Latest / The MeatEater Podcast / Ep. 021

Transcript

Ep. 021 · The MeatEater Podcast

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: All right, everybody, this is the best news to ever
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• 0:52
  Speaker 1: All right, thanks for joining the Meat Eater Podcast. We're
• 0:55
  Speaker 1: recording in a very teeny sounding hotel room and Bethel, Alaska.
• 1:00
  Speaker 1: Bethel Alaska is in western Alaska. Specifically, it's where the
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  Speaker 1: Costa Quim River flows out into the Bearing Sea. Just
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  Speaker 1: north of here, you've got the Yukon River flowing out
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  Speaker 1: into the Bearing Sea, and so the delta that these
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  Speaker 1: two things form. People say it's the Yukon Cuska Quim
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  Speaker 1: Delta or y K delta. It's way bigger than the
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  Speaker 1: delta made by the Mississippi flowing to the Gulf of Mexico.
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  Speaker 1: It's actually, um, the y K delta is bigger than
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  Speaker 1: the state of Louisiana. It's a huge tundra delta. And
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  Speaker 1: this area is predominantly Um. There's six thousand people in Bethels,
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  Speaker 1: predominantly Native Alaska. Uh Yupik Eskimo. We're coming from an island,
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  Speaker 1: Nu Nevak Island, which is forty miles out into the
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  Speaker 1: Bering Sea Islands, about forty miles by sixty miles approximately,
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  Speaker 1: and that's Chupic Eskimo out there. UM. And the only
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  Speaker 1: chupas like Chupas just live on New Nevak. There's two
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  Speaker 1: hundred people on New Nevak Island in a town called
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  Speaker 1: McCory Uck, and that's where we're coming from. We're just
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  Speaker 1: out there hunting muskox. But speaking of how big the
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  Speaker 1: y K delta is, Um, we're here with Mike washed Leski.
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  Speaker 1: You've never done one of these Mica. We kind we
• 2:20
  Speaker 1: kind of try to do on an anchors, but I
• 2:22
  Speaker 1: didn't have a hot Mica, Mike's done him. But Mike
• 2:25
  Speaker 1: has done him. But as Mike was on so kind
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  Speaker 1: of no, and we were asking Mike, Mike's from Texas,
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  Speaker 1: and this morning we were asking Mike if why is
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  Speaker 1: Texas so into the thing about how their states so big?
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  Speaker 1: But it's not the biggest state. It's like Texas fits
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  Speaker 1: inside of Alaska, but Texans are. It's a big thing.
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  Speaker 1: It's like no other second place thing acts like it's
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  Speaker 1: the first place thing. I think it's because it was
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  Speaker 1: its own country, so that's the claim to fame. I
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  Speaker 1: guess a certain degree. It's the biggest in the lower
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  Speaker 1: forty eight. I guess you could just say that, yeah,
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  Speaker 1: but it's it's probably carrying over from when before, from
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  Speaker 1: before Alaska became a state and then it was Okay,
• 3:12
  Speaker 1: what's the sports team that used to be good? Now
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  Speaker 1: they suck? Well. It's like like the Packers. The Packers
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  Speaker 1: ever used to win that they always win the Super
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  Speaker 1: Bowls in the old days. I feel like they did.
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  Speaker 1: They've been great. Okay, so people the Packers don't run
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  Speaker 1: around and being like, yeah, number one champion, right, It's
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  Speaker 1: like you used to be you're not now now you're
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  Speaker 1: just like a team. Yeah texts. You guys are just
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  Speaker 1: like a state. Texas has a lot of pride. Yeah,
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  Speaker 1: I mean people get tattooed. I mean how many tattoos
• 3:40
  Speaker 1: you see have, Like you know, Massachusetts on somebody's shoulder.
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  Speaker 1: Well here that you tattooed nine oh seven on your arm.
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  Speaker 1: That the areas a single area code state like Wyoming.
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  Speaker 1: So what happens whenever there's another area code and you
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  Speaker 1: happen to have that tattoo, you do slash, then you're
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  Speaker 1: you're the next the next three time. It's like a
• 4:01
  Speaker 1: remember also so so Mike's a camera operator and still
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  Speaker 1: photographer um and works with us on the show Media.
• 4:11
  Speaker 1: We're actually coming from filming an episode of Media and
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  Speaker 1: we're also joined by Honest But tell us who who
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  Speaker 1: you know is always hanging around? It's always kind of
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  Speaker 1: murmuring in the background there. And then Corey, how do
• 4:22
  Speaker 1: you say your last name? Catch mark or catch mark
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  Speaker 1: or kasmeric? Which do you like? Depending on the day.
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  Speaker 1: It's like, if you want to tell someone how it sounds,
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  Speaker 1: it's kasmeric if you look at it. Yeah, Corey comes
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  Speaker 1: from a big state, sixty six miles wide, Montana, and um,
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  Speaker 1: what's super interesting about Corey. Tell them what you used
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  Speaker 1: to do before you start being a cameraman. I'll tell
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  Speaker 1: him Corey was the dude. Corey is one of the
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  Speaker 1: dude is it jumps out of the helicopter with the
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  Speaker 1: snowboard and goes down a big, huge mountain that looks
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  Speaker 1: like you're gonna die. Talk about that just for a
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  Speaker 1: quick second. I've been snowboarding like twenty five years, and uh,
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  Speaker 1: I think my favorite kind of snowboarding is big mountain
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  Speaker 1: snow waring. So I used to compare bing mountain, big mountain, big.
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  Speaker 1: Sorry I got a little bit of a cold, but
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  Speaker 1: uh yeah, I was competed at a professional level, traveled
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  Speaker 1: around big mountain snow waring. I one time asked Corey,
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  Speaker 1: we're hunting, and I asked Corey if there's ever been
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  Speaker 1: a mountain the other dudes would go down on their
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  Speaker 1: snowboard and he wouldn't go down. And at the time
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  Speaker 1: he said, no, You've never seen a dude go down
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  Speaker 1: a hill. And then you said, there's no way I'm
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  Speaker 1: going down that hill. I could go down the hill.
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  Speaker 1: There might be routes where right now in my age,
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  Speaker 1: I'm only thirty nine, But that's old for a snowboarder
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  Speaker 1: to be jumping off fifty sixty ft cliffs. Yeah, you know,
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  Speaker 1: K two or I don't know what. Everest would be
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  Speaker 1: one that I would question, but it was at low elevation.
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  Speaker 1: I could probably make it down. Okay. You know it's
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  Speaker 1: the elevation that will get you on those mountains. What
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  Speaker 1: do you mean, I mean just the air, the air. Yeah,
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  Speaker 1: you could just be snowboarding and just pass out, you know,
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  Speaker 1: is that right? Oh? Yeah? Hey, what what is it?
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  Speaker 1: What's the death zone twenty? What is it? I think? So?
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  Speaker 1: Do you snowboard downhills where I don't want? I do
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  Speaker 1: want to talk about snowboard for a minute. Um, do
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  Speaker 1: you snowboard down hills or if you fell you would die? Yes? Yeah,
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  Speaker 1: I do that a lot. So you have to keep
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  Speaker 1: up right, Yeah, you don't want to fall or usually
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  Speaker 1: it's you're exposed. So if it's steep enough where you
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  Speaker 1: can like fall and you start getting momentum, it's the
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  Speaker 1: rag dolling effecting when you're going to pass over heels
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  Speaker 1: all the way down the mountain, you know, and then
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  Speaker 1: that's when you will probably die, have trauma or go
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  Speaker 1: over a cliff for you know, so you don't want
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  Speaker 1: to smack into a tree or trees. Did that happen
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  Speaker 1: a lot? I mean, do you see that like when
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  Speaker 1: it happens all time? Well, I mean like during a competition. Oh,
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  Speaker 1: during competitions, he can't get to the bottom hill for
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  Speaker 1: all the carcasses land everywhere. There are deaths. There are
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  Speaker 1: some deaths in that competitive scene. You know, it's just unfortunate.
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  Speaker 1: But you are a risk. You know, it's a time
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  Speaker 1: of day. Wake up, it's competition day. Or at the top,
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  Speaker 1: and you're gonna push your limits. And some people try
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  Speaker 1: to go a little past their limits, or some people
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  Speaker 1: just mess up off takeoffs and maybe landing and then
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  Speaker 1: an oncoming rock or cliff because you're missing you're looking
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  Speaker 1: at it from the bottom with your binoculars, this mountain face,
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  Speaker 1: and then you have to go up top and kind
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  Speaker 1: of turn that whole you know vision in your head
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  Speaker 1: because you're gonna go down the mountain now, so you're
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  Speaker 1: flipping the image and you have to remember like this rock,
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  Speaker 1: this tree, this four ft tree, you know, three ft
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  Speaker 1: to the left. I'm gonna take off there and it's
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  Speaker 1: gonna be a two ft wide landing and then I
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  Speaker 1: gotta take a hard left here because this is a
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  Speaker 1: you know, there's other trees or another forty ft cliff,
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  Speaker 1: so you gotta like it's a little puzzy putting to
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  Speaker 1: your head, and then you know you're at the finish
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  Speaker 1: line hopefully. And how fast you're going, I mean it's
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  Speaker 1: depending on your route route finding. Are you judged on speed?
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  Speaker 1: It's not really speed. You know. The judging criteria was
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  Speaker 1: line choice, which the line you pick going down the mountain,
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  Speaker 1: control your fluidity or aggressiveness, and um style. It sounds
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  Speaker 1: like a lot of like pretty arbitrary stuff. It's like
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  Speaker 1: figure scanning. Yeah you know that, but what speed would
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  Speaker 1: you hit? Oh, you can hit easy, you know, you
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  Speaker 1: points point to shoot for a long period of time.
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  Speaker 1: You can be going fifty easily. So do you do?
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  Speaker 1: You go on these mountains like side unseen, like you're like,
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  Speaker 1: here's your mountain, figure out the map and then you've
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  Speaker 1: never actually done the rap up. Yeah. True, that's at
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  Speaker 1: the high level. The low level, they'll let you go
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  Speaker 1: onto the face, ski around, look off things. You know.
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  Speaker 1: It's called an inspection day. You get one run through
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  Speaker 1: and you get the find your route and that you know,
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  Speaker 1: it's pretty explosive skiing when you have when you can
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  Speaker 1: go see where you're going. So these guys are just
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  Speaker 1: flying on the mountain, but when you have a there's
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  Speaker 1: actually a contest the World Tours in Handes, Alaska this week,
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  Speaker 1: and would you normally be at that right now? I
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  Speaker 1: followed that tour. I used to snowboard on that tour
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  Speaker 1: for two years and I've worked at probably like four
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  Speaker 1: years worked as a camera. So yeah, you just it's
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  Speaker 1: just the adrenaline thing. It's like hunting, like probably sheep
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  Speaker 1: or something. I would say I hunt, but on that
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  Speaker 1: like these guys, you know, not like Steve, those who
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  Speaker 1: are listening, but you know, you get that scene adrenaline rush,
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  Speaker 1: probably chasing sheep, walking these cliff edges, trying to find
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  Speaker 1: the sheet probably and you don't want to fall here
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  Speaker 1: with your big pack on. If you do, you're gonna
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  Speaker 1: get messed up a way in the back country. And
• 10:13
  Speaker 1: it kind of brings me and Mike peeked over a
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  Speaker 1: couple of edges. I wasn't about snowboard down. Yeah, I
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  Speaker 1: was just like Steve, you can go ahead up over
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  Speaker 1: that edge. I'm just not cool right here. So uh,
• 10:29
  Speaker 1: let's go way way back. I'm gonna go way back
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  Speaker 1: in time from it here. During like the place the
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  Speaker 1: scene epic, you had musk cocks all the way likes
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  Speaker 1: there's a term circumpolar, like muscles like the blue muscle
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  Speaker 1: eat when you get muscles in the restaurant, the blue
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  Speaker 1: muscles circumpolar. There's a band of latitudes around the globe
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  Speaker 1: that that muscle exists at. Okay um. Way back during
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  Speaker 1: the place the scene, European stone ages, you know where
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  Speaker 1: you've got humans spread around but still a long time ago,
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  Speaker 1: muskoks were circumpolar. They were like all through the Arctic,
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  Speaker 1: but way down man like, there's cave paintings of muskox
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  Speaker 1: down in France, so chro magnet people Stone age Europeans
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  Speaker 1: were hunting from muskoks. If it's any indication that they
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  Speaker 1: used to paint the stuff they haunted on cave walls
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  Speaker 1: from thirty thousand, thirty five thousand years ago, you had
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  Speaker 1: muskoks way down there. Um. Interestingly, by the time anyone,
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  Speaker 1: due to under our current understanding, by the time any
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  Speaker 1: human being step foot in the Western hemisphere. In this
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  Speaker 1: step foot in North America. Muskox only existed in North America.
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  Speaker 1: It seems by that point in time, um when the
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  Speaker 1: Russians first started dick and around in the Arctic, and
• 12:02
  Speaker 1: you know, some American Americans are coming up, not quite
• 12:05
  Speaker 1: Americans yet, but we're coming up into the Arctic. They're
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  Speaker 1: running the musk ox all through Alaska, the Canadian High
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  Speaker 1: Arctic into Greenland like everywhere. But they whittled away at
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  Speaker 1: him and whittled away at him, and they by about
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  Speaker 1: eighteen twenty muskox were gone from Alaska extra paated. Uh,
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  Speaker 1: you'll offer if you read about what happened all the
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  Speaker 1: muskox and like, let me let me back up one
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  Speaker 1: quick second. A musk ox is a big wooly animal
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  Speaker 1: with like a horn boss whereas horns dropped down and
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  Speaker 1: sort of gold on the side of his head and
• 12:40
  Speaker 1: curl out, Like what's that haircut? We're saying, I can't
• 12:43
  Speaker 1: because at a Betty Page. Yeah. No, it's like little
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  Speaker 1: Debbie on a little Debbie snap cake. Yeah. If you
• 12:50
  Speaker 1: ever eating a little Debbie what what are some of
• 12:53
  Speaker 1: those little devvie deals? Remember those? Uh? Uh, she's a
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  Speaker 1: big sponsored big dan you're na dingdong um, it's like
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  Speaker 1: a muskox is horns like are sort of plastered over
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  Speaker 1: the top of his head and dropped straight down into
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  Speaker 1: candy cane hooks. They got real wooly coats. In fact,
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  Speaker 1: they produced a wold called kivot and it's supposed to
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  Speaker 1: be x times warmer than any other kind of wool
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  Speaker 1: on the planet. A big bowl might be six hundred
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  Speaker 1: pounds um. And they live in coastal Arctic regions. People
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  Speaker 1: you'll read different things. You read like, oh, the Russian
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  Speaker 1: fur traders wiped out the musk Ox, and then some
• 13:35
  Speaker 1: people will point out that the Russian fur traders didn't
• 13:38
  Speaker 1: actually wipe out the Muskoks. Natives wiped out the Muskox
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  Speaker 1: operating on behalf of Russian fur traders who wanted to
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  Speaker 1: meet in the hides. So whatever it was, Russians came
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  Speaker 1: in flashing big money around and people shot the Muskox out.
