00:00:02 Speaker 1: Welcome to the Wired to Hunt podcast, your home for deer hunting news, stories and strategies, and now your host, Mark Kenyon. All Right, welcome to the Wired to Hunt podcast, brought to you by on X, and today we've got Tony Peterson on the show with me and most of you. If you're a longtime listener, at least you should know who Tony is. He's he's been a frequent guest on the show. He's a long time outdoor writer, he's been a Meat Eater contributor, and just a just a downright damn good deer hunter, especially when it comes to public land. D I y deer hunting. There are there are a few people better. And I got him on the show this week to cover a whole variety of topics, but in particular, I mostly wanted to discuss with him some of the less talked about variables, the impact who we are as hunters and the success we have, things like things like mindset and satisfaction and inner drive, toughness, work ethics, stuff like that. It's to be the best we can be at anything, hunting included. I think it requires a certain set of intangibles. I think UH focus on on nurturing and improving these these inner things that help us work towards our goals. And that's what we ended up spending a lot of our time discussing in this episode. You know how mindset has impacted Tony's hunting, the necessity of never losing your joy um, the drive to challenge yourself, even what Tony two point oh might look like if if his plans go is as desired. So that's that's really what we get into. It's it's an interesting and different kind of chat. And then we of course do spend a decent amount of time talking specific hunting plans to we we dive into what Tony has got in store for prepping and scouting this year leading to the deer hunting season. So he'll definitely get some some some tangible takeaways, I guess as well. So that's what is in store. It's a it's a great chat. I think you're gonna enjoy it. I do want to leave you with one quick note though, before we get into the main thing. Because if you're stuck at home like I am, and like most people across the country are, and if you're board and you're wishing you could be out doing things, you've ran out of all the podcasts and all the Netflix episodes you can handle. I've got to offer my shameless recommendation here for my book That Wild Country, an epic journey through the past, present, and future of America's public lands. UM have been seeing a lot of people posting on social media about it recently, because, as I just said, that a lot of people kind of getting into this quarantine reading and people people have been joined the book. UM. I'm super um honored and thankful that's the case. So if you're wishing you could be out traveling to some wild public place but can't because of these current lockdown regulations, I think this book is a perfect way to kind of vicariously explore through your imagination some places like the Bob Marshal Wilderness in Monte in A. Uh, the Arctic tundra of Alaska, the Red Rocket canyons and deserts of southeast Utah, um, the wildlife packed of valleys of Yellowstone. Uh. It's it's I think something that it's at least the book that I would want to read right now. UM, that that kind of book, at least the books I've just been reading. Actually have been like the things where you can go on adventure in your mind even though you're stuck, you know, reading in bed at night. So take it. Take it for what it's worth. My obviously biased recommendation. But here is a bit of news. If you do want to read the book and you want to show your support not just to me, but also to the team over a meat Eater, you can now buy that Wild Country on the meat Eater website. That's it's pretty cool. You can get it now on the meta store. If you just head to the meat eater dot com, go to the store menu and navigate to books, you will see it right there. Um, for some reason, you don't want to do that, you can't do that. The other option I'd encourage you to look into is picking up a copy from your local bookstore. Um. You know, these stores in many cases are struggling right now due to physical store closures, but many of them can still take phone or online orders. So if you enjoy a good bookstore, um, this is this is the time we need to support them to make sure they can still be around once everything goes back to normal. So that is my biased media recommendation for you today. Thanks, for humoring me. There and with that out of the way, without further ado, my chat with Tony Peterson. Enjoy all right with me now on the line? Is Tony Peterson back for I don't know. You've been a pretty frequent guest over the years, so I would have to guess maybe five six. I think we're at least probably too five at this point, and that's not counting RUT radio appearances. You've been on RUT radio quite a bit. Um, you're basically a co host at this point, don't you been in so much? But I'm glad you were able to find some time to do this. How how are you in the family holding up? As as anyone listening knows right now, we're in the middle of the COVID nineteen situation. So what's what's happened in Minnesota with you guys? Man? We are scouting turkeys and shed hunting, and we're gonna go out. I'm taking one of my daughters out tonight after we we wrap this up, just to do some photography and see if we can find some deer turkeys to take pictures of. And we're just we're leveraging the time staring at Netflix with just getting outdoors and taking the dog out and doing some stuff in the wild for our mental health. And I'm sure you know, I'm sure a lot of Wire to Hunt listeners are kind of in the same boat. They're they're finding every excuse in the book to get out in the woods. Right now, it seems like the best, the best possible option, given the fact there's so many things we can't do, getting outside is one of them that at least across most most places, you can still do that. And uh, that's the one silver lining, I guess those of us that are healthy, you can you can get out and spend some quality time out there. Um, although if you've seen that they are closing some national parks, I've seen national force are getting shut down. I saw that recreational fishing has been essentially outlawed in Washington State for the time being. Uh, that's pretty pretty crazy, Yeah, I heard. Uh the reason for that, at least partially was because some of the some of the salmon fishing situations out there. Some of the I don't know if they're the conservation officers or fishing wildlife or somebody has to have contact with anglers on a regular basis. And so that was sort of the impetus behind that. But to just blanket shut down fishing is it's insane. Yeah, I mean I I I have looked at everything that's been going on right now with you. I'm gonna take it seriously, gonna listen to the experts and all that, and I'm not going to try to pretend like I know better than anybody else. But to something like that, Gosh, you would think there could be somewhere around it. But but then again, maybe the decision makers have so little time to spend on something like that that the blanket pronouncement is just the only option given the bigger things that have to do with that might be part of it too, I don't know. Yeah, well I think that's part of it. And I think, you know, we're working on a project for the Fish and Wildlife Service And I was talking to a woman who manages a refuge out in Colorado yesterday and they allow fishing there and it's the only thing that you have to pay for. It's like three bucks for a permit or something per day. And she said they were just weighing, you know, whether they just waived that fee and then have no enforcement or how they addressed that, and that that's one of the things you're seeing is some of these states are going, we don't we don't want our CEOs making contact with these with anyone out there, and so their waving the fishing you know, hey, don't need a fishing license for the next month, or they're they're making it so people can get out, and that that's one you know, obviously I think we'd probably support that over just a blanket shutdown. But there that's what they're working around. So it's not just you know, it seems kind of simple, like, oh, these people are disconnected and they don't understand how important fishing is and how we can keep our distance. But there's you know, like with all issues, I think there's more going on behind the scenes, and they kind of got a factor that and you know, how how do you enforce fishing regulations and game regulations right now if you're if you don't want your CEOs within six ft of somebody, you know. So that brings up something else that I was thinking about the other day, which is and I hope, I hope this won't be the case. I hope that we're gonna stand as sportsmen and women and do the right thing. But I wonder, and I worry if there will be some