← Live Wild with Remi Warren
Live Wild with Remi Warren
Ep. 167 | Staying Ready - Live panel with Dustin and Randy from Sheep Show
01:02:37
Join me from the live panel at sheep show this month as I talk with Dustin Diefenderfer of MTNTOUGH and Randy Newberg about the importance of staying ready.
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Dustin Diefenderfer
Foreign.
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Remy Warren
I'm Remy Warren and I've lived my life in the wild as a professional guide and hunter. I've spent thousands of days perfecting my craft. I want to give that knowledge to you. In this podcast we relive some of my past adventures as I give you practical hunting tips to make you more successful. Whether you're just getting started or a lifelong hunter, this podcast will bring you along on the hunt and teach you how to live wild. This podcast is brought to you by Mountain Tough and Yeti. A lot of the tactics I talk about here require you to be in top physical shape. So I partnered with Mountain Tough to help get you ready for the mountain with their science based hunter specific training app. You'll get in shape and mentally tough able to tackle any hunt. Because we really believe this will help you be more successful as a listener to this podcast, we're giving you six free weeks to get you started. Just use code livewild Foreign welcome back to Live Wild Podcast everyone. So today I actually have a bonus episode and we are going to talk about mental toughness, living Ready and physical preseason preparation. On this one I was actually joined by Dustin Diefenderfer of Mountain Tough Fitness and Randy Newberg from On your Own Adventures. We sat down at Wild Sheep show and did a seminar that involved kind of our thoughts and philosophies, led by Dustin, that involved getting ready, preparing for the season, staying in shape, and being ready for anything the mountain can throw your way. So let's dive in to preseason prep and just physical preparation for the hunt.
- [01:53]
Randy Newberg
So Remy Warren is joining us today and Randy Newberg is also here and I invited the two of them them for some specific reasons related to this topic. So Remy from his guiding experience has a really interesting take on people that show up on hunts that have done preseason training and people that show up on hunts that do not do preseason training. So from his decades of guiding experience, he has a unique viewpoint on how people show up mentally and physically prepared for dream hunts of a lifetime. And how they prepare can ultimately decide the fate of that hunt. And so he has a lot of stories on that, on people that have showed up and made mistakes or showed up and been prepared and what we can learn from that from a guiding perspective. Randy has another unique perspective, kind of, kind of the complete opposite of the spectrum. Randy has hunted all over the world, been on some phenomenal trips. He's been very blessed to travel all over on a lot of the world's coolest hunts, but for the longest time he was Not a gym goer. He was not doing any gym training. He was just lucking out. And he also was working a desk most of his life. So an accountant by trade, he's pushed a lot of paper. And this year, we got the chance to do a lot of training with Randy in preparation for his Mackenzie Mountain Dall sheep hunt that he went on this summer. But it came at a time in his life where he knew he had to train physically in the gym to be ready for a trip of a lifetime. And now the coolest thing for me to see is Randy trained with us for a year, went on that hunt. It was a remarkable hunt. But then the day he got home, he was back in the mountain, tough lab training again. And now he's pretty devastated if he's not able to train. And that's been really cool for me to see because I knew he wasn't a gym rat like me his whole life. And the gym thing was kind of newer to him. And so for him to be right back in the gym right after he got home from that trip was awesome. So we're just going to unpack kind of some of these topics today on preseason and how you guys could think about preparing for sheep hunts or any other hunts you have coming up this fall or in the next couple years. Best practices and lessons learned. At the end, we'll open it up for some q and A in those last 10 minutes, kind of dive in with you guys. But, Remy, we'll start with you on. You've done a lot of guiding for a lot of years, and you've seen a lot of people show up prepared, and a lot of people show up unprepared. What kind of stands out to you for big mistakes? Like the three big mistakes you've seen guys really make when, you know, they show up to your door for that hunt of a lifetime?
- [05:11]
Remy Warren
Yeah, I think, you know, thinking back, like, it's always fun, the guide stories, and you got the ones of, like, the epic things that go right, but everyone wants to hear the things that went wrong. Those are, like. Those are the best guide stories, right? The guys that, like, you get up on the mountain and they lost their mind, and they're, like, yelling at you because they just can't go any further, and they think they're gonna die, and you're just like, what are we gonna do now? You know? And I think part of it is a little bit of unpreparedness, and it is a lot of, like, there's. There's a certain I don't know, I always kind of. You can't really tell sometimes as the guide, like how, who's going to be the person. That doesn't make it right. And I think one of the things that's like a big factor in, in like, you know, the success of someone's hunt oftentimes is like that, that initial preparedness and I would say like the first one that people, they like a lot of people that might come in overconfidence, like oh I'm indecent or whatever and then they put a pack on and that like they don't understand that. Like they do understand like to think about it. But it's a thing of like that's for the hunt. And I think that, well, you guys do a great job of like, you know, whatever your body weight is now when you're on that hunt. I've never, well, I don't think of any hunt where I've not had a pack on. And I think back in my life I've had a pack on probably the majority of my life. Like I walk around, my brother in law's like, you got fat guy calves? It's like, cause I walk around like a 200 pound dude, right? Cause I wear a pack all the time. And people don't realize that when you're, you know, they're training, they're getting ready, they're like, man, I've been, you know, putting in some miles or I've been doing this, that and the other thing. But they don't realize that it's, it's time under weight and then so that it's like that weight weighs them down. And so I think like that mindset and that kind of specific training of knowing you're going in even on a day hunt, I mean a light day hunt pack with your optics and everything's 20 pounds, you know. And then you go on a backcountry hunt or a mountain hunt and you know like a, you're on a sheep hunt and you load up your 10 days worth of food and your gear and people are like, that's the first time they've put that on their back. And then they lift it up and they've got, you know, two extra pairs of packages. They, you know, they got everything that they want plus and they're like that pack 60 pounds and they just are, they're now under gunned, you know. And then they start climbing up the mountain and it just starts creeping in their head. And then that's when you see people like Break.
