Truth From The Stand Deer Hunting Podcast

Clint Campbell
  • 4.7 (755)
  • Wilderness
  • Updated Weekly

Truth From The Stand is a weekly whitetail deer hunting podcast built for serious DIY hunters. For 10 years, we've been covering the tactics, strategies, and real stories that help hunters consistently kill mature bucks. From early season scouting and food plots to scrape hunting, rut tactics, and late season pressure, we cover it all. Each week we sit down with experienced whitetail hunters, bowhunters, and public land hunters to break down what's actually working in the field. Whether you're chasing bucks on public land or private ground, managing a property, or just trying to punch your tag on a mature deer, this is your podcast. New episodes every Wednesday. Follow the show so you never miss one

  1. 5d ago

    EP.505: Deer Hunting Mistakes | When Ego Takes Over | HOS

    Every hunter who's spent enough time in a stand knows this moment: the wind switches, the deer aren't moving right, something's off, but you've already invested the time. You climbed the tree, you sat through the cold, you've got two hours in already. So you stay. Not because staying is the right call, but because leaving feels like admitting you wasted the sit. That's the sunk cost fallacy showing up in real time, in a tree, with a bow or a rifle in your hands. And it's not the only bias working against you out there. Ego does the same thing from a different angle. You don't want to be the guy who moved and missed the shot, or the guy who backed out right before the buck showed up. So you push when you should reset, or you sit tight when you should be moving. I built a framework this season to cut through that noise, and it's simple. Before I commit to sitting tight, pushing forward, or backing out, I run through it. What does the wind and the animal's behavior actually tell me right now, not what I hoped they'd tell me an hour ago? What would I do if I hadn't already invested this much time? And am I making this call because it's right, or because I don't want to feel like I failed? That third question is the one that gets me. Ego doesn't announce itself. It just quietly convinces you that pushing is confidence when it's actually stubbornness. None of this replaces scouting or being prepared before you ever climb into the stand. Preparation is what gives you a filter to trust in the first place. But even with the best prep, you're going to hit moments where the hunt is on the line and your gut and your ego are pulling in different directions. Having a filter you trust, built before the pressure hits, is what separates a good decision from a costly one. This episode is about that filter, the biases working against it, and how to build one that actually holds up when it matters. 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

  2. 6d ago

    Trail Cam University: Why Hunting Less Will Kill More Deer

    There's a version of hunting that looks like dedication but is actually just noise. You know the guy. Out every weekend, every morning, every evening, running cameras, bumping deer, wondering why the big ones have gone nocturnal by the second week of October. I've been that guy. Most of us have. This episode is about the discipline nobody talks about, the hardest skill in deer hunting: knowing when to stay home. It sounds simple. It's not. Every hunter has that internal pull, that itch to be in the stand. You've got vacation days saved, gear dialed, permission slips signed. Sitting on the couch while daylight is burning feels like failure. But here's what I've learned the hard way: pressure kills opportunities faster than anything else. Faster than weather, faster than rut timing, faster than a bad wind. Pressure is the invisible ceiling on your season. Deer don't forget. That's the part that took me the longest to internalize. Every time you walk into a property, you leave a signature. Scent, sound, visual disturbance. The more often you're in there, the more those deer, especially mature bucks, shift their patterns to avoid you. You don't even know it's happening. You just notice that the good deer stop showing up in daylight. You blame the moon. You blame the weather. You never blame yourself. Strategic restraint is the answer, but restraint isn't passive. It's calculated. It means studying conditions, wind, thermals, historical deer movement data, and asking yourself an honest question: is going in today likely to do more harm than good? More often than not, the answer in October is yes. I've had sits where I knew walking in that the conditions were marginal. I went anyway because I couldn't stomach staying home. I bumped deer on the way in. I contaminated a transition zone I'd spent months protecting. And I burned a sit that could've been a sit in the first week of November when it actually mattered. The hunters who consistently kill mature deer share one underrated trait: they're comfortable with the discomfort of waiting. They understand that the season is a long game, and that every unnecessary entry is a withdrawal from an account that doesn't refill quickly. If you want to be better next season, start logging the days you decided not to go. What conditions made you hold back? What happened on that property the following week? That data will teach you more about your hunting ground than a hundred sits ever will. Patience isn't a personality trait. It's a skill you build by making hard decisions over and over until the right call feels obvious. 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

