Latest / Wired To Hunt Podcast / Wired To Hunt Podcast #167: The Epic Tale of My Alaskan Caribou Hunt

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Wired To Hunt Podcast #167: The Epic Tale of My Alaskan Caribou Hunt · Wired To Hunt Podcast

• 0:02
  Speaker 1: Welcome to the Wired to Hunt podcast, your home for
• 0:06
  Speaker 1: deer hunting news, stories and strategies, and now your host,
• 0:11
  Speaker 1: Mark Kenyon. Welcome to the Wired to Hunt podcast. I'm
• 0:16
  Speaker 1: your host, Mark Kenyan. This episode number one sixty seven
• 0:19
  Speaker 1: and today the show it is story time, as I'm
• 0:22
  Speaker 1: sharing all the details of my absolutely mind blowing, unbelievable
• 0:26
  Speaker 1: lasking cabal hunting experience and an update on my steal
• 0:30
  Speaker 1: in progress Montana public Land White to hunt. All right,
• 0:47
  Speaker 1: welcome to the Wired to Hunt podcast, brought to you
• 0:50
  Speaker 1: by sit gear, and today it's just Dan and I
• 0:57
  Speaker 1: and I have got some stories to tell. But but Dan,
• 1:04
  Speaker 1: before all that, well, what's what's new with you? Mark?
• 1:08
  Speaker 1: Let's just cut the bullshit right now. Okay, nobody cares
• 1:14
  Speaker 1: about what's going on with me, especially when you're posting
• 1:17
  Speaker 1: pictures behind a giant cariboo and your social media feed
• 1:21
  Speaker 1: is saying, oh cool man, Look I'm in Montana in
• 1:24
  Speaker 1: a white you know, hunting white tail. When the coolest
• 1:28
  Speaker 1: thing I've done in the past two weeks is okay,
• 1:31
  Speaker 1: I checked one trail camera. My family got a new house.
• 1:35
  Speaker 1: My wife gets mad because my son has a running
• 1:37
  Speaker 1: nose and he wipes his boogers on it. My wife's
• 1:40
  Speaker 1: pregnant and she's about to pop. That's my life right there.
• 1:44
  Speaker 1: Thirty seconds. Really. Well, so you got a new house,
• 1:48
  Speaker 1: that's news. No, a new couch, couch, couch couch. Remember
• 1:54
  Speaker 1: that couch story, the browning points of the couch story. Yep,
• 1:57
  Speaker 1: that was the birthday present. So and my son, he's
• 2:01
  Speaker 1: in this mode. This is disgusting. And I'm sure all
• 2:03
  Speaker 1: boys at some point did it, but he is in
• 2:06
  Speaker 1: full blown pick your nose and eat it mode. Yeah. Yeah,
• 2:11
  Speaker 1: I'm slapping his hand away. I'm saying no, that's disgusting.
• 2:14
  Speaker 1: And he looks at me like I'm not even there,
• 2:18
  Speaker 1: just with these hollow eyes, and he picks his nose
• 2:20
  Speaker 1: and puts it in his mouth, and I'm just like, buddy,
• 2:24
  Speaker 1: that is disgusting. That is disgusting. Mac. He's gonna be
• 2:30
  Speaker 1: a troublemaker, Oh buddy, he already is he He just
• 2:34
  Speaker 1: doesn't give it. He doesn't care. He doesn't care, which
• 2:37
  Speaker 1: is kind of cool. I I see him as growing
• 2:39
  Speaker 1: up being the kid that never gets pure pressured into
• 2:44
  Speaker 1: doing anything because he doesn't care what other people are doing.
• 2:48
  Speaker 1: He just he's that kid who just hey, man, I
• 2:51
  Speaker 1: don't care if you think picking boogers is eating him
• 2:54
  Speaker 1: his gross I'm gonna do it. I'm gonna be happy
• 2:57
  Speaker 1: doing he I don't care, man, I don't care. Look
• 3:03
  Speaker 1: good for him, good for him, good for him. So
• 3:07
  Speaker 1: I'm thinking today we flipped the script a little bit
• 3:10
  Speaker 1: and this is the Wired to Hunt podcast. But I'm
• 3:14
  Speaker 1: gonna ask you a lot of questions about your trip,
• 3:18
  Speaker 1: your trips, you know, the caribou hunt with Ronella, the
• 3:23
  Speaker 1: Montana um, you know, the Montana adventures that you got
• 3:27
  Speaker 1: going on, and just kind of shoot from the hip
• 3:30
  Speaker 1: like we always do. Yeah. I think that's a good
• 3:32
  Speaker 1: plan because there's there's lots to share over what I've
• 3:36
  Speaker 1: been doing over the past few weeks and what's going
• 3:38
  Speaker 1: on this week too. So yeah, so I could either
• 3:43
  Speaker 1: just like, I mean, do you want to hear about
• 3:45
  Speaker 1: my Alaska trip? No, nobody wants to hear about that.
• 3:50
  Speaker 1: Shut up here. This is that's just but before we
• 3:52
  Speaker 1: get into the Alaska trip, right, you what were you
• 3:57
  Speaker 1: doing before that? I mean, because you went antelope hunting, right,
• 4:00
  Speaker 1: talked about that a little bit and you never tagged
• 4:03
  Speaker 1: out right, No, it didn't tag out because I only
• 4:05
  Speaker 1: had one day to hunt um because you know, I
• 4:07
  Speaker 1: was there with my wife and I just had a
• 4:10
  Speaker 1: lot of stuff going on. I was trying to prepet
• 4:13
  Speaker 1: as much work done as I could before heading off
• 4:15
  Speaker 1: for these trips and um, and then I also was
• 4:18
  Speaker 1: going on a packcrafting trip um that I that I
• 4:22
  Speaker 1: was doing for this other project I'm working on. So
• 4:24
  Speaker 1: that did I tell you about how that went? No?
• 4:26
  Speaker 1: You did not, And I think that's gonna be a
• 4:28
  Speaker 1: great place to start. Yeah. So that was. Man, it
• 4:31
  Speaker 1: has been a pretty epic couple of weeks because that
• 4:33
  Speaker 1: was one of the very coolest trips I've ever done. Um. So,
• 4:38
  Speaker 1: me and my buddy Andy Bradley, we went and did
• 4:41
  Speaker 1: a pack crafting slash fishing, slash backpacking trip in the
• 4:45
  Speaker 1: Bob Marshall Wilderness up in northern Montana, and the Bob
• 4:49
  Speaker 1: is one of the largest you know, wilderness with the
• 4:52
  Speaker 1: capital w areas in the lower forty States. And for
• 4:57
  Speaker 1: those who don't know, you know, when I say wilderness,
• 5:00
  Speaker 1: I'm not saying just like generically, oh it's wild I'm
• 5:02
  Speaker 1: saying like it's a designated by the federal government wilderness areas.
• 5:05
  Speaker 1: So that means there's no motorized traffic, no permanent structures. Um,
• 5:11
  Speaker 1: it's it's the highest protection that's given to public lands.
