Ep. 801: Mindsets of the Whitetail Masters: Dan Infalt

the show many times in the past. He is a well known figure in the world of diehard deer hunters. He is the founder of the Hunting Beast, Hunting Beast Gear and just one of the really impactful teachers within the deer hunting world in the last decade plus. He comes from Wisconsin. He has a unique way of hunting public land deer, pressured deer. He's really popularized a lot

of hunting strategies around focusing on buck betting areas. All of this has been covered in detail in our past episodes with Dan, but today we're gonna get a different look at how he does things. We're gonna run him through this mindsets of the whitetail Masters set of questions that we've already talked with folks like Ben Rising, Andre Dequisto,

and John Eberhart about. We're gonna dig into the nitty gritty of how he makes decisions, how he deals with the diversity, how he looks at the importance of hard work and mental toughness and decision making and all of these kind of behind the scenes processes that lead to success. So this isn't you know, what's the rub mein? What's this great man? How do I shoot a deer? This is how do I make good decisions? This is how do I apply myself to a challenge. How do I

deal with things not going my way? There's a lot to learn from successful deer hunters on these topics, and Dan Infelt proved to be a perfect example of this. I really enjoyed our chat, highly recommend you tune into this one, and I think let's just get right to it. I will give you one quick reminder. Our new White Tail Edu educational video series is live now on the meat Eater Clips YouTube channel. So it's meat Eater Clips Clips.

Heading over there. Subscribe, You're going to see our new kind of everything you kind of need to know about the foundations of deer hunting video series that me and Tony Peterson are doing. We've had an episode out about tracks, We've had an episode out about what dear feet on. There's upcoming episodes on rubs and deer poop and scrapes and travel and weather, all sorts of stuff like that.

We try to break it down in a kind of back and forth conversational matter, but also drillian with specific examples, illustrations, graphics, trying to make this stuff as understandable as it possible can. So go to the media to close YouTube channel, subscribe, check out those videos. Thank you, and now, without further ado, my chat with Dan in Fault all right here with me back on the show is mister Dan in fault. Welcome back in.

than our usual ones. We've had some really good chats over the years. We've dove deep into, you know, all of your tactics when it comes to beds and you know, aggressive mobile hunting. We did one of my what would You Do series a few years ago where I gave you a bunch of hypothetical situations.

So that's my long winded wind up. But where I want to start dan is at the top with how you view success. So to start out, how would you define or how do you define deer hunting success.

I'm gonna wrap it up. I'm just there's only a few weeks left in the season. I'm done, and within a day I'm looking for another state. I'm back in it. You know, It's it's very difficult. So the success thing really is kind of measured in the chase. I think I'm unsuccessful if I fail on getting onto deer and i can't find a target and I'm not actively seeing sign. If I'm going out, I'm finding sign, which is almost

always you know. I do get in some situations out of state where you get in dead properties or something you not find this stuff, but usually through moving around I can. But for me, if I'm in the chase, if I have a target and I'm going after it, it's success. I mean that that's my goal. Is My love isn't killing. My love is the chase. And I think it started out killing, you know what I mean

when I was younger, and I think everybody does. I mean, you've got to get that kill under your belt, and then you gotta get the next one and the next one to prove that you're somebody, because that's the way you know your mind works. But once you have those kills and you've proved it to yourself, then it becomes about your own game, your own and it becomes more about the focus on the hunt, not really the kill.

that hope that I'm going to get that animal. But I have no problem shooting a mature gear that scores eighty inches if it's got a big, heavy beefy rack with a couple of points. I just love mature bucks. So it's not really I don't really have goals. I just, you know, I don't shoot things that I don't feel as a challenge and I just like mature animals. But I will hold out for something bigger if I've seen something that I really want.

I've had some very bad had issues with my eyesight the last few years and have a very hard time focusing on my pins and my target at the same time, and it's led up to some very bad hits and I've lost some animals, and that is one of the hardest things to overcome, especially if you're open about it and you put videos out and you show people that stuff, because you take a lot of ridicule and it's hard.

