Truth From The Stand Deer Hunting Podcast

Some guys kill a deer. Cameron Derr fills tags, season after season, and that’s a different thing entirely. Luck can hand you one buck. It can’t hand you a track record. So when Cameron sat down with me, I wanted to get past the results and into the decisions that keep producing them.

We started where every deer camp eventually ends up arguing: the moon. Everybody has a theory, and most of those theories line up suspiciously well with the days we already had off work. We dug into whether moon phases actually move deer or just give us a story to tell ourselves, and where the moon belongs on the list next to the things we know matter.

Cameron also just launched his own podcast, and his approach caught my attention. Keep it digestible. Give people something they can use on their next sit instead of an hour of theory they’ll forget by the parking lot. That’s a good rule for a show, and honestly a pretty good rule for hunting.

Then we got to the part I was most excited about: ground hunting early season whitetails in the Dakotas. No big timber, no perfect tree, just open country, summer patterns, and deer that can see you coming from a long way off. It’s a high-wire act. Some days it comes together fast. Some days a buck takes one wrong turn and the whole plan is dust. That unpredictability is exactly why it’s so addictive.

The back half of the conversation went deeper into what really separates consistent hunters from everybody else. Patience. Observation. Watching deer long enough to understand what they’re doing instead of guessing. We talked wind, and how one bad sit with the wrong breeze can undo weeks of careful work. We talked about adapting when the ground changes under you, including what happens when the loggers show up and the woods you thought you knew turn into something else overnight.

Cameron shared stories about specific deer, the lessons those bucks taught him, and the preparation that goes into a hunt long before he ever walks in. None of it is flashy. All of it is the kind of stuff that quietly stacks up into filled tags.

If you’ve ever wondered why some hunters seem to connect every year while you’re still waiting on the right moon, give this one a listen.

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Nobody needs help getting out of bed on opening morning. The gear’s been laid out for a week and you’re awake before the alarm. That’s motivation, and on opener it’s free.

The morning that decides your season is the one three weeks later. Same 4:15 alarm, the fourteenth time you’ve heard it, no shooter in ten days, and a very reasonable voice in your head making a very reasonable case for sleeping in just this once.

That morning is what this episode is about.

In 2024 I hunted one deer in the Pennsylvania mountains for more than thirty-five days straight. A legitimate Boone and Crockett buck living in country where deer like that almost never exist. I lived out of my travel trailer, hunted mornings, worked remotely through the middle of the day, and went right back in every afternoon. On October 11th I saw him on the hoof for the first time. Then he vanished. A week of not finding his sign later, the excitement was gone. What got my feet on the floor after that wasn’t motivation. It was something I’ve started calling truthful lies. Small, technically true things I told myself every morning. A big scrape I hadn’t seen before. Old rubs from past seasons. The tallest rub I’d ever found in those mountains. None of it was proof. All of it got me to the truck.

From there I get into why motivation acts like weather, and why Angela Duckworth’s Grit is a book I come back to every fall. Enthusiasm is common, endurance is rare. Effort counts twice. In hunting terms, that means the small, boring reps nobody brags about. A few arrows a day through your full shot sequence. Ten minutes on the map. Logging every sit, especially the empty ones. Enough sleep and strength to be sharp on day twenty instead of just present. Before the season, during it, and after.

I also break down the three places guys fizzle: when the novelty wears off, when fatigue turns into one excuse a week (I own one of mine from this season), and when a miss guts you. That last one comes with a story from a sixteen-day Midwest public land trip where I missed a big buck twice, kept getting up anyway, and on the final evening, truck already packed, killed a deer I didn’t know existed the day before.

Then the practical part. Build the floor, not the ceiling. Set minimum daily standards for your bow, your intel, and your body, plus one rule for the hard mornings. Mine is simple. The alarm is not a question.

And yes, I tell you how the Pennsylvania deer ended. It isn’t the ending you’d guess.

Motivation’s going to show up for opener. It always does. This one’s about what gets you out of bed when it doesn’t.

SHOW NOTES AND LINKS:

—Truth From The Stand Merch

—Check out Tactacam Reveal cell cameras

— Save 15% on Hawke Optics code TFTS15

—Save 20% onASIO GEAR code TRUTH20

—Save on Lathrop And Sons non-typical insoles code TRUTH10

—Check out Faceoff E-Bikes

—Waypoint TV

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Every year around the back half of October, something shifts. The woods go from feeling like early season leftovers to feeling like something is about to happen. Scrapes open up overnight. Licking branches get torn apart. If you’re paying attention, there’s a short window in there that a lot of hunters sleep through while they wait for November.

That window is what Jake Hofer and I dug into on this episode.

Jake spent last season chasing specific deer, and he came on the show to unpack what that actually looked like. Not the highlight reel. The encounters that didn’t work out, the sits that taught him something, and the slow grind of figuring out how a mature buck lives. Every one of those close calls made him a better hunter, and that’s the part that never makes it onto social media.

