00:00:02 Speaker 1: Welcome to the Wired to Hunt podcast, your home for deer hunting news, stories and strategies, and now your host, Mark Kenyon. Welcome to the Wired to Hunt Podcast. I'm your host, Mark Kenyan, and this is episode number three forty two. In the show, I am joined by professional archer, Avid bow Hunter and YouTube phenomen Chris B to discuss competitive archery, mental strength in the Moment of truth, and epic road trip hunting. All right, welcome to the Wired to Hunt podcast, brought to you by on X. Today, we've got a fun show for you as I'm joined by Chris B. Now, Chris is a fellow Michigander and uh proud to say, a fellow Michigan State alum. And well, I don't know if he's an a lumb yet, he's a Michigan State attendee. Hand a guy that I started taking notice of a few years ago through his popular be Real YouTube channel where he showcases all sorts of pretty epic hunting trips and archery videos and various other fun antics. And he's doing a he's doing a very good job with it. It's it's good stuff, it's fun stuff. In addition to the hunting and shooting media he produces. He's also a professional archer, having been a Vegas Shoot finalist and having had multiple national and international podium finishes. So, in short, the guy's a hell of a shot. He's a bass to the wall hunter and a very good storyteller, and that, in my mind, is the recipe for a good chat. So today with Chris, we talked a little bit about his competitive archer history and the ways that shaped him as a hunter. We discussed some of the lessons he's learned along the way about archery and competition that have helped him perform in high pressure situations like hunting. We dive into archery advice and practice regiments. We finally spend a lot of time actually discussing his most recent hunting season, which involved just it was an insane hunting season. He had a d i y road trip to Alaska, a three state tour across the West in a impressively rigged camping van. He had more white tail hunts than I think you can count on two hands, uh, And across all that we touch on his favorite gear. We talked about camping, food, hunting lessons learned, tips for planning, hunting, road trips and a whole lot more so, that is what we have in store for you. And during times like these, while we're recording, which is in late March mid the whole COVID nineteen pandemic, I think we need conversations like this more than ever. You know. It's it's one that's full optimism and fun and some escapism, and it's just jam packed with something that we love so much, which is hunting, and we need a little more of that love and excitement right now, I think. So get ready for an escape from the bad news and an invitation to dream about your next hunting trip too. I hope you enjoy it, and we'll talk to you soon. All right, now, on the other side of the line with me, I've got Chris B. Welcome to show. Chris, thanks for having me Mark. Let's say it's exciting. I'm excited to be talking on this. I've listened for a long time. That's awesome, man. Well, thanks for listening and for making the time um to do this. I guess a lot of us have maybe a little more time than usual since most people are on lockdown here at home given the crazy things. Now you're you're in Michigan, right, Yeah, Yeah, I'm not too far from Yeah, so we're we're underneath the same government stay at home shelter in place order, So we were not even supposed to be going to the pro shop, going to the hardware store, doing anything anymore. Yeah. Yeah, I got that text last night. Pretty crazy. Yeah. So so basically all we're allowed to do is have Skype phone calls to talk about honey. Not that bad. Yeah, it could be worse, I guess in that case. Um. Yeah, so you're you're somewhere in like mid Michigan, right, give or take. Yeah, so I'm I'm just east of Lansing. Um, and then I do a lot of hunting, like right around the Lansing area. It's awesome, awesome. You're not too far from my buddy further, he's east of Lansing a little bit too, so you guys might be bumping to each other in that general reagion. Um. Yeah, so you're I've been kind of aware of you now for a few years, watching your stuff on YouTube, thinking it's pretty cool, and I I've had you on the list of someone I wanted to talk to for a while now, and after your hunting season, and seeing all that and just being really horribly bitterly jealous of you in a lot of ways and thinking to myself, Man, this crispy, I don't like him at all. He's doing everything I want to do right now. You got a heck of the year. So so yeah, I want to talk to you about last year. I want to talk to you about some of the things you've got going on right now from an archer perspective, because I think there's a lot of people similar to us locked down and wanted to do something productive and worked on your archery game. I think is a pretty good thing to do right now. So I want to dive into a lot there because you've got this background in tournament archery, and I want to I want to kind of hear a little bit about how that started for you. As I understand it, you got a hunting at a young age and then pretty quickly got into the target archery stuff. Can you give me just a really quick rundown of kind of how that began for you, Um, what that looked like. So I was, um, I was six years old when I got like one of those little tiny fiberglass you know, red bows shoot in the backyard and really don't stick in the target like that type of setup. So I shot that for like, you know, for a year or so, and then um I found a local club it's actually Livingston Conservation Sports Association UM and that's not too far from me, and my dad got um me ugged into a youth program up there, and I think I was seven or eight when I started doing that. And it's like you can basically like borrow a basic recurve and you can shoot Saturday mornings and like you can score if you want, and so it was kind of cool and that got me like involved in a community aspect of archery at like super young age. So that kind of progressed. Like several years later, I got a boat for Christmas, um a com pombo, and I kept shooting, and then I think I was ten years old is when I shot my first tournament, like just a local state tournament. UM. And that's the first year I shot a deer also with the bow, so they both kind of were happening at the same time, and it just kind of escalated from there. Like you go to a couple of local shoots and then you know, you keep getting better and better and then someone says, hey, you should go shoot you know, this tournament out of state, and You're like, okay, let's go explore that. So we went. We went to a couple lot of state tournaments and went to nationals and kept upgrading equipment, and eventually, by the time I was in like fourteen fifteen sixteen, I was on like United States Archery team for like their national team, which is the top five in the nation. Um So. I was on that from age fourteen through nineteen every year, um so, traveling all around and stuff. And then when I was when I was sixteen, actually that's like when I had my first quote unquote sponsor. Um I did really good at an event in Vegas. And whenever you do good in like a big event or anything, it just it just draws eyeballs on her or whatever. So people are always their sponsors are always looking. So anyways, um hoy actually picked me up when I was sixteen at the Vega shoot. So from there that kind of spurred my professional career, I guess you could say. And I started shooting more in than professional divisions and traveling around and everything. And you went to my right, you went to Michigan State yeah, and technically I'm still going. Nice go grain man, that's my own model right there. Really right on, I didn't know that. Yeah, I'm oh, oh nine graduate, so so so you're still you're still going. You guys have got class canceled though now right, oh yeah, I don't. I'm not taking any classes as a semester. But yeah, all the everything's canceled. Everything shut down. Everyone I believe how to be moved out by April something the beginning of April. So that's pretty crazy. My wife actually works at Michigan State, so she's she's pretty tapped into what's going on. And every day I'm hearing the different things and pretty nuts. So my camera guy, Bryce, who does a lot of my stuff, he's a sophomore at Michigan State, so he's a he's all pushed around. Now, yeah, that's a place I love. It's nice. My wife works from home most of the time, but she does go in the office once a week or so, and uh I sometimes go up there with her and work at a Starbucks or something. It's just a good excuse to get back up there and and just relive the gold glory days. Well, next time, after all was quarantine stuff. You should hit me up. Yeah, I go to all the Starbucks by that. Yeah, there's a there's a couple of good ones there. So yes, we'll have to uh, we'll have to do that. Um. But something you said a second ago, I want to rewind a little bit too, um, because you got you got this early start and then it progressed and you kept getting more and more into it, and you didn't mention this, but I think as you got more and more into the tournament side of things, you also got more and more into the hunting side to right. That's true, So that was that was going on for you. I selfishly, and this is gonna date me as being an old man now, but I selfishly want to ask you about this because I'm a dad now. I've got a two year old son and I want him to do like the same thing, and of course, so I don't want to force me anything, but I'd selfishly like him to do the similar things that you got into. Like I'd love to see him love archery and love hunting from an early age. Um, My dad got me into hunting, but not into the archery side of things, and it was like a very casual thing he was not. Um, you know, I kind of I kind of picked it up myself and got really excited about and got him more into it. UM. So I'm curious for you, you know, when you were pretty young and it sounds like your family is getting you into the stuff. What were the things that were like most impactful or that that helped you get into this and became so passionate. Was it just the fact that you got this bow and you were into it, or were there other things that maybe I mean I was, I was super into it. I mean I really I enjoyed it, and I played other sports through UM, through elementary and middle school. Like I was, I was active in other sports along with doing it, so it wasn't like my only thing, um. But no, it was. It was definitely something something I was super passionate about. And I think because it tied in with hunting so much at first, because like, my dad's a big hunter. We live on We're this we are the classic deer hunting Michigan family. We live on ten acres. We have another fourteen acre chunk. You know, we hunt out of the backyard. We have several tree stands on the back so we would go hunting all the time, and my dad got super into um, I don't know if you're familiar with Tony Lapratte. Yeah, so we've gone to a lot of his stuff. So my dad got super into food plants and hinge cutting and deer management and everything. So on our other chunk right down the road. Um, we kind of went crazy on that. So not only like deer hunting at a young age and I'm like eight, nine, ten, eleven, Um, we would go like multiple days in the summertime and just like go to town over there doing two pods, hinge cutting and everything. My dad was self employed, so he can he was kind of flexible, so we spend like days, you know, just going crazy over there. It's it's it's pretty cool and now years later, but yeah, so I was super involved all the way through. And UM, I don't like a parent standpoint, My parents are just super supportive of it. UM, never forceful. And now like now that I'm older