Ep. 948: How the Right Mindset is a Deer Hunter’s Most Valuable Tool

00:00:00
Speaker 1: Welcome to the Wired to Hunt podcast, which is brought to you by First Light. I’m your guest host, Tony Peterson, and today I’m joined by my good buddy Clint Campbell, who is the host of the Truth from the Stand podcast, a Brazilian jiu jitsu practitioner, badass guitarist, and all around good dude who kills big public Land bucks. Surprise, surprise, Mark Kenyon is off today. Now you might think he’s doing something cool with his time, like hunting public Land Bucks, but our little buddy is actually in recovery. He got hired to be the keynote speaker at the Flutter Festival, which you probably think I’m making up, but I’m not. This event happens down in South Carolina and is a celebration of butterflies. So in preparation, Mark got a monarch tattooed on his lower back. I can’t remember what you call a tattoo in that location, uh, but anyway, Mark got one, and unfortunately he didn’t let it. Heal very well, and he went to a water slide with his kids and it got infected. So please go to his Instagram and wish him a speedy recovery.

00:01:12
Speaker 2: All right.

00:01:14
Speaker 1: Returning to the Wired to Hunt podcast today is Clint Campbell. Clint is a Pennsylvania resident who spends all fall bow hunting public land in a bunch of different states, and he’s really good at it. I love talking to him for a lot of reasons, but a big one is because his mindset and his approach to hunting goes way beyond typical advice. This episode won’t teach you how to find a buck’s bet or read a rub better. But if you pay attention to what Clint has to say and you follow his advice just even a little bit, you will become a better hunter. I promise you not, Clint. I can’t tell you how good it is to see you, buddy day Man.

00:01:54
Speaker 3: You’re looking good, dude, not looking at a day over fifty three.

00:01:58
Speaker 2: And now I’m just kidding, super super man.

00:02:04
Speaker 3: I’ve been good, Man. Been busy this summer, as you know, man, you know, life just seems it seems like as things go, it gets busier and busier. You know, I would have imagined as my daughter got a little older, you’re out of that constant care phase. She’s a senior this year. So we just did our first university visit, So that’s wild. And I thought things would maybe get a little easier, a little slower whenever that happened, But it just it gets more and more chaotic, fingers crossed, like I’ll be an empty nester next year, and I’m hoping then, like maybe things that slept down a little bit.

00:02:37
Speaker 1: So did you when you took her to it, because you just took her to her first college visit just got back yet? Was it like kind of getting hit by a freight train realizing that that’s like the phase that’s coming now.

00:02:52
Speaker 3: I think it happened before we left, to be honest, like knowing that it was coming over the course of the summer. I think, truthfully, it was probably more when we were getting ready to do our family vacation this summer, because it had dawned on me that this is probably the last year, maybe next year, just depending on what her kind of work schedule and you know, when she has to show up for school and stuff like that, that this will probably be the last year that we really take a focused family vacation where we’re going to plan on it with her in mind, you know, knowing that she’ll be with us, you know, next year, you know, it may not be the case, just depending on what we have have going on. So it kind of hit me a little bit earlier. I kind of had to have that moment where I was sitting by myself and I was just kind of thinking that I need to you know, as funny as this in cliches this sounds, but I need to get okay with letting go and that I’ve done my part and that she’s, you know, for lack of a better way to say it, she’s been a good soldier, and you know, now I need to let her kind of go out and do her do her thing right. And so I need to change my perspective as her dad about what she needs from me as opposed to what I can you know, what I can do for her, right, it’s what now? How can I support her in helping her make those decisions? Not? You know, And she and I have had that conversation where I’m like, you’re at a at a point in your life where you know I can’t do everything for you anymore, and I can’t fix wrongs as many wrongs for you anymore as I used to be able to, because you know, you make mistakes now at this point, I was like, and they’re a little bit more I don’t want to say detrimental, but they’re a little bit more consequences associated with some things, you know. And so it just is a different it’s a different way to have to think about it. And so I’ve tried to just more so focus on, you know, what does she need from me to help her make those decisions and make sure she knows I’m a partner with her and all this as much as she wants me to be, and I’m her biggest fan, you know. And so I was like, I was like, and that’s hard because I as the dad. It’s like I just want to pick her up, you know, and carry her around still, you know. So right, but that is that ship has sailed, And so I think it’s just a little bit of a mindset shift, man, where you have to you know, the reality is different, and so I have to live in the reality of it and not in the not in the what I wish it were still, you know, And I think that’s sometimes the hardest.

00:05:16
Speaker 2: Part, right, you know.

00:05:18
Speaker 1: I it hit me very very recently, you know, my daughters are they just started eighth grade, and so I wrote a piece earlier this week that’ll drop any day now, might be out by the tennis podcast is out for The Mediator’s site about you know, three non hunting decisions I made in my life that made me a lot better deer hunter.

00:05:39
Speaker 2: And the third one was having kids. And you know, I.

00:05:44
Speaker 1: Thought about it from the perspective of, you know, all the young fellows out there listening to this, maybe some young women.

00:05:50
Speaker 2: I don’t know how many young women we have listened to this podcast, Probably a few.

00:05:53
Speaker 1: But if you’re young and you’re listening to this and you’re at that stage where you might be starting a family, you know, at some point in the next few years, you know, a lot of the fear is like your your time in the field’s going to go away, right Like, if I have a kid, I’m not going to be able to haunt nearly as much. And like, you know, it’s like a real kind of it’s like selfish, but it’s just very real, right, Like it’s the same thing like how can I afford having a kid? Like that’s a big thing that people deal with, and then all of a sudden you just figure it out, you know, But I keep thinking about that where finding out I was going to have two kids at the same time, I’m like, I’m never going to have any time out there. And as soon as we had the girls, and you know, the next the first season, real season I had because they were born late in and they were born in December, so the season was about over. But that following September, you know, I remember having like a lot of anxiety and being like, man.

00:06:41
Speaker 2: I have really short out of state trips.

00:06:44
Speaker 1: And at that point, you know, I was entirely a freelance writer for magazines and websites and whatever, so I was like, I got to kill a lot of shit and I got to produce a lot of stuff I just do.

00:06:55
Speaker 2: And I remember being like, so, you know.

00:06:59
Speaker 1: Kind of spun up at that, but also went out on my first trip out to North Akota, only had four days, killed a buck in the last like fifteen minutes, and just like realizing, all, right, like this is possible, and I had you know, you don’t know it at the time, right, but I was like shifting into this like scout with real intention, like hunt with real intention. Like I didn’t have the time to just be like I’m going to take a total flyer on this spot. Or that spot, like I felt the like the pressure to do things that were going to benefit me, like not just like follow whatever balloon was blowing down the alley and chase it.

00:07:35
Speaker 2: For a while.

00:07:35
Speaker 1: It was like you got to you have to like work at this. And it really kind of changed my entire mindset because that first season I went on a tear and I was like, man, I killed bucks everywhere I went. Just had one of those seasons, and it was like part of it. I think I can give credit to the fact that just literally having a family changed how I viewed my free time and how I had my free time to use.

00:08:03
Speaker 2: And it’s like a weird thing, you know.

00:08:05
Speaker 1: I mean a lot of people are listening to this who probably don’t have a family or whatever they’re gonna it’s probably like an unrelatable thing. But the thing that I took away from that is, you know, you don’t have to go have some kids to have a to be a better hunter. But doing something that allows you to adopt that mindset of do this with intention and you will just be better off has like it’s fed so much in my life deer hunting and not deer hunting since then, and I know, you know, you’re you’re.

00:08:34
Speaker 2: A busy guy.

00:08:35
Speaker 1: You have a full time job, you’re running troops from a stamp podcast, You’re rolling in BJJ like crazy, You’re doing a lot of shit.

00:08:42
Speaker 2: I know that you sort of have that mindset too. Yeah.

