Welcome to the Wired to Hunt Foundation's podcast, your guide to the fundamentals of better deer hunting.

Presented by First Light, creating proven, versatile hunting apparel for the stand, saddle, or blind.

First Light. Go farther, stay longer. And now, your host, Tony Peterson.

Hey, everyone, welcome to the Foundation's podcast, which is brought to you by First Light.

I'm your host, Tony Peterson.

And today's episode is all about comparing ourselves to others.

And this kind of weird disease that seems to have infected whitetail hunters.

I didn't really want to do this podcast because it's kind of a little too predictable and I'm sure it's going to be a little too preachy.

But I think the new year and the direction whitetail hunting is kind of going probably makes this a little more palatable for a lot of us.

It's also good for us to remind ourselves what matters in deer hunting and how we should probably just watch our own bobbers, as my wife likes to say.

So I'm going to talk about trophies in comparison and the shitty ways we treat each other

and why all this is leading to, you know, some loss and opportunity and just making things worse.

Kind of just sucking the joy out of the whole thing.

A few weeks back, one of my really good buddies and I sat in a hotel room in western Minnesota

after a day of falling one bird short of our pheasant limit. It was honestly a great day in the

public land catails. The dog work was incredible. The birds, they're pretty plentiful, and for the most

part, where we pointed our shotguns, our strings of fives and sixes went.

If it wasn't for one last runner that my buddy knocked down that evaded three worn-out dogs until the clock ran out, it would have been about as good as you can get.

Now, while I don't see him often, when we do get together, it's great.

We talked about a lot of stuff,

and then he mentioned that he was within a few months of a huge buyout at work, and that when it came,

he was punching out forever at the age of 45. Do you know what I felt in that moment?

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