#450 - Cameron Hanes

It wouldn't be the same if everything came out smooth. Well, Cameron, first of all, thanks for doing this podcast for people who don't know Cameron. Cameron Haynes is a famous bow hunter, which is a rare thing. It's very rare that someone becomes famous as a bow hunter and in the most manly form of bow hunting ever. You're famous for shooting the biggest, most majestic north american animals with sticks.

That's right.

I mean, that's what you're famous for. You're famous for taking out giant bugling elk with a flying stick. That's pretty badass, dude.

I wouldn't say famous.

You're famous. To me, you're famous. I told a friend of mine who's a hunting fan, he's a personal trainer. And I said, I'm doing this podcast with Cameron ains. He goes, oh, that's that Keith hammering guy. That's it, dude.

Okay, one other guy. You and one other guy.

You are famous, Jared hunters.

Yeah. So there's three.

I brought you up to my friend Brian Callahan, who works at first light, and he said, oh, yeah, I know who that guy is. Yeah. So people know who you are, man.

Okay.

You have become, at least, can I say you have notoriety?

Yeah, I'd say that.

Okay, some notoriety from killing elk with flying sticks.

That's it. Yeah.

How does one go about becoming famous? Or at least develop Internet notoriety from killing elk with flying sticks?

I think for me, I don't know. I just came up just like everybody else. So what I've done kind of gives other people that didn't have any breaks or just regular guys hope to chase their dreams. I really think that's it. I think that's why people like me.

Well, I'll tell you how I found out about you. I watched a lot of videos on YouTube online, whether videos about anything that I find interesting. And I saw this video, this guy carrying rocks in his backpack, going up hills, training for elk hunting. And I was like, what is that? And then I thought about it. I was like, that actually is a pretty smart move. Like, I've never heard of anybody training for hunting. I went hunting when I shot that mule deer with Steve Ranella, that was the first time I ever went hunting. And I was amazed at how tired I was. I was like, this is ridiculous. I thought I was in really good shape. But when you're climbing up those muddy hills in the Missouri breaks and everything's, like, sloshing, and it's these steep hills, and you're doing it for 6 hours in a row. Like, man, you get exhausted, your legs get rubber, your lungs are burning. I was like, I can't believe this. I was thinking I need to work out for hunting, but I'd never heard of anybody doing that before until I saw you.

Right. Well, like elk hunting, you can get up at sometimes five in the morning to get to where maybe you put some elk to bed the night before and walk. So an hour before daylight, then you're hunting all day, and then you get back to camp after dark, maybe at eight or 09:00. That's a long day.

It's a long day.

People aren't used to doing that. I mean, how often do you work out for 15 hours a day?

Not only that, if you shoot an elk, then you have to take that elk back and you have to figure out how to carry it through the mountains. That's where it gets really crazy, because what's the biggest elk you've ever shot?

It's probably a Roosevelt bull I killed in Oregon in 2010. And we're figuring it weighed about 1200 pounds. It was twelve or 13 years old.

That's a big animal.

I was huge.

Whoa. How long did it take you to carry 1200? I mean, that's on the bone. So once you quarter it and skin it and take the head off of it and the antlers, how much are you carrying out?

About 500 pounds. We had it quartered up and then with the hide, because I wanted to get it mounted and the head and all that, so we had to carry about 500 pounds. But I had a few guys with me, so made it a little easier.

Yeah. I guess you'd have to bring, like, a pack crew.

Yeah, they're big animals and that's part of it. But when you can go into the mountains where an elk lives every day, like you said, with a sharp stick, take it out, harvest it, so you're on its home court, and then bring it back to your truck and back to your freezer. That's a powerful experience. The whole thing is hard. Everything about it is hard. But to be able to do that, it's given me confidence to know that in whatever, everyday life, I can achieve things, because that's about as tough as it gets for me.

Yeah. I've always said that adversity is a very important thing for human beings, because if you don't go through adversity, you never know that you can. There's always going to be questions, and every time you do go through adversity, it sort of adds on to your ability and your confidence in all walks of life. It's like this tattoo that I have is Miyamoto Musashi, the guy who wrote the book of five Rings. And when I was a kid and I was competing in martial arts tournaments, I read the book of five Rings. And I remember this one quote. Once you understand the way broadly, you can see it in all things. And once you've gone through the kind of adversity that you must go through to hike 9 miles into a mountain, shoot an elk, and then bring that giant beast back and then cook it, you will develop confidence and you will develop a sense of accomplishment that's very difficult to recreate.

Yeah. And to do that, I know how difficult that is. And so in training, I try to simulate that as much as possible. That's where carrying the 130 pound rock up the hill or for training, I've run 100 miles, ultramarathons, that type of thing. And basically, I want to simulate that misery because I want to know what being miserable feels like. If you don't never know, you never know how you're going to react. Some people might fold up, quit. So I've tried to get there as often as possible.

Why did you decide a rock? Why not like weights? Well, you can measure weights. Did you try to just go with the rock because it's even more primal?

I don't know. I had been seeing this rock. I run this mountain all the time, so I've been seeing this rock, and I was like, man, I need to get that rock to the top of the Hill. And so I did this seminar at Cabela's, and I said, hey, anybody who wants to come up, I'm going to go run the mountain, because everybody knows I run this mountain. So they came in for the Cabela seminar. Then I told them, I said, if you run the mountain, I'll give you a free dvd. Just come hang. I just like to work out with people. I like to see people sacrificing. So I said, I'm going to carry this rock up and we can all go do it. And I figured. I figured it was about 70 pounds. I had no idea. So I get up there, I have this empty pack, and I have everybody there. I'm like, all right, just hang on for a second. I'm just going to throw this rock on my pack, and I lift the first time I'd ever touched it, and I was like, wow, this is more than 70 pounds. And so I ended up getting it up to the top, and then we tried to take pictures, trying to. I couldn't even lift that thing over my head because a rock is just weird to lift. So I ended up taking it down off the mountain. I'm like, obviously it's more than 70. I want to figure out how much it is. So it was 130 pounds, but it was just kind of on a whim, I guess, is how that came about. Now it's just my rock.

Now it's your workout rock.

It is.

Now, are you allowed to just pull rocks out of the forest? Is there any regulations about that?

I may have poached that rock. No, it's still there. I just carried up and down. I never take it. I took it to the gym to weigh it, but it's back. It's up on the mountain right now.

Okay, so what would you do if you came there and you saw somebody else throw that rock in their backpack? You're like, hey, man, nobody's going to do it.

Somebody did. I think they had seen the rock, talked about, and I said, hey, people question everything for whatever reason.

Sure.

And so they say, oh, that's not 130 pounds. I'm like, okay, well, here it is. Go pack it to wherever you want and weigh it. So somebody did move at like 20 yards, and I did notice that. But other than that, it just kind of sits wherever I leave it.

Well, if it's heavy enough, that's good that nobody will steal it, or most people won't steal it, I should say.

I don't think they're going to steal it.

Now, when you take that rock up to the top of the mountain, how often do you do this?

I do it about once a week.

Once a week?

Yeah.

Wow.

I mix it up, and that's my once a week type. Something different. Other than that, I usually just run the mountain.

So once a week? Once every seven days. You carry that. How far are you carrying it?

It's a mile and a half.

Jesus.

Yeah.

That hurts my lower back just thinking about it.

Yeah, me, too.

Is there any danger of doing that's like some serious weight that you're carrying on your back like that? It's an awkward way to carry weight and to do it, like once a week?

Yeah. I try to think I'm bulletproof, but I've found out that I'm not. That's a trail right there, up the hill with the rock.

That's some serious work, like the amount of actual, physical, kinetic work that you have to do to go up a hill with 130 pound rock on your back like that. Man, that's got to get you in some insane shape.

It helps. Everything helps. Mixing it up. I do a lot of different things, but that's just one of them.

Now, was this something that you had always done and then when you got into hunting, you just sort of ramped it up, or did you really get into fitness once you became a hunter?

That's another shirt I have. Ramp it up.

Oh, really? Is it really?

Yeah, it is.

Oh, no kidding.

But no. Let's see. So I started bow hunting. I was just a teenager, and I ended up killing a spiked bull elk my very first year. I think it was 18 or 19, and that was to kill a bull with a bow. Where I came from, a real small town, I mean, 20 some kids in my graduating class, and so a lot of people hunted.