00:08:45
Speaker 3: I mean I think when you have whether it’s kids, like you said, you know, not advocating for people that go right, don’t have kids to become a better hunter, but I think when you have things that vie for your time outside of hunt, you know, or outside of anything, doesn’t matter what it is, if it’s hunting, the thing you’re super into, if it’s playing tiddley links, like, whatever it is is your passion. Right, when you have something that happens to you or you know that that kind of comes into your life, it can be viewed in one of two ways. And the way you view it is really going to be what kind of determines how you how you approach you know, or whether you find success or whether you find failure, whatever the case is. And that is if you see it as a a detriment, right, like this is the thing that’s going to take away from Right, is one way that you can look at it. And if that’s the case. I mean, I’m gonna have less time to hunt, and I’m not going to be able to do all the work I want to do, and I’m not going to probably be as good as I want to be. And you know, those are a bunch of reasons, right or excuses maybe, or you can look at it as it really just put a finer point on the things that you need to focus on, right, And and so you kind of go through this evaluation process of what do I What am I doing that I absolutely need? And what are the things that I’m doing that are actually just maybe I enjoy doing them, but they’re not of a use to me, right, that they’re not things that I’m actually using, Right, And I think you kind of go through that inventory, not just in honey, but I think you go through that inventory just in general. I mean, I’ll be real honest. When we had our daughter, there were friends I was just like, not in a bad way, not that they weren’t of use to me, but it was just this isn’t going to serve me the way this relationship used to serve my life any longer, right, And so it’s actually going to be a net negative for me. And if it’s a net negative for me, then it’s a net negative for my family, and I can’t have it right. And so that’s a really kind of that’s a very kind of like mean way that I had to look at it to a degree, right, But if you let it, it really kind of sharpens you, because at least for me, you know, I had that, you know, with with my daughter. But then when I added in and I’ve talked about this, when I added in jiu jitsu, that was another thing that was kind of vying for my time. Love jiu jitsu, like hunting in jiu jitsu are like my my favorite things to do. You know. When I was a kid growing up, the three things I loved to do was play music, hunt, and wrestle. And I pretty much do all three of those things pretty much every day something related to all three of those things every day still, you know. And so it was hard for me to say, like, I’m going to give up this time to hunt in order to do jiu jitsu or vice versa. And so what I really had to do to get the same type of fulfillment out of hunting that I wanted to get out of it, is that I had to be super intentional whenever I was in the woods. And part of that lesson I learned on the jiu jitsu mats, because you hit a certain point you know, and whatever it is, and jiu jitsu was just where I really learned the hard The hard lesson, I guess if you will, was that you hit a certain point where you kind of know enough information, and you hit that same point in hunting where you know, you know how to read rubs and you know how to you know how to evaluate a scrape if it’s worth hunting or not hunting, or if it’s in the right spot. You know how to you understand terrain features and topography, and you know you understand just say, you understand deer hunting in general. Right. But the difference that takes you from you know, that place to kind of sharpening yourself is like, how do you look at things you know with with intention? Right? And so for me, at least in jiu jitsu, it was no longer just coming in and doing whatever the coach was teaching that day. I needed to kind of take my development in my own hands and come in every day during a training session and have something specific I wanted to work on to get better at. And that was on me to figure out, right. I think hunting is the same way. It’s like you know yourself better than anybody. What are the things that you need to continue to work on. Do you need to shoot your bow more? Do you need to maybe get in the gym and drop a couple of pounds like so you feel better? Right? Do you need to, you know, spend more time map studying, Do you need to spend a little bit more time with boots on the ground or whatever it is. But the thing is, you don’t have time to do all of them right, right, So you have to look at it with intention and go, what of these things is actually going to serve me best? And that’s where you focus, right. And so I think when you have added things that come into your life, whether it’s other hobbies, passions, whatever the case is, you can either let it dilute all the stuff that you’re already doing, or you can let it enhance all the stuff that you’re already doing if you start to understand and see the through lines of how they all kind of connect, right, And so I think that that’s just a more positive way to look at it and I think then you can kind of, for lack of remote way to put it, you can kind of have your cake and eat it too if you will.

00:13:29
Speaker 1: Yeah, dude, I’ve started to think about it, you know. I mean, maybe this is just the age or whatever, but I just think that mindset matters almost more than anything, right, And I think we sort of sell this image of you know, scout this way in the mountains out in PA and you’ll kill public land bucks, or scout this way, hunt this way in Kansas and you’ll arrow a booner on public land whatever. But really everybody’s like on their own personal journey, and I think that I think that white tail hunting is really hard for a lot of people because they don’t know what they’re trying to get out of it yet, you know what I mean. Like, I think they consume a lot of content and think, well, like I want to kill big Bucks, and that’s the that’s the direction I want to go.

00:14:15
Speaker 2: And it’s like, yeah, that’s the direction everybody wants to go.

00:14:17
Speaker 1: But really, like you see a lot of people who get there where they can consistently kill them, and depending on how they’re doing it, a lot of the fire will burn out pretty quickly because like once you get it figured out, if that if like your goal is just that you could just pick up an extra job and get a great lease and maybe solve your problem right, like you could you could maybe just do it that way. And it’s like that that to me, like it’s not that that’s a bad thing, but that might not be what you need, Like you might find that that goal was wrong, like it wasn’t.

00:14:48
Speaker 2: It was kind of like hollow or whatever. And I think the more that and more the more that people do stuff where they’re like why am I doing this? Like what’s you know, like you want to get in shape? Why you want to look good naked? Great?

00:15:01
Speaker 1: Like you want like okay, great, that’s like a that’s like a start, Like right, you want to feel better like you want to you want to like have more energy when you’re out in the woods or playing with your kids, or you know, not be forced.

00:15:14
Speaker 2: To medically retire when you’re late fifties because you can’t do something or whatever, like what is it? Like?

00:15:19
Speaker 1: The I think the more that we like focus on that stuff because I really learned this lesson. I know people get sick of hearing about you know, like fitness in the outdoors or whatever. But when I started running a lot, I did it because I could get a lot of exercise in a short amount of time, essentially, like you just gotta get your ass moving. What I didn’t realize what was that mental health wise? There was literally nothing better for me to do. Like literally, if I was having a bad day whatever for whatever reason, if I force myself to go do that, I will come out the other side and feel better. If I start my day with that shit, my whole day will probably be more smooth and I’ll be less agitated and whatever.

00:16:02
Speaker 2: It’s like.

00:16:03
Speaker 1: So when when we talk about all of this stuff, and you talk about your music and you’re you know, rolling at the gym and all this stuff, there’s like a surface level look at it, kind of like the surface level look of a lot of outdoor content is just kill big bucks. But underneath it are all these different pathways for the individual to follow to find their way. And I love it seeing people who are confident enough to follow those, Like I’ve been paying attention and you’ve been shooting a trad bow a lot, which most people modern hunters would look at this and go that is the wrong direction. You should be going to a crossbow because they’re easier, right, But you’re not doing that. And it’s because it’s like you’re just confident in a personal journey now and you’re like, well, this is for me in my mindset, is just like I just need to do this because of X, Y and Z, and it’s just like I think seeing that and seeing somebody like you is just really important.

00:16:57
Speaker 3: Yeah. I think speaking of the tret the trad bow, you know that that was really one of those things that it really just is giving me or I believe that it will give me the type of experience that have always kind of been looking for, right, because I think a lot of people get caught up in chasing an experience someone else has probably previously laid out for them, you know, or that they’ve seen it somewhere, and that’s fine. I think somewhere times it gets get started, right. You see it all the time in music. You’ll see bands that you know, you see them before they’re anybody, and you’re like, oh, they kind of sound like Zeppelin, or they kind of sound like this band, Like you can clearly hear their influences, right, But as they go, if they’re talented, right, and they’re decent songwriters and they own their craft. All of a sudden you start to see less and less of those influences and more and more of who they are comes out, because one they just get better at their craft, and two they start to get the confidence to express themselves. Right, I don’t think that’s really all that different than hunting at least right. So for me, it was, you know, getting better at my craft. And I kind of for a long time thought there was a version of me that I was kind of chasing to a degree, and it was probably someone else’s version. It was probably influenced by other guys that I’ve probably had on my show that I was like, this guy’s a great hunter. I’d love to be able to hunt like this guy, or do things like this guy does. Or I want to be Andy May when I grow up, you know what I mean, Like whatever the case is, you know. And then as I kind of went, you hone your craft, I honed mine, and you start to care less about what other people’s journeys are and realize that they’re not necessarily right for you, and you start to think about, well, what is it I want? Right, And then you become confident enough to just go this is the thing that I want, right, and so you go after it right. And so for me, that’s kind of what the trad bow has been. It’s like I want a certain type of experience and I don’t really I get it. I’m gonna have to probably watch a big deer walk out of my life at some point with it. I’m okay with that, right. It’s whether I kill that deer or not. A big deer is not going to define me. And three people are going to know about it. That’s about it, you know. So it’ll be like you, my buddy Chad and you know, my buddy Wilson are probably like the only guys that really talk to me about any year that I killed past the week that I killed it, you know. And so you know, that’s what I’m really kind of after. Like when you said, you know, you were talking a little bit about you know why people what your what your why is, and I thought that was really interesting because the trad bow is really, you know, is an expression of the why to a degree, but it’s not the why, you know. And I had this kind of internal battle, I guess if you will, whether maybe it was two years ago or something like that. It was probably about the same time that I started training in jiu jitsu. And you know, someone asked me at one point why I was, you know, why I was doing that, you know, or why I would want to do that. I love grappling, number one, but you know, at forty some odd years old, why would I start doing that and put my body through that? And they were like, and then we started talking about bow hunting. They were like, man, that’s kind of hard. Then we started talking about a traditional bow and that’s even harder. They’re like, why do you pick the like the hardest possible things to deal?