But I feel like people have the same problems and you don't want them to go through what you're going through and think they're alone, so I show it. But it is I am human, So you look at that as a failure. And two seasons ago I got through a season where I think I wounded it was either three or four big bucks and didn't end up killing an animal, and I was really, you know, not feeling good about that. That was definitely a failed season that

I'd like to take back, you know. So that's been one of my biggest goals recently, has just been fixing that problem.

I had a real nice buck come in at ten yards and I drew back the bowl early because he was coming up close and I was kind of skylight, and when the buck got into range, I had to bowl back and I was locked on the pin on the on the bowl and I had I was following where I wanted to shoot, and I was just waiting for him to turn in quarter to a quarter away from me a little bit, and as soon as he did, I shot, and I watched my arrogo right where it belonged,

and we couldn't find that deer and I was like, I shot it right behind the shoulder. It was quarter and away. It was a perfect shot, and we couldn't figure it out. And I went back and I watched a video footage and the deer literally quartered to me instead of away from me, and I shot it in the shoulder, but my eyes saw me hit it behind the shoulder. And my new fix it after that was to talk to some people that I knew, that I know are way better shots than me, who have had

similar problems. One of them was Jay Trudell, and he had the exact same vision problem. And I sat down with him and I wanted over everything that was going on, and he said what he did was he knew exactly what the problem was. He said, when you're pulling that bowl and you're focusing on that pin, you're losing sight

of the deer. I said, yeah, absolutely, I says, it's getting blurry, and he said that you know at that point, you know, you got to focus on the deer until it's time to shoot, and not the pin, and then when the deer gives you a shot, focus on the pin. I started doing that, but I was still having issues because at the time I'm looking at the pin, I'm not looking at the deer because of my eyesight problems.

So struggling through that, I went to other people for help, and Steve Pagel, the guy who used to own Forge Bows. He's retired now. He's a really good friend of mine, and he knows bo's and equipment and like nobody else, and the hunting that guys went through is incredible, and all the different people he's mentored. He's like, there's a little hidden gem in hunting that not many people know about. But the guy's just an incredible man. I went to him.

I went over to his house and I sat down and I talked to him about the problem, and he ended up telling me that he thought I should put a lens in my peep, and he got out a bunch of equipment. And he's retired, but he still has a bunch of stuff laying around. And he had me look through a bunch of lenses and do it through sites and holding a pin out in front of me and stuff. And he went through all the lenses until it got to like the worst one, and then it

worked for me. And right now I'm shooting at lens and the peep and I'm really feeling good about it. I can see my target, see my pin, so really in this case. Usually I work out all my problems internally, you know, if it's hunting related, if it's anything to do with the deer or the woods or the terrain, I worked that out internally. But when it comes to equipment, I'm not the greatest with equipment, so I always rely on people who who are you know, and I go to most people.

it forced you to change something. Is there any failure like that over the past decades that stands out to you? Is is like an inflection point for you?

and I change it. Is I would go into the season with some crazy plan that I'm going to go to some island in the swamp that's three and a half miles back that I know there's going to be deer their opening date, there's oaks there, there's no other oaks around. Nobody's going to go back that far. And at you know, late fifties, I don't quite make it, or or I get out there and I'm so dead, I can't do anything. So I do have to realize my limitations, and I have put that in perspective, and

I just don't do that anymore, you know. And I do realize that there are some people who can't. You know. I still make long trips and stuff, but I'm just saying that some of them that I was doing, we're far beyond my realm, you know. And and I shouldn't have to go and attempt those, to fail them, to find out that I can't do them, and waste an opening day.

exits and stuff to learn specific things. And I learned some stuff that really opened my eyes, confirm some thoughts, but really locks and things in And one of the things was that a lot of these betting areas that are really good seem to have like a two week peak period when the mature bucks are in there, and they're not there every day obviously, and they bet a lot shorter than I thought, you know, like they're only there a couple hours and they get up and they move.

