Mike

Reflections On My First Full Year Of Hunting

March 10, 2023 by Mike

An article about hunting. Really? Yes. However, I am going to try and avoid too much discussion around taking an animal’s life and focus more on things I noticed and learned on my path to picking up this new skill. I understand that some people don’t agree with hunting and I respect that. Please understand that my goal as a hunter is to be as ethical as possible in taking another animal’s life, respect what they have given me and my family, and use as much of the animal as possible. I know I am taking another life but I also think it is good to be as close and as involved in getting food for my family as possible. Besides the wild game, we try to grow our vegetables (to a degree), have a CSA to support local farmers, and buy the rest of our meat directly from a rancher who treats the animals well and focuses on regenerative practices.

Learning to hunt seems simple if you watch hunting shows, or you grew up in it, or if you know a bunch of people who do it. Or at least it would be simpler. Besides watching hunting shows none of the other things apply to my case. To up the challenge we moved to NW Montana earlier this year, an area I had never gone into the wilderness in and decided to hunt four different species (turkey, black bear, deer, and elk). I have alluded to my general philosophy on hunting, however, giving a bit more detail on it might be interesting to some. There are multiple ways to hunt, and for each person, they get to choose to a degree how they wish to do it. For me, I would prefer not to just drive around roads looking out a window hoping to find an animal. I would rather walk a few miles back, understand an area and the animals very well, and find an animal that I can harvest. This requires a bit more endurance, strength, and gear. Why strength? Well if you get an animal a few miles away from a truck something is going to have to get it back to the truck and often that thing is your body. I enjoy this style of hunting because it allows me to bring more skill to it, gives the animals a bigger chance, and allows me to be part of nature more.

All in all this season I was able to harvest two deer and one turkey. I put in hundreds of hours and walked hundreds of miles. I learned a lot of cool areas that I will want to get back to in 2023 and also some areas I will avoid in the future.

With all of that out of the way, how did I figure out where and how to hunt?

Preparing for the hunt

Many things need to happen to prepare for a hunt. They include items like weapon effectiveness, gear selection, physical and mental preparation, communicating with family and preparing them for you to be gone, choosing locations, learning about the animals and their behavior, and selecting tags. I am not going into details about all of this because it would turn into a book and I still have a lot to learn about all of those things.

The hunting region I was focusing on this year in Montana has millions of acres that are open to hunting. So the paradox of choice came into play this year with so many good-looking areas where do I even go? Given the timing and the gear I had I knew it was not going to be possible this year for me to go deep into the backcountry and hunt for multiple days straight. I also did not want to just walk a few hundred yards away from the road and try to find something. This means I had to figure out places I could get to relatively quickly, looked like they had some animals, and it was possible to walk a few miles back from the road. To help me narrow those down I got a few tips from people I met about general areas, and used tools like GoHunt, OnX, and Montana’s FWP harvest reports. E-scouting is still a skill I am learning but I am glad we have these newer mapping tools because if I just had to rely on topographic maps it would have been a ton harder. On top of just using the electronic maps tools like GoHunt allow you to see additional information more easily like slope and aspect which helped me figure out areas that were more likely to have animals. Then using the satellite images helped me identify old logging roads that I could use to help to get to areas more quickly instead of bushwhacking the whole way. One thing I quickly realized about NW Montana forests vs. the western Washington forests I was used to is the amount of deadfall that was in the areas I was walking. This made it so much tougher to walk quietly and semi-quickly. Having to go over and under fallen trees slowed down things. Then using the mapping tools 3d mode helped me see what it might look like when I got there, granted many times when I physically got to the areas things had grown up a lot more making it much tougher to look at things from far away. Still using things like the 3d mode and different maps allowed me to find some places that I would not have if I was just walking around because there is just so much area to cover.

When scouting with one of my sons he liked to try and “walk” on the deadfall for as long as possible.

