Backpacking, Bowhunting & Shooting Tips From A Natural Born Hunter.

In this episode of the Ben Greenfield.

Fitness Podcast, even camping, you feel like, man, I'm out here in the wilderness. But guess what? Every Animal within a 10 mile radius knows you are there. When you hunt, animals might crawl on top of you. I've seen some of the coolest things animals do while hunting that I would never see if I was hiking or camping. That's the misconception of hunting. It's a bunch of beer drinking fat rednecks out there just trapping animals and killing them. Sport. But there is a lot of nuances and respect, time and effort and planning and work that go into hopefully harvesting a really mature animal. Say the closest thing to compare it to is like a spartan workout mixed with a CrossFit workout that you shoot during.

Welcome to the Ben Greenfield Fitness Podcast. We provide you with everything you need to know for total performance, fat loss, recovery, digestion, sleep, brain and hormone optimization. So whether you're an Ironman triathlete or you just want to shed a few pounds, get ready for non run of the mill cutting edge content from BenGreenfieldFitness.com.

Take two. Take two. Folks, you just missed five minutes of fantastic podcasting with Will Bradley of Natural Born Hunter. And we were sitting up here looking over the Silver Mountain and the Silver Valley recording, just getting into recording. A lot of cool tips for you hunters when I looked down and realized that our recording was paused. So we're gonna go for round two here, see how that goes. What do you think, Will?

Let's do it. I mean, I don't think we're gonna get that podcast gold we had earlier.

Such gold. We were talking about how there are birth defects related to mining around here. We talked about Lyme disease back in Will's hometown up in upstate New York.

Yeah, some really, really uplifting knowledge.

We were just getting into STDs and explosive diarrhea when the recording turned off. So it was going to be dynamite. But now we're going to talk about hunting and fitness because we're out here at the Train to Hunt competition. If you don't know what Train to Hunt is, then go listen to the episode that we did with Kenton Claremont and you can find that over at BenGreenfieldFitness.com I believe it's BenGreenfulFitness.com train2hunt but today I'm with Will Bradley, who's one of the directors of Train 2 Hunt. He's really immersed in the hunting scene and especially the hunting and fitness scene. And like I mentioned, he's from New York. And I don't know a lot about Will. We just actually met this weekend. But from what I've gathered from him so far, he really is a wealth of knowledge on shooting, on hunting, on fitness. He's up here training on a team with a CrossFit competitor, and he's a good guy. So, Will, welcome to the Ben Greenfield Fitness Show.

Thanks, Ben. Thanks for having me on the show. Thanks for coming out, man. It's great for the hunter, the Train to Hunt challenge, and the hunting athlete community to have someone like you cross over into this sport and give it a go, even though you. You're new to shooting and, you know, you obviously aren't quite there yet as the level of some of the other.

Competitors, I don't know if it's good for me to be out here. For anyone who's out hiking in the trees, back behind any of the targets that we're shooting at.

No. Give Ben a wide berth when he's shooting.

There have been a few stray arrows, let's put it that way.

Yeah. Yeah. But, you know, that being said, there's some people who would be too intimidated or scared or come up with some kind of, like, lame BS reason not to come do the competition. But you. You came, you put it on the line, you competed, you gave it your all, and I think that's. That's what's really important.

Yeah, I don't mind making a fool of myself, obviously.

Yeah.

But. Well, I'm curious how you got into all this, you know, working construction in upstate New York. What's your story? Did you start off as a hunter? Did you start off as a lifter or a crossfitter? As a runner or. Where'd you get going on this?

You know, my. My physical training had consisted of a lot of, you know, regular gym workouts of bench press and curls and all that stuff. And hunting season came around, and I didn't grow up in a hunting family. My dad didn't hunt. My uncles don't hunt. My grandfather did a little bit, but he passed away before he could get me into it.

That's interesting. You're probably one of the first guys I've met at these things who doesn't come from a hunting background.

Yeah, you know, there's more of us, actually.

Makes me feel okay.

You don't come from a hunting back.

Not at all? No. My. My dad's from Miami. My mom's Michigan, in Miami.

And not a lot of hunting in Miami.

No, in Miami. At least not for. Not for wild Animals. A lot of hunting that goes on at 4am at the nightclubs, but it's about it. So you don't come from very similar, though.

If you can. If you can hunt that, you can hunt anything.

That's right. That's. Leave that one alone. So, so basically you didn't come from a hunting family, but you got into. Into construction.

Yep, I come. Well, that's. That is a family business I'm involved in, so I've been doing that. I worked full time every summer since I was 14. I went to college at Morrisville State College, which is about an hour from where I live now in Morrisville, New York. And. And I got a degree in residential construction there, went into the family business, and that's what I've been doing. And I had a lot of friends move way out west to Colorado and other places, and it was becoming, you know, I'd have less and less friends, less to do, and fall would come around. I wouldn't have any sports going on, and there wasn't a lot for me to do. And I thought, well, the friends I do have here hunt. And I tired of bumming venison and other meats off them. Maybe I should, you know, go get a gun and teach myself to hunt. So I did, and I've been hunting ever since. The next year, I bought a bow.

You can't just go over that so quickly. You bought a gun, you trained yourself to hunt. Was this.

I taught myself.