and I see um kids and helping kids and a little bit of coaching here and there, it's super important just for parents not to be like forceful and things like you you you provide the opportunity and if they bite on it, then you support. But I see so many kids that, um, you know, it's just like the satellite coach parent, you know, and it's like just so forceful and like you gotta do this, you gotta do that, and it's like it's like one, I don't like to see it because it's just you know, the kids doing something they might not actually want, you know, and it just creates it just creates this friction. So yeah, probably something that's similar to what you see across all these other sports too, right, Yeah, but you know a lot of these other sports are are a team oriented, so you you get away with um, you know, the team aspect. Archery is so individual, you know, it's it's practice. His individual tournaments are individual, like you can shoot in your backyard like it's it's not very team oriented. So there are some advantages and disadvantages with that. It's a good point. It's a good point. Uh. I'm curious if you think that I'm on the right path then, because I'm trying to take that approach you just said, like show support, get him excited, but not force it. Um So, so my son he's well on his way. He's two full years old and he's got I've got him a little nerve bow with a nerve arrow, and he is to the point now where he gets pretty pumped. He'll run around the house with his bow and he'll say, shoot deer, Shoot deer. He'll go up to the shoulder mountains. He'll he'll draw back, he'll stop them. He'll stop them with him rat and then he'll shoot him with the nerve bow. Would you say he's on the right path? I think you're doing all right. That's funny, kills me. It's pretty funny stuff, man, it's fun um. So so then what about for other you know, younger folks listening. I don't know, sixteen year olds out there, someone who's maybe getting into it or dabbling, um, wants that he has been considering should I start shooting tart show, shoot three D or should shoot some league? Um? Any advice for somebody who's thinking about getting into this is it? Is it something that's going to help people become better hunters? I would sure think so. But what are your thoughts on that or any tips as far as what to get involved in or anything. So I did a I'm kind of refreshed on this subject because I just did a blog post on it um. But the archery world is like super intimidating to the average bowl hunter, Like there's a there's a lot of unknowns. There's you know, from equipment to form to even like going in a pro shop and asking for help. Like if you if you just bought a bow like ten years ago and you haven't done anything since. Like, it's it's super intimidating. So the best thing to do, UM, I think, in any aspect if you're trying to find either more help on your equipment, more help on form um, or like more tournaments league type stuff, is trying to connect with the pro shop UM most of the time. And I understand there are pro shops that aren't as good as others or friendly or whatever, but for the most part, pro shops have a very good resource at getting you information. You know, from leagues. Many pro shop have like Tuesday night, Friday night leagues you can get plugged into, um, you know, obviously helping with tuning and form and everything. But then I mean online, like there's so much stuff online now, I mean you could pretty much, you could pretty much if you're that type of person, do everything on your own. Tuning Lise and everything, but I still feel like getting plugged in somewhere is so important. I mean, I've as long as I've been shooting up always somewhat been plugged in somewhere, even if it's like just a just a club you know, where you see people every now and again and you just go up and shoot. Um, it's just it's it's important for growth, I feel like in archery, because you see other people shoot, you see what they're doing, you ask, you bounce questions. You know, if you just shooting isolation, it's a I don't know, it's I feel like that that community is so important in archery. It's it's pretty easy to start off and ingrain bad habits if you're just doing it by yourself. To right, that's yeah, you know, you you get on a tangent of yeah this, this feels good, you can do this, and you realize that like something is totally jacked up. So and getting a coach is important, like if you really really really want to get good, like if you want to go like the tournament route, tournament route. Um. I know guys that have done it by themselves, but it's always hard and they always find difficulties. Um, finding some sort of coach is always super important, and you can and there's resources online, like you can go on USA Archery and they actually have a whole lineup of like certified coaches in your area with like their selling and email number and stuff, so you can actually reach out to him. Um. But for the most part, hitting up a pro shop, someone will know someone that knows someone. Most of the time, you know, something will work. You know, I never went the tournament route or considered that, but just back to having a second set of eyes on you. I I wish I had had that because I basically just taught myself how to shoot, like my dad and I learned how to bow hunt together. And and it's basically me learning and showing him kind of and yeah, and and and I probably learned it all wrong. Well I did learn all wrong. I had a whole lot of bad habits I just was kind of figuring out as I went. And then over the last you know, five ten years, I've had to address all these bad habits and things I've been doing wrong and and trying to fix that now that I know a little bit more. But man, if if I had, you know, if I had been doing it right fifteen years ago, eighteen years ago or whatever, it would have been a whole lot easier for me now, that's for sure. So I wish i'd had that. But yeah, um it's a it's a great point you make, and it's nice to know that if you do want to go that more serious route, that you can find coaches. And what's a coach to do? I mean, what's in your in your kind of line of when they're up to tournament kind of stuff? I mean, is a coach meeting with you and just watching your shoot and running you through drills and examining your former or what what's that process look like? So like for me now, um, my main coaches down in Atlanta, So and I'm to the point like where I don't need like a tune up like all the time, you know, But I mean I still need when I go down there like every couple of months because um Ul Trivi you archery. I don't know if you've heard of them, They've been on my stuff a little bit, but they're down in Atlanta too, So I go down there for them a lot, and then I get coaching also, But like you show up and you know. His name is George. He's like, yep, you're doing this or you're doing that, and I'm like, all right, that's why I come down here. Still, it's like you're you're never ending. You fall into these bad habits, so they're they're minor form tweaks or recently it's been mental. So George is really good at, you know, mindset type stuff because archery and hunting. I mean, there's a reason why there's buck fever. You know. All buck fever is is your mind, you know, so if you can control that, and it's no different in archery. I mean, like buck fever is so so similar to like when you're super jack, to like you know, shoot a perfect round, like your last arrow on a perfect round, or you're about to win a tournament, like mastering. That feeling is no different either way. Do you feel like you've mastered it? No, not even close. I don't know if you ever master it. That's the thing. It's like this ongoing it's just an ongoing battle. Like this year especially it was super hard, like tournament wise for me because I like switch bow companies and there's this extra pressure and so so tell me about that. What do you mean by that extra pressure? Is it because is it? Is it simply because you've got pressure into a sponsor, or is it you're grow a platform or is it you feel like, hey, I really want to be winning these things, because all right, it's just tell me all the above, all the above. So like you switch when whenever you switch bow companies, and um, I can have a little bit like following has grown, you know, tremendously since the past years, so there's more eyeballs on my personal channels, and you know, I feel like it's not actually the case. I know it's not actually the case, but I feel like I let people down, you know, when I don't shoot well, like followers or whatever. And then when you switch bow companies, it's like you're like, oh, is he gonna shoot good with the new bow? You know, because like you switch and they're always like, you know, is he gonna shoot as good or better or whatever? So there's like that sort of pressure. And does does Derek Nelson never like text you to say, man, you really screwed it up, dude? I mean jokingly just kidding. Nelson's cool, And it's actually Derek Phillips is uh is the pro staff manager um on the target side. So they actually, I don't know if you're familiar with them, most of the hunting people probably aren't too much, but they have like um, you know, Derek literally manages the pro staff for Matthews. So it's really cool that there's like a whole community side on that. Yeah, it's cool. So tell me, tell me about what you're doing to try to I mean, because because where everyone listening, all of us hunters were always trying to the same thing when it comes to hunting. I mean, I don't think I will ever get tired of thinking about or talking about how to handle the moment of truth. Like there's that's the crux of every it really is, and the mental side of things is both frustrating and kind of fascinating for me too. So how have you gone about trying to tackle that? What do your what's your coach say? What do you do? There's a lot this is like this is a giant wormhole that you can go down quick, especially with archery, because there's so there's so many things. It's it's different archery archery in the typical tournament, you could shoot anywhere from like dirty two, you know, a hundred arrows for scoring in a day, and most of the time every single one has to be perfect. So instead of just like one shot like on a deer, like like I can. I haven't mastered, but I gotten pretty good at like pulling myself together for one shot, but doing it for like ninety in a row. That's it gets it gets more difficult for sure. UM. So there's a there's a lot of things you can do. UM. I think the most recently for me, like on a personal level, has been, um being more intentional with my shooting. So instead of wishing for things to happen, you actually make them happen. So if you're sitting there aiming and you have the pin in the middle, and you're just sitting there and you're like, Okay, I really hope this goes in the middle, and you're just like going through your shot, and then the shot goes off and you're like, Okay, did it go in the middle? You know, like that sort of thing. And instead what I've been trying to do is being way more intentional and being like, Okay, this is going to go right in the middle, put the pin on the middle, go through the shot. Yep, that went in the middle. So it's like it's all about mindset start to finish, from even walking in the door of the tournament. You know, if you if you it's so sensitive archery so sensitive, if you like, if you have the wrong mindset all the way through, it just it just impacts you know your shot so much. So having a different mindset being more it's not necessarily confident, because I feel like you can have confidence but still have those hesitations throughout the shot, but um not having hesitations throughout the