I also got lots of patience and understanding from my wife who was cool with me going out almost every weekend to scout and try and figure out what to do come hunting season. In the end, I concentrated on two main areas with a distant third being the public land behind our property for quick jaunts for deer. Before hunting season I put around 150 miles into walking around and trying to figure out places that might or might not be good to hunt. I understand that where you find the animals during the off-season is not where they will be during the season so I kept that in mind and looked for older rubs and areas that the experts said the animals might like. Once I had gone to an area a few times I started to drag a single kid out with me each time. We woke up semi-early and got out there. Made sure there were lots of snacks, took our time, and tried to make it interesting. I look forward to next year when I can do something similar and start getting them more and more used to being in the woods and what to do (and not do). Although I wish I would have seen more animals with them because I think that would have made it more exciting for them.

Besides animal signs, I also looked for something more important to me. Human sign. I wanted an area with minimal human sign. Despite other hunters grumbling about lots of hunters I ended up finding many areas where very few people went. Did they suck to get into? Yes. Were they super nice glassing vantages? Not all the time. In general, though I now have multiple areas for next season that I know I can go to that most other hunters won’t go to even though it is public land. Granted with all of that I also didn’t see many animals so that might be another reason why there aren’t a ton of hunters back there. I did see a lot of fresh animal sign. So, I chalk a lot of me not seeing animals to my newness at this skill. Once I had figured out a few decent-looking places all that was left was for the hunting seasons to begin.

On The Hunt

This year’s hunting experience can be summed up with one word: walking. Just like during the preparation phase I walked quite a bit during the season. I enjoy doing this and it isn’t a complaint. Some things I figured out as the season progressed are:

I need to walk slower once I get to a place I want to hunt.
I need to get out earlier because getting to the place I want to go seems to always take longer than I think it will.
Most people don’t like to walk very far.
Glassing is a harder version of the Where’s Waldo books.

A large portion of this can be summed up to common advice to new hunters: be more patient. Overall, I didn’t have a ton of success finding animals this year. Yes, I had a few run-ins but it wasn’t till the very end did I get any success. I am quite sure part of that is because I was always moving and not spending enough time letting things settle down and spending time picking apart mountainsides looking for animals. I tried a few times doing predator calls for bears and once I think I got a bear to come in but I am still not sure if it was just a coincidence or from my calling. However, I was not ready and I had moved on from my calling spot so I was caught off guard when they showed themselves. Usually, I would do a few calls, sit there for thirty minutes at the most, and then head out. From a little research I have done it sounds like people will call for multiple hours and sit in the same area during that whole time. Next season I will try this approach and see how it works.

I finally was able to find animals consistently by going to the same small area and really walking slowly through there and sometimes just sitting in the same spot for an hour or more. I feel like I knew I was walking slowly enough when it almost felt like a type of meditation where I would be totally focused on what was going on around me and how my movement was interacting with the environment. Even then I probably saw and bumped 10+ deer before I was finally successful. I understand the majority of that is just learning but it was very frustrating.

A few times I dragged my kids out with me for hunting. On those times though I changed my expectation that it would be mostly road hunting with maybe one small walk. I was sure to bring lots of snacks and water. If possible I also tried to bring something that they would like to do or try while we were out there. As an example, one of my sons wanted to try shooting the .22 we had so we found a spot for him to try that safely.

When I finally was successful I was lucky that it was by our house. My wife was awesome and helped the two older kids find me as I was field-dressing the deer. This allowed them to see what it looked and smelled like. They also got to say thanks to the animal very close to when it died. Did they get bored? Cold? And start to argue? Yes, yes, and yes. I think overall though it was good for them to see and be part of that process. Once we got the deer home the rest of the kids came out to see the deer. We did not push them to do anything but usually, they were curious and wanted to touch it and see what different parts of the body felt like. I think all of this is very natural and we made sure they treated the animal with respect.