We spent some time there too. Hunting culture has changed. Social media has connected us in ways that are good for sharing knowledge and staying aware of the legislation that affects all of us. It has also turned a lot of deer hunting into a scoreboard. Jake and I talked about what we’ve gained, what we’ve lost, and where deer hunting in Illinois stands right now.

Then we got into the meat of it.

Homebody bucks vs gypsy bucks. Some bucks live in a tight core area and you can build a plan around them. Others show up for a week, vanish, and turn up three farms over. Knowing which one you’re dealing with changes everything about how and when you hunt him. Seasonal shifts move both kinds, and Jake had sharp takes on reading those changes before they catch you flat-footed.

Trail camera data was the other big piece. A stack of night photos can make you feel great about a buck that will never give you a daylight opportunity. Daylight photos, even one or two, tell a completely different story. We broke down how to read your cards honestly instead of hopefully.

Finally, we talked about picking your days. Weather fronts, specific dates on the calendar, and when it’s worth burning your best stand versus holding it for the right moment. Scrape week sets up November. Hunt it smart and you walk into the rut with real information instead of guesses.

If you’re staring at trail camera pictures right now trying to decide when to go in, this one’s for you.

SHOW NOTES AND LINKS:

—Truth From The Stand Merch

—Check out Tactacam Reveal cell cameras

— Save 15% on Hawke Optics code TFTS15

—Save 20% onASIO GEAR code TRUTH20

—Save on Lathrop And Sons non-typical insoles code TRUTH10

—Check out Faceoff E-Bikes

—Waypoint TV

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It had been way too long since Ryan and I sat down together. Long enough that we had some catching up to do, and long enough that a lot had changed — most of it on his end.

Ryan spent a big chunk of the past stretch recovering from a serious arm injury. If you've never had your body take hunting off the table, even temporarily, it's hard to explain what that does to your head. The physical rehab is one thing. The mental side is the part nobody warns you about. Ryan was forced to slow down, and in slowing down, he had to take a hard look at what actually mattered — family first, then what he really wanted out of his time in the woods.

That reset showed up in how he hunted last season. Ryan walked away from a lot of the tech. Fewer trail cameras, less leaning on years of historical data, a lot more trusting his gut. That's not a knock on cameras — I run them, you probably run them — but there's a point where the data starts hunting you instead of the other way around. You end up chasing a buck that was in a spot two Novembers ago instead of the deer that's there right now.

A big part of our conversation was about hunting mountain country, which is its own animal. Deer don't move through steep terrain the way they do in farm country, and the sign doesn't always tell you what you want it to. Ryan's approach leans hard on postseason scouting — getting in after the season when you can't hurt anything, walking the ground, and figuring out how deer actually use it. From there, he hunts more aggressively and stays flexible. If a spot isn't producing, he moves. No marrying a stand because it worked once.

We also got a little nostalgic. Both of us miss some of the old-school way of doing things, when it was just you, a map, some boot leather, and whatever you could figure out on your own. There's a version of hunting that's more about solving a puzzle than checking an app, and I think a lot of guys are drifting back toward it.

What I appreciated most is where Ryan's head is at now. He's enjoying the experience more and worrying less about the outcome. That's a hard place to get to, and it usually takes something going sideways to get you there.

We wrapped up talking about plans for this fall and how good it is to hunt with friends again. If you're stuck in a rut — too much data, not enough instinct — this one's for you.

SHOW NOTES AND LINKS:

—Truth From The Stand Merch

—Check out Tactacam Reveal cell cameras

— Save 15% on Hawke Optics code TFTS15

—Save 20% onASIO GEAR code TRUTH20

—Save on Lathrop And Sons non-typical insoles code TRUTH10

—Check out Faceoff E-Bikes

—Waypoint TV

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Jacob and I got into one of those conversations that starts on one topic and ends up covering the whole reason we hunt in the first place. It happens more than you'd think when the mic's rolling and you're not trying to force a structure on it.

We started with something that's been nagging at both of us: what happens to a hunting spot once it hits the internet. A photo, a tag, a location pin, and suddenly a piece of ground you worked years to figure out belongs to everyone who scrolls past it. We talked about what gets lost when hunting spots become content instead of something earned, and why we've both gotten a lot more careful about what we share and when.

That led us somewhere bigger. We talked about how hunting used to be something we did alone, and how it's turned into something we do with people, guys we trust, guys we've learned from, guys we're still learning from. Neither of us set out to make that shift. It just happened as the seasons piled up and we figured out the stand isn't actually where the good stuff lives. The good stuff is in who you call after, who taught you the thing you almost got wrong, who you owe a debt to for showing you how to read sign instead of just hoping.

We spent real time on mentorship, on surrounding yourself with people who know more than you and aren't afraid to tell you when you're wrong. On trying a technique you don't fully believe in because someone you trust says it works. On what it actually costs, in time and attention, to keep a marriage and a hunting habit both healthy at the same time. Neither of us has that fully figured out. We just know ignoring one to feed the other doesn't work.