higher percentage of violators out there, people poaching, people going out about licenses, people you know, doing that kind of thing because they think they can get away with it, or because the state admits they can get away with it. I sure as hell hope that kind of thing doesn't pop up, but I wouldn't be surprised. Yeah, you know, I think that's kind of I think it's possible, but I think it's just opening a door for the people who are going to do that anyway. Like I I really have quite a bit of faith in people. And it's kind of like if you if you look at the national news right now, you can find negative stories NonStop, but there's so much good going on. And I think most people are being pretty nice and respectful and and paying attention to this thing and doing the right stuff. And I kind of feel like the you know, the hunting public is going to be the same way. And yeah, you're gonna just have a certain percentage of people who never cared about the laws anyway, and they're gonna look at this like a gift to them. But those people were probably gonna break laws anyway, and I think I I just don't I hope people don't do that. Let me put it that way. Yeah, I think you'd be a good point. It's it's I'm not to go down a really dangerous rabbit hole, but it's it's when we talk gun control and added gun regulations and stuff, oftentimes you can talk about the fact that the guys are gonna they're gonna do this bad stuff. They aren't gonna follow the gun laws anyways. Um, which is one of those sometimes defenses for whatever. Um. Yeah, I don't know. That's it's not really what I've planned on spend too much time talking about. But it's an interesting thing going on right now. I don't know, man, this whole it's I think it's obvious to anyone right now that this is one of those situations that will be one of those things that you point to you like, oh, I remember where I was when this happened, or everything was kind of different before that happened. Um, it's seeming like this is one of those inflection points that will probably all look back on and hopefully we'll come out of it and it's not gonna be that horrible of a deal. Hopefully it's it's going to be better than people are expecting and and we'll be able to get on with life just fine here in a few weeks or months or whatever it is. But right now it just seems like life is on hold and we're in a weird place. I think you've got the right idea, though, with what you're doing with family. Get out there and take advantage of, like take advantage of the one small silver lining of it, which you've got the family there together. You have more time to get outside and do things. That's that's that's a blessing in in this case a little bit, oh Man, big time. And I think you know, I get into this in my podcast a lot, but you know, guys like you and I we understand, you know how important it is for you mentally just to get outside and recreate a little bit. And you know, I saw this. We were we were actually down in Florida when this When we flew down, it was kind of like, hey, this thing could get kind of crazy, but it's not there yet. And every day just got progressively worse, and we were there. The last day we were there is when they shut the beaches down down there, and so it had laminated pretty quickly, and we were you know, we kind of knew our schedule anyway, and knew when we were coming home, and so I'm sitting there going, well, I know when we're coming home. We already know we don't want to be close to people. And so we just fished every day and hung out on the beach and I kept my phone shut off and it didn't. It was amazing to me how just fishing and not having the bad news come in it changed how I looked at it. And it really didn't change our life a whole lot. We kind of knew what was going on and what we had to do, and and I see that sort of in a in a broad I don't know, maybe like a broad theme with society right now. Like, man, when you sit down and you're scrolling through your news feeds over and over again, you're not really taking any time to go do something for yourself that feels good and you're getting your body moving and you're out in nature, and that stuff matters a lot. Like I really think that we all benefit, not just us, you know, who kind of hold the secret where we know, yeah, this this is good. We like being outside, but I wish everybody understood what what that would do for them, just just doing something for themselves on a daily basis like that, instead of sitting there worrying so much and focusing on, you know, the potential negativity all the time. What's what's your relationship with your phone? Are you? Are you on it a lot? Do you get sucked into it and social media or email or things like that, or do you have are you pretty well distanced? Uh? That depends what I'm doing. So just just as an example, you know, how you get your like weekly screen time update. I don't know if you get that, but yeah, when I was in Florida, my screen time drop and yeah, dude, it was. And I've started to I really started this last year. Even when I was doing all days sits for white Tails, I was shutting my phone off and like intentionally just putting it away and going just just leave it alone. You gotta sit out here all day anyway, pay attention. And I'm trying to build that into my life more because I'm like, dude, I'm like everybody else. I mean, I'm staring at my phone a lot, and it's to the point where I don't want to be anymore, and so I'm like forcing myself to kind of do a little bit of a digital cleanse and and just just set it aside more often. Yeah, that's that's exactly the same with me. I feel it is so tempting so often to just pull it up and look at it, or to browse through social media or check emails any hour of the day. It's just right there. It's the same thing. We're all dealing with, um. But the only way I've been able to shake it is to do what you just said, physically separate myself from it. I have to put it away, you know. And it's it's it's just as bad when I'm in the tree, like you just said, when when I'm in the tree, versus like when I'm sitting at the computer, I have to get an article done or something. I've got to do some kind of work. And I don't know if you ever like this, but when I was writing my book or when I'm working on an article, I'll write a few sentences and then it gets hard, like I don't know what to say, and then oh, I'll just look at the phone and you don't even think about it. It's just like instantly the body reaches for like some little distraction from the tough next thing, and then I find myself, you know, ten minutes later, looking at something or completely worthless. It's not helping you move forward to any kind of way. And then that same thing happens when when you're in the tree hunting, it slows down, you don't see a deer for a few minutes, and then you're looking at your phone, and then you look around and next you know, you're looking at your phone again. Um, it's so counterproductive, but it's so easy that I don't know the mental, the mental side of of that, the mental implications of technology and having a device when you're hunting and when you're trying to work and all that stuff. I don't. I don't know if we know all the answers right now, but I mean it's changing stuff in a big way, and in a lot of ways negatively. I think I think so too, And I mean I think you just have to you know, like what you mentioned when you're writing your book and grabbing the phone, the instant, the instant, like an iota of writer's block hits you, or you don't have the next sentence, I've I've been there a million times, buddy, And I started leaving my phone upstairs. My office is downstairs, and when I know I'm on deadline or I want to get a chapter written or something, I just leave that sucker up there on silent and it can wait for me. And that's one thing I don't know. I don't know if I'm drawing a conclusion here that I shouldn't be. But for my life personally, I've started to really really enjoy certain kinds of fishing again, Like if I go, you know, brook trout fishing in northern Wisconsin, and I'm I'm out in the woods all day, or if I'm like pheasant hunting all day long. And I think part of it is tied to the fact that I'm just doing something that is not conducive to that that you know, boredom, instant boredom, grab your phone thing, and I just I find myself being drawn in more and more to those kind of activities, and I think part of it is like a self preservation thing where my brain is like, hey, bro go do something like this, so you're not picking this thing up constantly. So which kind of activity do you like more because I see something really cool about the two different types of activities I'm about to describe you. There's there's something like brick trout fishing or like fly fishing, where when I'm fly fishing, at least, it's