“I got my ass kicked for a week, then finally a buck stood up.”

The quote is paraphrased from a statement my friend Caylen Wojcik made during episode 60 of the Human Predator Packmule podcast. He’d passed on a buck during the first morning of his hunt. Then after a week alone in the backcountry, not seeing a damn thing, a nice buck showed itself on the final afternoon of the season – and Caylen capitalized.

But it takes a lot of doing to keep your head on straight and stay in the game for a week without seeing hide nor hair. It takes even more doing to capitalize when we’re finally given a shot opportunity. Caylen had the mental skills and the fortitude to stick it out and get it done. That’s what we all need to make the most out of our hunts, to enjoy them, to get it done when it’s time to get it done.

There is an instant when we’re set behind our rifle, or at full draw with our bow, that we must be fully present and emotionally in control. We’ll talk about tactics for mentally prepping to grind it out and stay in control even when it seems like nothing is going your way.

Let’s start with an unpopular, but true statement, mental toughness isn’t enough to get you through. Then we’ll break down six things you can do to mentally prep for grinding out a hunt.

There is More to Mental Prep Than Mental Toughness

Mental toughness is a hunting industry buzzword. The problem is, most people that spout it off don’t know truly how to define it. We learn from the psychological literature that mental toughness is best defined as “goal-fixedness,” or your willingness to stick to a goal. In many instances, it’s a good thing. But it’s not the only thing.

You must ask yourself, what helps me display mental toughness? That’s the question no one else is asking themselves or you. Dear friend, it’s mental skills that drive you to display your mental toughness.

See, it’s not just something you have. It is the culmination of skills you build. It’s those skills that keep your head in the game and focused on the goal. Without them, you’re left to hope that you’re mentally tough enough to get through. So, mental toughness is not something you have, it’s the outcome of mental skill building.

That’s an important frame that I want you to take with you for the rest of your life. You aren’t just mentally tough. You build skills so that you’re mentally tough.

Let’s get into those skills with six things you can practice to build mental toughness and mentally prep for the grind of a hunt.

6 Tips Mental Prep Skills for the Grind of a Hunt

There’s no order to these; they’re all important. Start with one skill and practice it for a few days or a week, then add another skill. As you add skills to your practice, make sure to revisit the skills you previously worked on so that they don’t perish.

Alright, let’s get into them.

Build Confidence: “True confidence is built by showing yourself that you’re competent and capable.”

That’s a line from our Backcountry Ready Mental Skills Guide. It’s true, too, you know? You can’t fake your way into confidence. But confidence does us a whole lot of good. It keeps us in the game when we’d otherwise have tapped out. The fundamentals of confidence are competence and capability. Those come from repetition, attention, and seeing yourself progress. But you can also drill confidence.

In our Mental Skills Guide, we include a drill from Dr. Nate Zinsser and his book The Confident Mind. It’s called the immediate progress review and it takes hardly any time or effort. All you have to do is remember your best rep.

Here it is, straight from our Mental Skills Guide:

Let’s use archery as an example.

You’re drilling at close range before eventually backing up to longer ranges. You start at 10 yards. Before you back up to 20 yards, you note your best rep at 10 yards and lock it in. Then, you shoot at 20 yards and do the same thing. Reflect on and remember your best rep before backing up to 30 yards. And so on and so forth.

You can apply the IPR to any process, from being a parent to improving your squat form. All you must do is pay attention, reflect on your best attempt, remember it, and move forward.

Practice Mindfulness: In his book, Deep Survival, Laurence Gonzalez mentions that people who remain present enough in survival situations to notice the beauty around them tend to have high survival rates. Now, I pray that you don’t end up in a survival situation on a hunt. But that kind of mindfulness also applies to everyday life as well as keeping your head on straight during a hunt.

Practicing mindfulness doesn't mean you have to go full Buddhist monk. All you have to do is pay attention while you do stuff. There’s a great Alan Watts quote about this. It goes, “Zen does not confuse spirituality with thinking about God while one is peeling potatoes. Zen is just to peel the potatoes.” Don’t get bogged down by the word spirituality, and take the statement for what it’s foundationally expressing: just do what you’re doing and be present in the moment.

Eating is a great way to practice mindfulness. Instead of ogling the ‘gram while stuffing your face, just eat. Look at your food. Notice how the flavors change as you chew. Notice what it feels like to chew. Pay attention when you swallow. What noise does your fork make when it hits your plate? These are just prods to get you started. There are a million things you could notice to keep you in the moment. 

What you’ll notice is that you enjoy your meal more. You’ll also notice that you feel calm. You don’t feel like you need to be anywhere else.

You’re just where you are, doing what you’re doing. That’s mindfulness.

Now, take that same practice with you while you’re sitting on a hillside glassing for deer.

Train Your Internal Locus of Control: There are so many things that happen on a hunt that are completely out of our control. We can’t control the weather. We can’t control the animals. And we can’t control the idiot that walks up on us right at shooting light after we hiked all night to claim our spot. But we can control our response to the weather and to the fella that trudged through our area. We improve our response by developing an internal locus of control.

In psychology, folks with an internal locus of control are described as feeling that they have control over their success and it’s not up to fate or external factors. A huge part of developing an internal locus of control is focusing on what you can do, and what you can control, and letting go of what you can’t control. We use eustress training to enhance our Backcountry Ready member’s internal locus of control.