  3. Aug 5

    EP. 504: The Ego Problem That's Killing Your Deer Hunts | Jake Bush

    Jake Bush and I sat down for one of those conversations that started in one place and ended up somewhere I didn't expect. We caught up on life first, the season, family, trying to find some balance between chasing deer and not losing your mind or your marriage in the process. If you've hunted hard for more than a decade, you know that tension. It's real, and it's worth talking about honestly instead of pretending it doesn't exist. But the meat of this one is mindset, and how much of what happens in the stand actually gets decided before you ever climb up into it. Jake and I got into a shift a lot of us go through eventually, moving away from chasing inches and toward chasing the story. That doesn't mean you stop wanting a good buck. It means you start valuing the process that got you there as much as the animal itself. We talked about what changes when you make that shift, and honestly, hunting gets a lot better. We spent a good chunk of time on failure, because that's where the real lessons live. Not every failure is the same. Some come from bad information, some come from ego, some come from just not being honest with yourself about what the sign is telling you. We broke down how to actually build a process for learning from a blown hunt instead of chalking it up to bad luck and moving on. That led us into scouting, staying methodical, staying present, and catching yourself when ego starts making decisions instead of your eyes and your gut. Patience keeps coming up in these conversations for a reason. It's the one thing you can't fake, and the one thing that separates guys who consistently kill mature deer from guys who get lucky once. We closed it out on deer behavior and core areas heading into this season, and what to do if you're feeling stuck or frustrated right now. If you're the kind of hunter who wants to actually get better every year instead of just showing up, this one's for you. Give it a listen and let us know what part hit home. 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

  4. Aug 4

    Trail Cam University: Information vs. Understanding | The Decision That Changes Everything

    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

  5. Jul 29

    EP. 503: The Discomfort Threshold | Cody D'Acquisto

    I've said it before, but every season I get a little more convinced that the best hunters aren't the ones with the fanciest gear closet — they're the ones who actually understand what they're chasing. That's the thread running through this whole conversation with Cody, and it went a lot deeper than I expected going in. We start with journaling, which sounds like a soft topic for a hunting podcast until you realize Cody uses the exact same habit for jiu-jitsu that he does for whitetails. Write down what happened, write down what you got wrong, come back to it later. Failure isn't the opposite of getting better — it's the raw material. That mindset carries through everything else we talk about, and honestly, it's the part of this episode I keep thinking about. From there we get into deer scent — and how much of what hunters think they know about it is built on assumption instead of observation. Every deer has a different threshold for what spooks it and what it just shrugs off, and understanding that spectrum changes how you think about wind, entry routes, and how much risk you're actually taking every time you climb into a stand. That naturally rolls into a conversation I've wanted to have for a while: the difference between gear that actually makes you a better, more efficient hunter and gear that's just marketed like it does. We name names, we draw the line, and we talk about why simplifying your kit usually beats stacking it with gadgets. Boots come up here too — because apparently neither of us has found the perfect pair yet, and if you have, we want to hear about it. We also get into the Ranger stand setup, quartering shots with a bow and the technique adjustments that actually help, why leaving your phone in the truck changes the entire texture of a sit, and how we both manage nagging injuries and stay in shape when we're living out of a duffel bag half the season. This one's got a little bit of everything — mindset, mechanics, gear philosophy, and the stuff that actually keeps you hunting hard into November. Give it a listen. 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