• 5:14
  Speaker 1: So what that means basically is it's it's super super rugged,
• 5:18
  Speaker 1: super wild and uh one of the highest densities of
• 5:21
  Speaker 1: grizzly bears in the lower forty eight. So just an
• 5:24
  Speaker 1: awesome place. Um. So me and Andy we rented these
• 5:28
  Speaker 1: rafts and we threw them and we'll Kylie dropped us
• 5:31
  Speaker 1: off at like this reservoir and we rafted paddled our
• 5:35
  Speaker 1: way up this reservoir for like four miles. And man,
• 5:39
  Speaker 1: right as we started going, it started like pouring rain
• 5:42
  Speaker 1: in like twenty or wind, and I'm like, oh god,
• 5:46
  Speaker 1: what did we get ourselves into. Um Like, we could
• 5:49
  Speaker 1: hardly make any progress because the wind was blown right
• 5:51
  Speaker 1: in our face. But we finally we made it a
• 5:53
  Speaker 1: few miles down and then like the water levels were
• 5:56
  Speaker 1: so low in the reservoir that actually just like we
• 5:59
  Speaker 1: just were and out of water. We couldn't find a
• 6:02
  Speaker 1: channel that kept going up into the river. So we
• 6:04
  Speaker 1: had to take the boats out, pack them all back
• 6:07
  Speaker 1: up and then strapped into our backpacks and then we
• 6:09
  Speaker 1: hiked another like I don't know another four miles or
• 6:12
  Speaker 1: so until we got to a camp. So that head
• 6:14
  Speaker 1: a black bear run across right in front of us
• 6:16
  Speaker 1: was just kind of cool. And then um, the next
• 6:20
  Speaker 1: day we hiked another like six to eight miles something
• 6:22
  Speaker 1: like that. And then the final two days we rafted
• 6:26
  Speaker 1: this river all the way back to where we started,
• 6:29
  Speaker 1: so it's a four day trip, half packing, half rafting. Um.
• 6:33
  Speaker 1: And then we fished every day and um, man unbelievable scenery,
• 6:39
  Speaker 1: just like beautiful rolling hills and mountains, and then this
• 6:42
  Speaker 1: river was just a gorgeous kind of snake of Emerald
• 6:46
  Speaker 1: winding us way through this valley and then every once
• 6:49
  Speaker 1: in a while he gets these big rocky cliffs and stuff,
• 6:52
  Speaker 1: and um, we saw lots of deer, eagles. Um, we
• 6:58
  Speaker 1: didn't see any grizz but we did have um a
• 7:01
  Speaker 1: good number of tracks around us that we saw. There
• 7:03
  Speaker 1: was a big track and mom salon cub track near
• 7:07
  Speaker 1: our camp one day, and then um, our last day
• 7:10
  Speaker 1: hiking out, we were walked right in like fresh from
• 7:13
  Speaker 1: that morning tracks that were heading towards us. So at
• 7:15
  Speaker 1: some point he was on the trail and he probably
• 7:18
  Speaker 1: heard us coming headed off the trail, and then we
• 7:20
  Speaker 1: just passed through. So that was crazy. But man, the
• 7:24
  Speaker 1: fishing was the It was the very best fly fishing
• 7:28
  Speaker 1: I've had in my entire life, like by leaps and
• 7:31
  Speaker 1: bounds um between the two of us. Like the first day,
• 7:37
  Speaker 1: the first night, I caught nine and Andy caught like fifteen.
• 7:40
  Speaker 1: The next day we both caught like I caught twenty seven,
• 7:43
  Speaker 1: he caught thirty. The next day it was like thirty
• 7:45
  Speaker 1: three and thirty three. The next day we didn't fish
• 7:48
  Speaker 1: very much but still caught some. But I mean it
• 7:51
  Speaker 1: was insane, and that was just the fish that we
• 7:53
  Speaker 1: landed like that we got to our hand. There's so
• 7:55
  Speaker 1: many our fish, fish that we missed or that broke
• 7:58
  Speaker 1: off or that we lost at some point, And mean,
• 8:00
  Speaker 1: it was just the most fun fly fishing ever. It
• 8:04
  Speaker 1: was nuts. So I want to ask you a question
• 8:06
  Speaker 1: real quick. This trip, you rafted and then you had
• 8:11
  Speaker 1: to deflate the rafts right and and hike with them
• 8:13
  Speaker 1: on your back. Yeah, So we had we had the
• 8:17
  Speaker 1: rafts on our back, we had paddles, we had the
• 8:20
  Speaker 1: inflating device, we had a life jacket, and we had
• 8:22
  Speaker 1: all of our regular backpacking stuff too. So we had
• 8:25
  Speaker 1: tents and sleeping bags and sleeping pads and food for
• 8:28
  Speaker 1: four days and all of our fishing gears so fly rods, rails, flies,
• 8:32
  Speaker 1: all that stuff. So we had we had some big
• 8:34
  Speaker 1: packs on. Yeah. So uh, the next question, well that's
• 8:39
  Speaker 1: not really a question. Yes, it is a question. I
• 8:41
  Speaker 1: want will you Will you promise to take me on
• 8:44
  Speaker 1: that same trip someday? Yeah, dude, if you can make
• 8:46
  Speaker 1: it out there, we should definitely do that. It was
• 8:50
  Speaker 1: it was. I mean, I've done a lot, I've done
• 8:53
  Speaker 1: a ton of backpacking trips, but this was a really
• 8:56
  Speaker 1: cool change of pace because, yeah, you're you're did some
• 9:00
  Speaker 1: backpacking and hiking, so you feel like you worked for
• 9:03
  Speaker 1: but in half the trip you were just floating along
• 9:05
  Speaker 1: and like enjoying yourself. And the river was like it
• 9:08
  Speaker 1: was at a nice point as far as water levels
• 9:10
  Speaker 1: where it's relatively low water, so the rapids that you hit,
• 9:14
  Speaker 1: you know, they weren't too bad, so you didn't feel
• 9:17
  Speaker 1: like you're gonna die. But there was enough that like
• 9:19
  Speaker 1: you had an adrenaline rush and you better to be
• 9:21
  Speaker 1: you better like paddle well and get around these rocks
• 9:24
  Speaker 1: otherwise you're gonna get flipped. So there was enough excitement.
• 9:27
  Speaker 1: But then there are these long stretches where you just
• 9:29
  Speaker 1: floated with your feet in the water and just enjoyed it.
• 9:31
  Speaker 1: So it's like relaxing adrenaline, relaxing adrenaline, catch a bunch
• 9:35
  Speaker 1: of fish. Uh so yeah, and just gorgeous weather. I
• 9:39
  Speaker 1: mean it was like eighties in the day, but like
• 9:41
  Speaker 1: a dry eighties, so comfortable, really nice and cool at night.
• 9:45
  Speaker 1: And um man, it was just amazing, amazing trip. And
• 9:50
  Speaker 1: um that's you know, part of this um public land
• 9:53
  Speaker 1: related writing project. I'm working on going to share that story.
• 9:56
  Speaker 1: And that's so excited about that super cool trip. And
• 9:59
  Speaker 1: then and I came back and I had like three
• 10:03
  Speaker 1: days to get all my ship around, pack up, unpacked
• 10:07
  Speaker 1: from that trip, and then start packing for the new trip.
• 10:10
  Speaker 1: And then Kylie and her friend Megan took off and
• 10:14
  Speaker 1: they road tripped through Yellowstone and Grand Teetown on their
• 10:17
  Speaker 1: way back to Michigan. And then I drove my camper
• 10:20
  Speaker 1: into Bozeman and parked in the long term parking lot,
• 10:24
  Speaker 1: slept in the long term parking lot in the airport
• 10:27
  Speaker 1: on Friday night, and then I left for Alaska. Nice.
