Latest / Wired To Hunt Podcast / Ep. 917: Becoming an Old School Hunter with Donnie Vincent

Transcript

Ep. 917: Becoming an Old School Hunter with Donnie Vincent · Wired To Hunt Podcast

• 0:01
  Speaker 1: Welcome to the Wired to Hunt Podcast, your guide to
• 0:04
  Speaker 1: the White Tail Woods, presented by First Light, creating proven
• 0:08
  Speaker 1: versatile hunting apparel for the stand, saddle or blind. First
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: Light Go Farther, Stay Longer, and now your host, Mark Kenyon.
• 0:19
  Speaker 2: Welcome to the Wired to Hunt podcast. This week on
• 0:22
  Speaker 2: the show, I am joined by big game hunter, outdoor
• 0:25
  Speaker 2: adventure and filmmaker Donnie Vincent to discuss his personal journey
• 0:30
  Speaker 2: to embrace an old school approach to hunting and what
• 0:34
  Speaker 2: the rest of us might be able to learn and
• 0:36
  Speaker 2: enjoy by embracing something similar. All right, welcome back to
• 0:47
  Speaker 2: the Wired to Hunt Podcast, brought to you by First
• 0:51
  Speaker 2: Light and their Camo for Conservation Initiative. Today we are
• 0:56
  Speaker 2: going old school, and we're doing that in a couple
• 0:59
  Speaker 2: different ways. And one I've got a guest today who
• 1:01
  Speaker 2: I haven't had in the show in a number of years.
• 1:04
  Speaker 2: Big mistake on my part. But back in I don't know,
• 1:07
  Speaker 2: probably like twenty fifteen, sixteen seventeen, somewhere in that window
• 1:12
  Speaker 2: which feels kind of like yesterday, but it's actually ten
• 1:14
  Speaker 2: years ago now. Donnie was on the show in the
• 1:17
  Speaker 2: past talking about some of his previous work, stuff like
• 1:20
  Speaker 2: his films like The Rivers Divide, I think another one
• 1:23
  Speaker 2: called Who We Are. He's been a tremendous filmmaker in
• 1:29
  Speaker 2: the hunting and outdoor world. He has a wildlife biology background.
• 1:33
  Speaker 2: He has traveled the world, been to some of the
• 1:36
  Speaker 2: wildest places, has done some of the most wild, fantastic
• 1:39
  Speaker 2: things you could ever imagine as a hunter an outdoor person.
• 1:43
  Speaker 2: But he's also a terrific storyteller and I think a
• 1:47
  Speaker 2: representative of our hunting community. And he's someone who's taking
• 1:51
  Speaker 2: kind of a unique approach to doing this. While many folks,
• 1:56
  Speaker 2: myself included at times, have leaned into all the time technology,
• 2:00
  Speaker 2: all of the tools, all the latest greatest trends within
• 2:03
  Speaker 2: the hunting world, Donnie's gone the other way. He has
• 2:06
  Speaker 2: leaned away from that, and he's gone more and more
• 2:09
  Speaker 2: quote unquote old school with his approach to hunting and
• 2:13
  Speaker 2: his equipment and his his mindset and the trips he
• 2:16
  Speaker 2: goes on. And all this came to mind to me
• 2:19
  Speaker 2: and I was reminded of all this with the latest
• 2:22
  Speaker 2: film he released. This film on the Donny Vincent YouTube
• 2:25
  Speaker 2: channel is all about kind of an old school deer
• 2:28
  Speaker 2: hunt and deer camp in Illinois that he did hunting
• 2:31
  Speaker 2: from the ground without a blind camping out in a
• 2:34
  Speaker 2: TP you know, a hot tent, hunting with a muzzleloader,
• 2:38
  Speaker 2: not having a bunch of trail camp pictures of the
• 2:40
  Speaker 2: bucks he's after, but just getting out there and seeing
• 2:42
  Speaker 2: what's there, and that was.
• 2:44
  Speaker 3: Refreshing and kind of inspiring.
• 2:47
  Speaker 2: And many of you folks might have you know, heard
• 2:49
  Speaker 2: my episodes we did earlier this year exploring ways to
• 2:52
  Speaker 2: bring adventure back into our hunting seasons. I think that
• 2:57
  Speaker 2: today's conversation is going to echo some of that and
• 3:00
  Speaker 2: kind of harken back to some of these themes ways
• 3:03
  Speaker 2: to get back to what hunting is really all about.
• 3:06
  Speaker 2: I've felt the need personally to re explore some of
• 3:09
  Speaker 2: these things for myself, and I have to believe that
• 3:13
  Speaker 2: I'm not the only one who's feeling that a little
• 3:17
  Speaker 2: bit of our modern hunting culture and technology and obsession
• 3:21
  Speaker 2: over certain things and the social media effication of everything,
• 3:26
  Speaker 2: it's changing the hunting experience in a way that I
• 3:31
  Speaker 2: personally am not fully comfortable with. And I'm still working
• 3:34
  Speaker 2: out what that means for how I hunt and how
• 3:36
  Speaker 2: I do these things and how I talk about these things.
• 3:38
  Speaker 2: I'm still personally figuring it out for myself, but I
• 3:42
  Speaker 2: feel like Donnie's perspective and thoughts on this could be
• 3:46
  Speaker 2: helpful to me as I try to sorrow that out,
• 3:48
  Speaker 2: and I think for many of you maybe as well.
• 3:50
  Speaker 2: So this conversation I thoroughly enjoyed it. Donnie has some
• 3:54
  Speaker 2: opinions and perspectives on you know, the way to do
• 3:58
  Speaker 2: things or the equipment. To you is that, of course,
• 4:00
  Speaker 2: might be different than many other folks out there, and
• 4:02
  Speaker 2: that's okay. We can all approach this in different ways.
• 4:05
  Speaker 2: Some of us might want to go more old school,
• 4:08
  Speaker 2: some of us new school. Some of us want to
• 4:09
  Speaker 2: use certain technologies and tools, others maybe not to each
• 4:14
  Speaker 2: their own right. But I think hearing Donnie's ideas on
• 4:17
  Speaker 2: this front, if for no other reason, is going to
• 4:19
  Speaker 2: be good food for thought. It's going to be something
• 4:21
  Speaker 2: for all of us to chew on. Regardless of what
• 4:23
  Speaker 2: decision or what way we decide to go about these things.
• 4:26
  Speaker 2: I think thinking long and hard about how we do
• 4:28
  Speaker 2: what we do is an important exercise.
• 4:31
  Speaker 3: So that is the plan.
• 4:32
  Speaker 2: Today We're going to old school talking about how to
• 4:35
  Speaker 2: embrace this old school approach to deer hunting and bring
• 4:38
  Speaker 2: a new mindset to our year as a hunter. And
• 4:41
  Speaker 2: I think you'll I think you'll be inspired and refreshed
• 4:44
  Speaker 2: by this.
• 4:45
  Speaker 3: That said, very.
• 4:47
  Speaker 2: Quickly, want to give you an update if you are
• 4:49
  Speaker 2: listening to this when this comes out, which.
• 4:52
  Speaker 3: Will be June. Oh jeez, bear with me here.
• 4:56
  Speaker 2: June nineteenth, twenty twenty five is when this podcast will
• 4:59
  Speaker 2: first to be airing. As of today, when I'm recording this,
• 5:02
  Speaker 2: which is June twelfth, twenty twenty five, there is a
• 5:06
  Speaker 2: really significant update that impacts wildlife and wild places and
• 5:10
  Speaker 2: our public lands in particular, that I would be remiss
• 5:13
  Speaker 2: if I didn't bring up here today for.
• 5:15
  Speaker 3: All of you. This is really important.
• 5:17
  Speaker 2: The budget bill that we discussed two weeks ago with
• 5:21
  Speaker 2: myself and Tony.
• 5:23
  Speaker 3: Hopefully you heard that episode.
• 5:24
  Speaker 2: I brought the fact there's this whole budget reconciliation process
• 5:27
  Speaker 2: going on, which is basically a fancy word for the
• 5:30
  Speaker 2: House of Representatives and the Senate are.
• 5:33
  Speaker 3: Debating a big, beautiful bill, as I.
• 5:34
  Speaker 2: Call it, and it's got a whole lot of stuff
• 5:37
  Speaker 2: in there that's not related to hunting and fishing, But
• 5:39
  Speaker 2: what is are a bunch of things related to public
• 5:42
  Speaker 2: lands that they're throwing in. And just yesterday, so June eleventh,
• 5:47
  Speaker 2: the Senate version of the bill, the Energy and Natural
• 5:50
  Speaker 2: Resources side, came out and in that is some pretty
• 5:54
  Speaker 2: crazy stuff. We're in a big fuss a couple months
• 5:57
  Speaker 2: ago about the fact that the House of Representatives included
• 6:00
  Speaker 2: public land sales of more than five hundred thousand acres,
• 6:04
  Speaker 2: and they were doing this in a way that went
• 6:06
  Speaker 2: around the usual process for carefully disposing of maybe a
• 6:10
  Speaker 2: few public land acres and making sure those funds go
• 6:12
  Speaker 2: back to future public lands. That was a big problem.
• 6:15
  Speaker 2: It was dangerous precedent. But hunters and anglers and outdoors
• 6:17
  Speaker 2: people raise a huge fuss and we got it taken
• 6:20
  Speaker 2: out of the bill. Well, now the Senate gets their
• 6:22
  Speaker 2: take and they just released their language and it's much worse.
• 6:26
  Speaker 2: The Senate version of this bill is now calling for
• 6:29
  Speaker 2: the mandated sale of somewhere between two and three million
• 6:33
  Speaker 2: acres of public lands. They're also calling for mandated drilling
• 6:39
  Speaker 2: on the coastal plan of the Arctic National Wildliffe Refuge,
• 6:41
  Speaker 2: which we talked about last time. They're also talking about
• 6:45
  Speaker 2: bringing back this crazy proposed road called the Ambler Road
• 6:49
  Speaker 2: that would push a two hundred mile industrial corridor through
• 6:53
  Speaker 2: the wild wild landscape of the Southern Brooks Range in Alaska.
• 6:59
  Speaker 3: A lot of stuff in there.
• 7:00
  Speaker 2: There's just almost too much to even bring up right now,
• 7:02
  Speaker 2: which is a damn shame that so much is being
• 7:05
  Speaker 2: lost in the noise. But really, this two to three
• 7:07
  Speaker 2: million acres of public lands being sold through this process
• 7:10
  Speaker 2: without public comment and without us being able to really
• 7:14
  Speaker 2: influence it is really dangerous. It's the most dangerous threat
• 7:19
  Speaker 2: I have seen to public lands, probably since I've started
• 7:22
  Speaker 2: paying attention to this stuff in the last fifteen years.
• 7:26
  Speaker 2: They have the votes, they have the support, they have
• 7:29
  Speaker 2: the pathway to making this happen unless there is an undeniable.
• 7:35
  Speaker 3: Upwelling of outrage about this.
• 7:37
  Speaker 2: So if you hunt or fish, or camp or climb
• 7:40
  Speaker 2: or backpack or do anything on public lands across the nation,
• 7:43
  Speaker 2: whether you live on the East coast or the West
• 7:45
  Speaker 2: or in between, this is serious.
• 7:47
  Speaker 3: This is the red alert. This is the Code red moment.
• 7:51
  Speaker 3: This is it.
• 7:53
  Speaker 2: This is the big one. This is something we really
• 7:57
  Speaker 2: need to take seriously. So it's in the Senate right now.
• 7:59
  Speaker 2: We need to all our senators. We need to give
• 8:01
  Speaker 2: them a shout. We need to let them know that
• 8:03
  Speaker 2: we aren't going to stand for our public lands being
• 8:05
  Speaker 2: sold off for quick money grab. It's as simple as that.
• 8:08
  Speaker 2: I'm going to give you a phone number right now,
• 8:10
  Speaker 2: and I'm going to ask you, practically beg you to
• 8:15
  Speaker 2: pick up your phones and give these folks a call,
• 8:17
  Speaker 2: because our voices do still matter. We still can make
• 8:21
  Speaker 2: a difference. If you call the capital switchboard and just
• 8:25
  Speaker 2: let them know, hey, I'm looking for the senator for
• 8:28
  Speaker 2: Michigan or the senators for Rhode Island or Montana or whatever,
• 8:32
  Speaker 2: they will forward you to that office.
• 8:34
  Speaker 3: The number is.
• 8:34
  Speaker 2: This two O two two two four three one two one.
• 8:40
  Speaker 2: I'll read that to you again in a second. But
• 8:42
  Speaker 2: you just call that number. You tell them what state
• 8:45
  Speaker 2: you live in. They will forward you to those offices
• 8:47
  Speaker 2: and then you're gonna get a voicemail, or you're gonna
• 8:49
  Speaker 2: get an intern or someone, and you just leave your message.
• 8:52
  Speaker 2: It's very easy. Nobody will argue with you. There's nothing
• 8:55
  Speaker 2: to be intimidated by. But let them know, Hey, I'm
• 8:57
  Speaker 2: a hunter or I'm an angler, I live in this state.
• 9:00
  Speaker 2: I care about these places, and we are not going
• 9:03
  Speaker 2: to support the sale of millions of acres of our
• 9:06
  Speaker 2: public lands.
• 9:07
  Speaker 3: So please ask.
• 9:08
  Speaker 2: Your senators to oppose the sale of these public lands,
• 9:11
  Speaker 2: to pose the degradation of our wildlife and wild places
• 9:14
  Speaker 2: that are so uniquely special to us who here in
• 9:17
  Speaker 2: America and to those of us who hunt and fish
• 9:20
  Speaker 2: and explore these places.
• 9:23
  Speaker 3: This one is a doozy, and I hate to have
• 9:25
  Speaker 3: to preach like this.
• 9:27
  Speaker 2: I wish I could just talk about deer hunting, having fun,
• 9:30
  Speaker 2: chasing big bucks, catching fish, enjoying ourselves out there.
• 9:33
  Speaker 3: I hate that we have to talk about politics.
• 9:35
  Speaker 2: But if we want to keep these opportunities in these
• 9:39
  Speaker 2: places and these critters around, we have to engage. And
• 9:43
  Speaker 2: this is one of those absolute most important moments in
• 9:46
  Speaker 2: my lifetime ever to engage on this kind of stuff.
• 9:49
  Speaker 2: And if you care about these things too, that's the
• 9:51
  Speaker 2: case as well. So please give this number a call
• 9:56
  Speaker 2: right now, pause this podcast. If you can make this
• 9:58
  Speaker 2: phone call, it'll take two minutes. It's really easy. Call
• 10:01
  Speaker 2: two zero two two two four three one two one.
• 10:07
  Speaker 2: That's two o two two two four three to.
• 10:11
  Speaker 3: One two one.
• 10:14
  Speaker 2: If you're listening to this in the future and this
• 10:16
  Speaker 2: is going on, hopefully we won this fight. Hopefully we
• 10:20
  Speaker 2: still have our public land acres. Hopefully you can forgive
• 10:23
  Speaker 2: me for taking a few minutes out of this podcast
• 10:25
  Speaker 2: to talk about these things.
• 10:27
  Speaker 3: But I care a whole hell of a lot about
• 10:29
  Speaker 3: our wildlife and wild places.
• 10:30
  Speaker 2: I know that many of you do two, so we
• 10:32
  Speaker 2: got to stand up for them. So with that out
• 10:35
  Speaker 2: of the way, thank you, and here's my conversation with
• 10:38
  Speaker 2: Donnie Vincent.
• 10:45
  Speaker 3: All right.
• 10:46
  Speaker 2: Joining me now is the one and only Donnie Vincent.
• 10:50
  Speaker 3: Welcome back, Donnie.
• 10:51
  Speaker 4: How's it going.
• 10:52
  Speaker 3: It's good, It's really good.
• 10:54
  Speaker 2: I'm glad that we can be sitting here chatting again
• 10:57
  Speaker 2: as we're just talking before recording. It's been a while,
• 11:00
  Speaker 2: so so thanks for making this happen.
• 11:03
  Speaker 4: Yeah, I appreciate the invitation. It's uh. I figured we
• 11:06
  Speaker 4: jump on another one of these things sooner rather than later.
• 11:08
  Speaker 4: But yeah, I appreciate the invite and look forward to it.