shot. And I'm not talking about like punching, because there's a difference being intentional and being like okay, right now, you know that's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about like very very slight um intentional shots and and that kind of goes from I don't know if you've heard of Joel um from Yeah, yeah, he's super at So me and him, me and him a couple of months ago got talking and and I've known of his stuff, but he really opened my eyes just like a time in a conversation I was like, holy cow, you know what you're talking about? Like I know and I'm aware of everything he's saying, but just like the way he says it and just goes about it. It's like, jeez, so I don't know. That's kind of where I'm at um personally. But there's there's all sorts of things you know mentally that you can do. What what's something that throws off your mindset? Like have you had have you had an experience where you went into a tournament where hell, even a hunt where you went in in your mind just just wasn't right and you paid. Can you give you an example, as someone next to you could just be like, oh I just dropped a nine and you're like crap, It's like am I gonna drop a nine in this one? Like that's all it takes. And then the entire time you can or you can't think about it. It's all about how you deal with those type of how do you get that out of your head? Then there's all sorts it's like, um, let's see okay, So a book um from Lanny Bassam. It's called what Winning in Mind? He had a thing um where you have to do a repetition of one thing and the only thing about that one thing for like eight times in a row. So like whatever it is, if you put your pocket if you put your hand in your pocket and take it out for eight times in a row, and then you only like you literally have your conscious mind only thinking about that, and then when you're done with that sequence, then you forgot whatever you were thinking about. There's things like that, or you just you know, you're just confident with yourself and you'll be like, Okay, well that guy at your shot nine, but I'm not gonna shoot nine, and I'm just gonna shoot you know, my shot or my arrow or or whatever. And that boils down to more of um. You can look at your scorecard um like all at once, like a big picture, but what you really should be looking at and shooting is one arrow at a time. So like every end of vidual arrow is its own and it has its own value and its own score and its own shot, and it's not a culmination of it all. So it's like, sure, it could be a three hundred out of three hundred at the end, but every single arrow has to score at ten. So all you're in control of you're not in control of the future like the next arrow, and you're not in control of the last arrow you just shot, So all you all, you're in control of is this one arrow right now? So just shoot a ten, Just shoot the perfect shot, and then worry about the next one. So when you boil it, when you boil it down, you know, micro like that. It helps a lot too. Easier said than done, though, I bet so much. I wish I could just go up to the line and be like, all right, you shoot three and then to shoot it, you know, but you can't do that, So so walk me through. Let's say you've shot your second to last shot and it's good, Everything is perfect as it could be. Now you get your last air of the tournament. It's the it's the big Vegas shoot. I saw. I don't I don't know I've anything you did, but I saw you were a little bit, maybe a little frustrated with how things ended up this past year in Vegas. Is that right? Yeah? Well I dropped too, and you drop one and you're done. Okay. So let's say it's it's this coming this next season. You're in Vegas again. You've done it perfect. Now you've got your last arrow. Uh you you step up to the line. Walk me through exactly what you do, exactly what yourself talk is. I want to know the exact process you're gonna follow on your final perfect shot to to finally do what you want to do. Okay, so last year was actually not the hardest, but I will walk it through for me at least, but I will walk you through it. Um, what is the hardest shot? Hard shots for me are like the first ones? Well, would would you do anything different from the first to last? Given that scenarily you don't do anything different. And that's the thing. You don't do anything different throughout the entire thing. Every single shots exactly the same. And that's you know, it's all about repetition. It's all about consistency. But there's also you know, every everyone has a different things. A lot of people like say things in their head as they shoot. But I mean, I'll knock my arrow, I'll you know, get in my pre draw, which is like knocking ero release, set everything up, and then you always, like I always look at the target, you know, get essentially acquired with the target because there's multiple um spots on your target. There's like a triangle for vegas, so you have to you're not allowed to shoot two arrows in the same target. So and we all we always shoot in the same order, like every archer has their own order, so we're we're always pretty good at that. UM. But now and again people shoot like the neighbor's target or the one above them. So you always want to acquire your target, like you always lock lock on on your target. So pre draw, you get set up, you drop back, and then you always want to make sure you're going going into your shot either um saying the repetition you know, sound or sequence that you do once you get a full draw, or like a blank mind or something positive. You never want to you like, go in it with nothingness because when your when your mind is not thinking about anything and it's blank, it's super easy to bring in external sources and you don't get thinking about something bad. Um. So yeah, you go into that sequence and it's changed a lot lately because I've been messing around that. But I've counted you know, one, two, three, boom, and then you know, shot goes off. You know, I've saying a song I've saying, I've said, Um, there was a little phrase I was saying. I forget what it is. It was a while ago, but it was like one perfect shot, one perfect shot, or you can say, okay, I'm gonna do this right now, and then you draw out the last word until it goes off. So it doesn't there's no right or wrong with that. It's just like you should have some sort of sequence when you're shooting, or you're gonna you're just gonna get um you're more um favorable to have, like you know, external things bothering you. Um So anyways, Yeah, shot goes off and then you're good. But what happens a lot of times is when you're under that stress, your shots go a long, so you hold longer than normal, and then you get under fatigue and you start getting stressed and then shots go off and those are normally the bad ones. So making sure your shot timing is like relatively the same under those pressure situations is super important. So you're those shots are holding longer just because you're trying to be extra careful to make sure you're aiming right or Yeah, the problem with archie if you try too hard, you're gonna fail, right. That is so like this weird fine line between being you can't be a try hard But you also said like you want to be intentional with it. You want to like you know, as Joel Turner talks about you need to have a process, you have to have you know, you have to be in control of the whole shot sequence, but at the same time, you also kind of want to be like second nature almost like it's it's like you want to be an autopilot, but you want to be in control. And it's somewhere in between. That's the perfect place. But it's really hard to put your finger on it. Um. Yeah, I don't know, man, I'm I'm wanting I'm wanting you to give me a secret weapon for this. There is no secret weapon. That's the thing. I'm trying to figure it out. You know, I'm still trying to figure it out. I don't know what there is. It's just like you just gotta keep going at it. And the more you're exposed to it, the east you're eight kids. How much of this translates over to your hunts? When you like the things, you're working to get your mind right for your tournaments, how much does that translate to your hunts? Um, it carries over pretty easy. I actually don't. Um, I got practice with my hunting bone and get everything dialed in, but I don't I don't necessarily like train with my hunting though, I guess, um. And then when it comes to like shooting a deer or something, that's pretty much little pilot. I don't have like a certain um formula, I guess um. One thing that I have always done over the years is make sure to like, um aim, like pick your spot, because I've been, you know, my younger years known to like put all of the pins on the deer and shoot. That's why I shoot a single pin now. Um. So yeah, aiming is very critical because sometimes when you're just so jacked up, you just kind of like shoot at the deer. So when I when I draw back, I aim like a very critical at Okay, I'm gonna hit the deer right here and then shoot. And then you know most of the time that that works out unless external and I mean like this year I did have I wounded. I hit a deer in the shoulder. Um, I hit a deer high, skimmed, skimmed its back, So like it does happen. Um, it's just the fact of hunting. You know, it's you're dealing with a live animal. But um, how do you handle the situation like that? Do you being coming from the level of archery, experience and and and knowledge that you have when you have a bad shot or when you have a whatever was that happened? Like that wounded deer. Do you have some like hyper analysis you do when you're trying to figure out what do they do wrong? In my process? Or most of the time, most of the time I do know, Like I know what happened for both of them. What happened. So the one dude I hit in the shoulder, um, he was super alert and it was sixty five yards, and I said, I'm gonna hug the shoulder a bunch because I felt like he was just going to run rather than duck. I don't know why I thought that, but I was like, I'm just gonna like hug the shoulder pretty tight. And I hit right where I was aiming because he didn't move, So I was like, gosh, dang it. So that that was it. I don't know why I thought of that. Right when I drew back, I was like, all right, put it like right close to shoulder. Um. And then the other I'm as a mule deer at seventy four and that one I think was just a misrange because he was um. There was a couple of branches like right close to him and around him. So I really think that I just ranged one of those branches and it's just a total misrange because the left and right was pretty good. Do you like after this happens, Yeah, take a shot of deer. You're trying to recover it. You don't find it. It's the worst moment for any hunter just about. All right, I know that feeling unfortunately too. Um, how do you personally deal with it? Is it? Is it literally the next day or that day you're sitting and stewing on this stuff you just told me? Or so, Like Wyoming was the the shoulder shot one and it was like a one fifty white tail, like the biggest white tail I would have killed. And we're sitting on this edge of a of a alfalfa field and uh, it's super cool terrain out there. It's like mountains. This is like meal deer country, and then in the bottoms was white tail country. So we're sitting sitting on the edge just like watching this field and it's like it's getting twilight, you know, it's like twenty minutes left of shooting light, and this buck pops out like four yards away, So we all look at each other and we're like, we gotta go. So we ran like a mile. It was at least a mile in this ditch. Like we ran probably like in fifteen minutes, you know, all the way around and luckily there was this ditch all the way