Cameron Hanes - Keep Hammering Collective - KHC 052 - Hunting Shape?

Episode Date: December 31, 2023

Follow along: Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/cameronrhanes Twitter: https://twitter.com/cameronhanes Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/camhanes/ Website: https://www.cameronhanes.com Thank you to our sponsors: Montana Knife Company: https://www.montanaknifecompany.com/  Leupold: https://www.leupold.com/ Ketone IQ: https://hvmn.com/CAM use code CAM for 20% Hoyt: http://bit.ly/3Zdamyv  MTN OPS Supplements: https://mtnops.com/ Use code KEEPHAMMERING for 20% off and Free Shipping Black Rifle: https://www.blackriflecoffee.com/ Use code KEEPHAMMERING for 20% your first Order Bass Pro/Cabelas: https://www.basspro.com Timestamps: 0:00:00 Intro 0:03:20 Running Marathons to Get in Shape for Hunting 0:05:49 Improving Your Odds: “Train Hard. Hunt Easy.” 0:13:38 Being Aware of Risks 0:14:31 “Rawhide and Sinew” Article 0:19:31 Fred Bear 0:20:41 Staying in Shape for Hunting 0:22:39 Cam’s Eagle Cap Bear 0:25:51 “Hunting With the Bow and Arrow” by Saxton Pope 0:30:03 A Mindset for Always Being Ready for Anything 0:34:35 No Limits & An Iron Mindset 0:36:04 Outro

Every step I take, I move my truth. Every time they tell me stop, I use. Every comment hate that makes my feel, gather up my energy and boom. I hear them talking, saying the way that I move is so reckless. That is a part of my mind I've been blessed with. Giving my blood so I am relentless. Welcome to the Keep Hammering Collective. This is another solo podcast.

The topic of this discussion will be how good of shape do you need to be in to kill an elk? So I have a lot of history in this category of knowledge or mindset or approach, I guess. How good a shape do you need to be in? You know, it depends, I guess. If you're going to rely on luck, which happens every year, I mean, there's guys who are driving down an old logging road or backcountry road. if they're rifle hunting, they, you know, see an animal off the road. I said elk, but this could go for deer or elk, whatever the case, whatever you're hunting. But I pretty much focus on elk.

But this could be for anything. Driving on the road, see an animal, jump out, shoot it. That could happen. That happens every year. Those type of people are not going to have consistent success. So the fact is to do something like that, you don't need to be in great physical condition. You need to be able to drive and shoot. So those are the two things.

Bow hunting, it's going to be a little tougher. Those animals usually won't get you that opportunity, but they could. And it happens every year. So, yeah, I guess you don't have to be in any sort of physical condition. As long as you know your weapon and you can shoot straight, you could potentially kill, right? So, you know, over the years, this might seem weird now, but back when I first started coming into the scene and writing articles and kind of my journey developed from, I would, I just wanted to shoot my bow and bow and bohun. I thought it was cool and be in the mountains. And I didn't really,

you know, we did 10Ks and we kind of trained a little bit, but nothing crazy. Then I started hunting the wilderness and I was like, man, I need to be in better shape to do this. This is really hard, especially the way I hunted with a Bivie style setup, which means Bivouac camp on your back. So you're taking all your food, all your water, all your survival gear, tent, sleeping pads, sleeping bag, the whole thing. Loaded down at the beginning of, say, a seven to 10 day hunt, you're going to have two pounds of food pretty much a day. So just roughly, if you're going to be out there for seven days, that's 14 pounds of food. So 14 pounds of food, if you have, you know, say half gallon of water, there's four more pounds, right? So now we're up, what, 18, almost 20 pounds right there.

And then you have all your gear. So you could have potentially about 50 pounds. And that's every step of the way in the mountains, in the wilderness. And the way I hunted is I would keep my camp with me all the time. I could just wherever it got into elk. If it got dark, I'd just, you know, bed down there. And right back in the morning, I'd be ready to go. But to do that, I had to be in shape.

