The MeatEater Podcast - Ep. 583: BONUS - Whitetail Induced Mental Turbulence

Episode Date: August 9, 2024

Steven Rinella talks with Mark Kenyon, Tony Peterson, and Brent Reaves. Topics discussed: First Lite's new reengineered whitetail system; Elevation, angles, leaning, positions; chasing specific deer; when you can’t chose the perfect tree; stalking the spot you wanna be in; number one reason why folks miss or wound deer; never shooting under and always missing high; target panic; the wait time to expiration; hot tips of before and after the shot; and more.  Connect with Steve and The MeatEater Podcast Network Steve on Instagram and Twitter MeatEater on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and YoutubeSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Hey folks, exciting news for those who live or hunt in Canada. You might not be able to join our raffles and sweepstakes and all that because of raffle and sweepstakes law, but hear this. OnX Hunt is now in Canada. It is now at your fingertips, you Canadians. The great features that you love in OnX are available for your hunts this season. Now the Hunt app is a fully functioning GPS with hunting maps that include public and crown land, hunting zones, aerial imagery, 24K topo maps, waypoints and tracking. You can even use offline maps to see where you are

without cell phone service as a special offer. You can get a free three months to try out OnX if you visit onxmaps.com slash meet. This is the Meat Eater Podcast coming at you shirtless, severely bug-bitten, and in my case, underwearless. We hunt the Meat Eater Podcast coming at you shirtless, severely bug-bitten, and in my case, underwearless. The Meat Eater Podcast. You can't predict anything. The Meat Eater Podcast is brought to you by First Light.

Whether you're checking trail cams, hanging deer stands, or scouting for elk, First Light has performance apparel to support every hunter in every environment. Check it out at firstlight.com. F-I-R-S-T-L-I-T-E dot com. apparel to support every hunter in every environment. Check it out at firstlight.com. F-I-R-S-T-L-I-T-E.com. All right, so I'm joined with Brent Reeves. I'm with Tony Peterson. I'm with Mark Kenyon. And we're doing a little whitetail tutorial here,

a whitetail bow hunting tutorial. And there's a lot of stuff we're going to skip. I'm just going to warn everybody up top. We're not talking about scouting. We're not talking about cooking. What else are we not talking about? Any of that stuff. We're not talking about what kind of camper you want.

We're not counting about how to get permissions. None of that stuff. We're not talking about how to get permissions. None of that stuff. Not talking about food plots. I could go on all day, but what we're not talking about long list. We're not talking about the problem I'm currently having, which is black bears destroying your cameras. What we're talking about is you're in the, you're in the, you're in the whitetail woods with your bow. We're talking about how to make your arrow go where it wants and what to do after you let the arrow fly.

So we're talking about everything that happens between, oh my God, here he comes, or she. Oh my God, here it comes to, I found it! And everything that fits between those two moments. Okay? Sounds good to me. Love it. All right, saddle up.

White-tail hunters, you get that little joke? Yep, we got it. Get your spurs on. This is a white-tail special. We got a bunch of avid white-tail hunters in the room. And when you say white-tail hunters, I feel like it almost kind of means like you're bow-hunting white-tails, right? where we got a bunch of avid whitetail hunters in the room. And when you say whitetail hunters, I feel like it almost kind of means like you're bow hunting whitetails.

Right. That's the first impression. Yeah. If I say he's a big time whitetail hunter, you know, I picture a bow hunter. Right. Because you can hunt for such a long period of time.

Is there anyone you know of who would consider themselves a diehard whitetail hunter but just do it with a firearm? I couldn't think of one. No. I think of Doug Duren as a... Doug Duren is a very enthusiastic, dedicated hunter of whitetails. Who's antagonistic to bow hunters? Well, he does. It's not these antagonistic bow hunters.

He's had a lot of late nights looking for... He's had a lot of late nights looking for people's deer that they hit with a bow. And I don't think he's had that many late nights looking for the ones that he shot with his gun. That's where he's coming from.

Our family deer camp is 95% gun hunters. Like me and a nephew, they're only two out of however that math figures out that bow hunt. Okay. But I do feel like that was my family too and i guess they would identify as like i love deer hunting yeah but the number of days they actually did it you know was four days a year yeah a week so they're enthusiasts but i don't know if they were practitioners yeah yeah i think we've moved the goalposts for what an avid yeah that's sort of i think an avid whitetail hunter is sure this this this episode is meant

to be full of very practical information but we're going to indulge this for one more second and i'll point out um when i when i was a boy if you didn't hunt with a bow if you were a big time whitetail hunter you had 10 days so that'd be like saying that'd be like if you went on an annual vacation to florida for spring break week you wouldn't say you're a big time floridian right yeah yeah be like dude you go there once a week you go there for a week every year right so if you didn't bow hunt you couldn't be a bigtime whitetail person because they'd be like, okay, you have a 10-day season. But, I mean, if you compared that to whitetail hunting, that would be like if you put a sandbox in your backyard and all summer long you pretended like you were at the beach building sandcastles and working on your beach umbrella. No, that's true.

You could be a big-time Florida guy. You could be an off-season Florida guy. That's what I'm saying. The reason I don't think the criteria for being an avid whitetail hunter is the amount of days in the field necessarily. Good point. It's where your head's at. Yeah.

You did speak about this whole sandcastle thing in the backyard with a lot of experience, Tony. I could see myself. Just getting covered up. Maybe a couple bad decisions away from being a beach bum like saltwater fishing and uh i could see it all right stay focused white tails i have a piece of insulation lodged in my uh back of my throat so you'll pardon me for my i'm gonna go a lot can we get more context to that? Yeah, I was going to ask. I was up in my attic crawl space late last night trying to identify a source of a leak. Oh.

And it caused me to get insulation lodged in my throat. Let me ask you this. Let me ask you guys this. I'll go out on a limb and say most people wind up that they don't shoot their bow as much as they thought they were going to before season starts. 100%. Oh, yeah. For me. Yeah.

Almost everybody. The snow melts, and I'm like,'m like man i'm gonna shoot this bow every day you know in like may and then august i'm like man i really ought to be shooting that bow yeah that late august it's not easy how do you know when you're ready what What's ready? I mean, how many people do you know? This is a complicated question because have you ever known anyone that in the end said, I better not hunt. I'm not ready. Oh, no. We were just talking about this yesterday.

Okay. And Tony, we're just saying how we never feel like we are ready. There's always more we could have, should have done. But you need to put yourself in as best a position as possible so that even though you feel like you're not ready, you are 10 times more ready than you were last year at least or more than the average. And I think that might be a function of us being –

we have very high standards for what ready should look like. And the reason we're able to do half decent is because of that, I think. So there's always more you could do, right? That's what I was going to say. How much of that is due to anxiety and anticipating the hunt and getting ready for it? And as the time approaches, you just get more angst about getting out there and maybe checking a spot that you didn't get to check to.

Oh, man, that's eating me alive because I didn't get to go check that once. Oh, no, when I talk about ready, I'm trying right now. I'll just talk specifically about how do you know when you're ready as a marksman. What do you call a marksman with a bow? As an archer. Archer. Archman? Yeah, there's no word.