After the Hunt

Once we got our animals home we had to figure out what to do with them. We watched a few videos and read a few articles on processing deer before ever harvesting an animal. The majority of people we told that we got a deer asked if we were going to process it ourselves. The answer was “of course.” Our approach to this was to hang the deer and let them age for a week or so. Once that occurred we processed it. Did it take a while? Yes. Was it cold? You betcha. But it was an awesome feeling to know that we were able to harvest an animal and get it to the stage where we can eat it and store it for us to eat over the winter. Different kids were interested in different parts of the processing portion. Some were very curious about how we were going to get the hide-off. Others wanted to know how to cut the meat off of the carcass. In every case, we tried to include them and have them try if they wanted to. I thought it was pretty awesome that they wanted to join in and I hope over the years they will want to help even more. Our oldest son wants to tan the hide of one of the deers so it is now sitting in our freezer waiting for that project to start. We tried to minimize waste and use as much of each animal as possible. I am sure we didn’t do as good of a job as someone who has been doing this for years but I feel like we did the best we could. Overall, the meat turned out very tender and delicious.

Deer corridor – going just two miles back all signs of other humans go away

This year was definitely a tough one for me on hunting. Hunting is never certain for almost anyone. But when you are a beginner and in a new area, you aren’t sure if you aren’t seeing animals because of your skills or because there are no animals there. I am starting to lean towards especially for what I did that it was my skills more than anything. I am glad that I am learning this skill but it sure would be nice to have someone to help guide or advise me through the first few years. Next year I plan to go slower and sit longer than I want to. While I know this will be tough for me I think it will yield more encounters than this year even if I don’t have more success. Just seeing more animals will be a success in my mind. In a few months (or earlier) I look forward to going out with my kids and exploring some areas I saw while hunting that just looked cool. Sure, it will kind of be scouting but it really will mostly just be being in the woods with the kids which I look forward to. As I want to have my children to be comfortable in the wild and know the basics so they won’t be as clueless as I was when I reached adulthood. I look forward to writing a similar post in a year to report my progression.

Management Lessons / Pieces of Advice

June 10, 2022 by Mike

Over the years, I have had people ask me for advice about management and they ask me about how to be a good manager. Instead of giving this information out individually, I figure a post might be more useful to more people. I am by no means an expert at managing nor am I perfect. I have been managing for eight years and reading about managing for 20+ years though, so I have a decent number of mistakes under my belt that maybe other people can avoid. Anyways, enough rambling let’s get into the meat of it.

Foundational items

I pay particular attention to the following four basics of managing a team:

Regular 1:1s – These meetings should be viewed as almost sacred. Yes, you will have to cancel them or move them occasionally, but try not to make it a regular occurrence. I remember being told that a 1:1 is the easiest time for an employee to have time with a manager but not vice versa. This makes sense to me because as a manager part of your job is to talk to your team whenever. The team might not feel like they can always do that with you (even if you try to be the most accessible person in the world). I try not to make these status meetings. Instead, I try to check in with team members to get a pulse on how they are doing.
Setting a team direction/vision/long-term goals – Every team I have been a part of, or led, wanted to know what the point was of their work and what the general direction was of the team. This goes from big to small teams. Most people want to know that their work matters and that they are being useful. Part of our jobs as managers is to step back and tie the work done by individuals into a cohesive vision.
Taking care of the team’s health – I have a whole section later in this post, but I think it is worth mentioning more than once. A high-performing team isn’t one that is always under pressure, being overburdened, or, conversely, has a constant light load. The key is finding and maintaining a balance. Will a team have to sprint sometimes? Yes. But that means there should also be some planned slack in the system for recovery.
Focus on building a team – A team is not a group of individuals doing work in silos. A team should be a group of people that work together to help each other do the best work they can. Building out a cohesive and well-functioning team has a huge effect on the team’s effectiveness and well-being. This can take some time, however, the payoff is great.. While building out a team, there are indicators to look out for like: inside jokes, healthy banter, people helping other people without prompting, etc… If done correctly a team will be more than the sum of its parts.

I plan on jotting down more detailed thoughts on each of the above items in future posts. If you can’t wait that long, feel free to reach out as I am always happy to listen and chat.