it's so engaging and that like every second you're doing it, you have to be thinking about what you're doing, and so you're completely enveloped in putting the fly in the right place, watching the fly, figure out where you're going to do your bad cast. Then you're casting, then you're watching again, then you're mending, and you're fully in it, and in hours and hours can pass and I it'll be just like that snap of the fingers and all of a sudden, it's five hours later. I haven't had time to think about anything. And then there's that kind of activity. But then there's the complete opposite kind of activity, like going for a five mile run and you don't have anything going on, with nothing to listen to. You're just in your thoughts or sitting in a tree for a whole day and hopefully not on your phone the whole time, and there's nothing pressing at you, and you're just sitting there with with nothing but what's around you and what's going on in between your ears? Um, which are those two things? Which are those two things? Do you do you prefer? Do you like? Do you find more challenging? I don't know. For me, there's something about both that are great, but they're very very different experiences with like the inside your headset of things. I think the sitting and waiting is way harder. I mean, like you said, you know, with the fly fishing thing, you just you get someone immersed in that activity that it's like it's just time does just disappear on you. You have to focus on it. I feel the same way if I'm if I'm hunting anything upland with my dog, because you know, I'm running a flusher, so I'm paying attention to her constantly, and it's kind of the same deal. Especially if I go by myself. I don't have anybody else there to think about. I just follow my dog wherever, whether we're grouse hunting or pheasant hunting, and it's one of those activities where you're just in it the whole time and there's no like you. You almost don't have to think about anything else. It's like you know, I know, you listen to Rogan, and I've heard him mention that meditation is like when you when you start meditating, it's like when you open up your computer and you have nine thousand browser windows open and you gotta just start clicking them, you know, and shutting some of them down. And I feel like some of those activities, you know, if you're if you're wading up a brook trout stream, or your your pheasantant and behind a flush, or you just so many of those things go away, and so many of those distractions. And you know, when you're sitting on a tree stand all day, or you know, we're coming up on Turkey season here and you're gonna be spending some time in a blind, it's a different kind of activity, and you're in your head a lot more. And so it's just it's easier to reach for distraction, or it's easy to focus on, you know, should I be here, should I be doing something else? Should it be working? And so I think just generally I leaned towards some of those other activities, but that that might also just be because I spend so much time in trees and in blinds, that my my brain is just like, let's go move, let's go do something active. You know. I was reading something the other day and they were talking about how since the advent of smartphones, we now have seen this dramatic decrease in the amount of free space that people's minds have, so almost all the time, if you're in line to get food, or if you are on the bus, or if you are in the car, or if you are taking a job, or if you are if there's a ten second blip in a conversation with someone while you're sitting next to each other, people are pulling up their phones, They're listening to stuff, they're looking at stuff, they're reading stuff. It's it's constant content consumption almost at all times now, unless you know you're not like the average person, or unless you are actively thoughtfully trying to not do that. Um. And they were saying that because of this, because people are constantly filling their head with stuff, that there is this worry or concern around reduced creativity and productiveness through creativity, like people don't have that free mind space anymore to just let the mind wander and have new ideas pop up. I mean that is so often when I have like a new idea, it comes when I'm going on a hike not listening to anything, or when I'm on a run with that without my phone, or when I'm in the shower not thinking, and all of a sudden like that, Oh, that's the answer to this thing. Um. I feel like there's a lot of truth to that, um. And it's kind of true for hunting. I mean, I could see some parallels with without that open space that we're filling now with looking at Facebook called we're sitting in the tree, we're missing other things too. You know, well, yeah, man, I agree with you, and I think it's like so easy to think about, you know, the buck that gets in on you because you're staring at your phone or gets away, or the the encounter you blow because of that. But really, you know, what you're talking about is like I couldn't agree more. I think creativity is directly tied to experience, and you know as well as I do. You can't just sit down and be creative eight hours a day for your job. It just doesn't fly. You have to You have to get out and be doing stuff and that you know that ties to the content creation side of things that we're talking about. But it also ties into being a better hunter, like you're leading to, like you want to you want to solve problems out there in the woods, spend time out there and pay attention and actually actually pay attention. Don't be out there but clicking on hearts on Instagram and stuff like that. I don't know, I I am maybe extra woo woo on some of these things, Like I'm really fascinated by the mental side of things, by what's going on on that next level. I'm constantly trying to read more about philosophy or mental processes are problem solving or I don't know, I'm just I geek out about that stuff. But I just keep seeing more and more and more when it comes to like becoming a really good hunter. If if we go back to the main thing we usually talk about here with where done, there's like this certain set of um basic understandings of animal behavior and habitat and stuff that you've got to figure out and some basic skills. Once you have this, I don't know, we'll say we'll just call this top level set of skills. Then I feel like the way to take those next steps, it's almost all these mental things. Mental toughness meant problem solving, learning, how to calm your nerves, how to adjust on the fly, learning learning, how to learn from things. I mean, all that mental stuff I keep thinking is what's gonna help me and helpably hopefully people listening. That's how you go from just an average I get out there and I do okay ever once in a while, to be in like a very consistent successful hunter. Um, do you feel like embarking with their own tree on that kind of thing or is there something to that. I agree with you, and I think the missing component there that you haven't mentioned yet is when you when you start getting your head right as far as you know, enjoying the work and understanding the decision making process and being more comfortable with the mental side of things, you're just gonna be happier with your hunting. All that stuff ties into more enjoyment and less worry, less second guessing. And I'll tell you what, man, I'm I've gone through lots of different phases of deer hunting. I've loved it, hated it, been everywhere in between. And what I realized that probably one of the biggest things that ever happened to me is I just I just kind of got to a place where I'm like, I just enjoy the scouting parts so much and in the work parts of it, and it didn't it didn't bother me to fail anymore as much. I mean, I still didn't enjoy it the same way. But what it kind of like all tied into is I just got happier with my self as a hunter. I stopped caring about the big buck thing as much, and I stopped caring about you know, kind of the bs that surrounds the job when you when you do what we do and just realize, like I just want to go out there and enjoy it. And it changed everything for me, like decision making process and the amount of time I hunted and sticking to my you know, if I had a plan and went, okay, this is this is how I think this is gonna shake out, Like to what level I kind of had some discipline to stick to it or being opened, you know, some some kind of encounter changes what you think about your plan and just being in the right mental head space is It's a It's a weird thing to preach because people want to like, you know, what kind of call should I use? What kind of scent should I use. They want some kind of answer that way. And when you sit here and go, hey, you gotta be happier, they go, uh, can I just buy a call? Like is there a decoy that will do that for me? And