I can tell you my, before the season, I will shoot, I know I have to shoot enough to where I can walk back to 40 or 50 yards, and every shot I take is going to hit the vitals on a 3D deer target in my backyard. And then I always, when I hit that level where I can, different distances, you know, maybe shoot like, I don't shoot a lot, like 12 arrows a day but we're every one of them i'm like very confident that's going right where i need it and then i start shooting broad heads and if they're doing that then i start to feel like that okay okay so mixed distances out to 50 yards every arrow in the vitals on a 3d target yeah like i don't want to make this sound like i'm super methodical because i'm not but i do a lot of early summer not a lot my early and mid-summer

shooting is always like 20 yards just get back into the groove muscle memory kind of thing get the bow settled in and then as i start to hit august I'll start to back out a little bit and just start working in 25, 30, 35, 40, whatever. And then walk back range, 27 yard shoot. And I don't, I don't do volume shooting. Like I go out and I'm like, you know, let's say I'm shooting four arrows. I'll just do three rounds, but I want to get to the point where I never miss. Like I'm never like, oh, that one went in the shoulder. That one went in the guts and when you start to get to that point out to like 40 or I can shoot to 50 in my

yard then it's like okay now it's now it's broadhead time and if the broadheads follow suit and I'm matching up arrows and everything's going good then I'm like I feel really good because I'm not going to shoot away till 50 yards you know like I know when I'm at that point when I'm on my stand and they're 20 yards away then feeling pretty good so when I'm at that point, when I'm on my stand and they're 20 yards away, then feeling pretty good. So when I get to the point where I can, I have that feeling. And then what I'll do is start practicing specific situations. Like I'm beyond, I have that, that threshold of confidence. And now I'm going to actually get the saddle out and start shooting in the saddle at different distances.

Or I'll try kneeling and shoot, or I'll get to all sorts of wonky angles and start guessing distances. And when you're doing that and you're starting to have confidence with that, then I'm like, okay, I can handle whatever it might, whatever the, the real world might throw at me. I was going to ask you guys about that. How much time do you, do Tony ever move up and start shooting from an elevated position? So I do, I can shoot from my deck. And so it's pretty easy. much time do you do tony ever move up and start shooting from an elevated position so i do i can shoot from my deck and so it's pretty easy if i want to i don't i've spent so much time bow hunting out of tree stands like i know i i think i probably know where you're going with this no um i don't

think about that like i have a kind of just like i know where i'm aiming on white tails and i know what i'm going to do uh it's pretty second nature to me so i don't really about that. Like I have a kind of just like, I know where I'm aiming on whitetails and I know what I'm going to do. Uh, it's pretty second nature to me. So I don't really need to reinforce that with tons of elevated shooting or sitting on, you know, on my knees or whatever. It's different. I actually go through a way different process when I'm coming out West. Cause that's just a different deal. Uh, but it's, I think for a lot of newer hunters hunters that's like a crazy important element to build in

like figure out how to shoot somehow set up a stand figure out how to shoot off a deck an elevated platform something because it's just coming like you're going to take that shot but i think just as important as the elevation thing and sometimes maybe more important it's it's the the positions you're shooting from that are different like how many times the deer hunter have you stood perfectly upright and shot usually you're sitting down or you're leaning in a saddle or you're swung around and shooting behind you and we never most folks never practice that and so doing that so even though i don't have a tree action, I can actually get up into, I just have like a support pole in the back of my barn that I saddle into.

So I'm not significantly higher on a little bit of a hill, but the biggest thing I try to do is practice shooting, standing, leaning, turning angled high low, just because that's so different. You have a different structure structure you have a different platform for your feet you have totally different muscles that are being activated in those different positions and that you know you don't want the first time you do that to be with the deer that was a big learning curve for me when i got bowhunted forever and then my son got into it in his early teens he wanted to start hunting so we obviously were shooting in the backyard so i hung a stand up and showed him the difference between shooting at a 30 yard target level and then 30 yard and from an elevated position and the amount of the technique of bending at the at keeping the tee

and bending at the waist and all that was really reinforced in me it helped me a lot when i was supposedly teaching him what to do he was really teaching me seeing it putting that practical application it was so i've i still got that that elevated stand back there and i still shoot out of it do you guys ever do dress rehearsals so shoot out of your hunting suit because man i tell you you shoot all summer in your t-shirt yep and then all of a sudden you got you're freezing your ass you you shoot all summer in your t-shirt yep and then all sudden you got you're freezing your ass you you now you got a net gator on which you've never found uh you've never found your uh draw point you know you never found your hand position

with a net gator on there's a big old hood on that all of a sudden you pull back and you're like what the hell is that? You got binos, maybe gloves. Yeah. You never thought about the fact that now you got a gloved hand or not a gloved hand. Um, you realize the string is actually sort of like pressed into and folded into

a heavy jacket, which surprises you. Yeah. I mean, I, I just shot some photos for a piece I did for, for us on shooting, shooting like that.

And I had to set up and shoot out of a saddle and I, you know, I'm still wearing shorts and a t-shirt, but I've got my bino harness on. And a parka. No, I didn't, I didn't do that cause it was so hot, but I was out of a saddle, like two feet off the ground. And even then, you know, so when when when you're asking about you know shooting at an angle or whatever people will hear that and go i have to shoot at an angle just to understand my like where i'm holding point impact arrow trajectory all that stuff but also it puts

you in a position to be like get used to the safety harness get used to the movement like mark kind of alluded to on a little platform you know because a lot of people don't spend very much time in a tree stand you know you think about it you know even the avid hunters they spend a fair amount of time but your average hunter is not going to be in a tree stand for that many hours in any given season and now you have to do this thing that takes a lot of a lot of concentration a lot of form in it in a little tiny environment that you're just not that used to and so you're also you're not just conditioning yourself for how to shoot you know like how to hit something but

you're conditioning yourself like how to work around these like parameters that you're gonna you're gonna be in you know maybe the most important dress rehearsal I go through though, is not at home before the hunt. It's actually when I'm in the tree at the beginning of the hunt. So every time I get up into the tree or get into my blind or get into my position, I get, you know, unpacked, settled. The very first thing I do then at that point is I envision the scenarios that might happen. I envision, okay, a deer, I think, could come through here, and I could have a shot there. And a deer might come through, and I might have a shot there. And then I, like, role play that scenario.

So I imagine, okay, if a deer comes through here, like I hope he does, how do I have to get my bow? How will I move? What do I need to do? And I'll literally do it. I'll practice doing the thing. I'll practice drawing back as if I'm going to shoot right there. And then I test.

I'm testing to see, like, does my elbow hit a limb here? Am I going to hit against my tree here? Like, can I do that? Can I make that movement quietly, smoothly? And I'll do that for every possible scenario so that I've done it all. I'm not surprised in any kind of way from that perspective at least. And that's been a very important thing for me. Mark, when you're doing that, have you accidentally just hit the relief?