- [07:52]
Randy Newberg
Yeah, And I've witnessed that firsthand also from the side of. I've had friends that have trained in the gym really well, but they never touch that heavy pack. And it stands out an obvious difference when it comes time for a pack out. Even though that individual might have physically done some great training in the gym with like strength training and cardio training, when they be a seminar next door, talked about a lot is, you know, we're going to get into physical and mental components of training today. But one of the things that he pushes very well is a big part of preseason prep is just preparing to be an outdoorsman. And so if you have that hunt of a lifetime, but you're not spending time on the mountain with your pack, then you're not getting those outdoorsman skills and you're not getting that pack training. Because some of the, some of the greatest hunters in the world, one thing that is helping them is experiences. Stacking on experiences, stacking on experiences. But a lot of people will have that 20, 28 sheep tag, but they're not, they're not camping, they're not hiking into high mountain lakes for fly fishing. So the preseason prep, not only is it mental and physical training, but it's just outdoorsman training, which I think ties into that heavy pack pretty well, for sure.
- [09:23]
Remy Warren
Yeah, that, that like you're doing one thing that's new is always hard, and then you throw in a bunch of things that are new and that, that really throws people for a loop. And you know, one of the other things that like, is something that, I don't know, people might not even think about when it comes to any kind of like you're hunting your training. I think one thing that breaks people too, is like they go on a hunt and they go, they're going on a horseback hunt. Horseback hunts break people, like, seriously, because they're like, in their head, they're like, I'm gonna be on horses. And then they aren't prepared. They've never ridden horses. And then you, your legs get sore and then you get tired, and then you also realize that you're just using those horses to get to where you're camping. And then you're also hiking and then you also have to carry a pack and you probably also have to overnight. Dude, horse hunts kill more people than like straight up backpack hunts. Because, like, they just, it's like a preparedness level. Like they've never done it. They've never done it. They didn't know what to expect. They don't know what it's like to ride for 20 miles. They don't know what it's like to do these things, like how much that even beat. And then they get off, and then it's like, time to hike, and they're just smoked, which is weird because they're like, they did that hunt so they didn't have to hike, and then it's like. But they're completely unprepared. So, like, your training should mirror whatever you're potentially doing in the field. So it's like, in some ways, like you say, being outside, getting on that pack, horseback, hunt, get on a horse even. Or, like, do some, you know, something to strengthen your quads and other things that you might not. Muscles that you don't even know that you need to do. And then having that pack on and just being prepared for, like, all right. These are things that I have don't experience in normal life. So I'm preparing for that. So when I get on the mountain, I'm not. Everything's not new.
- [11:12]
Dustin Diefenderfer
Yeah.
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Remy Warren
Sleeping on the ground, like, that's another thing. Right.
- [11:17]
Randy Newberg
I made that mistake this year. We went to Kyrgyzstan for ibex, and the horse rides killed me. Even with all the gym training that we did in preparation for that trip that I made, you know, mistake number one of not doing what we were actually going to do on the hunt, and that was not spending enough time on a horse before that trip. But the, you know, the insides of your knees would hurt so bad. You would get off the horse and just stand there for a couple minutes before you could start moving because he'd be so stoved up and so stiff. So even, like, all the workouts we did, every. All the hiking we did, all the heavy pack work we did, we completely missed it when it came to the horse riding component. And it. It got most of the guys on our. Our team. And it was just kind of like rule number one, as you mentioned, that you have to do the stuff you're going to do to be most prepared.
- [12:14]
Remy Warren
Yeah. I had a hunt that I went on, and we took horses, and I was like, I just. I've been there. And. And I was like, I was with a bunch of other guys, and I just. I threw my pack on the horse and walk, and they're like, you're gonna ride? It's like, no, I'm gonna. I had. I brought some lighter shoes, like boots, and I was like, this is for my pack in. They're like, it's 26 miles. I was like, cool. Like, I'm walking and Everyone else was smoked. I was like, I'm ready to go. Yeah. Because I was like, I'm not riding. I'm just gon. But because I hadn't, you know, done that. And I was like, I know I can go. I'll just. I'll just go what I'm used to, which is, like, a complete opposite, but not having a pack, and you're light and fast, and it was easier.
- [12:57]
Randy Newberg
Yeah. What do you think mistake number two is? You've seen?
- [13:01]
Remy Warren
I think mistake number two. Well, this is just, like, I think, where I've seen improvements from guys. Like, if we've got a guy that one year, it was just really hard for them. And then they come back, and I think, like, to see how it improves. I think people, like, they're like, okay, I'm going on a backcountry hunt, and I'm going to work out. Okay? And that's one component of it. And you're building your strength, you're training. You're doing everything right. But then I think, like. And this is something that, you know, I've learned later on, like, everybody. When I was younger, I never thought about this, but as I've gotten older, you know, like, a diet is a huge component for it now for me, because, like, even, like, seeing it with clients, because it'll be like, a guy that comes in and he's. He's. He. He. He trains, but he doesn't really, like, the rest of the year, it's like, yeah, he works out and he's physically capable, but, you know, the diet's preventing him from possibly shedding 20 pounds. That's a lot of extra weight and strength that could be on your back, you know, so, like, kind of adding that component of, like, losing body weight and then gaining that strength to carry that additional weight makes a big difference. And I've had. I've had probably over a dozen guys over the years that are, like, guys that I've hunted with year after year after year. And I have one guy in particular that, you know, started out hunting with us, and it was, like, damn near died. It was the worst experience of his life. And he's like, I'm gonna come back, but I'm gonna do it different. Started training, and then it's like, all right. And then he started. And then when he mixed that diet aspect in, he. He actually, like, lost more weight and had more energy on the hunt. And I don't know if it's. I'm not like a nutritionist, but, you know, there is I've been learning certain things about when you eat certain things on the hunt, you just have, like, this boost of fuel energy, especially if you aren't used to it when you're in. Like, you can burn that energy fast, and he can continue to go and utilize the food that he has on the hunt better, and he's just more. More productive. And so that is actually, like, a thing. I mean, if you're, like, in your 20s, it probably doesn't matter. Like, it didn't matter for me. Like, and even 30, like, early 30s didn't matter. But, like, the last three or four years, it's mattered, you know?