• 10:32
  Speaker 1: So how long was that float trip in total? Four
• 10:36
  Speaker 1: days total? Okay, four days So that's uh, something that
• 10:40
  Speaker 1: you would recommend to somebody in the future. Highly highly
• 10:44
  Speaker 1: recommend a pack rafting trip like that. And you know,
• 10:46
  Speaker 1: I think you gotta you know, be aware of like
• 10:48
  Speaker 1: your skill set. And if you've never rafted or paddled
• 10:51
  Speaker 1: a kayak or anything and you know, don't have those experiences,
• 10:55
  Speaker 1: I would like either go with someone who does, or
• 10:57
  Speaker 1: try to learn before doing this, and then make sure
• 11:00
  Speaker 1: you check on water flow levels for a river like this, um,
• 11:03
  Speaker 1: because this river that we did, if we did it
• 11:05
  Speaker 1: at much higher flows, UM, it could be dangerous, especially
• 11:09
  Speaker 1: if you didn't really know what you're doing. And I don't.
• 11:11
  Speaker 1: I'm not an expert by any means of this. I
• 11:13
  Speaker 1: paddled decent bit, but I was even a little nervous,
• 11:16
  Speaker 1: you know, not knowing exactly how rough these things are
• 11:18
  Speaker 1: going to be. But for a lot of rivers, maybe
• 11:21
  Speaker 1: all rivers, um, I'm not exactly sharing that, but the
• 11:23
  Speaker 1: USGS keeps water flow meters in most of these rivers,
• 11:27
  Speaker 1: so you can actually go on Google and look up,
• 11:30
  Speaker 1: you know, and just google you know, ex river water
• 11:32
  Speaker 1: flow and it will show you what the flow rate
• 11:35
  Speaker 1: is and UM that that gives you a good like
• 11:38
  Speaker 1: starting point. And then man, there's so much information online
• 11:41
  Speaker 1: these days that people kind of you know, give you
• 11:43
  Speaker 1: like guides for different rivers and stuff. So I found
• 11:47
  Speaker 1: a website that had all sorts of information about different
• 11:50
  Speaker 1: rivers you can raft in the Bob Marshall or in
• 11:52
  Speaker 1: that general area. And then he had information to saying, Okay,
• 11:56
  Speaker 1: you know, at this flow rate, it's like Class five
• 12:00
  Speaker 1: rapids like super dicey at this flow rate, could be
• 12:02
  Speaker 1: like Class two to three and be pretty decent. At
• 12:05
  Speaker 1: this flow rate, it's too low. Um, So just look
• 12:08
  Speaker 1: up that kind of stuff. Um. But there's there's a
• 12:11
  Speaker 1: lot of rivers like this you can do in the Bob.
• 12:13
  Speaker 1: In that general are there's the Bomb Mark. It's called
• 12:16
  Speaker 1: the Bob Marshall Wilderness Complex, and that includes the Bob
• 12:19
  Speaker 1: Marshall Wilderness, the Scapegoat Wilderness, and the No Crap. I
• 12:24
  Speaker 1: think it's the Great Bear Wilderness or something like that.
• 12:26
  Speaker 1: I'm probably wrong, but there's three wilderness areas all tucked
• 12:29
  Speaker 1: in just south of Glacier National Park, and that forms
• 12:33
  Speaker 1: this Northern Rockies ecosystem. Um. And it's just just an
• 12:39
  Speaker 1: unbelievable section in Montana. So highly recommend you know what's
• 12:43
  Speaker 1: cool about it is I mean, Glaciers is epic, epic mountains,
• 12:47
  Speaker 1: but once you go south of that into these wilderness areas,
• 12:50
  Speaker 1: you don't have nearly the crowds, So you can see
• 12:52
  Speaker 1: some similar things to Glacier, but not deal with you know,
• 12:56
  Speaker 1: thousands of people. So right, I mean that sounds fun alright,
• 13:02
  Speaker 1: So real quick, before we go any further, I want
• 13:04
  Speaker 1: to pause real quick to thank our partners at Sicker Gear,
• 13:08
  Speaker 1: And rather than share a typical sikest story from someone else,
• 13:11
  Speaker 1: I thought I'd share a bit about my own experiences
• 13:14
  Speaker 1: on this Alaska trip were talking about, because really, you know,
• 13:16
  Speaker 1: this whole podcast is a sick of story. And for
• 13:19
  Speaker 1: this hunt, I needed a bunch of new gear that
• 13:22
  Speaker 1: was gonna be appropriate for the location and the type
• 13:24
  Speaker 1: of things that we're going to be doing. So here's
• 13:26
  Speaker 1: the system that I ended up using and that worked
• 13:28
  Speaker 1: very very well for me. On the bottom for this hunt,
• 13:31
  Speaker 1: I was wearing the Sick Timberline pants. These are just
• 13:35
  Speaker 1: like a super rugged soft shell type pant It's like
• 13:38
  Speaker 1: they're they're proto typical sheep hunters pant um. But it
• 13:43
  Speaker 1: worked great for this too, and it's got this heavy
• 13:45
  Speaker 1: duty reinforced backside and heavy duty kneepads actually in the
• 13:50
  Speaker 1: front that I ended up really really liking. So so
• 13:53
  Speaker 1: this pant is really built for the kind of hunt
• 13:54
  Speaker 1: I was on where you're crawling or kneeling or sitting
• 13:57
  Speaker 1: down and glassing a lot. So I love those pants
• 14:00
  Speaker 1: and even you know, even when I was down in
• 14:01
  Speaker 1: the thirties or ripping windy, which it was a lot,
• 14:04
  Speaker 1: and this is all I ever needed to wear my
• 14:06
  Speaker 1: lower half, nothing else. Now on the top, I wore
• 14:09
  Speaker 1: a Core lightweight based layer, a Core midweight quarter zip layer,
• 14:13
  Speaker 1: and then my fanatic hoodie, and then when I got
• 14:16
  Speaker 1: really cold or windy, I topped it all off with
• 14:18
  Speaker 1: the Kelvin Light hoodie and that's like a ultra light,
• 14:21
  Speaker 1: packable puffy type jacket and everything there in that list
• 14:25
  Speaker 1: it performed great, and it gave me the flexibility that
• 14:27
  Speaker 1: I needed to shed or add layers based on the
• 14:30
  Speaker 1: conditions or activities, so I was able to be comfortable
• 14:33
  Speaker 1: out there no matter if it was super hot or
• 14:35
  Speaker 1: super cold. And then finally I had the storm front
• 14:38
  Speaker 1: jacket and pants for my rain gear, and we did
• 14:40
  Speaker 1: get some pretty serious rain on two of the days
• 14:43
  Speaker 1: I was out there, and this gear worked flawlessly I
• 14:46
  Speaker 1: got I got another number of compliments on it actually,
• 14:49
  Speaker 1: and the pants and jacket I found were just really
• 14:51
  Speaker 1: smartly designed, with pockets and adjustment points exactly where you'd
• 14:55
  Speaker 1: want them. I couldn't have been happier with it. And
• 14:58
  Speaker 1: no point did I get wet or wa are seeping
• 15:00
  Speaker 1: in anywhere. So that's that's why I hear. So there
• 15:04
  Speaker 1: you have it. That's my Alaskan Caribou hunt sist system,
• 15:07
  Speaker 1: and stick around here for more of my sikest story.