So I started running marathons. I started, well, first half marathons and marathons and ultramarathons. And then I would write about, hey, I'm, you know, getting in shape for the wilderness, unforgiving country. It's, you know, there's no easy kills back there. And it, you know, got a lot of pushback. So again, now in this day and age, it's pretty common knowledge that you should train for hunting. But back then, this is 25 years ago, you know, people didn't like being told that you need to run a marathon.

Even though I never said you need to run a marathon, I just said that's what I did. But people took it to be like, oh, this guy is saying you need to run a marathon to kill an elk, which I had never once said. All I'm saying is it's not going to hurt. It's not going to hurt being in great shape. So I got a lot of pushback on that just because the hunting community is, you know, steeped in tradition. There's a lot of badasses out there that don't run that can get around on the mountains. You know, people will point to my buddy Roy and they say, well, you know, Roy wasn't running any marathons. And I would, I would agree.

I mean, he did a 5K up during the I did a rod. I think it was like minus 20 and he had a t-shirt in a jacket. So he did a 5K. But what I would say to people to say that Roy did it and was one of the best to ever do it and he never ran, the only thing I'll say to that is you're not Roy. Nobody is Roy. Roy was one of one. And I could say pretty much every person listening or watching this will never, ever be as tough as Roy,

as capable as Roy, have as much woodsmanship as Roy, and be able to read animals and make decisions and troubleshoot and do everything that a successful hunter needs to do. 99% of people watching this will never be to that level. So do not compare yourself to a freak of nature

who know he didn't run marathons, but he was incredible in every other sense of the word. I cannot say enough good things about the guys over a Montana Knife Company. I've been using their knives in the mountains for the past three years, and I've been nothing but impressed. They're an American company, their knives are made here in America, and their master bladesmith, Josh Smith, is one of the best knife makers out there. Their culinary cutlery is some of the best I've used, even though I don't use it because I don't cook,

but I do use it when I'm eating. But I do know any cook would likely love them in their kitchen. I'm proud to partner with the guys over Montana Knife, and looking forward to some cool new products who are working on collaborating on in the coming months. head over to montananana knife company.com today and use code cam for free shipping so as long as we're taking out the outliers let's just look at the big picture um yeah you could get lucky yeah you could be roy okay neither one of those things are probably going to happen so how can we best improve our odds in the mountains well as we know the mountains they don't lie they're not

going to give you a break. They're not going to reward, oh, this guy, he's been, you know, he really wants this. Let's give him a gift, right? The animals aren't going to sacrifice themselves. They're not going to commit suicide by standing 20 yards from you and saying, you know, hit me right here. It's not going to happen. So how do we earn those opportunities? For me, it's, I need to be, I need to, I came up with this moniker and it sort of was based on an old fight magazine and it said train train hard fight easy so that was like you train so hard to prepare for your fight that the fight was easy in comparison so i put a twist on that and i would say train hard hunt easy so my goal was to make my training harder than my hunt so any challenge

during the course of my hunt was going to be easy in comparison it was like yeah i've overcome more than this or it's not even i didn't even have to talk myself into it it was just It was just a non-factor. I would hunt. And what I realized is, man, if I could just focus on the hunt, just me and the animal and getting within bow range and then making a perfect shot on an animal and not care about all these other factors that weigh in on most hunters, being fatigued, feet torn up, having blisters, being out of water, being out of food, being homesick, being fearful,

all these things that really sabotage a lot of backcountry hunters. If I could make those a non-factor and it was just me versus the animal, I'm going to have a lot of success. And I did. I mean, I don't know. I've killed, I've been bo hunting for 35 years now and, you know, killed over 30 bulls here in Oregon. And it was public land, wilderness, do it yourself. There's no special breaks. So how do you kill 30 bulls in one state that's not known for great hunting?