that's not how it works. Man. Did you have like a breaking point or some kind of event or a season in particular where you had this Okay, I need to look at this differently. That was there something some time period or ventu you can point to when that shift happened for you or that forced that shift? Yoh, yeah, I've I've had so the first time I had an absolute deer hunting breakdown, I was I think fifteen, and so I started bow hunting when I was twelve, and I didn't come from a gun hunting family or anything, So it was it was just bows or nothing for us, for my dad and I and I. You know, I loved it, That's all I wanted to do. But I could not hit him. I would. I was missing dear a lot. And you know, we've talked about this on past podcast. And I ended up hitting a point when I was like still a teenager where I gave I told my dad, I said, I'm done, Like I can't. I can't keep going sit in the woods. And I remember him he said, well, you want to get a slug gun, we can go gun hunt. And I thought about it and I took off like I don't know, a week or ten days or something, and I just missed it so much. I went back at the end of the year, I killed my first deer with a bowl, and it was like a It was a good lesson for me because I needed it later in my life when I got into the hunting industry and my you know, some of my income was tied to being a guy who could kill big bucks and that pressure. I just didn't see that coming. And so I had another breakdown where my buck fever came back real bad and I had to reinvent myself. And so I've had two times in my life where I was like, I'm not enjoying this. I was almost you know, I don't have you ever hunted with a traditional bowl? You probably haven't haven Okay, there's there's a weird thing when you do that where if you haven't practiced enough and got confident enough, you don't want to see a deer walking in Like you're sitting up there and you're like, please don't come any closer, because I'm you have no confidence in your abilities. You know, It's it's a weird thing, and I'm sure it happens with other weapons, but when you when you're in that place, it takes some work to dig out of it. And I've had to do that twice in my life, and the last one was a long one, and when I got through it, I just felt like, you know, part of it was probably growing up a little bit, but I just felt like I got to just so much of a better place. And it's, you know, it was it was a stinging lesson both times, but it's it's stuck. You know. Is there anything you learned coming out of that, um, not just tactically like how to be able to shoot things better, but I mean more so if we were to take one like step up the hierarchy of of what's going on there, and did you learn anything about how to recover from failure? Because I feel like that is one of these big things that we encounters hunters a lot, because there's all these different types of failures that you can encounter as a hunter, and it happens more times than not, right we we we have ultimate success only handful of times on any given year, even the very best of us. And most of the time you go out there and something doesn't go quite the way you wanted to. Either nothing shows up, or the wrong deer shows up, or you shooting miss or you're shooting wounded deer, or you spook a deer, or a hunter comes on the property and spooks all the deer out and ruins your hunt. I mean, there's all these potential failures that happened during a given season, and and I I gotta I mean, as we're talking about this, probably one of the very most important skills you can have as a deer hunter is is learning how to deal with failure and bounce back from it, because that happens almost every hunt. I mean, what did you learn about that that you just accept it? I mean, that's that's the thing that you know. There, there's when you get into that topic, you're kind of getting into the danger of the social media and the you know, the comparison issue, because it looks like everybody's killing giant bucks. I mean, I was thinking about this. I was talking to a buddy the other day. I'm like, I feel like I'm the only person in the world who's not consistently finding shed antlers right now. And it, Believe me, man, it's not for a lack of try, and we are cover ring some miles, but it's such a skewed view of things. And so yeah, I mean, I got real comfortable with failure and and not letting it get me down, because, like you said, you know, if you look at bow hunting success rates state to state, you're talking typically right around there. And so generally of us are failing in any given year to kill a deer. And on any given day you go sit in a tree stand, it's almost a certainty that you won't kill something, you know, let alone the misses and whatever else that that are almost seemed like worse failures. And so you kind of just do have to get past that, and that's that's that's what's going to happen. But for me, what kind of what I realized about it, uh, sort of on that note, it's sort of a parallel was I didn't need to worry about the success as much because I learned that if I put in enough scouting and enough time, you know, looking at the aerial photography and burning some boot leather and getting out there all year round. It was like a given that the opportunities would come. Like you know, if you hunt enough states and you put in enough time on the front end, you've just set yourself up where those encounters will come to some extent name but you know they vary from year to year and and state to state. But you get a lot of confidence and you get real comfortable with yourself if you can, if you believe, that's what's going to happen. So I think you you kind of answer this question for me with the example you just shared for the examples, But if if I forced you to tell me right now what the single greatest intangible trait that you have that helps you to be as successful as you are as a hunter, what would that be? What's your superpower? I love scouting. I I think that that you know, you've interviewed a lot of deer hunters, and I have interviewed a lot of deer hunters. When you when you get somebody and I know you've seen a before where you get somebody on here like this person has a lot of experience, Like you can tell they're speaking from you know, pretty deep well there's almost always this love of scouting built in there, even if you know they have a different you know, even if they hunt beds or their core area masters or they have some kind of specialty, there's always almost always like intrinsically linked to that. It's just a sheer love of scouting year round. So what do you think that? Is that? Like, like, back it up, So you love scouting, But is that because you're really curious? Or is that because you are so damn determined? Or is that because you will hate yourself if you don't do every possible bit of work you can. Like, what's the thing in your mind that's making you scout? Know what I mean? Yeah, totally. I love being in the woods man, Like I just like, it's not a it's not like a terminator drive to kill big Bucks. It's not like that for me. I just it's this is one of the reasons I hunt everything. I just love being in the woods. And so, you know, tonight it's the end of March. I'm gonna be sitting in this Buddies box blind shooting photos of deer I hope, with my little girls. And I'm super excited. And you know, there's gonna be no antlers out there. It's just gonna be you know, where we're going. It's probably gonna be dose and funds if they do come by. But I just love being in the woods. And so yeah, you know, if you're if you're talking winter scouting or summer glassing, running into check a trail camera, all of that stuff. I just enjoy being there and that's a that's a big part of it. Yeah, that's that's a good if. If that kind of stuff comes from that place of just love for it, that's that's hard to beat. That's hard to beat. It's an intangible man Like some people, I know, some people don't like it as much as I do. And it's not their fault, but it's that's just I just feel lucky that I have that sort of bend towards being in the woods like that. You said you don't have that terminator drive though, do you, like, are you at a place right now where you are really satisfied with you're out there and you're enjoying it because you love it, You're satisfied with what's happening with the types of hunting seasons are happening having or do you still have a terminator drive of any kind to like, is there a next level for you? Or is there the next mountain you want to scale? Or do you want to is there is there is there a quote unquote better or next for you in any kind of way? Or are you in that happy place where he wants to No, there's always next, man. I you know, I get bored with stuff pretty quick, and I was. I was talking to Zach from the hunting public about this at the