By the end we landed on something neither of us planned to say going in: the outcome matters less than it used to. Not because we've stopped caring about killing deer, but because we've started caring more about whether we showed up honest, paid attention, and left the woods a little better for having been in them.

If you've been hunting long enough to feel your own priorities shift, this one's going to hit close.

SHOW NOTES AND LINKS:

—Truth From The Stand Merch

—Check out Tactacam Reveal cell cameras

— Save 15% on Hawke Optics code TFTS15

—Save 20% onASIO GEAR code TRUTH20

—Save on Lathrop And Sons non-typical insoles code TRUTH10

—Check out Faceoff E-Bikes

—Waypoint TV

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Carl Brickey and I get into just about everything in this one, and by the time we're done it doesn't feel like an interview anymore. It feels like two guys who talk shop on the phone a lot finally hitting record.

We start where a lot of good hunting conversations start: gear and stories. Archery season, duck hunting mornings, the whole process of building a bow by hand. Carl's got real callouses from that last one, not the kind you fake for a photo. There's a thread in here that caught me off guard: how surfing and skateboarding shaped the way he reads the outdoors. Different sport, same instinct. Read the conditions, adjust in real time, or get humbled by something you didn't respect enough.

That instinct is basically the whole episode once we get into mature bucks. Carl doesn't talk about killing big deer like it's luck. He talks about it like a research project. We spent a long stretch on how he actually studies a piece of ground: not just where deer are right now, but where they've been for years, and why last season's pattern doesn't automatically predict this one. Historical data came up more than once, and not in a spreadsheet-nerd way. In a "I've hunted this ridge for a decade and here's what it's actually telling me" way.

We got into specific gear and technique too, the stuff that changes outcomes instead of just looking good in a photo. What's earned a permanent spot in the pack, what's been cut, and why some of what worked five years ago doesn't work the same way now.

Toward the end the conversation drifted toward what's next. New ground he's looking at, a few life changes on the horizon, and how those changes are already shaping the way he's thinking about next season before it even starts.

This is one of those episodes where the takeaway isn't a single tip, it's a way of paying attention. Terrain, history, patience, and knowing the difference between a hunch and a pattern you've actually earned. Give it a listen and let me know what stuck with you.

SHOW NOTES AND LINKS:

—Truth From The Stand Merch

—Check out Tactacam Reveal cell cameras

— Save 15% on Hawke Optics code TFTS15

—Save 20% onASIO GEAR code TRUTH20

—Save on Lathrop And Sons non-typical insoles code TRUTH10

—Check out Faceoff E-Bikes

—Waypoint TV

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I want you to think back to the last time you were at full draw and something in your head started talking. Not the calm rundown of yardage and pin placement. The other voice. The one that shows up uninvited and starts narrating the worst version of what's about to happen.

I always figured that voice mattered. I just wasn't consistent about doing anything with it, if I'm honest, until I sat down with Carter Starocci this summer. If you don't follow wrestling, here's what you need to know: Carter is a five-time national champion at Penn State, the first man ever to do it. By the time he was chasing that fourth and fifth title, the pressure wasn't hypothetical anymore. Every match had a target on it.

I asked him what he was doing with his head between whistles, and what he told me reframed how I think about my own competition, and then how I think about hunting.

The first thing he said: the words you use with yourself become true, not mystically, mechanically. Rehearse "I always blow it when they get close" for twenty seasons and your nervous system stops reacting to the deer and starts reacting to the story. Heart rate spikes early. Hands shake. You rush a shot you had plenty of time to make.

The second thing cuts deeper. At his level, the difference between competitors isn't physical anymore, it's mental. Everybody left on the mat can wrestle. We've all hunted with a guy who shoots lights out in July and can't hold it together when a shooter steps out in November. It was never his form. Nobody had drilled what was supposed to run through his head in that moment.

The third thing changed how I think about stand time specifically: you remove the anxiety by not making the hunt the whole goal. It's just the next rep in a career built out of reps. I felt that firsthand this year, in a BJJ tournament and out on the plains chasing a genuine giant. Neither result was the point while I was in it. That's exactly what let both of them happen.

This episode builds a four-question filter for running that self-talk audit on stand, and it's not an off-season-only project. It's before, during, and after. Go build your one line. Drill it until it's automatic. It won't show up on its own the day it matters.

Hunt like you train. I'll see you in October.

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Every year around this time, Chad and I sit down and do the same thing: we say the goals out loud. Not because saying it out loud makes it happen, but because it forces us to actually think about what we want this season to look like instead of just running on autopilot until October hits and we're reacting to whatever the woods throw at us.

This one was part planning session, part low-key therapy. We talked about where our heads are at heading into the year — the excitement, the nerves, and honestly how much both of those have changed over the years. It used to be all adrenaline and impatience. Now it's more of a slow burn. You hunt enough seasons and the anticipation starts to feel different. Less "I need to kill something" and more "I want to be locked in when it actually matters."