That's over-the-counter tags. It's public land. How does that happen? That happens by putting the odds in your favor. How do you put the odds in your favor? Do you prepare more than anyone else? And that was one thing that kind of caught me off guard is I was looking for people. And I was like, man, if I'm getting so much pushback on this, are others not training for the hunt?

Are they just relying on sheer toughness? which that can work because I know some badasses who are just tough. Maybe they work in the woods. Maybe they're loggers. Maybe they're, you know, if you go out and cut firewood for yourself, you know, like a lot of guys do back in the day, especially with wood burning stoves, just cutting wood, loading wood, splitting wood, hauling wood in for the wood stove in a wheelbarrow, carrying it in, arm loaded, you will be tough. That type of person can go into the mounds.

and have a lot of success. And one thing I do wanna mention is being in great physical condition will never offset knowledge of the animals you're hunting. Will never offset being comfortable in remote country by yourself. It will never, it'll never replace it. But if you have all those things, if you have these years of experience and all these hard lessons learned,

and you're an elite athlete or maybe train for endurance or not even elite, but you can run a marathon. You can cover 26 miles in a day. Man, you're going to be way ahead of most people because if you put all those things in your favor, the woodsmanship, being close to animals and being able to read body language of an animal, how they communicate, whether they're spooked, halfway alert, calm, feeding, all these things. It's just you learn that by being close to the animals. And then also you have, you have good gear. You are prepared mentally and physically.

You've done all the little things, plus all the things that are huge, the woodsmanship and everything else, man, you're going to be, you'll be undeniable in the mountains. And so that's always the goal. And people might say, well, you know, I think, I can't remember. I think Huberman asked me if I was the first one to talk about physical conditioning and being prepared for the Bowhunting Mountains, and no, it's for sure not.

I was the guy who maybe got more attention, good and bad for it because I talked about it. And I wrote about what I did. And I'm never telling anybody what to do. I actually don't care what you do. It doesn't impact me at all. all, right? But I'm just telling you what I do and how it's helped me. But no, I wasn't the first. There was, man, legendary bow hunters realized a long time ago that the better physical condition you're in, the more success you're going to have. Dwight Shoe was like the generation right

before me, one of my bohunting heroes, Randy Olmer, same thing. Larry Jones, who is, I think probably 80. He still lives here in town. I watched elk fever with him and Dwight Shoe hundreds of times growing up, you know, when I was a new bowhunter in the late 80s and early 90s. And he still's out here on the bike path getting around. So these guys knew that, yeah, the better shape you're in, you're going to be able to make a mark, right? And that's what we all want to do. We, you know, are we, well, at least I want to do. There's some people who bow hunt and it's just a way to get or just an excuse to get away. It's a nice vacation. maybe a break from the old lady.

Maybe it's just getting, you know, you need to decompress from work or the pressure of society or bills or whatever else. So those guys, yeah, get out there. Reset yourself. It's all good. If you kill something, sweet. But for some people, they want that success.

It's something they think about every single day of the years. It's what I think about every day of the year. So for those type of people, there can be no stone left unturned. And the physical conditioning, the being capable, to being confident is a big stone that we can put it in our favor. And we take a little ketone shot real. I don't want to lose my mental acuity here. So let's hit the ketone.

You know, it's kind of like vegetables, I guess. Vegetables suck, but they're good for you. That has definitely a unique taste, but I think it does help me. So, and speaking of all that, you know, I've taken this conditioning thing to, again, train hard, hunt easy. I'm never going to have to run 240 miles on a hunt, and I've done that, right? And that teaches you a lot about yourself, a lot about surviving and pushing forward when times are miserable. You know, it took me 78 hours, about two hours asleep to cover that distance, 240 miles. and it was rough.