  6. Jul 22

    EP. 502: What Ten Years Of Deer Hunting Mistakes Taught Me

    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

  7. Jul 15

    EP. 501: Why Your Worst Hunt Last Season Was Actually Decided In July | HOS

    I'll pick this up right where I left off in episode four. I told you to sit down and run four honest questions on your worst hunt of last season. No sugarcoating, no "I need to be more patient." Find the actual decision that broke things. If you did the homework, you've got something with edges now, a real turning point you can point to. So now what? It's July. There's nothing to hunt. You've got a diagnosis and no patient to test it on. This is where I borrowed an idea straight from jiu jitsu, a sport I've spent a fair amount of time getting choked out in over the last few years. There's a difference between rolling and drilling. Rolling is live sparring, full resistance, real stakes. Drilling is the boring part. The same move, fifty times, nobody fighting back, until your body just does it without asking your brain for permission. Hunters only roll. We show up in October with nothing behind us except the last October. No off-season reps. Just waiting around and hoping we remember how to be good at this. I got into Angela Duckworth's research on this for the episode. She splits practice into naive (logging hours, shooting shots you can already make) and deliberate (finding the exact thing you're bad at and grinding on it while it's uncomfortable). Most of us practice naive. We scout the ground we already know. We shoot the yardage we're already good at. Then October shows up and the same gap is sitting there waiting. I break down three ways to actually drill in the off-season. Running high pressure scenarios in your head until the right call has a groove worn into it. Physical reps on your shot sequence, including the part where I talk myself through mine out loud like a crazy person, and it works. And catching the pattern that keeps costing you, then building the habit that interrupts it before it happens again. Right now, we're in the building phase. August and September, you tighten up. Once the season opens, the drilling's done. You're just trusting the work. Duckworth has a line I can't shake. One season of learning is a paragraph. Ten seasons of deliberate work is a book. Most of us are out here collecting paragraphs and wondering why we never get anywhere. Hunt like you train. 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

  8. Jul 8

    EP. 500: The Hunt Was Never The Point

    I hadn't sat down with Josh in a while. Not because we fell out or drifted on purpose, just life did what life does. Kids, seasons, work, all of it stacking up until you look up and realize it's been way too long. So when we finally got together to record this one, it felt like picking up a conversation we'd never really finished. A lot of this episode is about parenting through the years nobody prepares you for. Josh and I are both staring down empty nesting, watching kids pull away into their own lives, and figuring out what that means for how we spend our time now, hunting or otherwise. There's grief in that transition, but there's also freedom, and we don't pretend it's simple. From there we got into hunting, which for us has never really been separate from parenting anyway. We talked about what success actually means once you've been doing this long enough. Filling a tag used to feel like the whole point. It isn't anymore. What matters now is who you're with, what you're teaching your kids, and whether you're building memories that outlast you. We got honest about the risks of hunting alone. Not in a preachy way, just real talk about what you lose when there's nobody there to help you make a decision or get you out of a bad spot. Companionship on the hunt isn't just nice to have. It's part of what makes this whole thing worth doing. We also talked about the fear that comes with getting older. Losing hunting partners, losing time, losing the version of this sport you grew up loving as the landscape shifts around you. That's a heavy subject, but we didn't want to dance around it. By the end we landed on gratitude. For the friendships, for the stories our kids will tell someday about us, for the fact that we still get to do this at all. The hunt was never really the point. This one is about why we keep coming back to the woods anyway. If you've got a hunting partner you haven't talked to in a while, this episode might be the nudge to call them. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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About

Truth From The Stand is a weekly whitetail deer hunting podcast built for serious DIY hunters. For 10 years, we've been covering the tactics, strategies, and real stories that help hunters consistently kill mature bucks. From early season scouting and food plots to scrape hunting, rut tactics, and late season pressure, we cover it all. Each week we sit down with experienced whitetail hunters, bowhunters, and public land hunters to break down what's actually working in the field. Whether you're chasing bucks on public land or private ground, managing a property, or just trying to punch your tag on a mature deer, this is your podcast. New episodes every Wednesday. Follow the show so you never miss one

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