You taught yourself.

I would say there wasn't much training, so.

So we're kind of on the same page here, because my first hunting foray was with a YouTube video loaded up with how to field dress an animal.

Yeah.

And my rifle. And me out there with pair of jeans and a cotton t shirt.

Yeah. YouTube's wonderful.

Yeah. Was that your journey or did you have like a mentor who went out there with you?

It started out where I had a buddy who kind of hunted, but I don't know if he had ever shot anything. And so we were basically going out there. I would say, I really don't know how to word this, what it is when you're not good at hunting at all, but you sit there all day long, which I guess, you know, you're still hunting, but I mean, we didn't know if we were in a place deer would ever come.

I mean, isn't that an ancient Native American meditation technique?

Yeah.

Sit spots. Yeah, I would say just sit there.

I was so good at meditating there, I fell asleep a few times. And so My first season, I go out and I bought a couple tree stands, set them up, sitting them every day, every weekend for almost all day. And on the last day of the season, I was out with my buddy Tommy, who doesn't hunt, but he came just to keep me company. And we're sitting there and I had fallen asleep, and he wakes me up and he's like, man, there's a doe out there. I was like, really?

And you were asleep?

Yeah, I was asleep. He was playing, I think a Candy crush on his iPhone. And he wakes me up, he's like, I think there's a doe out there. I was like, really? So I lift up my binoculars and I look, and it was a big size four point buck, which, you know, they're still kind of small compared to like an 8, but he was a decent size. So I quickly raised up my rifle, boom, shot him. He dropped right there. We went up there and luckily my neighbor had hunted before and he came over and just. I gutted him. He just kind of walked me through it and I gutted him out. We took him up to a buddy's, we hung him up. The next week we. Or I don't know if it was a week later, but soon after, we butchered them up and I was eating them throughout the year.

Wow. Wow. And so from there, were you just hooked on hunting? Did you get into a hardcore after that?

Yeah, I was hooked on hunting the minute I went and sat in the woods. Because when you hunt, you're not, you know, I've hiked a lot before that. We have something back in the Adirondacks. They call it the 46 High Peaks, which are the 46 highest mountains that are all over 4,600ft in New York State. And I've been into those. You know, I was. One of my goals is to climb all of those. So I was taken away at climbing all those, hiking a lot. You know, I kayak, do all that, you know, camp in the wilderness. But when you hunt, you become part of the wilderness. You're not just someone strolling through it or, I mean, even camping. You feel like, man, I'm out here in the wilderness. But guess what? Every Animal within a 10 mile radius knows you are there. When you hunt, animals might crawl on top of you. I've seen some of the coolest things animals do while hunting that I would never see if I was hiking or camping.

So there's a disconnect for me here, and that is that you, you shot your first animal from a tree Stand falling asleep while your friend played Candy Crush.

Yeah.

And I think that is a lot of people's perception of many hunters is that they aren't fit, that fitness isn't required, and that it's almost unfair, really, in that you're hiding up in a tree somewhere with a projectile object, whether it's a bow and arrow or a gun, taking out an animal. Where did you make the transition from sitting up in a tree, stand falling asleep with your friend waking you up, to actually getting involved with something like train to hunt, or even realizing that fitness is required for hunting?

Let me put it this way. Sounds easy the way I did it, but when I say it was the last day of the season, we have a season that runs from, I think it's mid October to late November. And if you were to count the amount of hours I spent in the woods after work, I had never. It would be in the.

That's hard work on your sitting muscles.

Yeah. I mean, but you have to have patience, and you have to go out there and not knowing what you're doing, you really have to spend a lot more time out there than people who know what they're doing.

Nerves fall asleep. No, but you're right. I do know that it takes some patience. But, you know, now. Now you've got a podcast that's devoted to, like, fitness hunting. And I know. Are you doing, like, more spot and stock style hunting now as well?

Nope, Nope.

Still hunting.

From the three still hunting. Well, it's like this. You don't have to be fit to hunt. And so all those guys out there who say, you know, you don't have to be in shape to kill an animal, you're. You're 100% right. You do not have to be in shape to do it, but it will make it a billion times easier on you. It'll make everything you do that involves hunting, whether it's your. If you're an east coast or Midwest hunter, hunting whitetail, you know, over a food plot, it still takes a lot of talent and dedication to harvest a mature animal and planting seeds, setting tree stands, all the work that leads up to hunting season. It's just easier when you're fit. And not only that, you're gonna live, you know, hopefully live longer because of it.

That's a. It's a lot different answer than what I kind of expected out of you, because that's often kind of the complaint that I hear people make about hunters, is that you're baiting an animal and you're waiting for it versus going out there and making it a fair fight as you stalk through the trees and maybe do archery out in. I guess it's more of like an east thing than the west, isn't it? More of the. The tree stand style hunting in the east versus the spot and stock in the west.