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  Speaker 1: Period Like when you hear about Arctic explorers, you hear
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  Speaker 1: about the guy named Peery. Some guys sat down and
• 14:00
  Speaker 1: figured out how many Muskoks did Peries expeditions alone account for,
• 14:04
  Speaker 1: and they feel like PERI killed six hundred Muskoks to
• 14:07
  Speaker 1: feed his expeditions. The Arctic explorer Stephenson, he's always eating
• 14:12
  Speaker 1: muskox um. We'll get into why it's easy to wipe
• 14:16
  Speaker 1: out muskoks some how. You could probably wipe out muskox
• 14:19
  Speaker 1: the second time if you felt like it, within about
• 14:21
  Speaker 1: five months, five or six months if you felt like it.
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  Speaker 1: They're not difficult to find. But they wiped them out
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  Speaker 1: of a Laska by the mid eighteen hundreds. Then in
• 14:31
  Speaker 1: nineteen thirty, I'm just giving you some background here. In
• 14:34
  Speaker 1: nineteen thirty, they brought thirty some muskoks from Greenland, one
• 14:40
  Speaker 1: of the places where they hadn't been extrapated. So like
• 14:43
  Speaker 1: the super remote Ship, muskox never got killed out of
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  Speaker 1: They never got killed out of Greenland. And I think
• 14:48
  Speaker 1: like Banks Island, the Coronation goldf Area, the way Canadian
• 14:52
  Speaker 1: hier Arctic stuff, they never got wiped out of soties.
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  Speaker 1: Someone was like, man, we should get some muskoks back.
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  Speaker 1: They went to Greenland, got some muskox and eventually put
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  Speaker 1: those muskaks out on New Nevak Island in the Bearing Sea,
• 15:05
  Speaker 1: which is off western Alaska, and they dumped them out
• 15:08
  Speaker 1: on Nunivak Island and they just let them start reproducing,
• 15:10
  Speaker 1: and it wasn't much time at all. They had hundreds
• 15:13
  Speaker 1: of the things. So at that point in time, like
• 15:16
  Speaker 1: as late as nineteen the only muskox that existed in
• 15:20
  Speaker 1: the US besides for a captive zoo specimen here and
• 15:23
  Speaker 1: there were the pop was the population on Nanovac or
• 15:27
  Speaker 1: nun Novak. They went out and caught some of those
• 15:31
  Speaker 1: in the sixties to start an experimental herd in Fairbanks
• 15:35
  Speaker 1: where they wanted to start messing around with this idea
• 15:37
  Speaker 1: of using it as an agricultural product, where you'd raise
• 15:40
  Speaker 1: muskox to get the wool kiveot and you'd have like
• 15:43
  Speaker 1: economic development in rural areas. That seems to have kind
• 15:47
  Speaker 1: of gone nowhere. As that heard on Nunivak expanded, they
• 15:52
  Speaker 1: kept grew in numbers, they kept peeling off some to
• 15:56
  Speaker 1: start all these herds. And now if you look at
• 15:58
  Speaker 1: a map of Alaska where a musk ox live, they're
• 16:01
  Speaker 1: kind of like back to everywhere they would have been.
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  Speaker 1: You got them on Seward Peninsula. The first muskox I've
• 16:06
  Speaker 1: ever seen the first time, the first three times I
• 16:08
  Speaker 1: ever ran into muskox was all hunting carried on the
• 16:11
  Speaker 1: north slope they got muskots on the north slope around
• 16:14
  Speaker 1: Prudeo Bay. They're around and that's kind of how they
• 16:17
  Speaker 1: came to be. So hunting opportunities are extremely limited for muskox.
• 16:24
  Speaker 1: The hunt I did the State of Alaska. The hunt
• 16:27
  Speaker 1: just did. The State of Alaska calls like d X
• 16:29
  Speaker 1: O O three. It's a hunt unit you apply for.
• 16:32
  Speaker 1: It's a tag that's good from February one to March
• 16:35
  Speaker 1: fifteen on now Nevak Island and it has I don't know,
• 16:40
  Speaker 1: it's about a nine percent chance of drawn the tag.
• 16:42
  Speaker 1: They're giving out fewer and fewer tags right now. The
• 16:45
  Speaker 1: herds not doing great on now Nevak. I think this
• 16:48
  Speaker 1: year they gave out twenty tags for the winter hunt
• 16:51
  Speaker 1: and then I don't know, five or ten tags for
• 16:55
  Speaker 1: the summer hunt. Um the spring hunt they calls the
• 16:59
  Speaker 1: March hunt. And it's cold. So did you choose no
• 17:03
  Speaker 1: Nevak specifically or their other draws in different areas of
• 17:07
  Speaker 1: the this year, now Nevak is the only drawing nonresident
• 17:11
  Speaker 1: can put in for. So like the way Alaska run hunts,
• 17:15
  Speaker 1: Alaska has over the counter stuff, which is just over
• 17:18
  Speaker 1: the counter stuff. Tag you're gonna buy you can buy
• 17:20
  Speaker 1: the day you want to go hunting. They have registration
• 17:23
  Speaker 1: hunts which are first come, first serve open to residents.
• 17:26
  Speaker 1: Then they have like the Then they have like a
• 17:28
  Speaker 1: Tier one draw which is a resident draw. Then they
• 17:31
  Speaker 1: have just like the drawing hunts. And so if a
• 17:33
  Speaker 1: non resident wants to put in for a musk ox tag.
• 17:36
  Speaker 1: So if you don't live in Alaska and you want
• 17:38
  Speaker 1: to hunt muskox right now, now Nevaks your only option.
• 17:43
  Speaker 1: You can go up the Northwest Territories and is by
• 17:45
  Speaker 1: permits from guides, but if you want to hunt here,
• 17:48
  Speaker 1: that's it now Nevak Island. I was awarded one of
• 17:54
  Speaker 1: the tags several years ago and wasn't able to go,
• 17:57
  Speaker 1: and I never thought it would have had another chance.
• 17:59
  Speaker 1: It's was not even fair that you can draw it
• 18:02
  Speaker 1: and draw again, like a lot of stose not that way.
• 18:05
  Speaker 1: If you draw a buffalo tag in Alaska, that's it
• 18:07
  Speaker 1: for the rest of your life. If you draw a
• 18:10
  Speaker 1: toke sheep tag, it's it for like four or seven years.
• 18:14
  Speaker 1: I don't know why they let you keep cracking on muskox.
• 18:16
  Speaker 1: It's not fair, but I did it, and I got
• 18:18
  Speaker 1: a second tag and went back and we just got back. Um.
• 18:24
  Speaker 1: It was interesting was that the locals on the island
• 18:27
  Speaker 1: had to It was a first come, first first come,
• 18:32
  Speaker 1: first served basis on the island. Even you know the
• 18:36
  Speaker 1: two people there, I think, uh one are One of
• 18:40
  Speaker 1: our guys was saying Raymond that he stood in line
• 18:45
  Speaker 1: when he was the first one there and he was
• 18:47
  Speaker 1: two days early, two days a good tag. So yeah,
• 18:50
  Speaker 1: tags are always distribute, like generally, I shouldn't say always.
• 18:54
  Speaker 1: Registration hunts are you go online and get the tag.
• 18:58
  Speaker 1: It's like or you go something you have to go
• 18:59
  Speaker 1: into the actual office and get a tag. So you
• 19:01
  Speaker 1: might have a registration hunt where you gotta go to Bethel,
• 19:03
  Speaker 1: Alaska to pick up your tag, right, and it really
• 19:06
  Speaker 1: limits it two dudes in Bethel because people aren't generally
• 19:08
  Speaker 1: gonna fly to Bethel to pick up a tag. The
• 19:12
  Speaker 1: residents the Chupic on now Nevak Island every year get
• 19:16
  Speaker 1: allocated some number of tags. This year, I think it
• 19:19
  Speaker 1: was five cow tags, five bull tags. There's two people
• 19:23
  Speaker 1: that live on the island. Um, it's not online, it's
• 19:28
  Speaker 1: said a dude from Alaska Department and Fishing Game flies
• 19:32
  Speaker 1: out there with the tags and hands the tags out
• 19:35
  Speaker 1: to the first guy's waiting in line. So Rain was saying,
• 19:39
  Speaker 1: the same people seem to get the tags every year.
• 19:41
  Speaker 1: So he went and waited in line two days in
• 19:44
  Speaker 1: a row this year, so that when the guy showed
• 19:47
  Speaker 1: up he got a cow tag for a muskox. Yeah,
• 19:50
  Speaker 1: and he's out there right now. He's out there today.
• 19:52
  Speaker 1: He's probably out butchering a muskox right now, and that's
• 19:55
  Speaker 1: a subsistence hunt for him. There are a lot of
• 19:58
  Speaker 1: muskox hunts in alas where it's a registration hunt and
• 20:04
  Speaker 1: you have to destroy the head of the muskox. You
• 20:08
  Speaker 1: have to saw the horns in half. They have those
• 20:12
  Speaker 1: from moves too. You know, they don't want you doing
• 20:14
  Speaker 1: the hunt. They don't want a trophy dude coming out
• 20:18
  Speaker 1: to do the hunt, so they make it that. Sure,
• 20:21
  Speaker 1: you can go get the registration thing and hunt the muskox,
• 20:23
  Speaker 1: but you don't get to keep the head. You gotta
• 20:25
  Speaker 1: destroy the head. I read an article about a guy
• 20:29
  Speaker 1: who was involved in the game commission in Alaska who
• 20:31
  Speaker 1: tried to pull a fast one, and he because you
• 20:34
  Speaker 1: can buy handicrafts from indigenous people like you know, if
• 20:37
  Speaker 1: people are trying to sell US seal hats. Right, you
• 20:41
  Speaker 1: can't buy a seal skin from a native lad like
• 20:46
  Speaker 1: you can't buy a seal skin from a chup, for instance,
• 20:49
  Speaker 1: because of the Marine Mammal Protection Act. But if that
• 20:52
  Speaker 1: individual takes that sealskin and make something out of it,
• 20:55
  Speaker 1: you can buy it from him, Like you can buy
• 20:58
  Speaker 1: carved ivory, but you can't buy raw ivory. So could
• 21:01
  Speaker 1: they give you so say, this is a square seal towel.
• 21:06
  Speaker 1: That's the thing. That's what I People wonder about that
• 21:09
  Speaker 1: all the time, and like, I don't know, it's somewhere
• 21:11
  Speaker 1: it's spelled out. But anyway, some guy had gone, so
• 21:15
  Speaker 1: I'm gonna go do a registration muskox, hunt, kill my
• 21:18
  Speaker 1: musk ox, give the head to a native woman, have
• 21:22
  Speaker 1: her do a carving on it, and then buy it
• 21:25
  Speaker 1: back from her. And they determined that that violated the
• 21:29
  Speaker 1: spirit of that law. I'd be like, just a little
• 21:33
  Speaker 1: teeny carving on the bottom would be fine. Write your
• 21:37
  Speaker 1: name on the upper palette, the one that sits on
• 21:42
  Speaker 1: the wall. So the first like the biggest thing that
• 21:44
  Speaker 1: coming up, like coming up to go out and hunt?
• 21:46
  Speaker 1: What else should we say? What else is important to
• 21:48
  Speaker 1: established about musk cos it tastes good talking more about that, boss,
• 21:53
  Speaker 1: you know. I read that the horns and then the
• 21:56
  Speaker 1: skull beneath it to where the brain cavity star is
• 22:00
  Speaker 1: eight to ten inches. Muskox bash heads one name. It's
• 22:06
  Speaker 1: like sheep, dude, Like when big horns are bashing heads,
• 22:10
  Speaker 1: it sounds like a twenty two rifle. In fact, I
• 22:12
  Speaker 1: was out hunting one time and thought a guy kept
• 22:14
  Speaker 1: shooting a gun and later realized there was two big
• 22:16
  Speaker 1: horns cracking heads. I saw a big horn ram a
• 22:19
  Speaker 1: tree one time. I counted he ran that tree seventy
• 22:21
  Speaker 1: five times, like quickcounting are seventy five times in real
• 22:25
  Speaker 1: a bighorn sheep can withstand forty times. The bighorn sheep
• 22:31
  Speaker 1: can withstand the amount of power to his head forty
• 22:35
  Speaker 1: times greater than what would fracture your skull. Why do
• 22:38
  Speaker 1: you think he was in a trade for practice, just
• 22:40
  Speaker 1: getting pumped up. I guess it's this time of year.
• 22:42
  Speaker 1: It was September. They don't run till November. Like a
• 22:45
  Speaker 1: football player. Just like banging his helmet. He was banging
• 22:48
  Speaker 1: a ponder roles the pine and all those buddies must
• 22:51
  Speaker 1: have did the same things is ponder rolls a pine
• 22:52
  Speaker 1: look like someone had been hitting with a baseball bat
• 22:54
  Speaker 1: for about three years. That was nuts, so they got what. Yeah,
• 22:57
  Speaker 1: it's called a horn boss where the horns are like
• 23:01
  Speaker 1: on top of their head. It's like if a girl
• 23:05
  Speaker 1: who's got thickle hair pulls, splits her hair down the
• 23:10
  Speaker 1: center and makes a braid or like a pony a pigtail,
• 23:13
  Speaker 1: and almost like almost like piggy tails would be like
• 23:16
  Speaker 1: a hair boss. And the horn boss is just this
• 23:18
  Speaker 1: amorphous blob of horn that sits up there and as
• 23:21
  Speaker 1: the bull gets bigger, girls bigger and bigger, and that
• 23:24
  Speaker 1: thing's polished off like someone took a palm stander to it.
