a good reason, like they are literally my dad and he loves me very much and wouldn't do that. Consider that the opportunity might not be as clear cut or as beneficial to you as you might

think anyway. Ponzi promised investors a fifty percent return on their capital in ninety days, which I hate to do this again, but I feel an obligation to say. There's no real, big free money out there. If someone tells you they are in a dividends stock or ETF that churns out even eight or ten percent a year, it's probably not very safe. You can get ten percent a year in the S and P five hundred, but you have to give it many years to average the ups

and the downs. It won't be an instant year to year guaranteed ten percent, let alone fifty percent in three months. The thing about a Ponzi scheme is that it has to grow forever because the money that it needs to return that fifty percent in three months has to come from somewhere, and it sure as hell isn't going to come from flipping stamps for a huge profit. So new investors have to show up with their money, and that

has to go to the early in our investors. Now, when Ponsi was really humming along, he was bringing in two hundred and fifty K a day, which would be about like three million or so today. Not bad for a day's work right, Well, it didn't take too long before the growth of new investors didn't outpace the needs of existing investors to get paid out. Predictably, he went to prison and a whole bunch of folks lost their life savings. His devious nature and attitude out lying ruined

a lot of people. We generally despise dishonest people, at least we present that image, but when it comes to political tribalism, which just folks we like, we can overlook a lot of obvious bullshit. In the outdoors, we do this as well, with fishing and probably being the activity

that is most tightly linked to outright lying. No one catches a big pre spawn smallly and actively tries to underestimate the size, just like any of the trout dorks here at meat Eater when they catch a cutty out west generally won't round down the length of it when they type out their Instagram caption to go along with the photos of themselves with a fly rod in their mouth, so you know that not only are they better than you, but also probably smarter and with just a little bit

more impressive manhood than the pond scum who would catch a trout on a spinning rod. Is there harm in those lies? I don't know, not really. I mean, who cares if some Randos trout was closer to eighteen inches than nineteen it doesn't matter. The same could be said for rounding up the score of your bucks, antlers. Does it really matter that your buck is closer to one

twenty than one thirty? Not really? But I will also say maybe the reason I say that is that, at least in my opinion, I hear this a lot, which is way too frequently. Someone will say something like, oh, that little one hundred and twenty inch buck or that scrubby one hundred and fifteen inch deer. While there are folks out there who look at deer that size as small,

they are in a tiny, tiny little minority. What's worse is that most of the folks making hunting content seem to be in that tiny, tiny little minority, but general hunters find their way in there as well. To the rest of the hunters. Maybe that skews the perception a bit. I know a lot of really really good hunters, and I know very few people who pass up bucks that are bumping up on the pope and young minimum. I also know a hell of a lot of weekend warriors,

and none of them are passing those bucks up. Those are big bucks to them, because one hundred and twenty inch deer generally are not small deer. They just aren't. One thing I know is that we are most likely not going to start getting more honest about the size of bucks we want to shoot or the size of bucks we actually shoot. But I think that's a shame. I shoot a lot of little bucks for a lot of reasons, and a lot of people tell me that

they really like that about me. Some tell me they hate me for that, but that's fodder for another podcast. I don't think we will collectively change on that front a whole bunch. But let me give you another example that I've probably talked about on here before. Several years ago, while hunting in western North Dakota with a couple of buddies, I crested a rise one evening and spotted a mule deer dough browsing away below me. I was a mule deer hunter in those days, which meant any meal deer

was on the menu. Because I was not very good at getting close to them. Well, I got close enough to that one at least to shoot at her, and like I did a lot then and still do more than I'd like, I shot over her back pere buck fever or I guess doe fever, whatever, But she let me get another arrow knocked, and this time I shot under her, which doesn't happen to me very often, but surprisingly isn't much more fun than air bawling high, which

is what my third arrow did before. So that MULEI, who must have been drinking a little bit too much of that polluted fracking wastewater out there, took off.

my presence. Eventually I saw them all get nervous and start to peel away. I did not, I might add watch any of them tip over after catching an arrow to the lungs when they bolted, I drove back down to wait for my buddy, who, when he finally hiked all the way out, was sweating and not in a great mood. He mentioned that he blew the stock. That was that happens pretty often when you're bow hunting antelope.

It wasn't until I got back from camp after whiffing that dough three times and the wild turkey was flowing that I told my story about how bad I had flamed out. And after I wrapped up my story, that buddy admitted that he too had whipped three times on those antelopes, and that he was too embarrassed to talk about it at first. Now you might be thinking a couple of things. First off, that my buddy and I need to hit the range more, and you'd be right. I can fall apart with the best of them, and

so can my friends. But you might also be thinking, why lie about that? And you'd be right. But let me ask each and every one of you something. Have you ever just flat out missed a deer for no other reason than you just didn't aim? You just didn't do a good job of executing your shot, and instead of killing a gimme deer at twenty yards, you screwed it up. And that is that. If you can honestly answer no to that question, my advice to you is

to keep hunting. That's coming for you, buddy. If you can answer yes to that question, think about the story that you tell around it. Does it go something like, man, I was sitting there as the light started to fade, and I heard a stick snap, so I stood up and got ready, and sure enough, here he comes right down the trail, right on my good side, totally oblivious to me. And when he got to my best opening, I drew, squeezed my eyes shut tight as can be,