Short-term vs long-term

Some people call this tactical versus strategic. Whatever you want to call it, as a manager we always have to keep a partial eye on the short-term (i.e. is the work that needs to be getting done, actually getting done) and the long-term (i.e. are we heading in the right direction as a team and as individuals). This can be hard to do and it is a balance that depending on your current events and environment, will slide from one side to another. I have observed that far too few managers think or communicate about the long-term picture. Even if they think they are thinking about it a lot, from a team’s perspective, it is not enough. It is really easy to get sucked into the day-to-day with fire drills, endless meetings, and whatnot. My only advice is to try and reserve some time regularly to step back and make sure the team is heading in the right direction and spend a little bit of time thinking and communicating about the long-term. Because if the team doesn’t know the why for what they are doing it can be hard for them to keep slogging through a tough project or understand how their work ties into the bigger picture. That is up to us as the managers to help them see and realize this.

Take care of your people

No, I don’t mean wipe their noses or hold their hands. Get to know your direct reports, build a vested interest in each of them, and make sure that they understand that you have their backs. I know this is hard to scale as you get more and more people reporting to you, but it can be done to a degree. Given that people have a lot of choices where they work, by making the investment in the relationship you will demonstrate your appreciation for their choice. What does this look like? Here are some examples:

It means having a general understanding of what is going on in their life (as much as they want to share)
Where they want to go in their career and what their long-term career aspirations are
What type of work interests them and trying to find those projects/tasks for them
Explaining to them what their career progression looks like based on what you know of their desires
Making sure they take time off
Are they working with the correct people so they can continue to grow and improve
Are they improving themselves and are you giving space for that

There is a lot to cover in this area but it can be shortened up to this: give a damn about the people around you, they aren’t “resources.”

Take care of yourself

Managing/leading a team can be a lonely business. As you go up the ranks it seems to get more lonely. More and more people depend on you and fewer people want to know about your struggles. So it is important to find trusted people you can talk with and get feedback from. It is also important to make sure you do stuff for yourself, such as exercise, meditate, journal, go for walks in the woods, or whatever action helps you recharge. My only reminder to people is our brains and bodies are tied together, if you don’t take care of your body by staying healthy your thinking will not be as clear. This is something many people seem to disregard or only attend to with intense bursts, followed by extended periods of neglect.

The tension between the business and managing the team

I am not sure why it took me a while to realize this but it did. Most businesses want to hire good managers (setting tasks, delivering on said tasks efficiently, etc…) while most people want good leaders. So, there is a natural tension between what the business needs and what the team needs. However, it seems the vast majority of books and management advice focus on leadership but rarely on what the business is wanting. Maybe it is self-evident for many people but it wasn’t to me. For me managing a team well means improving things at the company, figuring out what is needed for the business and what the people on the team want to do and figuring out a happy middle ground, taking an interest in each person on the team, and trying to help them achieve their goals while also delivering value to whatever company I am working at. As a manager, you get to try and balance these two items (business needs and managing the team). You need to help meet the business needs, but also don’t drive the team like machines. Companies don’t hire you because you are good at growing a team, taking care of the team’s individuals, and building a cohesive team. Sure, they might say they want that, but that isn’t the primary goal for hiring you. I also think most companies don’t really know how to hire good managers even more so than they don’t know how to hire good individual contributors. For a few years, I would ask people what percentage of good managers they have worked for and sadly, the average percentage was around 20-30%. These individuals are super important for a team and yet the percentage of solid ones is still very low. This is concerning.

With great power comes…

I don’t mean this in the Machiavellian sense. As a manager (or leader) of the team, you have an outsized influence on its culture. If you swear a lot your team will swear a lot, if you say a phrase often the team will start to pick up on that. Tim Ferriss is known for saying that you are the average of the five people you are around the most. Professionally, managers tend to be one of those people, so it makes sense that managers have an outsized influence on the team. What does this mean? It means that people are always watching you (not in that creepy sort of way… hopefully) but, as an example, if you go into a meeting and you are grumpier because you got a speeding ticket and you do not explain that is why you are grumpy, people will read into thinking something is wrong with them or the team. Your influence can be used to great effect by setting standards, bringing a certain type of energy to the team, etc… All you just need to do is act how you want the rest of the team to act. This can also be daunting because if people on the team are acting a certain way you don’t like, or in general the team is doing something you don’t want, you have to look in the mirror and realize you might just be the cause of this trait. Conversely, if the team is acting a certain way or doing things you like it might not be because of you, it could just be luck or other factors.