00:20:04
Speaker 2: Right?

00:20:04
Speaker 3: Like? And I started thinking about it. I was like, well, maybe I just like things that are really hard, right, Maybe I like the challenge. And I was like, I do. I was like, but that’s not If that were the case. Once I met the challenge, then I wouldn’t be interested in anymore, right, because that’s I like things that are kind of continual, right, And so you know, what I landed on and what I realized was is that and this has been all my life because I started looking back, like even when I was a kid and stuff like that, and music was another example, like music’s really hard, Like that’s what I did for a living for a while, So why would you choose that as a profession at some point? Right? Why would you choose to be an archery hunter of all things?

00:20:42
Speaker 2: Right?

00:20:44
Speaker 3: And what I kind of landed on was that the things that really motivate me or the things that I feel like that are like those things that are like buried in you that you can’t explain, is that I like things and seek things that have no possibility of mastery ever, like you, And if anybody tells you they’re a master of it, you will one percent know that they’re full of shit, because there’s it’s just not possible. Right, And so it’s a kind of a weird way to where everyone’s always kind of like the same, Like there’s a hierarchy like in that, like you know a good hunter from like someone who’s maybe not as accomplished or whatever, but does doesn’t mean that person can’t be. Right, you know someone who’s really good at jiu jitsu by your rank of your belt, right, and that really just means that person spent more time, right, But it doesn’t mean the person who’s a white belt that just started yesterday can’t be a black belt or a fifty degree black belt or whatever. Right just because someone just started playing music today doesn’t mean they’re not going to be the next Jimmy Page or the next John Lennon. They’re not today, but they could be, right, And so it’s all those things that you know, there’s no possibility of mastery. It’s all endless, it’s open ended, and it’s really just about your journey. And so that’s what I kind of learned. And I think that all the different things that I’m involved in, you know, over time has kind of taught me that. And that’s that’s ultimately, you know, where my why kind of stems from is having something that there’s no possibility in mastery. So I’ll never run out of intrigue until I’m you know, in the ground, you know, hopefully.

00:22:18
Speaker 1: I love I love how you frame that up, because I so my daughters and I went down this weird rabbit hole last winter of watching all these documentaries on like mountain climbers and rock climbing and squirrel suit jumpers and all these guys like crazy adrenaline sports shit right like free solo Alex Hanold type stuff, and I just the other night when I was running, I was listening to Alex Hanold, who is the first dude to climb l CAP with no safety equipment, which is crazy, crazy three thousand feet straight up of just death after like the first minute, it’s just death, no matter what if you screw up. Anyway, he was on Huberman’s podcast, and Huberman asked him a lot of questions about like, you know, when you do something like that and you accomplish it, like how do you find the next thing? And he was like, there’s always a whole bunch of the next things like rattling around in my brain. It’s not like he’s like, I have to do l CAP, that’s it. And then once I’m done, I start over and I start thinking about this thing he’s like. And then he started explaining about like the little day climbs him and his wife would do, and like, you know, there’s this like one move I couldn’t master, this one spot where it was like kicking my ass, And I think about that so much, and I had I was just down in Nebraska a little bit ago, hanging a bunch of stands and putting up blinds for this hunt. We’re doing during the rut here with Steve and my cameraman is a mountain climber, and so I never worked with the guy before I met him. Super good shape, and I looked at I’m like, what do you do? Like you can just look at him and just tell he’s like doing something like and he’s.

00:23:55
Speaker 2: Like, oh, I just loved a rock climb.

00:23:56
Speaker 1: And so I asked him so many questions and he knew nothing about deer hunting. Great guy knew nothing. He’s from Idaho. He literally asked me, uh. At one point, I put up a blind and he said, do you have to get out of the blind to shootingmorer? Can you stay in it? Like That’s that was his pace level of you know, deer hunting. He just doesn’t know, right, He just started. He hunted elk last year for the first time because he started filming with us, and so he he doesn’t come to the conversation knowing anything about what we do. And as I talked to him more and more about his favorite climbs and the places he’s gone and the like close calls and all that shit, I was like, this is just bow hunting on a vertical cliff like that. It was the same kind of thing where he was like, you know, he explained to me because we started talking about free solo, and I was like, it had never occurred to me how much Alex had rehearsed and worked through like individual moves and how many times he had climbed it with gear to know every part. Like obviously when you hear that on the outside and now you’re like, oh, yeah, duh, you’re not going to just go up there blind. But it’s like a decade’s long process, or it maybe a decade or whatever. And I asked this guy, I was like, do you have stuff like that where it’s like it’s taking you ten years to you know, summit certain spots whatever.

00:25:15
Speaker 2: And he’s like, yeah, absolutely.

00:25:16
Speaker 1: He’s like, you fall all the time, and if you fall one time, it’s not a success. You have to go up there and do this without falling. And he’s like, some of the things that I do take me ten years to finish, but I’m always working on that and something else and something else and some other move and bouldering this way or whatever. And it’s like it was so fascinating to me because you would look at those worlds, especially if you looked at like a you know, like a TV hunt for white tails in like a typical outfitted situation, you know, like the kind of hunt that like the Western hunters would you know, tear us to shreds over right, like the one they like to point out where it’s like that’s not hunting, right. If you look at that world especially, you’d be like, man, there’s no connection. There’s no touch point between this and you know, going up El Cap. But it’s a mindset thing, and it’s like it’s you know that kind of thing is like, yeah, a lot of people have done this, right, Like a lot of people have done this route in that route and whatever, but it doesn’t matter. Like a lot of people have gone out into the woods in Pennsylvania and killed one hundred and forty inches. That doesn’t change your arc at all. Like you still have to follow your own path.

00:26:36
Speaker 3: Yeah, you got to follow your own path. And and I think at the outset you have to have an understanding of how long something’s going to take, or that it that it takes time. I think that’s the one thing that doesn’t matter what it’s in, whether it’s hunting or anything else, is that we just don’t afford ourselves any time any longer. Everything is such a microwave situation. You know. You take opening weekend of football just occurred, right, and you see rookie quarterbacks, right, for example, the expectations that they just come in and set the whirl on fire. You know, from from day one, when if you go ten years ago or fifteen years ago, or whatever the case was, there was a concept of bringing a rookie quarterback along. Right, there’s an understanding that it takes time to learn certain nuances of this game versus the game that he played in college. Right, It’s the same thing, you know, whether you’re talking bow hunting or whether you’re talking jiu jitsu, or whether you’re talking you know, free soloing or whatever the case is. Nobody starts, you know, especially in those types of endeavors. You know, and unless you live on a managed property, if you do good, you know, good on you. I’m not not poo pooing that. But for the public land guys out that are listening, you know, nobody’s starting, you know, like one hundred yards ahead of you in that sense, right, they might feel like they are starting ahead of you because maybe they’ve been doing a little bit longer, and they know a few more things than you might know, or they you know, whatever the case is. But everyone’s kind of starts at the bottom rung in that regard. And I think that’s one of the things that always, you know, that I find fulfilling, at least in bow hunting, is that when I go out to a piece of public somewhere, and no matter where it’s at, whether it’s in my home state of Pennsylvania or whether I’m traveling to a plane state somewhere, or you know, Ohio, Iowa, Missouri, like whatever state, it is the piece of dirt that I’m walking onto. Anybody who has a tag and is legal with a legal weapon is starting the same place I’m starting. Like, we’re all doing the same We’re all doing the same thing. The only thing that’s going to kind of separate us is one luck, because that’s a big part of it, you know, in two is your willingness to just deal with the suck when it comes because it’s going to right. You have some of those gem hunts like I had in the planes two years ago, where you show up and you see the deer you want to kill, and the second day you kill it, you know, but that was three year. That was the third year two years of eating a tag before that happened, right, And so it’s all that suck built up of enduring. That was what led is what led to that. Right. Or if you’re climbing a mountain, right, you’re using the gear to climb so you don’t make when you do make mistakes that you have a safety net so you can learn from the mistake. Right, And jiu jitsu, you enter tournaments and you get beaten. When you’re you know, you get a little bit better, you win some tournaments, right, and so it’s all the same, it’s all the same process. But I think the important part of that as you were kind of you know, talking about the mountain climbing part of it, and I was kind of thinking, you know, what is the what is that thing when you have all these things rattling around in your head of when you achieve one thing, like where do you go next? Right, because a lot of people see that achievement is like the pinnacle, like you you killed the deer you were after you climb them ount and you wanted to climb, or you won the tournament you wanted to win, or whatever the case is. And the thing that I kind of thought of that was kind of binds it all together is that in every one of those scenarios, in a person who’s achieving those things at a decent clip in those areas or whatever area it might be, is that they’re always looking to start over. Like That’s actually the appealing part is the starting it over again, right. It’s not sitting and looking at oh, look at me, what did I Look what I just did? Right? There’s a little bit of time for that, and a little bit of time for reflection about what I learned from it. And sure, maybe you give yourself a pat on the back and you enjoy the fruits of your labor for a minute. But most people are always onto, what’s the next thing I want to tackle, you know, And for a lot of us, it’s what’s the next new thing I can tackle? Right, What’s the next kind of state I want to go to. What’s the next type of terrain that I want to hunt in? That’s the next type of habitat I want to visit. What’s the next species I want to chase? What’s the next weapon I want to use? You know, It’s like all those variables of what you kind of start thinking about, and you just you get more excited of the proposition of things being new than you do about the goal you just achieved, because to me, like the exciting stuff is the stuff you haven’t that you don’t know yet. It’s the stuff that you’re going to figure out and the the way it’s going to test you and test whether or not you’re as good as you think that you are, right, test the things that you know are they are they as solid of tools as you think as you think you have right And a lot of times you get exposed, you know, and that’s a lot of what happens. And honey, when you go to a new state, or you know, in jiu jitsu, if you go to a new gym and you train with guys who have a different style than you. Just happened to me this weekend in different style man, and I learned some lessons about where I have some holes I had need to fill. There was a large MMA fighter from azerbaj On who was here to for his fight camp that I learned some lessons from.

