The Best Hunting Gear Investment You Can Make

How you think determines how you act, which has a monumental impact on your outcomes. For instance, if you head on out to a party and you believe you’ll have a bad time, you’ll act like you’re going to have a bad time, and, voila! You have a bad time. It works this way for most things in life, from your baseline mindset to how you approach hunting. Ya gotta have your head on straight.

Backcountry Ready member Tyler Notch has the best mindset on hunt training that we’ve ever encountered. Tyler thinks about his body how we should all think about our bodies; he treats it as the most important piece of gear that he owns. (He wrote about it here.)

I have 100 bucks that say you’ve never thought of it that way. But that simple shift in mindset could completely change the way you hunt, and for how long you get to hunt. That means during this season and for the rest of your life. 

Your Body: The Highest Return on Investment Hunting Gear

Do a rough of all the money you’ve spent on hunting clothes and boots over the past few years. The number has a least three zeros at the end of it, right? I’m not dogging you for spending money on good hunting clothes, I do it, too. It’s worth it to buy stuff that lasts. 

But let’s think about “stuff that lasts” for a hot second. Your body is the most important piece of stuff that needs to last. By last, I mean during this hunting season and every hunting season after for the rest of your life. You can’t treat it cheaply and expect it to be there for you when you need it.

The big difference is expensive clothes, no matter how nice, wear out. Then you buy new ones. You can’t buy a new body, homes. You get only one. The bad news is that aging will take your abilities from you. But the good news is that you can delay that significantly and maintain your ability to hike, climb, lift, ruck, run, and do whatever the hell else you want by training. You can’t train your pants; you can sew them up, but eventually, you just buy new ones.

Peter Attia notes in a blog article called Why do we Lose Muscle and Strength with Age? , that 

“Active muscle releases a number of biochemical signals which promote growth of motor neuron fibers, induce them to form more connections to the muscle, and enhance excitatory signal transmission at the neuromuscular junction. These combined effects improve neuromuscular communication and lead to better control and increased strength of muscle contractions, counteracting the effects of aging muscles. In particular, endurance and power training appear to contribute significantly to neuromuscular remodeling, and data from life-long athletes indicate that regular exercise in our later years is effective in improving muscle strength and function.”

That’s nerd-speak for, if you train you will retain your strength and endurance into later life. But only if you train. 

Think of it this way, a 60-minute training session is an investment that you reap a percentage of in the short-term future and a percentage of in the long-term future. That’s an incredibly high yield. Most investments take 30 years for compounding interest to build them up. With training, you get a lot now, and a lot later. You can’t say that about pants or a backpack or a pair of boots.

But, you ask, how long does it take to see the return on the investment? Well, it depends on what you’re measuring. Some things improve quickly, especially if you haven’t been training. Other things, like strength and aerobic capacity, take at least 8 to 12 weeks to start seeing the big ROI. 

Phillip Velayo of Modern Day Sniper just finished up his first 12 weeks of training with us. During those 12 weeks, he improved his 3-mile ruck time by about 11 minutes while dropping his average heart rate during the assessment by 30 beats per minute. That’s that the kind of ROI that’s possible with consistent, smart investments into your body.

(This was last week's assessment.)

We know the ROI is high. Now, let’s chat about how to invest.

How to Invest in Your Body

There are different ways to invest in your body. But each costs time and money. You can’t skimp on on the costs and expect the best results. A $200 rifle gets you $200 accuracy. A minuscule investment in your body gets you minuscule results. It’s best to plan to spend time and money on the machine that keeps you in the mountains for the rest of your life. With that in mind, here are a four elements that you should use to build your physical investment strategy.

Treat it Like an Investment Account, Not a Checking Account

Financial experts with your best interest in mind will prod you to invest consistently while thinking long-term. They’ll caution against treating your investment account like a checking account, depositing and withdrawing on whims. They’ll tell you to consistently do the right thing with your money so you reap the long-term benefit. Treat your body the same way.

You won’t get the best yield if you panic and only invest in your body during the 12 to 16 weeks leading up to hunting season. You’ll miss out on the compounding interest you would have gained from consistent, year-round investing. However, if you’re always investing by training year-round, you’ll stay ready and get more out of your body during the current hunting season while getting paid out in physical dividends for years to come.

You will age; there’s no choice in the matter. The best way to fight aging and to keep yourself in the game for as long as possible is to prepare your body the same way you prepare your bank accounts, by thinking long-term and making consistent investments over time.

Educate Yourself

As it goes with financial investments, so it goes with training investments. You can’t make bad ones and expect to prosper. The best way to avoid bad investments is to know a little bit about investing. The same is true of training.

There are a couple of ways to gain that education. First, you can hire a good coach. The fair follow-up question is, how do you know the coach is good? The first indication is that they don’t try to sell you on something sexy. Second, they can explain the why for everything they have you do in a simple way that you understand. Third, they create resources to help you understand why you’re doing what you’re doing. And fourth, their training gets you results if you hold up your end of the bargain and consistently train.

The second way, and this works well in concert with hiring a good coach, is to do some self-study. Buy training books from respected sources like Building the Elite or the folks at Uphill Athlete. Watch webinars from folks like Andy Galpin. Commit to finding answers. If you’re not sure where to start, ask the coach that you hired. If they’re good, they’ll have solid recommendations based on the things you want to learn. 

The more you know, the more you can help yourself. And sometimes helping yourself means avoiding making a bad investment by signing up for a shitty training program.

Do What You can With What You Have

So many people think things like, “I’ll start investing when I have a better job and can put more money into the market.” But if you don’t build a savings habit now, what makes you think that you’ll build one when you have more income? Spoiler alert, you won’t. People apply the same logic to training. They’ll do it when they have more time or when “things slow down.” Spoiler alert numero dos, things will never slow down. 

Here’s a little mantra that helps you defeat that flawed logic:

Perfect is the enemy of progress.

Is it ideal for you to have a couple of hours per day to exercise? Sure, that’d be great.

Would it be better if you had the same amount of time every day year-round? Yep. 

But that ain’t reality, baby. Some days you’ll have a couple of hours, other days you’ll have 15 minutes. Sometimes you’ll have access to a full gym. Other times you’ll just have your legs, arms, and lungs. 

No matter where you are and how much time you have, do what you can with what you have and make an investment.

Eat and Sleep Like an Adult

Training is paramount for conditioning your body for the short-term and long-term rigors of the mountains. You can’t be ready without exercise. But exercise isn’t the only investment. You must invest in rest and fuel.

Listen, this is shit you know. I’m just telling you now so you do something about it if you’re not already. 

Set up an evening that winds you down and gets you ready for sleep.

Eat lean protein, veggies, fat, and carbs at every meal. Limit your snacking and don’t try to cover up a shitty diet and sleep schedule with supplements. 🙂

Thank You Tyler

How you think determines how you act. If you think of your body as the most important piece of hunting gear you ever own, you’ll invest in making it work for you for as long as possible. Thanks to our guy, Tyler, you have a brand new way to think about your body and how to invest in it so you can hunt as much as possible for as long as possible. Your body is your most important piece of hunting gear. Treat it that way.