- [15:21]
Randy Newberg
So, Randy, you are destroying an apple as we talk about nutrition. And you had a lot of experience with this this year, too, working with Kyle Camp and going through your nutrition for trade show season, but also for hunting season. And you were. You were pretty blown away with the difference of just the fuel going in your body.
- [15:44]
Dustin Diefenderfer
Yeah, I have two addictions in life, chocolate and ice cream. And I've been on the wagon now for a while with the ice cream. I still haven't kicked the chocolate. But meeting with Kyle was very helpful because kind of pointing or adding on to what Remy was talking about. As a CPA, you drive a desk hard from December 1, April 15, and then you think it's like Superman's going hunting, because you remember back when you're in your 20s, and you could just jump out from behind the desk and go. When in reality, it's like Pee Wee Herman goes hunting, and you haven't taken care of your diet, you haven't taken care of the exercise, and you go out hunting. Well, when you work a lot of hours, like, the CPA is going to work almost seven days a week, and so you're just so exhausted. But part of when you get in this. I'm exhausted and I'm tired. One of the places you cut corners is your diet and the quality of the food that you put into yourself. And this just becomes like this snowball. And by the end of tax season, I've gained 30 pounds. I have zero energy. Yeah, I've worked a lot, but part of the reason is I've been living on caffeine and bad food. Well, this was the first year where I've said, all right, trade show season like this. Last year, you guys taught me this. I land at an airport. I head right to the supermarket. I'm not gonna eat the stuff that's at the, you know, coffee pub down at the hotel. Nothing against the Pepper Mill you know, good, good coffee. But a lot of what you see in those, those morning breakfast things there gonna give you that big sugar spike, and you're gonna crash. And the more times you're spiking and crashing during a day, you just. You lose all the energy and you aren't keeping your body in the place that it needs to be. And you'd say, oh, Randy, why do you have to become 59 years old before you figured that out? Because I'm like your typical American, right? I'm always too busy. Well, I'll worry about this next week. I'll worry about. Well, I got to get to this appointment, so I'm going to swing by the coffee joint and I'm going to grab a muffin, and that's going to get me through today. Now, there's. There's a reason why healthy people, energetic people, have the energy and the health they have is besides the. What they're putting into it. It's what they're putting into themselves. And CPAs are probably some of the worst in the world at that. We. We think that donuts are, you know, a health food. Enough donuts and enough coffee and you can solve the world's problems. Well, you pay for that when you go on an elk hunt or a mountain hunt or whatever. And so I think the place where being a CPA was really helpful and it was easy to make that transition is everything in the CPA world is you're not going to solve a problem overnight. It's like bits and pieces. Every financial plan you put together, you got to work at it, Work at it. And so this was just, all right, I got to work at it. I'm. I'm going to change my diet, and I'm not going to lose eight pounds tomorrow, but I'm going to get. I'm going to replace fat with muscle. I'm going to have higher energy levels. That's going to give me what I need to say. All right. Yeah, I got an extra 20 minutes. I'm going to grill something tonight. I'm not just going to swing by Burger King or, you know, wherever. So I think there's those little things. And then it's also the mental part. I think the diet part is more mental than it is anything for sure.
- [19:28]
Randy Newberg
And how many, like, healthy snacks do you have in your hotel room now for trade show season?
- [19:34]
Dustin Diefenderfer
Well, this. This trip, I gotta admit, my wife came with me because her brother lives here in Reno. So Wednesday night, when we landed, I had an event, and she ran down To, I don't know, some supermarket and cleaned the joint out. If you came to my room right now, there's enough cashews for all of us for this week. This is like, I think I got five apples left and I fly out tomorrow. Bananas jerky. But the point of all that is she now is kind of on the program of what I need to do. And, yeah, it just. It takes 5 extra minutes, 10 extra minutes to swing by a supermarket and if you know the things you. You need. But, man, it just makes a world of difference because right now I left on Wednesday and I'm on a 19 day trip of trade show after trade show after trade show. After 19 days, you can really ruin your diet.
- [20:33]
Randy Newberg
Oh, yeah.
- [20:33]
Dustin Diefenderfer
Of trade show food and restaurant food and everything else. And so it's worth it to take that few extra minutes when you get into town and go do that.
- [20:42]
Randy Newberg
Yeah. And you really noticed the difference last year on how you felt, because that was the first year you made that change. But when you got home from trade show season last year off of this new plan of, like healthy food and protein all day, throughout every day, you were pretty blown away with just the energy level difference.
- [21:04]
Dustin Diefenderfer
Yeah, and I was blown away at the energy level. And I also. I have this belt that's kind of my. All right. Have I been eating too much ice cream? Because there's two notches. I know this is weird, right? It's my belt that I wear the most. And it's like, if I'm on this notch, I've been eating too much ice cream or donuts or whatever. If I'm on this notch or even tighter. All right, I've been behaving myself, so I haven't had that other notch for over a year.
- [21:33]
Randy Newberg
Nice.
- [21:33]
Dustin Diefenderfer
So I'm hoping that. I'm hoping that come when trade show season's done in April, that I'm not over at that notch. Yeah, I know it's weird. But I'm a simple guy, so I gotta have these little markers and reminders throughout the day that just keep me on track and remind me when I'm doing what I need to do versus when I'm not.
- [21:54]
Randy Newberg
That's awesome. Ice cream notch. I love it. Let's shift into more preseason prep. And. And Remy, when you think about that, and you think about hunters that have shown up to hunt with you, who kind of stands out as just beasts that have shown up that have been crazy prepared, that can kind of keep up step by step, anything stand out on what those guys were doing?
