Mastering YOUR Rifle and Archery SHOT PROCESS - Joel Turner

Joel Turner spent 11 years as a SWAT sniper instructor before becoming one of the most well known instructors in the hunting world. His take on why hunters miss is unlike anything you've heard — and it applies equally to archery and rifle.

We start with how bullets actually kill. From there we get into the pre-ignition flinch... why there's no such thing as a subconscious override of the central nervous system, what open loop vs. closed loop trigger press actually means, and why the fix isn't mechanics. The fix is speech. Joel's core argument: the skill is not in the shooting, it's in what you say in your head while you shoot.

In this episode:
Hydrostatic shock, the 2,200 fps threshold, and why a .22 Creedmoor can kill elk
Pre-ignition flinch — open vs. closed loop trigger press explained
Why talking yourself through the shot is the actual skill
The 2014 blacktail story — how Joel figured it all out in a rainy tree stand
Commentary shooting from police driver training and why it works for archery
Free diving and breath holds — why that culture already knows this
Hinge releases: when they're a fix for a mental problem vs. a legitimate choice
Elk calling — distress calf vs. bull calling cows bugle, and the textbook bull setup
The yo stop: why a bull whirling at 10 yards is a controlled shot, not a panic shot

Guest: Joel Turner — ShotIQ founder, former SWAT sniper team instructor, competitive barebow archer. 
Joel's elk calling app: https://www.mtnwispr.com/
Shot IQ: https://shotiq.com/
Instagram: @joelturner_actual

Chapters
00:00 How Bullets Actually Kill
04:44 The Flinch Mechanism
34:17 The 2014 Breakthrough
45:48 Commentary Shooting
51:44 Snap Shots & Mental Game
01:14:02 Listener Questions
01:20:33 Free Diving Parallel
01:41:22 Elk Calling System

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Transcript

SPEAKER_03 0:00

It's not in the doing. The skill is in the saying. The ultimate skill of the human being, according to me, my opinion, is the ability to get loud in your head with the right words at the right moment. That's how you get the discipline. That's how you get the determination. That's how you get your work ethic.

SPEAKER_01 0:16

Joel, great to have you, man. You do not need an introduction. So we're just gonna dive, we're gonna dive right into it, man. Dive in, bro. We're gonna dive into the comment that you made on the Instagram post yesterday. So I posted up, really, it was off an off-the-cup cuff explanation that I made regarding choice of caliber when it when it comes to rifle hunting elk. And uh you mentioned you wanted to discuss it. Uh, you probably you heard my kind of thoughts on it there. What are your thoughts, man? What are your thoughts on cartridge choice, recoil, uh, how that affects training, any of that stuff, man?

SPEAKER_03 0:53

So that's a that's a big book to open, but let's start with how bullets kill stuff, and that's hydrostatic shock. It's the pushing of water, it's not the bullet. The bullet is there to push water. That's what it does. So when you watch a bullet go through ballistic gelatin, the shock wave is behind the bullet. It's not in front of the bullet, it's behind the bullet. So the bullet has to penetrate far enough so that the shock wave reaches the organs. Okay? So, and that bullet's got to be traveling at 2,200 feet per second. That's the bottom end of hydrostatic shock. At 2,200 feet per second, that shock wave of water is fast enough to tear the organ. If it's not fast enough to tear the organ, the only flesh that is destroyed is that which is touched by the leading edge of the bullet. So if you're shooting like a 4570 or something, that's why you have to shoot a bigger bullet in those in those calibers that are so slow, so that you the bullet mushrooms a bit and it destroys enough tissue to cause enough shock and hemorrhaging and such to you know to humanely kill the critter. But a smaller bullet, like you mentioned, that you've shot some 22 caliber stuff into elk. I've killed a bunch of elk with 22 creed moors. Yeah. Because the bullet is fast enough to cause hydrostatic shock. But you have to have bullet construction that will reach past the organs because the the hydrostatic or the shock wave trails the bullet. Okay. So when you, I mean, just you can see it in the in the ballistic gelatin. So the caliber doesn't have to be that high, it just has to be fairly fast and it has to penetrate far enough to reach past the organs. So if you're going in a quartering away shot or something like that, your shock wave may be taken up by the guts or whatever. And by the time it gets the lungs, it's not traveling fast enough. Right? Right. So the shock wave is not hitting the lungs, so it's only the mushroom bullet or bits of bullet that are causing damage to the organ. So that's why when they're shooting super long distances, let's say you're shooting, uh, say you're shooting a seven PRC and you're trying to shoot a thousand yards with it. Well, you're under 2,200 feet per second. So your point of impact has to change. That's why they high shoulder shoot critters at long distances, so it actually shocks the spine. That's you know, so that's you can't just punch them behind the lungs and expect them to expire very quickly because you've only made a pencil hole through their lungs. So the caliber's not so important, other than it's got to penetrate far enough to get the shock wave to the organs. Does that make sense to me? I'm with you. Yeah, no, it makes sense. Um people will go ahead. And you know, when you go to these bigger calibers to get the penetration that you think that you need, if that bullet's traveling slower, you're it's not doing what you think it needs to do. Like you're shooting uh, let's say you're shooting a 300 wind mag with 180 grain bullet at you know 2,900 feet per second or 2850 or whatever it may be. If you can handle that recoil, that's cool, but your bullet's not really killing any better than a smaller bullet that is penetrating just as far, but maybe going a little bit faster. It's all about pushing water. So, what most people do with the bigger calibers is they can't shoot them very well because they don't talk themselves through it. And that's where you know that punishing recoil that we feel. You're there's here's here's the basic problem. There's no such thing as a subconscious override of the central nervous system. The core problem is shooting. Your subconscious mind will not allow you to cause your body impact as a surprise. And there's no such thing as a subconscious override of the central nervous system. So if you're not consciously increasing pressure on the trigger, you are flinching. And if you flinch, those flinching movements start before the trigger press happens. They're pre-ignition movements, right? We've called them in firearms instruction, they've been called pre-ignition push for a long time. But that's the push of, you know, basically a handgun. But it's the same exact system that happens with a rifle. So if you are going what we call open loop on the trigger, which means so fast you can't stop it, like you're going, let me give the camera up, right? So if you're punching a trigger so fast, like when you send that motor program, if you can't stop it, if you're not going slow enough, you can stop it, then it's controlled by an open loop control system, which means the brain is allowed to brace you for impact. Because the subconscious is sending that, right? So the subconscious is like ready now. When it sees those crosshairs, get on, it's like now. And the pre-ignition push comes slightly before that. So you're not hitting where you think you're hitting.

SPEAKER_01 6:18

Joel, and I'm I'm just I'm just soaking this all in because this is exactly where I was hoping you would go with this, because I'm I'm pretty familiar with your archery side of things. And uh a quick follow-up question here. When we talk about you don't view the recoil of a rifle any different than the than the shot of a bow. It's like psychologically, do you view do you view the two different?

SPEAKER_03 6:44

Different only in the fact that rifle recoil is much easier to override than archery recoil. Okay. Because rifle recoil, the explosion happens in the apparatus. It happens in the rifle. Recoil is imparted upon you. Smoke, fire, noise, all those negative things to your mind. But in archery, the explosion happens in your body. Explosion being defined as a sudden release of energy, right? So your mind wants to know when that's going to happen. It wants to know when to brace to take up the shock of that recoil of that big old 416 REM mag that you're shooting, or you're shooting the smallest bow, but your body is in tension. Because your body's in tension, the sudden release of energy happens throughout your body. Different than with firearms recoil. So recoil in archery is a hundred times harder to overcome than recoil on a rifle.

SPEAKER_01 7:44

Okay, so my my follow on is and maybe it's a matter of training. Why is it that I know I know almost nobody that shoots a heavier when you really when I really like like test guys, or you know, test is I'm using that word loosely, Joel. But from what I have seen, almost anybody and clients, guys I've hunted with, shot with whatever, they shoot a lower recoiling rifle, if they shoot a lot, substantially better than a heavy recoiling rifle. Sure.

SPEAKER_03 8:20

And that stems from people not knowing how they do what they do. Because if you take, like I did this growing up, I mean, I shot my first 3030 when I was five years old. I pressed the trigger perfectly exactly one time, the first time. And then my body went, ooh, that sucks. And so the next time I pressed the trigger on that 3030, I am positive that I closed my eyes, I clinched both of my fists, and I yarded on that trigger like it needed 40 pounds. Yep. Right. So we get to shooting, and and my whole life growing up, I went from that 3030. I was I was good with a 22, but not with any center fire stuff. And then I started actually packing a rifle when I was 11. And I remember the first deer that I shot at was with a 3030. And I got I got that deer inside the magic ring of the peep site. I don't know where the front site was, and I started hammering rounds with this thing, completely uncontrolled. And then the next year I shot uh up until last year, what was the biggest blacktail of my life when I was 12 years old? And I can specifically remember that deer running down the road at 130 yards or whatever it was, and I put the crosshairs, I swung the reticle out in front of that thing and yarded on that trigger. It was a 270, and I got him, but I shot him right in the top of the ass and and blew his femoral artery out when I was 12 years old. And uh what a happy day. But man, I didn't I didn't control myself, and all growing up, I was horrible with center fire rifles because I would always have that pre-ignition movement until I bought a 22250, and I thought, well, this is gonna work out. I was working for USDA Wildlife Services at the time, bought a 22250, and we're doing some cormorant work on a on a hatchery, and I can remember specifically this one shot. It was the first shot I ever took with this 22250. The cormorant lands in the water, swims across the river, gets up on the log. I've missed this cormorant, I don't know how many times with a 270. He does the same thing, he gets up on there, and now I've got my new, this is in 1990, 1999, and I've got my 22250, and it was a Browning Abel. The safety was in a different spot than all the previous Mauser rifles that I've been shooting. And this thing gets up on the log, puts his wings out, and I'm like, Oh, I got you now. And I got on that, I got on that trigger, and I I didn't flip the safety off. And that's the big thing about firearms as opposed to archery, is there's no safety on a bow. Right. So you shoot it and you have pre-ignition movements, and you couldn't feel them, you couldn't see them, nobody else could see them, but they were there. When you keep the safety on on your rifle, or you forget, you know, when that bolt slides past around and you don't actually put one in the chamber and it goes click, you get to see, you get to see it all, right? And that cormat got up on that log and I'm over across the river in my little hide, and I got on him and right, it was the same thing, it didn't matter what caliber it was. So, but because I had that big yip, I went, okay, Turner, come on, man. You get a hold of yourself, right? And I remember okay, flipped the safety off, and I remember just screaming myself through that shot and it was a surprise break. And why wouldn't it have hit it perfectly? Right? Right. But what happens is people change calibers because changing calibers to a smaller caliber allows you to be quieter in your mind when the skill is getting loud in your head. Okay. So instead of shooting your rifle or shooting your bow, when you flip the script and you start to use your rifle to practice the skill of getting loud, or you use your bow to practice the skill of getting loud, then you invite more recoil. Like hand me a 500 nitro, and I'm like, okay, this is gonna suck, but here's exactly how I'm gonna do it. I'm gonna mount that gun, I'm gonna make sure the safety's off. I'm gonna mount that gun. I'm gonna get my aim, then I'm gonna address the trigger, then I'm gonna prep my mind for concentration by saying, here I go, then I'm gonna talk myself through the pressure increase on the trigger. And yes, it is going to suck, but I am going to shoot this as a surprise break, no matter what. And that's where I had to get to in my shot control because right after I got off, you know, doing USDA stuff, then I started into law enforcement, and then I got on the SWAT team, and then I got in the sniper team leader position, and you know, so on and so forth and so forth. But it was it scared me to death being on that sniper crew and not knowing whether I was going to press the trigger perfectly or not. Sure. And that's what drove me to try to figure this stuff out. Like, how do we actually do this? And that's where shot IQ came from, and and all the things that I've done with a rifle and a pistol and and now archery. And so it was a lifetime of frustration that came down to really figuring out what skill am I actually chasing here.

SPEAKER_01 13:41

Yeah, and so this is this is super interesting, Joel, because I guess what I would say is that I have never really thought about the mechanism of why why this works. I've only observed that it works. Like if I if if you take a guy, and this is I can speak for myself also, uh, a guy and you he's say he's shooting a seven mag and that's what he practices with, and he shoots 200 rounds a year. If you get him to start shooting 2,000 rounds a year with a 2, 2, 3, and then he hunts with the 7 mag, he will he'll get way better. Obviously, some of that is reps, uh, but you know, but some of it is also probably this mechanism that I don't I didn't really quite understand. When you when you talk about the idea of it's just so much easier to like listen to yourself shooting those rifles, like shooting a smaller recoiling rifle, it like it resonates in my mind because it's absolutely that way, right? But what I want to dig into Joel is the the idea that does a guy does a guy have to do that all the time, or once he's built up the skill set shooting a smaller cartridge, can he be a guy that just just only practices with the heavier recoiling? Like your example, if you go to shooting in that extreme example, really heavy, like a dangerous game rifle or whatever, will you end up reverting back? Will you get the flinch back? Will you forget the process? I mean, is there a risk of that? Or is that like does that does that make any sense?

SPEAKER_03 15:15

Yeah, there's there's only risk of it if you don't know how you did it. Like, like I said before, the skill is not in the shooting, the skill is in the talking while shooting. So if you've got a guy shooting a seven mag 200 rounds a year, if he doesn't know what he says during those 200 rounds, yeah, then it's a complete mystery. Sure, you can go to a lighter caliber and shoot 2,000 rounds and you will get reps. But what you're getting reps in, as soon as your mind knows that it's a higher caliber, yeah. If you don't know how you did it, like if you don't know how you walked yourself through the pressure increase on the trigger on that 223, then it means nothing. Yeah. Right? So it would be way faster to train these people. And this is what I tell guides all the time if you've never heard your client shoot, you have no idea what's in their conscious mind. So the first thing I do when I have a client is I take them to the range and I make them talk me through exactly what is happening in their mind. Okay, I'm getting on the rifle and I'm getting my aim. Okay, I know it's 225 yards and I'm dialed for that. I'm good. Okay, aim is good. It's good as gonna get. All right. Now I'm gonna put my finger on the trigger, a little bit of pressure, but not too much because I'm not shooting yet. Okay, a little bit of pressure, got it. Now I'm gonna prep my mind. Here I go, and now I'm gonna talk easy now, a little bit, that's it. Stay in that squeeboom until that rifle goes off. When you have somebody that can talk fluently about their shot during their shot, then they know exactly how they did it. Yeah, then you can take that verbal blueprint to any caliber, it doesn't matter. So you don't have to waste 2,000 rounds of 223 ammo. You need to shoot your large caliber rifle and understand exactly how you do it. Yeah, because what most people will do is you'll hear them, okay. So talk me through your shot, and you're like, okay, okay, I've got my safety off, getting my aim, okay. Boom, and the rifle goes off. They don't say anything, yeah. Right? And if they don't say anything, then they have then they're not thinking anything. If they're not thinking anything, then they have no way to override the central nervous system, and you will go open loop on the trigger. Yeah, and when you go open loop on the trigger, there will always be pre-ignition movements linked to that. Yeah, so my thing is really getting people to understand how they do what they do. And if you don't know that as the guide, if you don't know what your client is saying, what happens is you get on a doll sheep hunt, you've spent 70 grand on this thing, and your client, you've never actually heard them shoot, so you don't have any idea what's going through their conscious mind. And what do the guides do? They get them on the sheep and they get them to aim at the sheep and they get them to dry fire four or five times, right? Yeah, just to get them used to it and get them what it feels like, and okay, this is all good. But if they're not talking during this, then as soon as they put that round in the chamber, they're right back to square one. Yeah. Because there's no such thing as a subconscious override of the central nervous system. Your subconscious is your central nervous system, they are one. Yeah. So unless you have them talk through those five dry fires or whatever you do, when it put when you put the round in it's going to be a nightmare again.

SPEAKER_01 19:00

Man, so I got I got tons of questions there. So one thing that yeah, no, so one thing that's interesting, Joel, is I actually because I'll hear this from guides quite often, and tell me where I'm wrong on this. But guides will do that a lot when they know, when they know somebody is, you know, buck feverish or nervous, lots of anxiety. A lot of times the sources from, and we'll get back to this a little bit because it's it's part of the reason that I am a big proponent of guys shooting a lot. It actually has not to do, not so much to do with the shot process in terms of being in the field, it has to do with building their rest and stuff. I feel like you know, the reps at that is a big deal. This is a little bit outside of this discussion. But um it it in in regard to the shot process, I'll hear that guys will have folks who haven't shot a whole lot, they'll have them dry fire a few times. And the only thing that I see it does is it teaches them very quickly where the trigger's at. I hate to say this, but I'll I'll admit to it. If I know somebody very new to hunting and shooting, a lot of times I'll have them shoot my rifle and I'll have this is it's uh to me, it's a little bit of a cheat code, but I'll have them shoot a rifle with a light trigger, and I can promise you the first shot's gonna be good. It almost always is. You know what I mean? It and it's like what like it am I is this the right mechanism? I know that might that might sound a little weird to the audience. Like, why would you have somebody do that? But I would almost rather have somebody who's very nervous and very new to shoot my gun on the very first shot on the animal. Does that make any sense?

SPEAKER_03 20:33

Oh, it makes all the sense in the world because the person's probably gonna go open loop on the trigger, or they don't know that the trigger is that light. So as long as you have them aim first and you ask the question, are you on? Yep, I'm on. Okay, put your finger on the trigger. Boom, gun goes off. Well, of course it's gonna be in the center, right? Because it was a surprise break. But the second shot's gonna be completely different. Yeah, just like just like five-year-old Joel Turner on Mineral Creek with the 3030, right? My first one was perfect. My second one wasn't even close, right? Your subconscious learns the pressure increase exactly the first time.

SPEAKER_01 21:11

Yeah, that's that's what's that's what's amazing to me, Joel, is it's so quick. And and what I just said, I don't I don't want anybody to construe that to I think that's a good prescription. It just worked for me as a cheat code. You know what I mean? Um and so that's what's so interesting, is I don't think like even comments to the post that we started this discussion on, any comments to any of this stuff. I get so many folks that say, oh, well, I don't believe you need to shoot a rifle all that much, which which is aligned with what you're saying. Um, but they all and they say, Oh, well, I'm not sensitive to the recoil, all these sort of things. But it when I shoot with guys, they'll shoot a couple rounds, and then immediately it happens. Like it it it's it only takes like a one or two rounds. And if that if that third round is a safety that's not turned off, if it's an empty magazine because they thought There were three rounds, not two. It's like you know, everybody, yeah, you know, so it's amazing how quick it occurs.

SPEAKER_03 22:07

Yep, and that's again, that's people that are just shooting by mystery, yeah. Right? They've learned to shoot, they put the reticle on there, they put their finger on the trigger, and they apply pressure to it, and boom, the gun goes off, cool. And they're shooting, you know, they're shooting a three-inch group at 100 yards. Cool. Is that good enough to hunt? Yeah, if your critter's 100 yards away, sure is, right? Sure. But when it's not that, when precision is required, you have to know how you're going to do what you're going to do. Like, I know exactly, I mean, I shoot all different types of weapon systems all the time, right? High caliber pistols are one of the best things to train on because if you can work through, especially like a double-action revolver, if you can work through a 500 Smith and Wesson double action without in a closed loop control system, meaning it's slow enough you can stop it anywhere within it, right? You're watching that hammer's coming back and it's does two clicks, and then you just keep on going. And for you to keep on going in a closed loop control system requires an override of the central nervous system. How do you do that? That is done through speech. That's almost the only route there is. So if you don't know how to do that, then you're going to click, click, oh my gosh, whammo, right? And you're gonna go open loop on it, which will have pre-ignition movements linked to it. So instead of trying to trick the mind with a light trigger, let's learn exactly how your brain works and works against you in shooting. And that is through what we call commentary shooting. You are talking out loud while you are shooting. Yep. Because if you and you, as the guide, you get to hear exactly where your client is putting their conscious mind and when they are putting it there. So you don't, I mean, they don't have to be a better shooter. I mean, shooting is simply pressing the curvy thing to make the pointy thing come out the round thing. That's shooting, right? But we got to know how to actually override the central nervous system so that we we can remain closed loop on the trigger when that is what's required for that situation. Closed loop is not what's required for moving critters or shooting shotguns at flying, you know, at birds. That's open loop. But if you put a dummy round in any shotgun shooter's shotgun, I don't care who who it is, the the top level trap shooter in the world. I don't care who it is. You put a dummy round their shotgun and they don't know it, they call for that bird and you're gonna see you're gonna see some pre-ignition movements in it because they're open loop on the trigger, because they have to be, because it's a timed event, right? You can't get surprise breaks with shotguns, you'd never hit anything, right? If you're sitting there as the birds flying, you're like, keep pressing, keep pressing, keep pressing, keep pressing, keep pressing power, and it goes off as a surprise. It doesn't work that way, right? Yeah, timed event. So if you have moving shooter or moving target, it's open loop trigger work. Then you put your conscious mind in the aim. But if it's precision work and you need to go closed loop on the trigger, then you have to allow the subconscious to do the aiming. You will initially set your aim consciously, and then you got to step away from it and give it away because it's controlled by what we call visual approprioception. No matter which way the radical moves, its next movement's always back to the center. Right. So knowing that, that's a scientific, that's the science of aiming, right? Then you put your conscious mind in the trigger pressure increase. You do that through speech.

SPEAKER_01 25:56

Yeah. And so I so I want to make I want you to make a little distinction for me. And just so you know, Joel, for some context, I I use your I've used your s I use your system kind of on the archery front. And then I I I feel like I apply it to rifle stuff too. So you're aiming. I talk about, I I use pull, pull, pull, pull, pull, pull, pull, pull, pull every single time I pull the trigger. Now, as like what the where I want you to make the distinction for me, I do a lot of positional stuff myself, and then you know, with clients and and that sort of thing, because uh back to what I was saying before, uh in the hunting context, to me, it's like a huge weakness. You know, guys, it seems like it's the first time they've you they've used their tripod, it's the first time they've shot over their back. It it's probably not, but they're they're the fact that they're screwing with it so much and it's causing so much anxiety when an animal comes out, to me, it's something worthy, worth a lot of repetition, right? Absolutely. So, anyways, uh, you know, a shot opportunity where I have to, you know, I have I have 30 to 40 seconds or 45 seconds, which which to people that are listening to this, that might sound like a long time, but if you if you go try it, you'd be surprised in the honey situation, how short it seems to people. But anyways, so I get my backpack off. I'm gonna lay prone on my backpack and shoot this bull elk, right? I still, even under that pressure, Joel, I feel like I used the steps in your process. I'm still going, I'm still, you know, aiming and then forgetting about it. I'm still pull, pull, I might be going, instead of going pull, pull, pull, pull, pull, I might go pull, pull, pull, pull, pull, but I'm still, I'm still doing it. So where that's time pressure to me, where's the distinction where I'm a I'm staying in the closed loop, right? Am I definitionally in that? Where where is it where I need to jump to or am I gonna naturally go open loop in that regard? Because to me, that seems like I've got a lot of time pressure and there's a lot of movement of me going on.

SPEAKER_03 27:57

That's not when I say moving shooter, I mean walking. Okay, right? I mean, moving the the shooter's always gonna be moving, right? The aim is never going to be perfect, but positional shooting draws the conscious mind into the aim because it is not as stable. Yeah. But when you listen to the hunter that hasn't shot a lot of positional stuff, and they get down this packs, like, and they're trying to get into it, like, oh man, I'm not steady. Yeah. Well, saying I'm not steady means that they're leaving their conscious mind in the aim. Right. You, on the other hand, you get your position built, you aim, and then you step away from it. That is almost the biggest skill that you could have, is the ability to step away from the aim. Right? You're as stable as you can be, then, and you keep watching the spot you want to hit so that the reticle has something to anchor to. Remember, visual proprioception means that it's always coming back to the center. That's the visual feedback system that your brain uses, right? So if you give it a spot to come back to, awesome. If you watch the reticle, you only get fleeting glimpses of what you want to hit and it has nothing to anchor to. So if you've got both things in focus, the reticles in focus and the animals in focus, choose the animal. Pick that little spot behind their, behind their shoulder, right? Or wherever you're trying to hit them. Sure. And then keep watching that spot. The reticle will always dance back to it. And then you step away from that, you prep the mind to concentrate by saying, Here I go, let's do this, eff it, whatever you say to jump your. If you were to jump off a cliff into water, that's what you would do. Yeah. Right? That's what you would say. Because you're about to do a movement that causes your body impact. You need that movement to be the only thing left in your world. You do that by prepping the mind, by saying, Here I go, or whatever you would say to jump off a cliff. So you build your position, you get the aim, you're on the trigger, then here I go, and then you talk yourself through the pressure increase. Now, if you've got all the time in the world, you can shoot your normal pressure increase. If you don't have all the time in the world, then you're going to shoot at what we call the speed limit. Speed limit of closed loop. And in my online course, we've got a test that we do to show you exactly what that speed is. And so you'll know exactly what that is. So sometimes in your training, shoot stale shots, ones that you're in the trigger forever. Right. And you're just, I mean, you're a quarter of an ounce at a time of pressure increase. When you do that on purpose, thoughts become invited into the mind. Oh my gosh, how long is this gonna take? Oh man, I'm really shaky. And when those thoughts come in, you get fantastic reps in kicking them out. Yeah. Oh man, I'm a little shaky. I don't care. I'm still I'm staying in this. Come on, keep going. Easy now, right? If people, you gotta start using the shot instead of shooting the shot, right? So some stale, make them stale so that you get reps in fighting through the thoughts that come in. Yeah. Some of them normal timing. Like if you're shooting groups, normal timing. So at the rounds in the chamber, it's the same heat, it's the same everything every time, right? Some shots work at the speed limit to where you're like, okay, got it on the trigger. Here I go. Pow and you break the shot. You're not going open loop, you're staying closed loop, but you're working right at the speed limit. Right? So that's that critter that's about to step over the cliff. But if you go open loop on it, you're gonna have pre-ignition movements linked to it, and it's not gonna work. So a lot of the culling operations that I do, I have to time head movement. Yeah. So I'm, you know, I've done lots of culling on bighorn sheep and elk and deer and all kinds of stuff. So I have to time this head movement. And so I mean, I'm litter like timing. Okay, the head's down for one, two, three, they're back up, two, three, they're back down, right? So I know I know the window that I have to break this shot in. So what I do is I set a reticle trap, and I've actually done this in tactical situations for real on human beings. You set a reticle trap so your aim doesn't take as long. You set the reticle to where their head was, I guess. And they moved it away from that. And then when it comes back in, the aim is much quicker, and the organization of the shot is much quicker. So that is just a little tactic there that you can use. Redic, what I call reticle traps.

SPEAKER_01 32:52

All right, guys, it's some of my content. You're gonna see that I've been using this chest holster from Invader Concepts. This is with my 10 millimeter. I also use it with my Glock 19 and even a PMR30. I'm gonna do a bunch of content here in the next couple months on that around bear defense. It should be interesting. It looks a little awkward to have your gun under your bino harness, but if you test out all the different variations, it is the best and you have it on you all the time. I do have a discount code, it's Cliff G, and it's for 10% off. Go check them out. It's very, it's very interesting. I one question I have for you, and this is gonna, I'm I'm a little naive on your rifle side of stuff, Joel. Do you do you um institute breathing like a like when you start the trigger squeeze in terms of breathing? So and I'll I'll give you a persp where why why I'm asking this question. Because when you mentioned the idea of a really slow uh trigger squeeze where I've got all like a stale trigger squeeze, let's call it. I do uh try to break my shots at the bottom of the respiratory pause. And one thing that comes that it's weird, but it comes into my mind during a slow trigger squeeze is I go, oh, I'm holding my breath too long. And it and it it fucks me up. Excuse me. Like it screws me up, and it's like one of those things, and then I gotta just think, like, oh, it doesn't matter right now. Like you're good, you're still gonna shoot, pull, pull, pull, pull, pull, pull, pull. So, do it do you have any uh like thoughts on that?

SPEAKER_03 34:18

That's why you make stale shots like that, so that you get that. Oh, I'm holding my breath. Yeah, because oh, I'm holding my breath, has no instruction, it has no strategy, therefore, it is a thought. Thoughts cannot solve problems. So you disregarding that thought and going, oh, wait, no, I'm staying in this no matter what. That's the skill. I got you. The skill is not in you and continuing with your trigger press. The skill is in you going, nope, I'm doing it this way, no matter what. That is the skill, right? Yeah, I got you. So, but if you never did those stale shots, you would never experience kicking thoughts out. Yeah. So then you get this giant bull elk in front of you that's 580 yards away, and you got just a little window to shoot them through, and it takes some precision. If you're like, man, I don't know if I can make it through those trees. That has no instruction, it has no strategy, it is a thought, it cannot solve the problem, yeah. Right? So good on you for doing that. But that's how you use shots. Yeah, you make stale shots, you make speed limit shots, you make normal shots, you do all these things to where no matter what, if that critter is stationary, I'm going closed loop on the trigger, no matter what. And that was not a fundamental truth for me until 2014. I gotcha. 2014 is where I finally had enough failures to where I'm like, okay, I have got to figure this out. Yeah, I mean, 2014, I've been a sniper for oh man, from 2003 to 2014, so like 11 years or whatever it was. And I still didn't know how it was gonna go. Right. Because I'd go coyote hunting and I'd get on a call, call a coyote in. As soon as reticle would get on him, I'd yank the trigger. I'm like, oh my god, what am I doing? Like, how am I gonna how am I gonna stop this? The next day I might be in a hostage rescue. Who knows? Right, right. So I was scared to death, and I'm like, man, I gotta figure this stuff out like right now.

SPEAKER_01 36:19

And in 2014, go ahead. Oh, I was just gonna say, but you were shooting enough to know it. That I think that's relevant. You know what I mean, Joel? I think there's a lot of people that don't they don't know it because they don't shoot enough. Does that does that resonate at all?

SPEAKER_03 36:32

Well, it's not that they don't shoot enough, it's that they don't hunt enough. I gotcha, don't put themselves in high stress events enough. Like I was phenomenal on a target. You put me on a target, I'm your guy. You put me on a coyote, I was not your guy. I gotcha. And that is not good, right? Right. Oh, yeah. So so it's people don't put themselves in these situations, and then when they get in those situations, they don't use them. It's not until 2014 that I started using hunting, I started using tournaments, I started using every single shot to make me stronger instead of allowing that shot to make me weaker. Yeah. But it wasn't, I didn't know how to do that until I figured out how I did it. Because, you know, in 2014, I'd had so many failures in bow hunting, and bow hunting was always my sounding board. Like it took me 13 years to kill a bull up with my bow. I started when I was 14, I didn't kill a bull till I was 27. In that time, I was a two-time world elk calling champion. I can call elk in like a chicken on a string. Sure. They just, I could not hold myself together at the moment of truth. So it wasn't until 2014 that I had, at that time, I had two or three actual successes. And I've told this story a million times, but on December 14th, 2014, I was in a tree stand in Washington, and I was hunting this big blacktail buck, shooting my recurve. And he finally came in, and he came in to eight yards. Man, it was perfect. And I was right over the top, and I drew that bow back and I smoked him right in the heart, but I didn't control my shot.

SPEAKER_01 38:07

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 38:08

I went, man, I cannot do this anymore. And so I just sat there in that tree stand and it got dark and it was raining, and I'm sitting there going, what was the deal on those two or three successes that I had? And I remembered two of them specifically, and I was able to dissect those shots and go, what was the difference in those and the shots I'd taken 20 minutes ago? Because I didn't even go look for that deer yet. And it was I talked myself through each one of those successful shots, and on all my failures, there was no speech whatsoever.

SPEAKER_01 38:43

I got you. So that you you you pulled out that speech was an important component.

SPEAKER_03 38:47

I figured out that speech is the key. And of course, this is used everywhere all the time by people thousands of times a day, but because we don't realize that it's the ultimate skill, like I ask this question all the time of people when I'm doing corporate speaking, I've got you know a crowd of hundreds or thousands of people. I'm like, what's the one skill that's gotten you through everything so far? And people throw out like discipline, mental toughness, and persistence and consistency, ability to take pain, all these things, right? And I say, Well, how do you do those? How do you teach those things? And nobody's got an answer. And one of the things I I asked them is, you know, generations that are the younger generations, we always say that they've got a poor work ethic, right? And maybe our generation and certainly generations older than us had phenomenal work ethics because they had to, right? Yeah. Why is it that this work ethic is starting to diminish? And people don't really have an answer for it. I said, well, because we've never taught them. We've never taught them how to have a work ethic. You you and I, as parents, all we have is an example, right? We we work hard and we hope that our kids take that as an example. Yeah. And sometimes they do, sometimes they don't. But what if we could teach them how we did it? Right? Because when I've got a task in front of me, and when you've got a task in front of you, you're gonna look at that and go, man, that's gonna suck. But I'm gonna do it anyways. Right. Right? The skill is not in doing the task. The skill is not in saying that's gonna suck. The skill is in saying, but I'm gonna do it anyways. Yeah. Because the younger generations, they stop their conversation that this is gonna suck. Right. And then they go to other things. But if you taught them what you said in that moment to get you through, to get you started, that's the skill that we have failed to pass on. Yeah. So same thing in shooting. There's been phenomenal shooters out there, but we don't know how they did it, and they don't know how they did it because we never ask them, hey man, hey Cliff, what do you say when you shoot at a giant bull elk that's 600 yards away? What are you what are you saying in your head? Right. Right. If you were to, if somebody was to ask you that question, like, well, let me think about that for a second. Well, I say, you know, okay, let's get on, okay, let's get on the trigger, and then I say, pull, pull, pull, pull, pull, or I'm breathing and I'm I'm pressing the trigger as I'm breathing out, and I'm trying to break that trigger at the bottom of my respiratory pause. That's how you do it. Right. Most people are gonna say, I don't know, man. I just like put it on there and I just squeeze that trigger slow. Right. Oh, awesome. That's great. How do you do that?

SPEAKER_01 41:42

Yeah, I think one question I got to ask you though, Joel, is that there's a weird thing in hunting, the hunting part of shooting, and you touched on it, and that's that you had the uh the motivation or whatever you want to call it, you had the willingness to not just look at the observed outcome, to actually look at the process, because you can look at the observed outcome, and even though there's a dead animal there, you knew that that shot wasn't right. Like you knew there's something you had to work on. I feel like a lot of guys, they never get to that point, Joel. Like they just, you know, sometimes they may, I mean, it's it's a it this is like a totally different subject, but I have seen this very weird psychological thing that hunters do. A lot of folks that I've guided like over the years, they literally forget about the bad outcomes, only remember the good outcomes. And then the good outcomes, even if they really got lucky, which you know happens to me too, all the time. Like it's like, okay, this well, you know, we were talking about Africa. I went to Africa. There was a few animals that were dead right there perfectly, but it was because it wasn't because I did it right, it was because I had a little luck on my side, right? So it's this weird, it's a weird data set we get as hunters because we actually have to go to the next level to understand if we did it right or not. I I don't know if that makes any sense, but I think it's a challenging problem because that we you could have five years as an elk hunter, you know, particularly with a rifle, and you could have five dead elk. And I get this all the time. Guys will say, Well, I don't want to change anything, or I don't want to think about it, or I don't need to practice because five years, five dead bulls, and maybe they are awesome, but there's a part of me that's like, well, it's not really like that's not really the data set. You got to focus on like like like what it what the process was. Does any of that make sense?

SPEAKER_03 43:36

Yeah. And here's here's the problem. Like I said, there are good shooters, but because most people don't know how they did it, they have no way to pass it on. Right. If it's if if you know we shoot five bulls in five years, man, cool. Why why would I change anything? Sure. Well, would you teach that shot to a young person? Yeah, it's a good way to figure it out. There's professional archers that are out there right now that are phenomenal. They're punching the crap out of a trigger and they win. Awesome. Awesome for them, not awesome for archery as a whole. Right. Right. You've got my son Bodie and myself, we're out there propagating, teaching, going, this is how you work your mind in an archery shot. And this is how you get a surprise break. Is it more accurate than punching a trigger? Usually, yes. Sometimes no. Right? But these people that punch the trigger and are good at it, they they win a lot, but they don't win them all. And they have these big ups and downs, right? Their career does this all the time. Oh, they're hot right now, man. You can't stop them. Bodhi is just like this at a very high level all the time. So it's not so much what you did, it's would you teach what you did? And if you did teach it, would that young person be successful in it? Right? So I don't care what you did, I care can you teach it?

unknown 45:17

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 45:17

And I don't believe that you can teach it unless you truly understand it. Yeah. And then when this person, that's what that's why commentary shooting is so important. Like if you know what you say and you know where you're put your where you put your conscious mind and you know when you put it there, of course you could teach that to somebody else. Right. Right? Instead of, well, I just put my reticle on there and I press the trigger slowly. That's great for you. Yeah. But can you teach it? So that's where I I come at that problem.

SPEAKER_01 45:48

Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, I love I love it, man. Um, before we jump off the subject, I got I got the problem talking to you, Joel, is like as you talk, I love it, dude. Like it all makes sense. I love the analysis. I I love the process, but questions arise and I'm like trying to keep them stacked up in my mind. We got to go a little bit back here because you started off with how animals die. We talked a little bit about recoil, we moved into the shot process and the important of that, the importance of that, but we kind of went two different directions on the simple question. I want to kind of tie that up. You made the argument that, hey, we don't, we may not necessarily need as large a caliber as we think we do to kill elk or or whatever species. But then you made the argument that, or you made the argument that, hey, if you want to shoot heavier recoiling stuff, that's fine, but you've got to learn you've got to learn the process so you so you still get a surprise shot when you have the heavier recoiling rifles. So what what I mean, and it's like now that we're we've gone so deep, it seems like such a shallow question, but what like what's your thought on that? Is the thought just hey, shoot whatever you who shoot whatever you want to shoot, or do you still feel like there's an advan advantage to shooting the smaller cartridges outside of the obvious you know cost and things like that?

SPEAKER_03 47:00

I don't think there's necessarily an advantage to shooting the the smaller calibers, other than you get to watch your impact. Yeah, like caliber should not matter right to you. You should be able to pick up a 22 long rifle or a 500 nitro and shoot it the exact same way. That's what I'm saying. Yep. I've given you some science of hydrostatic shock and how that works. So if you got a critter that requires a higher caliber to get the bullet past the organ so that the shock wave can actually get the water through there fast enough to tear the organ, then that's where you're gonna have to shoot, right? But don't think that a bigger caliber is gonna make you more lethal. Yeah, but it's sometimes required to get through more muscle mass, more bone structure, more whatever, right? You got to get the bullet where it needs to be, but that should not matter. You know, there was a guy on a buddy of mine from Australia, and he was he shoots a stickbone, he shoots really high poundage. Okay, and he's a decent shooter, but he is locked off target, constantly locked off target, right? And he was making fun of people in the states that shoot lower poundage, and so he says, you know, this is what it feels like to be in the state shooting a lower poundage, and he's got his little kid's longbow, and this thing's tiny, right? And he's pulling it back like this, but he's still locked off target with this five-pound bow. And so what you see is right, even with the five-pound bow. And I wanted to I wanted to write him so bad, I'm like, dude, you're making fun of us for shooting lighter pounders, but you can't get on target with even your daughter's long bow, right? It doesn't matter. When you understand how you shoot, you should be able to shoot them all.

SPEAKER_01 48:57

Yeah, yeah. So the the gist the gist of it in terms of the data set I've seen, because I I there's no reason why I I I there's no reason I have to disbelieve what you're you're saying. It makes total sense to me. And I have seen it pretty consistently in the archery world. Like a lot of guys I know, you know, they had target panic or they just started with your system and they're they're good. They're good at what what they're doing. The rifle world, man, there's a there's such a small segment of humans out there. Like I can think of a few that I've interacted with that can do it, Joel. So but but your your point is that that is just it still it has to do with that they haven't perceiv perfected the prop the shot process.

SPEAKER_03 49:42

Right. And in the firearms world, there's a lot of ego that seems to happen out there, and there's a lot of there's a lot of uh phenomenal shooters, but again, I mean you can look at rifle schools and they're not gonna teach you what to say, right? They're gonna teach you what to do. The skill is not in what you do, the skill is in what you say, so that you can do. Yeah, so they're gonna teach you all the physicalities of shooting, and that's all good. But when you get higher stress and the thought volume increases, do you know how to increase the volume of your thinking? Which is your voice, and it's gotta be the loudest one in the room. So, again, I I'm not a shooting coach, I'm pretty much a speech coach these days. I teach you how to talk during a shot so that you know where to put your conscious mind and when to put it there. So that's what that's what this whole thing is built around. There's the history of human beings. We are not built to shoot stuff, we're built to run and throw stuff. We're not built to shoot things, it's totally unnatural for your mind to override your central nervous system. It does not like that because it's what's keeping it's what's kept you safe all these years. Yeah, when you're open, armor bow in your hand, it's completely different.

SPEAKER_01 51:02

Yeah, I got you. We're open loop, we're we're open loop uh by nature, I guess would be. Yeah, no, I got you. But uh, but it is interesting because I I mean you've already answered it, Joel, but uh maybe just to reiterate the because the the pushback, I mean, I've had guys, I mean, if I had instructors who I very much respect, who I've learned a lot from and shot a lot with, that'll say, man, I really like Joel, but when it comes to to firearm stuff or or follow-up shots or whatever, sometimes you just gotta have like a snapshot, right? You just you can't do the you know you can't do the process. I mean, I think you've already answered it, but do you do you mind just like addressing that that concern that people have?

SPEAKER_03 51:44

So let's let's take it to a different level. Let's talk about the mental game of it, because it's two completely different mental games. Like, what would you define as the mental game of precision rifle shooting?

SPEAKER_01 51:59

The the mental game of precision rifle shooting. Yep.

SPEAKER_03 52:04

Uh I mean to me or it could be the mental game of golf, or it could be the mental game of life, or it could be the mental game of you you pick.

SPEAKER_01 52:11

Yeah, like what would I call them the mental game? I mean, to me, it's about having a repeatable, a repeatable process that I can I can do over and over again and get the same result. And and then basically fighting my own psycho my own psychology that's stopping that. I like to me that's kind of like buck feverish or anxiety or stress within trying to perform.

SPEAKER_03 52:32

So that explanation you just gave is very difficult to teach, right? People talk about that they're working on their mental game all the time. I'm working on my mental game of golf, wrestling, shooting, whatever it may be. I'm like, awesome, what does that mean? And they're like, well, and they'll give an explanation similar to what you what you gave. But that's not the definition of it. Like, if you don't know what the mental game is, then you're playing a game where you don't know who the opponents are, you don't know the rules of the game, you don't know when the game starts, you don't know what a win feels like. How can you possibly win that game? So we set upon the definition of the mental game, and this is how we define it it's understanding where, when, and how to direct your conscious mind into a specific task at a specific moment. Understanding where, when, and how to direct your conscious mind into a specific task at a specific moment. So let's take this scenario, this follow-up shot that you have, right? Yep. So you the first mental game that you're playing, let's say, oh, let's pick. Let's say we're shooting, uh, we're shooting a Cape Buffalo, and we're on the sticks, and we're shooting uh 416 REM mag. That that's one that you used, right? Yep. So we're on the sticks, it's 50 yards, and we've got to shoot through this little hole. Okay. We're shooting a one to four power scope on there, and we've got it up to four power. We can see exactly where we want to be. Let's plug this problem, it's all it is is a problem. Let's plug this problem into the mental game equation. The buffalo is not moving, so we're gonna put it in the precision work category. Yeah, what's the mental game for this shot? Where do I want the conscious mind of the shooter in this particular scenario? Give me that. Where do I want the conscious mind?

SPEAKER_01 54:23

Where do you want the conscious mind of the shooter? Uh I mean, I I guess my response would be you you would want them to start start this shot process, right? So do you aim? But specifically, so we have aimed.

SPEAKER_03 54:38

We're all we're on, we're on the buffalo. Yep. We've addressed the trigger. We've said here I go. Now, what's the final mental game? Where do I want the conscious mind after we've done all those things? We've organized all we've organized the aim, we've addressed the trigger, we've said here I go. Now, where does it need to be? So I'm gonna be talking to myself. Pull, pull, pull, pull, pull. Okay, so the where of this particular mental game is the pressure increase on the trigger. Okay, yeah, the when is right after here I go. So now we've got a very specific where we're putting it, when we're putting it there. How do you put your conscious mind into the trigger pressure increase after here I go? How do you do it? By talking to myself. By talking, right? Yeah, speech is always the how of the mental game equation. Okay? Yep. So we know where we're putting our conscious mind, we know when we're putting it there, we know how we're putting it there. So we've got this buffalo 50 yards on four power. We've aimed, got it. I've addressed the trigger, got it. Here I go. Easy now, a little bit squeeze, boom, that 416 goes off. We smoked that sucker, right? And now he's flipping around, and the guide's like, shoot him again, shoot him again, right? Sure. The mental game now changes because what do we have? We have a moving target. Yeah. Okay, if it's a moving target, the mental game changes. Now, where do I want the conscious mind of the shooter? When the buffalo is flipping around. Yeah, I want him to re-reload the gun and and shoot it. He's shooting the the gun's reloaded, the shot is happening. So, what's the mental game? Where do I want the conscious mind of the shooter now? In the aim. I gotta get the reticle where it needs to be. When do I need it there? Right now. Okay, right. How do I put it there? Speech. So on the second, on the follow-up shot, of course, everything's gonna be much quicker, but we don't have to worry about the trigger anymore. We're going open loop on the trigger now. We've got to get the reticle where it needs to be. Yeah, right? You've got a moving, a spinning buffalo. You're like, okay, that's it. On a shoulder, shoulder, shoulder, shoulder, shoulder, shoulder, boom, right? And you shoot it. You're you're talking about your aim in that regard, right? So it's a different mental game. So what you get good at is not the shooting portion. What you get good at is switching and being aware of mental game, mental game, mental game, mental game. Which game am I playing right now? Where do I need my conscious mind? When do I need it there? How do I put it there? The how is always speech. Yeah, right. So, yes, there are certainly times when open loop on the trigger is the requirement, but you got to get aimed first. Like this whole thing, shot IQ was not built for archery, it was built for police officers, specifically SWAT team, specifically snipers. Yeah, right. I was the lead firearms instructor for Washington State at the Basic Law Enforcement Academy in 2009 to 2012. That was my full-time job. That is where I got to experiment on recruit after recruit after recruit. How do I get this recruit to concentrate on a trigger pressure increase when somebody's trying to kill them? Right. Well, that's a very small portion of gunfights. Precision work is a very small portion of gunfights. So I needed I need to figure out the mental game of close quarter stuff when it's fast and it's close and it's scary and all these bullets are flying your way and bullets are flying the other way, right? How is it that a police officer can go into a house and miss somebody completely at 10 feet multiple times? Right? How is that even possible? Well, it's possible because they're playing the wrong mental game. They did never get their front sight or the dot on the bad guy. Yeah. And that's how they miss. Of course, they're going open loop on the trigger. That's what's required. Yeah. Right? You can't just, you know, you come around the corner in a building, you're like, oh, there he is, and you're like, put the site on, keep pressing, keep pressing, keep pressing, keep pressing, keep pressing, all the while you're getting made into Swiss cheese. It doesn't work that way. Sure. You got to come around the corner and go, Oh my gosh, front sight? Pow. And I used to make fun of firearms instructors all the time. All these old fire instructors always yelling, front sight, front sight, front sight, right? Yeah. I'm like, what are these guys saying? Because when they say that, they're putting the conscious mind of the shooter in the front sight. And but the problem was they were doing it and trying to get the person to press the trigger perfectly. Right. Right. They were saying the right thing, and I made fun of them for years for saying that, but that was the right thing to say for close quarter, close and fast stuff. Yeah. But it's not the right thing to say for precision work. Right? So all I needed to do was make that distinction a little bit, and it has completely changed firearms instruction and how we learn things now.

SPEAKER_01 59:57

No, and that makes it dude. It's funny because we didn't we didn't preemptively talk about the Cape Buffalo thing, but the the description you're talking about is like spot on how I shot my buffalo. Like, you know what's amazing to me, not to sidetrack the conversation. I mean I was expecting the buffalo not to do anything when I hit him. Because you see, you you hit, you know, there's Kate Buffalo, right? And he hit the deck. Like he hit the and I and it like kind of blew me away, but he's still alive and he went to get back up or whatever. But, anyways, uh within this this example, it's interesting how you describe it, and the answer makes so much sense to me. It's like, yeah, now you gotta you gotta go to the aim, and then you can be open loop on the trigger. Now, you know, of course, because you're gonna need speed there. You may only have one little small window to shoot him, you need to put another bullet into him. So I totally understand that. Now, that's a pretty unique thing, even within the hunting world, right? One thing that I've noticed is a lot of times I really train myself and anybody I'm shooting with to just get back, you know, just just the fun of just like the the repetition of knowing to, you know, like rack the bolt, right? I mean, ever every guide who's guided at all gets in the habit of yelling at guys to rack the bolt because they like they're stunned, right? So you so this is like things that are before the process, of course, but but you you get where you you do these things. So you've racked the bolt, you you say, okay, this is gonna be a quick shot. I'm gonna be open loop on the trigger. I I get my aim, and then I move on. But a lot of times in the hunting world, you move on, and then you realize that you're kind of bat, you you get the opportunity to go back into precision. Does that make sense, Joel? Like a lot of times outside of like this Cape Buffalo example, a lot of times follow-up shots, um, you get back on the animal, and really all of a sudden you do have three, four seconds, right? Because they've stopped. It is the right thing there, you go back to going close looped loop on that last process. Okay.

SPEAKER_03 1:01:52

If you can go precision, close loop, then do it. Yeah. If the requirement allows you, or if the environment allows you to do that, then certainly do that. Yeah. But if it doesn't allow you to do that, then you have this other mental game that you play. You at least got to get the reticle on. But like let's say you're shooting at uh you're shooting at an elf that's 600 yards away, and you shoot them the first time, and they just kind of hunch up, right? And they're not really doing anything because that bullet is now slower than 2200 feet per second, and he didn't push a bunch of water fast enough through their lungs. So all you did was you just punch a little hole through them, right? They just kind of hunch up. You're like, okay, if your if your shooter racks that bolt and is now gonna go open loop on the system, you're not gonna hit them at all, right? So you got to be able to go right back into that. Get back on them. Are you on them? Yep, good. On the trigger, here we go. Easy now. I and the little speech, like the little speech of easy, here you go, little bit, that's it. That's how you teach. That's how you would teach your son or daughter to thread a needle, right? You got this little needle, you're like, you're not like go, go, go, right? You're like, easy a little bit, that's it. There you go, stay in there, right? And you're talking at that cadence. That is what you use to get the pressure increase started. Like when you start your pressure increase on the trigger, I imagine you don't start it with pull, pull, pull, pull, pull, pull, pull. You start it with easy now a little bit. There you go. Pull, pull, pull, pull, pull. Right, and then you start into the actual motor program of it. So the little speech is what gets the pressure increase started. The initial pressure increase on the trigger is not to make the gun fire or the bow go off. The initial pressure increase is to set the speed limit. See what I mean? I got you. Yeah, right. It's just to set the speed limit, and that's where you can set the speed limit super slow on a stale shot for training or set it at speed limit for a hunting shot or whatever, right? And so these are the things that we train in. I don't just train in shooting, I train specifically for all these different environments, and I can do that, and I teach people to be able to do that with any weapon system, any caliber, any bow, whatever.

SPEAKER_01 1:04:20

Yeah. Well, and I and I think it's uh the the process that you're describing in the context of the follow-up shot, Joel, it's very powerful. And maybe that question I just asked seems a little naive to you or the audience, but what I have seen is that if you don't have some some process, the second shot, even if it's not time sensitive, you act like people will act like it's you they have a half a millisecond. And then they, you know, and then it's you know, and then they there's no point of even shooting, you know.

SPEAKER_03 1:04:54

So that's all it is is a new problem. So you've shot this first shot, and the critter doesn't go down or is spinning or whatever it's doing, and your mind now goes out the window, right? Because it's a problem, so it's an increase in the volume of thoughts. That's all a problem is. Problems increase the volume of our thoughts. Yeah. Like, oh my god, he's gonna get away. Oh, he didn't fall down, right? Those have no instruction, they have no strategy, therefore, they are a thought. They cannot solve the problem of you putting another round in that critter. So, unless you stop yourself and go, no, get on it, okay, good. Get on the trigger, got it. Here I go, right? Those, unless you say no, the skill is in saying no, right? Right? That's the skill. Like I remember uh I called in the giant bull this one year, and this thing is mesmerized, man. I did my bull calling cows bugle on him, he's lost his mind, he's come into 10 yards from me and my hunting partner. My hunting partner is in. At full draw. I'm not at full draw because I'm shooting my recurve. And this bull is in front of me 10 yards and he's throwing mud and sticks and all kinds of crap all over the place. He's dancing in front of me, and I can't quite get to full draw yet because I think he's going to see me. Well, then I realize that when he sticks his antlers in the ground and throwing mud all over the place, he's got his eyes closed. So I got to full draw. And when I get to full draw on my recurve, that bull turns his body perfectly broadsided, 10 yards. And every fiber of my being, I mean, I'm looking down the shaft of my arrow, it's gonna go perfect. And every fiber of my being was like, just let it go, just let it go. You're good, you got it. Bull of a lifetime, you're good, man. Yeah, and I remember saying, No, I'm not gonna do that. Right. And I worked through my shot, and because I didn't just shoot that bull, I used that bull for concentration practice. And after that, I was so mentally strong after that that now I take it to every critter that I shoot at. And it's just been a phenomenal experience. When you flip that script and you start using your hunting situations, you start using every shot instead of shooting that shot, use it to practice the ultimate skill of the human being, which is getting loud in your head with the right words at the right moment. Like I said, when I talk about that in corporate speaking environments, people give me all these discipline and mental toughness and all those things. I'm like, how do you teach that? And because they can't tell me how to teach it, it's not a skill. The ultimate skill of the human being, according to me, my opinion, is the ability to get loud in your head with the right words at the right moment. That's how you get the discipline. That's how you get the determination, that's how you get your work ethic. It's not in the doing. The skill is in the saying.

SPEAKER_01 1:07:59

Yeah. No, no, I'm I'm I'm following, man. You're giving you giving me so much to digest myself. So I I I appreciate it, Joel. Like I I feel like I I feel like I follow, I'm doing a decent job. Like I personally follow 85% of what you're saying. You know what I mean? But there's there's there's the framework is like, yeah, okay, I I'm following, like I'm doing a lot of these things, but the it just is a reminder of how powerful it is, the process, you know, and then it and in some ways, maybe it's the wrong term to use, but it's very much a confidence builder in a way. Like you go into the next opportunity knowing that you're knowing that you're gonna you're you're gonna exactly that's the that's how I define confidence.

SPEAKER_03 1:08:42

The confidence for me is defined as knowing fully how you do what you do, right? And to do that, you have to know what you're going to say and when you're going to say it. Yeah. And then why wouldn't you be confident? I mean, I know exactly how I'm gonna shoot my next bull elk. There's no question. I'm gonna draw my bow back and aim it, then I'm gonna tension up, then I'm gonna say, here I go, then I'm gonna talk myself through a pressure increase. Right. I know exactly how it's gonna go. Why wouldn't it? Yeah, but again, it took me 13 years of failures to figure that out, and even more years to really figure it out how I how I do it or how we do it.

SPEAKER_01 1:09:20

Right. You know, uh to to finish up the conversation of the follow-up shot, tell me if I'm wrong here, but I actually feel like this kind of harkens back to the small caliber thing a little bit, but when I did start shooting smaller calibers, Joel, I started getting more follow-up shots. Um, and I don't mean that in a sense that like things weren't dying. I just mean that like I, you know, you don't have the recoil, so you get back on them faster, all those sort of things. And so I would be prepared to take another shot, or I could take another shot even if they didn't need it, those sort of things. But that has been in ways transformational to what I did in my early years of hunting, because now you have another opportunity that has like another layer of pressure that I almost feel like I've had to focus more on the process, like what we're talking about. And in a way, it's given me like a very high, uh, high pressure way to rep that. I don't know if that makes any sense, but it almost is it's almost allowed me to do to focus on what you're talking about under even more pressure. And I it's something I guess I I tell people all the time, it's like really focus on take if you can take another shot, take another, take another shot. If it's still moving, take another shot. And it's that has built in some confidence for me too. And I think it's the same deal, it's just being confident and that I can do this process, but I can also do it in a short, constrained period of time, stress period of time, you know.

SPEAKER_03 1:10:46

So yeah, it's it's so difficult to replicate the adrenaline, the cortisol, all the things that happen to your body, it's physiologically changed. That's why I shoot archery tournaments. Yeah, because when you step up on the line in Vegas and you're trying to hit something the size of a dime, and for Bodie, he's got to hit that dime every single time, or he's you know, pretty much out. So it's you know, when you step up on that line and you get that adrenaline, you get that cortisol, and your body is shaking, use it. You can't learn it any other way. And and for rifle shooting, you know, now we've got NRL matches and PRS matches and all that stuff. But what I'm seeing is, and I've trained a lot of the high-level, some of the high-level, highest level people in that regard. And when I watch folks, I watch a lot of stuff on Instagram when people are shooting an NRL match or a PRS match, and they are you watch, they've doped their scope in, and then as soon as their reticle gets on that piece of steel, boom, they break the trigger. Yeah. You think that's open loop or closed loop? Yeah, it's open loop, right? Right. But because the rifle is so heavy, I mean 20, 21 pounds, right? Somewhere in that in that realm, and their triggers only four ounces, yeah. The trigger movement is so slight that the mind can only, it limits the range of motion of the pre-ignition movement, right? It's not a big flinch, but it is a flinch every single time. With any other weapon system, that would be a miss.

SPEAKER_01 1:12:23

Right.

SPEAKER_03 1:12:23

So when I get these high-level PRS shooters in some of my clinics, I'm like, you're not shooting your gun, you're shooting my gun. Yeah, because you got to be able to shoot them all. You're gonna shoot this old 1917 Enfield 30 odd six with a military two-stage trigger on it, and you're gonna learn to work through that. Right. And then what we see when I see them shoot again, and they got their reticle camera, whatever they got, you see that pause, right? It comes onto the steel, there's a pause, and then pow ding. Why wouldn't it hit it? Right? If you got your dope right, you got your wind right, you got all those things right. Don't miss because of pre-ignition movements. There's no reason for that. So those people that are still going open loop, are they really using the match? Right. Even if they win it, right? Like, oh, cool, I won the match. Would you teach somebody that way to shoot?

SPEAKER_01 1:13:16

Yeah, I mean, in a way, that's right, I think this is even, I mean, outside of the competition space, Joel, I think it's in the hunting space too, right? We we we know there's a we we we know there's a problem or we don't know there's a problem, but regardless, we try to solve it with mechanical means instead of a process means, you know. I think there's I mean, the analogy is the same, right? Like a guy who bounces around releases in archery. He's kind of the same guy who bounces around 10 different rifles or whatever, right? He's basically trying to do the same thing.

SPEAKER_03 1:13:50

Um trying to fix a mental problem with mechanical means, just like you said. And you're not you're not getting to the core of the problem, which is you don't talk during your shot. That's the problem.

SPEAKER_01 1:14:02

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SPEAKER_03 1:14:34

Yeah, and you don't know what to say, you don't know where to put your conscious mind or when to put it there. And when you look at it in this different way, you can master it all. You can shoot the worst piece of crap Kmart special release, right, or the worst two-stage, nasty old military trigger. It doesn't matter. And when you understand that trigger system, go, you know, you play with a little bit, go, okay, I got this figured out. Then go shoot it closed loop right and use it, right? Like in my precision rifle course, my online course. I'm not shooting high-end stuff, I'm shooting like one of the rifles, old 3040 Craig Bolt action rifle. Sure, right? Lever guns, whatever. I don't need good triggers. Yeah, I need crappy triggers so that I get better reps and thinking louder.

SPEAKER_01 1:15:22

Dude, it's it's crazy that you brought it up this example because uh and it is I this is gonna sound egotistical a little bit, but since I've been embracing a chunk of this philosophy, Joel, I notice when I shoot somebody else's rifle, or if I change one of my rifles, somebody gives me a rifle to try, whatever, it'll hit me, right? Like the first shot, it'll hit me when I start squeezing on the trigger. I'll think, wow, what a shitty trigger. And but then I move back to the process. You know, I I I like I oh, not a big deal. I'm gonna go back to the process. You know, it's kind of it's kind of funny. You notice it for a second and then you go, oh, it's not really that relevant. Keep doing what I'm doing, you know. But it's it's it's noticeable, you know, and then you but you don't let it like devastate you. It's not like, oh, Jesus, this is like not nothing's gonna work because of this, you know.

SPEAKER_03 1:16:12

Right. I mean, you somebody would hand you a rifle and you're like, okay, got it. Yeah, that's that's how it's gotta be. I mean, I did that in a hostage rescue. I shot somebody else's rifle in a hostage rescue. Yeah. A real life, you know, life or death situation. Somebody handed me a rifle. You know, I you were able to use mine because the lowest power on my scope was too high for the shot. It was only like 11 feet, right? And so I had to use somebody else's gun. Not like, oh man, I wonder what the trigger's gonna be like in this. What I needed to know in that situation was I needed to hold 2.7 inches higher than where my round was gonna hit, right? You know, and so that's what I needed to do. So it was a different mental game for that thing, but you have to be able to control them all, right?

SPEAKER_01 1:16:53

No, no, no, totally, man. Um, Joel, I'm I'm stealing a ton of your time here. I do I I have I have one thing that I feel like is a priority. I actually I told people on my list here that I was gonna have you on, so I've got like three or four questions from people. Do you do you mind answering those? Let's do it. Um, and then we'll we'll touch on your LCON thing because your your app that you showed me was was pretty cool. Let me um let me pull up. I actually a couple of these were sent in audio-wise, so I'm gonna I'm gonna play them here and you can listen. This one, oh, I don't have his name here. I I apologize. I think it's I want to say it's Tony, but here I'll play it. Tell me if you don't hear it. So less of a question, but more of a thank you. Kind of cool. Do you have any logic on that?

SPEAKER_03 1:18:29

Commentary driving is where I learned about commentary skill building. Because when you're a new cop, you got your FTO sitting next to you, right? Your field training officer sitting next to you, and they say for the next 20 minutes, you are not allowed to stop talking. Ah, so you're driving and you have to constantly be talking. I'm coming up on this street, that that car's got mud tires on it. There's a female driving that, she's got brown hair. This guy's driving next to me. Uh, it looks like he may be armed. What you're right, you have to constantly you're talking. And what you're doing is you're putting your conscious mind in all these different places. But he, as the husband, when he's when he's with his with his wife that's driving, and she's becoming very subconscious in her driving and kind of maybe spacing out or whatever, when she talks, he gets to hear exactly where she's putting her conscious mind and when she's putting it there. So then you can manipulate that. You can change her speech pattern to where she starts to pick up on different things, like what street's coming up, right? Where does that street lead to? Where am I going? What's my next turn? All these things. So you can now manipulate the speech pattern to manipulate where they put their conscious mind and when they put it there. So that's phenomenal. That brings me back to the old commentary driving days. And then I'm like, why are we not using this for all skill building? I mean, golf, baseball, pitching, right? All these things. Very few people do it. Yeah. No, no, I grew up in sports and I'd never heard of it until my FTO, next 20 minutes. You're not allowed to stop talking. Oh my gosh. So now I tell people when you get to full draw, you're not allowed to stop talking. When you get the gun mounted, you're not allowed to stop talking. You have to tell me everything that's going on. And then the instructor goes, Oh, this is where they're putting their conscious mind. Right. When they're putting it there. So it's a much faster way of instruction.