The concentration of hunters is on the east coast. We have like the top. I don't know, maybe it's top three out of the top five populated hunting states. I mean, if you were to compare the numbers, it's probably. I don't want to throw numbers out there, not knowing the facts, but we may double the population of hunters in the west and that's what most people do. And as an east coast hunter, I can tell you going from. Well, I guess I'll tell you the story. So I was out setting a tree stand the following season. I had bought a bow the year after my first rifle season. Decided, you know what, I want to be a bow hunter. I get to go into the woods earlier. It just seems cooler, more intimate. It's harder. And that's just where I want to be. And so I go out, I set this. We have 100 acres of hardwoods mixed in with. We have a farmer who plants soybeans out there in a field. And I went in and I went down by this creek. I had to go off a ridge to get down in there. And I'm hiking out with my stuff and I keep having to stop because I feel like I'm gonna die. And it was the moment where I decided I can't be like this anymore.

Yeah. And I think that's what people should be aware of is even if you're sitting up in a tree stand, you're still doing massive amounts of hiking. And if you have a successful hunt, massive amounts of hiking with a significant amount of weight. Right.

Yeah, there's. There's a lot of, you know, that like you said, that's the misconception of hunting that it's a bunch of beer drinking, fat rednecks out there, just, you know, trapping animals and killing them for sport. But there is a lot of nuances and respect and time and effort and planning and work that go into hopefully harvesting a really mature animal. I mean, that's, that's the goal. Nobody's out there killing, you know, yearlings and fawns or hopefully not doing it. The goal is to harvest an old, you know, near the end of its life animal. But, you know, because it keeps the population that popular herd population health.

Yeah, exactly. And really The. The ethics of hunting. You know, Ken and I hit on this when I had Kenton Claremont on the podcast, too, and in our initial Train to Hunt episode. And that's certainly, you know, it's kind of a whole different topic altogether. I know we're going to kind of. We're going to kind of hone in on the fitness component here in just a second. But by the way, I was going to tell you, that's a pretty bold thing for someone to accuse folks of thinking that hunters are just fat, redneck beer drinking folks sitting around. From a guy who's sitting there drinking a Nevada Sierra Pale Ale, this is.

My victory beer context for you.

We're sitting here looking at the Train to Hunt finish line as we're recording this podcast. You may have heard children playing on the playground behind us. My kids are out there somewhere. It's a real family event. Will's drinking his beer. I'm eating my deer sausage with my avocado here, my paleo meal, dipping it in barbecue sauce from the ski resort.

Paleo barbecue sauce.

Paleo barbecue sauce. I'm going to assume with a little bit of high fructose corn syrup added in. So you got into hunting a little bit more intensively after you. After you got that first buck.

Yeah.

Where did Natural Born Hunter and this whole, like, podcast and kind of like hunting entertainment, you know, side gig that you're doing now start?

You know, the podcast came about from a lot of. A lot of different things that just kind of connected and ended up happening. But so after. After that hike in the woods where I just felt like I was going to die, on my way out, I talked to my girlfriend at the time, who's now my fiance, and said, you know, I really think we should look for something to get in better shape. So we joined our local, local CrossFit box crossing, Mohawk Valley. And I was hanging out at the bow shop, you know, talking about fitness, and somebody said, hey, have you heard of Train to Hunt? And I said, no, What's Train to Hunt? And so I got online and I looked it up and I was like, man, this is. This combines the things that I love and I want to do. So I looked up where there was a challenge and there was one just outside of Denver. My sister lived in Denver. So I made it my goal to train for about six months. Leading up to it, they'd let me shoot in the box and they came up with a program just for me to do it. And I just started training to. I wanted to be the national Champion at the time, it didn't work out that way, but I became a much healthier, well rounded individual and a much better hunter and much more fit in the process.

Why didn't it work out that way? What do you think are your biggest barriers to being, like, a Train to Hunt champion?

That, I mean, I can't say. I would have beat Phil at the Fort Collins, Colorado qualifier.

And Phil is your podcast co host. Phil Philant is the Train to Hunt champion. He's your podcast co host.

Yep. He beat me at the Fort Collins qualifier. Then he won nationals. But I dropped an arrow at the fifth target and didn't realize it till I got to the six.

Oops.

And had to run back. So I got to the six target. Phil was just leaving it, and I had to run all the way back and get it, and I still managed to play second place. So I was pretty stoked about that. And then I got to. And I knew the elevation had hurt me there. But then when we went up to nationals, which is like, at 8,000ft, the altitude just crushed me. I didn't have a chance.

Yeah. So are you. Are you planning on going back to Colorado this year to compete?

Yeah, I'm gonna go back to compete because, I mean, you see, and I think you've experienced the community that goes on here, all the nice people, you know, you make friends. So, you know, Matt and I will qualify today for national, so we'll go and give it our best shot. And that's, you know, if you care about just getting a gold medal, then, you know, I think you're doing it for the wrong reasons. Yeah, medals are nice, but the experience and the journey along the way is something I've always valued over that standing on the podium.

Are you using an elevation training mask? Nothing to get ready for the altitude?

No, I can't say that I am. If anyone listened to our most recent Natural Born Hunter podcast, I had my buddy Joe on, who's a respiratory care therapist, and he pretty much told me I was an idiot for trying, really? For wearing it. And I actually tried it before leading up to Colorado. I spent a lot of time with it, and it didn't help one bit.

So after that, I don't think they're a sponsor for today's episode. Anyway.

Sorry. Elevation training?

Yeah. I mean, there is that misconception out there that elevation training masks put you at elevation. They train your inspiratory and expiratory muscles, but they in no way decrease the partial pressure of oxygen in the air.