• 15:11
  Speaker 1: As you know, as you might expect, this hunting experience
• 15:13
  Speaker 1: is really once in the lifetime and I'm just really
• 15:15
  Speaker 1: glad that my clothing enabled me to be out there
• 15:18
  Speaker 1: and to be effective and to be comfortable. So if
• 15:21
  Speaker 1: you'd like to make a SICKS story of your own someday,
• 15:24
  Speaker 1: you can learn more at sick of gear dot com.
• 15:28
  Speaker 1: Now transitioning to your Alaska trip, did you before we
• 15:33
  Speaker 1: even talk about the travel to get there? I know
• 15:36
  Speaker 1: that you were pumped and jacked to start. You know
• 15:41
  Speaker 1: that you even got the opportunity to do this, So
• 15:43
  Speaker 1: before you left, did you have any expectations of what
• 15:49
  Speaker 1: this trip? This big Alaska trip was going to be
• 15:52
  Speaker 1: like you know a little bit um. You know, I
• 15:58
  Speaker 1: knew when when I got the invite. I talked to
• 16:01
  Speaker 1: the guys about it, and they you know, shared some information,
• 16:04
  Speaker 1: and they said that they had they had heard really
• 16:07
  Speaker 1: good things about the area we were going into. Um
• 16:09
  Speaker 1: and we're flying with a with a transporter. So basically
• 16:13
  Speaker 1: there's there's lots of different kind of bush plane type
• 16:16
  Speaker 1: operations up in Alaska where they transport hunters and all
• 16:20
  Speaker 1: sorts of people way back there under the wilderness. And um,
• 16:24
  Speaker 1: the transporter we were we were going with was very reputable.
• 16:28
  Speaker 1: They're well known to you know, you know, they'll they'll
• 16:31
  Speaker 1: get your in the right places and everything like that.
• 16:33
  Speaker 1: So it sounded like the plan was to go into
• 16:36
  Speaker 1: an area that should be really good. Um And there's
• 16:41
  Speaker 1: a migration of Cariboo that comes through here this time
• 16:43
  Speaker 1: of year that's fifty cariboo strong. Is this populations the
• 16:48
  Speaker 1: forty mile herd and um, it's somewhere around fifty cariboo.
• 16:52
  Speaker 1: They all kind of they bunch up more and more
• 16:55
  Speaker 1: and more as they get into September and October. So
• 16:58
  Speaker 1: I knew, based on all those things, a good chance
• 17:00
  Speaker 1: of seeing a lot of animals. UM. And then I
• 17:02
  Speaker 1: also knew that it was going to be like beautiful country. UM.
• 17:06
  Speaker 1: They had done a hunt up in this general area
• 17:09
  Speaker 1: last year for moose UM, somewhere within miles maybe of
• 17:12
  Speaker 1: where we're at, give or take UM, so they you know,
• 17:15
  Speaker 1: I heard a little bit about the general terrain and stuff,
• 17:18
  Speaker 1: but that's basically all it new. UM. And so it
• 17:21
  Speaker 1: was gonna be myself hunting. UH. Ronnello was hunting, and
• 17:25
  Speaker 1: then Steve's friend Doug during Um, who's a guy from Wisconsin,
• 17:30
  Speaker 1: a white to hunter from Wisconsin who's done a lot
• 17:33
  Speaker 1: of stuff with Steve, and Steve's hunted on Doug's property
• 17:36
  Speaker 1: lot in Wisconsin. So this is kind of like a
• 17:38
  Speaker 1: way of saying thank you to Doug, I think, inviting
• 17:40
  Speaker 1: him on this trip. So it was gonna be the
• 17:43
  Speaker 1: three of us hunting. And then there was four other
• 17:47
  Speaker 1: people that were on the production side of things, so
• 17:49
  Speaker 1: the crew, So there was two full time cameramen and
• 17:53
  Speaker 1: then the producer, and then a wilderness production assistant is
• 17:56
  Speaker 1: what they call this other guy, Brody UM and both
• 17:59
  Speaker 1: of the Janice and Brodie both had some cameras too
• 18:02
  Speaker 1: for different things, but um but yeah, So so I
• 18:05
  Speaker 1: knew I was going in there were seven guys that
• 18:07
  Speaker 1: was gonna be really different, and I knew it was
• 18:08
  Speaker 1: gonna be beautiful, and I knew we would probably see
• 18:10
  Speaker 1: a lot of caribou, and that was basically all I knew.
• 18:13
  Speaker 1: And those were my expectations going in were just like,
• 18:16
  Speaker 1: I'm going to Alaska and it's gonna be like an
• 18:18
  Speaker 1: amazing experience. Whether I killed anything or not. Like I
• 18:21
  Speaker 1: wasn't really concerned about that at all. Like I could
• 18:23
  Speaker 1: have gone and not shot anything and I would have
• 18:26
  Speaker 1: still been super stoked. Um right, I just wanted to
• 18:30
  Speaker 1: see Alaska my whole life, you know, dreamed about it
• 18:32
  Speaker 1: and just like oh gosh, for years and years and
• 18:35
  Speaker 1: years thought about trying to get up there. Um so
• 18:39
  Speaker 1: that was that was where my head was that going in. Alright.
• 18:42
  Speaker 1: So then you're you're sleeping in this parking lot and
• 18:47
  Speaker 1: you're it's the eve before you're you're getting ready to
• 18:51
  Speaker 1: take off on this epic adventure, right, something that you're
• 18:54
  Speaker 1: going to tell your children about, right, something that you
• 18:58
  Speaker 1: will never forget the first time you ever went to
• 19:01
  Speaker 1: Alaska on this kick ass caribou hunt with some you know,
• 19:05
  Speaker 1: some people that everybody knows, especially if you're a hunter.
• 19:10
  Speaker 1: Did you have like opening day sleep, like you couldn't
• 19:14
  Speaker 1: sleep like opening day, like the first day you're gonna
• 19:16
  Speaker 1: go white tail hunting? Or was this on a different level,
• 19:19
  Speaker 1: you know it was it was a little weird. Um,
• 19:23
  Speaker 1: I'm trying to remember exactly what my sleep situation was.
• 19:26
  Speaker 1: It was like that that day. That day was like
• 19:28
  Speaker 1: a crazy day because like I had to pack up
• 19:32
  Speaker 1: every all, Like Kylie left that morning, and so like
• 19:35
  Speaker 1: it was like saying goodbye to her and getting off
• 19:37
  Speaker 1: her stuff ready to go, and I wasn't I wasn't
• 19:39
  Speaker 1: gonna see Kylie for three weeks. So it's kind of
• 19:41
  Speaker 1: sad saying goodbye to her. Um. And then like it
• 19:44
  Speaker 1: was like this really strong sense of like loneliness all
• 19:47
  Speaker 1: day because you know, for all this time, I've been
• 19:49
  Speaker 1: with Kylie the whole time and our dogs and doing
• 19:52
  Speaker 1: all this stuff, and I don't know, like you're you're
• 19:54
  Speaker 1: together all the time for like, you know, almost two months.
• 19:57
  Speaker 1: Like it's not like she goes to work and I
• 19:59
  Speaker 1: go to work and then we see each other at night.