Chad's got elk on the brain out in Idaho and whitetails back home in Ohio, and the thread running through both is patience — letting the hunt actually be a hunt instead of trying to force something. He's not chasing a score this year so much as chasing the experience, which is a mindset shift that takes most of us a decade of getting humbled to arrive at.

My season's built around Iowa and Pennsylvania, and if there's one word for what I'm after, it's presence. Not planning three moves ahead, not overthinking the wind at 2 a.m. — just showing up, reading what's actually in front of me, and adjusting instead of forcing the plan I made in July onto a September that has other ideas.

We got into the nuts and bolts too — scouting, camera placement, and how we're setting ourselves up to hunt deer and elk that haven't been pressured yet, which might be the closest thing to a cheat code in this game. There's nothing like working an animal that doesn't already know you exist.

Then we let ourselves dream a little. The scenarios we're hoping for this fall — and for Chad, a lot of that dreaming is wrapped up in his son and the experiences he wants to hand down, not just for himself. We closed things out talking shooting form and the mental work that has to happen now, in the offseason quiet, before the season shows up and asks questions you didn't study for.

If you've got goals of your own this year, we'd love to hear them.

SHOW NOTES AND LINKS:

—Truth From The Stand Merch

—Check out Tactacam Reveal cell cameras

— Save 15% on Hawke Optics code TFTS15

—Save 20% onASIO GEAR code TRUTH20

—Check out Spartan Forge to map your hunt

—Save on Lathrop And Sons non-typical insoles code TRUTH10

—Check out Faceoff E-Bikes

—Waypoint TV

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We do these listener Q&A episodes because they force us to say the quiet part out loud. This one, with Greg back on the mic, dug into everything I actually care about heading into another season — work, family, the woods, and how none of that stays in its own separate box no matter how hard you try to keep it that way.

We talked about how our hunting has changed, not because we care less, but because we've stopped measuring a season by whether a deer hits the ground. That took years to admit. Success used to mean a tag filled. Now it means I showed up, read the sign right, and made a decision I can stand behind whether or not it worked out.

Most of this episode is about the ground itself. Terrain, scouting, mapping tools — the stuff that actually separates a good season from a lucky one. We got into how we scout big woods country specifically: reading rub lines to figure out where deer are actually moving, not where we wish they were, and why entry and exit routes matter more than where you hang the stand. Blow a deer out once on your way in, and you've undone a month of careful work. We've both made that mistake enough times to talk about it honestly.

We also hashed out the mobile-versus-stationary debate, which never really ends and probably shouldn't. There's no universal right answer — just what fits the ground you're hunting and the hunter you are. Same goes for gear. We ran through what actually rides in our packs every single sit, no filler.

Toward the end we got into fitness, motivation, and discipline, because hunting hard big woods country is a physical problem as much as a tactical one, and what separates hunters who improve from hunters who stall out is usually the boring stuff nobody wants to talk about. We closed on the idea that's carried us through some rough seasons: control what you can control. The wind, the weather, the deer — none of that's yours to manage. Your prep, your effort, your attitude in the stand — that's the whole game.

If you've got questions of your own, keep sending them. These Q&As are some of my favorite episodes to record.

SHOW NOTES AND LINKS:

—Truth From The Stand Merch

—Check out Tactacam Reveal cell cameras

— Save 15% on Hawke Optics code TFTS15

—Save 20% onASIO GEAR code TRUTH20

—Check out Spartan Forge to map your hunt

—Save on Lathrop And Sons non-typical insoles code TRUTH10

—Check out Faceoff E-Bikes

—Waypoint TV

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://megaphone.fm/adchoices

I've had seasons where I punched my tag and walked away feeling empty. I've had seasons where I didn't fill it and walked away knowing I'd gotten better. If you've been hunting long enough, you know exactly what I'm talking about.

We've built this culture around the kill as the only scoreboard that matters. And I get it — that's what we're out there to do. But if the tag is the only thing you're measuring, you're leaving most of the information on the table.

This episode is about what you do with a season that didn't go the way you planned. Not in a feel-good, participation-trophy way. In a practical, honest way. Because there is real data inside every encounter you had, every decision you made, every sit where nothing happened. The question is whether you're paying attention to it or just moving on and hoping next year goes better.

The hunters I respect most aren't the ones with the most kills. They're the ones who can tell you exactly why they killed that deer, or exactly why they didn't. They've built a feedback loop. They treat every season as information, and they carry that information forward.

Most of us don't do that. We tag out and celebrate, or we strike out and sulk, and then we reset to zero in January. Neither response makes us better.

What I've been working on is a different way to close out a season — one that doesn't hinge on whether there's a deer on the ground. It's about asking harder questions. What did I learn about this property? What did I learn about how I make decisions under pressure? Where did I let patience become paralysis, or let confidence become carelessness?

A filled tag is an outcome. Skill is what you build in between outcomes. And if you're only paying attention to the outcome, you're flying blind most of the time.