Exactly.

What he is there is that little disconnect. But you know what? To their credit, I think they admit that.

It makes everything you do tougher. It makes you tough. Makes you look cool too.

So what does? You know, you're a Train to Hunt director.

Yeah.

You have a pretty intimate knowledge of the fitness requirements. What does a typical workout look like for you? Gold standard workout. To get ready for something like this.

You know, it'll be intervals thrown in with the things we do here. Whether it's burpees, sandbags, sometimes it'll. They'll be close, like a cross. I'd say the closest thing to compare it to is like a spartan workout mixed with a CrossFit workout that you shoot during. So, you know, you'll do like an interval, whether it's a rower, a run, or air dying. You'll do some. Something physical. I'll shoot, go back and you know, it's. Whether it's for time or reps or.

People haven't done this before. Do you actually have a target in your gym?

Yeah, I got a target. Yeah. I've only missed it and shot through the wall twice. So I think that's pretty good because I've probably shot hundreds of arrows in there and only sent two through the wall. Sorry, John.

I have a feeling after competing this weekend that my home would be like a target full of porcupine quills after trying something like that in the gym. But so you're running, you're stopping, you're shooting. It seems to me that there actually is a decent amount of running at this competition. I was surprised at the ground that you cover. Do you think that the train hunt workouts reflect that in terms of the amount of running that you guys do?

Yeah, those. Yeah, I would say they do. I mean, I follow. I'll mix in the train hunt workouts in my programming, but it's not just that, but I think leading up to the next one, I'm gonna kind of switch over more endurance focus because that's my pretty obvious weakness.

Yeah, yeah. Now, how about the nutrition component? Hunters are known kind of like for being, you know, fat, beer drinking rednecks. You sit up in trees waiting for an animal to come. They're known for donuts and beer and coffee out of styrofoam cups and those type of things, in your opinion, are people who are at these type of competitions on the healthy eating bandwagon? Are they like the paleo types or what's your perspective on the nutrition?

I'd say you get a mix of people who either go paleo macros or may eat just strict clean, or some others may mix it up. But looking out over here, we can see probably 90% of the competitors down there. And I don't think you. I can't see an unfit one. One person down there.

Yeah, they're pretty lean. What's your diet look like?

My diet's macros. So I eat for the carbs.

You eat for the carbs?

I mean, I eat. You know, I'd have to look up in my fitness pal what my carbs and proteins and all that is. But coming into the competition, my focus was to lose fat and maintain the muscle. I had. And I had a plan of. I think it was a pound a month of fat, and I was hitting that goal, so I'm just gonna keep doing that.

So you mean that you're restricting carbs or you're trying to eat more carbs?

You know, I had never done it before, so I don't know if it was restrict. I mean, it was restricting compared to my old diet that had a lot of pizza in it, so.

So are you following a specific, like, dietary protocol that someone's given you?

Like a menu? Yep. My buddy Ryan from Bare bones Strength, he calculates my macros for me and helps me monitor all that. Then, you know, so do you take.

You log your food and you send it to him?

I use my fitness pal and he ch. Make sure, you know, everything's going the way it should be. And honestly, I would say counting macros has been the easiest way for me to eat for my goals.

And by that, you mean that you are calculating protein, fat, and carbohydrate percentages?

That would be correct.

And are you shooting for a specific percentage?

Yeah, I got it on my fitness pal. I could tell you what it is. Yeah, I got it on my phone.

All right, gotcha.

So for those of you who don't use MyFitnessPal, it is a fantastic app.

Yeah. Most of the clients who I coach for nutrition, we've gotten off the food logging bandwagon. What I used to do is they'd send me an email with what they'd eaten at the end of the week. They just keep it in an Evernote doc, or a few of them use, like, MyFitnessPal or something like that. Now I do all photo logging, so everybody has a Flickr account that they share with me.

Really?

And they take photos of their food, and they just share with me their. Their Flickr account that you can keep private or public. So I'm able to look at the food. Okay, so you've got it pulled up here. Your calories and macros.

So I'm at 20 40% calories a day, 40% protein, 35% carbs, and 25% fat.

Gotcha, gotcha. And do you pay attention to the quality of the macros?

Oh, yeah. My fiance is a little bit of a foodie. She cooks all her foods. We do meal preps on Sundays, so we have everything ready. Most of our meat comes from probably two meals a week come from venison because she hunts as well. And as you, I'm sure you know the nutritional value of wild game meats and all that, which is pretty healthy and lean.

Yeah.

And then, you know, I don't. Have you ever done the. Looking at the skew numbers?

You mean. You mean the barcode on. On labels?

Yeah. We're supposed to tell you how percent of untampered with it is or whatever. The percent of which, like it's supposed to. I think it's practical Paleo. It talks about if it starts with this number.

Oh, yes. Yeah. The other book that goes into that is Good Calories, not Good Calories, Bad Calories, Rich Food, Poor Food by Mira and Jason Kelton gets into that too. How you can look at the skew numbers on the back and certain numbers are associated with. I forget if it's like organic versus non.

Yeah, I think that's kind of how it works.

It's kind of interesting. Those numbers can actually tell you a lot.

Yeah. So we go by those.