Never had a hunt even close to that as far as challenge goes. So that's a good thing, right? Most people aren't going to die on a Moab 240 type race, but on the hunt, you can fall. There are risks out there. There's predators, there's everything else. You've got to be aware all the time. So it's a little bit different in a race.

you can just kind of slog through. You don't have to be at your very sharpest. So on a hunt, I'm not going to push like I did for three days, but I have to be sharper because there's risks out there. The mounds are unforgiving. And yeah, so it's going to be a little easier physically, but the focus needs to be at a higher level. And I've just found that they both help me.

You know, a long hunt teaches me lessons. I can use on a long race, a long race teaches me things I can use on a long hunt. I did my solo podcast the other day. I've done three of them now. One hasn't come out yet. It's about the legend of Roy Roth, and it's going to come out in this one here. But I've read excerpts from, you know, Bowhunter magazine, which I had a column for for a while till I got, wore out my welcome there.

But it was called Bleed. And I like referencing some of those writings here. And I got another one too about Roy, which we're going to hit on later. But it's, you know, when you word things perfectly in an article, it's really easy to reflect back on it. So I was thinking about this topic today. And I wanted to pull up this article here. So the article I wrote for my bleed column, and this was back in, when was this? This was October of 2010.

So, what are we? 14 years ago now. I was getting a lot of hate for my marathon talk back in these days. The title of the article is called Rahide and sine you. And that'll make more sense further on in the article. But it says, Rahad and sine you with the subtitle, our bodies and minds are tools to use in the woods

and training hones these tools, simple as that. So it's no different than your bow, then your broadheads, then your knife, then your tent, and those are, those are tools. Those are tools that are going to assist you in the hunt. If we look at our body as a tool, the more we hone it, the more we put an edge on it, the more effective it's going to be. So our body is a tool, right?

It might be the most important tool. Our mind is a separate tool. So body and mind, they can go together. They can combat against each other sometimes. You know how it goes. It's like they say your mind won't quit your body will. Your body won't quit your mind will, whatever. Those are both true.

So anyway, different tools. We want to hone them both. So let me just get into this article real quick. It starts off, what I am about to write will likely have you either nodding your head in wholehearted agreement or shaking it in disgust while possibly muttering, here we go again. When the topic of hunting fitness comes up, I see very little middle ground. To the guys who like to offer up the same old tired statement, you don't need to be able to run a marathon to kill with a bow. I agree.

You don't need to do a lot of things to kill an animal with a bow. But one thing I do know, the better shape you're in, the better your chances are for staying 100% committed, mentally and physically to your bow hunting goals. You can't argue that. Being in a great shape is never going to hurt you. So I'll continue on here. I've obsessed about mountain bow hunting so much for so long. I feel like the comparisons and similarities I've concocted are valid and worth sharing. In my opinion, mountain bow hunting is not that much different from other performance sports like basketball, football, and running.

I think the ultimate performance endeavor, bare-knuckle bow hunting, is evolving and progressing in much the same way as these other sports. A few decades back, professional football players wore leather helmets. And I remember seeing an old NFL locker room photo in which the players looked like they could have been talking politics. At six feet, 175 pounds, they could have been insurance salesmen talking about the benefits of higher deductibles. Compare that with images of NFL players today. They're beast. Solid muscle and tracks are fast. They rewrite record books with ever-increasing skills and definitely no leather helmets.

Basketball, same deal. Have you ever seen old footage of Bob Coozy dribbling a basketball shooting? I have, and I don't remember ever seeing him touch the ball with his left hand. No disrespect intended because during his day he was the man. But his shot reminded me of my wife when she is out shooting hoops with our boys. Yes, the game has evolved big time. Running, same deal. Pretty much every single running record is broken every few years.

And in my favorite sport, ultramarathon running, guys are running faster and further every year. And now we can add, this is 2010 before Courtney. Now we can add women are running faster than actually, actually, many men even. So point is, it's like performance, performance athletics are, you know,

people are getting better. We're learning more. Science is involving. Nutrition's evolving. All those things, all those same things can apply to why we're better bow hunters. And,

and I mean, you can't argue it. So let me continue here. Now, back to my point. Similar raising bar performances are happening right now in the sport many of us eat, breathe and sleep, bow hunting. The question is, are you going to participate in this advancement or just get out of the knit wax to treat your leather helmet?