• 23:27
  Speaker 1: It looks kind of like an ass. It does not
• 23:32
  Speaker 1: off anyone, I know. It's ass like in that it
• 23:37
  Speaker 1: has a gluteal crease, has a crack um. Beautiful animals
• 23:44
  Speaker 1: when you're when you're reading about muscos, because muscots like
• 23:47
  Speaker 1: live in the Arctic, and the real wooly people eyes
• 23:52
  Speaker 1: like an ice age relic. But all animals that we
• 23:55
  Speaker 1: know about today, with the exception of perhaps the mule deer,
• 23:58
  Speaker 1: are ice age relics. I never I think people say
• 24:02
  Speaker 1: that because it's wooly. But like, why do people say
• 24:07
  Speaker 1: human beings the ice age relics? Like we were live
• 24:11
  Speaker 1: during the ice age, or you might say the field mouse.
• 24:15
  Speaker 1: It's just it's because it still lives in a ice
• 24:18
  Speaker 1: age like climate. Is that what they mean? You remember
• 24:22
  Speaker 1: the lead up to the Iraq War, I was reading
• 24:24
  Speaker 1: that Saddam Hussein had published several books of poetry and novels,
• 24:29
  Speaker 1: and I would always say Saddam Hussein, the poet novelist.
• 24:33
  Speaker 1: You know, it's like in conversation that say, yeah, you know,
• 24:37
  Speaker 1: Saddam was saying the poet novelists. His country is being invaded. Um,
• 24:41
  Speaker 1: but yeah, like everything's like everything's the ice age relic.
• 24:44
  Speaker 1: But that might be what they mean, that it's out
• 24:45
  Speaker 1: on the tundra, which would mean you'd have to say, um,
• 24:51
  Speaker 1: a vole, the ice age relic. He still lives on
• 24:55
  Speaker 1: the tundra. You know. It's just looks like a throwback
• 25:00
  Speaker 1: to like that's what it is. You think you're looking
• 25:03
  Speaker 1: at a mammoth. That thing had hair on it, the
• 25:05
  Speaker 1: one we butcher, the muskox we butchered had hair on it.
• 25:08
  Speaker 1: It was over eighteen inches long, short of a horse's
• 25:12
  Speaker 1: tail nothing his hair like that. It's very interesting to
• 25:16
  Speaker 1: see him standing there and then actually moving running and
• 25:19
  Speaker 1: it's almost like they had a skirt around him, and
• 25:23
  Speaker 1: that hair almost seemed like it was close to the
• 25:25
  Speaker 1: almost hits the ground almost. The writer Peter Matheson who
• 25:29
  Speaker 1: wrote a book about like there's some natives called Muskox,
• 25:32
  Speaker 1: not on, not the Tupic, but some natives called Muskox
• 25:35
  Speaker 1: m mac. Peter Matheson wrote this book. It's sort of
• 25:38
  Speaker 1: like a magazine article that turned into a book that
• 25:41
  Speaker 1: he wrote, and he relates that wool, the way it sways.
• 25:45
  Speaker 1: He talks about it reminds him of chain mail moving.
• 25:49
  Speaker 1: And he also has a line where when they're in
• 25:51
  Speaker 1: tall grass, the grass coming up from the ground and
• 25:57
  Speaker 1: the wool coming down from the animal meat in a
• 26:00
  Speaker 1: way that makes it hard to sort of distinguish where
• 26:03
  Speaker 1: one ends and one begins. It's kind of like they're
• 26:05
  Speaker 1: just gliding across the As the animal moves, they do
• 26:08
  Speaker 1: seem to glide like they're on wheels, almost super wooly.
• 26:13
  Speaker 1: And um, I remember, like when I was working on
• 26:15
  Speaker 1: my Buffalo book, I remember reading it. They did this
• 26:17
  Speaker 1: study where they took um different animals. They had a
• 26:22
  Speaker 1: high a Scottish Highland cattle, Tibettan yak, and a buffalo
• 26:27
  Speaker 1: and put them in context containers and started lowering the
• 26:30
  Speaker 1: temperature to find out at which point the animals metabolic
• 26:33
  Speaker 1: rate went up in response to the to the dropping
• 26:36
  Speaker 1: temperature like a basically like when you started shivering and
• 26:38
  Speaker 1: getting like not relaxed. And they had I think they
• 26:44
  Speaker 1: had like an angus in there. He tapped out at
• 26:46
  Speaker 1: like ten degrees um. The Scottish Highland cattle tapped out,
• 26:51
  Speaker 1: the Tibetan yak tapped out the coldest they could get
• 26:54
  Speaker 1: that context container was negative forty, and the buffalo was
• 26:57
  Speaker 1: still relaxing. But I'm telling you a muskox smoked that thing.
• 27:03
  Speaker 1: You can't. You can't find his body, you know what
• 27:09
  Speaker 1: I'm saying, When he's laying there dead. You can't. If
• 27:12
  Speaker 1: you can't get your hand to where it's touching leather,
• 27:19
  Speaker 1: like where you parted, Like if you're looking at your
• 27:21
  Speaker 1: dog to find ticks, you can't do that with the muscox.
• 27:24
  Speaker 1: You can't find him underneath there. It's really hard to
• 27:27
  Speaker 1: tell what isn't there. You know, it's very thick, which
• 27:34
  Speaker 1: you guess that we were just packing that we checked
• 27:36
  Speaker 1: in the hide already at Alaska air And how's that hideway? Yeah,
• 27:41
  Speaker 1: I threw it on the Yeah, the hide no hooves
• 27:45
  Speaker 1: on it. So this is a hide cut from the ankle,
• 27:47
  Speaker 1: skinned out and clean skinned. I mean not a scrap
• 27:50
  Speaker 1: of fat or meat on that hide. That hideway pounds well,
• 27:54
  Speaker 1: Hilayer scan too is super dance too, way thick fact
• 27:58
  Speaker 1: fat leather the biggest thing I'll say this like as
• 28:04
  Speaker 1: begin to this discussion, my muskuts, I just want to
• 28:06
  Speaker 1: cut right to the main primary point and and and
• 28:08
  Speaker 1: leading up to this hunt, not the primary point, but
• 28:11
  Speaker 1: just something that this is gonna tea off a whole
• 28:13
  Speaker 1: of the conversation leading up to this hunt. I was
• 28:15
  Speaker 1: sorry to this dude who was saying, it's not really
• 28:18
  Speaker 1: a hunt, it's like an experience. And when we're out,
• 28:25
  Speaker 1: I had observed to someone how all animals have like
• 28:31
  Speaker 1: a vulnerability um that we exploit when we hunt them.
• 28:38
  Speaker 1: You know, deer are suckers for alfalfa and shelled corn
• 28:43
  Speaker 1: right um. Turkeys when they're breeding, they're very vocal, uh
• 28:51
  Speaker 1: right everything sure kind of find your weakness. And that's
• 28:56
  Speaker 1: how ducks are gregarious. Ducks want to be around other ducks,
• 29:01
  Speaker 1: so you play that against them. He makes sounds of
• 29:04
  Speaker 1: sound like a duck. You put out some fake ducks.
• 29:06
  Speaker 1: Duck can't help himself. He's gotta go check it out.
• 29:09
  Speaker 1: You know. Generally the thing you exploit on the musk
• 29:12
  Speaker 1: ox is they just got nowhere to go for one,
• 29:15
  Speaker 1: and they'll bunch up when they're threatened. They'll they'll bunch
• 29:20
  Speaker 1: up and stand around, and it's easy to see how
• 29:22
  Speaker 1: dudes wipe them out. They got nowhere to go, you know,
• 29:28
  Speaker 1: and they can't really put on miles very fat, like
• 29:31
  Speaker 1: not that fat, not like most stuff can put on miles.
• 29:34
  Speaker 1: So this guy was saying, the hunts more of the experience,
• 29:36
  Speaker 1: and I can say that it is, and I would
• 29:38
  Speaker 1: almost haven't done it now. I would almost say that
• 29:43
  Speaker 1: it's not really a hunt. But what makes it like
• 29:49
  Speaker 1: the hunting the animal? I wouldn't say it's really like
• 29:51
  Speaker 1: a hard hunt. What makes it what it is is
• 29:56
  Speaker 1: the conditions you're dealing with and the getting to the
• 30:02
  Speaker 1: place you're going to and being in the place you're
• 30:05
  Speaker 1: going to. It's tough, Like how would you guys sort
• 30:09
  Speaker 1: of describe the cold and wind it's full tundra, negative
• 30:17
  Speaker 1: below with that wind. The win chill what was it
• 30:21
  Speaker 1: called we saw I think negative it was negative ten,
• 30:25
  Speaker 1: no win chill. Yeah, that's just that was just air
• 30:28
  Speaker 1: temperature with the winds with Yeah, yesterday it was I
• 30:32
  Speaker 1: mean there was guys like the thirty and so I
• 30:34
  Speaker 1: just I mean, I think who knows what the win
• 30:36
  Speaker 1: shill was, probably negative. I mean it was cold. You're
• 30:39
  Speaker 1: in the middle of the Baring Sea, so the humidity
• 30:41
  Speaker 1: level is way high. It's like the comparing Michigan ten
• 30:45
  Speaker 1: degrees to Montana ten degrees. That Michigan ten degrees is
• 30:48
  Speaker 1: way but this is way different. Yeah, like this island
• 30:53
  Speaker 1: is not. It's hard. At times. We're fishing cod tom
• 30:57
  Speaker 1: cod through the ice. I couldn't tell when I was
• 31:00
  Speaker 1: land around ice. Yeah, it's all just a big white
• 31:04
  Speaker 1: blanket that's undulating. It's like I feel like we aren't
• 31:06
  Speaker 1: we kind of drilling a hole over the dirt. You
• 31:09
  Speaker 1: realize that you are. It's like there's no real protective
• 31:13
  Speaker 1: buffer on land, no vegetation. Well, I mean there's tundra,
• 31:18
  Speaker 1: but nothing to block the wind. The wind howls and
• 31:20
  Speaker 1: the funny thing is like they've they've got you know,
• 31:23
  Speaker 1: sand dunes, but they're made of snow. Yeah it's nice
• 31:27
  Speaker 1: and you know it's soft, but those are I mean
• 31:29
  Speaker 1: those are sand. You know, there's snow dunes just blasted
• 31:33
  Speaker 1: by the wind. There's move just as you know a
• 31:36
  Speaker 1: sand dune would on the beach. But it's just white,
• 31:39
  Speaker 1: blistering cold. I was wearing just just this is just
• 31:43
  Speaker 1: the girls stand around. I was wearing bunny boots. Bunny
• 31:50
  Speaker 1: boots are like government issue cold weather Korean war boots,
• 31:54
  Speaker 1: which are rated to negative sixty three degrees fahrenheit, which
• 31:58
  Speaker 1: you know, who should go ahead and just jump in
• 32:00
  Speaker 1: and promote some bunny boots because if anybody does any
• 32:04
  Speaker 1: cold by their activities and need some cold boots, and
• 32:06
  Speaker 1: you're not gonna really hike too far in spend the bucks,
• 32:11
  Speaker 1: get some military serapost bunny boots, and you will not
• 32:13
  Speaker 1: be disciplined. There really isn't. No one makes a boot
• 32:17
  Speaker 1: that can go. No one makes an equivalent. There is
• 32:19
  Speaker 1: no equivalent. And the other thing is it's sealed rubber,
• 32:22
  Speaker 1: so like we always warm ice fishing, because you can't
• 32:27
  Speaker 1: you can fill the boot up with water, but the
• 32:31
  Speaker 1: water can't get to the insulation. It's it's wool sealed
• 32:36
  Speaker 1: between rubber bunny boots. If you like bunny boots, these
• 32:40
  Speaker 1: big gass white boots to actually have a pressure valve
• 32:43
  Speaker 1: on the side that you need to like open when
• 32:45
  Speaker 1: you're flying so you don't burst the boot. When I
• 32:48
  Speaker 1: was a kid, there were five bucks. I mean, we
• 32:52
  Speaker 1: just had bunny boots. Man, five bucks apiece. Now they're
• 32:55
  Speaker 1: what yeah, something like that, and they got like instructions
• 33:01
  Speaker 1: written on them. It says like double lace to hold firmly,
• 33:05
  Speaker 1: and then it says, um, open valve when airborne. And
• 33:09
  Speaker 1: they're white, they're great. Yeah nothing nothing. I mean running
• 33:15
  Speaker 1: on them was terrible and yeah, yeah you sweat. They're
• 33:19
  Speaker 1: not for walking. Man. People call Mickey mouse boots too.
• 33:23
  Speaker 1: But then I was here and like black, I didn't
• 33:26
  Speaker 1: know this till recently. If you see black bonny boots,
• 33:29
  Speaker 1: which are Mickey mouse boots, they're not. I thought it's
• 33:32
  Speaker 1: just you could get them in black or in white.
• 33:34
  Speaker 1: But black is not as cold rated as white blacks
• 33:37
  Speaker 1: negative twenty. White's negative sixty something, which is one of
• 33:43
  Speaker 1: the few things in life that's actually true, because like
• 33:45
  Speaker 1: when someone tells you sleeping bags rated for negative tent.
• 33:47
  Speaker 1: They're lying. That's the survival rating though, Yeah, the comfort
• 33:52
  Speaker 1: ratings probably like yeah, survival rating, like I always go,
• 33:59
  Speaker 1: I don't know, I are you sleeping bag? That's probably
• 34:01
  Speaker 1: like I'll generally go ten or twenty degrees off of
• 34:04
  Speaker 1: what they're saying. Is the rating for me? It's my
• 34:09
  Speaker 1: legs get cold anyways. These boots are legit war mask.
• 34:13
  Speaker 1: Never been had such comfortable feet out in towns like that.
