00:00:01
Speaker 1: Welcome to the Wired to Hunt Foundations podcast, your guide to the fundamentals of better deer hunting, presented by first Light, creating proven versatile hunting apparel for the stand, saddle or blind. First Light, Go Farther, Stay Longer, and now your host, Tony Peterson.
00:00:20
Speaker 2: Hey, everyone, welcome to the Wired to Hunt Foundations podcast, which is brought to you by first Light. Today I’m going to talk about hunting buddies, lost opportunities, and the reality that if you ever want to travel to hunt anything, time is not on your side. Look, this is just kind of your yearly reminder, but I hope you listen. Our hunting opportunities are disappearing faster than most of us probably realize, and that trend is only going to accelerate because the opportunities that are left are seeing increasing demand. If you’ve ever dreamed about drawing that Iowa white tailte or maybe taking a trip out west to el hunt with your buddies, the times now it’s right now.
00:00:57
Speaker 3: Now.
00:00:57
Speaker 2: I know you think that I’m being a little crazy here, and if you keep listening, you’re going to see what The state of Missouri holds a special place in my heart. It really does. Missouri was the first state that I ever traveled to in order to hunt anything. And let me tell you something that was a big deal. When I was growing up, I only knew one guy who traveled to hunt. He spent part of his fall in Montana for elk each year, and to me, that was incredible, like truly incredible. Then Field and Stream magazine ran a story on destination hunts and they highlighted northern Missouri as one of the places to go for turkeys.
00:01:43
Speaker 3: And you know who went, My dad. That’s who.
00:01:47
Speaker 2: I was outraged, offended, and quite honestly totally shocked. My dad’s history with turkeys is one of being a very very bad turkey hunter. Well he didn’t kill a turkey on that first miss trip, but the following year, when I was fifteen, he, my buddy Nolan, and I all drove five and a half hours to Kirksville to chase some public land birds. I’m not being facetious when I say that that trip changed my life. At that time, in Minnesota, we had to draw a turkey tag for one five day season. If you wanted to hunt in the early part of the turkey season, you were not going to draw every year. The last two seasons that were offered up late May seasons were pretty much a gimme because no one wanted to hunt them. The opportunity to buy a tag in a different state and hunt for two turkeys on unfamiliar ground was unbelievable to me. It was so different from my home state of Minnesota. We drove down there several times and it was always worth the cost of admission.
00:02:46
Speaker 3: So fast forward to today.
00:02:48
Speaker 2: After seeing Nebraska sell out of their tags in record time and then checking Iowa for non existent leftover tags, I looked at Missouri to see if a buddy and I should head down there for a camping trip centered around god on public land and maybe a little bit of fishing in the afternoon. Well, this year, a non resident license is only good for one turkey, while the resident tag is good for two. A resident pays nineteen dollars and fifty cents for that, while a non resident will shell out three hundred and four dollars and fifty cents to top it off. The state, which has long been known to shut down turkey hunting at one o’clock each day, now allows anyone on private land to hunt all day public land hunters still have to quit halfway through. Now, your mileage may vary, but I’m pretty open to spending a lot on tags, but at a certain point, I’m just not And Missouri kind of hit that point for me this year, to think that my license cost would cover the bill for fifteen residents, but is good for one turkey, while those fifteen could theoretically shoot thirty, all while having to spend half the day not turkey hunting because I hunt public land.
00:03:53
Speaker 3: That’s just a bridge. It’s too far.
00:03:55
Speaker 2: I add that part in to show that it’s not likely a response to over Harvard when you consider the bulk of licenses are sold to residents and they are still allowed to kill two birds and can even have extra time to do it if they’re not on public land. Now, I’m not picking on Missouri because they aren’t alone in this. This is a thing that a lot of states do and a lot more will do in the near future. Look, we watch the West tighten up everything for non residents, partially in response to managing the resource and partially in response to Hunter’s lobbying to kick us out.
00:04:27
Speaker 3: They have a lot of.