Virtually every passionate hunter about my age has heard of Fred Bear. So far as I know, Fred was a first world famous bow hunter. After Fred was Chuck Adams, who redefined how bony's success was measured, he killed five popen young, world record animals and a hundred plus others that qualified for the record book. So Chuck was an aside. Chuck was a hero of mine and I was just blown away by the success he would have. And I need to mention, too, that Chuck was tunnel vision focused on bow hunting. I mean, more so than me. I mean, I can't even compare myself because I have a family.

I have kids. I have all this other stuff. As far as I know, Chuck, he was married, but he never had any kids and he just focused on hunting. He just loved bow hunting so much. It's why he's the legend he is. But no distractions. You know, I mean, not much gets in the way of me thinking about bow hunting, but, I mean, I have a family. I can't ignore that.

So, I mean, with Chuck, it was just like all bohunting. And you see, I mean, the results speak for themselves. He's unbelievable. One in a million, bow hunter. So anyway, and just like that, the mainstream sports, and just like in mainstream sports, I can promise you, there are bohunters out there who have have the ability to push the envelope higher yet. These days, bow hunters are shooting better than ever have access to much better equipment than ever before and thanks to the internet and other media are better students of the game, but many would be hunting phenoms have an Achilles heel,

lack of conditioning. The best equipment in the world is not a band-aid for being ill-prepared and out of shape. The rugged country that elk and deer call home has broken the spirits of many so-called men and will continue to do so season after season, count on it. So maybe if you aren't trendsetter or the next great bow hunter still the curve is moving upward based largely on the fact that people are achieving more physically for longer periods of life i think the longer part of that sentence is the most important when you are young you are you generally you are you generally have great physical ability by virtue of youth alone but inexperience and lack of maturity often negate the advantages of physical ability result of that physical ability resulting in unfilled tags with each passing year your hunting knowledge and skills increase. And if you can sustain or even improve your physical conditioning and ability, you create the perfect get that taxidermost on the speed dial storm. While many bohunters are realizing the benefits of staying physically fit,

not everyone is on board. I suppose that's all right because being in shape is not mandatory in order to buy an elk and deer license or to kill a bull or buck. But many bohunters have proof of that. I discussed that earlier. but I don't get the head shakers, the guys who are overly critical of training for hunting by saying physical condition as little or nothing to do with killing big game. Our bodies and minds are tools to use in the woods and training hones these tools,

simple as that. The better the tools you pack into the mountains, pack, sleeping bags, stove, bow, binoculars, body, mind, the more success you'll have. and my page or bookmark here to get on that where that article continued was this bear here I killed in the Eagle Cap Wilderness and I think it was I'm pretty sure it was 1999. It doesn't say on there but I remember so I killed I was sitting in the saddle 12 miles deep in the wilderness and I thought elk would come through there's middle of the day here comes this bear so I arrow this bear to get to the trailhead where I killed that bear,

there was one behind me, and it would have been about 12 miles. Where my truck was, was all the way around the big basin, and all the way down the spying ridge. That was 18 miles. So I had to break this bear down. I wanted the hide,

because it's got, it's blonde, it's got blonde highlights on it. And this bear rug is actually up in my father-in-law's. I just, father-and-law's, I just saw it on, we went up there for Christmas. and it's up on the wall. So I packed this hideout. It's made a great rug.

I packed all the meat out 18 miles. Kill it 18 miles out. Take the meat to the to a, there's a cooler there in Elgin or Joseph Oregon and pack all the way back in 18 miles. I was out of the elk hunting routine because of that kill and packing it and coming back in and doing all that for four days. And I was going to be there for nine days. So that cost me four days of my elk hunt. And it was freaking hard. It was hard packing.