Deer Classic at the Minnesota Deer Classic recently, and he and I are kind of weired similarly where he's you know, he's one of those guys. He lives in Iowa and he's sick of Iowa. He's like, I want to move somewhere else because the hunting is too easy. And you know, we started talking about that. You know, you and I have hunted some of the same spots and in different places, and I love those spots. But every time I get one where I get like a public land area where I'm like, this place is going to be good year to year and it's I could go back there and probably kill big bucks or at least have encounters. I find myself looking for new places and and you know, it's a weird. It's it's kind of counter to a lot of what boat or a lot of what deer hunting is about right now, where it's you know, kind of get your amazing spot, build it up and and you know, kind of raised the deer and have that experience. And I'm just not I'm not wired for that very well. I like new stuff, And you know, I always talk about it like I have a really good buddy who I hunt with quite a bit, especially bird hunt with a lot, and he's the kind of guy who, you know, if you were talking fishing, he would park at the bridge walk below the bridge and drown a nightcrawler in the biggest hole under the bridge for an entire day. And if I got down there, I would I would start walking up stream and all of a sudden I would realize it's sunset. I'm seven miles from my truck, you know what I mean. It's just it's just a difference and how we're wired, know what you mean? That's that's me right there too. I always wonder what's over the next hill, What's what's around the corner, what next thing? Could I try to figure out that that's the thing for me. That's what I love about this stuff. It's that problem solving, that's an exploration. Uh I can't beat it. So okay, so what about the next So there's like the next adventure, Like you want to figure out these new things, you want to see these new places. But if I were to say, what is the thing like you need to not go to, not the thing you'd go do, but the next thing you have to get better at or something like if if Tony Peterson the Hunter were to become Tony Peterson the Hunter two point oh, what if you had to elf diagnose like your weak spot or the thing you had to work on next? What do you think that would be? Probably Western critters. I just you know, I've really only recently started elk hunting, and that's kind of you know, that's an activity I do where I feel like there's a big knowledge gap for me, you know, for for white tails. I don't know, I don't know what's left for me other than new states and new places, you know, new challenges, and just keep pushing the public land thing and going to new areas because that, you know, kind of like what you talked about would be in weired similar to me with the what's around the bend and over the hill. You can keep you know, stoke in that fire, even in the deer world, even in states close to where you live or in state by just going to new places and the mystery is there, and the chess game is there and the whole thing. And so I don't know if if I don't know how I would classify what I need to do to be the two point o version. I'm not I'm not sure where to go with that. Uh so are you plan do more Western stuff? Are you doing more this year? Yeah? Well hopefully. Um I've got I'm hoping to have a mule deer tag and I'm I'm I've got another ten days blocked off in September to go elk hunting. So yeah, I'm gonna mix in some you know, I try to do at least one Western trip of year, just because you know how it is. You got to get it into the mountains. I gotta. If you live at eight feet like I do, when you're surrounded by cattail swamps, you want to see some some elevation, want to see something. You want to see farther than a hundred yards. Yep, Yeah, I can totally relate to that. Um. So, um, you talked about scouting. Let's I have no plan with this conversation, so it's been going wherever wherever it takes me. But you mentioned how much you love scouting. Uh, it's that time of year and so much of what makes you you seems to be just that next level scouting that you are able to undertake. We've talked in past years about a whole bunch of different tactics. We talked about some of the different hunts you've been on, but I don't know if we've ever dove deep into like what a spring and summer of scouting looks like for you. Um, can you walk me through what's to come this year? I mean, are you scout? Do you have trips planned to some of the other states to scout, or you just hitting local stuff a lot? What's your actual scouting schedule look like? If you can describe that at all? Um. I actually got asked this by a a guest or one of the guys at my seminar at the Deer Classic. He said, well, how many days a year do you spend scouting? And I said, well, if you talk e scouting and boots on the ground. It's kind of haunted me since then because I couldn't really answer it. I'm like, I don't know, it's a lot um and it's it's still like something I think about and really, right now, man, a lot. I'm doing a lot of in state boots on the ground stuff. We're we're One of the things I've really been doing a lot this year that it's a little bit different than in the past. Is I spent some time in southeastern Minnesota on this farm that I have permission to hunt, really trying to figure out core areas because the farm is getting the timber is getting really mature, and you know, we lost antler point restrictions last year and and party hunting is back on. So the kind of hunting that's occurring on that farm, especially during shotgun season, is changing. It's getting easier for them to kill a bunch of deer, and so finding those little core areas that are thick and out of the way and hard to approach is it's gonna be real important for me from now on. And so I spent quite a bit of time and probably January through a week or two ago driving down there and just looking for these areas and going, Okay, last year, somebody really big spent a lot of time on this ridge or this point, and I know some of those bucks got killed, But I also know that when you find an area like that through through winter scouting, it'll get filled in by somebody else, so there'll be another mature buck in there. And I'm really thinking that what I found. I found two areas that just really got me excited, like little tight spots that it was clear, you know, big big deer, we're using them. And so I kind of want to do a sort of a dual strategy this summer to figure out, you know, if if they're living there in the summer, I'm gonna run some cameras around there and leave them for a couple of months, and then I'll do some long range glassing to see who's in the area and kind of sort of take a headcount and just get a feel for all. Right, you know, you can kind of watch those bucks in the summer and go, Okay, that's the oldest one. He's probably going to take over that spot, or you can see some of those her dynamics play out a little bit on who's probably the top dog, and it might not be the biggest buck, but you kind of see how they act. And so give me an idea of how to tie in that stuff to what I found this winter, and I'm I'm pretty excited about that. When you look for those those core areas, you said you're looking for these tight little spots. How tight are we talking? Like? Are you saying I want to find the one acre two acre thicket that I think they're in, or is it this forty acre swamp um down there? It's it's pretty small man, couple acres tops and it's all related to ridges and how they can bed with you know, prevailing wind blowing down the ridge and what they can see trying to sneak up hill to them, and it's it's it's always a good lesson to me, and that kind of because that's bluffy close to the Mississippi River type of stuff. So it's pretty up and down for Minnesota. But what it always reminds me of is when I find that and I stand there, I feel like I'm thinking about Western hunting and and you know, when you watch a meal deer bed in a mountain basin or in the in some breaky territory. You just look at it and go, you know, it wasn't by accident, Like there's always a reason. You know, the wind is in their faver they can see a whole bunch of stuff. The approaches aren't so great for predators, and we don't watch that in white Tail. So we have to piece that together by what we find in the sign we find and so sometimes and you know, depending on if I'm hunt in Wisconsin or some other state, in bigwood stuff, it's a different kind of core area that like you're talking about with the swamps and the it might be a bigger area just generally. But this stuff that I'm talking about is pretty egg dense and it's deciduous forests, and so there isn't a ton of super thick cover, and so it's tied to the terrain features and where they can where they can