• 11:12
  Speaker 3: Yeah, it's it's uh.
• 11:15
  Speaker 2: I've always appreciated your hunting and outdoor philosophy. I think
• 11:22
  Speaker 2: might be how I would summarize it. And we're in
• 11:25
  Speaker 2: a moment right now and it's not particularly unique, I
• 11:28
  Speaker 2: guess to right now, it just seems maybe amplified right
• 11:31
  Speaker 2: now in which it feels like our hunting culture is
• 11:35
  Speaker 2: is changing, and that might be for a lot of reasons,
• 11:39
  Speaker 2: but but something feels different. And I saw a recent
• 11:44
  Speaker 2: piece of content from you that seemed to echo a
• 11:47
  Speaker 2: different way of going about things, which which caught my eye,
• 11:51
  Speaker 2: which reminded me, hey, I gotta get downy back on here.
• 11:53
  Speaker 2: I want to talk to him about this kind of
• 11:55
  Speaker 2: stuff because I've been thinking about all this a lot
• 11:58
  Speaker 2: and so and so where I want to start it
• 12:00
  Speaker 2: is with a phrase, a little bit of something that
• 12:04
  Speaker 2: you wrote about yourself a while back. I want to
• 12:06
  Speaker 2: read it to you, and then I would love for
• 12:08
  Speaker 2: you to kind of explain or expand on this and
• 12:10
  Speaker 2: help us understand what you mean by it. All right, Okay,
• 12:13
  Speaker 2: So the other day I read you described yourself as such.
• 12:17
  Speaker 2: You said, I'm just a man who's obsessed with wild
• 12:20
  Speaker 2: places and the way the old boys used to do it.
• 12:25
  Speaker 2: So what do you mean by that?
• 12:26
  Speaker 3: What do you mean? Why are you obsessed with how
• 12:28
  Speaker 3: the old boys used to do it? What do you
• 12:30
  Speaker 3: mean by that? And what's all that means for how
• 12:33
  Speaker 3: you live your life?
• 12:34
  Speaker 4: Well, the first part saying I'm obsessed with wild places
• 12:38
  Speaker 4: is one of the things, one of the elements that
• 12:41
  Speaker 4: I think there's a disconnect today is I truly do
• 12:45
  Speaker 4: love going to the wilderness. I don't want to go
• 12:47
  Speaker 4: to the wilderness and be there just long enough to
• 12:50
  Speaker 4: shoot a boone Crockett caribou, or to shoot a boone
• 12:52
  Speaker 4: and Crockett elk and to get my picture back so
• 12:55
  Speaker 4: I can share it with people who back me, to fans,
• 12:59
  Speaker 4: to other hunter's friends, family, I truly want to spend
• 13:04
  Speaker 4: as much time as possible in the wilderness. I'm completely
• 13:09
  Speaker 4: enveloped by the weather, by songbirds, by reptiles, by the
• 13:14
  Speaker 4: game I'm hunting. It doesn't matter. I'm completely immerged when
• 13:17
  Speaker 4: I'm out there. And so that's the first part of that.
• 13:19
  Speaker 4: That's really what I meant is I love being out there.
• 13:22
  Speaker 4: And the second part of it is I think there's
• 13:28
  Speaker 4: not only a charm. You know, a lot of times
• 13:31
  Speaker 4: I think we look at old photos and we get nostalgic,
• 13:33
  Speaker 4: and it's very easy to get nostalgic and look at
• 13:35
  Speaker 4: things and remember stories that you had with your dad
• 13:37
  Speaker 4: or your buddies, and that emotion, that family emotion or
• 13:42
  Speaker 4: friend's emotion starts to kind of take over the essence
• 13:46
  Speaker 4: of the photo or the essence of the moment. But
• 13:49
  Speaker 4: I think there's a certain charm with how hunters originally
• 13:53
  Speaker 4: did it, actually chasing their food, actually chasings and skulls
• 14:01
  Speaker 4: for a slightly different purpose of you know, still having
• 14:05
  Speaker 4: them as ornaments and cabins and things like that, but
• 14:09
  Speaker 4: that being a portion of the hunt, the photographs being
• 14:14
  Speaker 4: a portion of the hunt. But how they used to
• 14:16
  Speaker 4: kind of enter into these wild places without every technological
• 14:21
  Speaker 4: advantage at their fingertips. They went into places that they
• 14:25
  Speaker 4: didn't know what was on the other side of the mountain.
• 14:28
  Speaker 4: They had maps, of course, and a lot of these places.
• 14:31
  Speaker 4: They looked at where the stream beds were, where major
• 14:35
  Speaker 4: river bottoms were, mountain tops and plateaus and things like that,
• 14:38
  Speaker 4: where there's forested regions and grass regions. They looked at
• 14:41
  Speaker 4: major demographics of ecologies and different habitats, but they didn't
• 14:47
  Speaker 4: know what was out there. And I think that is
• 14:51
  Speaker 4: incredibly charming. I think that is to actually go and
• 14:54
  Speaker 4: look around and to have that in your mind of
• 14:58
  Speaker 4: I actually have to go and scalt this place out.
• 15:00
  Speaker 4: I actually have to go, and where is the best
• 15:02
  Speaker 4: place for me to set up my tent? Are there
• 15:05
  Speaker 4: trout in that stream that I can catch and have
• 15:07
  Speaker 4: for dinner. Occasionally, Am I close to the elk? Are? They? Are?
• 15:12
  Speaker 4: They miles away? And just I think that having that
• 15:16
  Speaker 4: unknown and having that lack of technological advancement brings you
• 15:21
  Speaker 4: so much closer to the hunt and so much closer
• 15:25
  Speaker 4: to your quarry. Because back then, Mark, if you wanted
• 15:29
  Speaker 4: to kill an elk or a caribou or a moose,
• 15:32
  Speaker 4: you had to have an understanding, whether that came from
• 15:35
  Speaker 4: people that had hunted one hundred years before you through
• 15:37
  Speaker 4: wisdom or saying, hey, my dad always said, and I
• 15:41
  Speaker 4: love these things. You know, like you hear different things
• 15:43
  Speaker 4: about you know, the turkeys are gobbling, when the lilacs bloom.
• 15:47
  Speaker 4: You hear all these different timing things that old timers
• 15:49
  Speaker 4: tell you to kind of give you hints like hey,
• 15:52
  Speaker 4: morell mushrooms are growing, when oak leaves are the size
• 15:56
  Speaker 4: of squirrel ears. You know, you hear little things like this.
• 15:59
  Speaker 4: And so unless you had some someone mentoring you, like
• 16:03
  Speaker 4: you had to be as much of an expert as
• 16:05
  Speaker 4: possible on these animals to go out and find them
• 16:07
  Speaker 4: in experience and hunt them. And that's basically what I mean.
• 16:13
  Speaker 3: Why is that?
• 16:15
  Speaker 2: Why is that still important today? Why does that still
• 16:19
  Speaker 2: hold an appeal today? Because some folks might hear all
• 16:22
  Speaker 2: that and say, well, that sounds charming as you put it,
• 16:26
  Speaker 2: but maybe not terribly effective. Given the fact that we've
• 16:28
  Speaker 2: got this app and this tool and this other technology.
• 16:32
  Speaker 2: Why is that still relevant now in your mind?
• 16:36
  Speaker 4: For me, it's the closeness as I learn more about
• 16:40
  Speaker 4: the area that I'm going to hunt, learn more about
• 16:42
  Speaker 4: the animal that I'm going to hunt, and all the
• 16:45
  Speaker 4: other elements that in body, at the weather weapons that
• 16:49
  Speaker 4: I'm using, things like that gear, the I'm going to
• 16:51
  Speaker 4: be bringing. It brings me closer to the experience. It
• 16:54
  Speaker 4: envelopes me more into that predator and prey relationship. And
• 16:59
  Speaker 4: it's just the experience that I value, the intrinsic value
• 17:02
  Speaker 4: the experience that I value so much more. I'm not
• 17:04
  Speaker 4: saying that using a certain app. I've used some of
• 17:08
  Speaker 4: these things, and actually I used an app and in
• 17:13
  Speaker 4: hunting the deer of the piece of the footage that
• 17:18
  Speaker 4: we just released, the film that we just released, and
• 17:20
  Speaker 4: I looked at kind of the lay of the land
• 17:22
  Speaker 4: and how I had seen this buck before, I'd been
• 17:27
  Speaker 4: in this river bottom before, and and I was just learning.
• 17:32
  Speaker 4: I walked and looked at everything, looked at all the sign,
• 17:36
  Speaker 4: looked at how the animals were moving around. But I
• 17:38
  Speaker 4: also want to see kind of the lay of the
• 17:39
  Speaker 4: land from bird's eye view, and so I didn't have
• 17:43
  Speaker 4: a paper map of the area, so I used I
• 17:45
  Speaker 4: used an app to do so, and so it you know,
• 17:47
  Speaker 4: there's still some elements of it. But just the more
• 17:51
  Speaker 4: you can immerse yourself for me, the more intrinsic, the
• 17:55
  Speaker 4: more valuable the hunt is to me, and the more
• 17:57
  Speaker 4: unknowns that exist, more rewarding they are as they present themselves,
• 18:02
  Speaker 4: kind of like fishing a lake that's never been fished before.
• 18:05
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, What were the early inspirations for you? Like,
• 18:09
  Speaker 2: you've described some things there that I'm curious where or
• 18:13
  Speaker 2: how this kind of infiltrated your life in your subconscious
• 18:18
  Speaker 2: I'm hearing echoes of the past and what you're describing,
• 18:20
  Speaker 2: and I'm curious what those things were, whether it was
• 18:23
  Speaker 2: stories or books or films, who or what kind of
• 18:28
  Speaker 2: inserted this parasite into your system that's grown and grown.
• 18:33
  Speaker 4: It was books, man, I mean it's it's been a
• 18:34
  Speaker 4: few different things, but it was books. It's I talk
• 18:37
  Speaker 4: about it. We have a new film series that we're
• 18:40
  Speaker 4: coming out with. We'ren't a unique position at our company, Sigmanta,
• 18:46
  Speaker 4: So we've been filming professionally since twenty eleven, and we've
• 18:50
  Speaker 4: produced five films since twenty eleven, but we have filmed
• 18:54
  Speaker 4: like twenty films since twenty eleven. So we are not
• 18:58
  Speaker 4: launching a film series entitled Fantastic Places that are going
• 19:02
  Speaker 4: to launch the other fifteen films that we never launched,
• 19:05
  Speaker 4: from the very first one that is going to probably
• 19:08
  Speaker 4: come out probably two to three weeks, we're going to
• 19:12
  Speaker 4: launch that. It's an archery doll sheep hunt to all
• 19:16
  Speaker 4: the other places that we have traveled. But in that
• 19:20
  Speaker 4: kind of essence of laying out that new film series,
• 19:25
  Speaker 4: I talk about my dad had this bookcase when I
• 19:28
  Speaker 4: was little, and he had two things that really spoke
• 19:31
  Speaker 4: to me. He had a walnut bookcase and he had
• 19:33
  Speaker 4: a walnut gun case. And my dad's walnut gun case
• 19:37
  Speaker 4: had those two sheets of glass where you know, I
• 19:40
  Speaker 4: had that weird round and horizontal lock in the middle
• 19:43
  Speaker 4: of my dad unlock. The lock would slide together and
• 19:45
  Speaker 4: he could slide the glass either way and he would
• 19:48
  Speaker 4: My dad hunted very rarely, and almost always when he did,
• 19:52
  Speaker 4: it was for squirrels. Or he'd go out with a
• 19:54
  Speaker 4: buddy of his and they'd go help a farmer with
• 19:56
  Speaker 4: woodchucks or whatever it is. Because I grew up on
• 19:57
  Speaker 4: the East Coast. But my dad's gun case and I'd
• 20:00
  Speaker 4: look at the I'd look at the wood on the guns.
• 20:03
  Speaker 4: I'd see how he would oil the guns. And when
• 20:05
  Speaker 4: he'd open up the bottom drawer, it had his nineteen
• 20:09
  Speaker 4: eleven service pistol for money he was in the navy,
• 20:11
  Speaker 4: had his hunting knives, all these cool things that he
• 20:13
  Speaker 4: had collected. And then my grandparents got him a book
• 20:17
  Speaker 4: subscription to Outdoor Life, and so he had all these
• 20:19
  Speaker 4: Outdoor Life books, not magazines, but books, and man I
• 20:24
  Speaker 4: pored over those things, and I read how those guys
• 20:27
  Speaker 4: would describe traveling. You know, they would take steam train
• 20:31
  Speaker 4: to you know, they would take a ship and then
• 20:33
  Speaker 4: a steam train, and then they would take horses and
• 20:35
  Speaker 4: then they would or the horse would drop them off.
• 20:38
  Speaker 4: They'd and they talked about the horses having flour in
• 20:41
  Speaker 4: their boxes, penn air boxes, and they had flour and
• 20:45
  Speaker 4: sugar and like they're making biscuits. And they would talk about,
• 20:48
  Speaker 4: you know, the color of the doll sheep's horns, and
• 20:51
  Speaker 4: it was just they were going into uncharted territory, and
• 20:55
  Speaker 4: they're going for a big adventure, going for thirty forty
• 20:57
  Speaker 4: five days. And it's just how they wrote about the animals,
• 21:01
  Speaker 4: you know, they would describe everything from the sheep that
• 21:04
  Speaker 4: they were hunting to the wolverine that they ran into
• 21:07
  Speaker 4: along the way. And then he would, like Jack O'Connor,
• 21:09
  Speaker 4: would very eloquently pen about the personality of a wolverine
• 21:13
  Speaker 4: and what this particular wolverine looked like that he ran into,
• 21:17
  Speaker 4: what his attitude was, where he was going, what he
• 21:19
  Speaker 4: thought he was up to, and you do it so
• 21:20
  Speaker 4: in such a such a beautiful fashion that it just
• 21:24
  Speaker 4: was very inspiring. And the clothing they wore, how they
• 21:28
  Speaker 4: described it just was, you know. And they were headhunters,
• 21:31
  Speaker 4: like these guys were trophy hunters, like they ate the
• 21:32
  Speaker 4: animals they killed. They talked often about the very fine meat,
• 21:36
  Speaker 4: but they almost always described the very fine heads that
• 21:39
  Speaker 4: they were after forty inch sheep, there after seventy inch
• 21:42
  Speaker 4: bull moose, and it was all wrapped into one for them.
• 21:46
  Speaker 4: It was the entire experience, the meat and the and
• 21:49
  Speaker 4: the trophy.
• 22:01
  Speaker 2: When you when you think back on those stories or
• 22:04
  Speaker 2: even when you're talking about them right now, about how
• 22:06
  Speaker 2: it used to be, does that create a sense of
• 22:12
  Speaker 2: sadness in you now when you recognize the difference of
• 22:16
  Speaker 2: them to today Or is it or is it inspiring
• 22:21
  Speaker 2: when you hear about how it used to be and
• 22:23
  Speaker 2: how that might inspire what you do today. Which of
• 22:25
  Speaker 2: those possible emotional responses do you have when you look
• 22:29
  Speaker 2: back and think about that.
• 22:31
  Speaker 4: Both it's both. I'm terribly inspired by what happened back
• 22:36
  Speaker 4: in the day, and you know, it inspires me to
• 22:41
  Speaker 4: look at the areas that I'm going. Like years ago
• 22:45
  Speaker 4: in two thousand and nine, I hunted. I was archery
• 22:50
  Speaker 4: hunting stone sheep in British Columbia, and I was hunting
• 22:53
  Speaker 4: with a native guide and he and I were talking
• 22:55
  Speaker 4: about Jack O'Connor and his grandfather, I believe had one
• 23:03
  Speaker 4: of his cousins or one of his grandfather's cousins had
• 23:07
  Speaker 4: guided Jack O'Connor, and he was pointing to one of
• 23:10
  Speaker 4: the mountains, like I'm sitting on the top of the
• 23:12
  Speaker 4: mount with my bow. I just airwed a big pitch black.
• 23:17
  Speaker 4: And Jack would always talk about these really dark rams.
• 23:20
  Speaker 4: I just airwed this pitch black, really handsome stone sheep.