00:04:27
Speaker 2: Reasons for this, but the truth is almost universally because they perceive those extra hunters as making it harder for them. And if hunters are interested in anything, generally, it’s easier hunting. Now, if I am coming off a little salty, I don’t mean to. I really don’t. It’s just that I’ve been nostalgic lately. Maybe it’s just the gray in my beard, or the reality that when you and all your hunting buddies have kids and your jobs get serious, the trips too haunt together just become harder to come by. And now that our kids are somewhat self sufficient and we aren’t broke post college students, we started looking for a few ways to go spend five days in tents somewhere hunting something together. We don’t really care what, because our trips have never been about trophy hunting. That’s just not our jam. And while we have killed some great deer and western critters along the way, we’ve also killed a lot of critters that meant more to the grill than they would being put on display in the man cave. But those trips weren’t just about killing something. I can look at Chad Antler’s on my basement shelves and pictures of our trips on my walls and think back on what I missed the most. And it’s not that we don’t get to go shoot an antelope in North Dakota.
00:05:35
Speaker 3: Ever.
00:05:35
Speaker 2: Again, it was always about getting to do something really cool, which is why it felt reasonable to pay what was to us a lot of money to go do it. I’ve recently had conversations with two people who have enough Eyewa points to drop pretty much anywhere in the state, and they are both dragging their feet. The thought of not feeling an expensive rare to get tag is scary for a lot of us.
00:05:59
Speaker 3: I get it.
00:06:00
Speaker 2: I have a lot of Wyoming points for a couple of critters that I’m scared to cash in because of that, but also because I know that they are my only shot at one of those hunts where you can hold out for a good one, and more importantly, are well within reason to block off a couple of weeks to go deep in the back country and live like we all secretly want to.
00:06:19
Speaker 3: But those Iowa tags.
00:06:20
Speaker 2: They’re not going to get cheaper, and they aren’t going to get more plentiful anymore than the fine folks in Wyoming aren’t real likely to decide that those of us who live in Michigan or Ohio or Texas or wherever should have more access to meal deer tags at a reasonable cost.
00:06:36
Speaker 3: This train only moves one way down the tracks.
00:06:38
Speaker 2: My friends and a whole bunch of hunters are sitting there shoveling coal in the fire to get it to move faster. That bums me out in some ways and scares me in others. It bums me out for reasons I’ve already stated, but also for the fact that the things that I was lucky enough to do are gone for my kids. But guess what, they’re gone for yours too, or they mostly will be in not too much time. What scares me about this trend is that when we are in the thick of it, when it comes to protecting public lands and this kind of conservation issues, and I know people want to make this a political issue, and that’s fine, but the truth is that public land, at least to the general population and not the politicians who live and die by their elephant or donkey status, is bipartisan. Our public lands are a gift and if they go away, they will not come back, just like our hunting opportunities this is a fight we need lots of people to care about. But let me throw an example out here that I think is very realistic. The primary reason that I’m interested in public land out west is because of the possibility to hunt or fish on it.
00:07:44
Speaker 3: You know, mostly hunt.