My. My catch 22 on that is we eat these days, so little packaged food that I rarely actually am looking at a barcode or a label.

Yeah.

So that's. That's the only issue with that. But yeah, it can be a handy little.

Funny. Yeah, funny thing about that. We now we started a vegetable garden. We have 30 pheasants and 30. I think they're Cornish game hens.

Nice.

No, they're French guinea hens.

Nice.

Yep. So we're raising. Raising birds. Gonna have some eggs.

Oh, you're raising them. They're not like wild birds that have come in since started.

We just. We're gonna start. Got a little chicken coop. We gotta have a fly pen and everything. Raise them and.

Very cool. Yeah. We recently added a. Added a little mobile chicken coop in a. In a barn to our.

They're cool, right?

Our homestead. Yeah. Yeah, cool. Chickens are cool to have around. And frankly, I was afraid that a rooster would be really annoying. And man, about one of the coolest things when you're. I go out on my porch every morning and do yoga. I'm one of those guys where my out of my underwear doing yoga on the porch. It's something about that rooster calling.

Nice visual there.

It's. It. There's something, something that feels really homey about being, being outside and just hearing your rooster growing on a quiet early morning.

You know, I think with hunting, and you may see it from, I don't know how many guys you. You're friends with on Facebook or Instagram, but you see a lot of guys who are also, you know, I would say the hunter athlete side, who are also into that homesteading type thing where I know you were on Mark Warinke's podcast and you know he's got goats and chickens.

Yeah, the Got Hunts podcast. As a matter of fact, I believe that there was some goat action going on when I was on his podcast recently. So that's the Outdoors Outdoors Adventures podcast or international. Yeah, Outdoors International podcast. That's another good one for hunting. And I gotta tell you, Will, I'm now that I'm getting more into this, this Train to Hunt challenge and hunting in general, I'm discovering this whole new world. You know, your podcast, Natural Born Hunter, which I, which I found through Kifaru, which creates some of the gear that I've been wearing. This guy named Aaron Snyder. Yeah, he's done an interview with him on your podcast. And then there's this Outdoors International podcast, and I found another one the other day called the Gritty Bowman Podcast, which is another good one, chock full of advice. So these things are popping up all over the place. Why is it that you think hunting and especially fitness in hunting is growing? What's, what's your take on this? Is it, is there a reason for it? Is it just a passing fad or what's going on?

You know, I think fitness as a whole is on an uptick. And I'm sure you see that with the Spartan races and the stuff you do that, you know, more and more people are deciding, oh, man, I don't want to be miserable. I don't want to feel miserable. I don't want to be put on drugs, to have to feel good all the time. I want to chase that natural high.

You know, people were doing marathoning in the 80s, right. And bodybuilding in the, in the 70s. To me, it seems that this whole, like, outdoors natural movement. Right. Yeah. Getting outdoors, getting your hands dirty, Spartan, Tough mudder, even American Ninja Warrior functional fitness. And I was talking and I know I asked you the question and I'm starting to talk now, but I was talking after I crossed the finish line about an hour ago about how it just feels very ancestrally appropriate to be running with a weapon, stopping shooting, and having to get your heart rate down and then continue to run again as though you were chasing or being chased. But unlike a Spartan or a triathlon or a marathon, you're not doing it all day long. No, it's 20 minutes, 30 minutes.

And here's the thing. It's like, all right, most people work a day job nine to five, right. They come home and they might practice shooting and work out and all that, but the animals are always out there. They are way more wood savvy and smart about predators than we are about hunting them. And events like this kind of give you that, I would say, old school, competitive glimpse of what maybe a hunting gatherer or a small native tribe would have experienced. And I would say the hunt, the Train to Hunt challenge. You know, the Train to Hunt people are almost a small little kind of tribe within the hunting community. And I think when you come here, you get that visceral experience. You're not maybe competing against an animal, but you're competing against other really hard working, talented people, people who are going to push you to those limits.

Yeah. And for, there's this whole philosophy of like move, lift, sprint as being the ultimate fitness program for longevity. And yesterday we were moving for what, four hours, just low level, as we did a 3D course walking through the woods, and then we were lifting, right. 80 pounds that we had to carry a mile or so. And then today we were sprinting, you know, with a 20 pound pack and sprinting straight up the side of a mountain and stopping and shooting. And that's really everything.

Yeah, Lifting in the middle, you know.

Yeah. So it's, it's, it's one of those things that just feels very appropriate. But I'm curious where you think the whole hunting component fits in. Do you think more people are interested in gathering their own food and hunting as they become fed up with modern egg or, or, you know, the crappy food from the grocery store? What do you think is going on?

I mean, and I talked about this before on a podcast a little like, watermelons don't taste like watermelon anymore, Chicken doesn't taste like chicken anymore. Nothing tastes like it used to. If you have elk or bear or deer, it tastes so different. And there's actually flavors in there than a lot of food. You'll buy in a grocery store today. And I think once people start eating it, they're like, whoa, there's a difference. And then they look at the nutritional facts and they're like, well, this makes sense. And on top of that, with that harvest, you know, the. Was the local. Local movement.

Yeah. Locavore. Local harvest.

Yeah, yeah. That movement.