around this field, and we got to the point where like we popped up. We popped up a couple of times, but we got to the point where he was and we popped up and he was right there at you know whatever. I think it was sixty I forget it's in the video, but arranged it, drew back, stood up, and he was just looking at me and I shot um. So, yeah, that eat me up a lot because I hit him the shoulder. We went and found the arrow. There was like zero penetration um, which pros and cons of expandable broadheads. I was shooting expandable broadhead with pounds and a five fifty graine arrow, and I had a half inch of penetration. Yeah. So we followed blood for three d yards and he started doing circles and we were pretty sure we were like following him around. But the problem is that we had a schedule, so we had to go to Nebraska the next day, like like the next day or no, We're going to drive through the night and get there in the morning. That's what we're gonna do. So we decided shoulder shot, he's probably going to live and be all right. So we backed out. Well, we ended up finishing our Western tour like a half a day early, and we were only like eight hours away from Wyoming still, so we actually drove all the way back to Wyoming and we looked for another half day and we didn't find anything. No more blood, no more no more anything. But we went We spent an extra eight hours of driving to go back to look just for you know, for my mind really, because my mind was just thinking the entire time in the next two states. So, yeah, that's good. That's hard to that's just that's never easy no matter way anyway look at it. Yeah, especially when it was my fault for like, you know, if I do it was aiming two inches further back, it would be dead, do you do you I know, like talking to other buddies or even in my own situation, I've I've dealt with this a little bit differently in different cases. There's there was one time I hit a deer and wounded it, and search and search never could recover him. And it like just took the wind out of my sales and I didn't want to hunt for like a week. I was just like, I don't even know if I want to keep going, and just like just took me out of the game. And then there's another time depressed. Can it really can? But then if at other times where I thought, you know what, you just have to get right back on the horror and go out the next day and pound your boat, just like shoot your ball, bunch, make sure your confidence is there, and then get right back after it. U what what have you found to be what works well for you? If you have a miss or or a bad shot, do you want to get right back after it? Do you step away? Usually? What's how do you get your mind right after that kind of a failure. I guess you could call it. The past couple of years, I really haven't had a choice to step away, Like I've always had trips planned or was on a trip or you know, so it's like you can't really take a break, you know. So my go to I I always shoot right after like a bunch, make sure everything's dialed in, and once I know, like everything's dialed in and that it was like either my fault or an external factor. Like as long as I know what happened, I'm okay. Like as long as I know, like the deer's gonna live and I know what happened, then I'm fine. I probably I have no idea what happened, or it's like I was having a mental breakdown and like punch a trigger. That's no point though, Um, Luckily I've never really had to deal with that, um like hunting, punching the trigger, target panic type stuff, so I've always been able to figure out the problem and assess it. Have you ever had that problem in tournament scenarios? Target panic or anything like that? So there's different forms of target panic. There's like legit you can't even aim on the target and you gotta like swing into it and punch a trigger, which is like very common, like you hang high and then you swing down and shoot into it. And then there's like performance target panic where you you can't aim quite at the middle, but you can aim like a half inch or an inch below it, no problem. And when you say you can't aim it that, do you mean you just get kind of stuck there. Get stuck. Yeah, you can't like but but in practice, so this happens a lot of tournament archers deal with this. It's very very slight target panic that can be fixed, you know, like in a weekend of training most of the time. Um, but practice as you can aim the middle, you can shoot in the middle, it doesn't matter, like middle doesn't matter. Show up to a tournament, you hang an inch low because now you have this performance pressure and you're like, you're scared of the middle. Essentially, you don't you don't want to perform. Well, you're telling yourself, I'm not gonna you know, you're scared of the performance. You're scared of the first place trophy, you're scared of the fans, you're scared of the check. Like, so you just like hang an inch low and you just move your site so you can do that. And so I've experienced that before. Um, but I've never experienced like just crazy target panic. Luckily, now back on that, I'm kind of jumping around here, but you keep on popping these different ideas in my mind. So back on the tournament side, you describe that performance anxiety of sorts that you've you've had maybe a little bit of at times, what do you think is And maybe you don't know, but if you if someone had a gun to your head and said, hey, Chris, what is the hurdle that you need to get over to to take this thing to the next level to get where you want to be? What's the one thing like you've got a crush or the one thing that you've got to fix or what's holding you back? I think it's time. We've had many, many late night tournament over a glass of line conversations on this, like probably too many to think of, and um, you always when you want to analyze it, every major pro most there are some like wonder childs, but most of the major pros um rise right around twenty seven to thirty years old. And in life, most of the time right around that age, you either um, you're done with college, you may or may not be married, but most of the time you're like in some sort of like solid relationship, you have some sort of solid income, and you have your life a little bit more figured out. So in that part of your life when you're like a decent pro but you're not winning enough and don't have enough sponsors to make it your living. You really don't care as much how you perform, therefore you perform better. You know. Right now, I understand that if I win Vegas, I can pay off student loans and and get a really good kickstart. So I'm thinking about that when you're when you're a little bit farther down the line, emerging into it. Like I'm talking, I'm not talking about like the professionals that are established and everything, talking about like guys in my situation five years from now that are a little bit more you know, on a foundation. You know, they really don't really don't care, you know how they do, but it's it's different. So I think, Um, for my personal situation, I either need to let time deal with that and sure I'll like progress and do well from now until then, but I really won't be fully archery mature until then, or I need a you know, have that mindset now and just understand that. But it's easier said than done. Yeah, how old you? Okay, so you're twenty two and you're talking. Seven to thirty is when a lot of people hit their stride. Um, all right, So paint me a picture when you're so five years from now, what's your what are you gonna be doing? What's what's your life like? Yourn tell me what that goal is. I don't know. I have some goals, but cheese, Hey man, you know what you're getting into when you came on here. I mean, I don't know right now. I mean the past couple of years has been pretty awesome. I've been able to turn this into like my full time job, so I'm I'm pretty stoked about that. Um. So the next five years, UM, the plan is to grow everything and continue and whatever opportunities arise arise because of it. Um. I started my YouTube channel when I was young, like thirteen fourteen, but everything around my YouTube I've spurred so many new opportunities, Like YouTube has always been my my pillar of growth essentially. So I don't know. I I see myself, UM definitely still shooting, um a bunch. I mean, I just love to shoot, So I don't really see myself stopping, um, especially this year. There have been times in the past. Um, really, like two or three years ago, I thought about stopping shooting and just like hunting and stuff. For this past year, I really hammered down and uh, I really loved shooting again, so I'm super jacked about that. UM, So definitely going to continue shooting. UM. I love working um on the business side of things UM, like my own stuff and helping out ultraView Archery I do. I help out quite a bit them Colby Hanley who owns it, it's like one of my best friends. So we're always um working on stuff and collaborating. So I definitely see myself diving in more, more and more and more into the business side of things UM, hopefully growing YouTube channel beyond. I mean right now we're kind of projected by the end of summer to reach a u K subscribers, so that would be rad UM. So yeah, you never know. I don't know. I really don't have a game plan. It's a thing. I just kind of like know what I have to do like today and tomorrow and that's about it and this end vision. But I don't have like a you know, solid solid plan right now. Anyways, So you're doing this full time. You're filling your hunts for YouTube, you're vlogging, your showcasing, your your tournaments, all these different things, and you're also you know, participating these tournaments and and all that is this it's kind of a dream job for a lot of people. Right, yeah, it's pretty close to dream drive for you probably then, right, yeah, dream job. I didn't know that was a dream. Just kind of like it just kind of like happened. It's crazy, but yeah, it's funny. Though you talked earlier how there's this sense of added pressure once you start and I once you start kind of getting this thing. And I've definitely felt this too when I started building my platform my audience. Um, I all of a sudden felt this whole new pressure around everything I was doing. And if I you know, if I didn't had the success in the field that I thought I was supposed to, I feel like I was a failure or that I was letting people down. People would like I think I'm an idiot or or not worth you know, listening to or whatever. So I know, yeah, yeah, I know what you're going through there. Um, but it's it's some days you're like, oh, man, this this almost takes some of the fun out of this thing that used to be just a fun thing to do. Um when it becomes a job. But then at the same time to pinch my self and remind myself, man, you know, don't ever lose the fun. Don't ever let that happen because standard nine to five, you know, doing it on the weekends, it could be way worse. Um, so there's definitely catch twenty two there. But yeah, and I'm I'm managing that. I'm trying to figure that out, you know, navigating it. But it's been good. It's been fun. It's this year, or you can keep going, we can dive in. I have so much I want to touch on real quick about this hunting season because it was crazy, but well, yeah, I mean this, this is a nice segment and because it's funny. Um, you're twenty two, I'm thirty two, and uh, as I was telling you before we started recording this, watching your season last year, I just was really jealous. And then it's it's weird. I shouldn't be jealous because I have my dream job. I'm super lucky to be able to make a living in this industry of this world too. Um, but you know, I have certain obligations that keep me from doing a whole bunch of the crazy