• 23:24
  Speaker 4: And here I am sitting there and he's telling me
• 23:27
  Speaker 4: about his grandfather guiding Jack O'Connor, and he's pointing to
• 23:29
  Speaker 4: the mountain. He's like, not that peak, but the peak
• 23:31
  Speaker 4: behind it, and I said, yeah, I see it. He's
• 23:33
  Speaker 4: like Jack would hunt that mountain often, and I'm just
• 23:35
  Speaker 4: like wow, you know, it's just incredible and not obviously
• 23:38
  Speaker 4: things have change, but when you go to the North Country.
• 23:42
  Speaker 4: It's one of the reasons people ask me all the time,
• 23:44
  Speaker 4: like why don't you hunt elkmore? Why do you go
• 23:46
  Speaker 4: hunt caribou and moosen? Because when I get above the
• 23:49
  Speaker 4: Arctic Circle, or when I get near as far out
• 23:53
  Speaker 4: as I can get in Alaska, it's like taking a
• 23:56
  Speaker 4: step back in time. I'm flying in in a super
• 23:59
  Speaker 4: cub that was built in the nineteen sixties or seventies.
• 24:02
  Speaker 4: I'm you know, I'm rolling out a down sleeping bag that,
• 24:05
  Speaker 4: while it is brand new, looks identical to the downsleeping
• 24:09
  Speaker 4: bags that were made in fifty years ago, essentially, like
• 24:12
  Speaker 4: they haven't changed all that much. And you know, my
• 24:15
  Speaker 4: tent is a little bit more modern and Obviously my
• 24:18
  Speaker 4: weapon is a lot more modern, but still it's very similar.
• 24:22
  Speaker 4: So when I head to the North Country, that's what
• 24:25
  Speaker 4: really kind of embodies me, and what distracts me or
• 24:30
  Speaker 4: concerns me, is that the you know, either the social
• 24:35
  Speaker 4: media aspect of it, or just how some younger people
• 24:40
  Speaker 4: or I don't even want to put an age to it,
• 24:43
  Speaker 4: but some you know, like you see some of the
• 24:46
  Speaker 4: waterfall of pictures of guys saying piles for smiles, you know,
• 24:50
  Speaker 4: and they're like, there's no one even describes their hunt anymore. Mark,
• 24:55
  Speaker 4: they don't even tell you what the morning was like,
• 24:59
  Speaker 4: the don't tell you. I recently saw a somebody sent
• 25:04
  Speaker 4: me a post and it was about this person killed
• 25:08
  Speaker 4: I don't know, it's a certain number of turkeys this year.
• 25:11
  Speaker 4: And they said, I drove this far, flew this far.
• 25:16
  Speaker 4: I hunt hunted Kansas for one hour, killed the bird,
• 25:20
  Speaker 4: hunted South Dakota for one hour, killed the bird. And
• 25:24
  Speaker 4: they had killed like, you know, ten turkeys in two
• 25:26
  Speaker 4: weeks and two Grand slams, and like there wasn't one
• 25:31
  Speaker 4: element about the adventure, not one element. It was literally
• 25:34
  Speaker 4: a grocery list of you might as well have been
• 25:38
  Speaker 4: looking at football stats of how many interceptions you threw,
• 25:41
  Speaker 4: how many touchdowns you through and and it was it was,
• 25:44
  Speaker 4: it was, it was. It was boasting. There wasn't anything
• 25:47
  Speaker 4: about to do on the grass. And I'm listen, I
• 25:50
  Speaker 4: met with a company yesterday and it was a very
• 25:53
  Speaker 4: positive meeting, and the meeting went great, and it wasn't
• 25:56
  Speaker 4: about it was on the A lot of people don't know.
• 25:58
  Speaker 4: I have two branches of my business. One is a
• 26:00
  Speaker 4: commercial side and then the other is is kind of
• 26:03
  Speaker 4: our documentaries and storytelling. And this company was talking to
• 26:06
  Speaker 4: me about the commercial side. We're going to be filming
• 26:08
  Speaker 4: some work for them, but they, you know, to my face,
• 26:12
  Speaker 4: they're like, we're we're not really interested in your in
• 26:15
  Speaker 4: your long form storytelling, old school type hunt. We want
• 26:18
  Speaker 4: to go to this new breath of fresh air, this
• 26:21
  Speaker 4: fast paced movement, this kind of exciting hunting is cool.
• 26:25
  Speaker 4: It's it's it's trendy, it's fashionable. Like that's the direction
• 26:29
  Speaker 4: that they wanted to go and and and that's you know,
• 26:32
  Speaker 4: that's their prerogative. But I just see these things and
• 26:35
  Speaker 4: I just am concerned about the same wisdoms that I
• 26:39
  Speaker 4: was telling you about a moment ago where somebody says, hey,
• 26:42
  Speaker 4: the moose move into this valley about the time of
• 26:45
  Speaker 4: the first snow. You know, you hear things like this.
• 26:48
  Speaker 4: I'm just concerned that we're going to lose that type
• 26:53
  Speaker 4: of wisdom, We're going to lose that type of woodsmanship.
• 26:58
  Speaker 4: William Altman is our director of fatal at Sigmantha. He
• 27:02
  Speaker 4: lives in Maine. He's a he's a bigfoot essentially, like
• 27:07
  Speaker 4: the kid is in the woods twenty four hours a day,
• 27:11
  Speaker 4: texting me deer tracks and texting me map images of
• 27:15
  Speaker 4: like look at this swamp, look at this crossing, Like
• 27:17
  Speaker 4: we text back and forth NonStop about look at this
• 27:21
  Speaker 4: rub that I found. Look at this grouse on his
• 27:23
  Speaker 4: drumming lot. I mean it is total immersion. And then
• 27:26
  Speaker 4: and then to even move over to Cody dia Cuisto
• 27:31
  Speaker 4: from Lone Wolf Gear, Like the guy owns a trail
• 27:36
  Speaker 4: camera company. I use more of Cody's trail cameras than
• 27:40
  Speaker 4: Cody does, and he owns the company. He doesn't hunt
• 27:44
  Speaker 4: with a blind, he barely hunts with a tree stand,
• 27:47
  Speaker 4: and when he does so, it's ten feet off the ground.
• 27:50
  Speaker 4: He doesn't stop a deer, he doesn't use a peep site.
• 27:52
  Speaker 4: Now he's using a recurve, but he'll go out. He'll
• 27:57
  Speaker 4: text me in the morning, Mark and he's like, hey,
• 27:59
  Speaker 4: what are you think of this track? He has no
• 28:01
  Speaker 4: idea what this deer looks like. He goes, what do
• 28:03
  Speaker 4: you think of this track? Am I wasting my time?
• 28:06
  Speaker 4: Or is this a good one? I'm like, Cody, I
• 28:09
  Speaker 4: think that's a good one. And then four o'clock in
• 28:12
  Speaker 4: the afternoon, he'll text me a picture of his bloody
• 28:14
  Speaker 4: arrow and I'll go what is he? And he goes,
• 28:17
  Speaker 4: I don't know yet. I just saw a huge body,
• 28:19
  Speaker 4: white til walking by. I came to full draw and
• 28:21
  Speaker 4: I shot him. And then an hour after that he'll
• 28:23
  Speaker 4: text me this picture of this seven and a half
• 28:26
  Speaker 4: year old you know whatever. And he did it all
• 28:28
  Speaker 4: off of nosing around and looking at tracks. I'll guarantee
• 28:32
  Speaker 4: you Cody's experience is tenfold. The guy that got a
• 28:39
  Speaker 4: cell cam picture, grab his bow that he can shoot
• 28:43
  Speaker 4: ninety yards with ran and got in his box blind
• 28:46
  Speaker 4: and then when that deer walked out at ninety yards,
• 28:48
  Speaker 4: he made a good shot. But like I'll guarantee you,
• 28:51
  Speaker 4: Cody is is h His experience is ten times with
• 28:56
  Speaker 4: that gentleman, and he'll remember his experience and that deer
• 28:59
  Speaker 4: a lot lifetime, whereas I fear that other one might
• 29:02
  Speaker 4: just be a number and a dry a trip to
• 29:06
  Speaker 4: the tax durmy shop.
• 29:07
  Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, I don't.
• 29:11
  Speaker 2: I've wrestled with all this myself in my own personal trajectory,
• 29:15
  Speaker 2: you know, as I grew up hunting since I was three,
• 29:17
  Speaker 2: so I've been doing my whole life. But in my
• 29:20
  Speaker 2: you know, after I graduated college and I kind of
• 29:21
  Speaker 2: had control of my own future, is when I really
• 29:24
  Speaker 2: really doubled down on the white tail thing and really
• 29:27
  Speaker 2: wanted to figure it out. And at that time, it
• 29:29
  Speaker 2: was it all seems so so incredibly challenging and daunting
• 29:34
  Speaker 2: that every little piece of technology that I could use,
• 29:37
  Speaker 2: or every tool that might be available, is like, oh,
• 29:39
  Speaker 2: I need to take advantage of every opportunity I have
• 29:42
  Speaker 2: because this seems so damn hard. Sure I'll try this
• 29:45
  Speaker 2: thing that eliminates my sense. Sure I'll try this camera
• 29:48
  Speaker 2: that's going to help me see. I'm sure I will
• 29:49
  Speaker 2: try this you know site that's going to help me
• 29:53
  Speaker 2: see you know, get my pin on him. A little
• 29:55
  Speaker 2: bit later in the evening.
• 29:56
  Speaker 3: Et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
• 29:58
  Speaker 2: Yeah, But gradually, over time there's been this kind of
• 30:02
  Speaker 2: crossing trajectory where I've seen my skill set grow and
• 30:08
  Speaker 2: then at the same time see my need for those
• 30:10
  Speaker 2: tools decline because of the compensation I have created within myself,
• 30:15
  Speaker 2: within my own capabilities.
• 30:17
  Speaker 3: And so I've found now that my innate.
• 30:25
  Speaker 2: Tools that I bring to the table are just as
• 30:28
  Speaker 2: effective maybe as the technology that you used to supplement
• 30:32
  Speaker 2: me or be a crutch.
• 30:35
  Speaker 3: And I'm realizing that you are.
• 30:36
  Speaker 2: Losing, as you've said, you lose a little bit of
• 30:38
  Speaker 2: the experience with every additional layer of technology put in
• 30:41
  Speaker 2: between you and the animal. And so while I've used
• 30:44
  Speaker 2: all these things, I've done all these things, every year,
• 30:46
  Speaker 2: I'm finding myself wanting to simplify more and more and more,
• 30:50
  Speaker 2: a little bit by little bit. And I can see
• 30:52
  Speaker 2: where it's headed, Like I know where I'm headed, I
• 30:54
  Speaker 2: can feel it.
• 30:56
  Speaker 3: And I just don't know.
• 30:58
  Speaker 2: I don't know how to make sense of this from
• 31:00
  Speaker 2: like a community perspective, When you think about the entirety
• 31:04
  Speaker 2: of our cutting community, I understand everyone's in a different place, right,
• 31:08
  Speaker 2: We're all at a different point on that personal journey.
• 31:11
  Speaker 2: We all have a different background and experience with hunting.
• 31:16
  Speaker 2: For some people, their tradition is is sitting in a
• 31:19
  Speaker 2: box line with Grandpa and watching the food plot. For
• 31:21
  Speaker 2: some people it was you know, track and deer in
• 31:23
  Speaker 2: the snow in northern Maine. And I understand everyone has
• 31:26
  Speaker 2: that unique connection and it's valuable in its own way.
• 31:29
  Speaker 2: But at the same time, I can't help but feel
• 31:31
  Speaker 2: exactly as you are, and that we are losing something
• 31:36
  Speaker 2: when we when we immerse ourselves so much in our
• 31:40
  Speaker 2: phones or in the gizmo and gadget, and lose sight
• 31:45
  Speaker 2: of what originally brought us here. When you look at
• 31:50
  Speaker 2: this is a long winded way of getting to how
• 31:53
  Speaker 2: you feel when you look at where we are as
• 31:56
  Speaker 2: a community, when you look at all of this technology
• 31:59
  Speaker 2: and all of this modern culture around hunting. Now, what
• 32:05
  Speaker 2: specifically is most alarming? Is it how we're talking about
• 32:08
  Speaker 2: things on social media? Is it the fact that you know,
• 32:11
  Speaker 2: sometimes people are hunting and the ways you describe they've
• 32:13
  Speaker 2: got the you know, the instant photo on their camera.
• 32:16
  Speaker 2: They sneak out there with a high powered rifle and
• 32:18
  Speaker 2: a night vision scope. Now and they can have an
• 32:20
  Speaker 2: app that dials in their scope for them. They don't
• 32:23
  Speaker 2: even even know how to handle windage they've got, you know,
• 32:27
  Speaker 2: I mean every possible thing that the military has almost
• 32:30
  Speaker 2: now it seems like we're using to try to kill
• 32:32
  Speaker 2: a deer. What of all of this stands out to
• 32:37
  Speaker 2: you is like top of the pile concerning that that
• 32:42
  Speaker 2: maybe is a community we need to start thinking about,
• 32:44
  Speaker 2: because there's a lot of examples we could dive into.
• 32:47
  Speaker 3: What are those most glaring to you?
• 32:51
  Speaker 4: I think, I mean, one of the things that one
• 32:54
  Speaker 4: of the elements that I dislike the most is sell camps,
• 33:00
  Speaker 4: right that if you're if we're like picking up product,
• 33:02
  Speaker 4: That's one of the things that I dislike the most.
• 33:05
  Speaker 4: I I I even I have a large lease that
• 33:08
  Speaker 4: I hunt on with some dear friends of mine in Illinois,
• 33:11
  Speaker 4: and I've been there for years and we have like
• 33:14
  Speaker 4: I don't know, sixty cell cams on the place, and
• 33:17
  Speaker 4: and not once ever and it drives my least partner's nuts.
• 33:21
  Speaker 4: Not once ever have I logged in. You know, we
• 33:24
  Speaker 4: have a log in and we all get to see
• 33:25
  Speaker 4: all the photos. I've not once. I have no idea
• 33:28
  Speaker 4: how to log in. I've not once logged in. And
• 33:31
  Speaker 4: and occasionally I'll ask one of my least partners, like, hey,
• 33:34
  Speaker 4: did you see have you seen that giant eight? Is
• 33:38
  Speaker 4: he have he? Has he been coming walking down that stream?
• 33:41
  Speaker 4: Have you seen him from Afar or whatever? And it'd
• 33:43
  Speaker 4: be like He'll just like go into the app and
• 33:45
  Speaker 4: you can look, yeah, look, look look yeah, like and
• 33:48
  Speaker 4: I'm not going to And so my biggest concern is
• 33:54
  Speaker 4: and I think like this goes towards every aspect of life,
• 33:58
  Speaker 4: from learning how to drive a car, to hunting to
• 34:01
  Speaker 4: painting to it doesn't matter two dentistry. Like I feel
• 34:06
  Speaker 4: like the technology is is really pushing past the human
• 34:10
  Speaker 4: element and in the hunting sense. The thing that I
• 34:14
  Speaker 4: don't really care for is a lot of the young guys,
• 34:16
  Speaker 4: a lot. I'm not not all, Like I've met some
• 34:18
  Speaker 4: really young guys that really have a fever for they
• 34:23
  Speaker 4: want to get out in the woods and explore. They
• 34:25
  Speaker 4: want to be woodsman. They want to know how to
• 34:27
  Speaker 4: build a shelter, how to build a fire, how to survive,
• 34:30
  Speaker 4: and then how to add hunting to the element, fishing
• 34:32
  Speaker 4: to the element, things like that. But it's it's what
• 34:37
  Speaker 4: worries me is the community as a whole, how they
• 34:40
  Speaker 4: talk the you know, every state making crossbows legal for
• 34:45
  Speaker 4: archery season absolutely hate that drives the deer populations down,
• 34:50
  Speaker 4: particularly you you add the crossbow to the cell camera,
• 34:55
  Speaker 4: to either baits or foot plots, and then a box blind.