- [22:27]
Remy Warren
Yeah, so there's. Well, there's, like, two types of people, I think, and this is, like, the part of, like, it plays a lot into it. If you were just like, the guy that kept up the best, in my opinion. He was like a cowboy. He came, he showed up wearing jeans and, like, I don't even know if he had hunting boots. Probably. He was, I don't know, maybe 60 years old. He'd been. He was on a horse, got one leg, like, caught in a fence. The horse ripped him in half. Like, his pelvis snapped in half. He held his pelvis together, walked to the truck, drove himself to the hospital. He had pins in metal, and it was, like, really cold, like. And he matched me step for step. And I, you know, like, normally, I'm like, hey, you know, go at your pace. When you stop, I stop. Because I just keep going forever. And he's like, no, I just keep going. And he was in, like. I wouldn't be surprised if he never did any workout. He was in good shape, you know what I mean? Like, just from working, but, like, his strength was, like, between the ears. Like, there was just no quit, no, like, any of that. And it was 100%, in some ways, like, mental. Like, he was probably hurting really bad and just never even thought about it, and it never affected him, right? And then there's a. Like. And that's a huge thing of, Like, I say this a lot, but it's a huge component of the success on hunts and where people fail and fall behind, especially on really hard hunts, is there's guys that, like, we're all very capable of doing a lot more than we think. And I don't know, like, I think that one of the things that you see it in is, like, at least in. Outside of hunting or something, is like, a lot of people don't ever push themselves. Like, you, you know, I don't know. Like, you. Most people don't know how long they can hold a plank for, right? Because you stop way before your body would absolutely collapse, right? Whereas, like, I kind of. Or most people don't know how long they can hold their breath for. Because you always take a breath before you black out most of the time, right? Like, if you're just going to see how long you can only read, very few people will go till it gets black. But, like, a lot of people, you know, that. That, like, mental capacity. And then I've seen people that are in excellent physical shape that, you know, that peter out because they don't have that mental aspect now there is also that. So that's like one, one type. And then there's the type that like shows up physically prepared and is ready for it, you know, and I've had a lot of those guys as well. They're like, hey, I put in the time. This wasn't just like a, this wasn't just like a forethought. So they come, they've prepared physically. But I think that that physical preparation, it gives them a sense of mental toughness because they've done those kind of things throughout their journey to get there. And they're the ones that came prepared now. The ones that were like, oh shoot, I got that elk hunt or sheep hunt or whatever hunt in, in a month, I'm gonna do some stuff. The guys that were like, think about it year round and like, oh, I'm going on this and I'm gonna, I'm gonna kind of like always do this. And then they kind of, you know, they're, they're able to kind of overcome a lot of things that other people might not be able to.
- [25:56]
Randy Newberg
Yeah, it's so true. I mean, the mental toughness is everything. And we at Mountain Tough, we've always known that the mental toughness is going to trump the physical preparation. And you know, you see that across like all special operations selection. They'll. It's, you know, the farm kid that's been up at 4 in the morning feeding cows since he was 12, that's just not scared of the cold, that's oftentimes going to outperform the D1 athlete because of that. The mindset. The, the mindset is everything. And Mountain Tough, we spend a tremendous amount of time training that, talking about that, unpacking that, developing it in a lot of different ways throughout our workouts and our programming with mind tricks and mind hacks to develop that mental toughness. But I think you are spot on that in today's society, if you aren't working in a job like that in ag or something similar where you are getting that mental toughness every day, the physical workouts are a great way to build that mental toughness. So doing stuff that's hard every day, doing things that you think are impossible, challenging yourself with fitness events that you think you can't really do anything that's outside of your comfort zone, we have to artificially create those now because life can be so easy. Life can be so easy with our occupations and our technology that to be prepared for like a ten day MacKenzie she punt, we have to artificially create mental challenges. For ourselves to be ready for something like that because we're not in it every day.
- [27:50]
Remy Warren
Yeah, definitely. I think that, that the longevity thing is, is the hardest portion of like preparing for a backcountry hunt. When you're talking about preparing for something that you're, you know, whatever it is, like a mountain hunt is a 10 day hunt. There's a, there's a amount of time that's a long amount of time often. And you don't get that outside of that hunt. Especially like if somebody's saying like, hey, I'm, I'm going on a, I've got a sheep hunt, how should I prepare? And I think you have to prepare mentally and saying like, you're gonna have to do it day after day after day. And then at some point in your preparation you need to include like things that are long and day after day after day because another, another huge factor of like, you know, I like things that are very actionable and, and one of the best ways to prepare because the thing that slows people down on the hunt is like a buildup of being sore. Like they do something hard one day, but you gotta do it the next day and the next day and the next day and it starts to wear on you. And like if you aren't used to doing that in the repetition of over time, you get sore, you get tired, you get slow and things start to deteriorate fast and like that the people that come prepared, where they've done it day after day after day, it's like they have a hard day but their body isn't, is used to flushing and restarting, you know, like, I can't, I mean I've been on a lot of very hard hunts and push myself really hard and I can't really. I mean there's, there's definitely nights in the tent where I'm like, couple IB brokens, you know, like just take some ibuprofen and go to bed. But the next day I'm like, I'm ready, I'm ready to go. Because over time my body's used to just like restarting, restarting, knowing that this is not a one day thing. This is not, it's like no rest, no rest, no rest, no rest. And your body just gets used to it. And so I think that that's a huge factor of it too. Of like guys that come out and they, they're, they're ready, they've done it, but they, you know, they, they just don't have that longevity of like day to day. To day they've got their however they do it and then they blow it out on the first day. And then they're like, well, got any easy spots tomorrow?
- [30:12]
Randy Newberg
Yeah, the grind. This is the relentless grind. And you never know when the finish line is going to be.