00:32:04
Speaker 2: You know.

00:32:05
Speaker 3: It didn’t help that he went like two ten, you know, and he’s got me about about forty pounds, but he was very skilled and it was a rough round, but it was a very good experience because it just showed me, like where where there was opportunity for me to continue to grow, right, And there’s a plenty of I have plenty of places to grow. But just to kind of look at that in the hunting sense, you know, when you go to a new piece of public land, you get your teeth kicked in, like man, that’s like, that’s a great opportunity to figure out like areas that you can sharpen yourself. Because if you sharpen those areas and you patch those holes, like how much better are you going to be?

00:32:35
Speaker 2: Right?

00:32:36
Speaker 3: And that’s ultimately how you level up?

00:32:38
Speaker 2: Right.

00:32:38
Speaker 3: It is like when you find those deficiencies and you figure out not always can you fill them, because sometimes you don’t have the capabilities to fill them. But what you end up learning is how do I work with that deficiency? What do I need to do to mitigate the impact of that deficiency if you’re not capable of filling it? Right? And you can probably hear in my voice, but that’s the stuff I get excited about.

00:32:58
Speaker 1: Well, I mean, I think, I think what you’re saying in a sort of a roundabout way, and I might be wrong here, but there’s sort of this concept I’ve been thinking about a lot with white tail hunting lately, is you know what what do like the Andy Mays of the world share, Like what are the people who are just like really good at it where you’re just like that guy can figure it out anywhere? And one of the things, you know, I think a lot of people look at it and like their drive. You know, they scout constantly, blah blah blah. They’re out there all the time, you know, single minded terminator pursuit. And there’s like a component of that, right, Like they’re gonna they’re gonna go more than the average person just they just are. They’re gonna winter scout more, They’re gonna just there’s gonna be an extra level of work put into there. But I think the big differentiator is comfort with failure.

00:33:45
Speaker 2: Like I think about this.

00:33:46
Speaker 1: I mean, I was having a conversation with this girl who’s writing for us now for the for the Meat Eater site, and she’s she’s trying to go kill a public land buck and so she just ran some stuff by me and it was like, well, what if this goes wrong?

00:34:01
Speaker 2: And I’m like, well, you have a whole.

00:34:02
Speaker 1: Season, like it’s probably going to go wrong, you know, like, well what if they don’t come to the beans or the beans or yellow or blah blah blah.

00:34:08
Speaker 2: I’m like, that’s just that’s just bowhunting, man like.

00:34:12
Speaker 1: But it’s when you when you go through this enough, you just realize like, yeah, like my plan is this, and I believe in it because I’m doing it, and when it doesn’t work, which ninety nine percent of the time it just won’t, it’s like, okay, well, I just have to do something else.

00:34:25
Speaker 2: And when you when you’re you know, at home.

00:34:28
Speaker 1: I think that’s tougher for people because they feel like they can sort of create a situation where failure is less of an option or a.

00:34:34
Speaker 2: Less likely outcome.

00:34:35
Speaker 1: Maybe, but it’s not because the woods are dynamic and deer dynamic and things change all the time. When you go, you know, you load up your truck and you head out to Kansas or wherever, you’re just like, I’m coming into a place that’s going to hand me failure mostly right, And it’s like I’m okay with that because I don’t I don’t live here. I don’t get to walk out here and glass them over and over and over again and figure out that they walk by that tree when the winds out of the west or whatever. Like, You’ve got to figure that out in real time. And I think comfort with that failure is like sort of a big differentiator between a lot of really good hunters and a lot of people who are sort of struggling to like hit that goal right. And when when you talk about, you know, rolling with fighters who are like you know, they’re above you on the in the packing area, like they just they’re just better at it in every way or whatever.

00:35:27
Speaker 3: It’s like they’re better, they’re bigger, they’re stronger, they’re faster, they’re younger, they’re they’re all the things right.

00:35:33
Speaker 1: And literally every advantage out there, you go into that and you go, I know I’m going to fail. You pick up a trad bow and you know that on paper, that’s going to cost you some deer thin there’s I mean, it’s just I’ve I’ve gotten better with this about filming because I freaking hate filming hunts, especially white tail hunts. But now I’m just like having an extra person with me is going to cost me one or two opportunities in every four or five six day trip for sure, Like I just it still sucks, but you just have to be like that’s just the thing that’s going to happen. And what’s just as important is I’m going to cost me some opportunity during this hunt too, like I’m going to make a decision or something that’s just going to screw this up. And it’s like if you’re kind of doing that thing with intention, like we talked about earlier in this stuff, and you’re like, well, I know the failure is going to be here, like I don’t want to fail, but it’s just whatever. It’s like a it’s a consequence of doing these hard things like eventually that you just won’t at some point and you’ll hit that goal or you’ll kill that deer or you’ll have that great encounter, and it’s like okay, like I’m not I’m not immune to that failure again because that’s coming again. But it’s like you just learn like, okay, well sometimes you miss them, like sometimes you’re just not paying attention and they get in on you and they see you and they run away, or you you get a little lazy and you’re like I’m going to set up here even though the wind is not great, and then you get busted and you’re like, ah, yeah, like I failed, big deal. I think I think doing hard stuff teaches you that about all of these things and just makes it like way more palatable overall.

00:37:09
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think if you just kind of go into things, you know, whatever endeavor, it is just knowing that that failing part of it is the cost of doing business flat out, that’s just you just might as well like write it in the check book as a deduction. Right, it’s gonna it’s gonna happen. Right. And so I think with that going back to like the Andy and like what makes them those guys different, Like I’ve always kind of thought for them to a degree, It’s like I’ve always kind of thought of it this way that it’s disciplining care they care enough about it to be disciplined, right, And what is discipline really is doing the thing that you don’t really want to do when you need to do it because you just know you have to.

00:37:51
Speaker 4: Right.

00:37:51
Speaker 3: I’m sure there’s plenty of times, you know, I’m sure you you experienced this as well. You know I know that I do. You’ll be sitting somewhere and you’re like, man, I should probably take my stuff down and move two hundred yards over there, because I just watched three deer walk through this opening over here, you know, or this creek crossing or whatever, and I know I should move over there right be You’re like, I just set all my stuff up, I don’t want to move right. Well, the disciplined person goes and the Karen huff, which then kicks in their discipline, says, I don’t really want to do this, but it’s the thing that I should do. Therefore I’m going to do it. And that’s all the conversation you have to have with yourself, and it’s done right. The undisciplined person, you know, is you know, probably not going to make that move and is just going to kind of sit tight and see what, you know, see what happens that they’ll pull their gearity end of the night, you know, and watch ten more deer walk through that opening and never make a move right. And to me, that’s the difference. That’s what the guys like Andy has like, they just do the thing that they got to do because they know they’ve got to go do it right. And then there’s this kind of I guess this mantra I started kind of living by, especially with travel hunting just in general. Is that, you know, is that I look at it like this, that my hunt doesn’t really start until something bad happens, Like that’s when my hunt actually starts, you know. And for example, going out to Kansas two years ago, you know, I got a flat tire in Ohio, I blew a tire out on the trailer. And it was when I blew that tire out, I thought to myself, was like, I’m probably going to kill the biggest year of my life on this trip, you know, because I was going to get there late. I had to run and try to get get a tire fit get a new tire. They didn’t have the size. I spent two days in Ohio going to tire stores trying to find it an extra tire for my trailer. Finally got one, got there. You know, rest of the history ended up killing a deer. But it was at that moment where I was like, this has no other option other than to work out for me, because this the hunt just started and I’m still on the road, right And so I kind of tried to go into the hunts that way now, where that when something bad happens and it doesn’t have to be bad but doesn’t break my way or whatever cases, I just think about it and go, all right, it’s actually starting. Now. Good, we got that out of the way. Now we’re ready to roll, you know. And that was the same thing that last year when I was hunting that big deer, and I know we talked about that on this show that it wasn’t until you know, I screwed up one of the sits, you know, where I was like, cool, now we’re ready like things, and now it starts, you know, And you know that hunt didn’t quite work out the way I would have wanted it to. But I try to keep that mindset that way. I don’t ever let the things that are not going my way be the things that start to dictate how I react to like the rest of the hunt. Right, And it goes back to that intention. So every day I try to set an intention for what I’m going out for, Like if I’m doing a lot of scouting that day instead of like sitting, and then it’s like what am I looking for? And I’ll be very specific about what I’m trying to look for. And it’s just like not to be oheady, but it’s like when you’re trying to find, you know, a mate, when you look real hard, you never find them. When you’re never looking at all. It just happened to show up, right, And so that’s kind of the way I view hunting to a degree, is that whenever I’m looking really hard, say I’m trying to cut a track, and maybe I’m not finding any tracks that day, and this is exactly what happened to me. I was looking for tracks and I couldn’t cut a track, and then all of a sudden, I found that deer’s rub and I knew if I could find one of his rubs, i’d find a bunch of them because he had an identifying mark. And sure enough, that’s what I found, and then that’s what I used to track that deer down, right, So it wasn’t And it was because I went out that day and didn’t let the previous days of failing snowball into making that day terrible. What I did was I just said, Nope, today’s this is the thing I’m looking for. And then with that, you know, my aperture wasn’t cloudy outside of that, like focus point necessarily, and I was able to kind of see things that maybe I wouldn’t pick up otherwise, and then you know, lo and behold, I found a critical piece of intel that got me a lot closer to him and put me in the right kind of area to have an encounter.

00:41:59
Speaker 1: Yeah, dude, I mean I think I think that one of the things, you know, like there’s an intangible you know, we talk about Andy May all the time. He’s kind of it’s almost kind of a joke to bring him up because we always use him as the example for like what you should aspire to, and I know he listens to it and it’s great. But one of the things that like kind of on that point is like, all right, you’re driving to wherever your tire blows, like that shit happens on those trips a lot, right, Like something bad happens and you say that kicks off your hunt. I think that enough experience out there teaches you that those bad things are coming, and they don’t have to they don’t have to be as negative of an influence on your overall season or your week or your trip as it’s like easy to make them be right, Like I think about I mean, I’ve had, you know, I’ve had all kinds of stuff go wrong at home and on different trips, and I think about some of them were like, you know, I don’t know. I think it was twenty eighteen, buddy, and I drove all the way down to southern Oklahoma, which is a haul from central Minnesota. Right went to a place that I had pinned all my hopes on.

00:43:14
Speaker 2: You know.

00:43:14
Speaker 1: It’s like, I think it was like four thousand acres of public land.

00:43:18
Speaker 2: I’m like, Oklahoma’s covered in deer. It’s going to be great.

00:43:21
Speaker 1: We get there, set up camp, you know, long drive, fifteen hours whatever it is, and I mean, I cannot find a deer, like I cannot find a track. I can’t find I’m not talking one forties. I’m talking like a deer. And I ended up wandering around one day for like five hours, stand on my back, whole thing. Walked into this little oakmont and jumped a little buck out of it, and there was like two little rubs, and I was like, I’m going to sit here and wait for him to come back because I have nothing going on. And there’s one tree and I look at it and I’m like, all right, I can get up into that tree and I put my first I stick around the bottom and I look and it was it had gotten kind of cool for cold for down there, like whatever tempt that is. And there were these wasps in this tree like it had like real thick bark, and they were like hold up all over in there, and I was like, I can’t go up this tree. I’m gonna die right like if it gets like five degrees warmer, They’re going to destroy me. So I left, grab my stuff, and I had looked on the on X and I saw a spot that had a little stream flowing through it, like I’m gonna go over to that spot to see if I can find something, maybe I can kill something on water or whatever. And I got there and it was sort of this like wash out, little kind of like seep coming out of the hillside. It was kind of cool, but I wanted to get to the far side of it, so I had to cross it. And it was, you know, a shallow no big deal. But I stepped on these rocks that were slippery and fell hard and had my bow in my hand and slammed my bow against the ground. Arrows went flying, and I’m like, okay, Okay, now I don’t know if I have a functioning bow like on this trip that I’m you know, two days into fifteen hours from home. So I grabbed one of my arrows and picked out a little plant or something on the hillside where I’m like, I’m gonna just shoot at it, and you know, this broadhead will be screwed, but at least I’ll know if my bow is still on or not because I smoked it on the ground.

00:45:21
Speaker 2: I actually smoked it on rocks.

00:45:23
Speaker 1: So I take a shot at this like little bush on this hillside right like, just like, I was very confident my bow was not going to shoot well, take aim at it thirty yards away, shoot hit it just perfectly, and there must have been a little rock or something buried in there. My arrow just exploded. So I’m like, okay, I can’t find a deer. I damn near can cuss myself on the side of this little creek. Slammed my bow against the ground, just blew up an arrow. Still can’t find a deer, and ended up finding a dough in. Two fawns down there that we’re spending about four feet of their time walking on public and the rest an private so my buddies, my buddy and I, we called an audible drove to northern Oklahoma. I’ve told the story a million times. I go, I walk into a spot I picked out and set up a stand and literally grabbed a sandwich or something out of my pack who was like noon heard something behind me. Dope came up, shot her and I was like, I’ve spent ten minutes on this public land in no I mean literally we just showed up just out of the blue because we got our asses kicked on this other spot for three days. Killed that deer. The next morning, my buddy killed a doe. We got snowed in in a blizzard in Oklahoma, spent like twenty four hours literally not leaving the camp because it was wild, got out of that, went out, killed a buck seven seconds before we had to leave, And I just remember like most of that trip kicked my ass, Like most of it was me just failing hard. But it was like, I don’t know, you’re in a place where there’s like there should be good dear, you’re just missing something and you’ve had some bad things go on, and I think, you know, I’ve seen this a lot, like when I used to be at bowhun or I used to have to do a certain amount of like media hunts, you know those I don’t I guess I don’t really even know if they’re a thing now. They kind of are, but they were big back then, right because you could, you know, fly in a bunch of dudes who edited magazines or whatever and get a bunch of coverage out of it for the whole year or whatever, wine and dine type shit. And I would see people if it wasn’t pretty easy. A lot of the people in the industry were like they’re sleeping in by like day three, you know, like even on Turkey hunts and stuff, And you’re like, man, that’s like that’s just like the opposite of how you approach it when it’s hard, right, Like you don’t just give in. But like there is an easy mindset, And I think people look at an entire deer season and they go, you know, like I’m not feeling it today or I don’t think it’s going to be good tomorrow or right on down the line, so like I have time later. But like we talked about with you taking your daughter to her first college visit, like time’s gonna go away, buddy, Like that deer season. That’s like everybody’s super excited that deer season is starting right now for most of us, or you know, if not now, very very soon in the next couple of weeks, and then it’s gonna freaking fly by. It’s gonna be Christmas, that’s gonna be over. And so you don’t you just have to be like really aware of how you’re treating those failures and like how you’re reacting to them. And I know, it’s like easy to sit here and talk about them and be like, you’re like, I’m sure that I threw a temper tantrum on that Oklahoma a few times, Like I’m sure, I’m sure I did, because it was it was rough shit.

00:48:38
Speaker 2: For a while.

00:48:38
Speaker 1: But it’s like, I don’t know, you don’t you just don’t quit, Like it’s just like that’s just like a part of the thing. And I had a conversation with one of my daughters last night because they she started this three on three basketball league and she took a you know, a fairly easy shot early in the first game and missed it, and so then she wouldn’t shoot even when she was under and it’s like she got fed the ball she’s playing post whatever, she should be shooting right there. That’s like there’s no other option for you that’s better than for you to do a little move and just take your shot. And but she’s like worried about missing again. And I was like, honey, when we go deer hunting and we miss one, we don’t stop shooting at them.