100 Mile Diet.

Yeah. I think that plays into it. And, you know, you look back at what our ancestors were eating and doing a long, long time ago and, you know, it kind of plays into that as well as the hunting movement will grow, but I think specifically the bow hunting movement, because I see the bow as. It's a much different weapon, a much more personal weapon than a gun as, you know, getting into it, you can't just pick it up and pull the trigger and bam, hit what you're aiming at. Like.

And it's kind of like golf in that sense.

It's a dick. Yes.

Right. It's like, it's like you're driving golf.

Very much like once you want perfection. Yes.

And I've found myself whittling away, almost feeling guilty coming in after spending an hour messing around and shooting and setting up a target somewhere else and shooting again outside. You lose yourself as you're shooting.

It's, you know. You do yoga? My fiance's very into yoga. She's an. Would they be instructors or teachers? I don't know yogis either. Yogis. She's in. She teaches at our CrossFit box. She's tried the kettlebell yoga before and. And she bow hunts. And for me, what she gets out of yoga, I get out of archery.

Yeah.

I work box breathing into my archery.

And you go into the zone.

Oh, my coach talks about. There's the B game, which is conscious archery, of focusing on your aiming and your releasing and your. Your follow through. And once you get that nailed down, you start working on your A game, which is where it happens without thought.

Yeah.

And that's where you start. It'll be 10. 10.

10. Yeah. Yeah. So what are in your opinion? You've probably seen a lot of new people come into this sport. What do you think are the biggest mistakes that people are making either from a workout or shooting or a mental or physical standpoint?

The biggest mistake, man, you know, here in Colorado, I mean, not in Colorado, Northern Idaho, I see some really good competition. And, you know, I think when people follow the train to hunt stuff, they end up getting a lot of good information. They get into this world and people are just really willing to give, to help you out with whatever it is so they don't get too off track. But if you were to get into this to avoid maybe some things is instead of putting a lot of money into the bow right off the bat, maybe spend, you know, instead of getting a thousand dollar bow because it's sounds real fancy, go with maybe a four to six hundred dollar bow and then spend a little more on your pack. If you're going to be doing these challenges or plan on packing out meat, I'm sure you can attest to this that having a good pack on that meat pack was very important.

Well, having a good pack and this was this. Even yesterday, right before I sat out on the meat pack, you and Matt were helping me adjust where I placed the weight within the pack, where the waist belt was sitting on my waist, how my, my delta straps and my shoulder straps and my, my load straps were set up. That stuff all makes a huge difference. When you don't have your weight kind of like jiggling around in your pack and when it's sitting on your, on your hips properly and the weight is distributed on, on the kind of like the mid back as far as its placement in the pack, that makes a huge difference.

It does. And this is the cool thing I think about the hunting industry that people don't get to see is companies like Kafar who makes your pack and my pack and guys like Aaron Snyder who kind of head up the design and innovations there that they are insane about perfecting it and about getting everything. I mean the testing they go through with it. He has a whole, they call it the Mountain Warrior boot camp where they get like 10 guys together and they'll do the stadium at Red Rocks. You know, the steps there they'll go do these mountains and you know he gets the feedback.

Where's that at? In Denver?

Yeah, just outside Denver. Red Rocks. You ever go.

Okay, no.

Amphitheater?

No, never.

Oh, you should check it out. It's a heck of a workout. So you, it's a great, great cool experience because there's a ton of people working out there. Like it's, it's, it can be packed on weekends and are these actual stairs? Yeah, like they're built into the mountain. Built into the side of a mountain in the, in this big. I guess it would be Red Rocks park or whatever. I don't know the exact name, but I know it's Red Rocks Amphitheater. And they take these, these steps and they turn them into workouts and you know they'll Be doing lunges. Some people will be jumping them, doing push ups when they get to like a level surface, lunging up, you know, burpees, lunge up, like your squat up, whatever they come up with them. And there's all these kinds of people that are doing it and they go through all this testing and they do all this stuff. And honestly, I don't know if there's a backpacking company out there that can beat Kafaru's pack. But you don't see it in Backpacker magazine, you don't see them in Outside magazine.

So, you know, I think that's what.

People are missing out on.

And I purchased one just because I asked the director of Train to Hunt Kenton about, you know, which pack would be most appropriate and he recommended that one. And what'd you think of works really well. And I would agree with you that it seems to me that a mistake that a lot of people could make, you know, including myself. I've gathered a whole new body of knowledge that I wish I'd had like last year. I did. I don't know if you and I have talked about this much, Will, but I did the. The SEAL Fit Kokoro camp, which is like the. The Navy SEAL Hell Week equivalent.

I think I heard your podcast Civilians.

And you do a ton of rucking. Yeah, I thought I knew a lot about rucking when I finished that after competing in and prepping for Train to Hunt. I know so much more about. About selecting a pack, about packing a pack, about adjusting a pack and that. That I know come hunting season is going to come in incredibly handy. When it comes to packing out meat and packing in, you want to be.

Comfortable when you do it. You don't want to be in pain.

I took my kids out in the wilderness a couple weeks ago and had that Kufaru pack and was able to just carry everything that we needed in that pack. And it does make a big difference. Now, how about in addition to the pack shooting mistakes that you see beginners make when they're trying to get into something like this. And please don't shove me under the bus too.