SPEAKER_01 1:20:32

Right. You know, this is a follow-on to that, Joel. Joel, you've never free dived before, have you? You're not a diver, spear fisherman, or anything. So, so it's one of my like outside of the hunting world obsessions. Part of the reason that I live down here in the Caribbean part of the year. But what's interesting is that in that world, it's pretty commonplace. Like, like, like mantras and and this kind of like talking through your dives and that sort of thing is uh many instructors teach it. Uh, I've taken many free diving courses over the years, and it's very common in that world to to do this. And there's I think part of that is that the the nature of the activity is it it's uh I want to say it's like a little more cerebral or you immediately get feedback. Like if your heart rate goes up, it costs you immediately. It's gonna cost you how long you can stay, fish get the vibe, there's all these different like you get immediate feedback, right? If you if you if you're not controlling certain things uh physiologically, um, but it's in the culture to talk about it. Like that's very much ingrained. Do you think that part of the reason it's not in shooting is it's like, do you think it's because there's more of an ego? Do you do you think there's some other explanation of why it's not used?

SPEAKER_03 1:21:48

Well, because you don't get the feedback in shooting. Okay. Like you might miss a target. Well, okay, I missed, right?

unknown 1:21:55

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:21:55

Well, in this one, if you can't hold your breath, you're not going to be able to dive there, right? So one of the things in in the mind IQ course that we do is called an empty lung hold. Okay. Where we make you breathe in all the way, you breathe out all the way, and then you hit the you hit the stopwatch. And how long can you hold your breath? Right. And then, you know, we talk about that because as soon as your thoughts, oh man, this this sucks. As soon as your thoughts get louder than you're thinking, no, wait, you can stay in this, stay in it. You got it. Yeah, right. As soon as your thoughts get louder than you're thinking, you'll have to take another breath. Right. So, what I make people do is they do the initial one, we talk about it, and then I go, You got to get 10 more seconds. Right. Let's go again. The only way for you to get 10 more seconds is to get louder in your head with the right words at the right moments. So that's exactly what you're experiencing in the free diving. And that culture has embraced that because there's no other way to do it. Right. Yeah. Thoughts are moved from the limbic system of the brain to the prefrontal cortex into thinking through speech. It's always been through speech. And that culture of free diving has had to embrace that. Otherwise, there's no way to experience success. Yeah, I think it's out of necessity.

SPEAKER_01 1:23:15

Yeah, I think you nailed it, man. And you get the immediate, you get the immediate return, right? Like the breath holding is a perfect example, man. Like most guys, you know, I get guys that come free dive with me the first time and and they hold their breath for a minute and they think, dude, that's all I can hold my. I'm like, dude, guarantee you, you can hold your breath for two and a half minutes at the minimum. It's all like this, this talking thing. Like I literally, I literally talk through it, Joel. Like, I know, okay, here comes a little urge, little carbon dioxide's hitting me. And I know here comes contractions. People may not, but you you'll get you get physical contractions if you're holding your breath. You know, so you know the only way you can deal with physical contractions if you talk your way through contractions coming, contract. There it is. There's a trend contraction, bop, bop, bop. It's gonna go away, it's gonna go away, it's gone.

SPEAKER_03 1:24:05

Right, and then that's exactly what we're talking about in the shooting world. There's no such thing as a subconscious override of the central nervous system. Right. If you weren't talking, you would become the victim of your own mind on your free dive. Yeah, the the contraction would instantly send you to the top.

SPEAKER_01 1:24:24

Yeah, that's that's kind of the purpose of it. The purpose is your body's like, dude, I'm putting you in pain because you got to get to the top.

SPEAKER_03 1:24:30

Yeah, that's there's no such thing as a subconscious override of the central nervous system, right? Your mind will not allow you to cause your body impact as a surprise, right? So that's where we always talk about the surprise break. That won't happen unless you talk.

SPEAKER_01 1:24:44

Yeah, no, absolutely. I I love it, man. And I love what apply.

SPEAKER_03 1:24:48

Just real real quick. You mentioned that you shoot at the bottom of your respiratory pause. Oh, yeah. So one of the techniques that I use is I do an audible exhale for my trigger guidance on rifles. Okay. So I don't necessarily shoot my rest my respiratory pause, I take a cleansing breath and then I do a shooting breath. The shooting breath is so I take a cleansing breath in and out, and then this is if I have time, the shooting breath is in, and then I hold it, and then when I start on my trigger, I do an audible exhale through the back of my throat. I can feel it as a vibration, I can I can very acutely monitor it, and that's what I use. So as I'm pressing out, I'm also increasing the pressure on the trigger. Okay. So that's one thing that I do in in replacement of words. I use the audible exhale. Uh okay.

SPEAKER_01 1:25:49

Yeah, but it's still important that it's something you can hear. Absolutely.

SPEAKER_03 1:25:53

And you and I can feel it too. So I can I can feel the vibration in the back of my throat. So I just want to put that in there as a side note.

SPEAKER_01 1:25:59

No, no, absolutely. I love how I love how it's such a broad idea. You know what I mean, Joel? Like you you've disturbed the work where you can you can apply it to so many things. Um, let's run through a couple more of these questions. I think you touched on this, but but you can you can give me your perspective on it. This is from Colin. He says, uh, thanks guys. What does Joel think of elk hunting with a hinge style release?

SPEAKER_03 1:26:24

I think that uh if you have to hunt with a hinge, it's because you don't necessarily know how you do what you do. Like a hinge is a release that most professional archers will go to because the movement is bigger, so it's easier to control. Now, because you're you're hinging this thing, right? Now, when I do this with my fingers, that's not how most people shoot a hinge. Most people will draw a hinge back and then they might roll to the click and then they pull. Well, when they pull, that's a huge input. For hunting, it's been favorable because people can now control a bigger movement. But because it's a bigger movement, it's not quite as accurate. Now it might be plenty hunting accurate. The days of pulling on a hinge in the tournament archer world and winning are over. I got you. It's too big of an input. But most people that go to a hinge for hunting, it's because they're they're doing that fixing a mental problem with mechanical means.

SPEAKER_01 1:27:30

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:27:31

Like there's no real reason to have to hunt with a hinge. I get it, right? And I have done it myself. I've hunted with a hinge because that's all I could control. Yeah. So if this person is doing it because they just enjoy shooting a hinge and they like that movement, and they like how well they can evaluate it, then more power to you. But the problem is if you get in a situation where you got to go open loop on a hinge, it's a really big movement. Yeah, yeah. And so it doesn't, you won't have. The same point of impact, or you probably won't have the same point of impact. So if you know exactly how you do what you do, let's go to a release that may be a bit more convenient for hunting and allows you to punch it if you need to in a moving target situation, like an index finger, trigger, or a thumb button. Uh just if you're doing it because that's all you can control, there's a deeper problem, right? If you're doing it because you love shooting a hinge, then more power to you. There are a couple drawbacks as far as if you do need to go open loop on it.

SPEAKER_01 1:28:31

Yeah, I got you. Um oh, Eric Wilson says uh hi and thanks for doing his podcast. Yeah, you bet. And uh Kyle asks the easy one. With all the different styles of shooting you do, what is your favorite event to shoot at?

SPEAKER_03 1:28:47

My favorite event? Yeah, you're like tournaments?

SPEAKER_01 1:28:50

Yeah, I think that's what he's getting at.

SPEAKER_03 1:28:52

My favorite event is Lancaster, the Lancaster Classic in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. It's an indoor tournament and it is the utmost of precision. Like if you don't have your business squared away, you are not going to be successful in it. And for me, in the bare boat world, that's where all the Europeans show up to, so you get to compete against the best in the world, literally.

SPEAKER_01 1:29:15

So I got you. Good deal. And are you are you hunting exclusively with traditional archery now, Joel?

SPEAKER_03 1:29:21

I do mostly. There's a couple places that I elk hunt where I just I'm gonna have to call for other people. So I might have hours, I might have a whole day. And if that's the case, I'll take my compound with out I shoot it with no sights, but that's uh usually a pretty easy gig. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:29:38

No, I I I I got you, man. Uh well that that covers the the questions uh outside of the ones that you've already like specifically answered already in the in the discussion. Um let's talk about elk calling for as long as you if you got 10-15 minutes. I do. Dude, you showed me the app, describe it a little bit, and then we can if it to the extent you're willing to, I'd love to kind of just go through your process. Because the way you've described your elk calling is right along the lines that I describe my elk calling. You're a much better elk caller than me, but we both we both try to do a simple process, and I think that's the way to go. So I'll I'll I'll give the floor to you on that, man.

SPEAKER_03 1:30:19

So the thing that that Cliff's talking about there is first there's a new app that we're working on. It's called Mountain Whisper. It's M T N W I S P R. And I'll I'll put the I'll put the link in the extra question. And what it does, it's got some videos in there of me making the sounds, how to actually start making the sounds, how to choose a mouth read. And then you get to call into this thing. You record your sound and it will score you and it will give you advice and it will show you where you are on the pitch and the tone and and all these things. And so you can actually get advice on how to change that call so that you get the right pitches, and then you learn how to, you know, when to use that call. So we're talking about a calf in distress. Like, what does that actually sound like? So you get to hear what it sounds like from a real elk, you get to hear what it sounds like from me, and then you get to do your own recording, and it gets matched to that, and then you get all the advice that you can really hone in on it. It's a really cool thing. A buddy of mine, uh Ryan Matthews, is starting this, and he he came up with this idea, and I think it's really cool. And we've been working on it for the last few days. It's it's pretty awesome stuff.

SPEAKER_01 1:31:32

Yeah, no, I I I love it, and I'm always a fan of anything that compares you to to real elk, too. Yeah, it's I I think that's a good just in its own right, is a good way to approach it.

SPEAKER_03 1:31:42

Yeah, you gotta have. I mean, you I think in any calling program, you have to have the sound from a real elk, and you have to have the sound from a human being as well, because they're not the same and they can't be the same, they're different, completely different systems. But how do you make it sound as close to that real elk as you can? And I don't believe that you've got to get exact to a real elk, but you do need to get the structure. It's the structure of the calls, it's not necessarily the quality of the calling, because if you've heard enough elk, you've heard elk that sound like crap, and you've heard that ones are just pristine. So it's not about the quality of it so much as the structure of it and the emotion that you can put into it. And the calling systems that I do, I just, you know, I did not learn these from elk, I learned these from watching drunk human beings at bar fights. And what is the dynamic of that? And that's literally the elk woods with you know, with drunk human beings running around because elk don't have the the inhibitions that that humans do. And and I guess when people have alcohol in them, they lose some of those inhibitions. So uh, you know, I don't do certain sounds, I don't I don't bugle with a chuckle because I don't need to talk to that bull. A chuckle is a bull-to-bull communication. I don't need to do that. I need to talk to his ladies. That's how bar fights are started. Like, you know, Cliff, when you and I were standing at the doorway of a bar, I'm like, Cliff, you got 30 seconds to go in that bar and get in a fight with another male. You can't use your hands, you can only use your words. You got 30 seconds ready to go. Yeah. You know, there's got to be a 100% strategy to that. And a lot of people will say that they're gonna go in and they're gonna find some dude and they're gonna insult him. Well, probably about 10% of the time that's gonna wind you up in a fight, right? But if you go and you talk to his lady inappropriately, it's a hundred percent. You are gonna find yourself in a fight 100% of the time. Yeah, so let's use that, right? So don't go into the don't go into the elk woods and challenge the bulls. You don't even need to talk to them, you talk to their ladies, and we now know what that sound is that bull calling cows bugle, short, raspy, no chuckles.

SPEAKER_01 1:34:02

And and and and that's that's one of the prior, how many sounds do you like? If if a guy came to you, Joel, and he's like, Hey, I've got three months to learn how to elk call, and I'm like every other guy, I only really got about an hour a week. What what sounds would you have him focus on?

SPEAKER_03 1:34:17

Number one would be a calf in distress, and number two be a bull calling cows beautiful. Yeah, those two sounds will get you just about every situation that you can deal with in the elk woods. Yeah. Um, I wouldn't do a cow sound because cows hate other cows. Uh, they I've seen it so many times where they become suspicious of a cow sound that's not part of their herd. They do not let their bull go play with the hussy in the bushes. Right. It's usually the cows taking the bull away. It's not the bull taking the cows away. Because somewhere in your sequence, you have made a cow sound and they're like, nope. And they don't let them go there, and they just go the other way. So are there bulls killed every year with cow sounds? Absolutely. Are there bulls killed every year with with bugling and chuckling? Absolutely. But the calling percentage is way lower than it needs to be. Yeah. You stick with biologically correct sounds, like there's lost calves all day long, every day of the rut. Yep. And every day after the rut, and every day before the rut. There's lost calves. So you're really playing on those elk's instincts when you do that distressed calf sound.

SPEAKER_01 1:35:31

Yeah. I I I've called, I'm I'm very dependent on calf sounds. And and I'm I'm with you. I think I think it I get more elk to come in on calf sounds, distressed calf sounds. And I've and I I learned that uh just by default by dealing with groups of calves, you know, and calling them in, call, you know, they come, they're just fun to screw with, right? And so over the years, I I learned that because every time I'd get into calling them in, just screwing around, a bull show up. You know what I mean? And and I gotta ask, because I don't know the answer to this. And I I don't know, do you think what's your what's your theory, Joel? Is that a is that a sexual response? Is it uh is it just like a they're just curious response? Uh is it like a uh um like a uh paternal response? Uh is it what do you think it is?

SPEAKER_03 1:36:21

I think it's I think it's some of all the above because I mean it elicit risk it elicits a response from human beings. Right. Like if there's a if there's an adult female outside screaming, we don't just run outside. We go to the door, we like, what's going on out there, right? But if it's a baby crying outside, we go out there with no inhibitions. I mean, I've seen it in primal situations, time and time again when I was a cop. If there's a baby involved, people will go to the ends of the earth to help this baby. Yeah, like windows, windows are getting broken. Yeah, things are getting broken, things are it doesn't matter what's standing in the way. When it's an adult, it's a completely different reaction. So uh I think there's some some of it is sexual with the with the bulls because I mean if that calf's gonna stand around to be bred, he doesn't care. Yeah, yeah, right. If she smells right, then things are gonna happen. Right. So I think that's some of it. Uh, I think there's some paternal instinct of of protection. I think the sexual end of it is is uh higher priority for them. Yeah, um, so but it just it elicits instinctive responses from elk. Yeah, regardless of it. It works. I mean, whether you're calling in the cow or the bull, like uh I don't usually do too many calf sounds if I've got a bull with cows. I'm gonna go and I'm gonna speak to the cows with a bull calling cows bugle and elicit that response from him. But um, you know, if that doesn't work, then I'm just gonna call the cows in. Yeah, like if that doesn't work or I'm too far away from the cows or whatever, I'm gonna do a distressed calf series and call those cows to me because the bulls are gonna be right behind them. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:38:06

No, I got you. Um, on the on the calling front, uh, do you have any thoughts on setups, Joel? Like if you were going to distill how you set up on elk, is there is there low-hanging fruit for most archers?

SPEAKER_03 1:38:22

Uh we used to talk about the hang-ups all the time, right? Hung-up bowls. Well, he'd come in about 80 yards and then he'd just hang up. You stand there and bugle. Well, why wouldn't he? Because you've done cow sounds, sure, or you've done some other bugle or you've challenged him or whatever. So, with the sounds that I make now, with distressed calf and bull calling cow bugles, those two setups, I don't have hang ups anymore. They literally don't hang up. Just like you said, there's windows getting broken. They don't, they do not care. They come all the way and they come in tight. And if you do the bull calling cows bugle on a bull with cows, he's coming all the way. There's no stopping. And, you know, I I the analogy that I use is one night I was there was a bar fight, and the bar fight was over, and I'm out in the parking lot and I'm doing I'm doing reports, or I was taking a witness statement or something. Sure, and there's one guy on one side of the parking lot, another guy with his with his gal on the other side of the parking lot. One guy starts yelling at the other female. This guy yells back, right? Does a challenge bugle essentially back because he's yelling at the dude, and then he starts across the parking lot. And I'm standing there in full uniform and everything else, and he walks within feet of me and he's going to kill this guy. Yeah. So, and I see that in the elk world. When you get in tight, what I do on these bulls, if I do a location bugle, bull bugles back to me, and then I'm like, okay, cool. So there is a bull in that canyon. I'm now listening for tending bugles, glunking, cow sounds, anything to tell me that he's got cows. If he's bugled from the same place twice, he probably has cows. Yeah. So what I do then is I let them, I let them leave. And this is usually very early in the morning, and right as soon as it gets daylight, I I listen for the, you know, whatever he's doing down at the bottom, if he's doing tending bugles, glunking, whatever, when it starts into a roundup bugle, which is high, fluety, no chuckles. Because if there's no chuckles, he's talking to his cows. Okay. If he bugle with a chuckle, that instantly tells me there's another bull there, right? And we'll play that accordingly. But if he goes into a roundup bugle, these elk are now moving. So I just ghost him. I stay behind him, I stay out of the wind. And when that bugle changes or they stop, that's when I swing up to the same contour level and I come in from the side, so I don't have to worry about thermals as much. My goal is now to get within 100 yards of a cow. I don't care if it's the cow, just a cow or a calf or whatever. I try to get with a hundred yards of them. If I can get closer, I do. And then I get set up, feet are set, arrows knocked, releases on. If you're shooting a compound, whatever, get ready to go. Bugle tube, bowl calling cows, bugle, short, raspy, no chuckles, and then put your tube away. Get it out of the way of your bowstring. There's so many people that drop their tube and it gets in the way of their bowstring. That has saved more elk's lives than I don't know what, right? Get your tube out of the way and get ready. He's gonna probably bugle back to you with a challenge bugle. He's gonna bugle at you with chuckles, probably. Sometimes they don't, but usually with chuckles. That bull's gonna walk very slowly to you. And just let him come. He's gonna come all the way. If you can draw your bow back, if you're shooting a compound and you get a chance to draw your bow back, then do it. He's gonna be very close. It'll be 10, 15 yards frontal. If you're cool with that shot, then take it. But if you're not cool with it, or if you don't get your bow drawn and he's now at 10 yards, he's going to see you. And when he sees you, just let him see you. Just keep your face behind your bow limb, right? If you're looking through a split limb or whatever, just keep it between there, keep your bow in front of your face and stay relaxed. Keep your arms in and relaxed against your body. Don't be holding it out there. Keep it relaxed. Bull's gonna see you. His body language is gonna change. When his ears come forward and his head comes up slightly, that's when he's gonna whirl. Let him whirl. Let him whirl all the way until you see his tail. When you see his tail, you are outside of his 270 vision. That's when you draw your bow back. So when he whirls, you see the tail, that's when you draw your bow back, and you give him the yo. Right? You give them the yo that's barking at them. They will stop instantly. And the cool thing about bull elk, especially in the rut, their neck is swollen, they can't look over their butt like a cow elk can. So they have to quarter away to see you. So they will stop, quarter away. That's when you start your shot process. They will hold plenty long for you to shoot a very controlled shot. So that's a textbook setup for me. Like if I'm if I've got a bull with cows, I'm gonna just ghost them until they stop. Then I'm gonna swing up, get on the same contour on the same ridge, and I'm gonna work in until I get 100 yards from the cows, hopefully closer. Bull calling cows bugle. He's gonna come in tight. If you can get drawn, draw back. He's gonna probably be frontal. Shoot him frontal if you want. That's up to you. If not, if you haven't got the full draw, let him whirl, give him the yo, draw back, and or draw back first, then give him the yo. When he turns toward away, shoot a controlled shot. It's not an open loop situation.

unknown 1:44:09

Right?

SPEAKER_03 1:44:11

If if if he doesn't have cows, like if I'm if I go over a train feature, I sound check everything with a distress, distressed calf sequence. So I send that through there, the bull bugles back to me. Cool. I'll wait just a little bit. He's gonna bugle again, or if I do another calf sequence, he bugles again and he has changed position. Especially if he's come toward me, he has no cows. So act accordingly. Just get set because he's coming all the way. You probably don't need to call again. You can move, but you risk the chance of him seeing you on your move. So I usually just stay put and they come right into the calf sound. Awesome. Yep. Perfect, dude. It's very simple. It's not extravagant. I'm not selling elk calls. All I'm selling is a very biologically correct way of doing business on these elk, and it's very high success rate.

SPEAKER_01 1:45:09

Yeah, dude, I love the I love the whole uh the whole end game there too. You know, that's that's uh interesting because well it's interesting you even throw in there that it's a closed loop because most guys most guys think when a bull when a bull spins, yeah, like, oh Jesus, hopefully I'll have a chance, and then when they do have a chance, an arrow flies, you know.

SPEAKER_03 1:45:29

Right. So I mean it's any pin gets on hair and they're punching the trigger. Just talk yourself through it. The yo and that bull stopping is gonna create a problem. That is gonna increase the volume of your thoughts. Like, oh my god, Turner was right again. That bull's gonna stop, he's gonna core away. Like, oh my god, it worked. Yeah, right. That thought's coming, whether you like it or not. Cool, let it in. But you gotta talk loud. Oh my god, it worked. Okay, he's 25 yards, 25, got it on the trigger. Here I go. Pow and you whack him.

SPEAKER_01 1:46:05

Love it. So love it, man. Thank you. Thanks so much, Joel, for all your time, man. Let people know where they can follow you. I every I'm everybody knows who you are and stuff, but give give the quick rundown on that.

SPEAKER_03 1:46:17

Yeah, Joel Turner Actual on Instagram. Uh, my email is Joel Turner at shotiq.com. And uh yeah, hit me up.

SPEAKER_01 1:46:25

Anything I can do for you. Thanks so much, man. You bet, brother. If you enjoyed this content, do me a huge favor. Subscribe on whatever platform you consume it on Spotify, Apple, YouTube, whatever works for you guys. Everything else is on my website, pursuitwithcliffe.com. Go there, and it's going to be very apparent to you that I work my ass off just to not have a real job. All the hunts I guide, all the seminars I put on, all the unique experiences I offer in the membership site, all the details are there.