00:07:45
Speaker 2: But still, I’m just being honest here, because I’m not driving to Colorado to hike the trails and sample the local greenery. If you get my drift, I drive there to hunt, and you can substitute Utah or New Mexico or Idaho or whatever Western state you want here. In the last ten years, we’ve watched most Western states tighten their regulations to the point where fewer non residents get to go, and when they do get to go, they pay dearly for it. That’s fine, but fast forward that to another ten years or twenty. At some point, the call is going to go out like it did last year, for all of us to call an email and shout from the rooftops that our public lands aren’t for sale. But what if only a very very small and well healed percentage of hunters, you know, they’ve been allowed to hunt in those states. You know, the kind of folks who are far more likely to do outfitted things and you know, bivvy hunt back on public land. What if those are the folks left who get to hunt those states, and at some point we might have an apathetic enough populace that knows without question they won’t ever get to go do what you know, a few rich, lucky folks get to do wherever, So why should they care if the public lands get sold off to some developers or their you know, politicians’ friends who want to double the size of their ranches. We won’t care. And that’s going to be a problem. I think that’s a very real possibility, and I think it sucks. I hate to say this, but it also might be true that the folks who live east of the Mississippi might look at some of those situations like a good way to stick it to those same hunters who lobbied successfully to punish all of us who don’t live in their state. That’s a narrow view of a larger problem, because public land is good for a lot more than hunting. But it’s not that hard to imagine that scenario playing out. I know that personally, a state that has treated me like a piggy bank, who should bend the knee to folks who live across imaginary lines on a map isn’t likely to get a lot of sympathy from me in the future if their way of life is threatened. I hate to say that, because I hope it doesn’t come to it, but we need a unified front when it comes to the big issues. Yet we are very comfortable dividing ourselves if it means easier hunting for us as individuals. All of this has my undies and a bunch, but the subtle undercurrent that I’m seeing, specifically with public lands has me worried too. That example I gave of Missouri, which always build their one PM closure as a means to protect nesting hens and keep them from getting harassed too much now seems like a whole bunch of bullshit. After all, do the hens on private land now not need that protection, but the hens on public do. We’ve seen this lately with trail camera bans on public land and a few other laws. This is going to feel like I’m further sowing division by bringing this up. But hear me out, why would states be quick to further regulate hunters on public land but not on private Maybe it’s a reward for paying property taxes. But it’s also just back of the Napkin math that says the folks who rely on public land as a whole probably have less money than folks who hunt private. Now, I know that’s ignoring a hell of a lot of nuance, but I also know that when you’re dealing with issues out west, for example, it doesn’t take too many well healed ranchers to usher the laws in their favor. It takes a hell of a lot more public land hunters making a hell of a big stink to sway the folks who make the laws. You can draw whatever conclusions you want from that, but it’s kind of generally true. So if you’re worried about this stuff, you know, becoming a rich man’s sport, guess what it is. And this isn’t just a non resident thing either, although it’s more of a rich man’s sport right now than resident hunting is. But give that some time. When there are fewer opportunities to travel and spend money somewhere else. Some of that money is going to stay in state and be used to buy recreational land or lease it or buy a spot at an outfitted hunt. You know, a lot of this money is likely to flow in that direction, and those operations are really good at tying up land and animals that live on that land. All right, So is this a hopeless situation for most of us? Probably? That’s kind of how I’m looking at it. I’m looking for whatever I can do to spend some time with my buddies in a new environment, chasing whatever. And I’m looking for ways I can show my kids a world that is rapidly being closed up to them. And you might want to as well. There are a lot of tire kickers in our ranks. But something occurred to me the other day, and I really don’t know how to put it, but I realized something. I don’t want a hunting population. There’s devoid of hunters who dream of hiking into the high country to hunt elk, just like I don’t want a hunting population where my Western buddies have zero chance to drive out to the Midwest and November to experience the white tail rut. I just don’t want us to solely view this stuff as what is mine will stay mine, and there’s no good reason to share with anyone, whether they live down the street or across the country. I think that dreamer spirit is important to what we do, and it’s inherent in what we are. I also think the anecdote to this, or at least to us hating everyone and everything that doesn’t fit into our worldview, is exposure to new things. I don’t know how to describe this, but I can promise you I wouldn’t have the love for white tails and the outdoors that I have if I would have never been able to hunt turkeys on Union Ridge down in Missouri, or antelope in the Red Hills of Wyoming, or whatever I like. The idea of hunter is getting to live out their elk dreams, or a dude taking his kids to Nebraska to try to shoot their first turkey. Just like I don’t care anymore when I see Iowa plates at the landing on a lax lake here in Minnesota, or Illinois plates in the parking lot of the hotel that allows dogs where I like to peasant hunt, and I can see a couple of crates in the back of their vehicle and a pheasants forever stick around the window.
00:13:44
Speaker 3: Good for them.