Not yet. But knock on wood. Part of my dad's routine is he would climb up, pull his gear up, get situated, pick a leaf, shoot the leaf, and then start hunting. Every time. I know a lot of folks that did that. Unless there was a squirrel. Then he would pick the squirrel. Well, I mean, when we were growing up, we had an arrow with a judo point in the quiver

every everywhere you went and you might shoot at a squirrel like when i was younger i shot at squirrels out of my tree stand a lot like my dad i drove my dad nuts he would spend all that time sharpening a broadhead you know like stropping that bear razor head and then i'd shoot it at a squirrel into the dirt he'd have to start over again but yeah i mean that was that used to be really common now i mean can you imagine if you gave people that advice now just leave that arrow with all your scent on it yeah there's there's a i think there's a difference in approaches and mark had brought this up that mark you spent a lot of time when you're bow hunting for white tails you spend a lot of time where you'll have a particular deer in mind. Yeah.

You'll know how the deer moves. Um, you know, you'll kind of have a plan. You'll, you'll have a couple spots picked out where you might get an opportunity on the deer. And then when I hunted with you, Tony, last fall, um, you don't know who's around and you're kind of hunting on the fly in a situation where you're in like on the fly on public land place going to some places you hadn't had experience with before and that approach necessitates um unusual circumstances that can happen in the tree.

You're saying you get up in a tree and you go like, okay, I got this shot and that shot and this shot, but you can also probably plan it out a little bit throughout the year where you'd want to set up what it might look like as opposed to every night, perhaps every night, being in a new situation where you're not able to put a lot of thought into it and you get up there and you might realize,

well, here I am. I'm not going to move again, but man, yep. That tree is not where, uh, that,

that particular tree over there is blocking my best shooting lane. Yeah. You know, but that's, that's why I love that. Okay. So when you think about the hunt, we did that first night that Chris Gill and I went out,

I had a pond that I had scouted out and there wasn't a tree there that was like more than like six inches in diameter. So we were up there and it was super windy that night. And then I think, what was it? Three days later or two days later, when we figured out that little deal where you hit that spike and then now you're sitting on the ground on an edge of a, you know, 20 foot drop down to a dry river bed in a totally different kind of setup. And that's, that's, that hunting makes you just like,

I have to figure out what works here now. Cause this is the spot they're at. So I can't, I can't like choose that awesome, perfect tree with all these branches for cover and then sort of curate a whitetail spot around it, which is like a pretty common thing now. Yeah. Like you go in there and you're like, you're just working with what it gives you. I love that. We had that same kind of thing happen to Clay and I in Mississippi last year.

We got into a, we took, we took the boat down there was it was deer hunting down there we went to a spot that had only a few cameras on it but there's a lot of deer on it but it had been hunted zero so we went from day one trying to figure out where we needed to go and we just kind of eased into each place you know we there was a lot of sign here in this in this area right here so we just we stayed back a little bit and on the third day we finally kept moving up and moving up and moving up hanging stands all the time yeah rehanging hunting out of saddle just going from tree to tree to tree and finally on the third day we finally did it you know i killed that deer like you uh with a rifle but you essentially stalked, you slowly stalked the spot you wanted to be in.

Yep, exactly. And it would, weather conditions prevented us from, from continuing to hunt with a bow because it was 25 miles an hour, sustained winds gushing up to 40 that day. And it was just miserable. And there was just no way i could shoot a bow further than i don't know that i would have trust myself to shoot further than 15 or 20 yards with the high wind with the high wind like that yeah so we i switched to a rifle and and luckily we got it done there so but we just incrementally worked our way closer and closer not because we had we

had four days to do it and we started on the third day we finally got close enough to to make it happen and where you wanted to be hey folks exciting news for those who live or hunt in canada and boy my goodness do we hear from the canadians whenever we do a raffle or sweepstakes and our raffle and sweepstakes law makes it that they can't join. Whew. Our northern brothers get irritated. Well, if you're sick of, you know, sucking a high and titty there, OnX is now in Canada.

The great features that you love in OnX are available for your hunts this season. The Hunt app is a fully functioning GPS with hunting maps that include public and crown land, hunting zones, aerial imagery, 24K topo maps, waypoints, and tracking. That's right, we're always talking about OnX here on the MeatEater podcast. Now you guys in the Great White North can be part of it, be part of the excitement. You can even use offline maps to see where you are without cell phone service. That's a sweet function. As part of your membership, you'll gain access to exclusive pricing on products and services handpicked by the OnX Hunt team.

Some of our favorites are First Light, Schnee's, Vortex Federal, and more as a special offer you can get a free three months to try on x out if you visit on x maps.com slash meet on x maps.com slash meet welcome to the to the on x club y'all what do you guys think is the number one reason people miss deer or don't hit them right? Miss them or wound them? Let's talk physical first, and then we'll talk mental. It's all mental. We can skip the first part, buddy. 100%.

It's always mental. And lack of experience going through that mental turbulence like like so many hunters especially now get into hunting and they see folks like the three the four of us out there shooting deer or passing on younger bucks and we shoot big deer and then they come in and they're they're 17 years old and they think that they should hold out for a big buck for their first year or something like that and so they never go through what many of us did where for years and years and years we shot the first year we saw and we got experience going through that incredibly wild 10 seconds right and even after all the experience

that that like at least the two of us have talked about this a lot we've had a lot of experience going through that and we still screw it up mentally sometimes in those moments. So how can someone who's done it four times expect to get it just right? And so just going through that many, many, many times to try to learn how to control yourself mentally in that moment is the biggest thing that a lot of people just never go through. Yeah. So I think the easiest way to frame this up is like, imagine you're just, imagine you've shot enough, right? And you put out a full-size deer target at 20 yards,

climb into a tree, whatever, shoot from the ground. How many times do you think you'd have to shoot at that before you missed it completely? Target practice. So many. I mean, you might go thousands and thousands of shots now that thing has a heartbeat and it walks in and it's not a physical thing i mean everybody said oh i misjudged the range or i hit an unseen limb or you duck the string or like that you know the

greatest hits right yeah but it's always between your ears and you just didn't do the basic stuff to execute your shot. You know, we, and it's all panic, right? Like people, I used to do, I suffered from buck fever so bad for so long. I mean, it forced me to totally reinvent how I shot and everything. Cause I was like, I have to quit or I have to do something different. Cause it was like ugly. And I, so once I kind of got my stuff figured out and I like how Mark talks about it, like training yourself, you know, to go through your internal, you know, here's my checklist, bubble level, whatever. I had to dumb down my whole setup and work with how I just naturally shoot i

naturally shoot really fast i shot a lot of traditional archery growing up and i don't know if that's why but i'm like i don't take a long time to aim like it's just i can't do it it's the same thing like people will ask me about wing shooting like pheasants i'm like i can't give you any tips because i can never remember what happens count it it down for me. So you hit full draw and you're punching the trigger at what? Full draw, one, two, pop. For sure. Very often. Really?

Yeah. Like a two count. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's quick. I've even had cameramen say that like, holy cow. So I had to dumb down my setup for that. But I would do, when I started to kind of get my shit

together a little bit, I started doing seminars on how to beat buck fever because I kept reading about like traditional advice. And I was like, my path was just vastly different. And you know, you'd have a lot of people show up sometimes at Iowa deer classic or wherever. And then I would say right at the beginning of the seminar, I'd say I'd say hey how many you guys and gals get buck fever and there'd be like three hands raised so please and I'd be like well why are the rest of you here you just want to hear me talk you know so it's not something it's just not something that people really want to talk about and I don't think they understand the depths it goes you know and when you're talking a game of variables like bow hunting, you just don't have to be off by very much.