stuff you're doing, which is awesome, and I wouldn't trade what I've got. I'm very, very thankful for for everything I've got going on my life and my family and everything. But I do wish that when I was twenty two, I would have taken off on a season like you did in ten and uh and just just looks like you had a hell of a good time. Man. So so at some point I've got a couple more archer questions that I'm probably gonna circle back to. But on the twenty hunting season, first line up, like, give us the high level, thirty ft overview of everything you did in and then I want to dive into some of the specifics. But we first got to understand the scale of this epic tour of the country. Two thousand nineteen, I decided I was going to spend all of my money and go everywhere pretty much. So I pretty much went all out, went to eleven states. I had twelve buck tags and my goal was twelve bucks because Levi Morgans out twelve bucks last year. I was like, who you know, and and this this is a touchy subject to It's like how many deer can you actually shoot? And it becomes unethical. That has been like that has been a turning thing in my mind. But anyway, said, we can talk about that later. Yeah. Um, so I started in Alaska in August shout at Cariboo total d. I y met these guys who are Archie tournament. They invited me out, barely have spent more than thirty minutes talking to them before, and I just totally went up there. We spent twenty four hours together, driving up all the way to nearly Prude obey Us over the calendar Caribou Tag. Spent eleven days out there. Shot one um, other guys almost shot a couple. We flung a couple of arrows. They're really hard, especially especially out there. The way we're doing it. It's like the wild West. Yeah, the Hall Road. I definitely want to hear more about that. The Hall Road. It is the I did quite a bit of research before, and one guy explained it as the budget friendly Alaskan dream hunt, like anyone could do it. I think I spent two grand doing that, so it's not too bad, um for the Alaskan hunt. So that was rat that. I definitely would do that again. Um, it was fun. It was a fun time. You saw incredible things. We saw muskox Um Cariboo. Obviously, we saw a grizzly bear. Um, and you're you're in Alaska, like you know, like there's no joke. Yeah, Like sure, we were on the Hall Road back and forth. Um, and we would we would run that hundred mile strip like all the time. It was intense. So so I looked into doing that hunt. At one point a handful of years ago, I was doing a bunch of research and reading and uh and yes, it sounds like it's a heck of a great budget opportunity. But then I did hear from some people saying that it can just be like a ship show with all sorts of people if they migrations crossing the road, everyone's in the same place and it's hard to get away from other people. Is that that's true? It can be, it can and it can't. So we had we went the week after opening week, um, and I think opening week was a little more busy, but we probably only saw twenty trucks the entire time. Um. But the thing is is where the caribou are the people are, so like there was one time three big bowls in the group. We found them first because we were just driving, and then like, oh, there they are, you know, four yards off the road. So we parked, and uh, in the way the hall road is five miles on each side is archery only like from the ditch. From the ditch five miles you just can't shoot them like standing on the road. And so we run after these cariboo. We get all set up there, feeding towards us like it was gonna work, Like it was just gonna work. We were each huddled down to like this rock because it's flat, so there's like this little rock and we're huddled next to it. And then sure enough, a freaking diesel comes strolling up parks just running, so they're all looking at it, and then another truck pulls up and they're like get out and they're looking at them, and then they run around or they turn around and run back and they try to swing around and then they all spook, you know. So it's it is. It is kind of challenging. And even the one that I shot um we saw from like three quarters of a mile away. I have no idea how we saw it, um, And we started hiking after it, and before we knew it, we looked back behind us and there's two guys up on the mountain like back behind us, and we're like great, but we were in this I talked talked about it pretty blatant in the video, but I'm like, yeah, I think we saw them first, and I think we're ahead of them. So I was like, we'll just keep going and if we run into them, then we run into them. But we were clearly after the same one. So we go and we get in the position and we're like, yeah, they're still like, you know, three yards away or so, it's like we're gonna try to kill him. So we we dived down around this little Luckily we had some terrain, so we worked around this terrain and uh get to her. Maybe he was about a hundred yards away, and it peeked over and he wasn't there, so you can't really see it in the video, but he actually got spooked by the other hunters that swirled around. So those guys actually did us a favor, and the bull ran straight towards us on top of me like thirty yards, like right on the little it was just like a little hill that he was on. And this isn't on video, but I actually drew back on it at like thirty yards and I looked at the camera and my buddy I was filming and he wasn't filming. I was on his heart, like, oh my gosh, like I could just smoke him right now. And I was waiting for him to get the camera, and I let him walk right by. So then I let down and he runs right by my buddy with the camera like right by him, like ten yards, and then I run over to him and circle around and then he starts videoing and the deal and I whipped and missed the shot at like fifty because he was moving around and my range was wrong. Those cariboo never stopped ever ever stop. It's they're always moving. Um. So then I quickly reloaded and by the time the cariboo knew what was up, he had an arrow sticking in him. And uh then he ran to a hundred and he was just like wobbling there at a hundred, and I ranged him and smoked him and he dropped. So that's how that happened. Yeah, that was I saw part of that of that hunt up until you got the shot. And that was pretty crazy. Um. And that terrain, I mean you just yeah, it's flat's why open, but huge vistas, I mean beautiful in its own kind of stark way. Um. I mean it's it's hard to beat Alaska as far as the experience. Yeah, I totally recommend it. And there's ways you can like rent vehicles in uh not Anchorage. What's what's the one just Fairbanks? Fair Banks? Yeah, you can in fair Banks. You can fly into fair Banks. We're in a vehicle drive up. But the buddies I knew lived in Anchorage, so I drove all the way from Anchorage. That was all. So first Alaska trip, right, yeah, my first big, like big adventure type trip. One out of ten rating? Did it? Did it hit ten to hit your expectations or what? Nine? Nine, eight or nine? We were thinking we'd see more caribou, and but that's hit or miss with the migration, you know. Yes, I don't mean to make you jealous, but on my caribou hunt, I probably saw ten thousand. Yeah we saw uh no, but that's still pretty cool man. Still it was cool. Yeah, So yeah, what happened next? Then we went to Kentucky early season in September. Um. I brought little Cooper with me. We always go on a hunt every year. That was kind of a bust um. And then we went to oh then we into Texas, shot a pig out of a helicopter that was pretty rad with the bow, and uh, then we went to then we hit the Western Tour. So the Western Tour UM quickly kind of sponsored it. Um let us bring out there four by four machine, which was awesome. Um, it was was so rad. Yeah, we got to talk about that. Yeah, because so you were going on this multi state Western tour and quickly, for those who aren't familiar, it's like a big big camper van or big conversion van that was tripped out for this kind of thing. Can you walk us through what that van setup was? Yeah, So it was two bunk beds that flipped down on the side so you can put them up for storage or travel or whatever. And uh there was four seats so driver, passenger, and then like a half row in the back and then there's like a bunch of storage. Um. There are solar panels on the top. So the whole thing was power like the van didn't need to be on and like power like we ran a microwave like you could, you could do whatever you wanted. Um. And then we actually put a sleeper, little sleeper topper on top. Um. So yeah, it was fully functional for four people, Like, four people could run out of it, no problem. Um, now quickly hooked you guys up with that, right, Yeah, do you have an idea of what it costs to buy something like that? We did research because we were curious. You can buy like a stripped out transit van for thirty thirty like a pretty new one. Um, and then all the renditions we were thinking were like twenty five grand. It's not cheap, but not know, not more. But you buy a brand new truck, you know, I mean, I don't know. It's not for everyone, but you can also do it, you know, the budget friendly way. You get kind of a beater and four by four conversion and rig it out, you know, and for probably then you got a sweet hunt and rig that you can live out of. Now you don't have to pay for hotels and everything. Yeah, it's it's a really cool way to do it. I've been very tempted. I've looked at looked at vans for a while thinking about doing something like that because I love I love just going on my hunts and sleeping in the back of my truck and that works great. But yeah, sometimes wish she had more room. Yeah, yeah, it was it was cool. So we started. We started in Wyoming, UM, hunted there for six days. UM. We tagged out one out of three tags there. Wyoming is rough. Um. Then we headed to Nebraska. We're three for three on studs in Nebraska. UM. We hunted there for four days, shot three And then we went to South Dakota. Hunted there for a day and we shot two bucks. That was crazy. How that happened? Back to back, Um, and then we drove home. So how many days of a total day? Fourteen days total? You hunted three different states. You had a bunch of guys, bunch of Yeah, in every state we like new people were like joining us. So it was pretty cool. So I gotta believe that people see these videos on YouTube or they're listening now and they're wondering, how the heck did you pull it off? I mean, lots of people go on a Western hunt and they research and they plan all year, and they've got one place and they try to find one place to hunt, and uh, they're happy and lucky if they get one shot. And you guys hit three states all these different places. Um? Were these was this public land? Was a private was it with buddies to do these places like what was all that? So Wilding was a buddy's lease. Um, Nebraska is a friend's property. And South Dakota was walking hunting, Okay, And so there's a little bit of pre intel on some of these spots and some figuring out in your own all of them were. South Dakota was a little bit of intel. Um, some buddies from Wisconsin we met out there and they hunted there a year prior. Um when it wasn't like here they all are, you know, it was like right, we can hunt. You know these chunks or whatever. These chunks we know, Um, Nebraska, Wyoming we know like the back of our hand. Nebraska we know pretty well. Um, so those were like, you know, I'm pretty familiar in South Dakota was totally foreign to us. Which part of the state was that southwest? That was north Northwest. Yeah, it's cool stuff all those three states. What's your favorite Nebraska, but Nebraska or South Dakota. South Dakota was pretty awesome, um, because there's a lot of walk in in public ground and