Those are my overarching thoughts about what great managers should be doing. Be on the lookout for future, more in-depth articles about the above points. Drop me a line if you have any feedback, questions, or thoughts. I will reply.

Information Gathering at a New Job in AppSec

January 22, 2022 by Mike

I have started as the head of AppSec/ProdSec a few times in my career. I also had the interesting position of integrating multiple acquisitions at a previous job which was very similar to being the head of AppSec. I wanted to share my general list of questions I ask out of the gate and other things I try to learn in a short timeline. Hopefully, this is useful to people who are in a similar position and have never done it before. I am sure I will miss a few things and as always it is dependent on the culture of the business you are joining. I also think this can be useful to anyone who is starting at higher levels in AppSec/ProdSec.

Development Information

What languages are used?
What are all of the ways code is stored (almost every company seems to have more than one place they store code in my experience)?
How are the applications built and deployed?
Who are the people who have been around the longest? I use this information to figure out who to talk with to understand how the applications have changed and how they are connected.
What type of testing is done?
Are there any system diagrams or documents on the system architecture?
Where do the devs track their work and bugs/issues?

Cultural Information

How does communication happen?
Are there unspoken times when meetings aren’t supposed to happen?
What is the best way to talk to parts of an organization en masse?
Do groups do get togethers / team building events / launch parties / celebrate their successes? If so, how?
How does the company give feedback and kudos (if at all)?

Security Team Information

What are the different security teams?
How does vulnerability management work?
Who is the old guard on the security team?
What tools are in place and how well are they being utilized?
What vulnerabilities have been found in the past and where they fixed?
If consultants are used, I like to read the output from the engagements.

Misc Information

I will often load up 10,000 tabs of information that I can find either in a confluence, wiki, google docs, etc.. Just to start to learn other bits of information about the company as whole.
I will also schedule many meetings with as many people as I can to learn about the company. I will often ask the following questions:
- Who else should I talk with?
- What is the thing that needs to be improved the most here?
- What have your interactions been with the security team so far?

Well, that is about it. This might seem like a long list but learning how an organization works requires a lot of information at least from my experience. Also, many times it is easy to answer multiple questions at once. I also view this as something I rarely stop learning about and to find my initial answers usually takes me two to three months at an organization. That will of course change depending on the size of the company.

Why my 1:1s are an hour

December 14, 2020 by Mike

I don’t think anyone would debate that having one-on-ones (1:1) is one of the more important things you can do as a manager. But one thing that seems to be debated is the length of said 1:1. Personally, I choose to schedule my 1:1s for an hour with all of my directs. Why do I do this when it seems to be that the default is 30 minutes?

One of the main reasons is because I view 1:1s is time that I make sure that my directs have my attention. Because of the power dynamic, I can always get my directs attention and time but the inverse is not always true. I am not saying that I make myself hard to reach but I do acknowledge the power dynamic that exists between a manager and their directs where sometimes people don’t want to “bother” the other side. Ok, that explains a viewpoint on a 1:1 but why such a long time?

Have you ever had a 1:1 and you finally start to get in the flow with your manager and then boom it is time to stop or you want to bring up something sensitive but it takes you 25 minutes to get the nerve up? Yea, me too. This is the primary reason I schedule my 1:1s for an hour. When these unexpected things come up or my direct has something important to talk about or we are just having a good conversation I have the space to further that relationship. Quite often I am on the other side with my managers who only schedule a 30 minute 1:1 and we almost always run out of time.

What happens if you don’t need the whole hour most of the time? Good. It means you know have some uninterrupted time to get something done or handle another problem that has cropped up. Or what happens if you have twenty directs having an hour-long 1:1 for each kills half the week? Well, there are bigger problems if you have 20 direct reports :).

Next time you schedule your default 30-minute 1:1 why not give the space for an hour. It is worth a shot to see if you further connect with your directs or new insights come out of it.