• 34:18
  Speaker 1: So yeah, So I'm running around and like thick Marino
• 34:21
  Speaker 1: blend socks, Bunny boots, Marino ljs. Then like h are yeah,
• 34:30
  Speaker 1: I kind of sweat panty thing down pants. Then like
• 34:37
  Speaker 1: the new first Light bibs way call him Sanctuary, which
• 34:40
  Speaker 1: are some heavy nice bibs synthetic installation. Then I got
• 34:46
  Speaker 1: a Marino bass layer, a Marino hoodie, a flee shirt,
• 34:55
  Speaker 1: the same first Light type Sanctuary jacket. Then a giant
• 35:00
  Speaker 1: down puffy, a net gator, a face mask, another face mask,
• 35:06
  Speaker 1: a fur hat, gloves and beaver fer mittens and goggles
• 35:12
  Speaker 1: and goggles. And at that point you're feeling pretty bulletproof,
• 35:17
  Speaker 1: like you're just not cold. Did you get cold ice fishing? Oh? Yeah,
• 35:22
  Speaker 1: my feet dicks. I was kneeling for so long, and
• 35:24
  Speaker 1: but then I'd sweat it up my boots. My boots
• 35:26
  Speaker 1: are sweaty right now. Um, it's just cold, man, Like
• 35:33
  Speaker 1: you know, I mean, that's the coldest I mean, the
• 35:35
  Speaker 1: coldest to this point that I've ever experienced. I think
• 35:38
  Speaker 1: was when we were in Montana for ELK and I
• 35:39
  Speaker 1: was like, I think it was like five when we're
• 35:42
  Speaker 1: in the wall teeth, Yeah, I mean at night. But
• 35:46
  Speaker 1: when we're out in the in the environment, hunting and stuff.
• 35:48
  Speaker 1: I mean, those are the coldest temperatures I've ever experienced it.
• 35:51
  Speaker 1: So I had never This is the first time I've
• 35:52
  Speaker 1: ever felt negative temperatures. Yeah, but what was wicked about
• 35:56
  Speaker 1: It's almost more wicked Montana because you gotta move, you
• 35:59
  Speaker 1: gotta climb new backs flat and you're on snow machines
• 36:04
  Speaker 1: so you can get all bundled up. And if you're conservative, dude,
• 36:09
  Speaker 1: we we walked a little ways. I was poor and sweat, man.
• 36:13
  Speaker 1: But out there when it's so cold, if you watch
• 36:15
  Speaker 1: those guys, they have like the chupic man. They have
• 36:18
  Speaker 1: like a you don't see a lot of people jogging
• 36:20
  Speaker 1: around town. They're like very purposeful movements. Man, you're playing
• 36:26
  Speaker 1: in the head like there's this this tentativeness pervades about
• 36:31
  Speaker 1: what the weather is doing. I remember, like the day
• 36:34
  Speaker 1: we got there, a kid had gone out. He was
• 36:36
  Speaker 1: going on a snow machine to fish. He's going to
• 36:39
  Speaker 1: fish Dolly Varden's and he was coming back. I'm like,
• 36:43
  Speaker 1: We're like, oh, you got fishing. He said, we called
• 36:45
  Speaker 1: it off because they had seen some some kind of
• 36:49
  Speaker 1: weather thing. You know, anybody else would have been like that,
• 36:53
  Speaker 1: let's go anyways. But just like you know, deep respect
• 36:57
  Speaker 1: for the weather man, like you do stuff when the
• 37:00
  Speaker 1: weather says it's okay to do it, yeah, you know,
• 37:05
  Speaker 1: not bashful about it. It's not like they don't try
• 37:08
  Speaker 1: to act like those dudes don't try to act like
• 37:11
  Speaker 1: like we'll try to act like, hell, I'm going anyway, man,
• 37:13
  Speaker 1: can't hold me back. You know, they're like, no, the
• 37:16
  Speaker 1: weather is no good, I'm not going. We're going to
• 37:19
  Speaker 1: weathers because you know how much it sucks. Because they know, man,
• 37:21
  Speaker 1: it's ridiculous. Man. Yeah, nature will uh you know, put
• 37:25
  Speaker 1: you on your ass in an instant. Oh it's deadly.
• 37:28
  Speaker 1: And they're travel long distances on snow machines, so you
• 37:31
  Speaker 1: might be like, oh, yeah, they're hunting off snow machines,
• 37:34
  Speaker 1: but would be kind of like saying like, yeah, but dude,
• 37:35
  Speaker 1: you're hunting out of a truck because you drive to
• 37:37
  Speaker 1: where you start hunting there, hunting fifty miles away, miles
• 37:43
  Speaker 1: away from the village. So you might think like you
• 37:48
  Speaker 1: might all feel like proud of yourself because you hike
• 37:51
  Speaker 1: in a mile to where you hunt. But if you're
• 37:54
  Speaker 1: hunting twenty six miles from your house and you drive
• 37:57
  Speaker 1: in a car twenty five miles and then walk one,
• 38:00
  Speaker 1: I don't feel proud of yourself because you walk them
• 38:01
  Speaker 1: out to where you hunt. I don't know, is snow
• 38:04
  Speaker 1: machining twenty six miles in negative temperatures like that gravy? No,
• 38:11
  Speaker 1: not at all, It's really not. It's like it's a
• 38:14
  Speaker 1: difficult place to be out in, you know, and that
• 38:18
  Speaker 1: really plays into how you hunt. It's like a difficult
• 38:20
  Speaker 1: place to be out in, you know. So there's this
• 38:25
  Speaker 1: sort of like they're like in that covid not accustomed
• 38:30
  Speaker 1: to it, and then being out and you're in a
• 38:32
  Speaker 1: strange place and it's sea ice, which looks like not
• 38:37
  Speaker 1: like a frozen hockey pond. I mean it's just like
• 38:39
  Speaker 1: a jumble of ice piled up is out there in
• 38:45
  Speaker 1: the wind. I don't know. You get like this, I
• 38:46
  Speaker 1: don't want to say like a feeling of danger, but
• 38:48
  Speaker 1: you get a feeling of as an outside or you
• 38:51
  Speaker 1: get a feeling of being on on the edge of something.
• 38:54
  Speaker 1: It's like another planet. Yeah it is. And the guys
• 38:59
  Speaker 1: that lived there are not flipping about it, but they're
• 39:02
  Speaker 1: probably more parent, not paranoid, more cautious, you know, respectful. Oh,
• 39:09
  Speaker 1: then we would be, for sure, and yeah, until you
• 39:12
  Speaker 1: gain their respect. So do you think if if somebody said, okay,
• 39:15
  Speaker 1: we'll go hunt to mus cocks and then they just
• 39:17
  Speaker 1: dropped you there, you know, you would obviously wouldn't have
• 39:21
  Speaker 1: the same approach as you do now. Having done it,
• 39:23
  Speaker 1: just start beating the ground. Yeah, just like I'm gonna
• 39:25
  Speaker 1: walk over there and look around and find them and
• 39:27
  Speaker 1: get them. It's it's hard, it's hard to picture how
• 39:30
  Speaker 1: you do it. You would just have to travel, just
• 39:33
  Speaker 1: like Arctic ski explorers do. Now. You have to travel
• 39:37
  Speaker 1: with the sled behind you on skis and you have
• 39:40
  Speaker 1: to be packing. You know, whether it's Arctic ovens or
• 39:44
  Speaker 1: I don't know what. The alcohol still there's no wood
• 39:46
  Speaker 1: to burn. Yeah, you travel with the alcohol stove like
• 39:50
  Speaker 1: we got for our our We have an arcticle of intent,
• 39:52
  Speaker 1: and we got a thing called like the heat. Pal's
• 39:55
  Speaker 1: like a sailboat. Heater burns d nature to alcohol, but
• 40:00
  Speaker 1: to keep warm. In those conditions, you're gonna be going
• 40:01
  Speaker 1: through a at least the court of alcohol a night.
• 40:05
  Speaker 1: And how are you gonna get everything back if you
• 40:07
  Speaker 1: don't one It's like, yeah, then here's this seven hundred,
• 40:11
  Speaker 1: seven hundred pound bull laying there and you snow you
• 40:13
  Speaker 1: you skied thirty miles out of the village. They're excited
• 40:17
  Speaker 1: if they can find a musk ox within twelve miles
• 40:19
  Speaker 1: of mccoriack. Let's talk about mccoyak for a minute. Like
• 40:26
  Speaker 1: when the Russia, Like when the when the Russians first
• 40:29
  Speaker 1: made contact with the Chupick, they said there was four
• 40:33
  Speaker 1: hundred people living on nu Nevak and something like seventeen
• 40:37
  Speaker 1: villages or something. Yeah, that's what I are in. People
• 40:40
  Speaker 1: were living at every river mouth. Now there's two hundred
• 40:43
  Speaker 1: people in one village. Later something, they go to some
• 40:48
  Speaker 1: of those old villages now and now they're just they're
• 40:50
  Speaker 1: not are just called fish camps. Oh, is that what
• 40:52
  Speaker 1: they met my fish camp? Yeah? Once like church, a
• 40:56
  Speaker 1: church came, a school came, people got centralized. Later there
• 41:00
  Speaker 1: someone came and estimated there were seven people living in
• 41:03
  Speaker 1: like far fewer villages, when far more people after the
• 41:08
  Speaker 1: Russians first made outside contact. Um, so now everybody McCory, McCory, yuck.
• 41:17
  Speaker 1: Everyone on the island lives in mccorrey. It's about two
• 41:19
  Speaker 1: hundred people. It's just like on the spit of snow
• 41:23
  Speaker 1: out in the Buring Sea. And what's interesting about it
• 41:26
  Speaker 1: is it's like they still live very much. I mean,
• 41:28
  Speaker 1: it's you know, everybody's got a TV. Right, there's electricity,
• 41:32
  Speaker 1: surface level stuff like very modern existence. But underneath it
• 41:36
  Speaker 1: is that it's still subsistence lifestyle. Um. They hunt seals,
• 41:42
  Speaker 1: they hunt walrusks, They do subsistence fishing. They eat stuff
• 41:46
  Speaker 1: that Americans won't eat easily, like chum salmon. You know,
• 41:52
  Speaker 1: people are as like talking about fresh salmon. They don't
• 41:54
  Speaker 1: catch their salmon. They fished chums for food for human consumption.
• 42:00
  Speaker 1: They fished chumps after the chumps have spawned, and they
• 42:05
  Speaker 1: looked like hell, they got fungus all over their fins.
• 42:08
  Speaker 1: Then they net him to eat him because they the
• 42:10
  Speaker 1: less fat on the fish allows it to dry. They
• 42:15
  Speaker 1: eat dried fish dipped in seal oil a lot, which
• 42:18
  Speaker 1: is something we ate kind of um. One day after
• 42:24
  Speaker 1: we hunted muskoks, we went out to fish and fish
• 42:26
  Speaker 1: called tom cod. We went, I mean, how close were
• 42:29
  Speaker 1: we to the bank, just like took forever to drill.
• 42:35
  Speaker 1: We had a dull spun. I don't even if it
• 42:38
  Speaker 1: was basically trying to sput a hole to drinking straw man,
• 42:42
  Speaker 1: it's like a bunker metal like crow bar. I mean,
• 42:45
  Speaker 1: I guess crowbar even sharp sharper crow bars way sharp,
• 42:48
  Speaker 1: was blunt two ft right, slowly chiseled ahole. You couldn't
• 42:56
  Speaker 1: have pulled a can of beer up through that whole
• 42:58
  Speaker 1: well like, but it's star and wide by the time
• 43:01
  Speaker 1: that something bitch got through the bottom of the ice.
• 43:03
  Speaker 1: You couldn't have shoved a beer. Can't do it. And
• 43:04
  Speaker 1: that was the second hole, the first hall. Just Peter,
• 43:07
  Speaker 1: oh yeah, hit dirt right, yeah, oh yeah. We chilled.
• 43:10
  Speaker 1: We chiseled another hole and got down to the ice.
• 43:12
  Speaker 1: Ended that dirt. There's no like water colmn or he dice.
• 43:16
  Speaker 1: So he go to drill the second hole, and he's
• 43:19
  Speaker 1: got a rig where he's got like a stick with
• 43:22
  Speaker 1: some line wound around two dowels punched into the stick
• 43:25
  Speaker 1: at perpendicular angle to the dowel, and there was a
• 43:29
  Speaker 1: handful of beads on there in a banana. So it's
• 43:32
  Speaker 1: like it runs from the monofilment to a barrel swivel.
• 43:37
  Speaker 1: Then there's like five or six beads, no banana. Wait,
• 43:42
  Speaker 1: then five or six beads in a big gass rusty,
• 43:44
  Speaker 1: dull trouble hook. He lowers that thing down that home.
• 43:48
  Speaker 1: I'm like, come on, dude, ain't gonna work out. Pops
• 43:51
  Speaker 1: the tom cod within seconds. It was so fast. We
• 43:55
  Speaker 1: set out there and caught thirty time cod just like
• 44:00
  Speaker 1: sometimes this fasting pum out of the ice. And it's
• 44:04
  Speaker 1: right with the tide, right, I mean the yeah, he said,
• 44:07
  Speaker 1: like tide tide fluctuations affected, and whenever the tide change,
• 44:11
  Speaker 1: you could hear like boulders and stuff moving under an ice.
• 44:14
  Speaker 1: There's a dull thud resonating through the ground. This dude,
• 44:19
  Speaker 1: we like when you hunt the nune of that hunt,
• 44:20
  Speaker 1: you have to hire a guide um or, or you
• 44:23
  Speaker 1: have to hire what's called a transporter because the only
• 44:27
  Speaker 1: way to get on nune of back is you have
• 44:29
  Speaker 1: to land on native land. Most of the island is
• 44:34
  Speaker 1: what what's the refuge. It's the Yukon Delta National Wildlife Refuge.
• 44:41
  Speaker 1: So Yanna speak to about the land ownership issues, who
• 44:45
  Speaker 1: owns what where we could hunt where normal dudes can hunt,
• 44:49
  Speaker 1: because it's kind of interesting because we always have to
• 44:51
  Speaker 1: get film permits to hunt public land, usually cost us
• 44:55
  Speaker 1: anywhere from thousands to two thousand dollars for a week
• 44:58
  Speaker 1: long shoot to be on to be filling publicly. This
• 45:01
  Speaker 1: is a commercial commercial use permit, yeah, because we're gonna
• 45:04
  Speaker 1: take the footage and then sell it. Um. This was
• 45:08
  Speaker 1: a national Wildlife refuge, which we've had permits before in
• 45:11
  Speaker 1: the past. But what we didn't realize is that on
• 45:14
  Speaker 1: New bac Um most of the refugees wilderness as well,
• 45:22
  Speaker 1: and so they don't really give out commercial film permits
• 45:25
  Speaker 1: or any kind of commercial permit on wilderness too much.
