The MeatEater

When Lewis & Clark saw the West in the first years of the 1800s it still preserved the healthy biodiversity of Native-managed ecologies in place for 10,000 years. Within thirty years, everything had changed. Americans arrived in the West with religious traditions that taught animals were created solely for human use. And they introduced an economic system that made western animals commodities in a global market, an economy that snagged Native people in the trade and created the first American millionaires. By 1840 ancient western ecologies evolved around sea otters, fur seals, beavers and many other species were collapsing in both the interior and on the coasts. For some the period produced romantic figures like the mountain men. Witnessing such destruction, however, even some of their peers saw the casual loss of the ancient West very differently.

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Check out more MeatEater's American History audio originals "The Long Hunters" and "Mountain Men"

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This week, Tony discusses how often the wind messes with our hunt plans, and what we can do about it to ensure we don't miss a single sit this season.

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On this episode, Dirk talks with long time friend and hunting guide, Steve Fernandez. They hit on elk hunting and specific calling setups and strategies.

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The hunting industry is chock-full of good advice. From bed hunting strategies and how to read mature buck sign, to adopting a mobile mindset to surprise a deer in its core range, there is no shortage of content that can teach you how to get better at the whitetail game.

There is also a lot of content designed to get you to buy something, and I know this well, because I’ve created a ton of it. While buying the latest deer call or decoy can certainly help you put a buck on the ground, there are a few decisions I’ve made in my life that have undoubtedly helped me fill more tags than anything you can order online, and they might help you as well.

I took my first drink when I was 13, and my last when I was 32. The years in between, I took a lot of drinks. Too many, according to almost anyone who knew me then, and also according to my liver. Functioning alcoholism is rampant in our society, and it got me good.

The arrival of two babies at the same time finally gave me a reason to face who I really was, and while I wouldn’t say quitting drinking was easy, I will say that it was the best decision I’ve ever made. I had no idea how much it affected my life, and how much of an influence it had on my hunting.

Now, killing more deer is a poor reason to quit drinking, but I couldn’t help but notice how different my hunts went after I got off the sauce. I slept better, which was a huge benefit at home, but a game-changer on the road. I had more energy to scout, hang sets, and sit longer. I also didn’t feel like shit when I got into my morning stands, which meant I could focus more on the task at hand. It was like a new world opened up for me, and in that world, I was a better hunter who enjoyed my time in the field even more.

In the last couple of weeks, I’ve ridden around more on side-by-sides to do deer and bear work than I have in my entire life. I’ll admit, it’s pretty sweet. I get the appeal of not burning too many calories to hunt, but I also know that when I quit drinking and started working out, the whitetails suddenly found themselves in more danger around me.

I realize the fitness craze in hunting makes a lot of us want to puke, and I get it. I also know that when I quit drinking, I thought I was in good shape because I’m a man with an ego big enough to overshadow reality.

Trying to run a 5k after nearly two decades of professional alcoholism showed me what I really was, and it was not pretty. Getting into the habit of working out was way harder than getting off the sauce, but it has been a huge benefit to my hunting success. The physical aspect of hunting is what you make it, but even with whitetails, there is a real benefit to being in better shape.

Think about the appeal of hanging stands, or setting blinds, or getting up for the fourth morning in a row to sit all day. Where do you land on that stuff? A lot of your feelings toward them probably stem from how fit you are. I know they did for me, and I can safely say the second-best decision I ever made that helped me be a better deer hunter was to swallow my pride and force myself to go to the gym. I know that sucks, but it’ll help you kill more big deer than literally any product you can buy.

This is going to seem crazy to a lot of readers out there, but having kids made me a better hunter. I’m not saying that you should ditch the birth control in an attempt to kill booners, but instead to say that having my time suddenly not being mine anymore forced me to be so much more efficient.

Like a lot of soon-to-be fathers, I thought when my wife got pregnant with our girls that my time in the woods would disappear. It didn’t, it just became condensed. The first trip I took out of state after the girls were born involved only four days in North Dakota on public land. It felt like a scramble, but also a very targeted mission.

I hit a point where I accepted that I didn’t have enough time and I’d eat my nonresident tag, but with 15 minutes left in the trip, a two-year-old eight-pointer followed the script. It was a watershed moment for me because I realized that I could still do the thing I loved the most and be successful at it. I just needed to understand my new limitations and how to use my time wisely because I didn’t have much of it, and I suddenly didn’t want to be away from home for any longer than I needed to be.

Quitting drinking, working out, and using a family expansion pack aren’t typical routes to leveling up as a hunter, but they worked for me. There’s a lesson in all of them, and I hope, for all of us who love the deer game enough to want to get better.

Steven Rinella talks with author Nathalia Holt, Randall Williams, Phil Taylor, and Corinne Schneider. 

Topics discussed: Nathalia's new book, "The Beast In The Clouds: The Roosevelt Brothers' Deadly Quest to Find the Mythical Giant Panda" is out!; get presale tickets for MeatEater's Christmas Tour 2025 starting 9/22; the epitome of the bear to find; Roosevelt as a good dad; an expedition to China by foot in an area of no roads; museums and zoos; finding prints in the snow; simultaneous shooting; the gentle giant; collection is paramount; and more.