- [30:17]
Remy Warren
Yeah, I think like, one of the things that, you know for me now that I'm not it used to my scenario is very different because, like, when I first started, it was like every day I was out doing it. And there's no better thing than that. But as I've like, had a family and spend less time out there, now I have to do things to, like, stay prepared. And one of those things is, like, I'll do something that makes me sore intentionally. Like, and then I do something the next day that will also make me sore. And then I do it the third day that'll make me sore. And then by the fifth day, you're like, okay. And then you do that same thing the next week and it doesn't make you sore anymore. It's really weird.
- [31:00]
Randy Newberg
Yeah.
- [31:00]
Remy Warren
But I don't know if that's normal. So that's what I do.
- [31:04]
Randy Newberg
You're just breaking all human performance rules on that one. Like doing step ups on your Yeti to 10.
- [31:11]
Remy Warren
Yeah. It's like, all right, if it's like, okay, if I stop getting sore and do something, then I try to make it harder to get sore, to like, build that tolerance of just that, like, punishment tolerance of like, I can't walk up the stairs today. Now I'm going to run up.
- [31:26]
Randy Newberg
And that is a big factor, I think also when you see, especially at sheep show, you're going to see McKenzie Mountain type hunts, you're going to see the Arctic hunts in these, these remote places where it is a hunt in a lifetime. Maybe you've waited 30, 40 years for an experience like that. And then even though it might be advertised as that 10, 12, 15 day hunt, there's a good chance that you could be harvesting that ram on the days at the tail end of that trip. So day 11, day 12. So that ability to just grind things out over and over and over again is so important for a mountain hunter, especially a sheep hunter, where you just, you know, there's a lot of guys that will extend their trip in the backcountry in the Northwest Territories because they have not harvested that ram yet on day 10. And they'll stay another five, just till they can find that mature ram so that the ability to go every single day when you're extremely sore is critical. And I know that they might have talked about this with you, Randy, when you were up there. Remy, you might know as well. But the mindset is so important, the mental toughness is so important because the outfitters up there are going to always advertise that 99, 100% success rate on the sheep hunts you see for sale out on the floor right now. But I know that that is for the hunters that decide to go out on the trip after arriving in camp. So it's so remote and the wilderness is so remote that there is about a 30% quitting rate before the hunters even go out into the backcountry up there. So the mindset around just being out of your comfort zone, away from everything you're comfortable with, away from all the comfortable amenities of life. So they're advertising 100% even though a lot of people are going to quit in camp before even hiking into the field. So that mindset is crazy important. Did you see some of that, Randy?
- [33:40]
Dustin Diefenderfer
Yeah. You talk to guides and people like Remy who do this and they get the variety of people. And one of the comments they gave to us in our group, and this is probably one of the proudest takeaways of that hunt that you're referring to, is they said, you guys are some of the most optimistic people we've ever had in camp. And optimism is just a state of mind. If you get up and say, man, it's raining and why am I gonna go out today? You know, the cloud covers low, you're probably not gonna have that great of a day that day. And it's, it is completely optional. You get to decide if you're gonna have a great day or you're just gonna have a below average day. And when they said you guys are some of the most optimistic guys we've ever had, I'm like, cool. Because I work at, if you want to call it optimism or I believe every day is today. I'm filling that tag today and you're not going to keep me in camp. I mean, maybe if I had, you know, some serious illness or something, I wouldn't have any choice but talking to those guys, even talking to other outfitters that I've, I've hunted with and talking to a lot of my friends. The attitude of the person and their optimism and just their excitement, sometimes you got to manufacture that optimism. But that is going to determine success over the course of these longer term hunts. And I know maybe I'm lucky that I was just born an optimist and I Had a grandmother who just preached optimism all the time. And I saw what she had to live with. No running water till she moved into the old folks home at age 70 something. And she said, I've never had a bad day in my life. And so I kind of keep that in my mind. I'm sitting in whatever tent in the Gila of New Mexico or wherever. Man, I am one of a fraction of Americans who has this opportunity today. Am I going to mope because it's raining a little bit or oh, it's full moon now I'm wasting my time. So I think the human mindset of how we can get our mind in those places of optimism and believing without feeling like we're kidding ourselves. I don't feel like I'm kidding myself. When I leave the truck and I've got a full pack with my kill kit and my game bags, people are like, why carry all that stuff? You only kill something one out of every ten days. Well, I plan on killing something every day. If I didn't mentally feel that, I don't think I could give it the effort to be successful and to enjoy it. So I don't know. That's talking to those guys and them commenting how optimistic we were. And I think one of makes it more fun. But I think you end up more successful when you are just enthusiastic about what that day might hold.
- [36:43]
Randy Newberg
Well, let's dive into your training a little bit also because you came into Mountain Tough and you had the arm and wrist issue from the fall and then you had some health issues. You came off a trade show season and that year you knew you were going to the McKinsey. And so that was kind of your first big gym year of your life. Even though you know you played sports growing up. But your first year of training for hunting was last year in preparation for the McKenzie's. So everything was brand new to you, intimidating to you. It was different for you. And you know, the, the movements of weightlifting, the movements of straight strength training, a lot of that was new. We had some balance and stability issues at first for sure, but it all, it all paid off in the end. Mountain Tough did develop a program out of that because we specifically trained Randy differently than normal. And so that created a whole package for Mountain Tough where it's the PP50, so preseason prep for hunters that are over 50 and then our hunters that are under 50, we're training with preseason prep. So it created a whole new product from working with you. But that was a brand new experience, something that you had Never gone through kind of training like an NFL athlete is going to train for season. You were training like an NFL athlete for the Mackenzie Mountain sheep hunt. But it paid off big time in the end. But it was quite a journey at the same time.