• 45:28
  Speaker 1: And so you can guide hunters out there, yes, kind
• 45:32
  Speaker 1: of just like you can in the Bob Marshall. This
• 45:34
  Speaker 1: is a side note to what I think is like
• 45:37
  Speaker 1: a seriously bullshitty thing on part of the federal government
• 45:42
  Speaker 1: is that you can get a permit in the Bob
• 45:47
  Speaker 1: Marshall Wilderness Area to every day march up twenty tourists
• 45:54
  Speaker 1: on horseback, load them on the rafts, raft them down
• 45:59
  Speaker 1: the river, have a giant base camp set up at
• 46:02
  Speaker 1: the trailhead generators running hauling in horse feed every day
• 46:08
  Speaker 1: all summer long. And that's a okay commercial use. But
• 46:14
  Speaker 1: two dudes and the camera can't go in there. Well,
• 46:18
  Speaker 1: it's such bullshit. They are reworking the rules and the rags. Yeah,
• 46:23
  Speaker 1: but you want to talk about high impact US, hear you,
• 46:26
  Speaker 1: But I think those those rules are written for back
• 46:29
  Speaker 1: in the day when any when basically if someone's gonna
• 46:32
  Speaker 1: come to film, it was gonna be like a big
• 46:33
  Speaker 1: highwood production, yea setting up fake western town and they're like, no,
• 46:37
  Speaker 1: we don't want that understanding. Now it's different. You can
• 46:40
  Speaker 1: go in there and film a show like you just said,
• 46:42
  Speaker 1: with a couple of guys, a couple of cameras. Yeah,
• 46:44
  Speaker 1: because like an outfitter. And I'm not I'm not hacking.
• 46:46
  Speaker 1: I'm not saying the outfitters shouldn't be able to do it.
• 46:47
  Speaker 1: But outfitter could be like he's got wall tent camp
• 46:50
  Speaker 1: set up every which way, packing and dudes on horses right,
• 46:54
  Speaker 1: setting up full on little villages out there, electrified wires
• 46:57
  Speaker 1: to keep grizzlies out, stacks of hey, cutting fire would
• 47:01
  Speaker 1: and you can't be out there with the backpack and
• 47:02
  Speaker 1: a handicamp. Do they still make andicamps? You can't be
• 47:06
  Speaker 1: out there with the backpack and a camera. You can
• 47:10
  Speaker 1: as long as you're not gonna Yeah, but we're talking
• 47:12
  Speaker 1: about commercial use. The guys running those rafting companies where
• 47:15
  Speaker 1: they're hauling in thirty people every day, they'll float down
• 47:18
  Speaker 1: rafts aren't out there for for charity. No, It just
• 47:21
  Speaker 1: it just seems like it just strikes me as being
• 47:24
  Speaker 1: not fair. There's a case to be made, and we're
• 47:27
  Speaker 1: gonna work on it. We're gonna so at the refuge,
• 47:30
  Speaker 1: they're actually reviewing their film permit process and so we
• 47:33
  Speaker 1: couldn't even apply for a permit, so we can't film
• 47:37
  Speaker 1: the whole the new the Tupic. This is something I
• 47:42
  Speaker 1: don't want to get into, but but Native communities are
• 47:44
  Speaker 1: organized into corporations in Alaska. It's not like the reservation
• 47:48
  Speaker 1: system in the lower forty eight Native communities through the
• 47:50
  Speaker 1: Native Claim Settlement Act, which is put it under Carter
• 47:54
  Speaker 1: have corporations where Native community members are shareholders in the
• 47:59
  Speaker 1: corporation and sort of their world as run as a corporation.
• 48:03
  Speaker 1: They own this big long strip across the north shore
• 48:06
  Speaker 1: of New to Back. Yeah, it's like anywhere I think
• 48:10
  Speaker 1: from like one to three miles from the shore line inland.
• 48:13
  Speaker 1: For how many miles is that thing run? I think
• 48:16
  Speaker 1: about thirty basically from mccoyak to nash Harbor. And uh
• 48:21
  Speaker 1: when I applied, when I first applied for the permit
• 48:24
  Speaker 1: trying to get it, it has some spots that that
• 48:27
  Speaker 1: are James Whitman are outfit or had told me we're
• 48:30
  Speaker 1: gonna hunt. The dude came back and said, oh, well,
• 48:33
  Speaker 1: all that stuff's on NEMA Corporation land, So you guys
• 48:36
  Speaker 1: can film there as much as you want as long
• 48:38
  Speaker 1: as NEMA will let you. And uh so they did.
• 48:41
  Speaker 1: We paid a trespascity and uh they signed a location
• 48:44
  Speaker 1: released for us and we basically had to find a
• 48:47
  Speaker 1: muskox on that land if you guys were going to
• 48:51
  Speaker 1: get to see us hunt Muskox, which is a big
• 48:56
  Speaker 1: chunk of land, but it's like right from what we
• 48:59
  Speaker 1: lay there found out is that as the season progresses,
• 49:02
  Speaker 1: there's muskoks like a couple of miles from town. The
• 49:05
  Speaker 1: first day of the hunt, you know, when the first
• 49:07
  Speaker 1: dudes come in, and then as those animals are hunted hastle,
• 49:10
  Speaker 1: they just moved farther south. Farther south. Its basically getting
• 49:13
  Speaker 1: away from mc quoak. And so by the time we
• 49:17
  Speaker 1: were the last group on the island to hunt Muskokah,
• 49:21
  Speaker 1: no one was out there hunting when we were out there. No.
• 49:23
  Speaker 1: I think there's a couple of locals. Yeah, yeah, doing
• 49:26
  Speaker 1: their hunt, but there's no more. Um. The day we
• 49:29
  Speaker 1: actually got out, some dudes were leaving on a snow
• 49:32
  Speaker 1: machine to go hunta kow. They blew past and smell.
• 49:35
  Speaker 1: Those guys had rain bibs. I don't remember. He was
• 49:38
  Speaker 1: ready to the clients that James had previous to us
• 49:41
  Speaker 1: killed his muskoks based on the southern tip of the island,
• 49:44
  Speaker 1: fifty miles one direction away from the town. Was just out.
• 49:49
  Speaker 1: I thought that was combined. No, man, he did. He
• 49:52
  Speaker 1: did the hunter miles on a snow machine that day.
• 49:56
  Speaker 1: So thank goodness, we probably found the only bowl. Yeah.
• 50:02
  Speaker 1: I was doing some serious praying, you know. I don't
• 50:05
  Speaker 1: pray too often, but I was praying that we could
• 50:07
  Speaker 1: find Who are you directing them to? Huh? Just the universe.
• 50:10
  Speaker 1: You're praying to the universe for muskoks to be on
• 50:13
  Speaker 1: the land. The bull muscots the other suit. What's way
• 50:20
  Speaker 1: more interesting than hunting muskox is hunting walters. And these
• 50:23
  Speaker 1: guys go out um when the ice starts to break
• 50:29
  Speaker 1: up in late spring, they go out and hunt walrus.
• 50:32
  Speaker 1: They look for They cruise around their boats trying to
• 50:35
  Speaker 1: find walrus that are hauled out on the ice floes.
• 50:38
  Speaker 1: And a walors weighs two thousand pounds and they kill
• 50:42
  Speaker 1: him on the two twenty three in the Heady was
• 50:47
  Speaker 1: gonna go kill his cow muscots two in the head, Yeah,
• 50:51
  Speaker 1: he said, you hit that walrus right, and he kind
• 50:53
  Speaker 1: of showed me where you gotta hit it. He said
• 50:55
  Speaker 1: it just crumples. And he hunt seals the same way.
• 50:59
  Speaker 1: Hit him in the head of the two twenty three
• 51:00
  Speaker 1: close range and pile them up. And then he jacked
• 51:05
  Speaker 1: that water's up on the ice. If he falls in
• 51:07
  Speaker 1: the water and you start chopping up a two thousand
• 51:09
  Speaker 1: pound critter, the butcher on the ice, they don't they
• 51:12
  Speaker 1: don't hold on the butt. I'd like to get involved
• 51:17
  Speaker 1: in that. Yeah, we really wanted to. Unfortunately we're just
• 51:21
  Speaker 1: a little too early. It sounds like the sea on
• 51:23
  Speaker 1: the waters huntings in about another month. Yeah, So we
• 51:26
  Speaker 1: went out on fish these Tom Catt and he was
• 51:28
  Speaker 1: showing us a traditional thing they eat where like a
• 51:32
  Speaker 1: tom cuts about if you're familiar with lake perch. Tom
• 51:34
  Speaker 1: cuts as big as a lake perch. It looks just
• 51:36
  Speaker 1: like a damn cod. But it's like the size of
• 51:38
  Speaker 1: a perch, you know, like eight ten inches twelve inches
• 51:43
  Speaker 1: for a big one, big fatty, and they take a
• 51:47
  Speaker 1: they free I mean the fish freezes rock ass solid
• 51:50
  Speaker 1: the minute you pulled out of the water. But they
• 51:51
  Speaker 1: take the fish, take a h knife and cut, not flaze,
• 51:56
  Speaker 1: just shave off pieces of the fish frozen solid, and
• 52:00
  Speaker 1: then just dip it in seal oil and eat it.
• 52:03
  Speaker 1: And our guide's wife, our guide was born out there.
• 52:10
  Speaker 1: A wife is you know, Chupicka was born there. She
• 52:13
  Speaker 1: was saying that her father had explained that if you
• 52:17
  Speaker 1: just lived on tom Codd you would starve to death.
• 52:20
  Speaker 1: But if you ate Tom Codd dipped in seal oil,
• 52:22
  Speaker 1: you can stay alive and I asked her if that
• 52:25
  Speaker 1: was something that in his generation was a reality, and
• 52:28
  Speaker 1: she said, oh, yes, like they you know they could
• 52:31
  Speaker 1: at that time. We're still, you know, just in her
• 52:35
  Speaker 1: father's lifetime face starvation. She had a picture of her
• 52:38
  Speaker 1: father hanging on the wall dressed completely in skins, you know,
• 52:44
  Speaker 1: boots up, m now the most common skin. I did't
• 52:48
  Speaker 1: me see his sealskin hats, which Janni actually bought very close.
• 53:00
  Speaker 1: It wasn't our style. Yeah, it's just flashed me a
• 53:05
  Speaker 1: look to suggested, don't want to talk about the Seals
• 53:07
  Speaker 1: getting No. No, I have no problem at all sharing
• 53:09
  Speaker 1: the story. You know, it's pretty interesting. It was. It
• 53:13
  Speaker 1: was tense negotiation, so to you when you guys talking,
• 53:20
  Speaker 1: when of you guys don't. I wasn't even there. I
• 53:22
  Speaker 1: was sick. Steve was laid up. Yeah, I had like
• 53:25
  Speaker 1: I had gas thrown testinal issues much of the time
• 53:28
  Speaker 1: I was out there. No, we can bring we got
• 53:32
  Speaker 1: to town. Everybody's wearing these great looking Seal skin hats.
• 53:37
  Speaker 1: You know Ray's got a beard, no ribbon ribbon seal, yeah,
• 53:43
  Speaker 1: which she said is a rare seal to run into
• 53:45
  Speaker 1: a big gassars And James was wearing a bearded bearded Well,
• 53:53
  Speaker 1: that's kind of what we've seen. Oh and in town
• 53:55
  Speaker 1: here in Baffle, we had seen some beaver hats, Steve
• 53:57
  Speaker 1: rocking new beaver hat coin and our Corey and I
• 54:00
  Speaker 1: are like, all right, cool, when's next time we're gonna
• 54:01
  Speaker 1: be that's old beaver hat. You guys are on the hunt.
• 54:05
  Speaker 1: I mean you're like, yeah, you guys are like that. Yeah,
• 54:08
  Speaker 1: you guys are cuting. We pull people all over on
• 54:10
  Speaker 1: the streets and ask if we could take a picture.
• 54:13
  Speaker 1: Let me try it on. Yeah. Yeah. The Korean dude
• 54:15
  Speaker 1: selling twenty dollar hamburgers, he had an amazing fur hat
• 54:18
  Speaker 1: and he said he paid three hundred bucks for it,
• 54:20
  Speaker 1: and I'm like, you got ripped, But then I realized
• 54:22
  Speaker 1: he didn't get ripped at all. No, dude, a bag
• 54:26
  Speaker 1: of zip, a bag of like bad zip blocks up
• 54:29
  Speaker 1: here as eight bucks. Man, he's man, he's is twelve dollars,
• 54:35
  Speaker 1: which is that's sanity. If you want to ride a
• 54:38
  Speaker 1: cab across the street, it's twenty everywhere everything three three dollars. Yeah,
• 54:46
  Speaker 1: As the guy explained, a cab driver was trying to
• 54:49
  Speaker 1: explain how expensive Where is the cab driver from Korean. Yeah,
• 54:53
  Speaker 1: most of the cab drivers were finding our Albanian creature
• 54:57
  Speaker 1: was a Korean segment of the cab driving population. He
• 55:00
  Speaker 1: was trying to explain how expensive everything wasn't explained to
• 55:03
  Speaker 1: these guys that it's not double, it's three double. That
• 55:10
  Speaker 1: was a catchphrase for the hunt. What was So we
• 55:16
  Speaker 1: basically are are told that you know, a relative, um
• 55:21
  Speaker 1: someone skin make these hats for us, like sweet, we
• 55:25
  Speaker 1: would make you a steal hat, steal hat, you know,
• 55:27
  Speaker 1: beaver trim. So we're literally looking at one hat thinking
• 55:31
  Speaker 1: like all right, this is the hat we're getting made,
• 55:33
  Speaker 1: and it's like very like okay, you guys sure you
• 55:35
  Speaker 1: want it? Like yeah, cool, We're kind of ask him
• 55:38
  Speaker 1: like it. And it's a very muted the seal skin
• 55:41
  Speaker 1: is very muted. I'm the one you're looking at. Yes,
• 55:46
  Speaker 1: it's like a dull gray some black markings. Yeah, it's
• 55:51
  Speaker 1: a muted color. It's real subtle. And as they age,
• 55:54
  Speaker 1: the hair stands up on them on the skin itself,
• 55:57
  Speaker 1: so it's really a blonde kind of a fuzz to it,
• 56:01
  Speaker 1: almost yeah, dirty blonde though dishwater blonde, brown blonde. So
• 56:09
  Speaker 1: three or four days into it, we're told that Hey,
• 56:11
  Speaker 1: both the hats are ready, let's go. You guys need
• 56:13
  Speaker 1: to go over there to take your hat side to
• 56:15
  Speaker 1: right by the measurements. No, no, we didn't do that
• 56:18
  Speaker 1: because they gotta pay. I was a little nervous about that.
