The Most Impactful Hunting Tip People Don’t Talk Enough About
And I Don’t Mean Fittin’ This Christmas Cookie In Your Mouth
If you’re like me, you’re probably already sick of the ads popping up everywhere for free trial gym memberships or at-home workout equipment that requires a second mortgage to purchase. If you are a regular at a local gym who went before January 1, you are definitely sick of the newbie crowds who suddenly take up every machine but who you probably won’t see after Valentine’s Day. I know I don’t like talking about physical fitness all that much, and I like partaking in it even less.
Which is why it’s good for us to discuss it. Here’s the thing I wish wasn’t true – physical fitness is one of the most impactful skills you can have for hunting. I was recently reminded of this during a late season hunt. This hunt required a 1.25 mile round trip walk on nearby public land. That doesn’t sound too terribly difficult to most, until you factor in that almost all of that walk occurred in a swamp in 25 degree snow. The hip waders were on for the entire trek. I was also trying to be, you know, quiet while I traversed the landscape.
I cannot count how many times I had to quietly but forcibly pull my foot out of knee-deep muck at odd angles with some vital lower muscle or bone structure rendered basically useless. This is old reclaimed strip mine land, which means lots of short but steep hogbacks of slate and mud dotting the swamp. Fun times trying to pull yourself quietly out of a swamp onto steep, loose slate or mud, crawl for a bit through the briars or thickets, walk a nice 50 yards, then plunge back into the frigid swamp and do it all over again.
My mind also wandered to the morning I shot my buck this past season (not that I need a reason for this to happen, it happens most days all by itself). I thought about the tree I was able to climb and how without decent physical fitness, I would not have been able to get into that tree. It was the only tree with a decent window through/above the brush to the scrape where I eventually shot him. If I hadn’t been able to get into that tree, my next option was approximately 50 yards in the wrong direction. I may not have gotten a shot at him.
This tree was at an extremely harsh angle for the first ten feet – almost a 45 degree angle until it turned closer to 90 on the way up. This was an old split-trunk tree and there was no way to get a stick on the first three feet of it because it didn’t split until that point and the trunk was too big for my straps. I had to pull myself up to the split and start my ascent from there instead of the ground. Even then, it wasn’t exactly a level climb up the sticks. I was thankful for my safety rope and reminded myself they test these things on Jeeps. Not possible without a basic level of fitness and flexibility.
The Plan
I’m not saying all of this to criticize anyone – if you look at any my pictures, you’ll see that I’m not going to be mistaken for a Greek statue anytime soon. As you can probably guess, however, I am going to advocate for a simple, basic fitness routine that you can do on a frequent basis. I’m not going to tell you what that workout plan should be; everyone’s life is different. I personally have a few kettlebell weights, an old treadmill with my old Xbox set up in front to prevent the treadmill from becoming a coat rack, and I live in a neighborhood with a nice (when it’s not winter) 5 mile loop right out my front door. From there, it’s just about getting creative and sticking to it.
There is one topic, however, that I am going to get prescriptive about. It also happens to be the topic that comes up most with my 19 year old football players that I coach at a local DIII college. Every year, the freshmen will ask me what they should be working on to get better quickly. They expect me to give a common answer like hit the weight room, know your playbook, practice hard, etc. All of those are correct, but my answer surprises all of them, the same way it surprised me when I was a player: flexibility.
I saw my single greatest season-over-season improvement when I truly focused on my lower-body flexibility. I was fortunate enough to to have a roommate who played football and was also was a sprinter on our track team. He was always stretching in our dorm room. I made fun of him for it at first, until he got me to try it. After a winter offseason of stretching 10 minutes per day, everything dramatically improved. My weight room numbers, my on-field movement, my quickness, everything. I was hooked.
Until I injured my knee on my last game of my career. I took a year to rehab the knee and my flexibility took a break right alongside it. I have never truly regained the same level of physical fitness as I had when I was 21 (but let’s be real, who has?) At the beginning of the COVID pandemic, however, I did refocus myself on stretching and fitness. I’ve seen the same level of improvement in my hunting since I’ve done so. Hikes don’t seem as bad. Climbing results in less sweat than it used to. Dragging deer, shooting stability, even just the ability to sit still have all improved.
This stretching routine is pretty close to the one I do:
I do have a stretching band; you can find one at pretty much any sporting goods store or online. Even a towel or rope would work. Anything to be able to wrap around your feet and pull. I do this four times per week and it takes all of about 10 minutes to do. And yes, yoga does work too, if you want to do a joint activity with your spouse and also get better at hunting at the same time. It’s going to hurt at first; that’s fine, that means it’s working. Just don’t overdo it so much that you injure something and little by little you will see massive results.
Again, no one is going to confuse me with Cam Hanes or Miles Teller, and not just because both of them can grow facial hair much better than I can. Unless you have a 200 yard walk on flat ground through open timber to a chair in a box blind (and you probably wouldn’t be reading this if you did), fitness is a basic fundamental of hunting the way we do. I wouldn’t be taking the time to write about it if I wasn’t certain that it would help you become a better hunter.