- [38:30]
Dustin Diefenderfer
Yeah. And I just turned 60 in November. And anybody who, you know, as life goes along, you end up with injuries. And people might see footage of me walking down a trail. They're like, what's up with his right leg? So I detached the posterior tibial tendon in my right foot, and I never got it fixed for a year and a half. So that's the tendon that comes from the arch, like the inside of the arch of your foot around your ankle. And so I walked around with a collapsed foot for a year and a half and finally scraped enough money that I could get the surgery done. Well, in that process, my foot collapsed. It changed a lot. And so my right leg's a half inch shorter than my left leg. And so I got that. I have a blood clotting disorder that has ruined all the plumbing in my liver. So I get about 30% of the blood flow to my liver that all of you get. And then to top it off, Dustin's talking about two years ago, I'm in Portland at a trade show before the good diet thing came into play. Leave the trade show. My son swings me by, supposedly the best pizza shop in Portland, and I take it to my hotel room, and I get food poisoning. And one in the morning, I'm standing at the toilet vomiting, passed out, and went through a glass shower door. And I have this big shark bite here on my arm that severed three tendons and thought, fortunately, I didn't mess with my trigger finger. But a lot of these muscles are gone and stuff because it was pretty nasty. So I babied it that year of 2023. And I must have really been out of shape because Marcus, my lead guy in December, he said, randy, I think you could benefit from Mountain Tough because he'd been over there the year before because he'd drawn a sheep tag. And that's. Marcus is this polite, respectful guy. And rather than saying, randy, you really suck this year. You couldn't keep up with anybody. He politely said, you ought to go over and talk to the guys at Mountain Tough. I think with your arm and your leg and your liver, maybe they could help you. So I stroll into the shop over there, and I'm sure Dustin and Nick and Sarah are like, where did we find this guy? I mean, this guy, he got more Problems. I don't know how we solve his problems, but. And mentally, you know, you're pretty vulnerable when you're a 59 year old out of shape accountant and you walk into a gym with guys like Dustin with your white legs and your white socks and you know, it just, it required some kind of check in the ego at the door. But the point of all that was I could have used every one of those as an excuse of why I wasn't going to hunt hard the last however many years I have in my hunting life. And I'll just tell you all this, that you get to a certain age where every hunt becomes more precious and more valuable because you know, there's fewer and fewer of them. We're all traveling down this road and we don't know how many mile markers there are. But you don't get to put it in reverse and go back and redo that mile if each marker is, is a hunt. So mentally you just, you get there and you know the assessment video that you guys gave me the first day they do an assessment, they wouldn't film all of you. But I couldn't stand on my right foot. I couldn't stand just like one leg. I couldn't bend over with. I'd fall over. And Sarah's like, no, you can't fall over. I'm not trying to fall over. Sarah. This leg is shot. This foot is messed up.
- [42:26]
Randy Newberg
I thought you were messing with us at first.
- [42:28]
Dustin Diefenderfer
No, I wasn't. And so finally they developed this program. But the point of all that is everybody at a point in your life, you have health issues. It might be high blood pressure, it might be a mechanical physiological part of a bad knee or, you know, a bad. Yeah, yeah. And then my shoulders. Yeah, I. Every orthopedic surgeon who sees me is like, what's wrong with your shoulder? I don't know. They all tell me the same thing. Well, we could fix that with surgery, but you'd be laid up for six months. And so I've never got my shoulders fixed. So when I went over there, I could not do a push up. My shoulders just couldn't do it. Now I can crank out quite a few push ups. I mean, I'm not going to win a push up contest, but considering where I started from. But every one of those could have been excuses of why I'm not going to do this, why I'm not. Well, that hurts. Well, guess what? You're going to get to some point in your life when you get up every morning, something hurts. Maybe many somethings hurt when you get up, and that's just life. So I'm not willing to cash it in and say, I'm done hunting. I want to hunt until I'm. I don't know. I saw that guy doing the 72 the other day yesterday, did that thing. I want to at least hunt until I'm 72. That's only 12 years away. So I'm not going to let aches and pains and these things that we had to accommodate for stop me. And, yeah, it was quite a journey for me. Now, on our YouTube channel, we put that first video, and everyone's like, oh, my God, never. I can't believe you were in that baddest of a situation. And then they see nine weeks later and they're like, oh, my gosh, how do I sign up for that gig? I mean, I'm glad you guys have the, you know, the program that people can go through, but it does require that you commit to it, and you got to commit to your health and you got to commit to your hunting. But if you got half hour a day or an hour a day, it's the best investment I have made in my adult life. People think of investment of what are my stock portfolio doing or whatever. There's been no better investment I've made than in myself and in my health. And that's so obvious that that's never going to go away.
- [44:53]
Randy Newberg
The cool thing is we didn't know this was going to happen, but it fitness in this story played a pivotal moment of truth, as it doesn't always work like this. But on your trip, the way that it worked on the Mackenzie Mountain hunt, because of the training, you did have to sprint up a shale slide for a quick little shot window at your ramp.
- [45:21]
Dustin Diefenderfer
Yeah, we screwed up the first opportunity when the ram was just kind of there looking at us because I'd left my rifle down at the horses. So we go on a mile and a half hike, and our guest hunter, some of you may have seen the video, but when we leave the horses, I tell Marcus, I'm like, I'm leaving my rifle here because these guys are talking about getting a twofer. There were two really nice rams in this group. I said, the last time we tried a twofer, we got an offer. Look, I'm leaving my rifle down here because Andy's shooting this well. We go for this mile and a half hike, and now it is just pouring rain. We've gained, I don't know, a thousand feet of elevation. And Andy and Marcus My camera guy and Jason, their guy, they ease over and they're gone for a long time. And I'm standing there with my guide, Riley, and the wrangler tie. And all sudden, Jason comes back over the ridge. And then he's talking to Riley, my guide, and. And Riley's like, hey, Andy's not gonna shoot one of those rams. They wanna know if you wanna shoot one. Yeah, let's go look. So we get over there and my guide, Riley, looks, gets the spotter set up and he's like. Gives this look like, why is Jake. Why is he not shooting this thing?