• 56:20
  Speaker 1: It was basically like, yeah, you want a large, medium,
• 56:22
  Speaker 1: or small, you know. So we tried on a few
• 56:24
  Speaker 1: other hats and said, okay, it's large, I'll probably be
• 56:26
  Speaker 1: a small one. Was the most nerve wracking part was
• 56:29
  Speaker 1: is it gonna fit? You know? So when he said
• 56:32
  Speaker 1: you're supposed to go over and look at the hat, no, no, no,
• 56:34
  Speaker 1: we need to go over and buy that. As they're
• 56:37
  Speaker 1: ready for you to buy, you put your order in.
• 56:40
  Speaker 1: And so I've been looking. In two thousand and twelve,
• 56:42
  Speaker 1: i lived in Fairbanks. I saw a lot of these
• 56:44
  Speaker 1: hats there as well too. I almost bought one there,
• 56:47
  Speaker 1: the same hat steal hat with the beaver trim. Some
• 56:50
  Speaker 1: of them had like almost like a thicker wolf lining,
• 56:54
  Speaker 1: you know, that would give you a little more uh,
• 56:56
  Speaker 1: you know, wind protection. So I've been in the market
• 56:59
  Speaker 1: because I feel like sitting on a really high glass
• 57:04
  Speaker 1: and tit when the winds howling, like you glass forever
• 57:07
  Speaker 1: wearing that hat. Yeah, yeah, we I should point out
• 57:11
  Speaker 1: there is no hat warmer than a fur hat. Yeah,
• 57:15
  Speaker 1: like there hasn't been matt Like, no one has matched
• 57:20
  Speaker 1: like my beaver fur hat. It's like no one has
• 57:23
  Speaker 1: matched that with a synthetic material. It's like the subtraffics.
• 57:28
  Speaker 1: It's just like, you know, you can't hear any you
• 57:31
  Speaker 1: can't hear anything. You can anything, But anyway, we walk
• 57:38
  Speaker 1: a couple of minutes across, you know, a couple of
• 57:40
  Speaker 1: through back but the back alleys in the quick and
• 57:43
  Speaker 1: into another house. No cameras aloud, we were told, And
• 57:48
  Speaker 1: there are these hats and they are spotted seal. So
• 57:52
  Speaker 1: it's like this blonde, bright blonde base with basically black
• 57:57
  Speaker 1: spotchy kind of poking. It's like it's like almost almost leparty.
• 58:02
  Speaker 1: And instead of being like a natural beaver on the
• 58:05
  Speaker 1: I don't know what you call that part of the hat,
• 58:07
  Speaker 1: it's basically the forehead. I don't know if it's an accent,
• 58:10
  Speaker 1: if it's actually technically does something and maybe it keeps
• 58:13
  Speaker 1: your forehead warmer, but it's a second layer of beaver
• 58:16
  Speaker 1: on the hat. It's died black, like died shiny black.
• 58:20
  Speaker 1: Didn't say tourist on it just right, it said Gaper,
• 58:24
  Speaker 1: I think and uh yeah, mine was I don't know,
• 58:30
  Speaker 1: trimmed and rabbit yours. Corey's is trimmed and something that
• 58:34
  Speaker 1: couldn't be identified by anybody in the room and not
• 58:36
  Speaker 1: know what it was made up. Tell that part of
• 58:38
  Speaker 1: the stories. That's interesting. Yeah, so we're like looking at
• 58:42
  Speaker 1: him now, we're like, man, like, this is not what
• 58:45
  Speaker 1: we thought we were getting, and like, I want to
• 58:48
  Speaker 1: see this skin hat. I want to wear it. I
• 58:50
  Speaker 1: want to pay It looked like something like Liberace would
• 58:53
  Speaker 1: have ordered. Yeah some gal and yeah, a female and
• 59:00
  Speaker 1: asthen is not gonna wear a seal skin hat one.
• 59:04
  Speaker 1: It's very style. I mean, it's beautiful. I mean just
• 59:06
  Speaker 1: because the whole thing, because they know that the seal
• 59:08
  Speaker 1: had died, they'd like first oh yeah, alright, I'm staying corrected.
• 59:14
  Speaker 1: It doesn't matter. Um. So anyways, we've we've we've entered
• 59:20
  Speaker 1: this sort of you know, contractual you know, verbal agreement,
• 59:24
  Speaker 1: but having these hats made for us. So how well
• 59:26
  Speaker 1: when you first walked in there, she was just like, oh,
• 59:28
  Speaker 1: I worked non stop. She was like she was shaking
• 59:32
  Speaker 1: her hands and she was she was elderly, and she
• 59:34
  Speaker 1: she was just like, I've been working non stop for
• 59:36
  Speaker 1: two days to make these hats pieces to make sure
• 59:37
  Speaker 1: that you got them before you left. So I mean, like,
• 59:40
  Speaker 1: you know, the pressure is on nows like these are yours?
• 59:43
  Speaker 1: Top ball off. We just we were getting ready to
• 59:45
  Speaker 1: actually go shoot outside to catch you know, just shoot
• 59:48
  Speaker 1: shots of mcquarick. We're in like full down triple triple
• 59:54
  Speaker 1: double no three double down, layers, bunny boots and everything
• 59:58
  Speaker 1: walk into this house and how we get into this
• 1:00:00
  Speaker 1: uncomfortable situation and like, you know, just as many close
• 1:00:04
  Speaker 1: as you could possibly have on and we are sweating bullets,
• 1:00:07
  Speaker 1: and finally I just had to be like, look, I
• 1:00:09
  Speaker 1: don't want to disrespect you. We need to get out
• 1:00:11
  Speaker 1: of this situation. And with enough talking, she finally offered
• 1:00:15
  Speaker 1: up that said, hey, I don't want a discount for you.
• 1:00:17
  Speaker 1: Don't buy him at a discount. I can sell them
• 1:00:19
  Speaker 1: somewhere else. And we basically ended it with that. It
• 1:00:22
  Speaker 1: wasn't miscommunity. Well, well, then her husband comes in and
• 1:00:24
  Speaker 1: like and everything it kind of like found like a
• 1:00:26
  Speaker 1: nice resolve, that's right, And he comes in and he
• 1:00:29
  Speaker 1: introduces himself and then he sits down. He's like, he's like,
• 1:00:31
  Speaker 1: what's wrong with these hats? What's wrong with you guys?
• 1:00:34
  Speaker 1: Why why don't you like these hats? Like getting you know,
• 1:00:36
  Speaker 1: kind of offended that they didn't like them or they
• 1:00:37
  Speaker 1: didn't want to purchase them. Yeah, you boys wanted He's like,
• 1:00:40
  Speaker 1: what's wrong with you? Says He's perfectly fine, you boys
• 1:00:43
  Speaker 1: want to seal. You gotta see the moral story is
• 1:00:49
  Speaker 1: if you want to ribbon seal, hey, you gotta stay
• 1:00:51
  Speaker 1: ribbon seal exactly, You're exactly right, You are exactly right,
• 1:00:56
  Speaker 1: or bearded seal. And then she had a lot of
• 1:00:59
  Speaker 1: other things, but it's there is definitely a little feeling
• 1:01:02
  Speaker 1: of like, Okay, remember we're in like a very small
• 1:01:05
  Speaker 1: town of two hundred people were on an island, like
• 1:01:09
  Speaker 1: we are outsiders, we need to play this very Yes,
• 1:01:13
  Speaker 1: we want to get out of here. Wasn't the diplomacy? Yeah,
• 1:01:16
  Speaker 1: but I understand too, because these these hats are not
• 1:01:19
  Speaker 1: um cheap no three ducks three hundred bucks. Yeah, so
• 1:01:24
  Speaker 1: just so listeners realized we're talking about a three hundred
• 1:01:27
  Speaker 1: dollar hat and for three hund bucks you should get
• 1:01:30
  Speaker 1: what you want. Yeah, you know, because it's certainly it's
• 1:01:33
  Speaker 1: a very it's vastly inflated. You know. The dude that
• 1:01:39
  Speaker 1: one of my the dude that one of my um
• 1:01:43
  Speaker 1: A guy wanted one of my rifles, seventeen caliber rifle.
• 1:01:47
  Speaker 1: And when I talked about how maybe I would probably
• 1:01:51
  Speaker 1: his seals can had out of him for it, he
• 1:01:53
  Speaker 1: didn't act like that was any kind of sacrifice on
• 1:01:55
  Speaker 1: his part whatsoever. You know, I think seals can as
• 1:02:00
  Speaker 1: grow on trees, the spot of ones apparently, but they're
• 1:02:05
  Speaker 1: sweet looking. Man. The official ones are badass either way.
• 1:02:12
  Speaker 1: Corey and I are still sealskin hatless. Yeah, the I
• 1:02:19
  Speaker 1: just wouldn't. I wish we could identified what was the
• 1:02:21
  Speaker 1: interior of here is Corey, because I think you can
• 1:02:25
  Speaker 1: say it's like this this this made a dog. I
• 1:02:28
  Speaker 1: think it was dog, some sort of dog. Another thing
• 1:02:31
  Speaker 1: they got going on out here, which is cool, is
• 1:02:33
  Speaker 1: you go? So there are no native Noonavak has no
• 1:02:40
  Speaker 1: large native land mammals um for native animals, native land mammals.
• 1:02:47
  Speaker 1: They have a variety of small voles and things um
• 1:02:53
  Speaker 1: Arctic fox, red fox. It's about it like a red
• 1:02:58
  Speaker 1: fox is the biggest native land land mammal they have
• 1:03:01
  Speaker 1: out there, but for for a long time, they've had
• 1:03:04
  Speaker 1: a herd of reindeer and they have muskoks and muskoks
• 1:03:10
  Speaker 1: while they were in like historically they were inland, they weren't.
• 1:03:15
  Speaker 1: It doesn't seem that they were actually on now Nevac.
• 1:03:18
  Speaker 1: They were inland, but they weren't on the island. Um
• 1:03:22
  Speaker 1: the island. At one time they had mammoth and all
• 1:03:24
  Speaker 1: kinds of stuff. But you know, when the when the
• 1:03:26
  Speaker 1: sea levels were much much lower, but when the sea
• 1:03:29
  Speaker 1: levels rose, and that in the Bearing Sea, which is
• 1:03:32
  Speaker 1: very a shallow ocean, was just like a you know,
• 1:03:34
  Speaker 1: a grassland steppe environment. They had many animals, water level rolls,
• 1:03:39
  Speaker 1: things turned to tunder. Eventually no big stuff out there.
• 1:03:42
  Speaker 1: But now they got muskots, reindeer and they you know,
• 1:03:47
  Speaker 1: a reindeer is like the term reindeer is sort of
• 1:03:50
  Speaker 1: a eura, like a reindeer is a Eurasian caribou. People
• 1:03:56
  Speaker 1: talk about different species of cariboo woodland, mountain, um, barren ground,
• 1:04:03
  Speaker 1: but a geneticist doesn't even geneticis don't even really draw
• 1:04:06
  Speaker 1: a distinction between reindeer or the European caribou and the
• 1:04:13
  Speaker 1: cariboo that we have here. But in regards that they
• 1:04:15
  Speaker 1: have a reindeer population, so seedstock of the animals came
• 1:04:19
  Speaker 1: from Europe, and they're like a domestic critter out there.
• 1:04:24
  Speaker 1: They don't do any agriculture. They just feed on tundra.
• 1:04:27
  Speaker 1: They live a wildlife. I guess what makes them domestic
• 1:04:30
  Speaker 1: as they round them up with snow machines and slaughter them.
• 1:04:33
  Speaker 1: And the way they do their slaughtering is about maybe
• 1:04:36
  Speaker 1: like three and a half four miles from the village,
• 1:04:38
  Speaker 1: and they slaughter reindeer on what is the biggest lake
• 1:04:43
  Speaker 1: on the island, and the lakes frozen solid, and again
• 1:04:45
  Speaker 1: you wouldn't know you're on a lake. It just looks
• 1:04:47
  Speaker 1: like snoggerware and flat stuff, but you're on a lake.
• 1:04:50
  Speaker 1: They drive They built these big drive line fences like
• 1:04:53
  Speaker 1: funnel fences. They go out on snow machines and push
• 1:04:57
  Speaker 1: the reindeer out onto this ice, shoot all the reindeer
• 1:05:02
  Speaker 1: in the head of the I'm assuming with the twenty
• 1:05:05
  Speaker 1: two or two twenty three apparently kill all the reindeer,
• 1:05:08
  Speaker 1: and then everybody in the village buys reindeer. This year,
• 1:05:11
  Speaker 1: I think the going price is two bucks from reindeer
• 1:05:14
  Speaker 1: for a reindeer. That's just like what they pay, so
• 1:05:17
  Speaker 1: like that's what a community member pays to access one
• 1:05:20
  Speaker 1: of the reindeer that's owned by the community. And there's
• 1:05:23
  Speaker 1: some commercial slaughtering going on too, or some guy is
• 1:05:26
  Speaker 1: shooting reindeer and then shipping the meat out, so they
• 1:05:29
  Speaker 1: butcher these reindeer out on the ice and they're just
• 1:05:33
  Speaker 1: pulling meat off, like all the heads, all the horns,
• 1:05:36
  Speaker 1: all the hides are just laying out on the ice.
• 1:05:39
  Speaker 1: Spring comes, ice melts, and all that stuff just goes
• 1:05:43
  Speaker 1: into the lake. They've been doing this for decades and
• 1:05:46
  Speaker 1: decades and decades, and I think if you wanted to
• 1:05:49
  Speaker 1: make the weirdest video ever, you would go to that
• 1:05:54
  Speaker 1: lake and snarkle around or scuba dive around filming decades
• 1:06:02
  Speaker 1: worth of caribou or decades worth of reindeer skulls and
• 1:06:08
  Speaker 1: horns accumulated on the bottom of a tundra lake where
• 1:06:11
  Speaker 1: nothing breaks down, nothing breaks down. It's pretty cool. I mean,
• 1:06:17
  Speaker 1: that's what tundra is is just like vegetation that doesn't decompose.
• 1:06:23
  Speaker 1: You know, it is probably the creepiest place on the planet.