This season, whatever it looked like for you, had more to teach you than you probably took from it. This episode is about going back and getting what you left behind.

SHOW NOTES AND LINKS:

—Truth From The Stand Merch

—Check out Tactacam Reveal cell cameras

— Save 15% on Hawke Optics code TFTS15

—Save 20% onASIO GEAR code TRUTH20

—Check out Spartan Forge to map your hunt

—Save on Lathrop And Sons non-typical insoles code TRUTH10

—Check out Faceoff E-Bikes

—Waypoint TV

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://megaphone.fm/adchoices

I spent three hours picking the brain of a neuroscientist this week, and I walked away thinking about hunting differently than I have in years.

Dr. Steve Platek studies the brain for a living — how it handles pressure, fear, learning, and the split-second calls that separate the guys who fill tags from the guys who don't. We didn't set out to talk about deer. We ended up talking about what happens inside your skull when you're 20 feet up a tree with no cell signal, no notifications, and nothing but your own thoughts for company.

That's the part that stuck with me. Steve broke down what solitude actually does to your brain — not the campfire version of "it's peaceful out there," but the real neuroscience behind why disconnecting from your phone opens up space for clarity you can't get anywhere else. We've all had that hunt where the plan falls apart, and somewhere around hour four — sitting still, bored, uncomfortable — an idea shows up that wasn't there before. Turns out that's not luck. That's your brain doing exactly what it's built to do once you stop feeding it noise.

We got into gut instinct too — the calls you make in the field that you can't fully explain, the ones where you move a stand or draw back before your conscious brain has caught up. Steve's take on why some hunters trust that instinct and others override it with overthinking is worth the price of admission alone.

The back half of the conversation is where it got personal for me. We talked traditional bowhunting — the discipline of surrendering to a stick and a string, the delayed gratification of waiting for a shot most guys wouldn't take, and why the hardest seasons in the timber teach you more about yourself than the easy ones ever will. Steve doesn't dress any of this up. He's a scientist, not a motivational speaker, and that's exactly why it lands.

This one isn't really about tactics. It's about what the stand does to you when you let it — and what it reveals about who you actually are when nobody's watching and the only voice in your head is your own.

Give it a listen. Then go sit somewhere quiet and see what happens.

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There's a version of a deer hunter I used to be that I'm not proud of. He had all the intel, knew the thermals, understood the wind, watched the forecast, and then... sat at home. The conditions weren't quite right. Maybe tomorrow.

That guy left a lot of deer in the woods.

This episode is about that guy. More specifically, it's about why waiting for perfect is one of the most expensive habits in deer hunting. Not because patience is bad. Patience is a weapon. But there's a version of patience that's really just fear dressed up in camo, and if you've ever talked yourself out of a sit that you later regretted, you know exactly what I'm talking about.

What I've come to understand is that deer hunting doesn't run on certainty. It runs on probability. You are never going to know. The deer might not show. The wind might shift. That buck you've been watching might have already changed his pattern three days ago and nobody told you. You're working with incomplete information every single time you climb into that tree, and the sooner you make peace with that, the better hunter you become.

The mistake most hunters make isn't hunting in bad conditions. It's confusing hesitation with strategy. There's a difference between sitting out a sit because the wind is genuinely wrong and you'd be torching a spot you've invested months into, versus sitting out a sit because you're scared to burn an opportunity and walk away empty.

One of those is discipline. The other is paralysis.

In this episode, I walk through a framework I've been using to evaluate when to hunt. Not a magic checklist. Not some algorithm. Just a set of questions I ask myself before I decide whether to go or stay home, built around managing risk instead of chasing certainty. It's changed how I think about the calendar, the forecast, and the pressure I put on myself in the moments that actually matter.

If you've ever driven home from a sit where you did everything right and still came up empty, and you're wondering what the point was, this one's for you. The point was the decision. That's all you ever really control.

SHOW NOTES AND LINKS:

—Truth From The Stand Merch

—Check out Tactacam Reveal cell cameras

— Save 15% on Hawke Optics code TFTS15

—Save 20% onASIO GEAR code TRUTH20

—Check out Spartan Forge to map your hunt

—Save on Lathrop And Sons non-typical insoles code TRUTH10

—Check out Faceoff E-Bikes

—Waypoint TV

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://megaphone.fm/adchoices

We spent the first half of this one talking about fishing tournaments and running through a heat wave that had no business being that miserable. Neither of those things has much to do with a treestand, but by the time we got to deer talk, the thread was obvious. Grinding through a tournament you didn't prep for, or finishing a run when it's 95 degrees and your body is begging you to quit, that's the same discipline that gets you through a scouting season nobody's watching.

That's where we spent most of the episode: scouting, and why it isn't really about finding deer at all. It's about eliminating the ground where they're not. Most guys burn their summer walking easy-access spots and open fields, then wonder why their season stalls out in October. We walked through how we're doing elimination scouting this year — covering big chunks of ground fast, crossing off what doesn't hold deer, and narrowing down to the two or three core areas that actually matter once September hits.