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This week, Cal talks about a not very big but very wise lake trout, why we need to demand better management for our public lands right now, and so much more.

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To learn more and get involved with any Cal to Action, click here.

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Sometimes the biggest hurdles in the woods aren’t other hunters or natural predators but ourselves. That’s right, the thing keeping you from leveling up in the deer woods is probably yourself.

I hate to admit it, but I’ve screwed up more hunts for myself than other folks or coyotes have. In my earlier years of hunting, a lot of those mistakes stemmed from bad habits like hunting historical spots or trying to outwork the competition, only to run myself into the ground.

If you’re not careful, you can backslide into those same habits (and results). Whether you want to end a bad streak or find more success in the deer woods, here are a few bad habits you should drop.

Nostalgia is a powerful thing, and it’s probably cost you more deer than you realize. It can be tempting to try and recreate the magic of a fabled treestand or honey-hole, but once the habitat or hunting situation changes, those places can dry up.

Instead of hoping for a long-awaited sequel, try scouting new spots. These new spots could be miles away, or you might find that you just need to shift your focus a few hundred yards. Regardless, you can’t keep doing the same thing and expect to achieve different results. That method is a sure way to land you in whitetail purgatory (at your own doing).

While hunting the same spot over and over might give you the best recipe for tag soup, you can also walk (and talk) yourself out of a good spot. Mobile hunting, for all the opportunity it’s created, has also bred the misconception that all the good hunting spots lie miles from the trailhead or parking lot. This isn’t always the case.

Sure, you might not want to hunt that food plot in spitting distance of the parking lot, but there are other overlooked spots that might be within easy walking distance. Before the folks built a house on the neighboring property, one of the best deer trails on my family’s property happened to cross the county road. Before it dried up, my dad, grandfather, and I would hunt that spot where piles of does and occasionally a good buck would cross well before shooting hours ended. Sure, it felt a little weird watching all the cars go by, but the deer didn’t mind it, and it made for an easy drag out.

This approach doesn’t just apply to private land either. Last year, one of my hunting buddies shot a great buck within sight of his truck. He watched multiple small game hunters walk into that management area that evening, too. Prior to killing that buck, he found a ton of fresh droppings and tracks, so he hung a camera and got a few photos of that buck daylighting there. He killed that buck on his first sit. That’s a great lesson in letting the sign tell you what the deer are doing, instead of overcomplicating deer hunting.

I recognize the irony in this point, as someone who is attempting to give hunting advice. However, we live in an information overload, where hunting tactics, videos, and utter nonsense fill our ears and feed. It can be hard to separate the truth from the BS, and that especially applies to hunting.

There are tons of great resources out there for hunters, but like anything, a healthy dose of skepticism can help you determine what’s useful from what’s useless. In a recent interview with MeatEater’s Tony Peterson, he elaborated on this point and noted that most of the information or industry “secrets” peddled out there comes from hunters in privileged positions. That’s not an indictment against those hunters, but a lot of the time, that “expert” advice comes across as tone deaf to the average hunter bumping elbows on public land.

That’s not to say you shouldn’t indulge in hunting content and tips and tactics, or that they aren’t useful. However, you should spend even more time figuring out what works best for your own hunting situations.

If you’ve dabbled in trail cameras at all, then you’ve probably fallen prey to this trap (I know I have). Every year, I have buddies send me trail camera photos of bucks. Great bucks. I can count on one hand how many of those bucks my buddies killed, and I’d still have a few fingers to spare.

Most folks see those photos and assume that if they sit in point A, the buck will show at point B, and that’ll be all she wrote. However, those folks usually neglect to interpret that piece of information in a way that is useful. They see it as the whole story when it’s only a small piece of the puzzle.

Instead of making a ton of assumptions, try to ask more questions when you get a picture of a big buck. Which way was the wind blowing? Can you go find his tracks to see how he entered and exited that spot? Were there other deer around? These are just a few of the variables that you should consider. Just because you get hard evidence via a photo doesn’t mean you should take it at face value.

Unless you want the same results, you’ll have to make some changes to your deer hunting strategy. Even if you don’t, you can bet the woods—and the deer—will.

Hosts Randall Williams, Ryan Callaghan, and Seth Morris talk with Mark Kenyon about the Roadless Rule rollback, find out which pair of underwear Cal brings to Show-and-Tell, throw a listener submitted Hot Tip-Off, chat with Arkansas Game and Fish Commission's Ben Batten about their conservation work in the Mississippi Basin, and choose a winner of the Moultrie Trail Cam Contest.

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The first time doing anything with a high level of anticipation is a recipe for strong memories. That perfectly describes Brent's first elk hunt. It was an experience of a lifetime that has as potent of an effect on him today as it did fourteen years ago. Brent details that hunt on this episode with what seemed like the perfect setup that went from good, to bad, to great, all in a matter of moments. It's time for MeatEater's This Country Life podcast.

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This week on the show I'm joined by Dan Johnson to review our 2025 hunting plans, goals, hopes, and hit lists.

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