• 1:06:27
  Speaker 1: You couldn't wade through there. No, it's just so the
• 1:06:32
  Speaker 1: ice is covered with slaughtered caribou bits and pieces, and
• 1:06:37
  Speaker 1: like you go out there and it's just like red
• 1:06:39
  Speaker 1: fox and Arctic fox just to come in and going
• 1:06:43
  Speaker 1: out there. The Arctic fox coming off the sea ice,
• 1:06:46
  Speaker 1: the red fox come off the island. I got one
• 1:06:49
  Speaker 1: of each red fox in the Arctic fox, and um
• 1:06:54
  Speaker 1: women was telling me that in the old days, when
• 1:06:58
  Speaker 1: arctic fox is worth a hundred bucks, just sit out
• 1:07:00
  Speaker 1: there in a little hut shooting artic fox and selling
• 1:07:03
  Speaker 1: him and nothing he did for businesses. We're talking about
• 1:07:04
  Speaker 1: fishing tom cod. He would call him to Bethel here,
• 1:07:08
  Speaker 1: find out who wanted tom cotton. He'd sell frozen com
• 1:07:11
  Speaker 1: cod for two fifty pound, catch him through the ice,
• 1:07:15
  Speaker 1: freeze him, send him by air to Bethel. We didn't
• 1:07:18
  Speaker 1: catch five bucks for the tom cod at that price.
• 1:07:24
  Speaker 1: You know. Now they fish halibut commercially out there. Did
• 1:07:30
  Speaker 1: you notice any of the did you see any of
• 1:07:33
  Speaker 1: those big big antler piles with the the skins and
• 1:07:36
  Speaker 1: stuff that there was holes that the article or eat
• 1:07:39
  Speaker 1: the artic of the red fox had dug underneath the piles.
• 1:07:42
  Speaker 1: So essentially just had a little little little dan and
• 1:07:45
  Speaker 1: they just like you know, probably just sit there and
• 1:07:46
  Speaker 1: just like take a little snack from the roof and
• 1:07:48
  Speaker 1: just take a nap and just wake up and just
• 1:07:49
  Speaker 1: like eat from underneath. Yea, just like the and the
• 1:07:52
  Speaker 1: stuff is frozen. Everything's frozen, soil rock card. They must
• 1:07:55
  Speaker 1: just rasp that stuff off. I don't know, I don't ever.
• 1:08:01
  Speaker 1: I would be shocked if when I'm like dying, okay, Okay, yeah,
• 1:08:07
  Speaker 1: I've been telling the people lately, I don't want to
• 1:08:11
  Speaker 1: get in this too long. That's one point. If if,
• 1:08:18
  Speaker 1: like at whatever age my kids are old enough for
• 1:08:20
  Speaker 1: if I died a tragic death, it wouldn't screw them
• 1:08:24
  Speaker 1: up psychologically. How old is that? Like, how old you
• 1:08:29
  Speaker 1: gotta be? How old your kids need to be that
• 1:08:31
  Speaker 1: you dye in tragically has a greatly reduced chance of
• 1:08:36
  Speaker 1: screwing them up psychologically adults. Adults. So I got a
• 1:08:44
  Speaker 1: one month old right now, and I'm forty one, so
• 1:08:48
  Speaker 1: at age sixty, roughly you're gonna start at age sixty.
• 1:08:53
  Speaker 1: I'm gonna go die on K two. So when I'm
• 1:08:59
  Speaker 1: laying there dying, if you if I'm laying there dying
• 1:09:04
  Speaker 1: as a man who's been to now Nevak Island twice,
• 1:09:06
  Speaker 1: I'll be shocked Mike's going back. I'll go back. I'll
• 1:09:12
  Speaker 1: put it in. Why not. I I enjoyed my time there. Um,
• 1:09:21
  Speaker 1: I enjoyed my time there. I'm very glad I went
• 1:09:24
  Speaker 1: there to to have that experience. It's an animal I've
• 1:09:26
  Speaker 1: always been curious about. It's a landscape that I'm curious about.
• 1:09:30
  Speaker 1: I've read a lot about, you know, the baring scene
• 1:09:33
  Speaker 1: in the Arctic. I've been a Browns Mary. I I
• 1:09:36
  Speaker 1: am glad I went. But one, um, you are you
• 1:09:43
  Speaker 1: would never overcome outsider status. No, you're not chupid, you
• 1:09:51
  Speaker 1: got money. No, but you could marry in possibly if
• 1:09:56
  Speaker 1: you live there, I think you'd overcome out side er status. Yeah,
• 1:10:01
  Speaker 1: maybe not with everybody. But you're still the white guy.
• 1:10:04
  Speaker 1: I mean they said that there was there was like,
• 1:10:05
  Speaker 1: oh yeah, there used to be a white guy that
• 1:10:06
  Speaker 1: lived here for five years. But I don't hold. I
• 1:10:08
  Speaker 1: don't hold. I'm not I don't. I'm not even saying
• 1:10:11
  Speaker 1: that as a negative. Man. I totally understand it, all right, Well,
• 1:10:13
  Speaker 1: everybody everybody's like family. I mean it's literally like one
• 1:10:16
  Speaker 1: giant family. Yeah, i'dn't understand. I just don't. I don't.
• 1:10:20
  Speaker 1: I don't know that I'm dying to go back well
• 1:10:23
  Speaker 1: for the seal or for Walters. I would go back
• 1:10:25
  Speaker 1: to hunt Walter. I would go back to go I
• 1:10:27
  Speaker 1: can't hunt walrus. I would go back to be present
• 1:10:29
  Speaker 1: for a walrus hunt. I would go back to be
• 1:10:32
  Speaker 1: present for a seal hunt, to witness it. Um, but
• 1:10:36
  Speaker 1: I'm not gonna apply for d x O O three
• 1:10:38
  Speaker 1: the Muscots hunt because I didn't like it, or that
• 1:10:41
  Speaker 1: something's wrong with it. It's just like it was. It
• 1:10:43
  Speaker 1: was a once in a lifetime thing, not legally, but
• 1:10:47
  Speaker 1: like spiritually or something. It's like a once in a
• 1:10:49
  Speaker 1: lifetime thing now for me, Like if I go down
• 1:10:53
  Speaker 1: you know and hunting National forest land right all, Like
• 1:10:57
  Speaker 1: when I walk out of there, all I want to
• 1:10:59
  Speaker 1: do is go back and hunting in But I didn't
• 1:11:00
  Speaker 1: get that feeling hunting muskots. Yeah, that's a good point.
• 1:11:04
  Speaker 1: I felt like UM in large measure, Uh, I felt
• 1:11:12
  Speaker 1: like an interloper out on the Muskot. I just felt Yeah,
• 1:11:16
  Speaker 1: I didn't feel like UM. I didn't feel like an
• 1:11:21
  Speaker 1: ecological participant. I felt more like an ecological war year
• 1:11:28
  Speaker 1: that because of the challenge. Yeah, it just was. It's
• 1:11:31
  Speaker 1: not like it just not a kind of hunting that
• 1:11:33
  Speaker 1: I'm interested in doing. I mean, I'm glad I went.
• 1:11:37
  Speaker 1: It's not a kind of honey, I'm interested in doing.
• 1:11:39
  Speaker 1: What's kind of like if you know, I'm gonna go
• 1:11:42
  Speaker 1: see the lead entire pizza. Once you've done it, what
• 1:11:44
  Speaker 1: are you gonna go back and see it again? Yeah,
• 1:11:46
  Speaker 1: I mean you know you really yeah right, but yeah,
• 1:11:49
  Speaker 1: but it feels like that. But um, but most things,
• 1:11:52
  Speaker 1: like a lot of hunting doesn't feel like that to me.
• 1:11:55
  Speaker 1: You know, like I'm dying to get back up in
• 1:11:57
  Speaker 1: the Brooks Range and hunt moves because it's because that's
• 1:11:59
  Speaker 1: gonna be a different adventure and tight you don't know
• 1:12:01
  Speaker 1: what's gonna happen. I mean, this is kind of predictable,
• 1:12:04
  Speaker 1: that's right. If you went back and hundred muskox, it
• 1:12:07
  Speaker 1: would be the same thing. There's no I mean, the
• 1:12:09
  Speaker 1: only thing that would be surprising is if you got
• 1:12:11
  Speaker 1: caught in some nasty weather and got stuck out overnight,
• 1:12:14
  Speaker 1: you know, in the tuns and had to do some
• 1:12:16
  Speaker 1: arctic survival. I mean, that would be which is never
• 1:12:18
  Speaker 1: happened to our you know guide They're cautious doing it, yeah,
• 1:12:22
  Speaker 1: because because they respect the land, because they know it,
• 1:12:25
  Speaker 1: but there's more to it because even something as small
• 1:12:28
  Speaker 1: and simple as like the gray squirrel, you're looking forward
• 1:12:31
  Speaker 1: to your next grade squirrel. Absolutely. Yeah, I think there's
• 1:12:36
  Speaker 1: no mystery when those boys go out, when they get
• 1:12:41
  Speaker 1: a good weather day, they're going out and the muskox
• 1:12:45
  Speaker 1: is gonna die. Mhm. You know you got four there's
• 1:12:50
  Speaker 1: like four muskoks out on the island. The islands huge,
• 1:12:52
  Speaker 1: like you know, I keep saying it's an island. There's
• 1:12:55
  Speaker 1: no Lancet Island, but we're gonna saying the islands. Well,
• 1:12:58
  Speaker 1: it's why does point close to seventy is the same
• 1:13:01
  Speaker 1: size as Long Island? Roughly? Okay, so it's the island,
• 1:13:04
  Speaker 1: but it's giant, right, But you have four kas out there,
• 1:13:09
  Speaker 1: there's nowhere to really hide. When they go out, they're
• 1:13:14
  Speaker 1: gonna get a muskas if the weather is good. So
• 1:13:19
  Speaker 1: it's like, uh, I don't know, man, it would be
• 1:13:23
  Speaker 1: like I guess it's like going to the bar. Like
• 1:13:27
  Speaker 1: when you're single, there's sort of an adventure to going
• 1:13:30
  Speaker 1: to the bar that probably doesn't exist. Going to a
• 1:13:34
  Speaker 1: house of ill repute, you know what's gonna happen. It's
• 1:13:40
  Speaker 1: kind of like Buffalo hunting outside of the Elstone. Yea
• 1:13:44
  Speaker 1: almost same thing. But I put in for that tag
• 1:13:46
  Speaker 1: every year, but once I draw it, I don't know
• 1:13:49
  Speaker 1: if I mean I put it in for it all
• 1:13:50
  Speaker 1: the time. But yeah, it's like they're either there or not.
• 1:13:53
  Speaker 1: They're they're you're gonna kill them, But they're not hunting
• 1:13:55
  Speaker 1: for novelty. They're hunting for food. Who the locals are
• 1:14:00
  Speaker 1: new to that. I'm not talking about them, talking about
• 1:14:02
  Speaker 1: me right for them? Yeah, it's a subsistence harvest. Yeah,
• 1:14:06
  Speaker 1: I'm talking. I'm trying to put into words why Sometimes
• 1:14:10
  Speaker 1: I'll come back from my hunt and all I want
• 1:14:12
  Speaker 1: to do is go do it again, Like, for instance,
• 1:14:15
  Speaker 1: that hunt we did in the like hunting Cou's deer. Yeah,
• 1:14:21
  Speaker 1: when were we down here? All right, sign me up, man, Yeah,
• 1:14:27
  Speaker 1: I'm ready to go. I didn't even get a deer.
• 1:14:30
  Speaker 1: Maybe and there in lines to catch. Maybe that's why
• 1:14:34
  Speaker 1: I want to go because there's a level of uncertainty.
• 1:14:39
  Speaker 1: But it's not like this is a secret, because you
• 1:14:42
  Speaker 1: can go on the Last Department of Fishing Games website
• 1:14:45
  Speaker 1: and go look at success rates. So every year they
• 1:14:49
  Speaker 1: give out X number tags. Let's say on a typical year,
• 1:14:52
  Speaker 1: they give about thirty tags, you're go look and and
• 1:14:54
  Speaker 1: be like they issued dirty tags. Twenty two dudes actually
• 1:14:57
  Speaker 1: showed up and most of us to be like when
• 1:15:00
  Speaker 1: he one killed the musk. Cos you know, so going
• 1:15:03
  Speaker 1: into you're like, all right, you set aside a week,
• 1:15:07
  Speaker 1: and the reason you're setting aside a week is you're
• 1:15:08
  Speaker 1: trying to get a good weather day. We got lucky
• 1:15:11
  Speaker 1: and had we like we had a day. We had
• 1:15:14
  Speaker 1: a day we got stuck in Bethel. Couldn't even fly
• 1:15:17
  Speaker 1: for it's a little bit complicated, but we couldn't have
• 1:15:20
  Speaker 1: flown to Bethel. We couldn't have flown out there. Even
• 1:15:22
  Speaker 1: that they couldn't even have flown out there. Definitely could
• 1:15:24
  Speaker 1: have hunted that day, had another day when it wasn't
• 1:15:27
  Speaker 1: good to hunt, had later, but the day we got
• 1:15:30
  Speaker 1: there just so happened. We got there. It was a
• 1:15:32
  Speaker 1: good hunt day. When those boys loading up those trailers
• 1:15:34
  Speaker 1: and those snow machines, there was no doubt what was
• 1:15:36
  Speaker 1: gonna happen that day we were killing the musks, you know.
• 1:15:42
  Speaker 1: And but I don't know, man, Like if I went
• 1:15:46
  Speaker 1: to my mom's house right now on September, opening day
• 1:15:50
  Speaker 1: of Squirrel and I call Mrs Elder Rust and I said,
• 1:15:58
  Speaker 1: Mrs hunt squirrels on your place. Not only do I
• 1:16:02
  Speaker 1: know I'm gonna get a squirrel, I'm gonna get the
• 1:16:04
  Speaker 1: daily bag limit of five. They would take an act
• 1:16:08
  Speaker 1: of God to for me to not get five. That's
• 1:16:11
  Speaker 1: enjoyable to me. So is it that I don't know
• 1:16:15
  Speaker 1: what it is? I'm gonna kill five squirrels. Absolutely, if
• 1:16:23
  Speaker 1: I'm out of Miles City, We're gonna go hunt cotton tails.
• 1:16:25
  Speaker 1: We're gonna kill cotton tails. I'm going out there next
• 1:16:27
  Speaker 1: week to fish catfish. We're gonna knock the hell out
• 1:16:30
  Speaker 1: of them. Is it not fun? Now, dude, I know
• 1:16:34
  Speaker 1: we're gonna catch catfish. Do you know what is it?