really bed down on, you know, at least throughout the fall. That's what they were doing and and have a lot of things working in their favor. How are you gonna act on that? Then? So you're gonna you found a couple of those spots, You're gonna go back in the summer and glass the nearby crop fields to try to figure out who's there and who's probably inherited that that zone. Are you gonna have some preset stuff on the edges of that that you're like planning? Okay for sure, now that I know this core areas here, I want to have a couple of options right around it. Or how do you foresee building hunting strategy around each of these spots? Um one of them? One of them, I think I'm gonna have to just go in and hang and hunt close to the rut because just because of the way it's located, it's just to approach it is really tough, and so I think you kind of need the advantage of having having the rut and and maybe some some daylight movement in there. The other one, you could you could follow one of the most prominent rub lines out of it towards some fields and he could stick to a a wooded ridge for probably I don't know, a couple of hundred yards and when he was leaving in certain directions, and it will allow for a couple of different wins, and it's it sets up a little easier to maybe try to kill that deer either opening weekend or staging sometime in October, and so for that deer I'll probably go in and hang a standard two and tack a trail for the other spot with with a difficult approach. I don't, I don't. I haven't figured it out yet. I'm not sure. Now, what about your out of state scouting. I know you've talked past about doing these turkey hunt slash scouting trips. Do you have any of that plans here? Yeah, I'm I'm heading down to Iowa the end of April, third week April. At some point, I drew a tag down there to go scout. You know, I'll running gun for turkeys like I did last spring in this spot, but I'm I'm mostly scouting for deer um on the idea that I'm going to draw the Iowa tag this year because I have enough points. I've just been waiting to find some public land that I felt like burning them on. And it's been a little bit of a process for me, and I finally I think I hit on it last year. And so if I if I get down there and I turkey out for a few days and I go, yep, this is as good as I remember it, then I'm gonna draw that tag, and if you know, if that goes well, I might skip over to some of that stuff in Nebraska that I found at the end of the year and and look at that. And I'm actually heading over next week to scout some public land in Wisconsin that I hunted last year and killed a buck on and just just to figure it out more. So, Yeah, I guess. I guess you could say I got a few plans left to scout yet. Yeah, do you do anything different from a scouting perspective now than ten years ago, Like, has there been any major advancements in what you look for? Or I don't know. I mean, I'm just kind of curious about breaking your scouting process down more because a lot of people meet myself. For a lot of years, I would just walk around and look at stuff and they go, Okay, cool, there's that, and there's that, and and I've been recently trying to be more thoughtful I guess about how I scout and making sure that I'm not just noticing things or just I'm not just seeing things, but that I'm somehow seeing them, noticing them and then processing it into this like bigger picture that I can actually act on um. I don't know if any of that, if any of that resonates with you, But is there anything that you're doing different now or at least that's taking your scout into the next level and that kind of way, um kinda. I mean I did the same thing, you know, for a long time. I just walked through and look for rubs and scrapes and go, Okay, well this spot looks good, and then by the time the season open, I'd forget most of it. And so I'm trying to if I find a spot, I really try to figure out how is it huntable or how is it accessible? And how you know, when would I do that? And so you know, it's because there's different things, right you know. You you find you find a place with a bunch of scrapes from last year, that's that's gonna be a different timing thing than maybe that core area with a bunch of rubs or that pinch point you find along the river. And so just just trying to, you know, gather as much good information and make as many decisions as possible before I go try to hunt it. So go you know, when you look at the woods right now, you go, Man, if you want to sit here. That's your true and this is how you probably want to walk in. And then if you walked in there in July, you all of that stuff would be erased because it's just just the way things change, and it's so easy to forget. And so you know, I started marketing stuff on on X and and taking notes and saying come in from the east, or don't hunt this when the winds out of the north, and just trying to like circumvent my own forgetfulness, I guess, and and lay out as much of the plan as you can as early as possible. Yeah. So, then is there anything in the summer that you do find particularly helpful other than just glass and fields to see what's in the area? Um? Any summer scouting other than that kind of thing and trail cameras I suppose, Um not really. I mean, I think the glassing thing, I think that's just an enjoyable thing. And I think that's one of the ways that we get you know, we have the best chance to see mature bucks then, and I think it does something for us mentally to it there and watch them and take some of the mystery away. And you know, I like, I like doing the trail camera thing now where I'm I'm always trying to answer questions with them. I don't I don't hang trail cameras on field edges anymore. It's you know, I know where dear like to eat. It just doesn't. It's cool to get the pictures, but it doesn't really matter to me, And so I do a lot of you know, kind of kind of staging area research. I could, I guess you could call it with my trail cameras now where I'm like, okay, I can't see into the cover here. I don't know what these deer doing in some of the thick stuff and how they're traveling through it and using it, And so I like to use trail cameras for that. You know, you get some duds where you hang it in places where you're like, oh, I think it's gonna be really good, and you know, it just isn't for whatever reason. And it might be a timing thing, or it might be the spot, but I just I try to force myself and I don't know, I've talked about this a million times, but just just to use them to actually answer questions instead of telling me what I already know what are some of the spots that you're putting them back in those staging areas so they aren't done? Is it like a scrape location is going to get you a little more activity? Or I mean, how do you because it's really easy to pick field locations where you're probably gonna come out or people put out bait or something like that to get these pictures. But if you're setting back there to get a question answered, that's probably a slightly lower trafficed area not quite as obvious. How do you find the spot within that spot to actually hang it? Trails typically, you know, I mean, because you're not gonna see if you're walking in in June or July, you're not gonna see much from last year's sign, And so it's like, okay, you know, here's here's a trail coming off of this knob that I know they were betting on last year, and hang it and give it a month and see if that's what they're using, or you know there there is one thing I do with trail cameras a lot is you know, if you get out there right now and find those pinch points in those funnels. We always think of them from a rut perspective, but so so many of those spots or use them all year round. I mean just because they're the easiest place to go or one of the few limited options for they for their travel from point A to B, and so I like to I like to hang cameras on those spots a lot too, because those can tie in really nicely to staging deer. If you have a pinch point that's you know, between betting and food, and they you know they might stage there in September, you can they may be using that in June, July, August, September, right on through. And so again it's just it's hanging them in places like that with trails, some kind of train feature maybe that'll push them through and just answer those questions do you do do you ever set cameras? This is something that not done as much as I want to do, but I want to do more of it. Where you place a camera somewhere that's really hard to get to, that you probably won't be able to get to it all during the season, but you set it there prior to and then you check it after the season to get those questions answered, Like you couldn't get it snuck gonna help you that year, but it'll tell you something for next year. Do you do that kind of thing. I've