I think they're still there, but they're in a different bed or whatever. But I found that the timing is pretty exact. I mean you really got to, you know, do your detective work and figure out when they're in a certain area. What I mean by detective work is really looking at why are they betting here? Is it because of acorns? Is it because of security cover? Is it you know, are the rubs from early season or the rubs from late season or they from rut Are there?

No rubs? Are the you know what sign do I have to tell me what time frame that deer was there? Like if you look at the deer I shot two years ago. It was a real monster buck I've been chasing for years that lived in a marsh and I could never kill the thing because it always lived in cattails. It would never come out in daylight. And I had a couple of trees where I could hunt it. But he had figured me out there, and I kept going back at it, just trying to figure out what am

I doing. There's got to be some kink in this thing's armor. It was a seven and a half year old deer, and I had hunted it for quite quite a few years, and I ended up going out there one day and just looking through these cattails for some sort of way to hunt off the ground or something, you know. But the beds were kind of scattered and a whole bunch of areas. It was difficult, and it was difficult to find areas where the cattails were low

enough to shoot. But I kept trying, and I stumbled into something that I had seen before but never really took notice. It was this little island. I want to say it was thirty yards long and ten yards wide that just had some willow brush on it. And uh, I walked over and looked at this willow brush and there had to be twenty or thirty beds behind it, and all the willowbrush was torn up with rubs, and that particular willow brush, you know, it had to be

that buck that was doing it. But that particular willow brush had those beds under the willow brush and they'd lose their leaves in October, and I'm thinking all this had to be you know, in that early season portion. I mean, that deer would have to be here quite a bit and just that little window. So because of that,

that's how I killed that buck. As I ended up hunting and base on that sign, you know, I figured out that timing and that in correlation with those trail cameras telling me about timing and timing is is kind of a weird thing. You know. You see a lot of these guys will say, you know, I'm saving my best spots for rut, But what do you just hunt rut bucks? You just you know, every one of these spots has different timing and they're not always about rut,

and rut can be really hard to hunt. I mean, if it's a funnel or it's something like that, you know, Okay, yeah, it's probably a rough spot. It's probably best for you to save that for rut. But there's a lot of spots where they're really good in say September or early October, or even January or February. You know, however, your season goes if you time it right and if you don't

burn it out before that time comes. So knowing that timing was, you know, getting more in tune with that timing was a real key for me recently.

can't find that kink in his armor? How do you think through that challenge?

But I still have a plan every single day. What am I going to do today? Like today, I'm thinking, okay, I got to get home, I gotta do this with you. Then I got to do some video editing. I want to go check this spot out if I have time, maybe fifteen minutes. But every day I do something which I think your average person would think that that's nuts. But that's the level that gets you to success. I'm having,

if you know. But during the season precisely. You know, I'll run across a big buck or I'm hunting when I knew about but I'm not getting them in my spots, and I'm you know, I'm moving through. I'm specifically thinking about where I see his sign, where it could be coming from. I'm sitting in a stand waiting for that deer to come out thinking already thinking about, well, if he's not here, what's he doing? Where's he at? Where

didn't I look? One of the things that really goes through my mind a lot is where has nobody else looked? How are people thinking about this? Because and we've had a conversation before as they're in their overlook spots. But that's constantly going through my mind is where are those spots? Where aren't people looking? I'm trying to scratch off how are they missing something? Because if that buck's alive out there,

there's definitely some spots people are missing. Because most of what I'm hunting is heavy pressure, so and even when I get into private, ironically it seems to align with the way I hunt in public, only exception being they're

not as well behaved. They kind of do wander around a little bit more they don't get precisely locked into positions, you know, with less pressure, but they still do kind of seek out those spots where you rarely go, maybe even more so because I think on a farm or a property that's got like ten guys on or they really got a plan or to go through it the same way, perk the same all the time, where it's not different minds going in or from different directions, you know.

