Truth From The Stand Deer Hunting Podcast

It had been way too long since Ryan and I sat down together. Long enough that we had some catching up to do, and long enough that a lot had changed — most of it on his end. Ryan spent a big chunk of the past stretch recovering from a serious arm injury. If you've never had your body take hunting off the table, even temporarily, it's hard to explain what that does to your head. The physical rehab is one thing. The mental side is the part nobody warns you about. Ryan was forced to slow down, and in slowing down, he had to take a hard look at what actually mattered — family first, then what he really wanted out of his time in the woods. That reset showed up in how he hunted last season. Ryan walked away from a lot of the tech. Fewer trail cameras, less leaning on years of historical data, a lot more trusting his gut. That's not a knock on cameras — I run them, you probably run them — but there's a point where the data starts hunting you instead of the other way around. You end up chasing a buck that was in a spot two Novembers ago instead of the deer that's there right now. A big part of our conversation was about hunting mountain country, which is its own animal. Deer don't move through steep terrain the way they do in farm country, and the sign doesn't always tell you what you want it to. Ryan's approach leans hard on postseason scouting — getting in after the season when you can't hurt anything, walking the ground, and figuring out how deer actually use it. From there, he hunts more aggressively and stays flexible. If a spot isn't producing, he moves. No marrying a stand because it worked once. We also got a little nostalgic. Both of us miss some of the old-school way of doing things, when it was just you, a map, some boot leather, and whatever you could figure out on your own. There's a version of hunting that's more about solving a puzzle than checking an app, and I think a lot of guys are drifting back toward it. What I appreciated most is where Ryan's head is at now. He's enjoying the experience more and worrying less about the outcome. That's a hard place to get to, and it usually takes something going sideways to get you there. We wrapped up talking about plans for this fall and how good it is to hunt with friends again. If you're stuck in a rut — too much data, not enough instinct — this one's for you. SHOW NOTES AND LINKS: —Truth From The Stand Merch —Check out Tactacam Reveal cell cameras — Save 15% on Hawke Optics code TFTS15  —Save 20% on ASIO GEAR code TRUTH20 —Save on Lathrop And Sons non-typical insoles code TRUTH10 —Check out Faceoff E-Bikes —Waypoint TV Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Carl Brickey and I get into just about everything in this one, and by the time we're done it doesn't feel like an interview anymore. It feels like two guys who talk shop on the phone a lot finally hitting record. We start where a lot of good hunting conversations start: gear and stories. Archery season, duck hunting mornings, the whole process of building a bow by hand. Carl's got real callouses from that last one, not the kind you fake for a photo. There's a thread in here that caught me off guard: how surfing and skateboarding shaped the way he reads the outdoors. Different sport, same instinct. Read the conditions, adjust in real time, or get humbled by something you didn't respect enough. That instinct is basically the whole episode once we get into mature bucks. Carl doesn't talk about killing big deer like it's luck. He talks about it like a research project. We spent a long stretch on how he actually studies a piece of ground: not just where deer are right now, but where they've been for years, and why last season's pattern doesn't automatically predict this one. Historical data came up more than once, and not in a spreadsheet-nerd way. In a "I've hunted this ridge for a decade and here's what it's actually telling me" way. We got into specific gear and technique too, the stuff that changes outcomes instead of just looking good in a photo. What's earned a permanent spot in the pack, what's been cut, and why some of what worked five years ago doesn't work the same way now. Toward the end the conversation drifted toward what's next. New ground he's looking at, a few life changes on the horizon, and how those changes are already shaping the way he's thinking about next season before it even starts. This is one of those episodes where the takeaway isn't a single tip, it's a way of paying attention. Terrain, history, patience, and knowing the difference between a hunch and a pattern you've actually earned. Give it a listen and let me know what stuck with you. SHOW NOTES AND LINKS: —Truth From The Stand Merch —Check out Tactacam Reveal cell cameras — Save 15% on Hawke Optics code TFTS15  —Save 20% on ASIO GEAR code TRUTH20 —Save on Lathrop And Sons non-typical insoles code TRUTH10 —Check out Faceoff E-Bikes —Waypoint TV Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