00:49:17
Speaker 3: Like shooter going to shoot, you know.

00:49:20
Speaker 1: Like it’s time to just square up and take another one. But it’s easy to get into that mindset of like it’s like I’m going to do less because it’s hard. It’s like that’s just not how that’s not how you’re going to get anywhere with something like bow hunting.

00:49:34
Speaker 2: This is just challenging.

00:49:36
Speaker 3: Yeah, it’s shooter gonna shoot. It’s gona be my mentality with the trad bow this year.

00:49:42
Speaker 2: You know, so I forgot have you have you killed dear with a tread bow before?

00:49:45
Speaker 4: No?

00:49:46
Speaker 2: Okay no.

00:49:47
Speaker 3: I hunted one season with a trad bow very unsuccessfully years ago. And that was kind of what cured me of it a little bit for a long time, was that I was like, I just don’t think this is going to be for me. But my mindset going into this year is just you know, deer that get within range are going to be in trouble of having some carbon flung at them this year, you know. And I’m going to try to start early with you know, as soon as the season comes in from you middle of September, Like I’m going to try to just try to put blood on arrow as my goal, you know, as often as I can. The one thing you mentioned, though, I thought it was kind of funny, was you know, throwing that temper tantrum when things don’t go your way, right cause I think I think sometimes people will misconstruct kind of what we’re talking about, which is like they might take away from this conversation going, man Clinton, Tony got it like like they’re so dialed when they go in like nothing gets them off course, right, That couldn’t be further from the truth. Right. It’s like I’m an abject, like I’m a complete mess a lot of times, you know. But it’s not that you don’t let yourself have those moments, because you have to have those, like when you’re ticked off and you need to cuss and kick something or whatever. You know, there plenty of times I wanted to throw my bow out of the tree or whatever the case is. You know, you give yourself that moment, get it out right, and then right back to business, like, right back to what do I need to do? What’s what’s the next thing I gotta do? Right, But if you don’t give yourself that chance to just kind of lose it, it just festers and just it will just eat at you. Right, you just kind of got to get it out and move on the other part you were kind of talking about where, you know, because you and I’ve talked about this a little bit, you know, probably years ago at this point. But there is a point that I do believe that the more you press, the worse you the worse off you are. Right, I think there is a time and a moment, you know, where you’re better off maybe taking the next morning off right because maybe you’re just fatigued. You’ve been getting after it for however many days, and it’s you know, it’s a little different if you’re on a three day hunt or maybe a five day hunt. But some of the hunts that I go on, and I know that you’ve gone on, that could be two weeks, three weeks, whatever the case is. Where I’m just gonna speak for myself. I can’t do you know, the three thirty four am wake up calls and you know, be up at dark and up late getting back to camp or whatever for three weeks straight and be on my game, so to speak to where I know myself well enough now that you know, I know, I have probably like four consecutive days, maybe a fifth. If it feels real, real good, like I’m close that I can just kind of push myself and get through it. But if it’s not happening, I start to wonder a little bit. By not when I say happening that I’m killing something, but I’m just not in the game. Let’s say, for like four days, I start to question what is it that I’m doing wrong? And is my fatigue starting to play a factor in me making mistakes that I don’t typically make right? And so I try to I have that internal dialogue with myself, you know, to make sure that I’m I’m not the reason why things are getting mucked up, right, or if it is, that I’m recognizing it and I’m fixing it. But if I’m if I’m kind of burning at both ends and I just ain’t got the gas. It’s a lot of times, probably because I’m screwing it up, or I’m just not paying attention, or I didn’t see that deer coming in because I was kind of dozing off, or whatever the case is. That to me is like a sign that, you know what, you’re better off sleeping in a couple extra hours tomorrow and then being ready to go the next three or four days, then getting up early and maybe screwing up the one chance you might get.

00:53:32
Speaker 2: Yeah, man, I’ll tell you.

00:53:34
Speaker 1: One of the lessons that I learned when I started traveling a lot for deer hunting that has really stuck with me is you know, like when you say that and you you know, you kind of learn yourself and you’re like, I got four or five three thirty alarms in me and then I need a I need a morning or whatever. When you go at Western hunting sort of accelerates that learning curve, right Or you’re like when you wake up in that bivsac elk hunting and it’s like days, you learn a lot about yourself, especially if it’s not going very well, like especially if it’s not going to be a bugle fest and you’re like, you’re like that that can teach you a lot about who you really are pretty fast. But one of the things that sort of I guess I didn’t see coming, but I’m so glad I learned it was when I started traveling a lot, especially, you know, I went to a lot of places back then where you didn’t have cell phone receptions, so you were like you were just there, like you had no distraction, you had no real touch point to home, you know, like you know, might be able to go drive somewhere and get reception or whatever, but it was like an effort to do it, like you just couldn’t pick up your phone and do it. What I realized was like I don’t have anything else to do, like literally, like I can. I can devote my entire existence for the next four or five six days to this task or this you know, pursuit or whatever and get into a rhythm where it is so much easier for me in a hunt like that. That’s like a six day hunt to wake up every day and feel pretty good, even even though I’m in a tent, even though like on paper, I shouldn’t sleep as well as I do at home.

00:55:03
Speaker 2: But when I go.

00:55:04
Speaker 1: Out for the day, I don’t have that thought that I could be back in the office working or I could go pick the girls up.

00:55:11
Speaker 2: From school or whatever.

00:55:12
Speaker 1: It’s like when you when you sort of like close that stuff out of your life on those hunts, you just realize like how much you sort of allow life to bleed into this stuff at home.

00:55:23
Speaker 2: And it’s not like I’m not saying that. That’s like I don’t even.

00:55:27
Speaker 1: Know if you can control it really when you’re at home, right, like you can be more aware of it and you know, take care of your home life a little better or whatever and probably smooth that out some. But I think it’s easy to forget or easy to just not acknowledge. You know, you’re sitting here now dreaming about that rut cation you’re going to take right and it’s like, yeah, that’s going to be great. But the odds of you really unplugging for seven days in a row and doing all days sits are pretty low because you’ll be out there at you know, eleven o’clock in the afternoon and it’s day three and you want to take a nap, or you want to go do something else, or it’s too hot, too cold. It’s like really easy to give into that stuff and it’s okay, But like once you learn that, and that’s I mean, that’s one of the things that I preach the travel game a lot, because I think you just can’t learn things about yourself and your hunting style and what you really like without taking yourself out of the environment that you’re very, very used to and just going to try something different. Once like, you learn a lot about yourself and you bring those lessons home with you, you know, to your to your home, farm, your lease, whatever, and like that shit changes how you approach everything.

00:56:32
Speaker 3: I think, Yeah, in one hundred percent, and especially you were dead on with the whole the Western hunt. Yeah, especially when they’re not bugling. How quickly you find out what you’re made of. There’s nothing worse than like multiple days of hiking mountains in silence, you know, to make you to make you go crazy, but you know what you’re talking about, because it’s a real thing, I think, at least for me locally. And last year was a big challenging and test being away from home as much as I was, you know, and living you know, the vagabond white tail lifestyle for as long as I did, because that draw to come home because I was like, man, my girls are only like two hours away. It’s like I could get back home, and I was coming home like in between and like doing stuff with the family and like catching rounds at the gym and like getting a lift in and then running back and like I was fried, not just from the hunting, but the juggling of everything. And so there’s definitely a real, a real benefit to just traveling somewhere and knowing you’re going to be somewhere for six days where you can just kind of lock in because you learned so much, just like like you said about yourself, but you get a chance to really kind of try things that maybe you don’t get the time to try because a lot of times, you know, you you might have an idea of something you want to do locally at home, but if you’re working on a livinging, like I go, I’m gonna hunt Saturday, or I’m gonna hunt Sunday, and then I got to work this day, and then I got this thing with the family this day, and so you’re just kind of go into your bag of a game right where it’s like, what’s the best stuff I can do, And that’s only the only things I’m going to do, But it might not be the thing that’s gonna work best in that scenario, right, And when you travel and you’re gone for six days, it’s like you kind of go through your bag of a game kind of quick. You know, you’re like, I’m good at this, this and this, and I’ve already done those three things. It didn’t work. It’s like, what am I going to do now? And so now you go to like things you’re like, man, I was thinking about doing this one time, said well let’s try it, right, So that’s the it’s like the experimentation part happens. And that’s a real thing. And in I think in pretty much every endeavor of life to a general generally speaking, and I see it a lot in like at the gym, in that practice, because a lot of what you do is you kind of level up and get better, especially if you’re training with people who maybe aren’t as as skilled as you, start to use your B and C game versus them and play with things you wouldn’t do against someone who you kind of test yourself against it, if that makes sense, right. And so at home, I feel like you’re kind of testing yourself because you know it so well, right, So you’re really kind of using your a game stuff when you’re on the road and you’re traveling and the environment is kind of a little bit of an unknown. You go through your a game stuff, but as soon as it doesn’t work, you start to think about what else could I be doing, and you’re way more it’s a lot easier to say, man, it just didn’t work out. That was new terrain, a new state for me. I’ve never been there before, never scouted it. I just showed up and hunted it and it didn’t work out. So you’re a lot more willing to accept that failure of trying new stuff whenever the odds are so stacked against you than you are of saying, man, I tried stuff that I don’t typically do on my home, my farm or the public that I’ve hunted for twenty years and it didn’t work out, Because then you feel a little bit less like I should have this figured out already, right, And so I think it takes a little bit of the pressure off you, which whenever you’ve removed the pressure, I think then you really kind of start to you start to really become the hunter you’re supposed to be. I think, at least I found that in my experience and this year we’re gonna tell. But then there’s the family component of it too, like how do you keep the family happy and the balance like when you’re traveling and you’re out right like that’s a touchy thing, and I’m gonna I’m going to test the limits this year, I think because last year was a lot right for the family. I was gone for like whatever it was, like thirty five days. I slept in the truck and trailer. And then this year, my plan is to head out to the Midwest. I think like the last week of I’ll be there by the last week of October. So I’ll leave like the third week sometime the end of the third week of October, and my plan is to not come back until I kill something or Thanksgiving, whichever happens first. So it’s I’m gonna.

