Truth From The Stand Deer Hunting Podcast

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  EP. 510: What a Five-Time National Champion Taught Me About Hunting | HOS 16.09.2026 20dk

  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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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  EP. 509: Scouting Unpressured Ground Before The Season Ever Opens 09.09.2026 1sa 14dk

  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% on ASIO 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 megaphone.fm/adchoices
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  EP. 508: Mobile Hunting vs. Stationary | What Years in the Big Woods Taught Us 02.09.2026 1sa 35dk

  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% on ASIO 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 megaphone.fm/adchoices
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  Trail Cam University: I Filled My Tag and Got Worse at Hunting | Why You're Stuck 01.09.2026 16dk

  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% on ASIO 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 megaphone.fm/adchoices
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  EP. 507: I Let a Brain Scientist Explain Why My Best Hunts Happen When I Stop Trying 26.08.2026 1sa 50dk

  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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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  Trail Cam University: Patience vs. Paralysis | The Deer Hunting Decision Nobody Talks About 25.08.2026 16dk

  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% on ASIO 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 megaphone.fm/adchoices
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  EP. 506: Why We Stopped Looking For Deer While Scouting | Tony Peterson 19.08.2026 1sa 41dk

  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% on ASIO 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 megaphone.fm/adchoices
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  Trail Cam University: You're Hunting Right. You're Getting In Wrong. 18.08.2026 19dk

  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% on ASIO 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 megaphone.fm/adchoices
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  EP.505: Deer Hunting Mistakes | When Ego Takes Over | HOS 12.08.2026 22dk

  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% on ASIO 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 megaphone.fm/adchoices
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  Trail Cam University: Why Hunting Less Will Kill More Deer 11.08.2026 24dk

  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% on ASIO 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 megaphone.fm/adchoices
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  EP. 504: The Ego Problem That's Killing Your Deer Hunts | Jake Bush 05.08.2026 1sa 37dk

  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% on ASIO 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 megaphone.fm/adchoices
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  Trail Cam University: Information vs. Understanding | The Decision That Changes Everything 04.08.2026 17dk

  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% on ASIO 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 megaphone.fm/adchoices
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  EP. 503: The Discomfort Threshold | Cody D'Acquisto 29.07.2026 1sa 43dk

  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% on ASIO 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 megaphone.fm/adchoices
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  EP. 502: What Ten Years Of Deer Hunting Mistakes Taught Me 22.07.2026 1sa 38dk

  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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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  EP. 501: Why Your Worst Hunt Last Season Was Actually Decided In July | HOS 15.07.2026 19dk

  I'll pick this up right where I left off in episode four. I told you to sit down and run four honest questions on your worst hunt of last season. No sugarcoating, no "I need to be more patient." Find the actual decision that broke things. If you did the homework, you've got something with edges now, a real turning point you can point to. So now what? It's July. There's nothing to hunt. You've got a diagnosis and no patient to test it on. This is where I borrowed an idea straight from jiu jitsu, a sport I've spent a fair amount of time getting choked out in over the last few years. There's a difference between rolling and drilling. Rolling is live sparring, full resistance, real stakes. Drilling is the boring part. The same move, fifty times, nobody fighting back, until your body just does it without asking your brain for permission. Hunters only roll. We show up in October with nothing behind us except the last October. No off-season reps. Just waiting around and hoping we remember how to be good at this. I got into Angela Duckworth's research on this for the episode. She splits practice into naive (logging hours, shooting shots you can already make) and deliberate (finding the exact thing you're bad at and grinding on it while it's uncomfortable). Most of us practice naive. We scout the ground we already know. We shoot the yardage we're already good at. Then October shows up and the same gap is sitting there waiting. I break down three ways to actually drill in the off-season. Running high pressure scenarios in your head until the right call has a groove worn into it. Physical reps on your shot sequence, including the part where I talk myself through mine out loud like a crazy person, and it works. And catching the pattern that keeps costing you, then building the habit that interrupts it before it happens again. Right now, we're in the building phase. August and September, you tighten up. Once the season opens, the drilling's done. You're just trusting the work. Duckworth has a line I can't shake. One season of learning is a paragraph. Ten seasons of deliberate work is a book. Most of us are out here collecting paragraphs and wondering why we never get anywhere. Hunt like you train. SHOW NOTES AND LINKS: —Truth From The Stand Merch —Check out Tactacam Reveal cell cameras — Save 15% on Hawke Optics code TFTS15  —Save 20% on ASIO 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 megaphone.fm/adchoices
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  EP. 500: The Hunt Was Never The Point 08.07.2026 1sa 31dk