• 35:01
  Speaker 4: I mean, you have zero disadvantages. You can shoot however
• 35:05
  Speaker 4: far across bow can shoot. And you know, I moved
• 35:09
  Speaker 4: from My dad used to be a rifle hunter and
• 35:12
  Speaker 4: he did so very very sparingly, and he was not
• 35:14
  Speaker 4: a good hunter too. I told my dad, I said, hey,
• 35:19
  Speaker 4: can I get you to shoot a bow? And he said, ah, Man,
• 35:23
  Speaker 4: I don't know, and I said can, I said, I
• 35:24
  Speaker 4: want to show you what I see in September because
• 35:28
  Speaker 4: when we go out on deer opener, as charming as
• 35:31
  Speaker 4: that is, and you're from Michigan, right, Mark, Yeah, see
• 35:34
  Speaker 4: that stuff? To me and I'm going to be a
• 35:36
  Speaker 4: hypocrite here, it's charming as hell, like you sitting in
• 35:39
  Speaker 4: a box blne a box line that looks like a
• 35:41
  Speaker 4: fish house with your grandpa. Charming as hell. That fits
• 35:44
  Speaker 4: for me sitting in the latest scent roof silent window
• 35:50
  Speaker 4: five thousand dollars that that's where it goes like this
• 35:54
  Speaker 4: to me and so like I live in Wisconsin right now,
• 35:59
  Speaker 4: if I drive around during deer season, you should see
• 36:01
  Speaker 4: some of the blinds and stuff that we see out at.
• 36:04
  Speaker 4: Like there're guys like lazy boys, like yeah, Green Bay
• 36:07
  Speaker 4: Packer painted stands. It's crazy anyway. But with my dad,
• 36:11
  Speaker 4: I said, can I can I teach you how to
• 36:14
  Speaker 4: shoot a ball? And he's like, I guess. So I
• 36:16
  Speaker 4: got on a bow and he could shoot only forty
• 36:19
  Speaker 4: pounds and he had to come to full draw and
• 36:21
  Speaker 4: shoot like he couldn't hold it. He had to come
• 36:23
  Speaker 4: to full draw, get the target. Shoot. He showed like
• 36:25
  Speaker 4: fifteen eighteen yards. So anyway, I I borrowed a haybail
• 36:30
  Speaker 4: blind when the original haybale blinds from double ble Archery,
• 36:33
  Speaker 4: I borrowed one from a friend. I went put it
• 36:36
  Speaker 4: out in the woods and I took my dad and
• 36:38
  Speaker 4: I was sitting with him and we were over this.
• 36:40
  Speaker 4: It was over like a little but not a food plot,
• 36:43
  Speaker 4: but there was a clearing that would grow just regular
• 36:47
  Speaker 4: like Kentucky bluegrass. But the deer would always feed on it.
• 36:51
  Speaker 4: They'd come out of this swamp ticket they'd feed on
• 36:54
  Speaker 4: and then they go out to a beanfield and I'll
• 36:58
  Speaker 4: try to make this story really quick. But I was
• 36:59
  Speaker 4: sitting with my dad and al asudden I saw antler
• 37:02
  Speaker 4: tips coming through the woods and I said, hey, Dad,
• 37:04
  Speaker 4: a buck is coming. It's like okay. And this buck
• 37:07
  Speaker 4: came out and he was like one hundred and thirty
• 37:10
  Speaker 4: five inches eight pointer, which is the biggest buck my
• 37:13
  Speaker 4: dad has ever seen in his life. At this point
• 37:16
  Speaker 4: he comes out, he's looking at me like his The
• 37:18
  Speaker 4: deer is already at twenty yards right of this area
• 37:21
  Speaker 4: of grasses, twenty yards away, and the buck comes out
• 37:25
  Speaker 4: mark and he starts making us scrape. And I know
• 37:28
  Speaker 4: you've seen this. I know most archers have. But he
• 37:30
  Speaker 4: is hitting the ground so hard with this hoof, so
• 37:34
  Speaker 4: dirt is flying like twenty feet and he's doing it
• 37:36
  Speaker 4: with his left hoof, and then his licking branch is
• 37:40
  Speaker 4: such that he has to stand on his hind feet
• 37:43
  Speaker 4: and stick his nose way up there. He's like whatever,
• 37:45
  Speaker 4: six feet seven feet off the ground and he's rubbing it.
• 37:48
  Speaker 4: He drops down, he goes back to and I was
• 37:51
  Speaker 4: washing the deer, but I'm watching my dad and his
• 37:53
  Speaker 4: and the deer come starts walking right at us, and
• 37:55
  Speaker 4: then at five yards he turns broadside my dad comes
• 37:59
  Speaker 4: to full draw, but the deer doesn't stop walking. He
• 38:01
  Speaker 4: just walked away. My dad lets down, which is totally cool.
• 38:04
  Speaker 4: And I he just looked at me and he goes,
• 38:08
  Speaker 4: how often do you see that? And I said, almost
• 38:12
  Speaker 4: every day, man, when I'm bow hunting, I see that
• 38:15
  Speaker 4: almost every day. And he was just flabbergasted. And and
• 38:19
  Speaker 4: those experiences like that type of experiences. And then when
• 38:24
  Speaker 4: I moved from that, when my dad finally couldn't draw
• 38:26
  Speaker 4: his bonymore and I said, hey, okay, I'm going to
• 38:28
  Speaker 4: get you a crossbow. He was sixty four years old
• 38:31
  Speaker 4: or whatever. I got him a crossboard sixty two years old.
• 38:35
  Speaker 4: That's what the crossbow is for to me, Like, that's
• 38:38
  Speaker 4: what that is for, and like uh, and so just
• 38:41
  Speaker 4: all the technological advancements like we obviously. I remember back
• 38:45
  Speaker 4: in nineteen eighty six, I was in northern Maine with
• 38:49
  Speaker 4: a buddy of mine's family. They were bear hunting, and
• 38:54
  Speaker 4: we went up there just to ride Honda etc. Three
• 38:56
  Speaker 4: wheelers in the woods wall My buddy's dad and his
• 39:00
  Speaker 4: buddy bear hunted, and I remember that old psc or
• 39:03
  Speaker 4: old bear compounds. They had the latest compounds on the market.
• 39:06
  Speaker 4: They were so cool, like tree bark, and I remember
• 39:11
  Speaker 4: they were so amped up because they had three brass
• 39:16
  Speaker 4: pins and they had just added a light to those
• 39:21
  Speaker 4: pins because they couldn't see the sides of the bears
• 39:23
  Speaker 4: at night. They couldn't see their pins on the side
• 39:25
  Speaker 4: of the bears. And you know, that's this kind of
• 39:28
  Speaker 4: stuff that starts right that's where all this kind of
• 39:32
  Speaker 4: But yeah, I just concerned that with a lot of
• 39:36
  Speaker 4: the young people that hunting to them is inches of antler.
• 39:41
  Speaker 4: It's a crossbow, it's a bait pile, it's a food plot,
• 39:45
  Speaker 4: and it's dare I say this if you took a
• 39:49
  Speaker 4: group of guys to five guys, you and your buddies,
• 39:53
  Speaker 4: and you say, we're going to go on a hunt
• 39:56
  Speaker 4: in Illinois, boot plots, box blinds, giant box everything like that.
• 40:01
  Speaker 4: You guys are gonna hunt for a week. You're gonna
• 40:02
  Speaker 4: go do that, and then we are going to go
• 40:05
  Speaker 4: to a giant area of state land or a giant
• 40:09
  Speaker 4: private property in wherever. In New York. We're gonna go
• 40:15
  Speaker 4: to ten thousand acres in New York and you guys
• 40:19
  Speaker 4: were gonna go and everyone's gonna have a tree stand
• 40:21
  Speaker 4: on their back. Everyone's gonna have a different section of
• 40:24
  Speaker 4: the property. In the morning, we're all gonna hands in
• 40:26
  Speaker 4: the middle. Ready break, and we're all gonna go our
• 40:29
  Speaker 4: separate directions. And then I'm gonna force you guys, you
• 40:33
  Speaker 4: have to come home at night to a cabin and
• 40:36
  Speaker 4: the five you have to sit down and tell me
• 40:38
  Speaker 4: about your day. I bet if we did that, the
• 40:42
  Speaker 4: New York one would be way better than the Illinois hunt,
• 40:46
  Speaker 4: way better because you'd be exploring. You'd find crick crossings
• 40:51
  Speaker 4: that you didn't even know existed. You'd set up your
• 40:53
  Speaker 4: tree stand. Ol Suden, here comes a buck, You're like,
• 40:56
  Speaker 4: holy man like, or here comes a little buck, and
• 40:59
  Speaker 4: then Ol Suden, here comes a bigger buck, and like,
• 41:00
  Speaker 4: I'm gonna shoot this dough. It's just it's just so
• 41:03
  Speaker 4: much more rewarding. It's no different than like when I
• 41:07
  Speaker 4: I'm moose hunting in Alaska this year, I have no
• 41:10
  Speaker 4: idea what's where I'm I don't even know where I'm
• 41:12
  Speaker 4: going yet, I don't know what I'm gonna see. I
• 41:14
  Speaker 4: might see a seventy five inch bolt loose, I might
• 41:16
  Speaker 4: not even see a moose. Like it's all adventure to me.
• 41:19
  Speaker 4: But that's my biggest concern is cutting the corners, making
• 41:24
  Speaker 4: the crossbows available to everyone, making sell cameras to everyone's
• 41:27
  Speaker 4: just looking at their phones. Like, and I know you've
• 41:30
  Speaker 4: experienced this, Like you go into hunting camps. Now we
• 41:33
  Speaker 4: used to all sit around and tell stories of the
• 41:35
  Speaker 4: hunts that we had done. Now we all sit on
• 41:37
  Speaker 4: our phone. So like, I'll sit in a hunting camp.
• 41:39
  Speaker 4: I looked around. There's ten guys in camp. Everyone is
• 41:42
  Speaker 4: on their phone. They're not even talking. That's what's that's
• 41:46
  Speaker 4: that's what's going away.
• 41:48
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah, I've been feeling all this myself. And
• 41:53
  Speaker 2: and I did series on the podcast earlier this year
• 41:57
  Speaker 2: exploring the idea of how to bring adventure back in
• 42:00
  Speaker 2: to our hunts, because I think, especially in the white
• 42:02
  Speaker 2: tail world, it's become so there's become this this formulaic
• 42:06
  Speaker 2: approach that's become very popular. That's kind of everything we've
• 42:09
  Speaker 2: been describing, right, It's like, all right, get your food plot,
• 42:12
  Speaker 2: get your box blind, get your cell cam.
• 42:15
  Speaker 3: Uh. And again I say all this as someone who
• 42:17
  Speaker 3: has done all of this, so I've lived this.
• 42:20
  Speaker 4: I have as well.
• 42:21
  Speaker 2: Yeah, but but that you know, for all the reasons
• 42:24
  Speaker 2: we've discussed that can grow stale, that can stagnate, that
• 42:29
  Speaker 2: can you can lose something there, right, And and so
• 42:31
  Speaker 2: I've I've been exploring personally, how do you, how do
• 42:35
  Speaker 2: you how do I still be a deer hunter? How
• 42:36
  Speaker 2: do I still be a white tail fanatic? But do
• 42:39
  Speaker 2: it in unique different kinds of ways that that stoke
• 42:43
  Speaker 2: a fire in me in a different kind of way.
• 42:45
  Speaker 2: So I've talked to people about doing float trips for
• 42:48
  Speaker 2: white tails. I've talked to people about doing backpacking trips
• 42:51
  Speaker 2: for white tails.
• 42:52
  Speaker 3: I've talked to people about.
• 42:53
  Speaker 2: You know, doing canoe trips on big lake systems for
• 42:56
  Speaker 2: white tails, different stuff like that. I'd love to hear
• 43:00
  Speaker 2: what it's looked like for you, and I would love
• 43:04
  Speaker 2: to hear about the Illinois example. But also if there's
• 43:06
  Speaker 2: any other examples you have of ways that you have
• 43:08
  Speaker 2: brought back adventure or this old school connection to our
• 43:13
  Speaker 2: hunting past back into your white tail life, because I
• 43:16
  Speaker 2: think there aren't a lot example of there are not
• 43:18
  Speaker 2: many examples today of how that's done. Most of the
• 43:21
  Speaker 2: examples for what deer hunting looks today is the antithesis
• 43:25
  Speaker 2: of this. So could you paint me a picture of
• 43:29
  Speaker 2: that or give me some examples of ways that you've
• 43:31
  Speaker 2: done this.
• 43:32
  Speaker 4: So the last couple of years, for instance, when I
• 43:36
  Speaker 4: hunt in Illinois, Wisconsin, wherever it is that I'm hunting,
• 43:38
  Speaker 4: I've been hunting with a longbow or a recurve, either
• 43:43
  Speaker 4: one of those, mostly a longbow the last couple of years.
• 43:45
  Speaker 4: But and for instance, I'll tell you kind of my
• 43:49
  Speaker 4: system in Illinois is is it's we have one big
• 43:54
  Speaker 4: farm and we have like five or six little farms,
• 43:56
  Speaker 4: and so we almost always have some very large bucks
• 44:01
  Speaker 4: on the place. And so last year we got hit
• 44:05
  Speaker 4: with EHD pretty bad, so most of our bucks perished,
• 44:08
  Speaker 4: but there's there was still some really nice deer left over.
• 44:11
  Speaker 4: But I wait to see where these really really big
• 44:16
  Speaker 4: deer are going to be living, and then I stay
• 44:18
  Speaker 4: away from there because that's where everybody goes. That's where
• 44:21
  Speaker 4: all my partners go and hunt, because they all want
• 44:23
  Speaker 4: the two hundred inch deer, they want the one eighty
• 44:25
  Speaker 4: one And I never shoot those deer because I don't
• 44:28
  Speaker 4: I don't hunt those deer really, And so how I've
• 44:31
  Speaker 4: done it for myself is I went back to scouting
• 44:35
  Speaker 4: by being in the woods, by taking a look around,
• 44:37
  Speaker 4: by walking down crick bottoms and being like, Okay, here
• 44:40
  Speaker 4: is a crossing. Why are they crossing here? How are
• 44:43
  Speaker 4: they using this? Where are scrapes in the woods, not
• 44:46
  Speaker 4: just on the edges of food plots, but where are
• 44:47
  Speaker 4: the scrapes in the woods that really no one else
• 44:50
  Speaker 4: knows about? And how can I get to them by
• 44:52
  Speaker 4: a canoe? We have a river system that runs for
• 44:54
  Speaker 4: our whole property, so I've been looking at hunting by
• 44:56
  Speaker 4: the boat or waiting across the river. I've been doing
• 44:59
  Speaker 4: a lot of that stuff where I go in the morning,
• 45:02
  Speaker 4: hence the video that we just published. I way across
• 45:04
  Speaker 4: the river there to get in the back door on
• 45:06
  Speaker 4: that book and using traditional archery equipment, which takes a
• 45:11
  Speaker 4: lot of practice and a lot of understudy. With my
• 45:15
  Speaker 4: dear friend Joel Turner from sean IQ, I shoot underneath
• 45:18
  Speaker 4: him quite a bit. I learned from Tom clumb Out
• 45:21
  Speaker 4: in Colorado kind of the mechanics for shooting the bow.
• 45:24
  Speaker 4: And but that's an element. And then I I use
• 45:29
  Speaker 4: trail cameras mark And what I do is I set
• 45:31
  Speaker 4: trail cameras up in particular locations of where I really
• 45:37
  Speaker 4: want to see kind of movements, how animals are running,
• 45:40
  Speaker 4: but I set them up, and I generally set them
• 45:43
  Speaker 4: up at the end of August, and that I won't
• 45:45
  Speaker 4: check them like I haven't checked them this year yet.
• 45:47
  Speaker 4: I in fact, I've been too busy. I need to
• 45:49
  Speaker 4: go down to Illinois and pull all my cameras. I'll
• 45:52
  Speaker 4: look at all the videos and then i'll use that
• 45:54
  Speaker 4: information this year. I'll look at like, okay, bucks are
• 46:09
  Speaker 4: actually crossing, because if I find a really cool crossing,
• 46:12
  Speaker 4: I'll put a camera up there. And then I'll want
• 46:14
  Speaker 4: to understand our mature deer using this or is this
• 46:18
  Speaker 4: just a dough and fawn like highway and so, and
• 46:22
  Speaker 4: then I'll generally separate myself from the gentleman that I
• 46:26
  Speaker 4: hunt with. I'll separate myself and I'll go over to
• 46:29
  Speaker 4: one of our smaller farms that they really see not
• 46:33
  Speaker 4: a lot of value in the deer that are living there.