01:00:33
Speaker 2: Work out shape, buddy.

01:00:35
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, yeah, So we’ll uh that’s the that’s the one perk of the of the daughter having her driver’s license and being able to get herself to point A to point B, you know, like she can do all that stuff herself now.

01:00:46
Speaker 3: So so we’ll see, we’ll see, you know, we’ll see how quickly I get a phone call, like hey, when you’re coming back. We’ll see how that plays out.

01:00:52
Speaker 1: I want, I want to back up a second, because you know, when you’re talking about going on the road, and you know, like AGG game doesn’t work out, it’s time to dip into the B game, because whatever, what else are you going to do?

01:01:04
Speaker 2: Right? I think I think that.

01:01:08
Speaker 1: That is like one of the most understated things about why traveling to hunts beneficial. And you know, I say this all the time, right, like, you don’t have to go out of state. You don’t have to draw that I would tag like I look at my home state of Minnesota, in the different environments I can hunt in just in Minnesota, you know, I can go up into the right and hunt big wood stuff where there isn’t an egg field for twenty five miles.

01:01:32
Speaker 2: I can go.

01:01:33
Speaker 1: Left, you know, north, south, whatever and hit grassland and prairie potholes and cattails and places, you know, counties where there aren’t you know, a.

01:01:43
Speaker 2: Whole section of trees in the whole freaking county.

01:01:45
Speaker 1: Right, I go to the southeast, and it’s like I have two point zero with worst season structure. When you go do something where you don’t have the option to go home, right, when you go do whatever trip that is is a long weekend somewhere or something like that. Not only do you do what you said where you’re like, I’m gonna just I’m gonna be gaming the shit because I don’t know what else to do and I have to do something. You also don’t have that option to not go. And this is you know, I write about this and I talk about this all the time, where like modern white tail hunting advice, a lot of it is predicated on not hunting. You’re being smart by not hunting now. You’re being smart by not hunting mornings in the early season. You’re being smart by not pushing it in mid October when you can just wait. And it’s just not good advice for a lot of people. For some people. If you if you your primary goal is to kill a big one, that is great advice. If you have the farm and that’s what you want, that’s great. But for a lot of people who are like, I’m not I’m not killing the kind of deer I want, Like, it’s probably more important for you to get the woodsmanship and go than it is for you to follow somebody else’s playbook who has an amazing phon and they can run that strategy, right, So I think about that, like when I go on the road and it’s like eighty five degrees and the winds out of the east and everything sucks right, Like where if you’re at home, you’re like, I am not hunting today, Like I’m going to do something else with my time. They’ll be more productive. When you’re on the road, you can’t. So you’re like, Okay, how do I figure it out? Do I go sit water?

01:03:23
Speaker 2: What do I do?

01:03:24
Speaker 1: And you know as well as I do. I mean fifty percent of the time you’re out there, you hit those kind of conditions where it’s like, man, if I was at home, I’d have a pretty good reason to not do this. But when I’m on the road and I have four or five six days, I don’t have that choice. So I got to make every sit count and every day count. So you’re like, how do I make the most of this shitty situation or this weather that’s just working against me. When you’re in a situation where that’s like that’s just what you have to do, Like you don’t have the choice to go back and work and get a few hours in or whatever, it’s like you really figure out out a lot about deer and about nature and about other hunters and how they’re probably like the locals who are in the place that you traveled to aren’t going to go when it’s eighty five degrees in the winds out of the east, right, You’re gonna be the only one out there, and all of a sudden you learn about stuff like that. And I think for me personally, when I started traveling a lot, hunting a lot of public land, I think not having an out was maybe the best thing that happened to me.

01:04:26
Speaker 2: I mean, there’s like.

01:04:26
Speaker 1: A lot of benefits to just showing up and being like, I’m going to learn a new environment. I’m gonna learn the deer here, and I’m gonna figure it out. All that stuff’s great, But also just not having an out is huge because then you’re like, I mean, you know, like I’m kind of known for hunting water a lot, right, I’m like, well, one of the reasons I hunt water a lot is because I’m in a lot of places where it’s like I don’t know what else to do here that would maybe be as consistent as deer’s thirst, right, So, like you know, like it’s not like some grand like I don’t have some like grand strategy. Like a lot of times I’m like struggling and I want to be around deer, and that’s just one of the easier ways to do it, especially on public where the food source thing is often not as cut and dry, right, Like, if I’m on a public land somewhere that has fields, I’m almost never going to hunt them because everybody’s going to hunt them. So then you’re like, well, am i going to tap into this acorn drop or I’m going to tap into this browse thing or is like something that could work very well if you can find it, but also could be really hard to find and work in a short amount of time. So I’m like, well, almost waters easier, so I’m going to start here. And oftentimes when you’re doing that, you’re like, oh man, the acorn drop is here. Now I have water and food. Now I have something. But just not having that out is huge.

01:05:47
Speaker 3: Yeah, not having the out is I mean if it forces your hand. Right when we were talking you know earlier about the discipline, it kind of forces the discipline to a degree, right, But the one thing you kind of talk talking about, well, you know, people will make an excuse, you know, or it’ll be the reason why they don’t go hunt that day because of the bad weather or it’s warm, or whatever the case is. But the one thing that’s tried and true that if you talk to anybody that’s you know, a good hunter and killed a lot of deer, however you want to qualify it, the one thing the wall tell you for the most part is time and seat. If you want to kill deer like of whatever caliber, the more time you spend trying to do it, the more likely you are to do it right because there’s those opportunities and those encounters are are super fleeting, and you never know when they’re going to happen. Plenty of people have killed your own bad weather days or warm weather days or whatever the case is. I’m a great example, you know, Like I’ve the biggest one I’ve killed was on an eighty degree day right where it’s like most people probably wouldn’t hunted that day. But I think the one thing too, talking about mindset a little bit, that you know, I try to I try to do I’m you and I are similar in the way that like our minds like we’re both like we’re both slightly pessimistic because we’re very pragmatic, right, like, like I see things for what they are, and I don’t make them out to be more or less than what they are, right, But there is a little bit of there. There are times, and it is helpful when you can start to fool yourself a little bit in being more positive because it because it does help. And so especially on those travel hunts when I’m not getting the weather that I want and the plan that I have isn’t playing out because I’m either I’m getting more rain than I expected, or I’m getting more hot weather than I expected, or I’m getting the wrong wind or whatever the case is. Is that you know, it’s just like the you’re when you’re not looking for something is whenever the thing that you really really want smacks you in the face. Right. And so what I try to do is I try to think about, Okay, this is crap situation is how I think has how I understand it in my pragmatic brain, right, But I try to fool myself and say, how do I make this How do I make this situation great? Like what would be the thing that like would make this situation killer?

01:07:56
Speaker 2: Right?