We also got into what fall looks like for us. More family hunts than we've had in years, which changes how we plan everything else. Public ground keeps getting more crowded, and the deer know it just as well as we do, so the spots that worked three seasons ago aren't playing the same game anymore. We talked through why we're leaning harder into early season sits before pressure builds, what the rut actually does to all that scouting work once it kicks in, and why rubs and scrapes still tell you more about a buck's real pattern than almost anything else, if you know how to read them.

This one's part planning session, part gut check. If you're staring down a summer of scouting and don't know where to start, or you're trying to figure out how pressure has changed your ground, this episode's for you.

SHOW NOTES AND LINKS:

—Truth From The Stand Merch

—Check out Tactacam Reveal cell cameras

— Save 15% on Hawke Optics code TFTS15

—Save 20% onASIO GEAR code TRUTH20

—Check out Spartan Forge to map your hunt

—Save on Lathrop And Sons non-typical insoles code TRUTH10

—Check out Faceoff E-Bikes

—Waypoint TV

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://megaphone.fm/adchoices

Most hunters spend the offseason obsessing over the wrong things. They're pouring over maps, pulling cards, debating stand locations. And none of that matters if they walk in like they own the place and blow every deer out of the county before they ever climb a tree.

I've been guilty of it. I think most honest hunters have. You find a great spot, you're fired up, and you walk straight to it. Mature deer don't care how good your Intel is. They care about pressure. And the way you get in and out of your stand is pressure.

Access isn't a logistics problem. It's a hunting problem. It's actually the hunting problem.

What I've come to understand after enough seasons of doing it wrong is that access needs to be treated like a system. Not a path from your truck to your stand, but a thought-out process that accounts for wind, thermals, deer movement, and the cumulative pressure you're putting on a piece of ground over the course of a season. Every entry. Every exit. Every time your scent drifts into a bedding area you didn't know was there.

The hunters who consistently kill mature deer aren't smarter than you. They're more disciplined about the invisible stuff. The stuff that doesn't show up on a Spartan camera card or in a HuntStand layer. The way they approach their spots is calculated in a way that most hunters never think to calculate.

In this episode, I break down how I think about access as a complete system: route planning that actually accounts for deer behavior, scent management that goes beyond spraying your boots, and the mindset shift that separates guys who hunt hard from guys who hunt smart. If you've ever wondered why a spot goes cold after a few sits, this one might answer that question.

The best stand in the world is worthless if the deer know you're there before you do.

Listen to the full episode on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your shows.

SHOW NOTES AND LINKS:

—Truth From The Stand Merch

—Check out Tactacam Reveal cell cameras

— Save 15% on Hawke Optics code TFTS15

—Save 20% onASIO GEAR code TRUTH20

—Check out Spartan Forge to map your hunt

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Every hunter who's spent enough time in a stand knows this moment: the wind switches, the deer aren't moving right, something's off, but you've already invested the time. You climbed the tree, you sat through the cold, you've got two hours in already. So you stay. Not because staying is the right call, but because leaving feels like admitting you wasted the sit.

That's the sunk cost fallacy showing up in real time, in a tree, with a bow or a rifle in your hands. And it's not the only bias working against you out there. Ego does the same thing from a different angle. You don't want to be the guy who moved and missed the shot, or the guy who backed out right before the buck showed up. So you push when you should reset, or you sit tight when you should be moving.

I built a framework this season to cut through that noise, and it's simple. Before I commit to sitting tight, pushing forward, or backing out, I run through it. What does the wind and the animal's behavior actually tell me right now, not what I hoped they'd tell me an hour ago? What would I do if I hadn't already invested this much time? And am I making this call because it's right, or because I don't want to feel like I failed?

That third question is the one that gets me. Ego doesn't announce itself. It just quietly convinces you that pushing is confidence when it's actually stubbornness.

None of this replaces scouting or being prepared before you ever climb into the stand. Preparation is what gives you a filter to trust in the first place. But even with the best prep, you're going to hit moments where the hunt is on the line and your gut and your ego are pulling in different directions. Having a filter you trust, built before the pressure hits, is what separates a good decision from a costly one.

This episode is about that filter, the biases working against it, and how to build one that actually holds up when it matters.

SHOW NOTES AND LINKS:

—Truth From The Stand Merch

—Check out Tactacam Reveal cell cameras

— Save 15% on Hawke Optics code TFTS15

—Save 20% onASIO GEAR code TRUTH20

—Check out Spartan Forge to map your hunt

—Save on Lathrop And Sons non-typical insoles code TRUTH10

—Check out Faceoff E-Bikes

—Waypoint TV

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There's a version of hunting that looks like dedication but is actually just noise. You know the guy. Out every weekend, every morning, every evening, running cameras, bumping deer, wondering why the big ones have gone nocturnal by the second week of October. I've been that guy. Most of us have.