I put a picture up on my Instagram the other day. It's got that whole bear on my pack. And it looks like, you know, sticking out three feet off my back. But it was a, excuse me, it was a long pack, hard pack, definitely took the edge off my ability to Elkhund after I got back in. But in 1999, I wasn't running ultramarathons. I hadn't run an ultramarathon until 2005. So that was a test because I got that bear out. Meat was fine.

Everything was good. But my body was broke. I could barely, I could barely freaking hunt after that. And I was like, you know, all I want to do is kill a bull. This is all I care about. And my body's letting me down because I got to kill and I packed it out. That's the goal. And I mean, I just couldn't stomach that.

So I'm like, I got to get better. I got to get tougher. And from that moment on, then I ran, not that moment because, you know, I'm not that smart, so it takes me a little while to learn shit. But I ran my first marathon in 2002, as I said, that was 1999. So it took me three years to be like, okay, maybe I need to get, you know, putting more effort here. Ran that first marathon. I ended up getting third.

Did pretty good. Ran an ultramarathon in 2005. Then my first hunter mile in 2009. And, yeah, that was when I started to be like, man, you know, I can make these mountains seem smaller. They seemed crazy big to start with. And now it didn't seem intimidating at all once I got that big time endurance. So I'm going to continue on with this article here. It continues on, the other day I was reading one of my favorite books of all time,

Hunting with a Bow and Arrow by Dr. Saxon Pope, written in 1923. It details adventures of Pope and his friend Art Young. On page 181, it reads, these guys writing this in 1923, mind you. This is Pope and Young. So this is what any, there's a bowhunting record book that measures the antlers of the animals and scores them. And that's called Pope and Young. So it's a Pope and Young club named after these guys. So in 1923, this is what the.

The forefathers of our sport wrote on page 181, it reads, We also began preparing ourselves for the contest, although habitually in good shape, although habit habit habit, jeez, habit. Habitually. God, thank you. Tanner with the save. Although habitually in good physical condition, we undertook special training for the big event. In this case, he and young are preparing for a grizzly bow hunt.

Pope continues. By running the use of dumbbells and other gymnastics practices, we strengthened our muscles and increased our endurance. On page 206 of that same book, Hunting with a Bone Arrow, as I mentioned. On page 206 regarding the tough back injury hunt, he writes, we were there to win and nothing else mattered. Adding later, we were trained down to rawhide and sinew, keyed to alertness and ready for any emergency. That's the title of this article, Raw Hyde and Sineau. So think about it. Those guys knew how important physical conditioning was. Why is it that there's pushback on this? Is it, I get it.

Men don't like being told what to do. But again, I didn't tell anybody what to do. I just said what I did. Is it a comparison thing? Is it an ego thing? Is it what is it? But all I know is in 1923. So we're in 2023 right now.

This is 100 years ago. Friken 100 years ago, they're talking about being in shape. So it continues on. As a young up and comer years ago, I quickly dismissed those few sentences. But now, train down to rawhide and sinew resonates with me. That is some hardcore stuff. If Pope and Young realize the benefits of being

fit back in the 1920s, well, that's good enough for me. And I think it has made a huge difference in my success. Well, I filled tags back in my early days of bow hunting. I wasn't nearly as successful in the mounds as I am today. You can draw your own conclusions from that, but it does make me think, what if? Recently, I completed the Western States Endurance Run 100 miles for California, Sierra, Nevada mounds in 22 hours, 41 minutes. I've often asked myself, Why am I drawn to do things like run 100 miles? I believe it goes back to the intimidation I felt when I hunted Oregon's Eagle Cap Wilderness

as a young solo adventurer, measuring in roughly 60 miles by 30 miles, the Eagle Cap Wilderness is Oregon's largest wilderness area and with as Granite Craigs and bottomless canyons, no doubt the roughest. To me, an inexperienced young bow hunter, that seemed immense and overwhelming, scary if the truth were known.