• 20:00
  Speaker 1: It's like we're with each other the entire day in
• 20:02
  Speaker 1: this little camper. So then when it went from like
• 20:05
  Speaker 1: all that interaction to like complete silence and nothing around
• 20:08
  Speaker 1: and I was in the camper by myself, I was like, whoa,
• 20:12
  Speaker 1: it just felt weird. So then that that whole day
• 20:14
  Speaker 1: just said it was kind of weird. UM. But I
• 20:16
  Speaker 1: was like busily trying to get stuff around, and then
• 20:18
  Speaker 1: I had to drive the camper, and I've been trying
• 20:20
  Speaker 1: to find somewhere to keep the camper like a campsite. UM.
• 20:23
  Speaker 1: I was hopeful. I was hoping to find a National
• 20:25
  Speaker 1: Forest pull off where I could park the camper, leave
• 20:28
  Speaker 1: it and not to pay um, and then come back
• 20:31
  Speaker 1: and pick it up. But I couldn't find anywhere that
• 20:33
  Speaker 1: I could get the camper up to that UM was
• 20:36
  Speaker 1: reasonably close. So I ended up finding out that I
• 20:38
  Speaker 1: could park the camper at the airport. And yeah, that night,
• 20:42
  Speaker 1: I just I think I was just so busy getting
• 20:44
  Speaker 1: stuff around. I didn't even really have like jitters at
• 20:47
  Speaker 1: all or like nerves about the trip. It was just
• 20:50
  Speaker 1: like I get this done, gotta get this done, gotta
• 20:52
  Speaker 1: get this done. And by the time I had everything done,
• 20:54
  Speaker 1: it was super late anyway, so I just crashed and
• 20:57
  Speaker 1: then I think I was up at like five am
• 20:59
  Speaker 1: two to get in the airport and catch a flight. Right,
• 21:03
  Speaker 1: all right, So how long did the trip take from
• 21:07
  Speaker 1: the time you took off in Bozeman to the time
• 21:09
  Speaker 1: you actually got to Alaska? So our flight left like
• 21:12
  Speaker 1: seven in the morning or something like that from Bozeman,
• 21:15
  Speaker 1: and then we flew from Bozeman to Seattle, and then
• 21:17
  Speaker 1: we had a long layover in Seattle, um, like two
• 21:21
  Speaker 1: or three hours, and we met up with a couple
• 21:23
  Speaker 1: of the guys. So there was a group of like
• 21:24
  Speaker 1: five of us now that were there, and we said
• 21:26
  Speaker 1: like a big breakfast and talked about stuff. And then
• 21:29
  Speaker 1: from Seattle we flew to Fairbanks, Alaska, and I think
• 21:33
  Speaker 1: we got into Fairbanks around like three o'clock their time. Um,
• 21:38
  Speaker 1: so I don't know. It was a pretty long day.
• 21:40
  Speaker 1: And then we got Fairbanks, got all of our gear,
• 21:42
  Speaker 1: and man, when you travel with these guys, it is
• 21:44
  Speaker 1: an unreal amount of gear that they take. I think
• 21:47
  Speaker 1: we had like twenty I don't I don't know how
• 21:50
  Speaker 1: many total bags we have, but I do know that
• 21:51
  Speaker 1: when we left Bozeman, just for me, janice and dirt,
• 21:57
  Speaker 1: there was eighteen bags that we checked there and like
• 22:00
  Speaker 1: huge duffels or big Pelican cases full of camera equipment
• 22:05
  Speaker 1: or podcast equipment or all sorts of stuff. So there
• 22:09
  Speaker 1: was probably thirty bags that we picked up at lug
• 22:12
  Speaker 1: in the Fairbanks. We rented a rent a van in
• 22:14
  Speaker 1: a car, and then we drove from Fairbanks to another
• 22:18
  Speaker 1: town which is where our transporter was. And uh we
• 22:22
  Speaker 1: we got in late lat night and got dinner and
• 22:26
  Speaker 1: then um, I just passed out and uh I was
• 22:29
  Speaker 1: ready for the early flight in the morning. Right, Okay,
• 22:32
  Speaker 1: So I mean flying into Alaska itself had to be
• 22:39
  Speaker 1: pretty kick ass, right, I mean, how how far is
• 22:41
  Speaker 1: that flight from Seattle to Alaska Fairbanks? Yeah? So from
• 22:47
  Speaker 1: Seattle Fairbanks I think was like three and a half
• 22:49
  Speaker 1: hours or something like that. And unfortunately I didn't have
• 22:52
  Speaker 1: a window seat. I wish I did though, because I
• 22:55
  Speaker 1: was I was at an aisle seat, so I had
• 22:56
  Speaker 1: to look past two people through the window and I
• 22:59
  Speaker 1: was like over over the wing. But even with all that,
• 23:05
  Speaker 1: you could still see some just unbelievable mountains, just you know,
• 23:09
  Speaker 1: completely snow covered, massive peaks, all these glaciers that you're
• 23:14
  Speaker 1: flying like the whole trip, but especially when you're on
• 23:17
  Speaker 1: the plane. I just felt like I was living like
• 23:19
  Speaker 1: a Discovery Channel special. It's just like I just like this,
• 23:23
  Speaker 1: this isn't I kept of telling myself, this isn't a
• 23:25
  Speaker 1: movie mark, this is life. Like this is actually real life.
• 23:28
  Speaker 1: Um but yeah, like I'm flying over glaciers like massive
• 23:31
  Speaker 1: tongues of ice coming off these mountain sides. Um just
• 23:35
  Speaker 1: just awesome. And um so that was. That was sweet.
• 23:38
  Speaker 1: And then we touched down in Alaska and I was like,
• 23:40
  Speaker 1: holy crap, I'm actually in Alaska, like we landed there
• 23:43
  Speaker 1: and then I'm like, hey, guys, I just checked a
• 23:45
  Speaker 1: major item off my life bucket list. So I'm just
• 23:47
  Speaker 1: gonna turn around and go home. Now made to Alaska.
• 23:52
  Speaker 1: Um So, then the trans then it's time to take
• 23:56
  Speaker 1: off from the transporter plane, right that that following morning
• 24:00
  Speaker 1: and head into the bush right yeah, And that was
• 24:03
  Speaker 1: that was really cool. Um So I was some of
• 24:09
  Speaker 1: the guys were being shuttled from the trans from town
• 24:12
  Speaker 1: to a wilderness airstrip on a bigger plane, like a
• 24:16
  Speaker 1: four person plane, and then then they would take a
• 24:18
  Speaker 1: smaller plane from that airstrip to our camp. But the
• 24:21
  Speaker 1: two heaviest people, I was one of the two heaviest people. Um.
• 24:25
  Speaker 1: We got to fly straight from town all the way
• 24:28
  Speaker 1: to our camp area. UM in the little super cub
• 24:31
  Speaker 1: and super Cub is this really small plane. It's like
• 24:33
  Speaker 1: kind of ridiculous. UM seeing it for the first time,
• 24:36
  Speaker 1: there's just the pilot in front and then you and
• 24:38
  Speaker 1: it's like basically the pilots like sitting in my lap,
• 24:40
  Speaker 1: like my legs are on either side of him, and
• 24:43
  Speaker 1: it's just like glass all around me and one single
• 24:45
  Speaker 1: propeller and it looks like you could just like tip
• 24:47
  Speaker 1: this thing over with your leg if you kicked it. UM.