• 46:35
  Speaker 4: But I'll find a six seven eight year old, you know,
• 46:39
  Speaker 4: one hundred and forty in eight pointer and that looks
• 46:42
  Speaker 4: like a side of beef walking through the woods, and
• 46:45
  Speaker 4: I will love to hunt that deer. And so I'll
• 46:47
  Speaker 4: do different things like that. But it's just like what
• 46:49
  Speaker 4: you're saying going in with a stand on your back.
• 46:53
  Speaker 4: And I've been doing a couple of things. I've been
• 46:55
  Speaker 4: doing a fair bit of gilly suit hunting from the ground,
• 46:59
  Speaker 4: ye going in and just like and sometimes I get
• 47:03
  Speaker 4: just destroyed, right Like I'll find this little area where
• 47:05
  Speaker 4: the deer are feeding on a locust tree, and I'll
• 47:08
  Speaker 4: find this little spot that I'm gonna set up, and
• 47:10
  Speaker 4: I set up and lo and behold, because I don't
• 47:11
  Speaker 4: know this yet, Mark, Like all the does are coming
• 47:14
  Speaker 4: out behind me, you know, and I have my wind
• 47:16
  Speaker 4: blowing a certain direction, but all the dose are coming
• 47:18
  Speaker 4: out behind me. That I get just blown out that night,
• 47:20
  Speaker 4: and it makes me kind of laugh, like I didn't
• 47:22
  Speaker 4: realize they were coming out right there or whatever. But
• 47:24
  Speaker 4: I'll be doing stuff like that, or going in and
• 47:26
  Speaker 4: hanging and hunting. And I always thought saddles. I always
• 47:31
  Speaker 4: thought saddles were the dumbest thing in the world because
• 47:35
  Speaker 4: of who was using them, like the people like, you know,
• 47:39
  Speaker 4: kind of like it was very popular. And then I
• 47:42
  Speaker 4: met some of the guys from Tethered and they said,
• 47:45
  Speaker 4: let us send you one, and I said no, and
• 47:47
  Speaker 4: they said let us send you one. I said, okay,
• 47:49
  Speaker 4: let's set a watch.
• 47:50
  Speaker 3: Out for those guys. They're very convincing.
• 47:52
  Speaker 4: Yeah, very convincing. And then I used it, like I
• 47:55
  Speaker 4: can't film with it. It doesn't work for our style
• 47:58
  Speaker 4: of filming. But when I go out by myself without
• 48:01
  Speaker 4: a camera, it's it was incredibly rewarding. The hell of
• 48:07
  Speaker 4: a tool, hell of a tool, and like sneaking up
• 48:10
  Speaker 4: into this little tree and sitting there, it just was
• 48:14
  Speaker 4: so rewarding. Like if I were if I weren't filming,
• 48:21
  Speaker 4: I would either hunt like Cody dia Cuisto. Because it's
• 48:24
  Speaker 4: also very difficult for us to film, uh, with a
• 48:28
  Speaker 4: with a secondary photographer. It's very difficult for us to
• 48:30
  Speaker 4: film like ten feet off the ground. It's just very
• 48:32
  Speaker 4: very difficult. Yeah, So like we generally have to be
• 48:35
  Speaker 4: higher up or further back or whatever it is. Like
• 48:38
  Speaker 4: we are very particular about where we pick our spots.
• 48:41
  Speaker 4: You know, picking a big silver maple that has a
• 48:43
  Speaker 4: lot of branches and you know we'll set up there.
• 48:45
  Speaker 4: We can't just sneak in and set up you know,
• 48:48
  Speaker 4: on a telephone poultry, it just doesn't work. But anyway,
• 48:53
  Speaker 4: but adding elements like that, doing some some saddle hunting,
• 48:56
  Speaker 4: doing some low low tree stand hunting, doing some and
• 49:01
  Speaker 4: then finding these internal internal woods food plots, like finding
• 49:07
  Speaker 4: the locust trees that they're feeding on, finding where the
• 49:11
  Speaker 4: real good concentrations of acorns are, where these little oak
• 49:14
  Speaker 4: flats are, just reading the sign, going in and and
• 49:20
  Speaker 4: looking for mature, mature box and mature dose. That in
• 49:23
  Speaker 4: the deer hunting element, that's what's really inspired me. And
• 49:26
  Speaker 4: I've even thought about lately, both for ducks and deer.
• 49:30
  Speaker 4: I'm going to the boundary waters and paddling in and
• 49:33
  Speaker 4: like going on some of these islands. And then I
• 49:37
  Speaker 4: there's a place I don't want to say where it is.
• 49:39
  Speaker 4: There's a place in Minnesota that I've been wanting to
• 49:41
  Speaker 4: hunt again. I don't want to say where it is,
• 49:44
  Speaker 4: but I know very few people hunt this place. And
• 49:48
  Speaker 4: it is freaking massive, and it's it's public land, and
• 49:54
  Speaker 4: it's very difficult to get to, and it's very far away,
• 49:58
  Speaker 4: and and but I know some gentlemen that have been
• 50:01
  Speaker 4: around this area and they're like, man, there's very few
• 50:04
  Speaker 4: deer there, but like we have seen some box there
• 50:08
  Speaker 4: that are like will melt your freaking mind. And then
• 50:13
  Speaker 4: so things like that, Just doing things like that, and
• 50:16
  Speaker 4: I've recently been reading about finding lakes that have wild
• 50:22
  Speaker 4: rice on them in the boundary water, so I can
• 50:24
  Speaker 4: go up and duck hunt in the fall out of
• 50:26
  Speaker 4: a canoe, which I think would be really sick. But
• 50:28
  Speaker 4: that's what I'm doing. I'm and it doesn't take It's
• 50:34
  Speaker 4: a mindset like you and I, because I think you
• 50:38
  Speaker 4: would enjoy this. Like we could go set up a
• 50:40
  Speaker 4: camp in Illinois, grab twenty two rifles and go out
• 50:45
  Speaker 4: hunt fox squirrels and come back, skin them up quarterum,
• 50:51
  Speaker 4: get them in the frying pan, and you'd have the
• 50:53
  Speaker 4: time of year. It's no different than hunting moose in Alaska.
• 50:56
  Speaker 4: It's the same thing if you have the same mindset.
• 50:58
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 50:58
  Speaker 4: And the more difficult you make things, the more you
• 51:02
  Speaker 4: pay attention, the more interesting they are. And I've said
• 51:07
  Speaker 4: this many times on podcasts, but I took a photography
• 51:10
  Speaker 4: class in college, and my very rarely when somebody says
• 51:15
  Speaker 4: something to you that's all or nothing, is it true?
• 51:17
  Speaker 4: Almost always when somebody says the one hundred percent or
• 51:20
  Speaker 4: zero percent, all the time you can say no. But
• 51:23
  Speaker 4: my professor said to me one time, the closer you
• 51:26
  Speaker 4: get to something, the more interesting it becomes. And I thought,
• 51:30
  Speaker 4: is that true? I start thinking about like a tree,
• 51:33
  Speaker 4: Like you see a maple tree from far away, it's beautiful.
• 51:35
  Speaker 4: But if you really start getting close to looking at
• 51:37
  Speaker 4: all the bark and look at the venation and the
• 51:39
  Speaker 4: leaves and look at how it grows, and you really
• 51:41
  Speaker 4: understand the biology of sugar maple like acer sacaram Why
• 51:47
  Speaker 4: is it acer? What does that mean? Why is it sacarum?
• 51:49
  Speaker 4: Is that Latin for sugar? Like? Okay, so when is
• 51:53
  Speaker 4: the sap running? When do people collect sup? And you
• 51:56
  Speaker 4: become an expert on sugar maples. The next time you
• 51:59
  Speaker 4: see a sugar mate, well you're gonna be like, I
• 52:01
  Speaker 4: really appreciate that tree. And if you do the same
• 52:03
  Speaker 4: thing with the white tail deer, when are they breeding?
• 52:06
  Speaker 4: And why? Like I hear so much information out there
• 52:10
  Speaker 4: that's wrong, like what are they doing? What? And even
• 52:13
  Speaker 4: like I listened to your I don't listen to hunting
• 52:18
  Speaker 4: podcasts until the fall. That's when I'll start when I'm
• 52:21
  Speaker 4: road tripping and stuff. And I listened to your I
• 52:23
  Speaker 4: loved your series. I wish you did more of it.
• 52:26
  Speaker 4: Actually it's like seven days, oh, one week in November.
• 52:30
  Speaker 4: One week in November. Yea, I love that stuff because
• 52:34
  Speaker 4: I like chronological journal hunting. I don't care that you
• 52:39
  Speaker 4: shot a one eighty could care less, don't care if
• 52:41
  Speaker 4: it was on sugar beets, brassicas from this company or
• 52:45
  Speaker 4: that company, don't care. But if you're like I went,
• 52:49
  Speaker 4: you know, like this one time, you're like, I snuck
• 52:51
  Speaker 4: into this spot. I thought it was a good spot.
• 52:53
  Speaker 4: I heard of two bucks fighting, and then you realized
• 52:55
  Speaker 4: it was the neighbor rattling his face off. Made me laugh.
• 52:58
  Speaker 4: I was like, because that's a story that you didn't
• 53:01
  Speaker 4: kill a deer there, but it's a story. And then
• 53:04
  Speaker 4: and then you lament it on the one hundred and
• 53:07
  Speaker 4: fifty inch buck that you missed and all this stuff,
• 53:09
  Speaker 4: and like that you didn't you didn't kill a deer there,
• 53:12
  Speaker 4: But it was better than a story than if you did,
• 53:13
  Speaker 4: because you actually told the story. And I think about
• 53:16
  Speaker 4: those things and that's what's interesting to me. And I
• 53:19
  Speaker 4: hear this stuff also, Mark, I laugh about this all
• 53:21
  Speaker 4: the time. Come November, all these podcasts are talking about
• 53:26
  Speaker 4: the grind. How do you stay in a tree stand?
• 53:28
  Speaker 4: What little tips and tricks? What snacks a you're gonna break?
• 53:31
  Speaker 4: I sit? I like to hunt dark to dark. I
• 53:36
  Speaker 4: like to get to a tree stand about an hour
• 53:37
  Speaker 4: before shooting light, and I'll stay there until the gate
• 53:41
  Speaker 4: is good if it's if it's right at the end
• 53:42
  Speaker 4: of shooting light and nobody's around, I'll slip down and
• 53:44
  Speaker 4: I'll get out. And I take great care in how
• 53:48
  Speaker 4: I approach my tree stands. Very very often I'm going
• 53:51
  Speaker 4: through a crick bottom or something along those natures to
• 53:54
  Speaker 4: get into a tree stand. But I'll sit about twenty
• 53:57
  Speaker 4: five days thirty days every year, dark to dark. And
• 54:01
  Speaker 4: it's not a grind to me at all, from the
• 54:03
  Speaker 4: from the moment I get to the tree stand to
• 54:07
  Speaker 4: that when the sun goes down, it goes by in
• 54:09
  Speaker 4: a flash. To me. My alarm goes off every day
• 54:13
  Speaker 4: in November, my alarm goes off at three am. That's
• 54:16
  Speaker 4: when I get up. I get up at three every
• 54:18
  Speaker 4: single day. It's the same time. I don't want to
• 54:20
  Speaker 4: rush in the morning. I get up, I eat breakfast,
• 54:22
  Speaker 4: I drink a cup of coffee, I get my gear
• 54:24
  Speaker 4: together and I head to the woods. I do the
• 54:26
  Speaker 4: same thing every day. And when I sit there, when
• 54:28
  Speaker 4: I'm not coming out, I'm not going in. Sometimes i'll
• 54:31
  Speaker 4: come out if the wind's gonna be wrong and I'll
• 54:33
  Speaker 4: go to another farm. Or sometimes I have a plan
• 54:35
  Speaker 4: of like I'm gonna hunt this buck in the morning,
• 54:37
  Speaker 4: and I'm gonna slip over and hunt this buck in
• 54:39
  Speaker 4: the afternoon, things like that. But I'll literally just get down,
• 54:41
  Speaker 4: go over and get back up, or get down and
• 54:43
  Speaker 4: go whatever I'm doing. It's just it's just so rewarding
• 54:48
  Speaker 4: to see the birds and to watch the geese fly over.
• 54:50
  Speaker 4: And you know, I see the songbirds change throughout the
• 54:53
  Speaker 4: fall as they're going through their migrations, and the deer change.
• 54:56
  Speaker 4: And I know you appreciate some of this, but yeah,
• 55:00
  Speaker 4: I just want to get as close as I possibly
• 55:02
  Speaker 4: can to the natural world. And the older I get,
• 55:05
  Speaker 4: the more I hunt, the more I realize I wanted
• 55:09
  Speaker 4: to keep taking little mini steps back from from what
• 55:12
  Speaker 4: is popular right now and what is technology right now.
• 55:16
  Speaker 2: Yeah, speaking of those all day sits, I do a
• 55:21
  Speaker 2: lot of that myself. And what I speaking of all
• 55:24
  Speaker 2: these different little crutches or ways that you know, the
• 55:27
  Speaker 2: outside world infiltrates your hunting experience.
• 55:31
  Speaker 3: It's so easy today to be out.
• 55:33
  Speaker 2: There and every time your quote unquote bored or things
• 55:37
  Speaker 2: aren't happening. You reach for your phone, right, It's so
• 55:42
  Speaker 2: easy to reach for that phone out of just instinct,
• 55:45
  Speaker 2: and then before you know it, you're looking at some
• 55:48
  Speaker 2: smut on your social media feed or whatever it is,
• 55:51
  Speaker 2: and losing sight of everything around you. And what I've
• 55:54
  Speaker 2: tried to do more often, I don't do this enough,
• 55:57
  Speaker 2: but I want to continue to do more of this
• 55:59
  Speaker 2: is you go out there and not bring the phone
• 56:02
  Speaker 2: or bury the phone in the bottom of your backpack
• 56:05
  Speaker 2: as just for emergencies, and otherwise, force yourself to immerse
• 56:10
  Speaker 2: in the natural world around you. Force yourself to truly
• 56:12
  Speaker 2: open your eyes in the ears and notice all the
• 56:15
  Speaker 2: little things going on. And the times I have done
• 56:19
  Speaker 2: that are the absolute best hunts. The most rejuvenating, refreshing,
• 56:25
  Speaker 2: surprising hunts are when you embrace the stillness, embrace the
• 56:31
  Speaker 2: lack of action, embrace the embrace what you might originally
• 56:36
  Speaker 2: call boredom, but if you kind of wallow on it enough,
• 56:39
  Speaker 2: it ends up being fascinating. Like you talked about, when
• 56:42
  Speaker 2: you go deep into something, you realize there's so much
• 56:44
  Speaker 2: more there, There's so much more intricacy.
• 56:48
  Speaker 3: You know, this is a total tangent. But another way
• 56:51
  Speaker 3: I do.
• 56:52
  Speaker 2: This is you know, you talked about really focusing in
• 56:56
  Speaker 2: on something specific like a maple tree, And I think
• 57:00
  Speaker 2: that by understanding the context of a place or a species,
• 57:06
  Speaker 2: you see it more closely too, and so not you know,
• 57:10
  Speaker 2: for example, I'm going to and I think you've been
• 57:12
  Speaker 2: here before. I'm going to the Arctic National Wilife Refuge
• 57:14
  Speaker 2: in three days, and I'm just reading. I'm very excited.
• 57:22
  Speaker 3: I've just been reading every little bit.
• 57:24
  Speaker 2: Of history and natural history and everything about this place
• 57:28
  Speaker 2: because I know that when I go there, I know
• 57:31
  Speaker 2: it would be.
• 57:32
  Speaker 3: Incredible either way.