So yeah, I mean it's constantly trying to pick apart word that thing is at. Where is he in daylight? You know, where's that little window that he's moving in daylight on any given day.

you just describe trying to figure out. But you know, the morning of the hunt or the afternoon of the hunt, and I'm trying to decide, well, which of these possible tree options that I've set up, or which of these zone or whatever might be. That's always something where I'm debating back and forth. Can you talk me through what your internal dialogue looks like when you are making that level of decision.

should be at that time frame. And what will stop me from going from to point to number one or a or whatever you want to call it, is that maybe I have to walk past number three or something. It's gonna be a balance of the best spot versus the damage, and it's going to be a balance of

what the wind's doing. So I'll look at the wind, I'll look at my best spots for that wind, and then I'll say, well, can I get to that spot and still hunt this other spot, or am I going to screw that spot and sometimes I'll go round about way to get there. Another thing I do is I don't go directly to those spots that you know I'm I'm actually in the mindset that a lot of times those deer might just be off somewheres right and you

could go along. So what I'll do is I'll I'll plan out a path to my tree stand that is

not a straight line like everybody else would take. So I scout my way, and I try to plan for an extra hour and take a path in and I look for hot sign because I find I find if you find big tracks, you know, big rubs that are fresh coming in and out of a transition where it's probably betting that's way better than going to a spot where I scout it and I think a dear is going to come from the finding that sign that day is a better option. So it'll stop me from getting

to my spot. But then I'll just hunt that spot again the next day if that spot's unsuccessful.

And the most successful people I know are people that play it like a game of chess, where they're always working on an animal, but they have that belief that they're gonna kill that deer every day. And I try to mimic that with myself. But the people I know who have a really positive attitude that never question what they're doing. And that's hard to that's hard to give people advice to do, because you can't tell somebody, well, you got to have positive attitude. You have to always

believe because you've got to earn that. You got to gain that, and that's not something you can just buy on a shelf, which is how people like to solve their problems nowadays. But it's that that's that inner confidence. I think you can make a lot of the stakes and I see that. I see a lot of people that are making mistakes that I made years ago, and they don't see it in themselves, but they're still highly

successful because they're so motivated. It's the want thing. If you've got a guy who's got skill, that don't mean crap if he doesn't want it, because he'll never be motivated to go then extra mile. He'll never be motivated to really, you know, pound those stands. He won't if he doesn't really, really deep down want it. He won't be making that plan like I'm doing. He won't be sitting at work in a meeting listening to somebody talk about a chart while in his head he's thinking about

where he's got to be that evening. You need that, and you'll only get that to really, really deep down wanting it. And those are the people who are successful, even if they're lacking in skill or lacking in some places, they will have success just because they want it so bad.

what I want to do, you know. I'm I'm sitting around thinking about I've never looked at that property. I've got to get over there. It's part of my day's plan. You know. It's like it's like if I don't hit that this week or next week, it's not going to get hit before season because I got to hit this other property of the week after that. And I'm just constantly looking at stuff, and you know, like this time

of the year. The other day, I spent walking a mile back to an isolated like a grassy prairie type thing that went up against a swamp and glassing a mile stretch of that, you know, sitting in the middle of it with optics watching for dear to come by. I don't see any tracks of anybody else being out there. I don't ever see anybody else glassing when I'm out there parking there. You know, I think right now, everybody's worried about fireworks, They're worried about picnics, they're worried about

their old lady. They're worried about going to the beach. I'm worried about my next white tail. And that's what that work is about. It's not necessarily physically damaging, damaging work. I mean, it's it's it's just you have to be involved, you have to keep pushing it, and I can't tell you, gosh, it's got to be you know, probably fifteen percent of my biggest bucks came from just one day, on a whim. I got up and went out to field and glass and found some giant buck in a place I wouldn't

have been hunting. And I might not have killed in that year, but I was hunting that deer, even my biggest one. I had a sleepless night in July and I just got up went shining because I couldn't sleep and just found this buck in a place I would have never hunted. And then I hunted him for two years, had two years of enjoyment hunting that deer, and ended up killing him because of one night in July when

I couldn't sleep. And what if I did go out that day, that probably still got a deer, but probably not that one. And that's the biggest deer I ever killed. Yeah, you know, it just takes one day, one scout, and that's what you gotta have the mindset. You gotta have that one scout. Yeah, it probably won't do much for you, but it might be the day that locks it.

able to push through whatever might be. Can you can you talk to me about what that looks like for you. Can you define mental toughness in the context of hunting and how that factors into success.

the hunting. I really love what he's doing. But if he wounds a deer or in one case, a bear, he'll quit hunting for three years. It'll bother him so much. Where whether it's unfortunate or not, I can get over that. It's not like I like it. It's not like I want that to happen and do everything I can to keep that from happening again. But I know I got to move on. There's nothing I can do to fix stat.