• 1:16:37
  Speaker 1: I don't know. It's a mystery. It is the serenity
• 1:16:39
  Speaker 1: wasn't there with loud snowmobiles and cold exercise. Maybe you're
• 1:16:51
  Speaker 1: not in the driver's seat. It might be a guided
• 1:16:54
  Speaker 1: hunt thing, because think about it like this. Say you've
• 1:16:57
  Speaker 1: gone out there and it wasn't administered. It wasn't that
• 1:17:01
  Speaker 1: you had to land on native land Okay, and it
• 1:17:05
  Speaker 1: was just you could just have a pilot. He's got
• 1:17:08
  Speaker 1: a plane on skis. You could fly around. You can't
• 1:17:13
  Speaker 1: hunt the same day you fly. You flew around founder Herd,
• 1:17:18
  Speaker 1: put down somewhere a couple miles or mile away, so
• 1:17:22
  Speaker 1: you're not going to disturb him, set up camp, and
• 1:17:26
  Speaker 1: then out on foot. You'd be like, I'm coming back, dude.
• 1:17:29
  Speaker 1: That was a blast. You know, it's just the mechanics
• 1:17:34
  Speaker 1: of the hunt itself. Just how long we've been talking
• 1:17:37
  Speaker 1: for you? We're at an hour plus? All right, it's
• 1:17:41
  Speaker 1: all you guys paid for us. One hour. We're gonna
• 1:17:43
  Speaker 1: log out. Um a concluding thoughts, Mike, Texas is big.
• 1:17:50
  Speaker 1: Mike's wants clarified just how big Texas is. I wish
• 1:17:55
  Speaker 1: you'd best of luck, best of luck in the muscock
• 1:17:58
  Speaker 1: straw next year. Yeah, have you when you give your
• 1:18:01
  Speaker 1: concluding thoughts right now, tell us where you're at on
• 1:18:04
  Speaker 1: doing the muscart straw. Uh to be able to take
• 1:18:08
  Speaker 1: part in it as a well, you know, you bring
• 1:18:10
  Speaker 1: up some good points and screw it. I said, I'm
• 1:18:13
  Speaker 1: just tring. I don't know what. I'm sorry, but I
• 1:18:14
  Speaker 1: can't subtract us from my brain already in there. Um,
• 1:18:17
  Speaker 1: I don't know. I mean, like you said, it is
• 1:18:19
  Speaker 1: a once in a a one lifetime kind of thing
• 1:18:23
  Speaker 1: to do. It would be nice because you know, we
• 1:18:25
  Speaker 1: took part in it, so I've you know, the whole
• 1:18:27
  Speaker 1: operation and stuff, and so it's less of a mystery.
• 1:18:29
  Speaker 1: So maybe I don't know if that's a bad thing
• 1:18:31
  Speaker 1: or a good thing, But to do it yourself, I
• 1:18:33
  Speaker 1: think would be kind of cool. I'd like to come,
• 1:18:34
  Speaker 1: you know, bring my dad and like, you know, be
• 1:18:36
  Speaker 1: able to share in that experience. It's a great experience
• 1:18:40
  Speaker 1: because I mean there's no place that I've been to
• 1:18:42
  Speaker 1: that's more I mean save the you know, southern slope
• 1:18:45
  Speaker 1: of the Brooks Ranch when they were there, just vast open,
• 1:18:49
  Speaker 1: just it's bleak, but it has its own really like
• 1:18:52
  Speaker 1: sharp edged beauty to it. And you know, there's something
• 1:18:55
  Speaker 1: about the landscape that is just so it's I mean,
• 1:19:00
  Speaker 1: like I said, you know, it's like it's another planet
• 1:19:02
  Speaker 1: and you'll never see I mean, you know that stuff
• 1:19:05
  Speaker 1: like that doesn't exist in Texas as an owned as
• 1:19:09
  Speaker 1: it is, as big as it is, it doesn't have
• 1:19:10
  Speaker 1: that doesn't have arctic tundra snow dunes. So to be
• 1:19:15
  Speaker 1: able to to or be able to experience that vicariously,
• 1:19:20
  Speaker 1: to bring somebody else there would be pretty cool. You know,
• 1:19:23
  Speaker 1: having the knowledge of being there and taking part in
• 1:19:26
  Speaker 1: their in their community and stuff, and just you know,
• 1:19:29
  Speaker 1: just in a cultural sense, being able to see how
• 1:19:32
  Speaker 1: you know other people are. That's what's so great about
• 1:19:34
  Speaker 1: this job, as you get to go all these different
• 1:19:36
  Speaker 1: places and experience all these different people and stuff, and
• 1:19:38
  Speaker 1: that's that's rewarding in itself, beyond the animal. So you're
• 1:19:43
  Speaker 1: making me feel like a dick. Not for us that
• 1:19:45
  Speaker 1: because everything you're saying, no, because I was trying to talk,
• 1:19:49
  Speaker 1: you're shaming me on my own podcast. I was trying
• 1:19:53
  Speaker 1: to speak to just the just hunt. Yeah, culturally right,
• 1:20:00
  Speaker 1: I loved it. Okay, Yeah, granted there the hunt is
• 1:20:06
  Speaker 1: its own kind of beast. You hit the nail on
• 1:20:09
  Speaker 1: the head. It was the mechanics of the hunt. We
• 1:20:12
  Speaker 1: can we can let that one lay rest. I mean,
• 1:20:14
  Speaker 1: but yeah, being there, dude eating frozen tom con dipped
• 1:20:18
  Speaker 1: in seal oil. There are a few places wrap up
• 1:20:22
  Speaker 1: the mike still doing as wrap up um, you know,
• 1:20:27
  Speaker 1: because you know right now it's just such putting that
• 1:20:30
  Speaker 1: the chances of actually drawing that tag, I mean, it
• 1:20:32
  Speaker 1: would be more of just like, yeah, let's see what happens,
• 1:20:35
  Speaker 1: you know, throw on the wall seap of sticks, and
• 1:20:37
  Speaker 1: then I would have to like, okay, you know if
• 1:20:40
  Speaker 1: I did draw a tag, Okay, is this really going
• 1:20:42
  Speaker 1: to happen? And then there would be a whole another
• 1:20:43
  Speaker 1: process of like thinking about that and if actually pulled
• 1:20:46
  Speaker 1: the turner on it. But you know, right now and
• 1:20:48
  Speaker 1: just like a far off not real place like yeah,
• 1:20:51
  Speaker 1: sure it might be kind of cool, but definitely not
• 1:20:55
  Speaker 1: definitely not for the you know, the challenge of the hunt.
• 1:20:58
  Speaker 1: For sure. I feel like there's a few places in
• 1:21:02
  Speaker 1: the United States of America that are as exotic in
• 1:21:07
  Speaker 1: both like landscape and culture and activity and animal That's
• 1:21:13
  Speaker 1: what we just experienced. Put all those things together. Where
• 1:21:18
  Speaker 1: else are you gonna go to really like get that
• 1:21:21
  Speaker 1: far out of your comfort zone across the board like
• 1:21:24
  Speaker 1: that not necessary comfort zone, but just like what you
• 1:21:28
  Speaker 1: know about like we really mean, like even at the
• 1:21:33
  Speaker 1: airport here in Bethel, dudes are talking you know, some
• 1:21:37
  Speaker 1: dialect of Eskimo. Like it's the real deal. You're way
• 1:21:40
  Speaker 1: out here in Eskimo. It was shocking to be with
• 1:21:43
  Speaker 1: people who are speaking cupid. Yeah, like you know, like
• 1:21:47
  Speaker 1: these people are like into James. We we touched on
• 1:21:51
  Speaker 1: the Tom cod in the seal oil. James Whitman's wife
• 1:21:55
  Speaker 1: really never really hung out with us too much, didn't
• 1:21:58
  Speaker 1: really eat with us even as pain clients. Like around
• 1:22:00
  Speaker 1: the dinner table when we bosted out that tom clot
• 1:22:03
  Speaker 1: in the sea oil she was in, it was like this,
• 1:22:07
  Speaker 1: this stuffs the bomb, you know, yeah, I mean she
• 1:22:09
  Speaker 1: had a whole fish before you even got the first bite, Like,
• 1:22:13
  Speaker 1: you know, um, would you put in for the tag?
• 1:22:19
  Speaker 1: Not yet? Not yet? Give me your concluding thoughts. I'm
• 1:22:25
  Speaker 1: very excited to add I think species number ten to
• 1:22:29
  Speaker 1: my freezer. With that, weren't talk about the meat. Fifty
• 1:22:34
  Speaker 1: pound box of meat that you so generously rich, very
• 1:22:39
  Speaker 1: good meat, but very rich. Yeah, fatty meat, that's good.
• 1:22:42
  Speaker 1: We ate some that's great. We ate some ribs that
• 1:22:45
  Speaker 1: we're tasty. We ate pot no, we ate diaphragm. What
• 1:22:50
  Speaker 1: else we that sounds raw? Raw? Rich, fatty meat. We
• 1:22:58
  Speaker 1: went up was easy. We have over two hundred pounds
• 1:23:01
  Speaker 1: of meat. My box weighed in at sixty something sixty
• 1:23:05
  Speaker 1: So yeah, so we're each going home with sixty pounds
• 1:23:07
  Speaker 1: of you know, untrimmed meat, no bone, untrimmed but bones. Yeah,
• 1:23:12
  Speaker 1: but you'll probably yield you know forty I got a
• 1:23:15
  Speaker 1: sack of Tom caught me, and Corey got a sack
• 1:23:17
  Speaker 1: Tom got. It's gonna be eating shavings. So that is
• 1:23:25
  Speaker 1: that you're concluding thoughts concluding I had a great time.
• 1:23:29
  Speaker 1: I mean the experience and I agree with everyone in
• 1:23:32
  Speaker 1: the cultural aspect of it was amazing. I think that
• 1:23:36
  Speaker 1: the imagery that it's gonna stick in my mind and
• 1:23:39
  Speaker 1: the rest of my life is like pulling alongside, you know,
• 1:23:42
  Speaker 1: paralleling the moscocks running. I'm looking off the snowmobile thinking, wow,
• 1:23:48
  Speaker 1: you know there's like Jurassic Park or something. You know,
• 1:23:51
  Speaker 1: where's the saber tooth tiger now? But you know that
• 1:23:54
  Speaker 1: animals just like gliding on the thunder rod. See that
• 1:23:59
  Speaker 1: animals came to the ice age. He was right there. Dude.
• 1:24:02
  Speaker 1: It did me too. I know I was happening on
• 1:24:05
  Speaker 1: I know I was happening on the ice age thing.
• 1:24:07
  Speaker 1: But when I looked at him, I'm like, if I
• 1:24:08
  Speaker 1: was just sitting here, if you if you said to me, like,
• 1:24:11
  Speaker 1: if I somehow lost my position in time, okay, you
• 1:24:17
  Speaker 1: somehow could be confused where you were in the space
• 1:24:19
  Speaker 1: time continual, and you sat me down with my bannockers
• 1:24:23
  Speaker 1: on that glass and tip and I looked out, I'd
• 1:24:26
  Speaker 1: be like, well, there's a mammoth down there. That's what
• 1:24:31
  Speaker 1: I would think. I had talked about this a couple
• 1:24:34
  Speaker 1: of times out there. Is that when I first saw
• 1:24:37
  Speaker 1: musko was the first time I went Carribo hunting and
• 1:24:41
  Speaker 1: we drove up hunt caribool. I didn't hire, We just
• 1:24:44
  Speaker 1: like did it with a canoe in a truck. And
• 1:24:49
  Speaker 1: it was the first time I'd ever hunted in Alaska.
• 1:24:52
  Speaker 1: And this was the way it was fifteen years ago.
• 1:24:57
  Speaker 1: I knew that there was a thing called the muscos
• 1:24:59
  Speaker 1: that exists did but I couldn't have told you if
• 1:25:02
  Speaker 1: it existed there still or not, or where I knew.
• 1:25:05
  Speaker 1: It was just like I knew it was a creature, right,
• 1:25:08
  Speaker 1: and all of a sudden, We're looking at something through
• 1:25:10
  Speaker 1: the barbanoculars. You know, it was like looking across Some
• 1:25:16
  Speaker 1: talk about confusion and spacetime continue. It really was like
• 1:25:19
  Speaker 1: I wasn't like clear what I was looking at. I
• 1:25:23
  Speaker 1: could be like, Oh, there's a Muscox, but I'm like,
• 1:25:24
  Speaker 1: but what is a musco? Like where are they right now?
• 1:25:28
  Speaker 1: As a species? Am I did? I am? I seeing
• 1:25:32
  Speaker 1: the last one, you know, like what am I looking at?
• 1:25:37
  Speaker 1: It's just there's not a lot of awareness about that,
• 1:25:39
  Speaker 1: am because it's where I say, ram, it's like the
• 1:25:43
  Speaker 1: normway rat. I mean overall, the beautiful trip. Really, those
• 1:25:51
  Speaker 1: old ice shanties just sitting on the edge of the
• 1:25:54
  Speaker 1: Bearing Sea, Like the more sunrises sunsets were amazing. I
• 1:25:58
  Speaker 1: think we got lucky with the weather, Like really we
• 1:26:01
  Speaker 1: had five days straight of you know, partly cloudy to
• 1:26:05
  Speaker 1: sunny days. You had to have liked watch me jack
• 1:26:07
  Speaker 1: those time caught up through that whole new ice. That
• 1:26:11
  Speaker 1: was inspiring for you. Probably. I think making the hole
• 1:26:13
  Speaker 1: is the best. I don't know. Man, it wore out.
• 1:26:17
  Speaker 1: It wore a whole thing by beaver Mitten. Man, it
• 1:26:19
  Speaker 1: did were a whole thing by Beaver May has worked
• 1:26:22
  Speaker 1: for those holes. Four hours four hours of whole pounding.
• 1:26:26
  Speaker 1: All right, Yannis, give me the old wrap it up.
• 1:26:28
  Speaker 1: Thanks for listening, say say thanks for listening and laughing,
• 1:26:32
  Speaker 1: and I'll shut up. Paul Disca, he's close at this.
• 1:26:36
  Speaker 1: I love bun alright, signing out mediator podcast tune the
• 1:26:41
  Speaker 1: next time. Hey, listen up. This sounds like an advertisement,
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