- [46:33]
Remy Warren
He's like.
- [46:33]
Dustin Diefenderfer
I look through there and just then the ram looks at me and he's all big and flared out. I'm like, I'm shooting that thing. Let me go get Andy's rifle. And my guide is like, where's your rifle? Like, that's down there at the horses. And while we're doing this, the rams run off and he goes down to Jason, the other guy. I don't know what they're saying, but they're pretty frustrated that they have a client who climbed up the mountain without a rifle. Yeah, rookie move. Yeah. And so they're down there cussing to each other. And I look and Marcus is waving us up. Well, the rams had went around the corner, and Marcus is filming them at 250 yards. And we're down here arguing over whether we should have brought the rifle up the mountain. Well, Andy's up there with Marcus with his rifle. I'm like, riley, Marcus sees him. So we run up to where Marcus was filming above us. And now they run again, and they go around the mountain. And I told Andy, give me your rifle in five rounds. So he hands me his rifle, I grab five rounds, and when I turn around, Riley, my guide, is running across this scree slope. And anyone who's tried to run across a scree slope knows how that goes. You start losing elevation really fast. And then he turns and he's going straight uphill. I'm like, look, I'm dumb, but even I know you aren't gonna catch those rams going up a scree slope. Well, what I didn't know is he knew of a sheep trail up there. So we got to that cheap trail and he took off. We get across there and he's like, they're gonna cross this little gap up here. Let's go. And now we gotta climb really, really steep stuff for about, I don't know, a couple hundred yards. And I got my head down, I'm just trying my best to keep up because Riley's 27 and he's built like Remy and he lives in these mountains. And here's this accountant with his tongue hanging out trying to keep up. We get there and the setup is Marcus is setting up to film these rams gonna cross and Riley's right next to him. So I start, I come behind Riley and I'm starting to get set up. And Riley turns to Marcus. He's like, where the hell is Randy? I can tell I've got him frustrated at this point because first of all, I didn't bring my rifle up the mountain and now he can't find me and I'm right behind him and Marcus is like, he's right there. And oh shit.
- [48:57]
Randy Newberg
Oh, you're all good.
- [48:58]
Dustin Diefenderfer
And anyhow end up shooting that ram because they, they come across and I have about two minutes. Just work on my heart rate and my breathing and everything. And I can tell you, a year prior or even five years prior, if I would have had to follow Riley across that scree slope, go up that slope and then across the mountain and up, I wouldn't have got there in time for that two minute window of what we had as an opportunity. So it all worked out. So no one was mad at me for leaving my rifle down at the horses. But Riley wasn't in on the conversation when I made that decision. So after we're up there at the ram, he's like, why the hell did you leave the rifle down there? I said, well, I told you guys, I'm not doing a twofer because we get an offer. He just laughed in good Canadian style. But anyhow, that was without having committed, you know, all those months of getting in shape and condition it for the specific purpose of how mountain hunting. I told you when I came back, I said, as much as I hate Bulgarians, I love Bulgarians. Yeah, because all these weighted step ups and stuff you do when you got a heavy pack on and Bulgarians when you're trying to get up those slopes, it was, it was for the specific purpose of mountain hunting and it paid off.
- [50:20]
Randy Newberg
It's. That's crazy because you would have missed that ram by 10, 20, 30 seconds. So fitness. Like if you would have easily missed that one, maybe found him the next day, maybe not, you never know. But it, it definitely paid off in the moment of truth. I really wanted you guys to see this today. That, you know, like Remy and Randy are completely different people. So Remy has spent decades in the mountains guiding Randy with his CPA office Background. But the thing that is obvious with both of them is this mindset, and the mindset is this mindset of a lot of optimism. Randy, spot on. On. The optimism is like hack number one to mental toughness. The optimism gets you up every day. And the more days you're getting up in the backcountry, the higher your success rate is going to go. We don't have time to get into it today, but you know Randy's story of his liver issue. He can only have 40 grams of protein a day or his body shuts down, but that's not stopping him from pursuing his dreams. Last year in this seminar, we got into a lot of Remy's story. He made a film on it as well. But he. He broke his wrist catching a duck out of the air, which was another rookie mistake.
- [51:46]
Remy Warren
Very rookie. Very rookie mistake.
- [51:48]
Randy Newberg
So instead of not archery hunting with a broken wrist, he shot. He taught himself how to shoot his bow with his mouth and had a great year archery hunting off a mouth tab. So you can see the cornerstone to everything is the mindset. And with preseason prep, even though I own Mountain Tough, what I tell people all the time is it doesn't really matter if you swim, run, hike, bike, any type of spirit sport that you want to do to train. The key is consistency. So you have to find something that you can consistently do four, five, six days a week. It doesn't matter a lot what sport that is, because if you're not consistent, none of it matters. So you got to find something you love enough that you can consistently make four or five days a week. But you have to always be thinking about this mindset. So the mindset of never quitting, the mindset of optimism is the key to success. It's the key to success on the mountain. It's the key to success in life. When you run into a business issue, a marriage issue, an issue with your kids, it's the same principles that allows these guys to be successful that's gonna pull you through that, and it all revolves around that positive mindset. We're gonna stop here and open it up for questions. We got about six or seven minutes. And so if anyone has any questions at all for any of us, we'll pass a mic around here and get three or four of them answered before we run out of time. Hey, so I live in Texas, basically at sea level. How would you recommend preparing for elevation? Because sometimes I get up here and I'm walking around, it feels like my heart's exploding. You know? How. How would I Train for that at sea level? Yeah, that's a really common question. So high altitude, the, the science around high altitude is there's not really any hacks that work to prepare you. So for a while, the masks were common for guys to train in. They found that those don't actually do anything. The only thing that is actually working scientifically is the hyperbaric chambers, which most, you know, most people can't have their hundreds of thousands of dollars where pro athletes are sleeping in them to simulate 10, 20,000ft. That's unrealistic. So for a lot of people. So for mountain hunters that can't access anything like that, the only thing that we do know that is beneficial is to show up for that trip as physically prepared as possible. Because when you're physically prepared as possible, you're operating at a suboptimal level. So if, if, if you're at 70% heart rate on the mountain in high altitude and I'm at 100%, you're going to perform way better. And that's all going to come down to your training. So showing up as trained as possible keeps you at suboptimal, and that's going to do better at high altitude. The only other thing that is a game changer is acclimation. So anytime you're going on a hunt of a lifetime at high altitude, getting there as early as possible is the game changer. So it takes three days to start developing new red blood cells that are going to help at high altitude. So three days is the minimum you'd want to show up early for. But really it's any other day early is going to help you out. That's hard to do for a lot of people on a mountain hunt. But the worst thing you can do, which you see a lot in Montana, is someone from Texas will drive to Montana, get out of their truck and start hunting. So they're getting no acclimation. So any acclimation is going to help.