• 24:51
  Speaker 1: But man, that was so so cool. We we got it,
• 24:55
  Speaker 1: started flying, and very quickly you passed town and then
• 24:58
  Speaker 1: it's just nothing so versus all this is like muskeg
• 25:01
  Speaker 1: like swampy, tung jury marshy stuff that we're flying over.
• 25:06
  Speaker 1: And like the colors are like these reds and yellows
• 25:09
  Speaker 1: of these different willows and grasses and stuff. We're flying
• 25:13
  Speaker 1: over all this stuff, and then you start coming into
• 25:15
  Speaker 1: these hills and then eventually these big mountains. UM, and
• 25:18
  Speaker 1: it's you know, there's there's all sorts of spruce trees
• 25:22
  Speaker 1: and aspens. They're starting to change colors and then these
• 25:24
  Speaker 1: massive above tree line mountaintops, just Barren Rock, um in Stone,
• 25:30
  Speaker 1: and I don't know if you've ever seen pictures of
• 25:33
  Speaker 1: um the Presidential Range in New Hampshire, like the White
• 25:38
  Speaker 1: Mountains up there Mount Washington for anyone familiar with that area.
• 25:42
  Speaker 1: This looked very much like that, like those types of mountains,
• 25:44
  Speaker 1: but like just imagine on a much much bigger scale.
• 25:48
  Speaker 1: But um, yeah, we're flying over these in this little
• 25:49
  Speaker 1: super cubing. We're flying like fifty ft or a hundred
• 25:52
  Speaker 1: feet off the ground. They just buzzing around these ridge
• 25:54
  Speaker 1: tops and curling around stuff, and you can just see everything.
• 25:57
  Speaker 1: I mean, it was just a super super cool flight.
• 25:59
  Speaker 1: And that again was just like there's no way I
• 26:02
  Speaker 1: can describe it in words to like convey just like
• 26:05
  Speaker 1: I just on this flight in the entire time, I
• 26:08
  Speaker 1: was just in awe of the scale of everything, like
• 26:11
  Speaker 1: the distance I could see, and these massive mountains off
• 26:14
  Speaker 1: from the distance, and these other mountains that I'm right
• 26:16
  Speaker 1: on top of, and you know, these beautiful rivers winding everywhere,
• 26:20
  Speaker 1: and and and not a single sign of human intrusion
• 26:23
  Speaker 1: or presence anywhere. I mean, it was just hundreds hundreds
• 26:27
  Speaker 1: of miles of open space, and I'm thinking, as we're
• 26:30
  Speaker 1: flying over here, like how many bears out here are
• 26:32
  Speaker 1: out here? Moose or caribou or whatever might be there
• 26:36
  Speaker 1: so much wildlife all around here. So the flight in
• 26:38
  Speaker 1: was super cool. Um. What was interesting though, is I
• 26:42
  Speaker 1: assumed like they would be dropping us off I don't know,
• 26:45
  Speaker 1: like a gravel bar or a runway that they've made
• 26:47
  Speaker 1: somewhere out in the world. It's just something. But that's
• 26:50
  Speaker 1: not the case. They land you on top of a mountain,
• 26:53
  Speaker 1: like a little ridge coming off of a mountain side
• 26:57
  Speaker 1: like it's like a fifty there's like maybe fifty words
• 27:00
  Speaker 1: of space, and they just stop on a dime like that.
• 27:03
  Speaker 1: They's they're flying down and then just like boom, they're
• 27:05
  Speaker 1: right there on the ground. Um, but that's the case
• 27:08
  Speaker 1: when the wind's good. I was the first plan to
• 27:11
  Speaker 1: come in there, and we had like really windy conditions
• 27:13
  Speaker 1: and it wasn't good. So we go flying in and
• 27:15
  Speaker 1: he's like, all right, that's what we're gonna be landing, Like,
• 27:17
  Speaker 1: holy crap, that's we're gonna land And he circles in
• 27:19
  Speaker 1: and comes down and then he comes in and then
• 27:21
  Speaker 1: the last second he pulls up and like cranks up
• 27:24
  Speaker 1: and pulls up, and then he looks back and he goes,
• 27:27
  Speaker 1: you don't get airsick, do you? And I'm like, I
• 27:30
  Speaker 1: don't know yet. He's like, because this is gonna be interesting.
• 27:34
  Speaker 1: So he ended up having to do that like four
• 27:36
  Speaker 1: or five times. He makes these really tight turns were
• 27:38
  Speaker 1: completely on our side, spins around, and then comes flying
• 27:41
  Speaker 1: in and then tries to touch down in this fifty
• 27:43
  Speaker 1: mile or fifty ft like circle on the ridge and
• 27:47
  Speaker 1: can't do it, pulls up, does it over and over again.
• 27:49
  Speaker 1: And meanwhile, while this is happening, there's he's scattering caribou
• 27:53
  Speaker 1: off the mountain, like there's cariboo everywhere, right, We're gonna land. Um.
• 27:57
  Speaker 1: So finally I feel like five times he's able to
• 27:59
  Speaker 1: get down, and it was like, wow, that was something
• 28:02
  Speaker 1: and um, and then you know, for the rest of
• 28:05
  Speaker 1: the another four or five hours or so, it was
• 28:07
  Speaker 1: just basically them shuttling in the other guys and all
• 28:10
  Speaker 1: of our equipment and um, you know, then it was
• 28:15
  Speaker 1: setting up camp. And meanwhile, while this is all happening,
• 28:18
  Speaker 1: we're seeing caribou coming over the hillside on the mountaintop
• 28:21
  Speaker 1: or skirting around us on the ridge. I mean there's
• 28:24
  Speaker 1: just cariboo everywhere, and um, we set up camp and
• 28:28
  Speaker 1: uh got ready and we're gonna go do a little
• 28:31
  Speaker 1: scouting once we all got settled. So any question before
• 28:34
  Speaker 1: move on? Yes, Yes, at this point, dude, like you're
• 28:40
  Speaker 1: telling me you're living something that I've been dreaming about
• 28:43
  Speaker 1: personally as well. Has reality at this point set in
• 28:47
  Speaker 1: for you at all? Or are you just kind of
• 28:50
  Speaker 1: overwhelmed with everything that's happening. Are you saying that right
• 28:53
  Speaker 1: now today or at that point? I mean, like at
• 28:55
  Speaker 1: that point, at that point, I mean, dude, you're living
• 28:58
  Speaker 1: a national geographic type television show at this point. You know,
• 29:02
  Speaker 1: it's like, well, ship, we can't land. While we're just
• 29:05
  Speaker 1: gonna skip off this mountain. Five times you had some
• 29:08
  Speaker 1: of the most beautiful scenery in the entire world outside
• 29:14
  Speaker 1: and for me, I like every time. Do you remember
• 29:19
  Speaker 1: when we were coming back from that Elk hunt. Yeah,
• 29:21
  Speaker 1: and I was yeah that and just I was out
• 29:25
  Speaker 1: the window like a dog looking and remember and we
• 29:30
  Speaker 1: were driving even through Wyoming and I was just like,
• 29:32
  Speaker 1: oh my god, look there's Natalope, Like, oh my god,
• 29:34
  Speaker 1: look look look over there, Mark Martin. It was like, buddy,
• 29:37
  Speaker 1: I've been on this road like a hundred times, right,
• 29:39
  Speaker 1: so but for you, this is this is virgin ground.