Like one little part falls, like that cascading failure thing, and now you're going to miss that deer at 20 yards that you would never miss in 1,000 shots target shooting. Now I think there might be two different parts of this equation or two different versions of this. There's something that I would think of as buck fever. And then there's something that I would think of as like target panic. And I think they're different.

Oh, okay. Yeah. So I would define buck fever as breaking down as the animal's approaching. Like you are physically breaking down, shaking, nervous, over-excited. I don't have that. I have target panic then. So I used to have buck fever. I don't have that i have target panic then so i used to have buck fever i don't have that anymore like when i see like it i'm like in business it's like business time like you just know what you're doing you're doing the thing it's fine but oh yeah

yeah oh my god oh my god yeah that's what happens here he goes that's me that's me on the inside yeah i remember having a feeling sometimes of like oh no yeah when i the couple years that i hunted that's how i knew i had to stop hunting deer with a recurve because i started to be like oh shit like here he comes i didn't want him to actually come now i know i'm gonna have to shoot at him and this sucks because i'm probably gonna screw it up but target panic is more like what or at least how i experienced target panic is how i think you had in the past where i would rush through that final part of it so as soon as i would draw back as soon as my pen hit the vitals i didn't have conscious control of my release at that point it was as soon as the pen was on the vitals, it was gone. The arrow was sent.

It surprised you. That led to a lot of rush shots. It was usually fine, but sometimes it's a little back. It's a little bit forward. When you're not fully in control of that, there is this increased possibility for things to go wrong

in a situation where already so many variables are out of your control. And that is not acceptable. Well, and there's a good lesson in there, right? Because how you miss tells you partially what you're doing wrong. So my failure starting out even like 12 years old bow hunting, I started right out of the gate where I would draw and come down on my target and I would get some part of deer in my sight window and punching that trigger.

So I never shot under a deer. Literally, it was every time I would miss him high. And if I got one, it would be because I misjudged the artisan. He was a lot farther than I thought. And so when that- Nailed him. Right, right. I had a little buck come in one time.

One of the first bucks I killed, I had, he started coming in, a little six pointer, and I drew, and I shot square into a little tiny sapling about six feet in front of my tree stand, just bong, and he spooked out,

and just in like desperation mode, I knocked another and you know we didn't i didn't have a range finder then i was like 15 and i drew and shot and that arrow just went right into his heart and he ran up the hill and fell all the way back down and i was like oh my god i'm a stud looking back on it now all that was was that deer picked a horrible spot to run to when i just panicked and didn't you know i shot exactly like i always do i just had an extra 15 yards for that old aluminum arrow to fall into his heart into his pocket yeah it feels like there's a magnet in their punch that pulls arrows in that direction yeah that does seem common yeah uh with the target panic how did like I understand overcoming it through repetition but then it I feel like there's like a thing that needs to be refreshed I uh when I was a

Tony last year I I hit a uh spike that i lost and then reviewing it in my mind um and reviewing it my mind i'm like i knew exactly what happened and it reminds me of that you might go to bed last night or like you might go to bed at night like i did last night thinking okay next time i get really annoyed at my kids i'm gonna handle it more professionally right today i'll get annoyed at one of them about something and i'll handle it unprofessionally and then the minute a couple seconds after i handle it unprofessionally i'll be like son of a gun i just said last night i wasn't gonna do that and so with shooting you're like there's no way i'm gonna do that anymore i'm never gonna let an arrow fly i going to have the hair picked out.

And even when you're like, oh, here comes a deer. When he gets here, I'm going to pick out a hair and shoot that hair. And then all of a sudden you're drawing your bow back and whatever commitments you made to yourself, it's just something so powerful. Yeah, but part of it is just the repetition and the mechanics. Like for me, you know, when Mark talks about like target panic, what I did was started, well, I went to a single pin site, which was huge for me because I couldn't, in the moment

of truth, I couldn't gap. I couldn't like, I couldn't keep it together enough to put the yellow pin high or the red pin low. I had to just dumb it down. But also I, I specifically taught myself to draw at the target. So instead of coming down, even if you come down just a little bit, that was the death of me. So I would draw at the target and what that actually did for me.

You're landing on target. Right. And then what that did for me was I often drew and had to come up and that was that's a different thing for me because when i get that target acquisition when i'm coming up the pin finds its spot for me and it was just like a you know enough arrows gets you sort of like where you're going to take to that to the woods but there's still so many times where you don't do that. Yeah. Like still. When I pull back my pin, when I come to rest, right? Pre-shot.

My pin is always to the left of where it needs to be. And I always need to consciously move it to the right. Like I don't like to, like there's something in my head that doesn't want to obscure the area. So. And so I'm looking and the pin's always to the left and I always got to then hop it over to where it belongs, regardless of which way the animal's facing. Because you're a left-handed shooter.

Yeah, totally regardless. It doesn't matter. Always left, just left. You're shooting multi-pin sight, right? Yeah. So you're looking around that rack of pins. So if you did vertical pins and had that had equal spacing on both sides through your aperture where your pins are perfectly centered in the middle coming from the bottom

you wouldn't do that i bet you think so yeah it is it's something about obscuring the thing i went to it this year yeah single pin this year and that in that what are you saying worked for me you see this with a lot of new hunters a lot of new hunters hit too far left, too far, right shoulders guts, right? And it's because they will, you, I mean, imagine how little you have to move your head to get a, just a slightly different view through your site window. So you're already looking through your peep. You're already looking through your aperture to that deer. And if you're just natural inclination is to see just a little bit more of that deer you've changed your point of impact by six inches and it's you would never you would never do that on a target because you don't care it would never your brain would never take over and do that

but on a deer people do it a lot and so that's like back to our earlier point if you're a chronic shoulder or gut shooter that's that could be very well the reason why yeah well i'll point out the buck i just referenced uh the buck i just referenced it was to the left yep it was to the left where it belonged yep and i bet you had he been though had he come from the other direction it probably would have i probably hit him in the shoulder yep and then you know what i'll bet that maybe this is totally this is just speculation on my part, but you've shot a lot of stuff through a rifle scope. Oh, yeah.

With like a perfect view. You know what I mean? So your brain is used to, in that moment, which mirrors a lot of stuff you've shot, you know, the same emotions, the same kind of like adrenaline rush, whatever, that you've shot with a rifle, but you've had a very clear sight window yeah and when you pull out a bow you're you're kind of obscuring

half of that sight window and your brain is used to seeing the whole thing no well go ahead mark i was just gonna say just to kind of rewind just a half a step to your your issue or your question around actually dealing with target panic and this idea like we know what we should do, but then when it actually happens, you don't do it. You mentioned mechanics being one thing that can help. I had to introduce a new mental mechanic of sorts to force me into actually executing on the right thing because, again, my issue has always been it's like a roller coaster. And as soon as I draw back, I'm at the's like a roller coaster and like as soon as

i draw back i'm at the top of a roller coaster and then i'm flying down that hill and so what i had to do was introduce speed bumps into it and so i followed this the shot iq program that's kind of the model that i that i turned to and helped me and the way that i've done it and the way this program recommends you do it is by tying in actual verbal cues to physical actions. And you drill that into your psyche through repetition over and over and over again until you have a certain degree of conscious control of each step in the process. So instead of being at the top of the roller coaster and then just it's gone, I'm at the top of the roller coaster and then i'm three quarters of the way and there's a pause and then i'm halfway down there's a pause and i'm making when i'm doing this right i'm making a conscious decision to take each step down the roller coaster keeping me from pins on shot off so it's when i draw back no matter what i'm going

to do this right i'm literally saying this and then i have to address the target so that's just dropping the pin right in the tell. Tell me what you're saying. That's what I'm saying. Okay. Start from the scratch. I draw back. I'm a big buck. All of a sudden, like, wham, there I am.

