A strong man is harder to kill and more useful in general.

A strong man is harder to kill and more useful in general.

As a man, if someone tells you that you are too weak (especially too weak to simply hold your skeleton together) it drives you to change. I immediately began researching strength training programs, got a gym membership, and got to work! Now, if you've ever perused the internet for fitness advice, you're surely aware that there are more opinions than there are brands of overly priced yoga pants (what is LuLu Lemon, anyway?!). Not only that, all the opinions contradict each other. Muscle confusion, hypertrophy, sets of 5 or 8 or 10 or 30, cardio is awesome, cardio will kill you, squats are the best, squats will kill you...it's a nightmare!!! Eventually, all that advice becomes overwhelming, you fart around the gym for a couple months, progress and motivation stall, and you quit working out but keep paying for the gym promising yourself you'll go back next Monday. Ever been there?

I Left This Morning with Sleeves on my Shirt...

I Left This Morning with Sleeves on my Shirt...

Most of the time, a weekend of scouting for game is the most relaxing part of hunting. You walk around the woods, observe some nature, but you don't have any of the intensity of actually hunting an animal yet. Basically, it's a purposeful nature-walk, and is generally low key and very refreshing. This weekend, however, was NOT one of those times. It seemed that everything that could go wrong did go wrong, and you know it's a bad day when you actually think through how you'd direct a rescue helicopter to your location. The things we do for this glorious sport!

Always Bring the Barney Fife Bullet: Lessons Learned the Hard Way

Always Bring the Barney Fife Bullet: Lessons Learned the Hard Way

It was the 3rd morning of a rifle mule deer hunt in the desert southwest of Phoenix. I had been drawn for big game in AZ at least six times over ten years, and still had yet to bag my first animal. Due to scope issues with my rifle, by this point in the hunt I had missed two large bucks, and burned through a whole box of ammo trying to sight in again. We arrived before dawn on that third morning and I was determined that this was the day my slump would end. As I gathered my gear and loaded up my rifle, I found myself with four rounds in the gun, three in a spare magazine, and one lonely .30-06 round sitting in the box. “I’ll just leave this in the Jeep,” I thought to myself. “After all, who could possibly need more than seven rounds to put down a deer? Plus, who walks around with a loose bullet in their pocket? I’m not Barney Fife”...

The luckiest shot ever taken...my first archery elk!

The luckiest shot ever taken...my first archery elk!

As I approached the trees in a surgically slow army crawl, I popped my head up to check that the bull hadn’t grown suspicious. To my horror, the bull was now standing where he was bedded and staring right at me. Haltingly, I retrieved an arrow from my quiver, knocked it, and waited for him to avert his gaze for just a moment to give me the chance to draw. He stared through me to my partner who was blowing cow calls 40 yards behind me for what felt like hours. Flinching through an intensifying hamstring cramp, I forced myself to remain perfectly still. Finally, he moved briskly behind some thicker timber, giving me the chance to come to full draw. He stopped for another cow call, just on the other side of the timber, quartered away, with his vitals inside of an 18-inch window in the trees. I took a deep breath, squeezed back on the release, and watched the arrow sail through the air…