  I hadn't sat down with Josh in a while. Not because we fell out or drifted on purpose, just life did what life does. Kids, seasons, work, all of it stacking up until you look up and realize it's been way too long. So when we finally got together to record this one, it felt like picking up a conversation we'd never really finished. A lot of this episode is about parenting through the years nobody prepares you for. Josh and I are both staring down empty nesting, watching kids pull away into their own lives, and figuring out what that means for how we spend our time now, hunting or otherwise. There's grief in that transition, but there's also freedom, and we don't pretend it's simple. From there we got into hunting, which for us has never really been separate from parenting anyway. We talked about what success actually means once you've been doing this long enough. Filling a tag used to feel like the whole point. It isn't anymore. What matters now is who you're with, what you're teaching your kids, and whether you're building memories that outlast you. We got honest about the risks of hunting alone. Not in a preachy way, just real talk about what you lose when there's nobody there to help you make a decision or get you out of a bad spot. Companionship on the hunt isn't just nice to have. It's part of what makes this whole thing worth doing. We also talked about the fear that comes with getting older. Losing hunting partners, losing time, losing the version of this sport you grew up loving as the landscape shifts around you. That's a heavy subject, but we didn't want to dance around it. By the end we landed on gratitude. For the friendships, for the stories our kids will tell someday about us, for the fact that we still get to do this at all. The hunt was never really the point. This one is about why we keep coming back to the woods anyway. If you've got a hunting partner you haven't talked to in a while, this episode might be the nudge to call them. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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  EP. 499: Stop Waiting for Perfect | Hunting Aggressive When Time Is Short 01.07.2026 1sa 50dk

  There are seasons in life that don't care about your hunting plans. They hit hard, rearrange your priorities, and force you to figure out what you're actually doing out there and why. That's what this conversation with Justin was really about. Justin lost his nephew before the season started. I'm not going to gloss over that. It shaped everything about how he approached the woods this year, and honestly, it made for one of the more real conversations we've had on this show. Grief has a way of stripping away the noise. You stop worrying about inches and start thinking about what the time actually means. We got into a lot on this one. Fitness, aging, managing injuries that aren't going away as fast as they used to. If you've been hunting for more than a decade, you know exactly what we're talking about. The body starts sending signals you can't ignore, and the question becomes whether you adapt or make excuses. One of the things Justin kept coming back to was trusting his instincts. Not the overcomplicated, over-researched, app-dependent version of hunting that we've all been seduced into at some point, but the raw gut feeling you develop after years of watching deer move. That instinct doesn't show up on a map layer. You earn it. We also spent a good chunk of time on ground hunting, and that's where things got fun. Close encounters from the ground are a different category of experience. The margin for error disappears. You feel the hunt instead of observing it. Justin had some stories from this season that reminded me why I fell in love with this in the first place. But here's the thread that tied all of it together: time. When you're balancing a family, a job, real life, every sit matters more. That pressure can work for you if you let it. We talked about hunting aggressively when you only have one or two windows in a week, about not burning a stand waiting for perfect conditions that might never come, and about letting experience teach you faster than any piece of technology can. The role of tech came up too, and not in a flattering light. We've all leaned on it as a crutch. Sometimes the best thing you can do is put the phone down, trust what you know, and go. This one hit different for me. I hope it does for you too. New episodes every week. Subscribe wherever you 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% on ASIO 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 megaphone.fm/adchoices
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  EP. 498: The Truck Broke Down & The Hunt Got Real 24.06.2026 1sa 3dk

  There's a version of hunting where everything goes according to plan. The rig starts, the weather cooperates, your deer or elk are exactly where you left them. That version of hunting isn't what Blake Ledger and I talked about on this week's episode. Blake's a guy who hunts with traditional archery equipment, chases deer and elk in country that earns every inch of access, and has a relationship with hunting that goes a lot deeper than punching tags. When we sat down together, I wasn't expecting the conversation to go where it did -- but that's the thing about talking to people who actually hunt hard. The real stories always surface. Blake told me about a breakdown that happened mid-trip in the middle of nowhere. Not a dead battery, not a flat tire -- a full vehicle failure at the worst possible time, in the kind of country where that actually matters. What unfolded after that wasn't a disaster story. It was a testament to what hunting communities actually are when things go sideways. People showed up. Problems got solved. The hunt continued. We also spent a serious chunk of time talking about time. Not time management in the corporate-seminar sense -- actual hours in the field, boots on the ground, eyes on animals. Blake's a believer, like I am, that you cannot shortcut your way to understanding a piece of ground. Trail cameras help. Scouting helps. But there's a kind of knowledge that only accumulates when you've watched a particular drainage long enough to know what it does in a particular wind. That doesn't come from an app. The conversation shifted into the mental side of hunting -- the anticipation that builds before a season, the way a hunter's mindset evolves after years of close calls and missed shots. Blake's had both. He talked about visual confirmation and how trail cameras changed -- and didn't change -- how he thinks about hunting. There's a version of the scouting game where cameras become a crutch, and a version where they sharpen your decisions. The difference is the hunter using them. This is the kind of episode I started this podcast to make. Two guys who love the woods, talking honestly about what it actually takes. No shortcuts, no highlight reel -- just the real thing. Listen in. You'll leave with something useful. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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  EP. 497: Why Most Hunters Never Learn From Their Failures | HOS 17.06.2026 22dk

  Failure hits different in hunting. When a quarterback throws an interception, there's film. A coach. A coordinator breaking down every footstep and finger placement. The feedback loop is immediate, structured, and relentless. When you blow a shot at a giant buck, you drive home alone with your thoughts and a pile of questions that don't have easy answers. That's the part nobody really talks about. Not the failure itself, but what comes after. The silence of it. I've watched hunters handle blown opportunities in two ways. Some bury it. They chalk it up to bad luck, move on, and repeat the same mistakes the next time a buck steps into the wrong lane. Others spiral. They replay the moment so many times it becomes more about self-punishment than actual learning. Neither one makes you better. What actually moves the needle is treating a failed hunt the way an athlete treats film study. Structured. Intentional. Without ego. That's what this episode is about. I wanted to pull apart the process of reviewing a hunt, not just emotionally processing it, and give you something practical you can use when things go sideways. Because they will go sideways. That's hunting. The question is what you do with it when they do. I work through four questions that I think every hunter should be asking after a failure, whether that's a missed shot, a bad stand decision, or a deer that just evaporated before you could close the deal. These questions aren't about making yourself feel better. They're about pulling real information out of a frustrating experience so it actually means something next season. The hardest part of all of this is that hunting doesn't give you instant feedback. There's no referee. No stat line. No slow-motion replay from three angles. You have to build your own system for reviewing what happened, and most hunters never do that. They just wait for the next opportunity and hope the outcome is different. Hope isn't a strategy. If you want to grow as a hunter, you have to get honest about where things broke down. That means getting past the emotional weight of a failure fast enough to actually examine it. Not dismiss it. Not wallow in it. Examine it. This episode is for the hunters who want to get better every single year, not just the ones who get lucky.SHOW NOTES AND LINKS: —Truth From The Stand Merch —Check out Tactacam Reveal cell cameras — Save 15% on Hawke Optics code TFTS15  —Save 20% on ASIO 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 megaphone.fm/adchoices
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  EP. 496: One Thing The Best Hunters Do 10.06.2026 1sa 8dk

  There's a version of deer hunting where you show up every fall, do roughly what you did last year, and hope things go differently. A lot of hunters live there. I've lived there. And for a long time I didn't even realize it was a choice. That's really what this conversation came down to. Chad and I kept circling back to this idea of hunting as a craft versus hunting as a habit. And the more we talked, the more I realized how easy it is to confuse the two. You can put in a lot of hours and still not be getting better. Hours aren't the same as learning. The hunters who actually improve year over year aren't necessarily the ones hunting more. They're the ones who are honest with themselves about what went wrong. Not in a self-critical spiral, but in a practical, diagnostic way. What did I do? What did the deer do? What does that tell me? Most of us are pretty good at remembering our kills. We're not nearly as good at sitting with our failures long enough to learn something from them. We talked a lot about fundamentals, and I think that word gets watered down. Fundamentals aren't just "play the wind." They're the boring, repeatable decisions you make whether you feel like it or not. Entry routes. Timing. Pressure management. Knowing when to sit and when to stay home. None of it is complicated. It just requires discipline on days when discipline is inconvenient. Versatility came up too. There's a tendency to find something that worked once and lean on it forever. A stand location, a hunting style, a strategy. But the conditions change. The deer change. The hunters who keep filling tags are the ones willing to adapt, not the ones most loyal to what used to work. What I kept coming back to after this conversation was how much of consistent success is just self-awareness. Knowing your tendencies. Recognizing when you're making a decision out of impatience versus out of sound reasoning. That's not a hunting skill exactly. But it might be the skill that unlocks all the others. SHOW NOTES AND LINKS: —Truth From The Stand Merch —Check out Tactacam Reveal cell cameras — Save 15% on Hawke Optics code TFTS15  —Save 20% on ASIO 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 megaphone.fm/adchoices