• 29:43
  Speaker 1: You've never done anything like this. I mean, what was
• 29:46
  Speaker 1: going through your head at this point? Like I would
• 29:48
  Speaker 1: be shaking, yeah, I mean it was definitely like kind
• 29:51
  Speaker 1: of like you were on that wyoming drive. I was
• 29:54
  Speaker 1: just like there was so much going on that like
• 29:57
  Speaker 1: at times that you get caught up in like the action.
• 30:00
  Speaker 1: But I made a point like as much as I
• 30:03
  Speaker 1: could throughout the toll trip to just like try to
• 30:06
  Speaker 1: like remind myself, like this is such a special thing,
• 30:09
  Speaker 1: take it in. So I tried to find moments to
• 30:11
  Speaker 1: like sit off by myself and just like just look
• 30:14
  Speaker 1: around in silence or like just try to process it.
• 30:18
  Speaker 1: But I probably didn't even get to do do that as
• 30:20
  Speaker 1: much as I wanted to, because like, there was just
• 30:23
  Speaker 1: stuff going on. And the one thing, you know, probably
• 30:27
  Speaker 1: my biggest anxiety going into this trip. It wasn't like, oh,
• 30:31
  Speaker 1: am I going to get in a plane crash like
• 30:32
  Speaker 1: these things that can be dangerous. No, it wasn't that.
• 30:34
  Speaker 1: It wasn't like worrying about grizzly bears. It wasn't, am
• 30:36
  Speaker 1: I going to kill Caribou. Like my biggest anxiety was
• 30:39
  Speaker 1: probably it was more so like that the people stuff, like,
• 30:42
  Speaker 1: you know, and am I going to be a good
• 30:44
  Speaker 1: fit with this group? Are they gonna like me? Uh?
• 30:46
  Speaker 1: You know, I want to make sure I can you know,
• 30:48
  Speaker 1: pull my own weight and you know, do all the
• 30:51
  Speaker 1: stuff that I need to do. Um. I don't want
• 30:53
  Speaker 1: them to feel like I don't know what I'm doing
• 30:55
  Speaker 1: or anything like that. So it's like that people stuff. Um.
• 30:58
  Speaker 1: So because of that, like I was kind instantly and
• 31:00
  Speaker 1: I would I would do this anyways, but I was
• 31:03
  Speaker 1: especially trying to make sure I did a really great
• 31:05
  Speaker 1: job of like always be helping, always doing something. Like
• 31:09
  Speaker 1: I didn't want to be that guy that was like
• 31:10
  Speaker 1: lazy and like sitting off by himself playing around. So
• 31:14
  Speaker 1: it was like whenever other people were doing stuff, I
• 31:16
  Speaker 1: was constantly trying to find a way that I could
• 31:18
  Speaker 1: help out. So because of that, I was I maybe
• 31:21
  Speaker 1: didn't get as much time just like sit and like
• 31:23
  Speaker 1: take stuff in because I was like can I help
• 31:24
  Speaker 1: you move this back? Can I help you cook this thing?
• 31:26
  Speaker 1: Can I help do this thing? Um? So I was
• 31:28
  Speaker 1: like running around like like a chicken with his head
• 31:30
  Speaker 1: cut off. Just trying to make sure I was, you know,
• 31:32
  Speaker 1: doing my part um, but still still I mean there
• 31:35
  Speaker 1: was still plenty of times to soak it all in.
• 31:37
  Speaker 1: So yeah, it was just unreal. And we you know,
• 31:41
  Speaker 1: once we got everything set up, we're gonna go out
• 31:44
  Speaker 1: and do some scouting because that first day when you
• 31:46
  Speaker 1: fly in, you can't hunt on the day you fly in.
• 31:50
  Speaker 1: So we finally got our stuff around and you know,
• 31:53
  Speaker 1: now I'm learning a little about the TV side of
• 31:55
  Speaker 1: things too. So they got me all miked up and
• 31:57
  Speaker 1: they kind of talked through some of the things they
• 31:58
  Speaker 1: like to do and how they like to do this stuff,
• 32:01
  Speaker 1: and um, we start hiking up the mountain and we
• 32:03
  Speaker 1: were basicallynn hike up to a high point and sit
• 32:05
  Speaker 1: up there in glass and just trying to get a
• 32:07
  Speaker 1: get an idea of where these cariban are coming through
• 32:10
  Speaker 1: and where we might want to go back to the
• 32:11
  Speaker 1: next morning. And um, I found like it first when
• 32:17
  Speaker 1: you've got like, you know, there's me and Steve and
• 32:19
  Speaker 1: Doug up front, and then there's these other two guys
• 32:21
  Speaker 1: behind you walking along, and then there's two cameras they're
• 32:24
  Speaker 1: like running ahead of you or walking circles around you,
• 32:27
  Speaker 1: or like standing right next to you with the camera
• 32:28
  Speaker 1: in your face, and a couple of times I almost
• 32:30
  Speaker 1: like started to laugh. It just felt so absurd, so
• 32:33
  Speaker 1: I had to catch myself, like I got like a
• 32:35
  Speaker 1: half smirk on my face, like keep it together, Kenyan, Yeah,
• 32:40
  Speaker 1: act like you've been there before. But but yeah, the
• 32:44
  Speaker 1: scouting was good. We saw a lout of caribou and um,
• 32:47
  Speaker 1: you know, just got to have some good conversations with
• 32:49
  Speaker 1: the guys. And then on our way back to camp
• 32:52
  Speaker 1: that evening, Jana spotted the grizzly bear just underneath our camp,
• 32:56
  Speaker 1: just off the ridge. So we all go walking down
• 33:00
  Speaker 1: a ridge a little bit closer and we're watching him
• 33:01
  Speaker 1: with our buyos and stuff. Just one of the most
• 33:03
  Speaker 1: beautiful grizzly bears I've ever seen. Um. He was like
• 33:07
  Speaker 1: pure gold like sheny blonde gold like beautiful coat. Um,
• 33:14
  Speaker 1: and he was just feeding on blueberries and stuff. There's
• 33:16
  Speaker 1: berries all over the place, and um, he's feeding on
• 33:19
  Speaker 1: these blueberries. And he starts angling his way up the ridge,
• 33:21
  Speaker 1: getting closer and closer and closer, and we're all geeking
• 33:24
  Speaker 1: out on loving watching him. But he gets to maybe
• 33:27
  Speaker 1: like a hundred yards ninety yards and Steve was like,
• 33:29
  Speaker 1: you know, we probably ought to get this guy out
• 33:31
  Speaker 1: of here, especially because of how close we were to
• 33:33
  Speaker 1: camp Um. So he starts yelling, making some noise, and
• 33:37
  Speaker 1: the bear looks up finally notices up there, but instead
• 33:39
  Speaker 1: of like spooking off, he's just curious, so he just
• 33:42
  Speaker 1: starts running towards us. Yeah. So then Steve was like
• 33:49
  Speaker 1: picking up rocks and throwing rocks towards it and yelling,
• 33:51
  Speaker 1: and finally he got to maybe I don't know, sixty
• 33:54
  Speaker 1: five or seventy yards or somewhere around that ballpark. And
• 33:58
  Speaker 1: then finally he does like, all right, real as, I
• 34:00
  Speaker 1: don't want to mess with these guys, and he turns
• 34:01
  Speaker 1: and runs off. But it was just a really cool,
• 34:04
  Speaker 1: you know, encounter, And like now I'm like, all right,
• 34:08
  Speaker 1: I've got like my lasket, Like this is everything I wanted.