I've been staring at trail camera photos for longer than I care to admit. Thousands of them. Maybe tens of thousands. And for a long time, I thought that was the job — collect enough pictures, find enough patterns, and the deer would basically tell me where to stand. They didn't. What I've learned, slowly and sometimes painfully, is that there's a canyon-wide difference between information and understanding. You can have a card full of pictures and still have no idea what's actually happening in that timber. The data doesn't think for you. It doesn't filter. It just sits there, and if you're not careful, it buries you. We're living in the golden age of trail camera technology. Cellular cameras, high-res video, time-stamps down to the second — it's all incredible, and I mean that. But I've watched guys drown in it. They've got spreadsheets, they've got apps, they've got more buck sightings than they know what to do with. And come November, they're still sitting on the wrong ridge, second-guessing every move. Information without interpretation is just noise. That's what this episode is really about. The gap between knowing something and understanding it. Because those aren't the same thing, and the hunters who figure that out — the ones who can sit with uncertainty, resist the urge to over-analyze, and actually read what the woods are telling them — those are the hunters who make good decisions when it counts. Patience is part of it. So is humility. You have to be willing to say, "I don't know what this buck is doing yet," and mean it. Not as an excuse to do nothing, but as an honest starting point. The hunters who've been at this for thirty years aren't necessarily smarter than you. They've just been wrong enough times to stop trusting data at face value. Deer don't live in spreadsheets. They live in the timber, in the wind, in the terrain features you walked past without thinking twice. Your cameras can point you in a direction, but you still have to think your way to the stand. This episode is for every hunter who's ever felt more confused after pulling cards than before. You're not doing it wrong. You're just missing the step between data and decision. That step is understanding. And it changes everything. SHOW NOTES AND LINKS: —Truth From The Stand Merch —Check out Tactacam Reveal cell cameras — Save 15% on Hawke Optics code TFTS15 —Save 20% on ASIO GEAR code TRUTH20 —Check out Spartan Forge to map your hunt —Save on Lathrop And Sons non-typical insoles code TRUTH10 —Check out Faceoff E-Bikes —Waypoint TV Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

I sat down with DJ Riley for this one, and it turned into one of those conversations that started in one place and ended up somewhere I didn't expect — which, if you've been listening long enough, you know is usually when the good stuff happens. We kicked things off talking about summer. Not the fun part. The part where you're scouting in ninety-degree heat, dragging cameras through timber that feels more like a sauna, and trying to convince yourself that recovery matters as much as effort. It does. I've learned that the hard way more than once — pushing too hard in July and paying for it come November. From there we got into something I think about every single season: the clean slate. Every year I try to walk into the woods like I don't know anything. Not because I don't — but because the deer I'm hunting this year aren't the same deer, and the pressure map isn't the same map. Holding onto last year's plan too tightly is how you miss what's actually happening in front of you. That led us into deer behavior — specifically curiosity. DJ and I talked at length about how a buck's curiosity is one of the most useful and most underrated tools in your kit. It's why the bump and dump works when you do it right. You're not trying to avoid every interaction with a deer. You're trying to control how that interaction ends, so the information you leave behind works for you instead of against you. Trail cameras play into this too — not just as a way to inventory deer, but as a way to read how curious, cautious, or comfortable a specific deer is being on a specific piece of ground. We closed the conversation on something less about tactics and more about who we are as hunters. Every mistake I've made in the woods has taught me something, but only if I actually slowed down enough to notice it. DJ said something that stuck with me — that the moments right before a shot, the ones where everything speeds up, are exactly when you need to slow down the most. That's not just a hunting lesson. That's a life lesson wearing camo. If you've ever wondered why the same techniques don't work the same way twice, or why some hunters seem to "read" deer better than others, this episode is for you. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices