Dan Staton: Training for Mountain Hunting & Mental Toughness

Full transcript of the Tom Rowland Podcast, Episode 612 with Dan Staton.

Dan Staton: Hey, this is Dan Staton at ElkShape, and this is the Tom Rowland Podcast.

Tom Rowland: Dan, what's up? How you doing, man?

Dan Staton: I'm good. Busy, but ready for spring. Kinda cabin fever. But, yeah, man, I'm doing well.

Tom Rowland: That's awesome. Well, I love your podcast. It's nice to meet you — we've never met in person, so this is the first time we've had a chance to talk. I love your podcast because it's really helped both my sons and me get into elk hunting and really understand what's required and what's necessary. And then this year, we finally got it done, and it was so rewarding and so amazing. It was one of the greatest outdoor pursuits of my life, for my son too, and it was so cool. It really took five or six years. For so long I'd heard all the stories, I'd seen the videos, I listened to your podcast about how it happens for other people, and it just wasn't happening like that for us. We had close calls and stuff, but I just didn't know how we were going to close this thing. Anyway, listening to your podcast and getting as much information as we could, it finally happened for us, and it was fantastic. So thank you for that — I appreciate it. I know you hear that kind of story from a lot of people. You've helped a lot of people get into the sport.

Delayed Gratification and the Drive to Keep Going

Dan Staton: That's super special, man. Bottle that up, because that feeling of delayed gratification — it's hard to keep your eyes on the prize when you have five years of tag soup and you've put in a lot of energy. You've sacrificed a lot of your time and resources to get out there, and it just doesn't come together. You can get so close, but it's a game of inches, and everything has to be in your favor on their home-field advantage. It's tough to stay motivated after five years of getting your teeth kicked in. But once you do get it, bottle that up and let it be your driver for the next year, because consistent success is even harder than getting lucky once. Anyone can get lucky and have the stars align, but to do it year in and year out — that's really my driver. That's my motivator, and that's my why. And you can leverage it to do good things in life besides elk hunting.

Tom Rowland: Yeah. How do you do that? I know that's a big part of the message you have with ElkShape — how elk hunting is really such an enhancement to your life, but it also guides you through the rest of your life, through your fitness, your faith, and everything else. How does that work for you, for elk hunting to guide you like that?

Using Elk Hunting as a Guide for Life

Dan Staton: Yeah. I think when you realize the work that's involved to have consistent success, you have to recognize there are going to be trade-offs and sacrifices — and not just for you. Me, I have a family. I've got a couple of kids and they're young, and for me to be out there on public land, it requires quite a bit of time away from them to do it properly. So as soon as the season's over, I have to ask myself: is it really fair of me to take an entire month and go elk hunting, and then the rest of the year be a terrible father and husband and ignore them and be self-absorbed? I don't think that's fair, and I don't think you'll have a marriage if you take that approach. So I use elk hunting as my guiding principle. When I'm in the mountains, I get some reflection, and I evaluate how I'm doing as a husband, how I'm doing with my faith, how I'm doing as a dad, how I'm doing with my career. It's very much like clarity out there. I actually come back from elk hunting a better version of myself with more clarity. Then it's up to me to execute on the things I'm not happy about, the chinks in my armor, whether that's in personal development or in the actual hunting — maybe I need to spend more time on my fitness, my archery, my weapon, my e-scouting, or understanding elk behavior. But also, maybe I need to make more time for consistent date nights with my wife, or specific play dates with my kids to make them feel special, or planning vacations. So that's an open-ended thing for me. I could talk for an hour on how elk hunting has changed my life and how I leverage it to create the best possible version of myself.

Why Elk Hunting Demands So Much

Tom Rowland: It's really interesting — I see very similar things with fishing, because it is all-consuming. For the people who listen to this podcast, we talk about fishing a lot, and I know elk hunting is of interest to a lot of them too. Even though the fishing we do is on the water and it's fish, not elk, and we're often doing it with a fly rod or ultralight tackle, there's the same kind of preparation and practice that goes into learning how to cast a fly rod as goes into learning how to shoot a bow accurately. There's a real draw between the two — we get tons of elk hunters who come down and go fishing, and tons of fishermen who want to experience elk hunting. So I want to back up a little bit, because this isn't just your typical hunting podcast you're on. Give the people listening an idea — we keep talking about how it's all-consuming and takes so much of your time. Why? What is it about elk, and elk hunting especially with a bow, that requires all this time? And what are the minimum things you need to have and be capable of to do it the way you do?

Dan Staton: Yeah. Elk hunting is something that's getting more popular, and there's more competition, just like fishing spots can get exposed online or talked about in a forum or shown on a YouTube video, and people key in on a spot. I don't think it's social media so much as it's just the internet — there's more technology. And when there's a limited resource or limited spots, you kind of have to keep your cards close. I've always taken the perspective that separation is in the preparation. If I do my due diligence year-round — shooting my bow every day, breaking a sweat every day, eating the right nutrition, and spending the time scouting and e-scouting because I'm obsessed, because it's what I am — I separate myself from the average elk hunter who takes a week off and shows up at a trailhead not really knowing what the terrain looks like, not knowing elk behavior, not knowing where the elk want to be, and certainly not knowing what to do when the elk get pushed by other hunters. I have an advantage, and so I don't worry about the competition — I think competition brings out the best in me. But to your point, elk hunting is hard. You are signing up for hard work. You're literally going to be elk hiking, not elk hunting, so you'd better be familiar with your equipment and your backpack and be ready to put the sweat equity in, because elk are very nomadic. They have four legs to our two. They weigh six to eight hundred pounds. They live in the mountains year-round. They can smell, they can see, they can hear, and something's trying to eat them every day. Nothing's trying to eat you, Tom — nothing's trying to eat me. When I go get my next meal, I'm going upstairs to my kitchen. They may travel six or seven miles just to get a drink of water or find their food source. So they have a physical advantage, and they have home-turf advantage. It's fun to match wits with them. But when you choose to go archery elk hunting, you're really limiting your effective range to hopefully fifty yards and under, and you're getting as close as possible. But you're also rewarded, because you get to hunt them while they're in the rut, during their mating season, while the bulls are screaming and making bugles, the cows are in estrus, and there's competition for breeding rights. It's truly magical, spectacular — once you hear your first real bugle in the wild, it'll make the hair stand up on your neck. It's an incredible sound. They're incredible animals, and they live in amazing landscapes. Honestly, Tom, they live in places I'd probably never go if it weren't for an elk hunt — I really wouldn't find a reason to go that deep into those landscapes otherwise. So elk hunting is about chasing adventure. It's about trying to secure food for your dinner table and knowing where your food comes from. And it's also a discipline of, okay — I owe it to this animal to be in shape, I owe it to this animal to be able to make and decipher ethical shots, and I need to know how to break it down and get the meat back to my truck and in a cooler as fast as possible. So it's a marathon, it's a grind, but it's also something that could potentially change your life — because it certainly changed mine.

Dan's First Elk and Becoming a Bowhunter

Tom Rowland: Yeah, I see that. Now, how did it change your life? When did you start elk hunting?

Dan Staton: So I shot an elk when I was twenty years old with a rifle, in my home state of Washington, five minutes into the hunt. We didn't know what we were doing — we ended up getting that entire elk out whole, and we were in pretty deep. To this day I still don't know how, because you don't pack an elk out whole. We got it on a trailer with a four-wheeler and off-roaded, and it probably did some illegal things — I don't remember, it was a long time ago, but we definitely got the entire elk out whole. Then we hired some mobile butchers to show up at my dad's house, and they butchered it right in front of us, hung it up. When I saw the table just chock-full of elk meat, sky-high, I thought — why? Because I'd killed deer, I'd grown up hunting, but I'd never killed an elk, and this was like ten times the meat, and the rack was huge. Then I found out they bugled, and that if you had a bow, you could hunt them while they're bugling. That's all it took — the next year I became a bowhunter, all in, and I've never looked back. And it's funny, I didn't kill an elk for five years bowhunting after that. So I had five minutes of success and then five years of cutting my teeth, like your son did, and it was the best. I'd never want to change that, because every year I'd sit down, look at myself in the mirror, and think — dude, I tried as hard as I could, I hunted for an entire month and didn't kill an elk, what do I need to do to get better? That would drive me year-round to do all these crazy things to get better and learn more. And, man, I might have shed a tear on that first bull I finally killed five years later, because I'd worked so hard for that moment.

The Same Obsession in Permit Fishing

Tom Rowland: Dude, I know exactly what you're talking about. When it happened for my son and me this year, we were both crying — it was one of the most emotional things ever. It's the same thing. I spent about a year and a half, maybe two years, fishing almost every single day trying to catch this fish we call a permit. A lot of people say it's the most difficult fish to catch — I don't know, but it's certainly that way if you don't know much about the fish, which is what I didn't, kind of like you with elk. I'd see them, I'd throw at them, but I had no chance of catching any. Just like you, I kept asking questions, keeping my mind open, trying to figure out what I was doing, whether I could do something better, whether there was a way to have some success. And similar to elk hunting, in permit fishing you could throw a live blue crab on a spinning rod and they love it — that's great, but for whatever reason I didn't want to do it that way. I wanted to catch one on a fly, which would be similar to shooting an elk with a bow first — when you have zero experience, you know nothing about the animal, and you go try to shoot it with a bow without really knowing anything about shooting a bow either. So there was this whole process of learning, and that's what I went through with the permit. It was very emotional, and then it became my favorite fish, because I was having success with other species but no success with this one. Because of all the work I put into it, it became my favorite fish by far. Then I became proficient at it, just like you were talking about — it's one thing to get lucky and catch one, but how do you catch them repeatedly, how do you catch more than anybody else, and how do you catch them for your anglers as a guide? That became another challenge, and all of those challenges became an obsession, and I see the same thing with elk hunting. Now what I love almost more about elk hunting than any type of fishing is the physical requirement, because I love working out and I love training for something — like training for a marathon, and then running that marathon and trusting your training, running at a pace you've never run before but your training says you should be able to do it. And, man, how rewarding is that — you just did something you didn't think you could do. In elk hunting, it's like that at every turn. That was our little inside joke between my sons and me this year — every time you think it's going to get easier, it gets harder. We'd be hiking around looking for elk and think, okay, once we start finding them, it'll get easier because now we'll know where they are and we can just hike in. But then it would get harder, because now they're up there and you've got to go up there too. But you had this confidence of, well, I know I can do that — I've been training for this for eight months, and I can hike that mountain fast, I can get across that area before they see us. There's this physical world that has to be part of your tool chest in elk hunting, and I know that's close to your heart — you're Dan, the fitness man. So I want to talk about your fitness background and how you apply it to elk hunting. What is your fitness background?

Dan's Fitness Background

Dan Staton: Well, I've been obsessed with fitness since I got my first weight set when I was about twelve years old.

Tom Rowland: Was it plastic and filled with concrete, like mine?

Dan Staton: I wish — I used a set like that at my buddy's house in junior high. But what really did it for me was when I was about thirteen. My parents were building a house, and we had to move in with friends of theirs who had a basement — in modern terms, kind of like an Airbnb — that we rented out. In their basement was this immaculate weight room, and the guy who owned the house caught me messing around in there and said, if you want to learn how to do this properly, I can show you. That whole summer he dedicated his time to training me and showing me how to do it, and looking back, he actually knew quite a bit. The first thing he did was figure out how many calories I should take in, and got me on supplements — this was a long time ago, man, I'm forty now, but I remember taking creatine and meal replacements and all sorts of stuff. That summer I packed on twenty pounds of good size heading into eighth grade. People noticed — confidence went way up, I got a starting position in football, and I wrestled really well. It kind of changed my life's course right then and there. I understood that if I put the work in, did the research, and was willing to sacrifice, I could get what I wanted. So I was hooked on fitness at a very young age, and became a personal trainer right out of high school. In fact, that's how I afforded college and grad school — being a trainer and working for health clubs and managing gyms. Long story short, I ended up owning my own gym for over ten years, helping people. I've been a strength and conditioning guy for a long time, and it just doesn't get old. Fitness is a way of life for me, my wife, and our family — we have a gym on our own property in the backyard that we built, and there's just no excuses. We've made it a way of life.

Tom Rowland: I love it. So you're a wrestler too?

Dan Staton: You know, I look like a wrestler, and I did wrestle for a few years and did really well. But in high school, the first day of wrestling practice, I broke my ankle, and when it healed up I quit and went into snow skiing instead — and chasing girls. So I kind of wish I'd kept wrestling. Did you wrestle?

Tom Rowland: Yeah, I did. There's this funny thing I've noticed about people who are super obsessive about outdoor activities, especially fly fishing and bow hunting — there's wrestling in their background for some reason. They don't have to be an NCAA champion or anything, but they wrestled for a few years. I find that all the time — when I meet somebody who's a really good fly fisherman, or really good at anything outdoors, if you ask them, usually they say, yeah, I wrestled all through high school. I don't know what the draw is, but wrestling is kind of like physical chess, and elk hunting is very similar, as is the type of fishing we do in the Florida Keys, where you're thinking a couple moves ahead, like a game of chess with the fish. I think wrestling draws an obsessive, type-A personality anyway, but it's a sport that lays the foundation for a lot of things, probably including elk hunting and fly fishing. Anyway, the gym you started — it looks like a CrossFit gym. Did you have a CrossFit gym?

From CrossFit Gym Owner to Full-Time ElkShape

Dan Staton: Yep. I ran that gym for about twelve years. And honestly, I hated CrossFit before I owned a CrossFit gym — I despised it, thought it was the dumbest thing ever. But technically I was an early adopter — we opened in 2008, and it was a fun ride for us. I think the reason we ended up selling the gym is that you get to a point where you need something new, something fresh. I was hardly running it anymore — it was just a business — so I was able to sell it and do ElkShape full time. But the gym we built here, yeah, it's a shop — functional fitness, free weights, a couple of assault bikes, skiers, rowers. We've got sixteen-foot-high ceilings, so we can do rope climbs, plus dumbbells, kettlebells, medicine balls, sandbags — enough to not get bored, and to mix it up and have fun with it.

Tom Rowland: I'll send you a video of my backyard when we're done — I've got all the same stuff in my driveway. I've built it up since about 2008 with friends and people who come by, and it's free, but we do a little donation every year and go buy whatever — ski ergs, assault bikes, rowers. I've got a thirty-foot rig that looks like something out of a CrossFit gym, but it's grown. My wife has been very patient with it, but one day she looked out the window and said, "That's funny, that thing used to be over that way" — and those infinity rigs, you can just keep adding on. We kept adding more and more, and now it's like thirty-five feet long. But that's as big as it's going to get.

Dan Staton: Dude, I like that. Yesterday I was doing a workout with two of my buddies, and my wife had four of her friends over, and I thought, what's going on here? If you build it, they will come. We're not monetizing it — like you, I like that donation idea once a year, because I've been thinking we need more pieces to accommodate everybody.

Tom Rowland: That's how it happens — when you've got six people and only two assault bikes, there's only so many workouts you can do, and people say, let's buy more. If everybody kicks in two hundred dollars, you can get whatever you need. I got really lucky and bought a bunch of old rowing machines for about a hundred dollars a piece — a college was upgrading and just letting the old ones go. A lot of them needed work, but you can replace every part on those things, and I learned how to go through them and make an old one basically new again. That donation thing is good, and people are plenty happy to pay it — two hundred dollars twice a year is cheaper than two months of a CrossFit membership. So they're happy to do it, and your place grows, and then you've got all the stuff you need. It's not going to be giant overnight, but it will grow.

Dan Staton: Ours is pretty insane — it's forty by thirty, and it's already pretty full. I do think having a community matters, and my goal is to have the fittest neighborhood in my area and change people's lives. But I am a little jealous, Tom — I can just picture you walking out in the humidity, doing a couple of stretches, and you're already warmed up and sweaty, working out outside. We get snow.

Tom Rowland: You can leave some stuff outside up there. Down in the Keys you can't leave anything outside — not an Olympic bar or anything — it'll rust into the ground in about two weeks. This particular setup is in Tennessee, where I spend a lot of my time along with the Keys. In Key West you've got to be really careful — anything that isn't powder-coated and covered in oil is going to rust terribly, including your boat. It's just a whole different environment. But yeah, the community aspect of it is huge, and you've got a whole community built around ElkShape too. I'm interested in how you decided to sell the CrossFit gym and go into ElkShape full time. We talk a lot here about following your passion — people wanting to quit their job to become a fishing guide, or open a tackle store, or become a professional photographer. Where was ElkShape at the moment that gave you enough confidence to make that jump?

Building the ElkShape Brand

Dan Staton: That's a good question. I think you have to be a little calculated about it. I love the advice to chase your passion, and that all sounds good on paper, but most people are pretty leveraged, and that's why they're stuck in their job. If you're okay with delayed gratification, it could work out — running a gym was never really lucrative, in my opinion. If I'd wanted to make as much money as possible, I probably would have gone into consulting or managing several big-box gyms, which I'd done in the past. When I opened that CrossFit gym, I didn't even take a salary the first year — I lived off savings, lived with my dad. It was humble beginnings, but we grew it and developed systems. I've got a master's in exercise physiology — I wish I'd gotten one in business instead, because you learn a lot from the school of hard knocks. But I also had a background in the hunting industry. Back around 2007 I inked my first magazine article — there wasn't social media back then, you were a writer, you took photos and submitted articles. I did a few for free, then started getting paid, and then had several writing opportunities, and I'd always bring that fitness component into hunting content. That became my niche, and it led to other jobs in the industry, from videography to contract editing. In 2010 I started a website called train2hunt.com with a business partner, who was also my business partner in the gym — so we ended up with two gyms and train2hunt. Eventually it came down to not being able to serve multiple masters at once. We decided everything was getting thirty-three percent of our attention, and something needed to get a hundred. So we split it up — he took train2hunt, I took the gym, we closed the other gym, and went our separate ways. When we did that, I bought the domain elkshape.com, because my passion is elk hunting — not sheep hunting, not getting guys ready for crazy sheep hunts worldwide. I'm an elk-hunting kind of guy. I'd always heard people talk about wanting to "get into elk shape," and I thought, man, it's way easier to just stay in elk shape. So I started ElkShape in 2013 as basically a blog with articles, a website, and a small YouTube channel where I'd answer questions, do Q&As, and show what I was working on. I started the podcast a few years later. I really got serious about ElkShape when I just threw an idea out there — in one of my first podcasts I said, hey, I'm thinking about doing an ElkShape camp, here are the dates, come down, we'll do a whole weekend, I'll charge a couple hundred bucks. The next day I put the link up, and it sold out instantly. So I did the camp, executed it, it went well, threw out another one, it sold out again. One thing led to another, and I found myself back to trying to serve two masters — ElkShape was growing fast, and I was tired of running the gym even though I wasn't running it much at that point, so I decided I wanted to sell it. Selling a business isn't simple, at least it wasn't for me — I went through a couple of buyers who couldn't get funding or changed their minds, but eventually I sold it to the right guy who genuinely loved the people and what we were doing. That gave me the opportunity to try doing ElkShape full time, instead of doing it from nine p.m. to midnight every night as a side hustle. It was amazing how much more I could do when I woke up and just did ElkShape all day — podcast, YouTube, content creation, all of it. It just grew and grew. I told my wife I'd give it a year, and if it didn't make sense on paper, I'd go get another job or start something different. I haven't had to do that yet. But I'll say this, Tom — probably the most important thing I want to share is that I'm not a money chaser. I haven't been that way since I started elk hunting. I'm more concerned with having the time and autonomy to do what I want to do. We're pretty disciplined with our finances — I don't have any debt — and I'm just here to have a good time, help people, and not worry about chasing dollars. I'm worried about how many elk seasons I can have on this earth while raising good kids, teaching them about Jesus, being a good husband, and serving others.

Getting Out of Debt and Staying There

Tom Rowland: Nice. How have you managed to be completely out of debt at forty?

Dan Staton: It started back when we first got married — we'd been married twelve years now. My wife and I didn't even share a checking account at first, I don't know why, but that's just what we did. When she got married, she had a car payment, student loans up the wazoo, and a couple of credit cards, and I noticed she'd get letters from the bank about overdrawing. I'd never overdrawn in my life — I just kept a pulse on how much money was in there — and I started kind of making fun of her for it. She took it pretty personally, and rightly so, because I was kind of being a jerk. So we had a come-to-Jesus meeting and got a hold of some Dave Ramsey material. I'm not going to say he's the magic bullet, but I like some of his principles, so we started doing his debt snowball, the baby steps. It didn't happen fast — we weren't making much money — but it was pretty cool when we paid off the first credit card, which took months. Then all that money we'd been putting toward it went to the next credit card, and the snowball really is a real thing. We paid off credit cards, cars, and school loans, and we were finally on the same page, communicating, and we brought our checking accounts together, which was huge for us. That was probably eleven years ago, and it wasn't until we were maybe thirty-eight or thirty-nine that we paid off our second house — we have two houses, one in Idaho and one in Washington. The Idaho house I own with my dad, and we paid that off together — that was huge, kind of a legacy piece, a cabin I want to pass on to my kids. Being disciplined, you'd be surprised — if Dave Ramsey had me on his show, he'd probably say, "Wow, that took you guys a long time," not "wow, you did it fast." There were ebbs and flows, ups and downs, but we decided from the start to be on the same page. I have a narrow focus, Tom — I don't have a lot of other interests, so it makes it pretty easy. We don't have it all figured out, we're still on the journey, but no debt is where we envisioned it.

Tom Rowland: That's awesome. And don't you bring finances into your ElkShape camps a little bit too?

Dan Staton: Yeah, I'm very transparent about money. I think people are afraid to take their financial clothes off in front of others. I do these camps with fifty guys — I've got one coming up in Wisconsin — and I'd bet most of them make more money than I do, but I'd also bet I have less stress than they do. I put my numbers out there, show them what I make. We used to do the old-school envelope system with Dave Ramsey — stacks of cash, putting cash away every month for tires even though we didn't need new tires yet, because we would eventually. That kind of stuff really pays off. Hunting is expensive, and I don't want people going into debt to get boots, a brand-new bow, and a bunch of elk tags. If you want to hunt your best, your finances have to be dialed in at home. You can't be stressed out — you and your spouse have to be on the same page. So at these camps, I bring in a financial guy to help talk some sense into people about how to create a hunt budget, how to say no to all the new gadgets and gizmos, how to make a plan to get those things over time, and how to pay down debt. We don't get too deep into investing.

Tom Rowland: That's such an important part of this lifestyle, by the way. You see it with fishermen too — some guys are making plenty of money, but they go way too far in, spending way too much time on it and not enough at home. A guy who's your best customer for a few years and then you never hear from again, because he got divorced or his business went down — he just went too far in. If you want to be really great at something, you have to develop a plan for consistency so you can do it for a long time, because you're not going to be great at bow hunting or fly fishing in five years — this is a long process, and you learn more every year. So being consistent, and especially being on the same page with your wife, since there's so much time devoted to this — what do you talk about at your camps regarding that?

Staying on the Same Page With Your Spouse

Dan Staton: Yeah, I let everybody know that I don't have it figured out yet either.

Tom Rowland: Me either. But I'm trying, and I'm getting closer and closer to being on the same page with my wife — we just celebrated our twenty-six-year anniversary not too long ago. So we do have some things figured out, but there are times where it's clearly been a little too much, and it's time to be at home — which is where I want to be anyway, with my kids. But I'd like to know what you tell your people, since you say you don't have it figured out yet.

Dan Staton: Well, I always give the disclaimer — hey, I'm not giving marital advice, but I am going to go over best practices, things that have led to some success, because I'm gone a lot too, without a doubt, and there's a price, there are trade-offs. Communication is like they always say, but let me give you an example of communication that isn't fun but is a necessary evil. In my world, I'm putting in for elk tags and other tags for different species, and those draws run from January until nearly July. So when we first got married, I had to show her a separate account and say, there's ten thousand dollars in this account — this is monopoly money, this is what I use to put in for these tags. You could spend a lot more than that, but that's what I'd worked up as a single guy before I met my wife, putting in for every state. A lot of times they take your money and hold onto it, and after the drawing, if you don't draw, they give it back with a little interest, minus a small fee — you needed capital to put in. Nowadays it's a little easier, since most states don't require full payment up front and just charge your card after the draw. So the first thing was communicating to her, hey, I have this account and this is what it's for. But also, when I draw a tag and make a hunt plan, I used to hide that information until the last second and then spring it on her — hey, I'm gone next week, heading to Wyoming or Montana. That doesn't work. Now I go right upstairs to our shared calendar, an old-school calendar, and write down the dates I'll be gone, even though I know she'll roll her eyes about "another elk hunt." I like to let her know way in advance what my plan is. Even though I'm about the most simple guy to read — I just want to go elk hunting, you shouldn't be surprised — she's still surprised. So I still go write down all my dates and check with her, of course. And I make sure I don't do certain things I used to. I used to be a diehard shed hunter before it was cool, spending March through April humping the hills looking for elk and deer sheds. I don't do that anymore — that's time away from the family, and I've sacrificed it. Scouting in the summer, I used to go get boots on the ground where I had tags. I don't do that anymore either. Summer is for family camping trips and as much time as possible at our Idaho cabin making memories. I've learned through trial and error what I need to do to fill their love tanks — my wife's love language is definitely words of affirmation first, and quality time second. So I have to commit and invest in that, and I'm selfishly doing it too, because it means I can go hunt my best when I'm out there, not distracted or in a fight, because I've done that before and it doesn't work well.

Tom Rowland: Yeah, or feeling guilty the whole time, like you really shouldn't be there.

Dan Staton: It's terrible.

Tom Rowland: That's super good advice. How old are your kids?

Dan Staton: Five and seven.

Tom Rowland: Mine are all grown — twenty-three, twenty-one, and eighteen. One of the things we found as kind of the next step is learning how to turn the things you want to do into something that enhances your family life instead of taking away from it. Maybe it's shed hunting — maybe your five- and seven-year-olds, in a year or so, will want to get out and hike those hills with you and enjoy it too. Now something that was time away from the family becomes quality time with your kids. Or maybe they're not ready for hunting or fishing at all, but they still want to be out in the boat, or shed hunting, or just doing something together. I used to take my kids fishing and they wouldn't even touch a rod — they'd play in the livewell the whole time, and some people would get upset, like, "we're out here to fish, don't do that, you're killing the bait." But that was the cheapest entertainment we ever had — a dozen shrimp in there and they couldn't take their eyes off it, learning all kinds of things about science and the ocean while we had a great time. Just enjoy it for what it is. So that might be the next step — maybe it's shooting your bow in the backyard. Do your kids like to do that? Does your wife like to do that? It might seem like it has nothing to do with hunting, but really it has everything to do with it, from your perspective — you've got to get good at this. Could you make that a family activity, so it's an enhancement instead of a takeaway? The same is true for fitness, and I'd love to know how you think about that, given your busy schedule — where do you place your fitness, and where do you find the time for it?

Making Time for Fitness

Dan Staton: Oh, man. Most people should train first thing in the morning, because you know and I know something's going to happen during the day that compromises your workout — your boss asks you to stay late, or your wife asks you to grab groceries after work. Even if you're not feeling it, just get out there and do it — it's the best feeling when you're done, and I guarantee your day will be more productive and you'll have more quality time with your family in the evening. So I think you should win the day right out of the gate. That said, I don't personally train in the mornings unless I have to — I try to use training to break up my day. My routine is to get the workout done in the middle of the day, hit that afternoon slump with some endorphins instead of getting sluggish like a lot of people do, and I feel like I hammer even harder after a workout than I did in the morning. I like to train five or six days a week — rest days, what's rest? I don't really know, but I take it easy on Sundays, and on days I'm not in the gym I try to stay active and use my body and have fun. I'm not training to compete at CrossFit anymore, so I'm in and out in an hour, tops — get in, get out, that's my philosophy. I train with my wife quite a bit now, and I love working out with her — she's an absolute beast. But that's kind of what I tell people: get it done first thing, sacrifice your sleep if you have to. If you stayed up late, that'll fix itself eventually — if you keep working out in the mornings, you'll start going to bed earlier naturally. But that morning routine is hard to beat.

Tom Rowland: I'm all about it, man, totally on the same page. That's how it became for me too — I wasn't necessarily a morning person until I started fishing, and fishing is kind of a morning activity, so I got in the habit of waking up early. Then when I realized I needed to be in really good shape to do my job better — I noticed an absolute one-to-one ratio between the shape I was in and how many days in a row I could go out on the water, which meant I was getting paid more and taking care of my family better — that's when I started training really hard. The question became, when am I going to get this time in, since I had little kids at home? Are you going to train during dinner, bath, and bedtime? That might be good for your body, but it'll be terrible for your relationships, and it's just not sustainable. So even though we're leaving the dock at six, seven, or sometimes five, the only time that isn't a takeaway from my family — the only time that's an enhancement — is if I create it by getting up earlier. That's my time, and I determine how much of it I need. If I want to train for two hours, I get up two or three hours earlier, because you've got to warm up, cool down, get breakfast, take a shower, and get out the door. If I want to train for an hour, I get up earlier for that. It enhances every area of your life. A lot of people are out of shape, and their wife is encouraging them to work out, and they choose the wrong time to do it — "I'll go after work." For a while your family's happy, you've lost fifteen pounds, you look better, you've got more energy — but you're missing the most important part of the day for your family, and it's not sustainable. It'll never last, and I think that's why a lot of people fall off — because it starts to seem like you like the gym more than being at home. So I'm all about the morning, one hundred percent. And something always comes up, especially as your kids get older — a dance recital, a wrestling practice, a lacrosse game — and you don't want to miss those either, because those are the most important things. So I'm totally on the same page, and it's cool that you talk to your camps about that.

Going All In on ElkShape

Tom Rowland: Well, the transition to ElkShape — it sounds like you had momentum going, but was there a point where you just felt like, I'm going both feet in, all in? I guess that's when you sold your gym. Do you ever look back on that decision?

Dan Staton: No. It was pretty calculated, honestly — I'd tested how ElkShape was doing for a couple of years with the podcast, the camps, social media, and YouTube. So it was calculated, but there was definitely a point where it was, like, well, here we go, let's see. I'm the kind of guy who'd rather bet on myself than bet against myself — I can control my energy, my effort, my attitude, so I was going to go all in and see what God had in store for us. If this is what he's calling us to do, let's do it. After that there was no second-guessing — it was just grinding it out day in and day out, and the momentum built, not overnight, but the same way it did when we paid off our debt: if you consistently get the reps in and keep working hard and hustling, good things happen. I always tell people hustle is my love language — that's how I know you love me, if I see you hustling. I can tell you're a hustler too, Tom, not just in business, but in working out, fishing, and hunting — you're the kind of guy who puts his best foot forward and gives his all. All it takes is all you've got. That was my mindset going into ElkShape. Will I do this forever? I don't know. I'm certainly enjoying it — there are ups, there are downs, good things and bad things about it. But at the end of the day, I just want to go out hunting, raise a family, and be a man of faith. If I can keep doing this, I'm going to ride the wave as long as possible. But I also understand that if my time comes and this is no longer a viable thing, I'll make adjustments and figure out the next step. For now, this is what I love doing.

Tom Rowland: Well, you've got it set up so nicely that you're not heavily leveraged. It's like discipline equals freedom — that's the whole thing. You've spent all these years disciplined with your finances, and now you have the freedom. You don't want to do this anymore? You don't have to. You can do whatever you want. That's the perfect example of it.

Getting Started With Archery

Tom Rowland: I know you're busy, so I want to finish up with a few questions. One I get from fishermen who want to dip their toe into elk hunting: okay, first thing I need to do is get a bow and start shooting it, see if I even enjoy this, the same way I approach fly casting — I want to practice, practice, practice, get better at it. But if you're living somewhere without a bow shop nearby, what advice do you give? If you've got a bow shop down the street, those guys can help you get the right bow, adjust it, help with your shooting. But what about the guy who doesn't have that? How do you suggest getting into shooting a compound bow?

Dan Staton: That's tough. I don't know many people who don't have a bow shop within a couple hours' drive — I've traveled all over doing these camps in the US. But eventually you do need to get to an archery shop, because here's the truth, and you can probably appreciate this as a guide: I bet you've seen plenty of fly casters who are self-taught and picked up all kinds of bad habits along the way. Please don't do that. That's what I did — I got a bow at a pawnshop and taught myself how to do everything the wrong way, and it took a long time and a lot of coaching to fix those bad habits. So I'd encourage anyone to find a coach near them, pay the man, and get the fundamentals — those never go out of style. As for getting your hands on a bow, somebody near you probably has a compound bow sitting in their garage that they're not using — put it out there on Facebook, or check Facebook Marketplace, or Craigslist, or just network, and somebody's got an old used bow. Get one that fits you, get a coach or watch some online coaching, and start there to see if you enjoy it. It's definitely similar to fly casting — it's an art, but there are fundamentals that are the common denominator, and if you nail those early, you'll enjoy the process a lot more.

Redefining What Success Looks Like

Tom Rowland: Nice. When you're talking to all the ElkShape fans at your camps, is there one thing that sticks out — something more people get wrong that's actually an easy fix?

Dan Staton: I don't know that people truly appreciate how much time elk hunting requires. If you're only able to do it a couple of days a year, you have to set your trajectory and your goals accordingly. I think a lot of people believe you have to kill something to have success, and I could not disagree more. It's a win — a victory — when you're brand new to elk hunting and you get within bow range and hear their interactions, even if you blow it, they smell you or see you draw back and run off, or you screw something up and miss. That's still a huge win. So I think identifying your expectations going into a hunt matters — most people don't take the time to stop and define what success truly looks like for them. They think it's "I killed a bull elk or I'm a failure," and that's the wrong way to approach it. Just like with your fishing clients, you have to be in it for the long haul, understand the trajectory, and know it's going to be a series of small wins over the years — it could take five years, like it did for both me and your son. It will be rewarding, but it's a journey, and you're going to keep learning. So I like to help people identify their expectations, because I see it at every camp — people have unhealthy expectations of what success is supposed to look like, and I try to push them in the right direction.

Daily Habits and Discipline

Tom Rowland: Love it. Now, it's become very clear from listening to your podcast, and even more so on this conversation, that you're a hustler — you really go after it, whether that's in the gym, elk hunting, or with your family. What are a couple of things you do daily that you feel contribute to the success you've had?

Dan Staton: Well, like you said, discipline equals freedom — I believed that my whole life before I ever heard those words come out of Jocko Willink's mouth. I've always believed discipline wins. I'm a very disciplined, probably boring individual, and my wife tells me how intense I am — I don't mean to be, but that's just who I am, maybe it's the wrestler deep down. I'm an intense guy, and that's why I seek out intense workouts and intense pursuits like bow hunting. But as far as my day goes, I set it up the night before — I always have a to-do list on my desk, and at the end of the day I jot down what the next day is going to look like, kind of a musts-and-shoulds list. So I don't wake up wondering what to do — I already know what I need to work on. While the coffee pot's brewing, I get into the Word, because this life is short, and we weren't put on this earth just to make money, pay taxes, and die. A lot of times I wake up before everybody else, since it's an enhancement for me — I'm up, I'm solo, and once the coffee's ready I get some quiet time in. Then we're swinging, we're hitting, we're getting all the work done we need to get done. We always try to break the day up with a midday workout, get some sweat going, get outside, get some sun and some vitamin D. I just try to have the perfect day, every day, and I know what that looks like for me — I'm productive, I'm getting workouts in, I'm eating healthy, I'm getting spiritual wins, and I'm spending time with the family in the evening. That's the secret sauce, man — perfect days, every day.

Technology That Changed the Game

Tom Rowland: Nice, I love it. On a different note — since you've been elk hunting, is there one innovation or piece of technology that's really changed things for you or for elk hunters in general?

Dan Staton: Yeah, one hundred percent. When I started elk hunting, we had to read actual paper maps — when you knew you were headed somewhere, you'd get online or make phone calls to order physical maps and study them. That's gone out of style, but honestly it's still cool to do, especially with topo maps. Then some GPS units came out, but their screens were pretty rough — not super advanced, but at least you could communicate with your hunting partners. Fast forward to today, and two things have been huge for me: on my phone, I have onX with all the maps downloaded, so I always know where I am, where public and private land is, I can read terrain features and track my progress. And I have a Garmin inReach that lets me get ahold of my wife every day. I used to hunt solo back in the day before those existed, and my wife was fine not hearing from me for weeks at a time — that's not going to fly anymore with kids in the picture. So the inReach and onX have changed the game — I always know where I'm at, and I can always communicate with loved ones.

Legacy

Tom Rowland: Nice, love it. Now the last question — if you were to leave a legacy, which you will, what do you want that to be?

Dan Staton: Oh, you're just going to save that for the last question? That's so hard, man, that's tough. I don't know — I feel like the older I get, the more I want to see people live the life they want to lead, and I don't know that they're doing that. I'm constantly encouraging folks to pursue their passion. I don't want to speak in cliché, but this thing is short — go find a way, even if it's a side hustle at the beginning, to monetize what you love in a way that doesn't water it down or make it muddy. Don't do that. But if there's a way for you to get paid to play in a way you love, go for it and figure it out. You're smart — find a way to turn your side hustle into your main hustle, or whatever you need to do. My legacy would just be as the guy who sold hard work — that's what I'm selling. And I want people to adopt it and go live the life they've always wanted to.

Addressing the Criticism From Matt Rinella

Tom Rowland: Man, that's awesome, I like that so much, and I feel the same way. We talk a lot about following your passion, because people look at my career and say, man, that's awesome, you're able to do what you wanted to do, how do I do that? Now, recently — I know it wasn't such a popular thing with certain people in the hunting community, and you got a little bit of heat over that with Matt Rinella. I didn't really want to bring it up, but it's right there next to the passion topic — you're telling people they should have a side hustle and go after what they love, and then you received criticism for it, which I didn't think was accurate or fair, though that's his opinion. How do you sit with that? Does it change anything for you, the advice you give people about doing what they love?

Dan Staton: No, it doesn't. That Matt Rinella stretch was tough for me — somebody texted me and said, hey, you should listen to this podcast, this guy's talking about you. I said, whatever, and he told me to skip to a certain timestamp and hit play. I was in the gym with my wife — we were actually finishing up work on our gym — and we played it over the big speakers and listened. I could tell my wife was really upset. I knew the guy didn't actually know me, and he'd never researched a thing about me — he kept citing an article one of his buddies had written, which was mostly inaccurate, bordering on defamation. I was kind of surprised, honestly, because I thought I was doing something super positive — I've always been about getting people to change their lives, work out, take care of their nutrition, and prioritize faith, then family, then fitness, then elk hunting and career, in that order. I didn't think I'd have a hater. Since then, I've realized I do have some people who don't like what I'm doing, though it's a small percentage compared to how many support me. That's nothing new — I'm forty years old, I've lived on this planet, I get that there's jealousy or envy or whatever you want to call it. I'm not saying Matt Rinella is jealous of me, but the guys who host that podcast asked if I wanted to come on right away, and I was just too hot — I knew I'd say something I'd regret, so I turned it down. I did my own podcast instead, talked through it a bit and played some of his clips, but honestly I feel sorry for him. If you're that sour or disgruntled about other people hunting, you're kind of being selfish and trying to keep it all for yourself, and that's sad to me. Does he have some valid points? A hundred percent. Does social media have some negativity? Absolutely. But pointing the finger at me specifically — I don't think he knows me at all, and I don't think he did the research. If he were to dig in, I'd invite him — if Matt Rinella wanted to hang out with me as soon as elk season's over, I could help him have more success, because I don't know if he's putting in the work that I am. Did he shoot more arrows than I did? Did he break as much of a sweat? Did he e-scout as much, spend as much time in the mountains? He's actually a transplant from Michigan to Montana, so at one point he was a non-resident of Montana himself, and I don't think a few years of residency qualifies you to get mad at other people for wanting to share and enjoy the same resource. Again, he's got valid points — he's really smart, way smarter than me, he's got a doctorate in something. It is what it is, he said what he said, and I think he did some good — he stirred the pot and got some people to reflect. So thank you, Matt Rinella, because I look in the mirror and I know I hunt for the right reasons. If ElkShape disappeared tomorrow and there was no social media, I'd still be out there with as many elk tags as possible doing my thing. I do think some people need policing, but all in all, things happen for a reason, so I still look at it from a positive angle.

Tom Rowland: Yeah. Well, I think no matter what you do, there are always going to be haters, and you can't please everyone. So you really have to hone in on what's important to you and what your mission is. Especially if you're getting really positive reinforcement from the people you're helping and truly enhancing their lives — that's what you should be doing. And some people, for reasons completely unknown to you, maybe even unknown to them, just don't like it. You're never going to please them, and trying to please them just risks upsetting the people who do like what you're doing, because now you're not focused on your mission anymore, on what's important to you. So I don't know — you're always going to have people who aren't happy with what you're doing, and that's a hard thing to wrap your head around, especially when you feel like you're doing great things and here's this guy who doesn't like it. I can imagine, and I really didn't intend to bring that up, but when I heard about it, I thought, Dan's just going to keep doing his thing, that's not going to bother him one bit. But it probably does bother anyone when somebody publicly says something inaccurate about what you're doing. But I think you're doing awesome, man. I like what you're doing, I like your podcast, I like the ElkShape camps, I like the fitness and the whole clean-living approach, and doing the best you can while you're here. I love it — I think you're doing awesome.

Dan Staton: Appreciate that, yeah, man.

Where to Find ElkShape

Tom Rowland: Well, if anybody wants to follow ElkShape, listen to your podcast, or watch your videos, where do they go?

Dan Staton: Well, I'm part of your squad, man — I'm part of the Waypoint team, so ElkShape's on all the podcast platforms. If you're not into podcasts, you should be — I just like podcasts, Tom. You can consume them however you want while doing other things, and it seems like no matter whose podcast it is, there's always some nugget that resonates with you. So I love podcasting, it's here to stay. We do YouTube pretty well too — a couple of videos a week — and I'm on Instagram, Facebook, and at elkshape.com. But, man, I just appreciate finally getting to meet you and talk with you today — I knew this day was coming, and I finally got here.

Tom Rowland: Yeah, man. Well, I'd love to share a workout with you one of these days, that'd be fun, and I'm sure you could teach me a lot about shooting my bow, which would be very helpful too. So what part of Idaho is it that you go to?

Dan Staton: I actually live in Spokane.

Tom Rowland: Oh, I know — but the property in Idaho, what part of the state is that?

Dan Staton: Oh, yeah, it's right by a little town near Coeur d'Alene, in St. Maries.

Tom Rowland: Okay, yeah. I don't get to that part of Idaho much, but my boys are in Bozeman, and when I was a trout fishing guide, I spent a lot of time over in Swan Valley, Idaho, on the South Fork of the Snake River. That's where we were, so I know that area of Idaho a lot better than up north. But maybe we'll meet out there one of these days — we'll get together sometime, man. I appreciate you being on. I love talking to you, and I'll be listening to ElkShape and trying to become a better elk hunter myself.

Dan Staton: Thanks, Tom. Appreciate it.

Tom Rowland: Thank you. Alright.