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

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
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,

(00:29):
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

(00:53):
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.

Speaker 2 (01:12):
All right.

Speaker 1 (01:14):
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

(01:35):
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.

Speaker 3 (01:54):
You're looking good, dude, not looking at a day over
fifty three.

Speaker 2 (01:58):
And now I'm just kidding, super super man.

Speaker 3 (02:04):
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,

(02:26):
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.

Speaker 1 (02:37):
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.

Speaker 3 (02:52):
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

(03:12):
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

(03:33):
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,

(03:54):
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?

(04:16):
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

(04:37):
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

(04:58):
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.

Speaker 2 (05:16):
Part, right, you know.

Speaker 1 (05:18):
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.

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

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

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

Speaker 1 (05:53):
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

(06:13):
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,

(06:34):
so the season was about over. But that following September,
you know, I remember having like a lot of anxiety
and being like, man.

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

Speaker 1 (06:44):
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.

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

Speaker 1 (06:59):
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.

(07:20):
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.

Speaker 2 (07:35):
For a while.

Speaker 1 (07:35):
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

(07:57):
changed how I viewed my free time and how I
had my free time to use.

Speaker 2 (08:03):
And it's like a weird thing, you know.

Speaker 1 (08:05):
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

(08:26):
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.

Speaker 2 (08:34):
A busy guy.

Speaker 1 (08:35):
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.

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

Speaker 3 (08:45):
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

(09:07):
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.

(09:28):
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

(09:51):
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

(10:11):
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

(10:34):
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,

(10:55):
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,

(11:16):
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

(11:37):
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

(11:58):
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

(12:20):
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

(12:41):
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?

(13:03):
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

(13:24):
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.

Speaker 1 (13:29):
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,

(13:51):
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,

(14:11):
like I want to kill big Bucks, and that's the
that's the direction I want to go.

Speaker 2 (14:15):
And it's like, yeah, that's the direction everybody wants to go.

Speaker 1 (14:17):
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.

(14:38):
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.

Speaker 2 (14:48):
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?

Speaker 1 (15:01):
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.

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

Speaker 1 (15:19):
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

(15:43):
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.

Speaker 2 (16:02):
It's like.

Speaker 1 (16:03):
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.

(16:25):
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

(16:46):
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.

Speaker 3 (16:57):
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,

(17:19):
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

(17:41):
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

(18:01):
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

(18:25):
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

(18:46):
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

(19:09):
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

(19:29):
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

(19:51):
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?

Speaker 2 (20:04):
Right?

Speaker 3 (20:04):
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

(20:26):
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?

Speaker 2 (20:42):
Right?

Speaker 3 (20:44):
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

(21:04):
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

(21:27):
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,

(21:48):
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

(22:08):
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.

Speaker 1 (22:18):
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

(22:38):
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,

(23:02):
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

(23:24):
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

(23:47):
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.

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

Speaker 1 (23:56):
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,

(24:18):
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

(24:40):
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

(25:01):
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.

Speaker 2 (25:15):
And he's like, yeah, absolutely.

Speaker 1 (25:16):
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

(25:37):
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

(26:01):
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

(26:22):
arc at all. Like you still have to follow your
own path.

Speaker 3 (26:36):
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.

(27:00):
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

(27:21):
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,

(27:42):
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

(28:05):
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

(28:26):
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.

(28:49):
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

(29:11):
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

(29:34):
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

(29:56):
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

(30:19):
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.

(30:39):
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

(31:00):
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

(31:22):
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,

(31:42):
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.

Speaker 2 (32:04):
You know.

Speaker 3 (32:05):
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

(32:27):
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?

Speaker 2 (32:35):
Right?

Speaker 3 (32:36):
And that's ultimately how you level up?

Speaker 2 (32:38):
Right.

Speaker 3 (32:38):
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.

Speaker 1 (32:58):
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

(33:21):
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.

Speaker 2 (33:45):
Like I think about this.

Speaker 1 (33:46):
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?

Speaker 2 (34:01):
And I'm like, well, you have a whole.

Speaker 1 (34:02):
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.

Speaker 2 (34:08):
I'm like, that's just that's just bowhunting, man like.

Speaker 1 (34:12):
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.

Speaker 2 (34:25):
And when you when you're you know, at home.

Speaker 1 (34:28):
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.

Speaker 2 (34:34):
Less likely outcome.

Speaker 1 (34:35):
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

(34:55):
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,

(35:17):
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.

Speaker 3 (35:27):
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.

Speaker 1 (35:33):
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

(35:55):
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

(36:16):
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

(36:39):
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

(37:02):
you that about all of these things and just makes
it like way more palatable overall.

Speaker 3 (37:09):
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

(37:30):
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.

Speaker 4 (37:51):
Right.