started to the last couple of years mostly because of how much I was getting my butt kicked in the big woods in northern Wisconsin. And it's it's beneficial to me anyway. From my experience. It's beneficial that I get to see all the deer that were they're moving in daylight that I didn't think we're there. But it's a conference booster. Yeah, just just like you know, if you're gonna go over there and you have one of those all day sis, you don't see a deer, you know, you can think, well, two years ago, you left four cameras up here, and there were three days during the second week of November, third week of November where mature Box moved through you know, whatever, you know, And so it does work that way. But it also kind of gives me fits because it just it's one of those reminders that there's a lot of stuff going on out there that we don't know about, and when you get a glimpse into it, you go, man, there's there's you know, you might think you have this spot totally nailed, right, and then you do that and you check out, you know, three months of trail camera images in one of those areas, you go, man, there's a lot I didn't know about this, and so what what else are you missing? So you killed one of those big woods bucks out there last year? Right? Did you kill one the year before? It was last year? The first year in this general area. Um, I killed one last year and I killed one on that in that area in I think, so there there was a little gap there, but yeah, I've killed a couple. Do you feel like you've now that you've had a couple of glimpses like that? Has a light switched moment happened for you on that kind of in that kind of spot, Because when you said that, it just resonated with me with my big wood stuff up in northern Michigan, where I felt the exact same way, frustrated, wondering what's happening where they at? And then I put these cameras out last year and some of these deeper in the timber spots, and I had that exact experience where oh wow, there are these moving through here. There were a few days where it was really happening. So a new confidence booster. But then also okay, now how do I how do I adjust with this new stuff? Like have you had a light switched moment with the Big Woods hunting yet? Um? Anything there? Because I know we've talked on previous previous chats and a couple of years ago we broke down one of your seasons really trying to make it happen there in Wisconsin. And I'm just curious where you're right now. Um well, you know, just just as a side note, that where I killed the buck last year, UM, I'm not running cameras in there. That's public, and so the cameras that I ran over there were on private, and so they're kind of different. But the the thing that I think I've figured out out there over there to some extent is there are really good bucks on in that area, even though the density of deer's pretty low. You know, a lot of predators, bad winners, all that stuff, But it keeps me, it keeps me really interesting and scouting over there and covering a lot of ground, and that I feel like it's kind of your ticket to refinding those deer. And I don't I don't know if this makes sense or not, but where I killed the buck a few years ago. There was on this creek bottom thing that I had found. It was on a crossing and it was I thought all my questions were answered. When I killed that buck. I saw another big one in there. Um, I was like, okay, this is I got the spot. Well last year, I should I guess I should say two years ago. You know, the secret got out on that spot and there were people putting ladder stands in there, and the county that I hunt in you can bait, and so there were several people hunting around there that could drive a four wheeler close enough to it, that were running bait piles. And I'm trying to operate off a natural movement, and so that whole creek bottom thing blew up on me. It was gone, Like I couldn't find a deer in there anymore. And so I started, I had a kind of reset and start winner scouting in there again. And I found the spot that I killed this buck on last year scouting the winter before. And it's the same deer that probably we're using the other area. They just moved to a little bit of a different spot. And so I don't would I say that I have this stuff figured out in the big woods. No, like, not even close. I'm better than I was five years ago. But I'm telling you, man, and I know you've seen this in Michigan. I don't I don't think there's anything more difficult than hunting big woods deer in low density situations where you've got a lot of predators and a lot of winter mortality. It's just tough. Man. What of all the hunting you do, then, is the herd or not the hardest? That was the hardest. What's the easiest situation? Uh? Well, some of the some of those Western White tales are awful, awful friendly as far as allowing for some mistakes and and for real, you know, long distance patterning and sticking to their their trails. But I think for for me, the easiest is the places I hunt in Minnesota where I can do a bunch of work, where I can you know, hang stands and trim shooting lanes and and you know, put it piece together the whole year, and you know, because it's so close to home, and you can do all the scouting, you know that. But that's private land. As far as public land, you know, the easiest stuff is just getting to where there's a decent amount of deer and not very many people, which is probably not gonna surprise anyone, right, but a good foundational truth to keep in the back of your mind when making plans for future hunts. Right, yep, big time. So I think we chatted in late September or early October last year. I think was the last time we had during the show, and you've already killed three bucks maybe, is that right at that point? And I think you tagged a couple more by the end of the year. Uh five five buck text field last year? Is that possible? Four I killed four bucks to doing a bull ELK. So I think when we talked, I was actually I think I was driving to Colorado. It could be. So that's a good season. It was. That's probably understatement of the day there, but that was a good season. Do you think there was any theme to your twenty nineteen year or what or could you point to any like underlying thing that was consistent across all that success that led to it being such a good year other than I'm going to take away one option, which is gonna be you can't say because you scout it so much to talk about that a lot. Is there anything else do you think could have been like your key to success if we wanted to give that cliche title to it. Um, you know, it's probably tied back to the what we talked about earlier about shrug and off the bad stuff, you know. I mean, it's it's so easy when you when you have a year like that too, it's easy to boil it down and just be like, wow, that's that's a lot of success. But you know, there were a pile of times that I had somebody else come in, or I bumped a deer, I got busted, or you know, I had three weeks last year. You know, I didn't hunt every day, but I hunted a lot where I never saw a deer. I mean, I had three weeks in a row where I didn't lay eyes on anything other than squirrels and songbirds. And so it's kind of like just keeping at it and and and relying on that plan and the strategy and and just being comfortable with that kind of stuff to just keep going. And you know, it's kind of you know, you know how it is like you can have an amazing year and just not close very well, and so you just you have those encounters and you're seeing deer all the time and it's just fun to hunt, but you don't, you know, like in the in the Body Count Ellie, it's just not that great. Or you can have those years where you're not like you're not bumping into tons of deer, but when the right one shows up, you make it happen. I kind of had that last year, like I didn't have I just wasn't. I wasn't having like bang up hunts where it was like amazing deer encounters constantly, but it was like when one of them did make a mistake, it worked out pretty well for me. Do you ever do you ever feel do you what am I trying to stay here? What are your thoughts then? For so do you come into being like I'm gonna roll, I've got things rolling, I've got momentum. Uh, this is gonna be a great year. Or do you ever have this? Uh worry about the pendulum effect where the lucky rabbits foot paid off last year? This year, probably those little things that did go your way, the tiny you know, one percent in details that sometimes make all the difference. Now, maybe just the odds this year might slip the other way. Well, buddy, I live in terror of that because it's it's gonna happen for me eventually. I mean, I've had I've been on a good run for a while, and I just, you know, like my buddies keep reminding me, like, man, you're going to have just a clunker at one of these years, and