Hey, Mark. But I don't see you. You don't see me. Literally, as I'm drawing back, I'm saying, no matter what, I'm going to do this right. So that's like locking in. So trying to take a degree of conscious control. Okay. No matter what, I'm going to do this right. Then it's address the target. So that means drop take a degree of conscious control. Okay. No matter what,

I'm going to do this right. Then it's address the target. So that means drop the pin on the vitals. Now address the trigger. So then that's me locking on my finger around the release. And then here we go. And when I see, here we go, that's when I can begin my pull. And each one of those verbal cues triggers the physical reaction. Did you copyright that? No, that's all Joel Turner from Shot IQ. The actual words. Even the words. Yeah, he helped me with this. And I do

not get a 100% all the time. But it has definitely helped me regain a level of control and has improved things. And again, it's the speed bumps. Just getting a little bit of a stopgap in there from that free fall can help. I'm going to take this through the approach of

I come home and I see that a bunch of my tools are like out in the road and out in the yard. I'm going to say to myself, I'm going to get this right. Then I call my kids all into the garage and i'm gonna say here we go please report back to me on how this goes all right let's move post shot okay that's the longest 20 minutes ever. We're going to break up post-shot.

You guys are going to, I'm going to give you each an assignment. You can pick who gets what assignment. Dude, I feel like you gave me a couple assignments last fall. Okay. Assignment number one is like, it just looks perfect and you hear crash. Okay. Someone can have that. Okay. Someone can have can have man i don't even know if i hit that thing okay and someone can have that wasn't good okay you guys can fight amongst yourselves i'll take whatever's left i'll take the i don't know if you hit it one i don't even know if i hit it yeah because i my dad was he patented that shit there's a copyright on it it's my dad well based on some

phone calls i've gotten from you you've done a few of those i've been there but it was like there was a time period and so this is like like it so you're taking out you know if I hit it yeah okay yeah you want me to go and here's an added dimension it's dusk it's never noon you know yeah I've been on I went on one of those last year. Not with a buddy of mine who's just kind of getting into it. Although, to be totally fair to that situation, he was like, I smoked it. Oh, okay. And then it became, after some questioning, it became, I'm not sure. And then it became a total miss when we went out and found the arrow.

It's amazing how not uncommon that is. Right. I mean, I'm sure there's some whitetail guides listening to this and there's some people who've been around the block with this stuff who are like who can just totally understand the post shot thing of just total confusion like it just the the brain melt happened no idea felt like i did everything right like deer ran off reaction was this no clue you know and so often with that you know like it doesn't do you any good typically until you just go find that arrow okay like you know because you can be like where was he standing oh you're standing right by that birch tree or whatever. And then you go over there, there's no tracks.

And then 15 yards away, there's big digging tracks. You know what I mean? Like it's just, or what did he run by when he left? Right by brush that cedar tree out there. And you go over there and the blood trail is, you know, 90 degrees in a different direction. In literary criticism, that's called an unreliable narrator yeah well there's some unreliable narrators in the deer woods buddy let me tell you i'm and i came from some of them man uh but it's always just

kind of just like feeling out trying to get every detail because you know the post shot thing and we've been we've all been through this a million times, you have to trust your initial instinct. Like, did he meal kick? Did he not? Did he wheel this way or that way? Like, what did your brain register right away? And that will be right like 40% of the time.

Not what you think happened 45 minutes later, but what you initially thought happened. Not what you talked yourself into Because you heard that crash or all the squirrels started barking down the ridge or you know full moon came up Whatever like however, you know black magic you want to introduce into it. You have to go What did it feel like and then you like what were the initial reactions? But it doesn't it really doesn't matter till you go try to find that arrow and what really sucks is when you can't find the arrow and then you're like do you wait at all on on a i don't even know if i hit that thing it's getting dark are you are you cool just climbing down and going looking for the arrow yeah okay oh yeah i wouldn't so that

personally oh really okay every everything marks but he mark's got his own assignment no no no i know mark's got uh that ain't good yeah so i'll give my thought on this when we get to my okay yeah um i'll go right away now i will say this i will be real stealthy and i will not push it in any way. So if my, in my head, or if somebody, one of my buddies is like,

I know you were standing there and we like, I'll go investigate that. And if I start getting vibes, like this is going to turn into something we got to do some real detective work on, then typically I'll pull out because there's no, that's only like a net gain can you quickly explain what we're talking about the people pull out for what what reason oh because we don't want

to push it okay right because you you just don't know you know yanni hit that buck last year in wisconsin that sucker ran off a little ways better down he thought it was over got up like there that stuff happens yeah like he might have would have otherwise probably just died but you spooked it right and then it ran another 300 yards and now you can't find the damn thing right no and there's just nothing the thing the hardest thing to do with people is to blood trail with impatient people. Which is almost everyone. Right. It's like a, you know, when you, like, when we were looking for your buck,

the good one you shot in Oklahoma, you like fall into that cadence where there's like a leader, a follower, a leader, a follower, but the pace is kind of dictated by like, it's, it's always like way slower and more methodical. Then you think even when you're on like there's blood here blood here blood here you're kind of like there's like a little governor on people who know what they're doing yeah just because you might come up you might you know like the potential 15 yards down that you might run out of blood you know so you're just like you just fall into this sort of cadence where you're like there's nothing good that comes from us. We're running down this or all of a sudden just starting to grid search or go

look ahead. Like you just got to dial it back in a lot of people. And this is just probably mostly because they don't get to do it very much. And they haven't been through all those different scenarios where you've had that, those real late nights, the Doug Duren thing where it's like, you've been on another nightmare one that didn't turn out or the coyotes got it the next morning.