This episode is about the discipline nobody talks about, the hardest skill in deer hunting: knowing when to stay home.

It sounds simple. It's not. Every hunter has that internal pull, that itch to be in the stand. You've got vacation days saved, gear dialed, permission slips signed. Sitting on the couch while daylight is burning feels like failure. But here's what I've learned the hard way: pressure kills opportunities faster than anything else. Faster than weather, faster than rut timing, faster than a bad wind. Pressure is the invisible ceiling on your season.

Deer don't forget. That's the part that took me the longest to internalize. Every time you walk into a property, you leave a signature. Scent, sound, visual disturbance. The more often you're in there, the more those deer, especially mature bucks, shift their patterns to avoid you. You don't even know it's happening. You just notice that the good deer stop showing up in daylight. You blame the moon. You blame the weather. You never blame yourself.

Strategic restraint is the answer, but restraint isn't passive. It's calculated. It means studying conditions, wind, thermals, historical deer movement data, and asking yourself an honest question: is going in today likely to do more harm than good? More often than not, the answer in October is yes.

I've had sits where I knew walking in that the conditions were marginal. I went anyway because I couldn't stomach staying home. I bumped deer on the way in. I contaminated a transition zone I'd spent months protecting. And I burned a sit that could've been a sit in the first week of November when it actually mattered.

The hunters who consistently kill mature deer share one underrated trait: they're comfortable with the discomfort of waiting. They understand that the season is a long game, and that every unnecessary entry is a withdrawal from an account that doesn't refill quickly.

If you want to be better next season, start logging the days you decided not to go. What conditions made you hold back? What happened on that property the following week? That data will teach you more about your hunting ground than a hundred sits ever will.

Patience isn't a personality trait. It's a skill you build by making hard decisions over and over until the right call feels obvious.

SHOW NOTES AND LINKS:

—Truth From The Stand Merch

—Check out Tactacam Reveal cell cameras

— Save 15% on Hawke Optics code TFTS15

—Save 20% onASIO GEAR code TRUTH20

—Check out Spartan Forge to map your hunt

—Save on Lathrop And Sons non-typical insoles code TRUTH10

—Check out Faceoff E-Bikes

—Waypoint TV

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Jake Bush and I sat down for one of those conversations that started in one place and ended up somewhere I didn't expect. We caught up on life first, the season, family, trying to find some balance between chasing deer and not losing your mind or your marriage in the process. If you've hunted hard for more than a decade, you know that tension. It's real, and it's worth talking about honestly instead of pretending it doesn't exist.

But the meat of this one is mindset, and how much of what happens in the stand actually gets decided before you ever climb up into it.

Jake and I got into a shift a lot of us go through eventually, moving away from chasing inches and toward chasing the story. That doesn't mean you stop wanting a good buck. It means you start valuing the process that got you there as much as the animal itself. We talked about what changes when you make that shift, and honestly, hunting gets a lot better.

We spent a good chunk of time on failure, because that's where the real lessons live. Not every failure is the same. Some come from bad information, some come from ego, some come from just not being honest with yourself about what the sign is telling you. We broke down how to actually build a process for learning from a blown hunt instead of chalking it up to bad luck and moving on.

That led us into scouting, staying methodical, staying present, and catching yourself when ego starts making decisions instead of your eyes and your gut. Patience keeps coming up in these conversations for a reason. It's the one thing you can't fake, and the one thing that separates guys who consistently kill mature deer from guys who get lucky once.

We closed it out on deer behavior and core areas heading into this season, and what to do if you're feeling stuck or frustrated right now. If you're the kind of hunter who wants to actually get better every year instead of just showing up, this one's for you.

Give it a listen and let us know what part hit home.

SHOW NOTES AND LINKS:

—Truth From The Stand Merch

—Check out Tactacam Reveal cell cameras

— Save 15% on Hawke Optics code TFTS15

—Save 20% onASIO GEAR code TRUTH20

—Check out Spartan Forge to map your hunt

—Save on Lathrop And Sons non-typical insoles code TRUTH10

—Check out Faceoff E-Bikes

—Waypoint TV

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://megaphone.fm/adchoices

I've been staring at trail camera photos for longer than I care to admit. Thousands of them. Maybe tens of thousands. And for a long time, I thought that was the job — collect enough pictures, find enough patterns, and the deer would basically tell me where to stand.

They didn't.

What I've learned, slowly and sometimes painfully, is that there's a canyon-wide difference between information and understanding. You can have a card full of pictures and still have no idea what's actually happening in that timber. The data doesn't think for you. It doesn't filter. It just sits there, and if you're not careful, it buries you.

We're living in the golden age of trail camera technology. Cellular cameras, high-res video, time-stamps down to the second — it's all incredible, and I mean that. But I've watched guys drown in it. They've got spreadsheets, they've got apps, they've got more buck sightings than they know what to do with. And come November, they're still sitting on the wrong ridge, second-guessing every move.

Information without interpretation is just noise.