- [55:56]
Remy Warren
And I can add a couple of things to that because I think, like, what you do when you're there at altitude makes a big difference because I've seen people that like in. And I've been in some, like, hunts where we're like at 18,000ft. And one of the things is, like, hydration is huge, like just staying hydrated, having like, electrolytes, making sure your body's working at its optimal level because you could like, you know, I've seen people that have like, from altitude and get altitude sickness, and it's mostly because they, like, I Don't know, somebody just like, why is it gonna happen? But, you know, like, being prepared physically. I think the heart rate training is really big ahead of time, but when you're actually there, like, fueling, having electrolytes, staying hydrated is big. And the other thing I've noticed too, is, like, some guys, it's like the guys that are actually in really good shape sometimes get the altitude sickness or like, this is for real high hunts. But I get altitude sickness first, and it's like the slower guys get it later because before their body starts to acclimate, they burn themselves out. And then they're kind of like running at a deficit or they aren't used to, like, being hydrated. And then another thing too is like, we'd have people on in places where I found it's like they show up, like Dustin says, they drive the first place, they goes to a brewery, they have alcohol, and then they're gonna. They think that it's gonna be fine, and it's not. And it plays a big factor in it, you know, but like, growing up at altitude, like living at high altitude, anytime I would go to, like, lower altitude, you can't even. You couldn't even get a buzz, you know, but it's the exact opposite effect. So, like, seriously, you know, guys will show up, they get to camp, they crack the whiskey bottle, and those guys are the first ones to, like, feel the effects of the altitude and, like, struggle really hard. And that's just the truth of it.
- [57:51]
Randy Newberg
Another rookie move.
- [57:52]
Remy Warren
Yeah, major rookie move.
- [57:55]
Randy Newberg
All right, we got time for one more. I know you guys mentioned spending time under the pack to just get that experience and specific training or learning to hike with a horse and ride it.
- [58:09]
Remy Warren
But what specific exercises do you have.
- [58:14]
Randy Newberg
Or would recommend for backcountry hunting? Yeah, so the. The specific ones are single leg movements are going to be the most beneficial. So Randy talked a little bit about starting to love Bulgarians. Stuff like that is in human performance is going to be categorized as single leg. And the reason that that is so beneficial is because the mountain is never balanced. And so traditional gym training was kind of missing that component where traditional gym training, you're going to have your squat and deadlift, but everything is perfectly balanced and perfectly even. And so that is great for making you very strong, but it's not great for loose, rugged terrain that is unbalanced. And so things like single leg, Bulgarian single leg step ups, single leg RDls, you're going to see a lot of that in the mountain. Tough programming and the reason that that works so well is because the real world is so uneven. In most, you know, gym training is so even and balanced. So anything you can do to isolate one leg and strengthen that one leg off balance, that is the big game changer for mountain hunting. And you'll see a lot of that in our programming. And the reason for that is just that root, that loose, uneven terrain. The horse question, I have no idea. Just ride a lot of horses.
- [59:55]
Remy Warren
Thank you.
- [59:55]
Randy Newberg
And we'll be around on the side to answer any questions you guys got. Thanks so much.
- [60:03]
Remy Warren
Man. It is always fun being able to sit down with Randy and Dustin. You know, we just have like mindsets and there's a lot of similarities and then there's also differences too. But it's always fun to be able to sit down with those guys and talk hunting and share stories and some of the our thoughts and philosophies on the things that we've gone through. I think that those are just some great, valuable lessons, but also awesome things to think about as we prepare for the season and think about hunts coming up and hunts in the future. You know, as a hunting guide, I've had a lot of opportunity to witness people at their best and at their worst. And so our goal is to always just be able to prepare you so when you're out in the field, you. You're ready for whatever the mountain can throw your way. One of the things I also want to mention this week is we have a little bit of a secret drop coming up. So for those of you that missed The Montana Knife Company drop with my LiveWild Edition knife, make sure you're on my email list. We're going to send that out a little bit. Pre drop one's coming up at the end of the week. So the end of the month we are going to have another set of Live Wild Edition Montana Knife Company knives come out. I know there's a lot of you that, that weren't able to get them and a lot that were looking for that the black handled Live Wild Colorway. So those are going to be available and the ones that are going to be able to get those are going to be the ones that do it through our email first because you don't have to battle so many people right on time. Little secret, little trick of the trade. So for those of you looking that are big supporters of this podcast, listen to the podcast and really want that knife, which, that knife is a. It's a, it's an awesome knife, man. I mean, I think it's I'm a little partial to it because, you know, I helped design it, but I do think it's, it's one of the best ones out there. So if you guys are interested in that, that's coming up. And then the regular drop will be on Thursday as well. So something to look forward to and make sure you're on the email list so you can get that early access for those of you interested. So I think once again, I'm going to say as we sign off here, stay ready. Catch you guys later.