And so when I say, go look for that arrow. And then if you don't get it right away, or it's like, you feel that pole to just go a little bit farther down the trail, that's when you got to just check yourself and go, I'm going to get out. We're going to go get a sandwich. We're going to go get like good lights, batteries. We're going to go get a sandwich. We're going to go get like good lights, batteries. We're going to set up for this. And we're going to have a discussion outside of that zone where that deer might still be and just figure this plan out. And then, cause there's, you might, you might go back, your buddy might relax, or you might just be like, man,

kind of felt like maybe it was too far back or just like something. Or if it's just something you usually do, like we talked about, if you're a lot of times too far left, too far back or just like something or if it's just something you usually do like we talked about if you're a lot of times too far left too far right you could go if even though i can't remember i don't know that if i did screw up and hit him that's probably or what did it sound like it's kind of like the sound of that arrow is kind of jiving with the mistake i make a lot got it so did i got shoot him and so you just always err on that side of don't go push it you know like just do not do that and i know i mean we talk about that all the time but it really hits home when you're on one of those or you know

you you're like oh it's probably you talk yourself into it and then you jump that sucker and now he's on the neighbors across the neighbor's fence and now it's like it's become a thing that it didn't have to become and it never almost never becomes a better thing by accident you know what i mean you're never like well i'm gonna look for the arrow oh there he is you know it's like yeah oh it's much more common to go look and they'd be like oh right right hey folks exciting news for those who live or hunt in Canada. And boy, my goodness do we hear

from the Canadians whenever we do a raffle or a sweepstakes. And our raffle and sweepstakes law makes it that they can't join. Whew. Our northern brothers get irritated. Well, if you're sick of, you know, sucking high and titty there,

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slash meet. onxmaps.com slash meet. Welcome to the OnX Club, y'all. I guess I got the crash and you You got the, man, that looked perfect and I heard a crash. That's the hardest 20 minutes ever. That's what you do, 20 minutes? 20 minutes is what I heard a crash. That's the hardest 20 minutes ever.

That's what you do, 20 minutes? 20 minutes is what I shoot for. 30 is what I shoot for. 20, I think. That's where you compromise. I think second offer. Okay, 20 will be good enough. At 15, I'm standing at the bottom of the tree. And go find the arrow, and it's just absolutely painted.

And it looks just like you want it to look. But what I will do, regardless of my excitement level, I have taught myself, and the story I'm fixing to tell you was the day that I did it. When I heard that crash, I had a compass in my hand, and I shot an azimuth to it from where I was sitting in that tree. So I knew the direction because it's the world is a different place when you're 15 feet closer to the planet and you get

down there and you which which tree was I was I in you know once you get out there and you can't see the sand but I get out there and I find the arrow if I'm finally waiting 20 minutes and it's just blood blood blood blood and you and like to Tony like what Tony's talking about you just start walking faster and faster oh I can see it I can see it and if you ain't careful if it stops if that hole plugs up or if it rubs up against a tree and it doesn't drip on the ground that you don't see when it goes by. And all of a sudden there's no blood, and you turn around to look, and you've already walked five yards past it. And then you've got to go all the way back if you can find it again.

Then you've got to wonder if you didn't step on what was there. Exactly. Now I've ruined it. So this blood trail on this deer went like a slingshot straight away from where I shot it. And then it started varying kind of back to the left. And in my mind, I'm thinking, I heard him crash over here, but maybe that was just excitement because the blood's going here. Well, the blood starts, it gets 60 yards away from the tree. Now, in the bottoms there where there's thickets,

and I can't see the tree I'm in now, so in my mind I'm assuming I've got this blood line is straight. But I've actually made a big curve to the left, and the blood trail starts going up this bluff, and it stops. But where I missed, and I get to the top of the bluff, I can't find blood anywhere. I can't find a deer. I can't find blood anywhere. I can't find a deer. I can't find anything.

But where I missed was when that deer got to the edge of that bluff, he fell and rolled down the other side. And where I heard him crash was where I heard him crash, but it was 80 yards difference from where I lost that blood trail to right there and was actually back closer to the deer stand from where I shot him at. I got you. So when I, and how I found him was I walked back to the base of that tree and took the azimuth and I walked that azimuth that I shot out there and walked right up on him. To that sound you heard. To the sound I heard. And that was him. Cause I thought maybe if, if that was him, maybe he bedded, you know, and I would jump him up at least know which

way he was going. But, I mean, he was dead as a hammer. That's a good idea on that compass deal. Yeah. It's come in handy a lot. I remember being kids, and it would be a big thing. It was the old man would send you back up in the tree. Yep.

And he'd have his surveyor's tape. Yep. And he'd want to know, where did you first see it yep where was it when you shot okay where do you think it last saw it was and mark all this stuff you know and start laying out like a crime scene you know i mean because he's trying to pry as much out of an unreliable narrator as he could you know like visually on the ground. You know what I mean? Well, it became painfully obvious how they may leave in a straight line, but that don't mean they're going to stay in one.

You know, and I firmly believe that deer would have went on top of that bluff and fell over dead, but he fell over before he got to the top and rolled down to that other spot over there. If I hadn't done that you know we could still be out there looking for it yeah you're like fighting you're fighting this this dual thing where you have real information which is like the spore and then like this information you're making up yeah like you're filling in the blanks and so i think that's like the the most dangerous stuff on blood trails is the always and never stuff and then talking yourself into like we got to go

because there's a lot of coyotes around here or we got to go because it's kind of warm and maybe you know like when you're when you're when you're talking yourself into going and you're filling in the blanks instead of working off the actual information that tends to break bad a lot when the only reason you're coming up with those things to do is because you want to get there and put your hands up right yeah right so I'm gonna let Mark you're gonna take over on your thing but I just want to tell you a funny story one time we were out and and hit a bull elk and then drew back and kind of like went off to a rock area just to lay down and wait and the whole time we're like okay we're gonna wait 45 minutes and the whole time i'm like kind of smell elk i can smell elk and in our going back wound up like setting up like right

next to that thing no way waited 45 minutes stood up like oh my god right next to that thing. No way. Waited 45 minutes, stood up like, oh my God. Right next to a wallow, man. Pretty great. No, I point that out because that's usually not how that goes. No. All right, so Mark, take it where it's just like, that ain't good. Yeah. So in that scenario, everything that we've talked about so far is even more important.

So the very first thing I'm going to do in that situation is try to collect as much information as I possibly can to ensure that the narrator is as useful as possible at least. Even if it's you. Yeah, even if it's me. Let's put it that it is you. It is me. Which, hey, this has happened. What? So in a situation where like I saw the hit, I knew it wasn't great. Now I know, man, my job from here on out is going to be extra difficult. Let's put a finer point to it. It's way back. Yeah, way back. Not in the hit. I knew it wasn't great. Now I know, man, my job from here on out is going to be extra difficult.

Let's put a finer point to it. It's way back. Yeah, way back. Not in the hip. It's in that narrowest little waist part. Yeah. When it sounds like. Yeah.

So in that scenario, number one, I see that happen. Then I'm watching that deer and very, very carefully trying to see where's the last place I saw, like marking any possible visual way point in my mind. Okay. And then I try to take it a step further two ways. One, I will oftentimes like after the deer disappears out of view, the first thing I'm thinking about is in my mind trying to think through,

okay, what did I hear? What did I see? And trying to like have an internal dialogue and very clearly like okay he went that way saw him by that big oak tree last and something I haven't done but I should do and would recommend is actually pull out your notes app in your phone and actually write this down right then the moment write down everything you can remember while it's fresh before your mind starts playing tricks on you another Another thing I have done, I will take a picture from the

tree stand of where I shot it. So I know what the view looks like from up there with my phone. And then I will take a picture of the last place I saw him. And then like, even like circle in the photo, like there's where he was in my mind's eye. It's fresh. It just happened. I can see what it looks like right now. I'll zoom in and get a picture of that. That way, you know, just like you said, when you're down there on the ground, it's like know your dad in the surveyors tape similar thing but you can do this on your own right so then when you're on the ground you can be like okay is this the tree look at the picture oh yeah this is the oak tree here's that little sapling he was standing by it this is that sapling you can orient yourself on the ground because again i know that my my job

is going to be extra challenging i I need every single possible data point. So I'm doing these things, collecting all that data that I can from the tree already. If I know it's a far back hit right away, I know, Hey, this deer is going to need time. I will with any shot and maybe I'm overly conservative here, but even if I heard a crash, I always will wait an hour. Um, the only, only uh time that would not be the case would be if i can literally see the deer dead but if i can't see it dead i just think it's off there somewhere i'll at least wait an hour got it um that's a lot of discipline try to um it just seems like there's so many ways it can go wrong there's no way it can get more right if he's dead he's not going to be more dead

if I get down there at 30 minutes if he's dead he's dead as long as it's not crazy hot and I'm not worried about the meat going bad like that would be the only time I'd like rush down there if that was the case but like assuming that's not a concern the only thing that could happen is it could be worse maybe he crashed but he's actually not dead and I spook him

so when it goes on it comes down to checking the arrow I like to wait to check the arrow And the only thing that could happen is it could be worse. Maybe he crashed, but he's actually not dead, and I spook him. So when it comes down to checking the arrow, I like to wait to check the arrow because, again, worst case scenario, what if he crashed but is not dead? You go walk 30 yards out, it's crunchy. You go check that arrow, and all of a sudden he's up and running. I just don't want that to happen. I want zero chance of that happening. So I wait. If I know I hit this deer back, I might not even go check the arrow at all. So this is,

um, this is exactly, this is very close to a scenario I had last fall at Doug's place. So speaking to Doug with guys with archery shots and not hitting, getting perfect hits. So I had a shot at a buck, and I probably rushed the shot a little bit, and he spun on the shot, and the shot hit back. And so waited an hour, thought about going to check the arrow, and I'm having a hard time remembering if I did,

but I'm pretty sure that I did not go to the tree to check the arrow at all. I remember we talked on the phone afterwards, but I went back and immediately knew, you hit a deer back, my view is like a 10 to 12 hour wait no matter what again it goes back to what's the worst come out come like on any shot is an hour a pont shot you're going to give it 10 yeah just because that deer is going to die. Like that deer, a deer does not survive a shot in that region. Okay. Right.

But unfortunately the reality is that it is not a fast thing. It might, you might get lucky, but most of the time it's not a fast thing. But what you can count on usually is that that deer does not want to travel far. That deer wants to get to its first point of safety and it wants to lay down and it does not want to move again. And so the only silver lining here is that that's the case. So if you hit a deer back, there's a pretty darn good chance he's going to bed down quickly and he's not going to leave that bed unless you bump him. So that's why it's almost always better to give that deer a good amount of time at least 10 12 hours and then you can know with relative certainly certainty that there's going to be somewhere kind of close just don't screw it up give it to me and let's say we're not out in like prairie country but we're in mixed ag land and you're uh we're in mixed ag land with a lot of bedding covers scattered around. How many yards away?

One to 200 yards. You think so? First good security cover. Usually they'll, they'll bed down. And so I, I was on the edge of really thick cover and I knew that he could be within 70 yards. Got it. Like, I don't think he went far. And so I knew.

So he might go 70 yards from that point of like feeling that scare and feeling that hurt. He might go 70 yards and feel safe enough to lay down scare and feeling that hurt he might go 70 yards and feel safe enough to lay down like i've seen deer get hit in that punch they bound off like one or two bounds stop kind of hunch up and then just slowly walk away and as soon as they hit cover they bed down yep yeah and and so many people though have this pull like i just need to see i just need to know i just want to find it and it's the worst but nothing good comes of that so I am I am going to if if I feel very confident because of the terrain and the habitat that I can get to the arrow site without spooking it then yes I will go there and collect all

the information that you talked about get as much information as I possibly can to arm me with the ability to make as good of a decision as possible. So wanting to see, like trying to confirm, if maybe you're not sure if it was liver or stomach or something, then I'm looking at the arrow, I'm looking at the blood,

I'm looking at that kind of thing. But if I saw far back, like we know that's what it is, then I'm backing out and I'm doing two things. Waiting, three things. I'm waiting that long predetermined time. Number two, I'm trying to get some help. And number three, if it's legal in your state and you have someone who has a dog, get the dog. There's no downside to getting a dog. They are like magic. They are an incredible asset and tool. And if you can do it, there's no reason not to do it. 12 hours passes.

Now I'm going to return to the site of where the shot was. I have all of this information. I have my photo of the last place I saw him. I have the photo of the shot site. I have my arrow. I have the blood at the site of impact. And now doing everything Tony talked about and Brent talked about.

Slowly trying to follow that blood if at all possible. If you have the dog staying out of the dog's way, a big thing is like a mistake many people make with a subpar shot is that maybe they thought, well, maybe it was liver, maybe back of lungs and they want to believe the best case scenario. And then they start walking around and looking and they mess up the whole area. And then six hours later, like, well, now I got to call a dog. And they call the dog, but you messed up the first 400 yards of circumference around the area of impact.

What I've learned with, I've got one of my best buddies has a dog. And so he's done this hundreds of times. And now he comes out with me just for practice. And so I've gotten to see this many times myself. The best thing you can do is that the first hint of, eh, I'm not, like, I've lost blood, not feeling good about this. If you have that tool in your toolbox, grab it because it can cure so many woes if you have that tool. Yeah, those dogs are a lot better at it than we are. Yeah.

So, of course, if you can that tool yeah there are a lot those dogs are a lot better at it than we are yeah so of course if you can follow the blood absolutely but if you're reaching that question mark point and you're thinking dog no dog dog no dog i would always lean towards dog so now we've waited we have the information we're on the trail now it's just slow do not be impatient do not rush ahead mark last blood always don't rush into the now let's just search around the corner just follow all those protocols that force you to go slow that force you to be methodical about it and more often than not with that far back hit deer if you do all of that within 100 200 yards you're gonna find it bedded up not that far away and you have your happy ending and it worked out as best as it can out of a bad outcome.

Good, because I was nervous for a minute there that we were going to lose that buck. As we all are. And that thing, that process is exactly the process we followed. And we found a great big giant buck on Mr. Dern's farm, and it was a happy ending and a little stressful in between. But you never want that situation to be a situation you're in but once you find yourself there you have to just do everything you possibly can to end it well and that's easier said than done okay we're gonna do one last thing now

go ahead you have something well i was just gonna weigh in on like a couple quick things there the the thing that we do a lot of times, especially if you're talking about shooting one in the evening, right. As it's getting dark is you've got your headlamp with you and it's easy to just start down that trail with like the wrong stuff. You know, you've got what you have with you.

So I started keeping like a blood trailing box in my truck. It forces me to leave, go back. Like no matter what, if, if, if I'm not like i smoked him and he's 70 yards away it forces me to take that moment to get out of the woods and at the very least i'm like i gotta go arm up with the right lights batteries and then the other thing i think a big mistake people make on a blood trail is they think they need a lot of help and i always

i kind of equate it to pheasant hunting with a young dog if you if you go into the cattails and there's just you and you have a dog that dog will set the pace because it knows how to work the cover and it's figuring things out so you're you're pacing yourself to that dog but you get one more person in there or two more people in that slew. Now everybody wants to be in front because everybody wants to shoot that rooster. So then that dog is like, shit, they're walking up on me. They're forcing that dog to go faster. So then you get that stuff where that dog gets out, works back because they're moving past them and it changes the entire dynamic of the process. Now you think about a blood trail, not grid searching is different.

Like if you run out of blood and you, every eyeball you can get, it's better. But when you get just two people on a blood trail, a real blood trail where you're following actual spore, you just fall into a, I found this, he found this.

Oh, it's time to do circles. He found this. But if you have three, where's that third guy go? He starts walking ahead. He's going and checking that one He found this. But if you have three, where's that third guy go? He starts walking ahead. He's going and checking that one spot. Right.

And then you're like, you're like, well, this guy doesn't know a blood trail like I do. So I want to get ahead of him. And now it becomes a pacing issue where it's just no bueno. And everybody wants to be the guy that finds him. Right. Here's your deal. Well, there's just like a, it just changes the pace and not in a good way. The exception is when you're colorblind.

Yeah. Then you need a little more help. No. Well, right. Well, then you fall over the back of the line where you belong. All right. We're going to do one last thing. The focus is on making the shot and then the moments after the shot.

We're skipping all that other beautiful whitetail stuff. I want a hot tip from each of you. Take your pick. On post-shot or what? Everything leading up to, everything beginning with you pulling your bow back and ending with you saying like, oh my God, there he is. Meaning he's dead. Found him.

Any kind of hot tip within that area? Just be prepared. Have the stuff you need to take care of that animal regardless of the situation that happens between climbing up the tree and finding him at the end. Take the stuff with you that you need to take care, to get you, to get the animal taken care of

and get you both back to the truck would the truck would be mine so load it in there have it be ready no surprises no surprises no damn i should have brought my knife i wish i brought my knife should have brought some surveyors where's my flashlight i want to do a pre-shot one yeah this has changed so we we're in a in the whitetail space right now the primary scouting method is trail cameras very effective in a lot of different ways not a substitute for watching deer and so our the reason that we get buck fever and fall apart bad is there's something we really really want it means a lot to us and we are not comfortable around there like I always I always kind of like

equate this to like if Mrs. Peterson got hit by a train tomorrow and I had to go into the dating world and Margot Robbie showed up next to me at the bar buck fever I would not be that smooth like I think my odds would be pretty low to begin with but i don't think i'd help my case in and then then the next day you'd be sitting there being like i i can't even remember why i said what i said right i wish i brought my flashlight i just know it i just know it didn't work but so watching deer that's why i love the the long rain scouting thing just seeing bucks it like demystifies what they do but also when you're sitting in a tree stand and we're we're in this like kind of hit lister mentality where like i

know the bucks that i'm like i'm gonna shoot because they're worth my tag and this is the effort i put in whatever when you have deer around you and you look at them from a perspective of you were going to shoot them so that little forky, he comes in, you'd never kill, but you watch him and he walks in and he turns this way. And where, where did your point of impact go? Cause he scratched his nose with his back hook. Where did your point of impact go when he kind of, he heard that squirrel behind you and he just made that kind of half body turn.

Understood. Yeah. So you're like, you're sort of like, like, let's play this game, dude. Let's say I did want this buck. So did I really have a shot opportunity? you know i mean yeah all i think about when a deer's coming in that i know i want to shoot as i'm looking at where my point of impact is and that's like my little internal computer is always going now it's here now it's there here it is stop you try to stop him and he jumped six feet like thinking about that because we get so conditioned to just well we aim three inches behind the shoulder halfway up whatever but

they're 3d animals and your you know like your arrow trajectory that wound channel is everything and if you're thinking about that all the time, when you're looking at deer, it just gets you into that mindset of when that big boy starts coming down the trail during the rut, you're, you're not looking at his antlers. You're not like, I got to get this over with. You're like, where would I shoot him? Like when he hits this window, you're already, your eyes are like, there's my point of impact. And it's rarely, not rarely, but often not three inches behind the shoulder and halfway up. You know what I mean? Like, where do I need to run that arrow through?

And that's, that's something that like has really helped me because I look at deer that way. You know, I don't, I'm not drawing and aiming at the doe with the fawn walking by, but I'm looking at her. And then when you do that, because you know, most people probably listening to this, aren't doing the, they're not hunting out of a saddle in a new spot every night, right. They're going to that ladder stand on the food plot. And so when that Forky comes down the trail and you know, you're on Instagram cause you don't care and he walks through and you don't pay attention to it. Well, when the 140 incher comes down there, he's doing the same thing that Forky did. Like he's, he's on the same same trail he jumps through the crossing the same way you know what i mean

and like you're learning that like the minutia of like deer behavior in that spot and it just changes how you view like the setup to your shot yeah and i just think i think we don't spend enough time watching actual deer do actual deer things. Got it. There's a science behind that, and we used it in law enforcement when we would be clearing a house, just practicing, going from stress shooting. And the more you practice, it becomes second nature in stress level. You always resort in stress. In times of stress, you will always resort back to your level of training, whether it's low or whether it's very high.

And that's what makes special forces so good because they constantly train, train, train, train, train about different scenarios, but they constantly train about them all the time. And what Tony is saying is really the same same concept he's looking and watching looking and watching looking and watching and then oh there's that guy then he's looking and watching doing it subconsciously just because he's he's amped up but he's going back to that level of the stress is taking him back to the highest level of training that he's put himself through that's that's a really good tip so my my tip would be something that i say to myself often like all the time during a hunt or during the

hunting season and that is slow is smooth smooth is fast i'm constantly trying to remind myself to slow down for example when i'm about to head out for a hunt, my usual default mode is like I'm rushing to get out there. Rushing, rushing, rushing. And then you do that and you realize I walked out to the tree and didn't put my saddle on or I left my release back of the truck or whatever. So I'm always slow down, be smooth. Same thing when you're walking to the tree, slow down, be smooth. Same thing when I'm setting up sticks in the saddle, going under the tree. I'm always wanting to rush. I'm always worried, oh, God, a deer is going to come up while I'm getting ready. And then as soon as you start trying to rush it, you make mistakes.

You make a noise. You end up screwing things up that slows you down more in the long run. You get into the tree. You want to rush into glassing, whatever, or rushing into your phone and doing something on Instagram. But, again, slow down. Do the visualization. Practice everything like I talked about. When the shot comes, right? Again, slow down, slow down. That's the most important thing for me in the shot processes is slow down, do your thing. Don't fly down the roller coaster. After the shot, same thing. The instinct is,

I want to go, I want to see the arrow. I want to go find the deer. I want to hold him. Slow is smooth. Smooth is fast. Slow it down. If you don't rush, you've got a much better chance of the happy ending in the end versus rushing down there and then having a nightmare in your hands. So constantly trying to tell myself that. And slow is quiet, too. And quiet's important. Need to add that into the saying.

Well, uh, Mark Canyon, Brent Reeves, Tony Peterson. Um, thanks for the advice. I'm sure people at home will appreciate it.

And, when everybody, uh, gets up in that, gets up in that tree or up in that box blind, this white tail season, a couple of things to keep in mind. Thanks guys.