• 57:33
  Speaker 2: But if I were to go there with this context
• 57:36
  Speaker 2: and with this history and with this understanding, I think
• 57:38
  Speaker 2: it will be as I've experienced other places, and that
• 57:41
  Speaker 2: it feels like I go from looking at the world
• 57:43
  Speaker 2: through a fuzzy pair of sunglasses to instead putting on
• 57:49
  Speaker 2: a picture perfectly clear, terrific prescription set of eyeglasses, and
• 57:53
  Speaker 2: all of a sudden, the world is bright and clear
• 57:57
  Speaker 2: and you can see and recognize, in a appreciate so
• 58:00
  Speaker 2: much more around you. And I think you can do
• 58:01
  Speaker 2: that in one way being developed that context, learn, learn, learn,
• 58:05
  Speaker 2: And then the other is to simply open our eyes
• 58:08
  Speaker 2: and not be distracted by the junk in our pocket
• 58:10
  Speaker 2: or whatever it might be.
• 58:12
  Speaker 4: Absolutely, when I was younger, I attempted to bring a
• 58:18
  Speaker 4: book to the tree stand, and two things were glaringly
• 58:22
  Speaker 4: obvious to me. One, I can't believe how loud it
• 58:26
  Speaker 4: is to turn a page when you're paying it to
• 58:28
  Speaker 4: out was just like holy cow. And Two, I just
• 58:31
  Speaker 4: kept reading the same sentence over and over again because
• 58:34
  Speaker 4: I read the sentence and then I lift my head
• 58:36
  Speaker 4: up and look around, and so to your point, like
• 58:39
  Speaker 4: when you know, like I go to Alaska, right, I
• 58:43
  Speaker 4: get asked a lot, why don't you elk hunt? Well,
• 58:47
  Speaker 4: I love elk they are and I've camped in places
• 58:50
  Speaker 4: where elk live and I've listened to them bugle all
• 58:53
  Speaker 4: night long, and it is as I mean, I remember
• 58:56
  Speaker 4: the first time I saw a box canyon. And I
• 58:59
  Speaker 4: walked up into this mountain valley in Nevada, and I'd
• 59:02
  Speaker 4: heard the term box canyon before, but I walked up
• 59:04
  Speaker 4: in there and I heard these bolt bugling, and I
• 59:06
  Speaker 4: was like, oh, this is a box canyon. It's a canyon.
• 59:09
  Speaker 4: It's literally in the shape of a box, like and
• 59:11
  Speaker 4: I remember that popping in my head, like, oh, this
• 59:13
  Speaker 4: is really cool, and it looked like I took a
• 59:15
  Speaker 4: step back time because I hiked so far into hunting's elf.
• 59:18
  Speaker 4: But that's why I go to Alaska. That's literally when
• 59:21
  Speaker 4: I hunt Elk, I see people, I see side by sides.
• 59:25
  Speaker 4: I see ten guys standing around with ten spotting scopes
• 59:29
  Speaker 4: on tripods. I see all the hunting gear that I
• 59:34
  Speaker 4: don't want to see. I see all the outfits that
• 59:37
  Speaker 4: I don't want to see. I see it looks like
• 59:38
  Speaker 4: they fell out of a catalog, each guy. And when
• 59:43
  Speaker 4: I go to Alaska, the pilot that drops me off
• 59:47
  Speaker 4: doesn't give two rats ass about the hunting industry. He
• 59:51
  Speaker 4: doesn't care who's popular and who's not, who has this
• 59:56
  Speaker 4: many likes in this many followers. He doesn't care who
• 59:58
  Speaker 4: was on Joe Rogan could care or less. He is
• 1:00:01
  Speaker 4: a pilot in a very dangerous place, and he lives
• 1:00:04
  Speaker 4: there because he's a man that has enveloped himself, surrounds
• 1:00:07
  Speaker 4: himself with adventure. And he's going to drop me off
• 1:00:10
  Speaker 4: from the wildest freaking place he can think of, where
• 1:00:13
  Speaker 4: he may have saw moose last year, or he may
• 1:00:15
  Speaker 4: not have ever seen a moose, but he thinks it's
• 1:00:16
  Speaker 4: a good place to land his airplane. And I'm the
• 1:00:18
  Speaker 4: type of guy to take a look around, and I
• 1:00:21
  Speaker 4: love that. And when we like, we can't use our
• 1:00:24
  Speaker 4: phones up there right, the phones, there's there's nothing to them.
• 1:00:27
  Speaker 4: And we have our in reaches, which will occasionally use
• 1:00:30
  Speaker 4: for safety or even just to communicate at home. But
• 1:00:33
  Speaker 4: when you can be up there, and I've sat there
• 1:00:36
  Speaker 4: on the hillside before, Mark, I hunted moose in Alaska
• 1:00:39
  Speaker 4: three years ago. It hunted. I think it ended up
• 1:00:42
  Speaker 4: being the wettest year and recorded history in Alaska. It rained.
• 1:00:47
  Speaker 4: I was there for seventeen days. It rained dark to
• 1:00:49
  Speaker 4: dark for all seventeen days, probably about five hours it
• 1:00:54
  Speaker 4: didn't rain. Other than that it was downpouring, honest, because
• 1:00:57
  Speaker 4: there was a typhoon that was coming in. It was extreme.
• 1:01:00
  Speaker 4: What we saw. One legal bull moose. I definitely could
• 1:01:04
  Speaker 4: have killed it, but I passed it because I thought
• 1:01:06
  Speaker 4: it was probably about a sixty inch bull. But it
• 1:01:09
  Speaker 4: looked youngish to me, so I was like, I'm not
• 1:01:11
  Speaker 4: going to shoot it. But to your point, that boredom,
• 1:01:19
  Speaker 4: that leaving your phone tucked away, we ended up laying there,
• 1:01:23
  Speaker 4: sitting there whatever. And he talked like, you know, I'd
• 1:01:26
  Speaker 4: sit there. If you were there with me, I'd be like,
• 1:01:28
  Speaker 4: you know, tell me, tell me about the best hunt
• 1:01:31
  Speaker 4: you've ever had with your dad, or tell me. And
• 1:01:34
  Speaker 4: I would literally start asking you questions that I may
• 1:01:37
  Speaker 4: have already known, Like I might say, if we're sitting there,
• 1:01:40
  Speaker 4: I might say, like, Mark, tell me why did you
• 1:01:42
  Speaker 4: start wired to hunt? Like what what were you trying
• 1:01:45
  Speaker 4: to do? And then like what was your first hunting memory.
• 1:01:48
  Speaker 4: We'd start getting to know each other for the renversations,
• 1:01:52
  Speaker 4: and then we'd have like, you know, you've met William Altman, right, yeah,
• 1:01:57
  Speaker 4: So William would lay there and be like I tell
• 1:02:00
  Speaker 4: this to people and they just laugh. But hit later
• 1:02:01
  Speaker 4: there and be like, Okay, no bullshit, don't come up
• 1:02:05
  Speaker 4: with some fake answer. How many donuts could you eat
• 1:02:09
  Speaker 4: right now? Don't give me some stupid one hundred donuts?
• 1:02:14
  Speaker 4: Like how many donuts could you eat right now? And
• 1:02:16
  Speaker 4: I'd be and I'd sit there and be like, I
• 1:02:19
  Speaker 4: think I could eat eleven donuts. He'd be like, oh shit,
• 1:02:22
  Speaker 4: you cannot eat eleven, you know, like, and people wonder
• 1:02:26
  Speaker 4: and like he really likes goat cheese, so he started
• 1:02:30
  Speaker 4: talking about goat cheese and like, oh, we just but
• 1:02:33
  Speaker 4: you start having these conversations. Right, We've sat there and
• 1:02:36
  Speaker 4: we've been trapped in a tent for five days, where
• 1:02:38
  Speaker 4: we started reading all the packages and finding typos and
• 1:02:40
  Speaker 4: the ingredients and all this different stuff. Like people think
• 1:02:44
  Speaker 4: that you're lost, but I think that we're actually discovering.
• 1:02:49
  Speaker 4: And do you remember when Suckerberg started talking about the metaverse. Yeah,
• 1:02:56
  Speaker 4: and you were going to start having You're going to
• 1:02:58
  Speaker 4: meet be able to move to a house in the
• 1:03:00
  Speaker 4: metaverse and go shopping in the metaverse, and meet a
• 1:03:03
  Speaker 4: girl in the metaverse and have relations in the metaverse.
• 1:03:07
  Speaker 4: I actually got really excited about that because I was hoping,
• 1:03:12
  Speaker 4: and I'm sure it maybe will trend that direction, but
• 1:03:14
  Speaker 4: I was hoping about sixty or seventy percent of the
• 1:03:18
  Speaker 4: world's population was going to move into the metaverse and
• 1:03:22
  Speaker 4: just stay in their houses, stay on their computers, become
• 1:03:26
  Speaker 4: fat slobs, and just degrade into what it is to
• 1:03:31
  Speaker 4: be a giant blob of cells that lives in their
• 1:03:35
  Speaker 4: computer screen, and that they were going to leave the
• 1:03:38
  Speaker 4: woods to me. And I still kind of have that
• 1:03:42
  Speaker 4: hope for humanity, believe it or not, Like I hope
• 1:03:46
  Speaker 4: that a certain subset of people go and pour their
• 1:03:49
  Speaker 4: noses into their phones and into their computers so that
• 1:03:52
  Speaker 4: I have a little bit more room to rome outside.
• 1:03:55
  Speaker 3: Certainly seems like it's happening for a lot.
• 1:03:58
  Speaker 4: It does. Yeah, yeah, but it's it's yeah. It's just
• 1:04:02
  Speaker 4: that everyone has their own way of doing things and
• 1:04:08
  Speaker 4: I don't. And I mean this, I don't want to
• 1:04:09
  Speaker 4: denounce anybody else's way of doing things. But there is
• 1:04:12
  Speaker 4: a right, and there is a wrong, and there is
• 1:04:14
  Speaker 4: a way of being present. And my only criticism is
• 1:04:20
  Speaker 4: if I could show you a slower, more in depth
• 1:04:24
  Speaker 4: way and you have a better time in doing it,
• 1:04:28
  Speaker 4: doesn't that maybe lend itself to being a better way
• 1:04:31
  Speaker 4: of doing it.
• 1:04:33
  Speaker 3: It's hard to argue.
• 1:04:36
  Speaker 2: One element of this that I've noticed you lean into
• 1:04:40
  Speaker 2: even on your white tail hunts, would be what happens
• 1:04:44
  Speaker 2: after the hunt I've seen like in your recent Illinois film,
• 1:04:48
  Speaker 2: Pretty sure you were doing this in the River's Divide,
• 1:04:52
  Speaker 2: but like camping out, like I have a hot tent,
• 1:04:55
  Speaker 2: and even though you're in Illinois a stent, you couldn't
• 1:04:58
  Speaker 2: be too far from a road there, you're still camping
• 1:05:00
  Speaker 2: out on a tent, having it as wild of an
• 1:05:03
  Speaker 2: experience as you can have in a place like that,
• 1:05:07
  Speaker 2: can you can you just tell me a little bit
• 1:05:08
  Speaker 2: more about why that's been important for you, how you've
• 1:05:11
  Speaker 2: gone about that, what's the setup you'd like to use,
• 1:05:14
  Speaker 2: Because I think a lot of people look at this
• 1:05:16
  Speaker 2: and think, well, Okay, if I'm in Alaska or Montana,
• 1:05:18
  Speaker 2: sure I'll do some big wild camp out. But I'm
• 1:05:21
  Speaker 2: in Michigan, or I'm in Illinois, or I'm in Mississippi,
• 1:05:23
  Speaker 2: you can't do that.
• 1:05:25
  Speaker 3: But that's not true, is it.
• 1:05:27
  Speaker 4: No, that's not true. And originally we started doing it
• 1:05:33
  Speaker 4: because it filmed better, right we we and we weren't
• 1:05:37
  Speaker 4: going out to look, this wasn't fashion. We weren't going
• 1:05:39
  Speaker 4: out to film Batman here. We weren't. We didn't have
• 1:05:42
  Speaker 4: a set. But we just thought, we will be more present,
• 1:05:47
  Speaker 4: we will be better on camera. We will be dirtier,
• 1:05:52
  Speaker 4: more beat up, more aware if we're if we're camping,
• 1:05:56
  Speaker 4: if we're immersed in the you know. And several years ago,
• 1:05:59
  Speaker 4: I drew I drew a tag in Iowa and it
• 1:06:04
  Speaker 4: just so happened during the rock that year that it
• 1:06:06
  Speaker 4: was like ten degrees and William and I were camping
• 1:06:11
  Speaker 4: in Iowa. You know, Ben Harshein yep. So we were
• 1:06:15
  Speaker 4: camping on Ben let us use his lease well from
• 1:06:19
  Speaker 4: drawing my tagging. So we were camping on Ben Harshein's lease.
• 1:06:23
  Speaker 4: And I was texting Mark Durry and I was sending
• 1:06:27
  Speaker 4: him pictures of my downsleep bag was frozen in the morning,
• 1:06:31
  Speaker 4: like covered in frost. Mike were in a we're in
• 1:06:33
  Speaker 4: a seek outside tepee an hate man TP with a
• 1:06:36
  Speaker 4: woodstove and the TP and Marcus texting me back. He's like, man,
• 1:06:41
  Speaker 4: I have a house that's not too far from there.
• 1:06:44
  Speaker 4: Just go stay in that house. And then he's like,
• 1:06:48
  Speaker 4: you know, he's trying to find me places to stay
• 1:06:50
  Speaker 4: with buddies his or or whatever. And I was like, no,
• 1:06:53
  Speaker 4: it's not it's not the point in Illinois, and and
• 1:06:57
  Speaker 4: and then one of the times we did this, and
• 1:06:59
  Speaker 4: you'll see this coming out. You and I have spoken
• 1:07:02
  Speaker 4: about the River's divide in the past. You've watched the
• 1:07:04
  Speaker 4: rivers divide. Well, there's a River's divide two coming out,
• 1:07:07
  Speaker 4: like almost the exact same story. Cool, that's gonna come out.
• 1:07:12
  Speaker 4: But this deer I arrowed him. It was like thirty
• 1:07:17
  Speaker 4: twenty five or thirty below zero. I arrowed this deer,
• 1:07:21
  Speaker 4: he's six and a half years old, and I hit
• 1:07:24
  Speaker 4: him low in the brisket and it's really funny. William
• 1:07:29
  Speaker 4: Altman and I were sitting up in the tree standing.
• 1:07:30
  Speaker 4: We're like, you know, Williams like, did you heart punch him?
• 1:07:33
  Speaker 4: I was like, I don't know. I felt It's like
• 1:07:35
  Speaker 4: a thirty five yard show. I'm like he felt really good.
• 1:07:37
  Speaker 4: We're talking and then all of a sudden he comes
• 1:07:38
  Speaker 4: running by with blood dripping out of him, dogging adult.
• 1:07:42
  Speaker 4: We're like, nope, did not heart punch him. He is
• 1:07:44
  Speaker 4: doing just fine, and if we watched him anyway, But
• 1:07:48
  Speaker 4: I ended up hunting that deer for three years and
• 1:07:53
  Speaker 4: killing that deer. If you recall the River's divide where
• 1:07:56
  Speaker 4: Steve was standing when I killed him, this deer by
• 1:08:00
  Speaker 4: the time I killed him would be nose and nose
• 1:08:04
  Speaker 4: with Steve if you superimposed the two videos, which was
• 1:08:06
  Speaker 4: funny because this deer lived like three miles from Steve
• 1:08:10
  Speaker 4: and was rarely down by where Anyway. I tell you
• 1:08:13
  Speaker 4: this because William and I camped that whole time, and
• 1:08:17
  Speaker 4: there's a house that's available to us right there at
• 1:08:19
  Speaker 4: the property, pot showers and everything. But we camp for
• 1:08:24
  Speaker 4: like seventeen days in like negative thirty degrees, and you know,
• 1:08:31
  Speaker 4: camping in that temperature is hard, like everything's frozen. You
• 1:08:34
  Speaker 4: have to get up in the morning it's thirty blowszero
• 1:08:36
  Speaker 4: in your tepee before you get a fire going. But
• 1:08:39
  Speaker 4: it is so much more rewarding to come home, paying
• 1:08:44
  Speaker 4: your bow up, take your backpack off. You know, your
• 1:08:48
  Speaker 4: your senter go, you're breaking kindling, you're getting it in
• 1:08:52
  Speaker 4: the We had this little titanium stove. You're getting in
• 1:08:54
  Speaker 4: the stove, lighting it and you hear the aluminum or
• 1:08:58
  Speaker 4: the titanium on the stove where we use this stove
• 1:09:00
  Speaker 4: from a company called winter Well, they're really good. It
• 1:09:03
  Speaker 4: just starts heating up and popping and then you know,
• 1:09:08
  Speaker 4: like the stove pike gets red hot, the box gets
• 1:09:12
  Speaker 4: red hot, and we're just you know. The beautiful thing
• 1:09:15
  Speaker 4: about that is when we're in north to go to hunting,
• 1:09:20
  Speaker 4: there there's a lot of firewood, and places that we've
• 1:09:23
  Speaker 4: been in Alaska moose hunting, there's a lot of firewood.