Since running my first marathon some years ago, I've often thought, what if I could run across the entire Eagle Cap wilderness through the rivers and creeks and up drainagees and overmounds? If I could do that, I could do anything. Well, now I can, and that gives me confidence to face all my doubts and fears and beat them regardless of the obstacles that stand in my way. I would bet the same holds true for you and many other bow hunters. Starting way back when, the better shape I got in, the smaller the Eagle Cap wilderness seemed to me.

and now it seems quite manageable. Do you have any hunting country you'd like to make smaller, any hills you'd like to flatten out? Right now is the time to start getting trained down to raw hide and sine you. I'll see you on the trail. So that was 14 years ago. I wrote about that. And still, you know, nowadays, yeah, there's supplements companies.

There's whole, there's mountain tough fitness. There's trainers. There's elk shape, downstate. And there's guys who their whole business model. is built around helping hunters prepare for the mountains. So it's definitely changed. There's still guys out there who will push back just because that's just how guys are

and that's great. All I know is that when I go on a hunt and, you know, I've been on hunts that are more challenging than others. I say, for example, a spring bear hunt when they're coming to bait is not going to be like a doll sheep hunt. hunt or not going to be like maybe a hunt in Tanzania and in Africa where you, you know,

walk and walk and walk and it's hot. It's not going to be like, I don't know, even a backcountry mule deer hunt, you know. So there are hunts that are harder than others. But what I have realized is that if I'm prepared for anything, your body's one thing. But in your mind, if you're prepared for any challenge because you've left no stone unturned as I mentioned and you're just you've trained down to rawhide and sine you if you train that hard it's uh it i don't know it just has to be thinking that uh the way you the way you live the way you bow hunt is the way you're pretty much going to do anything i know that's true for me so if i look at my life my life is about um my wife would say I'm an overdoer, right? It's like never enough just to do just enough. So I'm going to do

if I was going to run 10 miles a day, I want to run more than I want to run 15. If I was going to run 100 miles a week, I want to go more than that. I want to run 120. It's never enough. So with bow hunting, it's the same thing. That's that's, that's, bow hunting is no different than my normal life. I'm going to bow hunt and I'm going to be ready to the nth degree. I'm going to be ready for anything, even if it's like a spring bear hunt that's not super physically challenging, I'm still going to be ready for any challenge that arises. And because you have that mindset, nothing surprises you. Nothing will get you out of your comfort zone.

That is key to making a perfect shot. That's the whole point, guys. That is like that is how you perform in crunch time. When you've trained and given all you got to preparation every day of the year, it's just a matter of dot in the eyes and crosses in the T's when that opportunity presents itself. So because of that mindset, I believe I'm not, you know, I'm not the most patient person. As I said, I go too hard sometimes. I'm not the most compassionate person.

I'm not the, I have my own, I have demons. But regardless of all that, on, on, I mean, since 2009, every hunt I've been on, public land, private land, United States, Alaska, obviously United States, but any states of lower 48, Alaska, Australia, Africa, a number of times, I kill on every single hunt. Some of those hunts aren't super challenging physically. Some of them are very challenging physically, but it doesn't matter. Get it done on every single hunt. How? Because you have to be prepared. You have to, when you train your body to be like at this highest level, your mind is going to come along too. And when you have all that going for you and you're just, you can't just, you can't care about those type of things and then not care about your equipment.

So by proxy, your equipment and your dedication and your and your focus on everything being perfect, just, it just happens because of all the other effort and work you've put in. So you make sure your bow is perfect. You make sure every broadhead is razor sharp. You make sure every arrow is flying perfect out of that bone, ripping a perfect bullet hole. You make sure you got batteries in your range finder. You got your wind checker. So you can make sure the wind's good when you're stocking that animal.