And I think if you're gonna dwell on things, if you're gonna let things bother you too much, it's gonna really affect your success. That's just how it is.

you're freezing. Nothing's going right? How do you how do you handle those moments? Like what's what's the internal dialogue like for you on that day when it's November thirteenth and you haven't seen a good deer for fourteen days or whatever it might be, how do you how do you push through that? How do you talk yourself through that?

to me what other people would say or whatever. That's all gone away. I don't know why, but I can hunt one hundred days in a row and it does not bother me one bit. And really, I think I've come to peace with knowing that when you're hunting mature bucks, it doesn't matter if you're seeing small bucks. It doesn't matter if you're seeing those. They're not even the same animals like you saw a peasant or a rabbit. I'm just worried about those mature bucks. You got to know

there's not a lot of them out there. If you're hunting pressured public land, it's not like like hunting a managed property or release, where you know you're going to see some good bucks that you know on a daily basis. You can go on public land, you can see nothing for ten days. And then for some people they're like, if I can't even see a dough, how am I going to kill a mature buck? But I'm hunting in places, and if you're doing it right, you probably are too.

You're probably not even going to see anything unless you see a big book, So you're going to see a lot fewer of the small stuff. If you're putting yourself, you're locking yourself into a position where that deer would work. You get further away from the food, further away from the you know, the major activity places where people expect deer, because that's where mature books go back to height because they start to understand human pressure, and you just see

less deer. So you've got to be able to go ten twenty days without seeing something. So I don't know what it is, but I got something in me where I can go thirty days and not see much of anything and go out on day thirty one and really

believe I'm going to kill that deer. I think what it is is, I think I really I've done it enough times that I'm real confident that the idea I have, the plan I've come up with, the spot I'm going to hunt is the spot, and then when it fails, I'm able to talk myself back into the next spot is the spot. And fully believe, even though I've went thirty days without seeing a deer, that day thirty one

is the day. And I've kind of come to the mindset that when I hunt down a property where I put my pressure, those deers stay away from my stinky ass and they go over to other spots. And it's like I wear out that property and you kind of know that he's going to be, you know, over on this other end, or you know, if he's not over here, I kind of follow the sign. And if you're following the sign, I mean, I'm not hunting a property that doesn't have rubs and stuff. If it doesn't have sign

of big bucks, he's not there. I'm moving on all deer leaves sign. You know, I can't tell you how many times people will ask me, well, the property that I hunt, I can't find any big rubs, you know, should I go deeper? If you're not finding big rubs, he's not there. All deer rub you know, so maybe he comes in later, maybe he doesn't, but you got to be able to move around, you knowing a lot of these people just don't get that kind of philosophy.

But the only way to get that experience, and the only way to get that confidence is to go out and get the experience which you just described, which requires you to do the hard work that you described earlier, and all of that builds. It's like a snowball effect exactly. And if you continue putting that relentless hard work and keep on going out and going out and doing that, eventually it gives you the confidence to then go and do that more often to feel good about it right right exactly.

