Success Favors the Prepared and Informed – Reflections from the Hunting Blind by Addison Taylor

Hunting has many similarities that can be related to business and life, and specifically in our line of work in the farmland investment industry. The importance of “Taking the Time it Takes so Ultimately it Takes Less Time”, or in other words, being able to put in the time to do the research, and having the experience and knowledge of key industries and geographies  can be the difference between success and failure.

As I reflect on the last few months and over the holidays, my mind mostly goes back to the lessons I learned about success and how to define it from my time with family and in the outdoors. In my family, the tradition of spending time together in the great outdoors brings an abundance of fond memories and lessons learned that can be both applied to life and passed down to the younger generation. Some of my fondest memories, both growing up and as an adult, come from time spent hunting with family and friends. I was blessed to have grown up in a family where hunting, as much as hard work, was a key part of our family life and a large part of the quality time we spent together. My appreciation and approach to hunting, like many aspects of life, has changed over the years as I gained more knowledge from my own individual experiences and from the influence of others around me. As time passes and my hair becomes thinner, I find that spending time in God’s creation provides me with clarity and an understanding of how to apply many of the lessons from success and failures to the rest of life.

Being prepared to act and having everything in place to take advantage of specific opportunities when they arise or having the ability to anticipate market changes increases the likelihood for success. This is most often the difference between closing a deal or otherwise wasting precious resources and time. Much like hunting a location that was great the prior week on public land, the following week it is covered by more aggressive competition that can make it impossible to be successful. Success in farmland investing comes down to being prepared and understanding what is required for success. Having the knowledge to accompany the preparation leads to more opportunities and allows you to identify and close a deal before the neighbor or competition can react or even get lucky by being in the right place at the right time as the opportunity passes you by. 

Over the past five or six years, much of my hunting has been centered around taking my sons and helping them gain the same appreciation that my Daddy passed to me. With this in mind, in addition to my own pursuit of becoming a better hunter, I’ve found that being prepared and gaining as much knowledge as possible are major factors in being successful. Most all the hunters I know start their due diligence long before the opening day of hunting season, and they do this to be in the best position possible to be successful by accounting for all the things in their control, as well as making the best attempt possible to account for the things outside of their control.

In hunting, as well as many other aspects of life and business, there are factors outside of your control. The actions of other hunters around you, the weather and what a wild animal will ultimately do are mostly outside of our control. However, we can create plans and scenarios where we have the highest odds of success given these factors. For example, we use trail cameras to learn patterns of behavior, sometimes all the way down to a specific animal and how they react certain times of the year and under different weather conditions. We account for wind and base our hunting locations around the prevailing wind direction. Some decisions are made based on what a neighboring hunter may do, such as the amount of hunting pressure and the location and the manner in which they hunt. Many hunters also have specific hunting spots that are only used when the ideal conditions exist, and these locations may go multiple seasons without the ideal conditions. However, when the conditions are right, these locations become the best locations for success.

Possessing tacit knowledge that other hunters in the area lack can’t be gained without personal experience and is not easily passed to others. Tacit knowledge of an area or specific location is difficult to gain but can prove to be one of the most valuable aspects of being a successful hunter. These insights, only come from experience and cannot be gained from looking at aerial maps, weather apps on a smartphone or from word of mouth.  Insights are often the difference between success and. Success when I take my sons hunting isn’t defined as bagging our quarry by any means necessary without regard to ethics or safety, but to make sure we are prepared and in the right place at the right time when the opportunity comes, while passing this discipline on to my sons in the process. If we aren’t “successful”, I try to make it a point to explain why I think we weren’t and ask them what we could have done within our control to have possibly been more successful.

Preparation and knowledge lead to success in many aspects of life. Overtime, experience and Insights add significant value.  As I try to instill the love for the outdoors into my children, I think it is also important to share with them the life lessons we can all learn from time in nature, and how to apply it to our business and everyday lives.