Eustress training is heart-rate-based strength training that builds strength endurance while improving mental skills. During a eustress session, the heart rate must be kept under 150 at all times and you rest until your heart rate hits 160 minus your age. Between sets, you remain relaxed, focus on your breathing, and dispel the tension built during the previous set. When your heart rate hits 160 minus your age, you lift again.

Here’s the crux: you must choose a weight that makes you a little nervous. Now, it shouldn’t be a max weight. But considering the weight for the amount of time you’ll be lifting, or for the amount of reps prescribed, should cause a mild pucker factor. 

Eustress training improves our locus of control by giving us distinct things we can focus on and control while putting us in an anxiety-provoking situation with many factors we can’t control. We can control our breathing; we can focus on the execution of the lift, and we can do relaxation techniques between sets. We can lift when we’re supposed to lift and rest when we’re supposed to rest. But we can’t control how many total reps we do. We can’t control the clock. And we can’t control our heart rate. We have to let those things go and focus on what we can do.

Throughout the years of using eustress training for myself, for the tactical population I work with, and for the HPPM members, I’ve noticed huge shifts in psychological resilience, as well as huge gains in strength endurance.

But it only works if you keep your focus on what you can control and let go of what you can’t. Don’t force it. Lift when you’re supposed to lift, and rest when you’re supposed to rest.

 Practice Compartmentalization: Compartmentalization is the art of dealing with what matters right now and forgetting about everything else. But it’s not avoidance. It’s asking, “Does this matter right now? Will it stop me from getting to my goal?”

Successful compartmentalization bids us to acknowledge whatever we’re feeling and then use self-questioning so that we can determine what takes priority. For example, you’d say, “I feel cold,” rather than, “I am cold.” That single degree of separation allows you to divorce yourself slightly from the feeling so you can put it in its rightful place. Yes, you’re cold. But does that matter? In most cases, no. You feel cold but it won’t stop you from getting to your goal, which is staying in the hunt. So, you’d follow up with, “Does this matter right now?” No. “Will it stop me from getting to my goal?” No. The cold is put in its proper compartment and you can carry on hunting.

Here’s a quick snippet from our Mental Skills Guide on how to practice compartmentalization:

My favorite way to practice this skill is by taking cold showers.

Turn the water as cold as you can stand without totally freaking out. Stand directly under the water. Breathe. Stay calm and relaxed. Now, listen to yourself and pay attention. Acknowledge whatever you’re feeling. Acknowledge whatever it is that you want to do. Then, get curious about it. Here’s a list of questions from the section on cold water exposure in Building the Elite:

Who or what is in control right now? How do I instinctively want to respond? How am I choosing to respond? Why?

Does this feel like a threat? Is it a real threat? Will this kill me or cause tissue damage?

What thoughts are coming up? What emotion am I experiencing?

Using these questions helps you to create a further degree of separation from how you’re feeling. You can examine your feelings objectively rather than psychologically avoiding the cold. You can control your behavior in the face of discomfort.

Then, you can accept, compartmentalize, and FEEL good instead of always needing to feel GOOD.

Practice What You’ll Experience on Your Hunt: “Act like you’ve been there before.” 

Football coaches throughout my career said that to me and my teammates to remind us how we ought to act after we score touchdowns. It was a reminder to show class and magnanimity while having success. The statement also applies to mental hunt prep.

There’s no substitute for direct experience. You can’t totally replicate the stressors of a hunt without being on a hunt. The more time we spend in the field, the more we will have actually been there before. And even the elite of the elite in the military and law enforcement continue to drill scenarios they’ve been in a hundred times in real life. We need to do the same.

The process is simple: go out and use your gear, shoot in the rain, shoot in the wind, camp when it’s shitty out, get your feet wet, put pressure on your shots, etc.

The more experience you have, the better the simulations that you’ll come up with. If you don’t have a lot of experience, talk with someone that does and set up training scenarios based on what they’ve told you.

Drilling so you’re prepared does a ton for your confidence and peace of mind in the field. It also makes it far more likely that you’ll act as you should when the opportunity presents itself.

Visualize: My defensive coordinator in college hounded us to visualize. He’d remind us at the end of every practice to take our scouting report, review it, and put ourselves in the situations in our mind’s eye. He told us to do it every morning as soon as we woke up and every night just before we went to bed. And he was right.

It’s been almost 20 years since I played college football, so we have some more research now on how to make visualization even more successful. First, it helps to do it in short bursts of 15 seconds or so and do a lot of those short sessions throughout the day. Second, it helps us to visualize our actions in good and bad scenarios. What will you do when the buck walks out? How will you behave when the tent wall caves in and everything gets soaked?

As you visualize, look through your eyes as if you’re doing it, not as if you’re watching yourself in a movie. Take in what it feels like; take in the smells. Notice what emotions you’re feeling. Notice what you do to deal with those emotions.

Regular visualization of all aspects of your hunt helps strengthen bonds in your brain so that you’re more likely to act as you’d like to act in the scenario. And it’ll feel even more like you’ve been there before, so it’ll be easier to keep your head on straight.

Use Your Mental Skills to Grind it Out

If you want to be like Caylen and capitalize when it seems like all is lost, practice the six skills mentioned above. And for the love of everything holy, remember that mental toughness doesn’t just happen. It is the culmination of building mental skills. Keep all this in mind and practice consistently and you’ll be mentally prepped for the grind of a hunt.

If you'd like a copy of our Backcountry Ready Mental Skills Guide, shoot an email to humanpredatorpackmule@gmail.com and put MENTAL SKILLS GUIDE in the subject line.