Speaker 3 (37:51):
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,

(38:15):
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

(38:35):
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

(38:58):
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.

(39:20):
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

(39:42):
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

(40:03):
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

(40:26):
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

(40:48):
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

(41:08):
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

(41:29):
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

(41:51):
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.

Speaker 1 (41:59):
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,

(42:22):
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

(42:42):
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

(43:04):
down to southern Oklahoma, which is a haul from central Minnesota.
Right went to a place that I had pinned all
my hopes on.

Speaker 2 (43:14):
You know.

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

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

Speaker 1 (43:21):
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.

(43:44):
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,

(44:05):
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

(44:27):
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

(44:48):
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.

(45:09):
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.

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

Speaker 1 (45:23):
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

(45:45):
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

(46:07):
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

(46:29):
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

(46:50):
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,

(47:13):
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

(47:36):
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,

(47:58):
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

(48:21):
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.

Speaker 2 (48:38):
For a while.

Speaker 1 (48:38):
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

(49:01):
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.

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

Speaker 1 (49:20):
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.

Speaker 2 (49:34):
This is just challenging.

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

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

Speaker 4 (49:45):
No?

Speaker 2 (49:46):
Okay no.

Speaker 3 (49:47):
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

(50:09):
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

(50:29):
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

(50:51):
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,

(51:13):
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

(51:34):
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,

(51:56):
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,

(52:21):
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

(52:44):
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,

(53:06):
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

(53:27):
to go the next three or four days, then getting
up early and maybe screwing up the one chance you
might get.

Speaker 2 (53:32):
Yeah, man, I'll tell you.

Speaker 1 (53:34):
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

(53:56):
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

(54:16):
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.

(54:36):
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,

(54:59):
even though like on paper, I shouldn't sleep as well
as I do at home.

Speaker 2 (55:03):
But when I go.

Speaker 1 (55:04):
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.

Speaker 2 (55:11):
From school or whatever.

Speaker 1 (55:12):
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.

Speaker 2 (55:23):
And it's not like I'm not saying that. That's like
I don't even.

Speaker 1 (55:27):
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

(55:49):
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

(56:09):
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

(56:31):
approach everything.

Speaker 3 (56:32):
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

(56:55):
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

(57:15):
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

(57:36):
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

(57:58):
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

(58:19):
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,

(58:39):
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

(59:00):
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

(59:22):
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

(59:44):
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

(01:00:04):
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

(01:00:26):
my plan is to not come back until I kill
something or Thanksgiving, whichever happens first. So it's I'm gonna.

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

Speaker 4 (01:00:35):
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.

Speaker 3 (01:00:46):
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.

Speaker 1 (01:00:52):
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?

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

Speaker 1 (01:01:08):
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

(01:01:28):
an egg field for twenty five miles.

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

Speaker 1 (01:01:33):
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.

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

Speaker 1 (01:01:45):
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

(01:02:07):
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

(01:02:27):
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

(01:02:47):
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

(01:03:08):
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?

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

Speaker 1 (01:03:24):
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

(01:03:45):
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

(01:04:05):
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.

Speaker 2 (01:04:26):
I mean, there's like.

Speaker 1 (01:04:26):
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

(01:04:47):
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

(01:05:08):
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

(01:05:31):
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.

Speaker 3 (01:05:47):
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

(01:06:09):
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

(01:06:30):
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

(01:06:51):
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

(01:07:14):
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

(01:07:35):
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?

Speaker 2 (01:07:56):
Right?

Speaker 3 (01:07:56):
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,

(01:08:18):
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,

(01:08:39):
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,

(01:09:04):
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.

(01:09:26):
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,

(01:09:47):
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

(01:10:09):
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.

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

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

Speaker 2 (01:10:36):
I think he's forty now.

Speaker 1 (01:10:39):
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

(01:11:04):
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.

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

Speaker 3 (01:11:30):
Right.

Speaker 1 (01:11:31):
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.

(01:11:52):
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

(01:12:13):
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

(01:12:34):
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

(01:12:56):
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.

Speaker 3 (01:13:15):
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

(01:13:36):
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

(01:13:59):
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

(01:14:19):
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,

(01:14:42):
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

(01:15:04):
experience and I will be. You will not find a
person more surprised than me if it happens.

Speaker 1 (01:15:10):
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.

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

Speaker 1 (01:15:24):
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,

(01:15:45):
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

(01:16:06):
fun talking to you. Where can people listen to you
spit and knowledge every week?

Speaker 3 (01:16:12):
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.

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

Speaker 3 (01:16:24):
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.

Speaker 2 (01:16:32):
You're not Mark.

Speaker 1 (01:16:35):
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.

Speaker 3 (01:16:51):
Now.

Speaker 1 (01:16:51):
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

(01:17:14):
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.

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Mark Kenyon

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