and shot without aiming at all. Then he ran out of my life, and I realized that not only am I not a good hunter, I'm actually pretty bad at this stuff. Or did you find a way to make

yourself look better. Maybe he came in super quiet and didn't give you time to range, so you just guessed and it wasn't right, guess wrong, or more likely, he managed to duck the string matrix style, so that while you actually did do everything right, because you're very good at this, you were just dealing with a deer that had unparalleled arrow dodging skills. Maybe you hit an unseen twig, which is such a great excuse that it might be

the most common. And we've all been there. And the reason we can coct a story like that is because we are driven at least partially by ego. It's okay, it's all of us, and I'm including myself in that big time. It's just something worth acknowledging. It's also just not fun to be a dumbass. Trust me, I've missed a lot of animals on film. I know all about it. Some of my biggest mistakes in the woods have literally been viewed by hundreds of thousands of people. Maybe that's

why I'm tired of the lying involved in hunting. But it's also because we all screw up way more than we let on. Most of the time, when big bucks or any dear we want to shoot get close to us, we screw it up or at least don't seal the deal. I think we'd be healthier as a group if we were all more honest about our mistakes. I think it's kind of like this, which is going to be extrain example,

but I'm going to use it anyway. Remember not too long ago, like before and around Christmas, when the mystery drone thing was blowing up out in New Jersey and kind of all along the East Coast and actually kind of in the world. Honestly, it was a big topic. And if you talk to people about UFOs and you're kind of honest and receptive to it without being judgy, you often suddenly hear stories about weird shit that people

saw in the sky that doesn't quite make sense. A lot of people have stories they don't want to tell for fear of judgment or social stigma. But why does it matter if you saw something in the sky that you can't quite explain as conventional aircraft? When you start talking about your failings as a hunter, people often relax and chime in with their own stories because they know most of us fail most of the time. There are

a lot of lies in hunting around not wanting to hunt. Two, the most influential folks in our space and in our lives are the ones who present the image of the terminator level determined hunter. Nothing we'll stop them, nothing can keep them from scouting or hunting, or shooting their bows or tinkering with their gear. They are single minded in their pursuit and will stop at nothing. But those folks don't scout or hunt, or shoot their bows or tinkle

with their gear every chance they can. They want you to believe that. So when you sleep in because you're tired from work or wrangling the kiddos and you just couldn't muster the motivation to go, sit on stand that. You know you're different from them, But a lot of that is wrapped up in outright lies. And for your part, if you do sleep in for some reason, don't you want to tell your hunting buddies it was for a very very good reason, as opposed to just being worn

out by life and life's demands. Of course you do. It's okay to be realistic. We're not curing cancer here. We're hunting rabbits with antlers. And if you don't want to hunt someday or sometime or whatever, you don't have to lie about that. It doesn't matter, because all of us sometimes just don't want to go, and sometimes we just don't go when we could. Also, there's no need

to lie about the deer we pass up either. I don't know why this one bothers me so much, But I have an inkling, and you know how it goes. Someone in your circle will casually mention that they passed up a young one hundred and thirty incher. This is often something you hear about after telling someone you shot a one hundred and ten incher, by the way, But when someone volunteers up information on all of the bucks they could have killed, I always wonder how much of

it is true. Did that young one hundred and thirty inch buck walk by at fifteen yards and offer up multiple good shot opportunities or did he stay in the thick stuff at forty five yards and not really offer up any kind of actual shot. That happens a lot, and if the ego has a little too much say in how the story gets out, it'll clip out many of the pertinent details that would change a for sure filled tag situation to a cool encounter with almost no

actual shot opportunity. We want people to know how dedicated we are to the big deal and how easy it would be to kill the kind of deer that almost everyone else would shoot and mount. But most of it is b s. Kind of like if Mark told you that he keeps getting hit on by supermodels, but then you find out that one time he was in the

same city as one. Sure, buddy, Sure. I think that we should try to be more honest about what we have happen and how we screw up when we are out there hunting deer or hell catching fish, or hunting turkeys or whatever. I think that the more we are honest about ourselves in that way, the more we will find out that a hell of a lot of our hunting brothers and sisters are in the exact same spot.

I think that might matter more than ever, as we were exposed to NonStop propaganda in our lives, and we are exposed to strangers who all seem to be living the dream and have amazing spouses and all make a couple million bucks a year while saving orphan penguins and Antarctica or whatever bs they want to pedal so they can make money off of you while reveling in your I think if we talk more about the misses and the times we just got caught snoozing when the big

boys strolled through, or the times when the alarm went off and we just weren't feeling it and realized that another two hours of sleep was more important in the moment than heading out to the woods to probably not kill a big buck. Maybe we can't change the hunting community as a whole, but we can take that role on individually in our friend group or when we find

ourselves chatting about hunting with whomever in our lives. That would be a start and kind of a relief for a lot of people to hear that not only are they not alone in their screw ups, but there are other people who are so comfortable with it they don't feel the need to hide it to lie about it. I don't think that'd be a bad thing, and I think a lot of us would really benefit from being

on both sides of that. So let's all be a little more honest, shall we, And let's come back next week because I'm going to talk about the spring Woods deer trails and why my scouting efforts now often yield good stand sites come full That's it for the week. I'm Tony Peterson. This has been the Wired to Hunt Foundation's podcast, which is brought to you by First Light.

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