Ep. 44: Spike Camp - Preparing New Hunters
In Pursuit
MeatEater
4.9 • 6.8K Ratings
🗓️ 11 June 2026
⏱️ 38 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
On this episode of In Pursuit, Rich Froning recaps the first Mayhem Hunt Prep Camp in Colorado.
From a 24-hour mountain bike race in Amarillo straight into 11 days in the mountains, the crew breaks down what it took to build a camp designed around real backcountry preparation. The episode covers mock pack outs, land navigation, reading topo maps, shooting bows and rifles at distance, gear lessons, altitude workouts, glassing, bushwhacking, and the reality of what it takes to get an animal off the mountain.
Rich and the crew also share stories from camp, lessons learned from the athletes who came out, and what they would build into next year’s version, including overnight backcountry work and mock hunts.
Fitness matters, but being ready in the backcountry takes more than being in shape. This episode is all about preparation, toughness, and learning the skills before the stakes are real.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This is an IHeart podcast. |
| 0:02.6 | Guaranteed Human. |
| 0:04.1 | If you do off-season work, you know it beats up gear, scouting, land work, |
| 0:08.4 | crawling through briar patches, brush, weather, long days. |
| 0:12.0 | First Light fieldware is built for all that. |
| 0:14.7 | No shortcuts. |
| 0:15.7 | Purpose-built, durable. |
| 0:17.3 | Hard-wearing where it needs to be versatile, where it matters, |
| 0:20.3 | it supports the work that earns the |
| 0:22.6 | season check out first light's new fieldwear collection at first light.com that afternoon we had |
| 0:30.1 | one one hundred pound bag two seventy five and three fifty so we did a mock pack out where they had to |
| 0:36.5 | get to the pin with this this day, we kind of |
| 0:38.6 | would help them, you know, like when they would start to kind of either make a mistake or, you know, forget about something. We would kind of, hey, look at it from this perspective, maybe, you know, mess with your topos. If you can't read topo, use the 3D, which is huge from Onyx. Yeah. And so we guided them a little bit to their spot. |
| 0:56.7 | Which is fair because they're literally packing out an animal and trying to get to a place that they never had been before. Yeah. And I was trying to like communicate that like to be. This isn't it really how like hey. Yeah. Like normally you start at zero. You go to where you're killing and you go back to your truck. |
| 1:12.4 | So you're very familiar with where you're going. |
| 1:17.5 | Out here, the stakes are real. |
| 1:20.7 | Effective preparation starts with fitness, but it requires so much more. |
| 1:25.6 | This show explores the tools, knowledge, resilience, and skills needed to be ready when it matters the most. |
| 1:32.7 | Join me, Rich Broning, as we apply the decades of wisdom I have gained through training and competition to hunting in the backcountry. |
| 1:41.4 | This is In Pursuit. |
| 1:44.3 | Brought to you by Mountain Ops. |
| 1:48.4 | In collaboration with Mayhem Hunt. |
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