you know, it's just it'll happen, and it's it's okay, you know. I mean, I don't I know, I know, no matter what, I'm gonna probably fill my freezer up one way or the other. And so that's that's kind of a relief, you know. I mean, I don't anticipate a year where I can at least put a couple of dolls in the freezer, and so as far as you killing a bunch of public Land bucks every year, like yeah, it's I know it's coming. I don't know if it'll be this year or not. I mean, I'm gonna I got some pretty good hunts planned this year, and I've I've got some high hopes. But I do know that, you know, Murphy's lack and step in, I know that eventually I could just flame out over and over again. And so I'm I'm trying to I'm trying to like, uh, find some peace with that knowledge because it is probably coming. It's uh. It goes back to the idea that one of the best things you can do if your mental health is is learned to know what you can control and what you can't control and just come to peace with those two things. Because like you said, there's there's certain things are out of your hands, and the clunker might might be on his way. I don't I don't think it will happen though for it don't think you'll you'll find a way around it. Well, I appreciate the vote of confidence there, Mark, What do you what do you think that of all the things you got planned? Um, what's your number one goal? And I'm gonna I'm gonna I'm gonna force you to be pretty specific with it. If if let's say, you can have one thing go right next year. I know you've got a lot of hunts planned, You've got a lot of things you'd love to go right. But if I'm gonna tell you that everything's gonna go wrong except for one hunt or one specific thing, and if that one thing went right for you or you filled this one tag or you've got this whatever you'd say, damn it, that was a really good season. If if you can pick one success, what would it be? Man, I I got one buddy who I hunt with a lot. He's we're both hoping we draw the any deer tags in North Dakota and he'll get an then he can hunt a mule here because he's never killed a mule deer there and he's hunted there quite a bit. And I really think I got a spot that he can do it, and so i'd like to if if that could go right, that would make me very happy. Um. I'd also really really like it if I could call in an elk for somebody. I'd love to. I'd love to be on the on the that side of it because I'm not a good out caller, and the buddies that I hunt with are always calling because they're better than me. So I'd like to flip that script because it's so fun, you know, in the Turkey world, taking somebody out and and kind of kind of directing that situation and being the one who calls him in. So I'd like that to happen a lot. I'd like to just call and call an elkin for somebody, Um, as far as you know what, I'm what, I'm hoping to get out of the season, like you know, with the Iowa tag or something like that. I'm like, I'm kind of wide open, man. You know, We've talked about this a whole bunch. I got a hell of a range. When it comes to the size of buck I'll shoot and I'm just not you know, I like a full freezer. I like, I like a lot of stuff out of it. So I'm just I'm just hoping we we all get to go hunting, and we're not We're not looking at shutdown seasons or anything. And I think if we do get to go, then there'll be lots of good stuff that happens. That's a good point. I gotta ask, though, when it comes to Iowa. You've waited, you've got you've stacked up points, you've waited for the right spot to look good. Are you gonna be pickier in Iowa this year than you might be in other states? Or you pretty loosely goosy with it. I think I'll be I think I'll be somewhat picky, provided that I'm right about the amount of pressure in the area. I'm at if I get in there, you know, I'm kind of putting all my eggs in one basket. And if I get in there and there's a lot more pressure than I thought, I might drop those standards a little bit. But it kind of all depends, you know, it will depend on how much time I have. I'm hoping to I'm hoping to be down there camping for like ten days during the rut, which you know that really gives you some some leeway. So you know, I I don't want to burn it on a scrapper, but well we'll see, you know, I don't. I don't want to commit myself to anything. I'm gonna use a bunch of weasel words here for you because I don't know how it's gonna play out. But you know, it's a highway tag. I mean, I'm gonna try to use it and kill a decent one. Do you worry at all? This is totally off topic? You know, we're not totally off topic, but it wasn't. Well, I don't know what I'm saying. What I'm trying to say is that do you worried of all about the attention that public land hunting in Iowa? Has gotten Over the last couple of years. There's been a lot of attention to public land hunting in Iowa. Lately, a lot of people have realized how good it can be. Now maybe more they always do. I was great, but maybe it was Okay, you gotta have a big lease, so you gotta have a private farm, and you've gotta you know, all that kind of stuff. Now that's oh yeah, there is great public land even though even though there's not a ton of it, there's some of it. Do you have any worries that you might get to this year it's flooded? Uh No. And here's why I've been thinking about this a lot. We one of the biggest barriers to public land hunting success is believing that kind of stuff is gonna like really affect your hunt. And so you know, I kind of say that with an asterix, right, Like, if you get into a place that is overloaded with people, it sucks. And I've been there a few times in my life, but almost always I find that even places that are seemed to have a fair amount of hunting pressure, like you're really dealing with people, there's always deer in there that would make me happy and I'm I'm seeing this just to it everywhere I go, you know, Oklahoma, the Dakotas, wherever if I put in some work, I can, I can, even if I don't kill them. I'm seeing bucks that are awesome. And it's it's one of those things where it's like we we we are really kind of drawn to the excuse or the you know, like the way out if we're not successful. So if you you know, sit here and say, well there's there's too many people on public land in Iowa, like that's a relative thing, man, And and really you still get to bow hunt the entire rut in a place with very few predators, um, no winner mortality to speak of for the most you know, you might have some HD areas, not probably not where I'm going, but generally you're hunting a pretty good place no matter what, whether there's a lot of pressure or not. And so it's sort of all relative. And I'm I'm really not concerned. I mean, you're seeing this too. I'm sure there's just there's a lot of people out on public land all over now. It's it's freaking popular, and so why I would be any different. It's just not gonna be Yeah, that's a good point, and it's kind of a good way to wrap it up to when it comes to just maybe that's your superpower. It's your superpower, Tony. Isn't that you love scouting so much. It's not that it's not that you gotta lucky rabbit's foot. I think it's that you are able to find the best in anything and not except the first door that might be blocked as the only door. It seems like you tend to be really good at opening the first one seeing that there's a cement block in the way, but then going to the next one, and if that one leads off a cliff, you go to the next door. And maybe if that third door has got a dog chain to a fence post and he's barking, and barking is a dangerous situation, you go find the window and you crawl through when you make it happen. That might be the Tony Peterson superpower. And I think that's a good place to end it. Uh, it was an odd analogy, but I stuck with you the whole time. Man. That's kind of in the story of anyone who's ever listened to this podcast. If you can, you can stick with it. There might be something there, definitely, Uh, Tony, I appreciate it. Uh, it's always fun to catch up. I wish we could do it even more and and I'm excited to hopefully, hopefully our plans work out. Hopefully we can share a hunting camp together this year too and do a lot more of this. Let's do it, buddy, Alright, folks, that is a rap. I hope you enjoyed that, UM, hopefully for for an hour or so you were able to take your mind off of some of the events, the current events of the day that can be a little less enjoyable. Uh. And with that in mind too, if you're listening to this in the current time here in April two thousand twenty, UM, I'm just wishing you all the best. I just want you to know that I I'm thinking and praying and uh hoping for all the best health for all of you. Please stay safe, please stay well, um, and I hope we'll get to chat again soon. Thanks for listening, and until next time, stay wired to hunt. H