You know, I think the hardest thing for shooters, and I think you can attest to this, is yardage judging. And one of the downfalls to the archery community is the lack of really good coaches. I was fortunate enough that I went out and found a good coach to get better for the Train to Hunt events. And I have to travel three hours to go get coached or sometimes he'll meet me halfway. I mean, once In a while I'll come up, but I'll travel three hours. Other guys will travel up from Pennsylvania. He lives in southern New York and from guys who come from Ohio, you know, so that tells you. There's one guy that I know of for the Northeast and I'm pretty active in all the social media and on, you know, on the uptake of what's going on in the industry. And I know of one guy.

There's some low hanging fruit for you people who know how to shoot out there, get into, get into shoot coaching. Yeah, I agree. I thought because I've been using my range finder and I've been shooting and I got a nice bow. I invested in a nice bow. I was pretty confident going into yesterday when we walked out there under that course with 20 different animals hidden out in the forest and we were walking through there taking shots. I was confident going in and thought I knew how to judge yardage and I didn't know a thing. It was incredibly humbling. And that's probably one of the number one things I learned out here was you have to be an accurate judge of yardage.

Think about this, you don't have to have the best. Like there is a technique to shooting, a proper setup and all that. But if you can, if you have a terrible setup, a terrible technique, a terrible anchor point, a terrible everything, but you can repeat it every single time you shoot. You will hit the same spot every single time you shoot. But if you don't know the yardage, it doesn't matter because you're gonna go up there, you're not gonna feel confident and it's, you're, you're just gonna release a bad shot. You know, if you don't want to shoot bad shots, don't release them.

In your opinion, if you could give folks the number one tip. This is a completely self serving question, by the way. If you could give people the number one tip for judging yardage, what would your tip be?

My number one tip would be find a coach. But my second number one tip would be there's a crossover method, they call it, where you stand on one foot and you look at the well, you say you stand on your left foot, you stand over your left foot and you draw a line from the right side of the end of the animal to your left foot, you know, in your ground with you know your mind. And then you stand on your right foot. You have to have a wide stance for this, but you stand on your right foot and then go from the left rear end of the animal back to your right foot. Right. And you'll be able to tell kind of where halfway point is between the two between you and the target based on where those lines cross. And it's a lot easier to judge, you know, 10 to 15 yards, which normally, you know, at most, maybe it'll be 30 yards to the halfway point. Halfway point for a 60 yard target, but it's a lot easier to judge up to 30 yards than it is to judge straight out to 60.

So you judge that halfway point and then multiply by two. Yep, exactly. Okay, got it. So we've got. We've got packing, selecting the appropriate pack and knowing how to pack it being one skill. That's. That's something that would tend to get neglected or fly under the radar for folks who want to get into this sport. We've got knowing how to judge yardage, being a good judge of yardage. If you had to choose one more thing that you think that. That folks should really target getting into Train to Hunt, what would it be?

Training. The training. I mean, I'm assuming most of your listeners are coming in pretty fit. So, you know, I'm gonna. I'm gonna give you all the benefit of the doubt that Ben's got you squared away with what you're doing physically. And I'm sure, you know, he. I'll give him credit, he came in here and dominated the meat pack. He just blew the doors off this thing. And I think. I don't know what the other people came in from the first heat, but he smoked the Train to Hunt challenge course today. I don't know what he got for his shooting, but he was flying. So, you know, he can help you on the fitness side or Ken can help you.

And there's also, yeah, there's the Train to Hunt website, and Ken and I talked about this. They actually give you. It's like a wad, right?

Yep, yep.

They give you the workout daily wad. You know, one thing that I noticed that really, you know, still, even though I'm relatively fit and have a decent hrr, right, that heart rate recovery. And if you want to, by the way, learn even more about heart rate.

Recovery, I would like to learn more about that.

Listen to the podcast I did with Dr. James Heathers where we talked about heart rate variability, heart rate recovery, and using something called breath ladders to actually increase your ability to recover your heart rate. It's essentially doing deep nasal breathing during hard workouts is the short story. But what I found was that I still think even Though I feel like I'm a fit guy shooting well while gassed. Really getting your heart rate up through the frigging roof. Right. Not just doing five burpees and taking a shot, which I have to admit, that's probably more of the type of training I did, but instead, like going two minutes at a full on glycolytic pace.

Yeah.

And then taking a shot. You know, I know my. My yardage judging was a little bit off my ability to kind of get my pack packed appropriately and set up appropriately, but then also that shooting while really, really tired.

Yeah. Here's where the. I would say coaching comes in to play with. With my coach of the B game and a game I'm supposed to, you know, if everything goes right, when I come into this challenge, there's no B game, only A game. Which means the only thing I have to do is stare at what I want to hit when I. When I shoot. I couldn't tell you where, say, the 10 yard or 20 yard pin is in my field of vision. It just disappears and I'm really. Yeah.

You don't look at the pin and.

Line the pin up with the target.

You just. You just look at the actual target and you're looking kind of like through your pin.