You think you now do everybody, even when you're they're doing better than you, you still believe that you can do it.

flow through those trees. I think most of the people that tell me you can't hunt with you can't hunt the wind because of swirling winds don't understand how to set up. Because maybe you can set up where you want to set up, But if you look at the forest and you look at how the wind's going to go based on the thermals, where the water is, where

the openings are where the wind's going to swirl. And from years and years of checking that with milkweed and looking at that and hunting it, I've kind of come to the conclusion I can kind of look at that stuff and figure out my best scenario. And that doesn't mean I don't get winded, but it gives me a better advantage. But I do believe that just about everybody out there, probably ninety ninety five percent, believe there's something they can do, whether it's rubber boots, whether it's taking

a shower. I think everybody. You know, some people believe fully that if they were scent lock, it'll just completely eliminate their scent whatever. I don't believe any of that. I believe you cannot fool a deer's nose, and I think everybody else thinks you can.

my money at different things. Right, We're all the same. But the guys who are successful, whether it's private land, where it's public land, no matter what they do, all spend there all day long daydreaming about deer. And they

spend a lot of time scouting. They spend a lot of time working on the land, whether they're just working on food plots and having the exact right position that they'll have a stand in the right position, or they're working on how's this deer going to move so I have the stand in position, or how is it going to go through this land versus pressure. Everybody is thinking about the deer, how they're going to move, how they're going to get them. And if they're not, they're not

having success. So I'd say everybody that is having success is probably a thinker. They're probably a guy who really contemplates what they have to do. They're probably not followers, you know. You see that, and I'm sure you see this, Mark, ninety percent of the people out there on hunting boards or watching this this what we're putting on right here, or following us or followers, they say, I like what Mark Kenyon does, or I like what Dan Infaul does.

I want to be just like him. I'm going to do everything the way he does, which very seldom works. You've got to build your own, you know, you know style, You've got to learn what you got to learn and believe in yourself. You take tidbits from me, you take tidbits from Mark. What can help you? And you say, yeah, but that Dan's crazy about scent control, He's nuts. So I'll take Mark's approach and scent control, and maybe Dan's got something with his betting stuff. You know. But everybody

can help you, you know. But you see that the guys who have the greatest success are not followers. They usually have a unique style of their own. You know, they're usually something unique about them, you know, whether it's you know, look at Eberhart up in Michigan. Guys pretty weird about some things, but you can't argue his success because you know he's doing something different than everybody else

in the public land in Michigan. You know, every one of these guys that's highly successful, way above the norm, is always a very unique individual who thinks about things in a different manner.

side path here. But when you think about how you are are spending your money on deer hunting, I'm curious a little bit because you've got an interesting kind of viewpoint. Given the fact you have worked on gear, have a gear company. I know your tinker. So I have two questions related to this. First off, what is the single purchase that you can think of of one one hundred dollars or less that's most positively impacted your hunting enjoyment.

So one purchase of less than one hundred bucks that made the most positive difference for you that you can remember.

time that it hurt me, it also helped me. It helped me, uh not miss my mark to a tree, you know by twenty yards where you just blew the bedding were out. You know, it helped me make a path to those spots. I mean those apps. You know, everybody argues about crossbows and all that crap, and these big debates. ONYX has killed more derd than anything else in this world. It's put people back in these marks, back in these hills. It's a deadly tool.

and then you have spent some extra money. If you had to give it all up except for one piece of top tier equipment, so you could keep one thing that was like best of the best, all the other stuff you had to return and just have like the very entry level stuff for everything else. What's the one thing you would want the top tier thing to be.

be out for a long time. But I don't even like that because it's something that could make noise and it's kind of not natural to.

to stand. I will hunt the ground when I have to, and a lot of times I do have to because these deer tend, these mature deer tend to gravitate to areas that don't have huntable trees. So I could hunt on the ground, but I really rather not give up my stand. But that's really all I have is a stand. I don't take anything with me. I have a pocket knife.

I guess you say, my milk weed. I love having milk weed and being able to see the air currents when the wind stops, because it's always different than when it's blowing. When you feel it dead, com is always a different current than windards of breeze. So milk weed is something I would not want to give up. Where I think people think they can use powder and the prices do nothing when there's no wind. Milk weed does it follows the air current?

sure every deer hunter gets on this billboard. What would you put on there?

that's what I want to do. My goal has always been to, you know, make people better hunters, well, making hunters better people, and that's always been my goal. I don't know how I put that in print, but I'm sure if I spent the night trying to figure it out, i'd plan something I could put on a billboard.

the nuts and bolts. But if you're into that kind of thing, come check that out.