uh, you're getting into like a different kind of Western field. Like Nebraska is probably my favorite, just because we go out with my buddy Tim, and it's just like fun hanging out with Tim and there's like tons of deer um and there's giants like everywhere behind every tree. Yeah, well he's got some sweet pieces of property. Um. Yeah, I don't know. But Wyoming is cool because it's it feels like out west, big mountains. You know, we see elk, we see meal deer, we see everything. But I don't know. They all kind of have their own their own deal. I hate naming favorites. Everyone's like, what's your favorite state, what's your favorite And I'm like, I don't know. It's like they all kind of have their own own thing that I love about them. Yeah. I understand that you've hunted sounds like a few of these states before Nebraska definitely before wilding before Um, anything that you learned last year on that front, on chasing mule's like that and in some white tail too. Um yeah, come away with any any lessons learned or anything meal deer. We kind of got a formula down for Nebraska. Now. The way that Nebraska is is where we're at there's lots of ad fields and then just like on the edge of an agg field or or like in the middle of it, there's a pasture, it literally goes down like it's like negative space if it looks like almost. So what we'll do is we'll get out there in the morning early and we'll sit on a and it's it's just pretty standard. But for Nebraska it's a little different because you can't get like on a mountain and look in the morning, you know. So we'll just get in the pasture somewhere where we can see like kind of the farthest um, and then we'll see them normally drop down in and bed down in the past year and then go through it, um, you know, try to put stock on it or whatever. Um. But the past two years, the same exact thing happened. Um my buck last year and my buck this year. We're actually just driving around in the truck in the past year because they're all they're literally like cow pastures, and we would bomb accidentally these bucks out of their bed like just driving one place to another and be like, oh, yeah, they're bedded right there there. They go, Okay, let's put a pin right there, And then next morning we would go look over that same spot and they would come back in bed in the same spot. So it was kind of interesting in this year. We didn't bump it hundred percent out of his bed, but we were driving. It was, um, just twilight at night. We're just driving back to camp, and we saw this buck just up on the ridge and we're like, he had to have just gotten up out of his bed to go to the go to the fields. So the next morning we set up kind of in that area, just overlooking that whole thing, and sure enough he came down, um just in one of the draws, and that stock took a long time. And another lesson I guess is I've slowed way down. Um, there's a lot of times. You know, this is my fourth year meal der hunting, um, and I don't I'm not a master, or don't know a whole lot, but all I know is you really have to slow down, and you really can't go slow enough if they're bedded. I think I took three hours to go two d yards and uh, because we had to work work these rim edges of these um cuts. Essentially they're not huge cuts, but it was just big enough and just steep enough where like you couldn't see them entirely, so we would me and Bryce. Bryce was like, right, behind me filming. We just worked really slow around these like four um four cut rim edge and finally on the fourth one um we saw him, luckily, and then I worked my way down and shout him at sixty five and so have you you've seen him from across the way. I said, okay, I think he's better there, and then you circle the way around or how did that work? Yeah? So we saw him coming off the cornfield probably four yards away, work down into the cut um and then disappeared. But the thing was is there was these four big cuts that we saw and we're like, well, he could be in anyone really, because he could have just like whazzled around and laid down. And in these cuts, they're like they almost look like, um, we're in Michigan, so you know when there's in the farmer's field and they just planted and it's kind of steep. We got a big rain and it like washes out and that's what it looks like. It looks like a big version of that up. I know exactly what you mean. Yeah, And uh so there was like four of these and we're like, oh, he could be really in anyone. And there's these deep little spots that can bed right around, so we knew he could be in the first one or he could be in the fourth one. So every single one, in every single corner, you just have to act like he's going to be right there. You know, if we just like blew through it and we're like, ah, he's not now, when he's not now, when he's not now, and we would have busted him, you know, he either would have hurt us or something. So he's I don't know. In in last year also, um, I slowed way down on my buck because similar thing happened. We watched him come up over this little hillside and dip down into a cut, but we couldn't see down in the cut. It's like same Azact situation. So we had to just work the edge super super slow and that probably took an hour. So and another thing it's like in Wyoming, I wish I practice this a little better with patients, is we had one opportunity at a meal deer for six days, like one in solid opportunity, and I kind of like rushed it because I was like it's first morning, Like I just rushed it and I kind of blew the stock. So it was like if I spent like a half a day, like or the whole day just trying to kill this one buck in his spot, we would have killed it, but instead we try to kill him in thirty minutes, and we blew it, you know, and and therefore we wasted six days, you know, or not wasted, but we then spent the next six days going at it. So if I just spent one day or like the half a day trying to just like really ninja in on this block, it would have worked other than going slow? What else do you do to be a ninja when you're stalking at him? Do you do you go as far as like thrown on stocking sacks, taking off your shoes or anything that? How about wind? Did wind play into any of these? How you're dealing with circles or anything like that? What else is going through your mind on that stock? This year, my Nebraska mule deer, it was like dead calm, which sucked because it was super it was dry, It was dead calm, and it was like that grass that follow yellow grass, Like every step was just crunchy. So I don't like to take off my boots because one time I took my boots off and like wore my socks to stalk in and well, one you can stop on a cactus and really jack yourself up. Um to the bucks spooked up, but then ran around and stopped, and I could have if I had my boots on, I could have hauled butt around and then got back on them. So if I were to ever um do that, I definitely would wear the moccasin type things. I would never like just do socks. But um, I just go slow, like I'm like slow, I'm talking about like he'll barely touching, and then you feel make sure you're not stop stepping on a stick, and then you like roll your edge of your foot down, make sure nothing's crunching, and then go all the way down and then shift pressure onto that foot and then you do the same thing next week. I mean that's what we did for like three hours straight. It gets sucked. But you gotta act like every single little when you're in a situation, like you have to act like every single little thing is gonna be betted behind. So maybe that's too much or not, but in those type of situations, all it takes is one little thing, you know, It's just like white, one little thing can jack it up. I think that's why it's so exciting and addicting, because all those little things matter. You just gotta do so on point. Um, So you did fourteen days, you guys days miles. Um, I think we got seven bow kills on film. That's a heck of a haul. How How what about gear? What about travel? Um? I gotta believe you came out of this with some favorite gear or some things that just absolutely saved the day or that. Now I'll never I'll never do a hunt like that without this or a little hack you figured out anything like that. Just as far as hunting trips like that, that that stuck out. Yeah, Um, I pretty much wore like the same stuff I run um sick of gear mountain pants pretty much for everything right around like that middle October because it's like just a little cold in the morning, but then it's pretty hot, so that those pants are just killer. Um. And then I talked about this a lot on like my channels, But my favorite jacket and I were like all sick of stuff, not all sick of stuff, but mainly sick of stuff. Um. It's the Kelvin light hoodie that brown. I love that hoodie. It's like if people are like, what one piece would you buy if you could only buy one piece, I really think it would be just that one because you can wear it for insulated for white tail, an outer for light tail, because it's pretty quiet and it's fine and all those mornings glassing kind of like in that mid season. It works awesome. And I've shot so many deer wearing that jacket. It's like, definitely might go to um out West. Out there. You definitely need a solid pair of boots. Um. I run kind of tracks their bottom used or got them used and they were good. Um. I really haven't messed with many others, but I think that's pretty common. Everyone says you always need a good pair of boots. You really do? You know, you can't. You can't be chomping around with with whatever unless you're unless you're just a special breed like that. There's a rancher out in Wyoming and he came out hunting with us for a day and he was in the sketchers. It's like, bro, what are you doing? He does it every day, so it's like he's like whatever. Um, yeah, I don't know. There's so much. One one major takeaways every year I bring less like my first my first time out West, I brought so much. And every year I consolidate and consolidate because I brought This year, I brought like recreation and clothes that I never even touched, like I could have, you know, eliminated a whole suitcase pretty much. There's just there's just things every year that I can solivate because you just really don't need it, Like when you're hunting like that, like literally hunted fourteen days straight. All you're doing is hunting. You're not you know, sun up to sundown. We were trying to kill something and you're just not spending a lot of time doing other things. So it's like remembering that for next year and packing wise, you know, really consolidate on things. Do you do you bring any emergency archery repair stuff? Uh? Yeah, very minor stuff. What what would you what would you consider like must have that someone should bring, or or any backup pieces or accessoris or anything like that. Either rather so than like backup pieces, I would um, I would mark on your bow, like your your peep site, either like you measure your peepsite or you put a little sharpie mark on your like where your peep site is on your bow. That is like the number one thing that gets bumped. I missed it here a couple of years ago because my peep site got bombed or moved like slid down the string and missed it low. Um, so that's like the number one thing I would recommend, um peepsite. It's really not falling out. Your rest could get bombed, but you really can't like just throw a new one on. Um, My equipment is pretty hardy. UM. I don't even bring like an extra bow. I probably should, especially on a trip like that, especially if I have one. UM. I really don't have too much extra stuff that I bring like that. Um, it's funny you say that both thing I've always had the same thing. I should bring an extra bow. I should bring an extra bow. But then it just comes down to space and wanting to keep it as minimal as possible. And it's like your bow is gonna blow up and it's gonna be like unusable or you're you're gonna be able to like fix it with like whatever you have. Like I think the same way as a tournament. You know, it's like your BA is gonna break to a point where you can't fix it. So you're gonna be screwed or is going to be something super super small that you can fix easy if the bad thing happens, it's just not your day. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Um, what about food after fourteen days on the road, what was learn anything as far as good travel food or how you guys handle that. Yeah. So this year what we did different is actually did pre made meals. So we made like fried rice, a ton of fried rice, made it and uh, and then freezer packed it and froze it and then um, I think I did eight days or nine days of food for that for four people each day. Um, so frozen and then actually did dry ice and a yetie and it kept it frozen for all those eight days. And then we did uh we did mac and cheese micro wave mac and cheese, and then we did because we had a microwave in the quickly. And then we did the super cheap dollar or you can buy like a twenty pack burritos at Walmart for like three dollars. You get a bunch of those, and we actually just like ate those as a d thought warming them up. It kind of sounds like you basically eat on a hunting trip, like I ate during college. Yeah, you know kind of when you when you go to eleven states and spend all of your money, you're still balling on a budget. So yeah, that's awesome. It's very minimal. That's the good stuff. Though. Those are sometimes the best meals if you don't anything fancy. It's just what do they say they say, I'm gonna get the phrase wrong, but like exertion is the best spice, Like after a long, hard day of work, it makes the food taste better just by virtue of what happened. Sprinkle sprinkle some dirt on anything, and pretty much needed at that point. Our best meal was in South Dakota. We finally had like we finished early in the day, so we had like a couple all hours at the end and we cooked up some back straps for everyone, and we had six people in camp. That was the biggest camp, so that was really cool. We had. We had a good time right at the end. Yeah, that trip was literally more sun up to sundown, fourteen days straight of hunting. It was so intense, and like when we were in Wyoming it was like ten miles a day, twelve miles a day. Nebraska was a little bit more laid back and then I think in South Dakota the one day we hunted, we did like fourteen miles in a day. Would you do would you do a trip like that again? Yeah? Yeah, we're planning one. Um this year it's gonna be a little different. Um, it's gonna have an elk hunt in it, hopefully so. But three states probably the same amount of time, right around the same time frame. Anything you do differently logistically or planning or anything like that. Looking looking forward towards your next hunt, specifically for the Western tour, maybe pick spots that are a little closer together, know, like find find the Golden Triangle, you know of of three states or something. If you're gonna hit up states or two states, you know, if you want to hit up two states, you know, you go on right on the border of one and then just jump across like two over the counter states. Um, maybe do that because like some our spons for like twelve hours apart. It's funny bring that up because it also brings up another thing that I've sometimes debated internally, and I've kind of been forced to pull back on this a little bit, just with you know, stuff that goes on family and everything. But I sometimes have debated in past years if it makes more sense to hunt a bunch of different states but be bounding in place to place and have time limits, um, or do you want to just focus on a couple. So that's super interesting you say that, because that's my focus for this year, So explain that. What do you mean? Which way? So like this year, we had three to five days in each state and it was hard. Like in most of these places, like Western Toil we had a little bit. But at these places like Ohio, Iowa, um, West Virginia, like all the other places I went, no previous experience, so we're just like showing up and we'll be like, all right, how do we kill a deer? You know? Pretty much. And we had three to three to four days, three or five days, sometimes two days to figure it out, and it was just draining and it was hard. So this year we're narrowing it down. I think I'm only going to five or six, which is still a lot, but compared to eleven, which was a lot. UM, narrow it down, spend more time, you know, try to um essentially, try to kill some bigger dear, you know, because my goal this year was like if it gets me pumping a little bit and it's like a good solid bock, I'll shoot it. Like I shot you know, a couple of two year olds and whatever. And I did that just for the adventure, you know, go somewhere trying to figure it out. Shoot you dear you know, that was my goal, which was awesome. Yeah. This year, I don't know, Like I'm hopefully going to draw in Kansas this year, UM, so I'll probably spend you know, a solid seven eight days planned for Kansas, um, you know, just to spend some time out there. So I don't know, it's it's uh, that has been a very um hot topic lately, especially talking with Bryce. We've been like strategizing on on that. So I don't know, spend some more time in Michigan. I spent so much time in Michigan preparing food plots and everything, and it's like I'm always gone, So it's like I don't really get to hunt it. Yeah, you gotta gotta give the homestakes some love, yeah, I know. And it's like it's the most challenging of all of them almost in my opinion. Yeah, yeah, I certainly feel the same way. It's my buddy Dan Johnson, who's on the podcast a lot with me Liz in Iowa and tell him that for years and finally he's gonna come and hunt Michigan this year, so he'll finally get to see what we're talking about. It's probably not gonna hunt it again, No, probably not so once in a lifetime. Thank I'm actually really impressed you guys. Shout back on the back forty. It was just it was touching go there for a while, man, just because I know how it goes. Yeah, it can be. It can be tough. But managed to find a few ever once in a while. So gonna work for him, that's for sure. So so you hunted, You hunted a whole bunch of white tail states last year, Like you just said, um, without taking another hour and going through every single one of those and talking to your ear off, was there anything that stood out across all of those as far as the most interesting or maybe not even that, but is there any hunt that sticks with you like you look back on it and you think to yourself, oh man, that changed how I look at stuff, or that was a huge screw up. I'll never do that again. Anything like that that stands out from your white talents. So Ohio, first time hunting in Ohio. Had some buddies that I met actually from Michigan invited me down and they have a couple of permission on some farms. Pretty awesome farms down there. But Ohio is different, Like there's not a lot of deer. Um, Like, we probably only saw ten deer in four days of hunting, and uh, but their quality, dear, like your opportunity to see a big one is a lot higher, you know, per dear um. So that was super interesting. Um. Kind of changed my perspective on things because a lot of times um and even even in now, thinking of Michigan and other spots, we we try to hunt like where the deer are, like where a lot of deer are, and maybe not necessarily all the time, where the big bucks are, you know. So it's like sitting in spots where like, all right, you might not see a deer today, but when you do, it's going to be a good one, you know. I feel like a lot of times we get we get cat up in and wanting to see a lot of deer because like there's spots in Michigan on the farm that we managed, but It's like if you see forty deer in a night, and you'll see a two year old and a bunch of one year olds, but if you sat here, you might only see three deer. But the chances are a lot more. So I don't I get caught up in that a lot. I feel like, yeah, that's a great point. And I feel like a lot of people do you know? So that's a big shift going from hunting any deer to hunting the Yeah it is, and uh, you know, I I've done it, like I've grind it out and I try to shoot big deer and I've shot I'm not having shot like a big deer in Michigan, um, but I've shot a lot of like a hundred and ten inch deer, which I feel like it is a hundred and sixty inch deer in Island. It's a different thing. Yeah, I you know, somewhat figured something out. But yeah, I don't know that. That made me kind of open my eyes on that a little bit. UM. And then I go to I've been to Louisiana at the past three years, UM, and that's totally different hunting down there. It's a it's a really awesome private chunk. It's like a hunt camp essentially and a buddy through archery. Austin. He he invited me down the past three years, and it's just like it's just totally different the deer. Like you go hunting now, like kind of like East coast West Virginia hunting, you know, Iowa, Michigan, Louisiana. You learn a lot about deer just by doing that. You know, the different types, the way they react to things. You know, like Louisiana, we can drive a buggy, dump a pile of corn, go back and there's deer on it right away. If you did that in Michigan, if you did that like any other place, you would never kill a deer ever. You know. It's just like I don't know, super eye opening, just the different types of deer behaviors, how they do things. I don't know. So what else is on the on the gauntlet for then? Kansas miss again? Which other states? Um? You got to do? Like the only reason why Western Tour worked is because like I had somewhat of a game plan and deadlines and strategy. So Kansas, UM, I'd like to make it back to South Dakota, UM, Nebraska for sure, hunting with Tim. Just like to go hang out with him, to hunt of him. It's awesome. Um, Elk is probably gonna be in Colorado. UM, I got some buddies out there that I'll probably tag along with. UM. Other than that, it's like the four for the four states, and then Michigan for sure. UM, I might dabble with Indiana this year because it's close and I probably sit down there a couple of weekends try to figure something out. UM sleeper state. It is a sleeper state, and uh, yeah, I don't know, but yeah, I'm I'm I might add I probably will add one more. I'll go to Louisiana hopefully again this year for sure. UM that's always a grand slam at the end because because there's so many deer and it's awesome. Um we go in January or right at the beginning of January end of December because that's when their rud is. But yeah, I really want to hang around like that six six states this year, just so I can spend more time, maybe multiple trips back, um, I don't know, and then documenting that I'm not a cent sure how I'm going to do it this year if I want to do it a day by day or a state series or what um kind of depends on capacity, on how fast we can get things turned around or whatnot. That's no easy task, that's for sure. People want content yesterday, they don't want it tomorrow. That's true. That's true. Um Man. It sounds like a fun, fun schedule ahead of You got a good year planned out. Um So with all those hunts coming up, you've got pressure on you to have successful hunts. You're you've got a lot of people watching you now. You of course are doing things on the tournament side as well. What I want to know is we wrap this up, is what are you doing right now from an archery side to make sure you're ready for all that stuff later in the year. Because because a lot of people are locked down right now, we kind of kind of lead with us early on and then I kind of forgot to dive into it. There's a lot of people right now that probably have a little more time on their hands at home to be dialing in on the archery side, maybe earlier than they usually do. What what are you doing and what are some things that some other ideas for people to really crank up their archery practice right now and do it in an intentional, thoughtful quality way. Um, since there's nothing better to do. Yeah, for real, right now? Is it this springtime? I feel like for me, it's always a good time to mess with the different equipment. Um, if it's like equipment you already have, you're just gonna tweak around, or you know, maybe getting like a different set of arrows and messing around with that. Now it's just a great time to mess with the equipment because they're far away from season other other than Turkey season, if you're gonna trying to shoot them with the bow, but we're far enough away from season, or do you feel like mess with stuff and tinker around, um, and now it's a good time. Um. I normally get my bows, my hunting bows, dialed in and set up now and then I'll shoot them like all summer long and like check up on them and make sure they're they're doing good and everything. But get them set up now. And I never like to rush. And I've been in so many situations where I'm like, you know, the day before, a week before, rushing to get something set up, and then it's never it's never a so like past couple of years. Um, my setups have been so dialed and so perfect early and then they you know, and then shoot with them, get familiar with them, and uh, you know, by the time September rolls around, they're already ready to go, you know. So yeah, now now it's a good time to really mess with your bow and uh, you know, like many of us right now and for the next week or two or however long. I hopefully not too much longer. We're stuck inside and many people can't shoot. Um, but becoming familiar with your bow on like the technical side of stuff if you can, and uh, and diving into a lot of online content. You know. The most important thing for me too is confidence. And when I know my equipment, When I know, like I said earlier, when I when I missed the deer or wounded deer or whatever, as long as I know what happened and I can fix it, you know, I'm in a better place. And I know that a lot because I know my equipment, I know my form. So it's like I was a good time to study kind of you know, we're stuck inside. It's understanding equipment, looking online, knowing how things work. You know, there's so many good, so many good and bad resources online, so definitely pick and choose and kind of filter things out. But yeah, what are a few of your favorite resources for for archery stuff? And then also you mentioned when we were talking mindset early on you mentioned a book something I can't remember who it was, some about winning. Are there any other books or people on the mindset side of things that would be interesting too? Yeah? So a book, um that I mentioned is with Winning in Mind by Lanny Bassom, and it's not archery specific. It's actually more like rifle shooting specific, but he does talk about archery a little bit, but it's all about mindset. Like that's the entire book. Kind of boring if you if you're not deep into that, but that's really good. Um. George Ryles UM has a lot of good segments called thing a week if you just literally type in a YouTube thing a week. He has like tons of very um in depth detailed videos on like one specific thing. It's like you know, you're shooting hand or whatever. And he's done that for years, so you can find some really old ones. But George Ryles, he's my coach down Atlanta. He's he's one so many things. He's like, he's like the pro that was like the top of the line pro like twenty years ago. So now all he does is like coach. He still shoots. He actually made the biggest shoot off like four years ago. Still. Um yeah, super knowledgeable there, George Riles. You can find all this stuff. Um. Joel Turner shot i Q for for anyone, bull hunters, trad people. Um, even he he's big into oh yeah, he's big into trapped but turnament shooters, anything for mindset, even for shooting, but for mindset especially. Um, he's got a ton of stuff. Dudley. Dudley's got some good stuff of course. Um, but everyone pretty much knows that. Um yeah, try to stay off archie talk. Don't give you started. Yeah, they can get messy in there real quick. Yeah that's crazy. Um okay. So then final thing for folks once they do get outside and they're shooting, UM, few tips for better practice, for for good quality practice. Um. And then it's a two part I do this a lot as I I asked a question and then I add all these add on So so so sorry for that. Um, so tips for better practice and then secondly, do you recommend people practice differently as the season progresses as a year progress. So so should we be practicing differently now than we would be in August than we would be in October? Right? I got you? So. Um, things you should focus on when your practice is to set goals for yourself and only compare against yourself at the distances you can shoot and at the skill level you can shoot. Um. A lot of people want to get messages all the time. It's like, oh I wish I could shoot what you shoot, or you know, I'm not shooting as good as you or whatever. And now social media and everything, you know, you can see all these people with their groups in their schools and everything. So you should really only compare against yourself and try to grow against yourself. Um, and don't wear yourself out obviously, you know, take it baby steps if you don't shoot a whole lot or anything. Um, but I guess that's one tip for practicing, like just in your backyard and stuff. Um, and then throughout the season. Um. What I like to do is I do like to stretch things out, and a lot of my videos I shoot far, you know, like eighty yards, ninety yards, hundred yards. And what that does is that really amplifies your mistakes, you know. It Uh, it opens up your groups, allows you to um try to tone in your groups that farther because like for me, if I shoot twenty yards, it's like sure, like I can really micro manage that in. But when you back up farther, it just amplifies everything so much for me. But that's not you know, those far distances could do the same thing for someone at forty yards. You know, if someone you know can do a paper plate at forty yards and try to dial that in, you know, I'm a paper plate at a hundred, you know. So everyone has their own distance that they really can max out and then zone in and then maybe max out a little bit more and then zone in. So it just makes you a better archer when you back it up a little bit. If you're always just shooting twenty yards like that's all you do, tony yards, that's it. Sure you can get better and everything, but unless you're scoring, or unless you're like really you know, paying attention to how your group size and it isn't everything can't really improve per se or see your improvements. Yeah, so that's that's something I've seen too. What about one way to get better at long distance shooting, because because I've always tried to stretch it out more and more and push myself. But then, like you just said, your group's open up, every mistake gets amplified. Uh, anything we can be we can be doing to get better at those long shots other than just doing it a lot. Yeah, well it's not just one thing. And like the long shot, it's not getting good at the long shot, it's just like getting good at your shot. So like a middle at twenty yards, if it's like dead nuts at twenty, it would have been dead nuts at a hundred, you know, So it's like middle's middle. It's just you know, how your shot is, so like really focusing on your form. You know a lot of people worry so much about equipment, equipment, equipment, equipment. You know, I gotta do this, I do that, I do this, But then the forum's jack you know, so if it's you know, there's so many things with form, like I can't there's just not one thing you can point to. But um, like I said earlier, like if you really want to get better, you're struggling finding a coach, finding a pro shop, videoing yourself, you know, like putting your phone on a tripod, looking and then looking online really analyzing it. Um. Yeah, form, form is so important. Like if you did the same thing if your boat, let's just say your bow is so untuned so jack, your knock was sticking in the target, it was doing a somersault. But it does that every single time. You know, your boat does the same thing every single time, like for real, it does so Like if your bow is so jacked, but you did the same thing every time and you shot every single time, you'd still shoot really good. You know. There's so many times like there's a there's there's a professionals that will like they tune their bow, but then they like untune their bow to get optimum groupings. Essentially it's for short term and uh yeah, it's it's it's all about your form. It's all about consistency. You can shoot, you can shoot anything. You can pick up any bow, and as long as your form is good and and everything, you can shoot good with it. So I feel like that's so over especially in the world of everyone's like foc and all this crazy stuff. It's like, okay, calm down. The most important thing. Do you know how to shoot? A bow. You know, it's easy to get hung up on all the menut shaw I kind of I'm not good at the menu show when it comes to archery equipment and gear. So I've tended to to focus on the side that I feel some sense of confidence around, which is which is trying to figure out good form and consistency and all that stuff. And then I just like outsource those other equipment things to the pro shop and say, hey, help me make sure this stuff's lined up because I can't keep track of it all. Yeah, So I don't know that's good stuff, man, Um, I think you've got to You've got a cool thing going. So I've I've enjoyed hearing more about it today, and I think people people certainly will have to. So if people want to see what's got going on, follow your YouTube videos or you on social media. Where can they find all this stuff? Yeah? So just in YouTube, just search my name Chris b B just like the Bumblebee. Gotta do it every single time. Or people are like, no, what's your full name? But yeah, I'm YouTube and Instagram is Chris be real? And uh yeah, follow along there and what kind of stuff do they expect over on YouTube here in the off season. So offseason, Um, I just did a bunch of bow build videos, so I like to start to finish on bow builds and people really love those. Um A lot of shooting, a lot of fun I love doing like uh, funny church shots, long shots. So we do a lot of entertaining stuff in the off season. Um. So yeah, we're I'm looking forward to a little bit warmer temperatures so you can do a lot a lot more cool stuff outside. Very cool. Well, I'll make sure to send folks check all that out. And I appreciate you taking the time talk about all this stuff. Yeah, no problem, it was fun. I enjoy it. To Chris, let's stay in touch and good luck. This season sounds good. Thanks guys, and that is it for us today. Thank you for listening. Make sure check out all of Chris's stuff. Like I mentioned, it's good stuff, it's fun, a lot of good information and hunts to follow along with, so enjoy that stuff. Otherwise, just be safe out there, folks. I just hope and pray that everyone in our Wired Hungue community is healthy and safely at home with your friends or your family, whoever you live with, and that you're all doing well. Um, thinking of all of you, and until next time, stay wired to hunt.

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