00:13:46
Speaker 2: I hope those folks have fun and catch some smallies or shoot some roosters. Because someday I’m going to Iowa again for deer turkeys. It might even take another swing at Pike County Deer someday, if the mood strikes me and it’s still a possible thing to do. Whatever option are left for myself and my buddies and my daughters, they’re taking priority for me. Lately, I feel the clock ticking and I’d rather not look back on this time with regret over a trip I didn’t make happen, but I could, and I suggest you do the same.
00:14:14
Speaker 3: And I know when I say that, a.
00:14:15
Speaker 2: Lot of folks react by thinking, you know, I don’t have the money or the time or whatever.
00:14:19
Speaker 3: And you might be right, but you might not be.
00:14:22
Speaker 2: And all of the things that could get in the way of a next state over trip, you know, things that for sure are real, and I don’t want to minimize them. They won’t matter at all if that opportunity just goes away. And a hell of a lot of this stuff is going away. It’s just a death by a thousand paper cuts type of thing. It’s also true that a lot of the critters you want to haunt are just going to be unavailable forever. I know, I personally won’t never hunt any of the sheep, probably mountain goats, And it’s seeming less and less likely that I’ll ever get to take a stab at moose. Elk are getting harder to come by, and the meal deer and antelope thing isn’t looking great either. You might not get to do trips for these critters either. But I’ll tell you something that I’ve learned, and it’s that I hear a lot of folks say, why would I travel to kill what I can kill at home? You know, maybe you can’t go out west, but there’s still some white tails left. But I think that’s the wrong way to look at it. Just because you can kill one hundred and twenty incheres at home fairly easy, doesn’t mean you’re going to go out of state and kill a buck that size in an easy hunt, which is kind of the whole point. Go where you don’t know everything about the deer or turkey’s or bar or whatever, and then figure it out in a new environment with a couple of buddies before those opportunities are gone, or you hit a certain age where when the phone rings at midnight, you know that it’s only bad news and that one of your hunting buddies might be permanently out of the running to ever draw a tag for anything. Ever, again, it comes quick. A lot of folks talk about how the time is just flying by since COVID, and it does feel that way, even if that’s all just mass disassociation or something else, it’s also true that time is well kind of freaking flying by. You’re not getting any younger, tags, aren’t getting any cheaper, they aren’t making any more land, all of those cliched but true statements. If you have the itch at all to travel, I suggest you use this most worthless month, that is March, to do some digging, find an opportunity that really interests you that you’d be really pissed off if you never did it and it disappeared, and then start to figure out how.
00:16:28
Speaker 3: To make it happen.
00:16:30
Speaker 2: That act alone is something that fuels the fire in the off season. But it’s also the only way that any of this stuff is actually going to happen for you. This is exactly what happened when I listened to one of my buddies tell me he isn’t going to apply for IOA tag this year. He has many reasons, but underneath it all is that fear that the most expensive deer tag in the country will go unfilled unless it’s just enough pieces fall into place before he applies. But he’s a good deer hunter, and I told him so, and I said, the easiest way to make sure you kill one and don’t waste that tag is just by getting the tag. Once you get the email that you’ve drawn it, the rest is just going to fall into place for most of us. So I beg you listen to my warnings, consider running a little mental inventory on what you want to do in the outdoors, and then get after it before it’s too late, and come back next week because I’m going to talk about you know, how difficult white tail hunting really is, but how we can all work to make ourselves a little more likely to find success. Anyway, that’s it for this week. I’m Tony Peterson. Thank you, thank you, thank you so much for listening and for all your support. I speak for everyone here at Meat Eater when I say that we truly appreciate our audience. It’s incredible how you guys show up for us. We wouldn’t have anything without you, so thank you for that. If you’re sitting there right now, and maybe you listen to this podcast and you’re going to go do a little research on hunting something or trying to get a tag.
00:17:56
Speaker 3: That’s great.
00:17:57
Speaker 2: If you’re poured out of your mind and you need a little bit of innerting aim, maybe you’re looking for a little education, head on over to the mediator dot com. We drop new content literally every day, films, podcasts, articles, recipes, news on the latest conservation issues. It’s all right there. Go check it out and thanks again.
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