01:07:56
Speaker 3: If it’s hot to your point, like, man, this is the best day to hunt water, best day right to do that? Right? You know I’m not I’m getting super high winds, right, And you know people have done studies and deer typically like that, like sweet swat that ten to fifteen, ten to seventeen mile per hour windish you know, situation. But you’re you’re in the planes and you’re getting thirty mile p hour rippers for the next four days. Right, It’s like, it’s like, awesome, how can I like, what is the best situation for this thirty mile per hour win for the next four days? It’s like, well, probably spot and stock them would be really good if you can find one bedt if they don’t want to move, you’ve got the wind noise to your advantage, right, and you’ve got a constant win that you can now play, right. And so I try to Maybe it’s as I get older, I try to look I try to not be so pessimistic, right, and I try to find like what is the opportunity in this, And a lot of times that’s where you find your success because it’s it forces you to think a little bit outside the box. The deer maybe having to do something different than what they typically are doing, right. You’re having to do something outside of what you typically want to do right. And a lot of times, man, you know, whether it’s deer hunting or sports or whatever, that kind of unexpected thing is kind of where the magic happens a lot of times, right, And it’s not a mystery as to why, but it’s I really think it’s because you’ve kind of forced, you know, the situation out of your comfort zone and you had to kind of remove the pressure and just kind of let it come to you, right, however it’s going to come to you, right. Football game last night, I know I used two football analogies, but like the Ravens and the Bills, right, like the whole Like I’ve went to begs. I thought the game was over, and I’ll wake up this morning and find that they kicked the field goal with time expiring to win the game, and I’m like, dude, like that fumble and like the whole ending of it, Like I thought it was a crap ending to a game, but ended up being awesome. Right, But they made it that way, right, Opportunities fell, they made the best of it, you know, and they and they had to comeback, you know, come back win. And so I think that you know, when you’re hunting, when you kind of have those unideal circumstances, if you just take a second step back and reframe it to what does this situation present the best for and then just go do that thing. Whether you’ve done it before or not, whether you’re experienced at it or not, doesn’t matter, because the worst case scenario is you’re going to learn something and now you’ve got that back pocket from wherever you have that happen again, right, and then you’re a little bit more confident the second time, best case scenario, you have to feel goal with time expiring situation.

01:10:27
Speaker 2: Right, dude.

01:10:28
Speaker 1: So that podcast I brought up with Alex Hanold on Huberman’s podcast, Alex talked about how.

01:10:36
Speaker 2: I think he’s forty now.

01:10:39
Speaker 1: He talked about how he doesn’t have a lot of surprises climbing anymore, but when he does, they’re awesome. And so it’s like some move that he didn’t think he could make, or some pitch that he did a certain way or something, and he said, you know, when I was younger, like a lot of that shit happened and it was awesome, and it like fueled me now I’m more confident. You know, he’s been there, done that, but he’s like that still happens, and you could hear it, like like that’s still driving him. And I think so often we look at we look at like white tail hunting is like there’s a way to do this where there won’t be any surprises anymore, right, Like you’ll figure out the program to scout, or you’ll figure out, you know, a bed hunting strategy or a water hunting strategy, or you’ll get that property that you can curate until they come out Halloween every year or whatever.

01:11:26
Speaker 2: But that’s fine, but like the surprises are what’s fun.

01:11:30
Speaker 3: Right.

01:11:31
Speaker 1: It’s like when you do go and it’s eighty degrees because you have to because you’re twenty seven hours from home and you have nothing else to do, and you kill that dear or see it. That’s like the fuel, right, and like we’re it’s hard to like look for that, Like you can’t just like you can’t structure your hunting really to find that other than just going new places or trying the traad boat thing or something like that. Like there are ways to do it, but like we often retreat from that instead of just being like well, here’s the here’s the scenario. I want to hunt. I have time, so now I’m going to do something. And like the more that you just do that, like the more that you hunt. And I I know this is I’m beating a dead horse here, but like that’s one of the things that bothers me so much about that advice of staying out, staying out, staying safe just to kill a big one. It’s like your cost, You’re gonna cost yourself. Like in the short term, you might kill a big one doing that, and that might be like a that like might be a strategic means to an end, right, but overall, it’s not making you a better hunter to spend less time in the woods. Like it’s just not like you might be a more successful hunter. And and I’m not saying, like, you know, picking your shots isn’t a good idea. Like a lot of us, even when we can hunt, we do play it safe in certain situations, Like I know that I will, especially if I’m on the road and i only have like one thing going on, like if the wind’s not right or something, I’m gonna sand bag it and play back. But I’m gonna do something that I think will work still, right, you know, and then you’re gonna wait for the wind to turn or the weather or whatever. And you know, sitting that two three days out, but you’re still in the game doing something, and it’s like when you’re when you’re doing that, you’re like, I’m being smart by not going there, but I’m also being smart by going here because they can’t go there. And you know, like sometimes you surprise yourself and you kill vig Onun and you’re like, well, I didn’t need that other shit, you.

01:13:15
Speaker 3: Know, right, Yeah, I think the surprise factor is I think is is key. And for me, the further I go, you know, in this in this journey, the more it becomes, the more it becomes important, you know. I think going back to the trad bow thing, right, because you’re kind of you know, you mentioned like you add things to it to kind of like get the excitement, get the new experience, get the surprise, right, And I would say there’s some of that with the with the trad bow. I think the the unintended consequence I think for me and Carry and maybe not unintended, maybe it was slightly intended, is that I have to be a better hunter to carry that thing, ye, right, Like I got to get closer than I’ve ever gotten before. My shot selection has to be better than it’s ever ever been before. Right, And those to me are like the exciting things, right, Like it’s like, how am I going to pull this off? Like I don’t know yet, you know what I mean, Like, I’m not sure how it’s going to play out, you know, to your point, it’s you know that the one that I killed in the planes, that was a good one, right, Like you know some people might want to try but go back and replicate that, right, And so it’s like, how do I just continue to do that over and over again? Right? But that’s not like to me, that’s not the that’s not the part that gets me excited. What gets me excited is how do I make this different? How do I how do I get the surprise factor again? Right? Even if I’m hunting the same general areas, you’re the same units or whatever the case is. You know, for me, it was, well, let’s try to go back and do that now, and let’s do it with a long bow. Right, Let’s see if we can do that, Like, because if I do be the surprise of my lifetime, you know what I mean, like, if I can decoy one in of that caliber and kill it with a long bow and get like get sub fifteen you know, sub fifteen yards, Like that’s bananas, Like that will be just an incredible experience and I will be. You will not find a person more surprised than me if it happens.

01:15:10
Speaker 1: I’ve killed a couple with trad bows in my life and it has always been freaking awesome because of that. Because you’re like, yeah, it’s just it is hard to describe the level of.

01:15:21
Speaker 2: Disadvantage it is when you’re used to using a compound.

01:15:24
Speaker 1: I mean, it’s just it is a huge disadvantage, not only just everybody thinks like you know, shot distance, but also just like maneuvering in a tree, maneuvering in a ground line, anything like that. When you think about a you know, an average compound that might maybe like twenty nine to thirty three inches axled axle, and then you grab a freaking re curve, then you grab a long bow, and now you’re at like sixty inches or whatever they are. You’re like, it’s a totally different thing. Like you can’t just shoot behind your tree now, you know, Like you can’t just set up on the ground here and have your limb tips clear in everything. It’s like a different thing, and it’s it feels pretty freaking good. Yeah, buddy, we are out of time here. As always, it’s so much fun talking to you. Where can people listen to you spit and knowledge every week?

01:16:12
Speaker 3: Yeah, it’s just truths from the stand everywhere, YouTube, Spotify, Apple, you know, wherever you wherever you get your white tail information. I’m probably there somewhere, so it’s all those places.

01:16:22
Speaker 2: Christmas socials are the same, social.

01:16:24
Speaker 3: The same, just truth from the stand. On Instagram, I’m not really on Facebook much. I don’t do the TikTok thing. I don’t have any fancy dances. So that’s pretty much why.

01:16:32
Speaker 2: You’re not Mark.

01:16:35
Speaker 1: I appreciate it, buddy, have a great one, are you too. That’s it for this week, folks. Make sure to tune in every week for more white tail goodness. I’m your guest host, Tony Peterson and this has been the Wired to Hunt podcast, which is brought to you by First Light.

01:16:51
Speaker 3: Now.

01:16:51
Speaker 1: If you want some more white tail content, feel free to head on over to the medeater dot com to get your fill. And while you’re there, you know, check out all the other podcasts in the video series and the articles. All of the content we drop every week. We have tons of stuff going up, and maybe you want to treat yourself a little bit, head on over to the med Eater store that’s there as well. But as always, no matter what you do, thank you so much for supporting us. We truly appreciate it. It means the world to us to have the audience that we do, so thank you for that.