You make sure of all these little tiny things because you've prepared, like I said, at the highest level in every other category. And that's what it takes. That's what it takes to overcome all the odds. We know that bony and success, on elk is 10%. We know the bonus success on deer is 20%. So if you don't want to be the guy,

one out of 10 guys who achieve success every year or you're killing a bull every 10 years, if that's not good enough for you, we've got to do it all. You've got to be married to that equipment. You got to be, have no limits when it comes to physical conditioning. You have to have an iron mindset,

which comes because you care about all those other things. And if you do that, man, if you wanted to be in these magazines, you could. And to me, it's not even, now it's not even magazines. I just wanted to share my stories and share what I did, and so was the magazines. Now it's just social media. And we can share our passion and we can say why hunting is so important to us and how much it means to us. And here's how we train. And we train like this because we care about these animals.

We want to deliver a merciful kill on these animals we pursue in the mounds. The mounds we cherish, the animals we respect. It's all part of it. It's all part of being. What I always say is like you can never be the ultimate predator, but that's the goal. You want to be the ultimate predator out there. So if we see an animal that we want, we've done the work, we can deliver a fatal arrow. And we can take that meat home to our family.

So that's my thoughts on how good a shape do you need to be in to be successful as a bow hunter. That's it. There is no requirement. But also, there's no limit. So find where you fit in there. Maybe you got to have, I guess, your effort match your goals because it will. And I don't know. I've just learned a lot about myself along the way over the years.

You know, as I said, this has been a 35-year journey. I've been hunting for 40 years now, but bow hunting for 35. And, man, every evolving, always learning, always trying to get better, you know, this training thing. As I kind of mentioned, the nutrition for hunters. It wasn't a thing that anybody ever talked about. I think it's a big thing now. Making sure you got enough calories back there, making sure you're not, you know, your blood sugar's not low so you can aim steady hold good make good decisions you're not crashing

make sure uh another thing that ultra running is Tommy is about salt so I think a lot of guys get salt deficient back there especially if they're not in great shape so they're sweating a lot and you can't perform you know I know in races when when guys get low on salt and low on calories they cannot perform so just think about that when you're on a hunt on that long hunt make sure have those salt tablets, make sure you have those S caps, it's electrolytes that you need, and it's that salt, and make sure you have enough calories to sustain yourself. You know, I know we get back in there and we get focused on just grinding, but when it comes to crunch time and you've got to make a perfect shot at, say, 60 yards, and you got, you know,

you have to make it happen right now. All those little things you're going to come in. Yeah, physical conditioning, sure, that's going to help, but also it's the nutrition. And it's all the little things. Bow hunting is like a million little things coming together and you capitalizing in the heat of the moment. So that's what I know about physical conditioning. I'm still learning. I don't have all the answers.

I'm not telling anybody what to do. I'm telling you what I've done and how it's helped me. And hopefully this helps. Have a great day. Keep hammering. One of my favorite packages that I get on a monthly basis is the Black Rifle Coffee Club, exclusive coffee roast. The only way you can get it is if you subscribe to the coffee club.

The exclusive coffee subscription gives you nothing but the best. It's a coffee of the month club where you get premium roast from the best farms worldwide. Black Rifle Coffee is America's Coffee. It's veteran owned and operated. They support hunting and conservation and give back immensely to the veteran community. They're offering followers of the podcast 20% off on your first purchase to the coffee club or orders on their site using code, keep hammering to get America's coffee today.

Bass Pro shops and Cabellas know that everyone has their season. Deer season, turkey season, duck season. Every animal is a unique challenge. Every hunt, a different experience. And I count on my local Cabela store here in Springfield, Oregon to gear me up with all my hunting necessities. And you know, I like to support companies that give back to conservation. Under the leadership of founder John Morris, Bass Pro Shop and Cabellas are leading North America's largest conservation movement.

Together with our partners, they're positively shaping the future of the outdoors through donations, grant writing, and advocacy. Head to their website, Bassproshop.com, or Cabellas.com, and get geared up for your upcoming hunts.