That's what this episode is really about. The gap between knowing something and understanding it. Because those aren't the same thing, and the hunters who figure that out — the ones who can sit with uncertainty, resist the urge to over-analyze, and actually read what the woods are telling them — those are the hunters who make good decisions when it counts.

Patience is part of it. So is humility. You have to be willing to say, "I don't know what this buck is doing yet," and mean it. Not as an excuse to do nothing, but as an honest starting point. The hunters who've been at this for thirty years aren't necessarily smarter than you. They've just been wrong enough times to stop trusting data at face value.

Deer don't live in spreadsheets. They live in the timber, in the wind, in the terrain features you walked past without thinking twice. Your cameras can point you in a direction, but you still have to think your way to the stand.

This episode is for every hunter who's ever felt more confused after pulling cards than before. You're not doing it wrong. You're just missing the step between data and decision.

That step is understanding. And it changes everything.

SHOW NOTES AND LINKS:

—Truth From The Stand Merch

—Check out Tactacam Reveal cell cameras

— Save 15% on Hawke Optics code TFTS15

—Save 20% onASIO GEAR code TRUTH20

—Check out Spartan Forge to map your hunt

—Save on Lathrop And Sons non-typical insoles code TRUTH10

—Check out Faceoff E-Bikes

—Waypoint TV

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://megaphone.fm/adchoices

I've said it before, but every season I get a little more convinced that the best hunters aren't the ones with the fanciest gear closet — they're the ones who actually understand what they're chasing. That's the thread running through this whole conversation with Cody, and it went a lot deeper than I expected going in.

We start with journaling, which sounds like a soft topic for a hunting podcast until you realize Cody uses the exact same habit for jiu-jitsu that he does for whitetails. Write down what happened, write down what you got wrong, come back to it later. Failure isn't the opposite of getting better — it's the raw material. That mindset carries through everything else we talk about, and honestly, it's the part of this episode I keep thinking about.

From there we get into deer scent — and how much of what hunters think they know about it is built on assumption instead of observation. Every deer has a different threshold for what spooks it and what it just shrugs off, and understanding that spectrum changes how you think about wind, entry routes, and how much risk you're actually taking every time you climb into a stand.

That naturally rolls into a conversation I've wanted to have for a while: the difference between gear that actually makes you a better, more efficient hunter and gear that's just marketed like it does. We name names, we draw the line, and we talk about why simplifying your kit usually beats stacking it with gadgets. Boots come up here too — because apparently neither of us has found the perfect pair yet, and if you have, we want to hear about it.

We also get into the Ranger stand setup, quartering shots with a bow and the technique adjustments that actually help, why leaving your phone in the truck changes the entire texture of a sit, and how we both manage nagging injuries and stay in shape when we're living out of a duffel bag half the season.

This one's got a little bit of everything — mindset, mechanics, gear philosophy, and the stuff that actually keeps you hunting hard into November. Give it a listen.

SHOW NOTES AND LINKS:

—Truth From The Stand Merch

—Check out Tactacam Reveal cell cameras

— Save 15% on Hawke Optics code TFTS15

—Save 20% onASIO GEAR code TRUTH20

—Check out Spartan Forge to map your hunt

—Save on Lathrop And Sons non-typical insoles code TRUTH10

—Check out Faceoff E-Bikes

—Waypoint TV

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://megaphone.fm/adchoices

I sat down with DJ Riley for this one, and it turned into one of those conversations that started in one place and ended up somewhere I didn't expect — which, if you've been listening long enough, you know is usually when the good stuff happens.

We kicked things off talking about summer. Not the fun part. The part where you're scouting in ninety-degree heat, dragging cameras through timber that feels more like a sauna, and trying to convince yourself that recovery matters as much as effort. It does. I've learned that the hard way more than once — pushing too hard in July and paying for it come November.

From there we got into something I think about every single season: the clean slate. Every year I try to walk into the woods like I don't know anything. Not because I don't — but because the deer I'm hunting this year aren't the same deer, and the pressure map isn't the same map. Holding onto last year's plan too tightly is how you miss what's actually happening in front of you.

That led us into deer behavior — specifically curiosity. DJ and I talked at length about how a buck's curiosity is one of the most useful and most underrated tools in your kit. It's why the bump and dump works when you do it right. You're not trying to avoid every interaction with a deer. You're trying to control how that interaction ends, so the information you leave behind works for you instead of against you. Trail cameras play into this too — not just as a way to inventory deer, but as a way to read how curious, cautious, or comfortable a specific deer is being on a specific piece of ground.

We closed the conversation on something less about tactics and more about who we are as hunters. Every mistake I've made in the woods has taught me something, but only if I actually slowed down enough to notice it. DJ said something that stuck with me — that the moments right before a shot, the ones where everything speeds up, are exactly when you need to slow down the most. That's not just a hunting lesson. That's a life lesson wearing camo.

If you've ever wondered why the same techniques don't work the same way twice, or why some hunters seem to "read" deer better than others, this episode is for you.

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