• 1:09:26
  Speaker 4: You will come to understand comfort as a as a
• 1:09:32
  Speaker 4: realm of the work that you have to do to
• 1:09:35
  Speaker 4: get it. And so like when you camp in a
• 1:09:38
  Speaker 4: place where it is very difficult to get clean drinking water.
• 1:09:40
  Speaker 4: You have to go very, very far. The next time
• 1:09:43
  Speaker 4: you camp in an area where there's a crystal clear
• 1:09:45
  Speaker 4: stream five yards from your tent, you will embody that
• 1:09:50
  Speaker 4: so much more. When you camp in a place where
• 1:09:53
  Speaker 4: you have to walk far and wide to get any
• 1:09:55
  Speaker 4: sort of firewood if you're going to have a fire,
• 1:09:58
  Speaker 4: the next time you camp in an area where there's
• 1:10:00
  Speaker 4: copious firewood, you will feel that that reward. You will
• 1:10:07
  Speaker 4: feel that, like man alive. We have so much firewood.
• 1:10:11
  Speaker 4: And several years ago, we were camping in Alaska and
• 1:10:18
  Speaker 4: there's we were camping on this spruce flat and all
• 1:10:20
  Speaker 4: the spruce trees, like their bottom ten branches were all
• 1:10:23
  Speaker 4: dead because they're all grown together. So the trees are
• 1:10:26
  Speaker 4: doing beautifully, but the bottoms were and we could just
• 1:10:29
  Speaker 4: go over there with a little saw and knock it
• 1:10:30
  Speaker 4: off and have like blazing fires. And it was an
• 1:10:33
  Speaker 4: endless amount of fire works. Like I'll never forget that,
• 1:10:35
  Speaker 4: you know. I ran out of water one time, Me
• 1:10:38
  Speaker 4: and the whole crew ran out of water one time
• 1:10:40
  Speaker 4: chasing this mountain caribou in the Northwest Territories, and we're
• 1:10:43
  Speaker 4: so dry, like you couldn't even lick your lips because
• 1:10:46
  Speaker 4: your tongue would stick to it like you could peel
• 1:10:48
  Speaker 4: your tongue off. One of the guys that was working
• 1:11:02
  Speaker 4: for me, Chris Kirkby, is a brilliant man. He's such
• 1:11:07
  Speaker 4: a wonderful guy. He doesn't work for us anymore. He's
• 1:11:09
  Speaker 4: such an awesome dude. He peed in his water bottle
• 1:11:12
  Speaker 4: because he thought he was gonna have to drink his
• 1:11:14
  Speaker 4: own pea later on that day, and he became so
• 1:11:17
  Speaker 4: dehydrated that he couldn't walk. He kept he basically fell
• 1:11:21
  Speaker 4: down the mountain. For us to get down, I carried
• 1:11:23
  Speaker 4: his backpack, so I double backpacks on. William carried all
• 1:11:26
  Speaker 4: of his camera gear and he just kind of like
• 1:11:29
  Speaker 4: figures his way down. But when we got to the
• 1:11:31
  Speaker 4: bottom of the hill, we were going through the forest
• 1:11:34
  Speaker 4: and mark we came upout this little It was a
• 1:11:41
  Speaker 4: spring coming up out of the ground. It was only
• 1:11:43
  Speaker 4: about two or three inches deep as crystal clear, ice cold.
• 1:11:46
  Speaker 4: The bottom was muddy, so we to be very careful.
• 1:11:48
  Speaker 4: We sat, we saw this thing, and the three of
• 1:11:50
  Speaker 4: us sat there and we'd fill up a bottle a
• 1:11:53
  Speaker 4: little bit, and we let Chris drink it down and
• 1:11:55
  Speaker 4: then it was, to this day, probably the most rewarding
• 1:12:00
  Speaker 4: thing I've ever drank or eaten in my entire life.
• 1:12:03
  Speaker 4: And so when we're camping, when we have moments like that,
• 1:12:08
  Speaker 4: if I come over to your house tonight and your
• 1:12:11
  Speaker 4: wife makes homemade pizza and you and I sit and
• 1:12:15
  Speaker 4: have homemade pizza, like that's not lost on me. Man.
• 1:12:18
  Speaker 4: Like I've been hungry, really hungry, and I've served long,
• 1:12:22
  Speaker 4: far and wide for drinking water and for firewood and
• 1:12:25
  Speaker 4: for animals, and I've walked into all my toenails have
• 1:12:28
  Speaker 4: fallen off, and I've I've been so cold and so beaten.
• 1:12:33
  Speaker 4: I've been so cold before that, I was certain that
• 1:12:36
  Speaker 4: I wasn't going to live this night. And I sat
• 1:12:38
  Speaker 4: down and talked to my good friend Frank Harris. I
• 1:12:41
  Speaker 4: was like, hey, man, I think we're gonna lose our
• 1:12:43
  Speaker 4: lives tonight. I just want to tell you like I
• 1:12:44
  Speaker 4: love you, like I don't regret a thing that we've
• 1:12:48
  Speaker 4: done today. Like we're very far from our tent. It's raining,
• 1:12:52
  Speaker 4: it's hailing. We're in the Chucatch Mountains of Alaska. I
• 1:12:55
  Speaker 4: couldn't feel my legs anymore. He couldn't feel his legs.
• 1:12:59
  Speaker 4: The only thing that I could feel, and I'm not
• 1:13:01
  Speaker 4: trying to be gross here, I could feel water dripping
• 1:13:05
  Speaker 4: off of my testicles. That's the only thing that I
• 1:13:08
  Speaker 4: could feel was when water would run down my back,
• 1:13:12
  Speaker 4: I could feel it dripping off my testicles. And like
• 1:13:15
  Speaker 4: we were going to lose our lives that night. And
• 1:13:18
  Speaker 4: we made a grave mistake, a terrible mistake of we
• 1:13:22
  Speaker 4: hiked a very very long way from camp without rein
• 1:13:24
  Speaker 4: gear and we got caught in a blizzard slash rain.
• 1:13:28
  Speaker 4: And then Frank said to me like, hey, you see that.
• 1:13:32
  Speaker 4: He was a super tough, macho guy. And he's like,
• 1:13:35
  Speaker 4: you see that rock up there And I said yeah,
• 1:13:38
  Speaker 4: and he's like, I bet you can't walk to that rock.
• 1:13:42
  Speaker 4: And we did that for about eleven miles until we
• 1:13:46
  Speaker 4: got to our tent and we actually made it that night.
• 1:13:49
  Speaker 4: So these experiences that I've had, I've been in the
• 1:13:52
  Speaker 4: Bearing Sea, where I thought during the Winds of Adac,
• 1:13:57
  Speaker 4: the film that we did for Benelling Colin, like William Oltman,
• 1:14:01
  Speaker 4: myself another gentleman, and then the two captains on the boat,
• 1:14:05
  Speaker 4: I I felt you it was about fifty to fifty
• 1:14:09
  Speaker 4: that we are all going to lose our lives that
• 1:14:11
  Speaker 4: night in a storm. And so I hate to say
• 1:14:17
  Speaker 4: it like this, but that's why I camp. Because when
• 1:14:21
  Speaker 4: you camp, when you listen to you know, in that
• 1:14:24
  Speaker 4: piece that we filmed, the coyotes were howling all around
• 1:14:28
  Speaker 4: us that night, Like you can't experience that in a house,
• 1:14:32
  Speaker 4: Like that's not gonna work. And then hanging the deer
• 1:14:34
  Speaker 4: in that in that big silver maple and having a
• 1:14:38
  Speaker 4: fire at night cooking the deer like that is just cool.
• 1:14:41
  Speaker 4: It's just the right way. Yeah.
• 1:14:43
  Speaker 2: Yeah, So you've mentioned a handful of different ways that
• 1:14:49
  Speaker 2: we could try to go about things in a different way.
• 1:14:52
  Speaker 2: We've talked about camping out. We've talked about, you know,
• 1:14:55
  Speaker 2: using more primitive weapon. We've talked about maybe stepping away
• 1:14:59
  Speaker 2: from from our cameras to some degree, at least changing
• 1:15:04
  Speaker 2: a little bit there. We've talked about, you know, maybe
• 1:15:08
  Speaker 2: setting aside our phone limiting distractions. Are there any other
• 1:15:14
  Speaker 2: really transformative ways that you're putting this into action in
• 1:15:19
  Speaker 2: your own life with your hunts? Are there any other
• 1:15:21
  Speaker 2: parts of this that other folks could consider, Like, I
• 1:15:25
  Speaker 2: gotta believe this is going to be resonating to a
• 1:15:27
  Speaker 2: lot of folks. These types of conversations keep popping up,
• 1:15:30
  Speaker 2: but people always like, well, how what, what was it?
• 1:15:32
  Speaker 3: What does it take?
• 1:15:33
  Speaker 2: What are there any other things that you would, you know,
• 1:15:35
  Speaker 2: want someone to take away from this conversation in ways
• 1:15:38
  Speaker 2: that they can reconnect with with the way the old
• 1:15:41
  Speaker 2: boys did it a little bit more.
• 1:15:43
  Speaker 4: I'll say two things. One thing, I want to take
• 1:15:46
  Speaker 4: a little dive back into gear because this was something
• 1:15:49
  Speaker 4: that occurred to me last year. I didn't realize it
• 1:15:53
  Speaker 4: until I did it, But so I met some engineers
• 1:15:57
  Speaker 4: from a company called Q It's a rifle company out
• 1:16:00
  Speaker 4: in New Hampshire. I don't know if you saw the
• 1:16:02
  Speaker 4: photos from my caribou hunt last year Mark in Alaska,
• 1:16:06
  Speaker 4: but I'd killed my caribou with this very technological looking rifle.
• 1:16:11
  Speaker 4: Had a silencer. I'd never shot a rifle of silence
• 1:16:13
  Speaker 4: around it before, had a rail like you would see
• 1:16:15
  Speaker 4: on a military gun, ar platform, foldable stock. Not anything
• 1:16:19
  Speaker 4: I would ever shoot, like the opposite of what I
• 1:16:22
  Speaker 4: enjoy shooting. But I met these engineers at Q and
• 1:16:27
  Speaker 4: they invited me out to come out to New Hampshire
• 1:16:30
  Speaker 4: where their companies and build to a gun build. I
• 1:16:33
  Speaker 4: was like, oh yeah, okay, I'll do that. It's kind
• 1:16:35
  Speaker 4: of cool. So I went out there and built this gun.
• 1:16:37
  Speaker 4: I tell you all this because I ended up taking
• 1:16:40
  Speaker 4: that gun to Alaska, and for no other reason than
• 1:16:45
  Speaker 4: they kind of dared me too, because I sat in
• 1:16:48
  Speaker 4: their offices and talked to their engineers and met their
• 1:16:51
  Speaker 4: owner and met their CEO and the presidents, and and
• 1:16:56
  Speaker 4: I was like, this is this gun isn't for me,
• 1:16:58
  Speaker 4: this is this is not the type weapon for me.
• 1:17:01
  Speaker 4: I ended up taking this technologically advanced gun and on
• 1:17:05
  Speaker 4: this hunt, and I started to realize all these little
• 1:17:10
  Speaker 4: intrinsic pieces, like how the gun carried when I was
• 1:17:13
  Speaker 4: in really serious bear country, how I was able to
• 1:17:16
  Speaker 4: go through the alders with this AR platform. It was
• 1:17:19
  Speaker 4: apparent to me because I've never served in the military,
• 1:17:20
  Speaker 4: Its apparent to me now why our soldiers shoot an
• 1:17:23
  Speaker 4: AR platform, both for the grip, safety, all this stuff.
• 1:17:27
  Speaker 4: When I shot my caribou, I took the longest shot
• 1:17:29
  Speaker 4: I've ever taken on my life at an animals three
• 1:17:32
  Speaker 4: hundred and forty yards, and I stuffed the magazine while
• 1:17:37
  Speaker 4: into my backpack, and it was way more solid than
• 1:17:40
  Speaker 4: just resting my rifle on the backpack. These are little
• 1:17:43
  Speaker 4: things that really spoke to me. But in doing this,
• 1:17:45
  Speaker 4: I kept looking at this rifle and thinking, this isn't
• 1:17:49
  Speaker 4: me at all, but I very much enjoyed hunting with
• 1:17:53
  Speaker 4: this rifle, and in that this is silly to even
• 1:17:55
  Speaker 4: admit this, but in that I realized, it's not what
• 1:17:59
  Speaker 4: you're hunting necessarily, it's how you're hunting. And so if
• 1:18:03
  Speaker 4: you you know, we all choose different weapons, Like I
• 1:18:06
  Speaker 4: shot that deer with the muzzloorder. There are a lot
• 1:18:10
  Speaker 4: of very fancy muzzlelolders out there right now that company
• 1:18:14
  Speaker 4: Woodman Arms or Woodman Arms out of I think they're
• 1:18:17
  Speaker 4: out of New Hampshire. To me, they build the most
• 1:18:20
  Speaker 4: incredible muzzle around the market, this little petite thing that's
• 1:18:24
  Speaker 4: for carrying and for shooting. They shoot beautifully, they're super accurate,
• 1:18:27
  Speaker 4: they look like they're built in nineteen seventy five, and
• 1:18:31
  Speaker 4: they're just absolutely stunning. And to me, when I'm holding
• 1:18:35
  Speaker 4: that gun, it's really charming and really rewarding and looks
• 1:18:40
  Speaker 4: the part. But then I also ran into that when
• 1:18:42
  Speaker 4: I was holding this queue when I was in Alaska,
• 1:18:45
  Speaker 4: and I realized, like, this is a really cool platform
• 1:18:48
  Speaker 4: hunt with as well for different reasons, and so I
• 1:18:51
  Speaker 4: think people don't put enough stock in their mindset. Much
• 1:18:56
  Speaker 4: like I used to say, to experience fantastic things, you
• 1:18:59
  Speaker 4: had to go to fantastic places. Well, there's people out
• 1:19:01
  Speaker 4: there that are like, I can't go to the Arctic Circle,
• 1:19:04
  Speaker 4: and they're wrong. They can, but they're like, I can't
• 1:19:05
  Speaker 4: go to the Artic Circle. It's expensive and it's not
• 1:19:08
  Speaker 4: actually as expensive as they think, but like it's scary,
• 1:19:12
  Speaker 4: and it is scary. The weather will kill you, the
• 1:19:14
  Speaker 4: bears will kill you, the airplane crashes will kill you.
• 1:19:15
  Speaker 4: But you know, they can go do these adventures. And
• 1:19:18
  Speaker 4: so one of the things that I realized is you
• 1:19:20
  Speaker 4: don't have to go to the Arctic Circle to hunt.
• 1:19:22
  Speaker 4: Like you're in the Arctic Circle. You and I, through
• 1:19:25
  Speaker 4: mindset and through adventure, could go camping in Illinois and
• 1:19:29
  Speaker 4: go or Iowa or Wisconsin and go on a squirrel hunt.
• 1:19:32
  Speaker 4: We could go on an October squirrel hunt and still
• 1:19:34
  Speaker 4: appreciate the leaves, changing still appreciate seeing a big, plump,
• 1:19:38
  Speaker 4: heavy hooked buck slipping through the trees while we're squirrel
• 1:19:41
  Speaker 4: hunting and shooting some squirrels and you know, and picking
• 1:19:45
  Speaker 4: some berries and going back to the camp and having
• 1:19:47
  Speaker 4: a fantastic dinner and having a very rewarding adventure hunt
• 1:19:53
  Speaker 4: kind of a big adventure hunt in somebody's proverbial backyard.
• 1:19:58
  Speaker 4: So I think mindset is something that's very, very important.