Yeah. When you shoot, the best way for aiming is you bring your bow up so you're looking through your peep. You got your pin out there. Once you got it to the right height, it should disappear, and you should be looking at where you want that arrow to go. Because at that last second, he always says your front hand will go to it. Your bow hand will go towards where you're looking at, and it'll send your arrow where it's supposed to go. Like, if I gave you a ball right now and I said, ben, hit that sign over there, you're gonna either hit it or come really close to it. And it's because that old, you know, what did we used to do to get food?

We would. We would use throwing sticks.

So, you know, we have great hand eye coordination, thanks to our ancestors.

Yeah.

And so it's that same interesting hand eye coordination. That pin is a distraction.

Yeah. That's a very interesting observation. I talked a little bit about this when I interviewed Chris McDougall of the Guy who wrote the book Natural Born Heroes. We didn't talk about this a lot in the podcast, but he certainly talks about it a lot in his book about how one of the skills that humans have for both self defense as well as catching prey is this skill. Of hand eye coordination and specifically being able to throw objects, crawl objects, or manipulate objects to be able to move through space that you don't see many other animals on the face of the planet doing, Aside from, like, you know, monkeys throwing their poop. Yeah. And the ability to be able to combine that with. With winding up and then releasing your fascia or like turning your hips and that type of thing where, you know, in the case of a bow, the fascia for you is the cam. Right. Something like compound bow. But ultimately, it's an interesting observation that if you, if you look at this as being something similar to throwing and using that hand eye coordination appropriately, the.

Bow should be an extension of your body.

Yeah.

That's what it really becomes.

Well, mine is certainly not yet an extension of my body. I have a little.

It's a new body part.

Mine still feels like a new body part. Exactly. It's like back when I started doing triathlon, that bike with the skinny wheels felt like a foreign object underneath, you know, now it's like natural. I can hop on a bike and it feels like it just molds to my body. But yeah, it's interesting.

But for you, it's time. You just need the time to train for that until you get it to where you got to work on your B game long enough to start developing an A game.

Yeah. Yeah. Well, folks, if you're listening in and you're. You're interested in getting involved with this whole train to hunt thing, and maybe you don't, you don't hunt, but you just want to get a taste for it as a gateway to getting into hunting. A few resources for you, of course, the traintohunt.com website. The previous podcast episode that I did with Kenton Claremont. Will Bradley is here with me and his website is at naturalbornhunters.com yep. Naturalbornhunters.com naturalbornhunter.com if you want a link in the show notes to all these resources, you can go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com Hunting. That's BenGreenfieldFitness.com hunting and I'll put plenty of resources there for you. Will, I'm going to put you on the spot here. If people have questions about train to hunt, about selecting equipment, about that type of thing, would you be willing, if they left them in the comments section, would you be willing to hop in every now and again and maybe pipe in and give people a few pieces of advice? You can say no and be a hole if you want.

No, ain't nobody got time for that. Yeah, I'd love to. You know, I'll pop into the show notes or your. Your Facebook page, wherever you are. You could hit us up at train 2 hunt, hit us up on our Natural Born Hunter Facebook page, Instagram, wherever. And that's the thing. If you have questions, this community will welcome you with open arms. We love new people who show an interest and they, they will help you with anything. And I think Ben's experienced that of you. You want to do this, we'll. We'll help you do what you can to put yourself in the best spot to win. We can't win it for you, but we'll help you do whatever it takes. And that's one thing Phil, Phil Mendoza, my co host from the podcast who's the current Train to Hunt national champion, says is I don't want to beat anybody who doesn't feel like they're competing at their best. I want everybody to be at their best. He makes my arrows. He makes Matt's arrows. He helps all the other competitors with their bow setups and everything. When I was competing against him after I met him, we became friends and he would give me just tons of advice and it works. And people, you know, if you're interested, just hit us up.

So It's Will Bradley. Naturalbornhunter.com all the show notes are@BenGreenfieldFitness.com Hunting thanks for listening in to our podcast episode here. Up on the top of Silver Mountain, looking over the children playing on the playground, who you probably heard a little bit of in the background looking over the Train to Hunt finish line, the beautiful trees. Will and I may actually go down here after recording this episode and take a few shots down at the 3D course down there in the trees. And I just want to finish by encouraging you. If you're listening in, get out there, whatever it is for you. That's the natural movement, whether it's getting into trees, park, nature. Anything else you want to add in, Will?

Yeah, this is all, you know, you hear all the kids in the background, but it's because people are bringing their families. It's a family sport. You know, guys are doing it with their girlfriends or husbands. People are doing it. You know, their kids are out here. Some of them are competing, or if. If they're not old enough to compete, they bring them and they just hang out. Nobody.

Rumor is they're going to add a youth division, too.

Oh, yeah.

So my kids have already asked me to step up their, their bows that they have back home to something a little bit more competitive, and we're heading down to Tamarack, Idaho, here in five days to go compete down there. So it's a great family event, too.

So it's really cool when you hear, like, Ben's kids yelling, go, Daddy. Go, Daddy. You're doing awesome. You know, it's, it's a very cool competition that, you know, if you want to just come check it out, just come hang out for a day.

That's right. So check it all out. BenGreenfieldFitness.com Hunting Will. Thank you, dude.

Thank you.

All right, folks, thanks for listening in. Have a healthy week.

Visit BenGreenfieldFitness.com for even more cutting edge fitness, nutrition and performance advice.

Sam.