• 1:20:01
  Speaker 4: But beyond that, I just think that if people go
• 1:20:07
  Speaker 4: to go do things that they've never done before. Go
• 1:20:12
  Speaker 4: go on a go on a wilderness hunt for elk
• 1:20:15
  Speaker 4: or moose or caribou, or go on a wilderness white
• 1:20:19
  Speaker 4: til deer hunt, or get out, go to someplace that
• 1:20:23
  Speaker 4: is just a little bit further out, go camping, don't
• 1:20:27
  Speaker 4: don't put much stock in the size of the antlers,
• 1:20:30
  Speaker 4: or you know, go on a doll hunt, even even
• 1:20:33
  Speaker 4: get together with your bodies and go dough hunting and
• 1:20:38
  Speaker 4: remove the remove the stress of the antlers, and say, hey,
• 1:20:42
  Speaker 4: we're gonna go onto this. We're gonna go on the
• 1:20:44
  Speaker 4: state land. We're each gonna we're gonna draw an area
• 1:20:47
  Speaker 4: out of the hat, and whatever you deal with you
• 1:20:49
  Speaker 4: have to deal with. If you drew the area where
• 1:20:51
  Speaker 4: there's a bunch of duck hunters, you have to deal
• 1:20:52
  Speaker 4: with the duck hunters, or you have to canoe it
• 1:20:54
  Speaker 4: or whatever and just get back to either hunting by
• 1:20:59
  Speaker 4: yourself or hunting with your body's hunting with your family
• 1:21:01
  Speaker 4: and kind of like taking a step back man and
• 1:21:05
  Speaker 4: looking at you know. We talked about the gear, We
• 1:21:08
  Speaker 4: talked about the the end result, like the size of
• 1:21:12
  Speaker 4: the animals, but really like, uh, what about the story?
• 1:21:17
  Speaker 4: What happened? Like what what what went down? And like
• 1:21:20
  Speaker 4: I shot this caribou last year. It's probably the biggest
• 1:21:23
  Speaker 4: cariboo I've ever shot in my life. And I've probably
• 1:21:25
  Speaker 4: shot I don't know, eight to ten cariboo. It's probably
• 1:21:28
  Speaker 4: the biggest caribou body I've ever shot my life. The
• 1:21:31
  Speaker 4: bowl was very, very old, just basically had hockey sticks or antlers,
• 1:21:35
  Speaker 4: but he had really big cool fronts. But like when
• 1:21:40
  Speaker 4: I got back into Camp Main camp, like a couple
• 1:21:42
  Speaker 4: of the guys had shot like Boone and Crockett bulls,
• 1:21:44
  Speaker 4: and like when I brought my bull on, they were
• 1:21:46
  Speaker 4: kind of like whoa, Like you shot that, and like
• 1:21:51
  Speaker 4: you know, but you know you didn't want to hold
• 1:21:54
  Speaker 4: out for a big Well, first of all, I shot
• 1:21:55
  Speaker 4: I shot this ball on the last day. I hiked
• 1:21:58
  Speaker 4: my face off looking for I'm mature bull that had
• 1:22:01
  Speaker 4: a really big, handsome rack and was heavy, hooked with
• 1:22:04
  Speaker 4: lots of good meat. I've got four pounds of hamburger
• 1:22:07
  Speaker 4: thowing right now on the counter from him, and which
• 1:22:10
  Speaker 4: is fantastic. Yeah, it's really good. But that is like
• 1:22:15
  Speaker 4: that bull was running an entire harem of cows. He
• 1:22:18
  Speaker 4: had pushed them to the top. He was in cheap country.
• 1:22:21
  Speaker 4: He pushed him to the tippity top of his mount
• 1:22:23
  Speaker 4: We hiked up there and I killed him, and it
• 1:22:26
  Speaker 4: was just so amazing. And I lost my dad last year.
• 1:22:30
  Speaker 4: I lost my dad in March last year. And so
• 1:22:32
  Speaker 4: I was sitting at this bull. I appreciate that, but
• 1:22:35
  Speaker 4: I'll sit at this bowl like like I just started, like,
• 1:22:39
  Speaker 4: you know, tearing up, and I was thinking about my dad,
• 1:22:42
  Speaker 4: and it was just like, yeah, it wasn't the biggest
• 1:22:45
  Speaker 4: antler bowl in the world. It probably was the biggest
• 1:22:48
  Speaker 4: bodied bull I ever shot. But I left there like
• 1:22:52
  Speaker 4: unbelievably fulfilled and unbelievably happy. And even if I didn't
• 1:22:56
  Speaker 4: kill that bull, I would have left there with a heart.
• 1:22:59
  Speaker 4: That was because I took my little one person hill
• 1:23:02
  Speaker 4: aberg tents camped at a mountain pass. I was camped
• 1:23:06
  Speaker 4: right next to this these legacy grizzly bear brown bear
• 1:23:12
  Speaker 4: tracks where they step into the same footprint.
• 1:23:15
  Speaker 2: I saw those last year on Admiralty Islands, a very
• 1:23:18
  Speaker 2: different place, but yes, I've seen it.
• 1:23:19
  Speaker 4: Does that not freak you out?
• 1:23:21
  Speaker 3: Amazing?
• 1:23:22
  Speaker 4: Like they're right right next to my tent and it
• 1:23:25
  Speaker 4: was cool. It's like, right next to my tent, there's
• 1:23:26
  Speaker 4: a caribou one that they've been walking in for a
• 1:23:29
  Speaker 4: million years, and here's the brown bear one. Like I
• 1:23:31
  Speaker 4: can literally see front pad, backpad, front pad, backpad, and
• 1:23:35
  Speaker 4: I can even see like I could go up to
• 1:23:37
  Speaker 4: these rock outcroppings where the snow cross over and I
• 1:23:40
  Speaker 4: know they dend there, and I'll go up there and
• 1:23:42
  Speaker 4: look and like there's like I can literally see somebody
• 1:23:45
  Speaker 4: dens there every year and I can see their footprints.
• 1:23:48
  Speaker 4: They've been doing it for ten thousand years. Man, And like, yeah,
• 1:23:51
  Speaker 4: whether I killed the bowl or not, I'm looking at
• 1:23:54
  Speaker 4: all this stuff. I'm washing the weather, I'm watching my
• 1:23:56
  Speaker 4: buddy come in and land is supercouver where he probably
• 1:23:59
  Speaker 4: shouldn't be landing a super cop picking me up and
• 1:24:02
  Speaker 4: dropping off the end of them mout like it was
• 1:24:04
  Speaker 4: just that's why I hunt man, that that I want
• 1:24:08
  Speaker 4: to share it with you. That's My biggest bane mark
• 1:24:10
  Speaker 4: is I want to share with you. I want to
• 1:24:14
  Speaker 4: share it with the guy down the street. I like,
• 1:24:16
  Speaker 4: if I was a billionaire, I would do exactly what
• 1:24:19
  Speaker 4: I'm doing for work right now. It's just that I
• 1:24:21
  Speaker 4: would take people with me.
• 1:24:22
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 1:24:23
  Speaker 4: Yeah, I share it because that, I think is one
• 1:24:25
  Speaker 4: of the next levels. It's mentoring somebody. Like I didn't
• 1:24:28
  Speaker 4: kill a turkey this year. I just brought kids turkey hunting,
• 1:24:32
  Speaker 4: and uh man, that was awesome, so awesome.
• 1:24:37
  Speaker 3: That's so cool.
• 1:24:39
  Speaker 2: I think like this is a perfect place to kind
• 1:24:42
  Speaker 2: of tie a bow on things. And I love this
• 1:24:45
  Speaker 2: kind of There's there's a number of different ways of
• 1:24:49
  Speaker 2: doing this, but everything drills down to reconnecting more closely
• 1:24:54
  Speaker 2: with the place, with the people, with the animal, with
• 1:24:57
  Speaker 2: the experience. And you can do that vie removing all
• 1:25:00
  Speaker 2: these different barriers, whether that be technology, whether that be
• 1:25:04
  Speaker 2: where you stay, whether that be mindset. But there's you
• 1:25:07
  Speaker 2: know this, this is this is an opportunity available to anyone,
• 1:25:11
  Speaker 2: whether you can travel to a fantastic place or not,
• 1:25:13
  Speaker 2: whether you have a lot of money or not. I
• 1:25:16
  Speaker 2: think that's a really important thing to remember.
• 1:25:18
  Speaker 4: That's right.
• 1:25:19
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I've got I've got just a couple of really
• 1:25:21
  Speaker 2: quick questions for you.
• 1:25:23
  Speaker 3: Uh.
• 1:25:24
  Speaker 2: Number one, you talked early on in the very beginning
• 1:25:27
  Speaker 2: about some of these books that inspired you. Do you
• 1:25:30
  Speaker 2: remember the name of any of these books or a
• 1:25:34
  Speaker 2: book that would be one you'd recommend us seek out
• 1:25:37
  Speaker 2: and try to find for some of this kind of
• 1:25:40
  Speaker 2: wilderness old school inspiration to any standout still in your memory?
• 1:25:45
  Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean I have. That's really funny. The most
• 1:25:48
  Speaker 4: inspiring book I have is literally right behind me, and
• 1:25:51
  Speaker 4: I've kept it all these years. It's called The Big
• 1:25:52
  Speaker 4: Game Animals of North America by Jack O'Connor, and it
• 1:25:57
  Speaker 4: just was in each chapter as a painting. So it
• 1:26:01
  Speaker 4: opens up with a particular animal, then as a painting
• 1:26:04
  Speaker 4: of the animal, and then he goes on to tell
• 1:26:06
  Speaker 4: you the story of hunting the animals, and then after
• 1:26:08
  Speaker 4: the hunt he describes the natural history. And so I
• 1:26:11
  Speaker 4: don't even know if that's why I became a biologist.
• 1:26:13
  Speaker 4: I don't even know if that's why the biology of
• 1:26:15
  Speaker 4: the animal is so important to me. But that's how
• 1:26:17
  Speaker 4: that book is laid out, and I absolutely love it.
• 1:26:20
  Speaker 4: Most of Jack O'Connor's books, Sheep and Sheep, Hunting, Desert Sheep,
• 1:26:25
  Speaker 4: Animals of the Desert. All those books are very inspiring
• 1:26:29
  Speaker 4: to me. And you and I have talked about this before.
• 1:26:31
  Speaker 4: I think before any hunter passes their hunter safety they
• 1:26:36
  Speaker 4: should have to read Elder Leopold San County Almanac, Like
• 1:26:40
  Speaker 4: that should be a prerequisite. I just had a friend
• 1:26:44
  Speaker 4: read it, a young man, he's probably twenty five, twenty eight.
• 1:26:49
  Speaker 4: He lives in South Dakota. He's a rancher in South Dakota.
• 1:26:51
  Speaker 4: He read it and he's like, I'm totally changing how
• 1:26:54
  Speaker 4: I set up my properties. He's going away from food
• 1:26:58
  Speaker 4: plots and going to not going away from food plots.
• 1:27:02
  Speaker 4: He's setting up more natural food areas. He's setting up
• 1:27:06
  Speaker 4: he's doing more grasses, he's doing more edge habitat, he's
• 1:27:09
  Speaker 4: doing things for wildlife, Yes, more things for wildlife. And
• 1:27:13
  Speaker 4: so Elder Leopold books, Jack O'Connor's books, I think that
• 1:27:18
  Speaker 4: stuff is And then you know, even the old school.
• 1:27:23
  Speaker 4: Have you seen the new field and streams that are
• 1:27:25
  Speaker 4: coming out? Yeah, they're great, Yeah, really well at don
• 1:27:28
  Speaker 4: and so like anytime you can jump on those old
• 1:27:30
  Speaker 4: pens and have an understanding of how those guys saw
• 1:27:33
  Speaker 4: wild places, I think is very popular.
• 1:27:35
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I couldn't agree more with you on that stuff. Okay, finally,
• 1:27:40
  Speaker 2: can you give us the scoop on on what's to
• 1:27:43
  Speaker 2: come with your films and your content? Where can people
• 1:27:47
  Speaker 2: see what you have out there already? How can they
• 1:27:49
  Speaker 2: connect with you and make sure they can see what's coming.
• 1:27:53
  Speaker 4: So search for Donnie Vincent on YouTube, subscribe and follow
• 1:27:58
  Speaker 4: us there. That's where new work is going to be
• 1:27:59
  Speaker 4: coming out. We have two film series that we're launching.
• 1:28:02
  Speaker 4: Three film series. Actually, one is Unfiltered, which you just
• 1:28:05
  Speaker 4: saw on an episode of the on the Illinois Buzzlutterbuck.
• 1:28:09
  Speaker 4: The next one is Fantastic Places, basically fifteen to eighteen
• 1:28:13
  Speaker 4: films that we have done that we have filmed over
• 1:28:15
  Speaker 4: the last fourteen years. They're already filmed, they're already in
• 1:28:18
  Speaker 4: the can. We're editing and editing them now. The first episode,
• 1:28:22
  Speaker 4: which is an archery dollshy Punt, is coming out probably
• 1:28:25
  Speaker 4: in two weeks. It's probably thirty five minutes long something
• 1:28:29
  Speaker 4: like that, which is really fun. I sit down in
• 1:28:32
  Speaker 4: this cabin and I kind of tell the story. If
• 1:28:35
  Speaker 4: you've ever seen like True Detective with Matthew McConaughey, I
• 1:28:38
  Speaker 4: sit down and kind of retell the story in a chair,
• 1:28:41
  Speaker 4: and then we caught the old footage that was shot
• 1:28:43
  Speaker 4: back then and then old interviews back then. That's fantastic places.
• 1:28:48
  Speaker 4: And then we have basically what is going to be
• 1:28:49
  Speaker 4: our new film series, which is just things that are
• 1:28:53
  Speaker 4: currently happening and so we're putting together. If you've watched
• 1:28:56
  Speaker 4: our film The Other Side, which was a film about
• 1:28:59
  Speaker 4: multi will bear hunts, uh, this is going to kind
• 1:29:02
  Speaker 4: of be like the Other Side part too, but it's
• 1:29:04
  Speaker 4: going to be all about Cariboo and different character hunts
• 1:29:07
  Speaker 4: and the backbone of it. It's going to be my
• 1:29:09
  Speaker 4: latest my last two caribou hunts in Alaska that I've
• 1:29:12
  Speaker 4: done in the Alaska Peninsula, but it's going to be
• 1:29:15
  Speaker 4: Embody Mount Cariboo, Woodland Cariboo, Caribou in the Arctic Circle
• 1:29:19
  Speaker 4: and all the different places that I've that I've wanted character.
• 1:29:22
  Speaker 4: So wow, Yeah, there's gonna be a lot of work
• 1:29:25
  Speaker 4: coming out, and yeah, there's there's going to be quite
• 1:29:28
  Speaker 4: a we we've taken quite a hiatus from putting films
• 1:29:31
  Speaker 4: together because our commercial business gets quite busy. But somehow
• 1:29:36
  Speaker 4: we're finding by managing our time a little bit more efficiently.
• 1:29:39
  Speaker 4: We're finding time to do both.
• 1:29:41
  Speaker 2: That's great, That's that's exciting. I can't wait to see
• 1:29:44
  Speaker 2: all that. I I appreciate you, know everything you've done
• 1:29:48
  Speaker 2: over the years down and you've been saying. A phenomenal
• 1:29:50
  Speaker 2: storyteller and and inspiration.
• 1:29:53
  Speaker 4: And and and a role model.
• 1:29:56
  Speaker 2: I think of sort for folks as as a way
• 1:30:00
  Speaker 2: of doing this a little bit differently than maybe what
• 1:30:02
  Speaker 2: we'll see everywhere else. So thank you, thank you for that,
• 1:30:05
  Speaker 2: and thanks for this conversation.
• 1:30:06
  Speaker 4: Yeah, thanks Mark, I appreciate it. And hopefully you don't
• 1:30:09
  Speaker 4: wait so long to do the next one.
• 1:30:11
  Speaker 3: I don't plan on it right on.
• 1:30:13
  Speaker 4: Thanks man, all right, and that's going to.
• 1:30:18
  Speaker 3: Wrap it up for us today. Thank you for joining me.
• 1:30:21
  Speaker 2: I appreciate you being here for this conversation. And until
• 1:30:24
  Speaker 2: next time, stay wired to hunt.