• 34:10
  Speaker 1: I've seen tons of cariboo, I had my grizzle bear encounter.
• 34:14
  Speaker 1: I'm camped out on top of this wind swept rocky
• 34:17
  Speaker 1: ridge and I can see like hundreds of miles maybe
• 34:19
  Speaker 1: in every direction. That's all I need. I'm good, right, right, So,
• 34:24
  Speaker 1: then while you were on this little scouting mission, did
• 34:28
  Speaker 1: you guys, locate some cariboo and were you putting a
• 34:31
  Speaker 1: plan together on how to attack it that next day. Yeah. So,
• 34:34
  Speaker 1: so here's the thing with these caribo was like they're
• 34:36
  Speaker 1: they're constantly moving, and it was just like there's always cariboo.
• 34:42
  Speaker 1: So we kind of identified like a general path, like
• 34:46
  Speaker 1: a travel path, like basically where we were situated, there
• 34:49
  Speaker 1: was a almost like a pass in the chain of
• 34:52
  Speaker 1: mountains and some ridges that kind of kind of like
• 34:55
  Speaker 1: deer are funneled through topography by saddles in a mountain
• 34:58
  Speaker 1: or something like their saddles on a ridge. There was
• 35:00
  Speaker 1: a series of saddles and ridges that were funneling this
• 35:03
  Speaker 1: migration of caribou passed our ridge. Um, so we located
• 35:08
  Speaker 1: this general area where there's just constantly caribou trickling through,
• 35:12
  Speaker 1: and um, you know, we knew that these these caribou
• 35:15
  Speaker 1: are there one day, they're gone the next so there's
• 35:17
  Speaker 1: gonna be different cariboo. But assuming that the migration continued,
• 35:20
  Speaker 1: assuming that we weren't at the end of the migration,
• 35:22
  Speaker 1: we knew that they should be back there the next day.
• 35:24
  Speaker 1: So we we found this general area and then the
• 35:27
  Speaker 1: plan was the next day to just go back up
• 35:29
  Speaker 1: to this little glassing knob and watch again. But that
• 35:33
  Speaker 1: was that wass as firm as a game plans we had,
• 35:36
  Speaker 1: But it's kind of all you needed. Um. I mean,
• 35:39
  Speaker 1: this is the most absurd hunting I've ever had in
• 35:41
  Speaker 1: my life. Like it's unlike anything else, unlike elk hunting,
• 35:44
  Speaker 1: unlike deer hunting, like by it ten times in that
• 35:48
  Speaker 1: there's just there's constantly animals. You're constantly watching animals, and um,
• 35:53
  Speaker 1: it wasn't a question, to be honest, very quickly we
• 35:57
  Speaker 1: realized as soon as soon as we realized like okay,
• 36:00
  Speaker 1: yes we're in the middle of the migration. It's not
• 36:02
  Speaker 1: like the end of it, Like we're in it. It
• 36:04
  Speaker 1: wasn't a question of if we're going to shoot cariboo.
• 36:07
  Speaker 1: It was just which one you wanted to shoot because
• 36:09
  Speaker 1: there were so many. But I will say what we
• 36:12
  Speaker 1: found is that you know, when I when I went
• 36:13
  Speaker 1: into this, when um Janice was like telling me, yeah,
• 36:16
  Speaker 1: you know, there's we're gonna be hopefully intercepting the migration. Um.
• 36:21
  Speaker 1: And when I started thinking about caribou migration, I was
• 36:24
  Speaker 1: thinking of like Discovery Channel stuff where you see like
• 36:27
  Speaker 1: these massive ambas of like twenty thousand or thirty thousand
• 36:31
  Speaker 1: animals all together like pouring across an area. It's not
• 36:34
  Speaker 1: it wasn't like that. Um. It was like here's a
• 36:38
  Speaker 1: group of five, here's a group of twenty, here's a
• 36:40
  Speaker 1: group of fifty, here's a group of fifteen, and they're
• 36:42
  Speaker 1: all kind of strung out. Or you could like sit
• 36:44
  Speaker 1: on the mountainside and you could look on one ridge
• 36:46
  Speaker 1: and you see a group of twenty, group of fifty,
• 36:48
  Speaker 1: group of ten there. But like any different direction you looked,
• 36:51
  Speaker 1: you'd see a group of cariboo there and they're constantly
• 36:54
  Speaker 1: moving through or the bed for a little bit, or
• 36:55
  Speaker 1: they mail around feeding for a little bit. But it
• 36:58
  Speaker 1: wasn't like this giant wave them. It was just this
• 37:00
  Speaker 1: never ending kind of trickle and flow of different size
• 37:04
  Speaker 1: groups coming through. Um. So that was what we started
• 37:07
  Speaker 1: to see on day one, and we continued to see
• 37:09
  Speaker 1: that the rest of the way. Okay, so so it's
• 37:14
  Speaker 1: just one of those things where you guys just kind
• 37:15
  Speaker 1: of you you found out where they were, and then
• 37:18
  Speaker 1: you drop off the mountain to go intercept the basic
• 37:21
  Speaker 1: line of the path of the migration. Then yeah, and
• 37:24
  Speaker 1: there and there were you know, there it wasn't like
• 37:25
  Speaker 1: one single line, Like there's lots of different little directions
• 37:29
  Speaker 1: and stuff that different groups of them would go. But yeah,
• 37:32
  Speaker 1: I mean when it came down to a day's you know,
• 37:34
  Speaker 1: the three days that we were actually hunting, that basically
• 37:37
  Speaker 1: end up being what we did. We had this general
• 37:39
  Speaker 1: glassing section that we would go to and we would
• 37:42
  Speaker 1: explore different areas, but many times we ended up back
• 37:44
  Speaker 1: there and you could just watch over this large area
• 37:47
  Speaker 1: and you just sit in the hillside with spotting scopes
• 37:49
  Speaker 1: and binoculars and you just pick out different groups and
• 37:52
  Speaker 1: eyeball that group. You find different group, eyeball that group,
• 37:55
  Speaker 1: find different group, eyeball that group, and um, because there's
• 37:58
  Speaker 1: so many animals, you know, Steve was, we should be
• 38:00
  Speaker 1: pretty picky about what we're gonna shoot. I mean, there's
• 38:03
  Speaker 1: no reason to go off and shoot the first thing,
• 38:05
  Speaker 1: you see. So he kind of described the main things
• 38:08
  Speaker 1: that you're looking for in a good and mature bowl
• 38:11
  Speaker 1: and with a big you know, a big mature caribou
• 38:13
  Speaker 1: bowl is going to have so they kind of differentiate.
• 38:16
  Speaker 1: On a caribou. There's like these times and there's the
• 38:19
  Speaker 1: there's the tops, and there's the fronts. Um. So the fronts,
• 38:23
  Speaker 1: like those things that obviously come out from the front,
• 38:25
  Speaker 1: like these different little arms and hands of aniler that
• 38:27
  Speaker 1: comes out right above the kind of like a brow
• 38:29
  Speaker 1: time type thing. And um. And then there's the tops,
• 38:34
  Speaker 1: which are like you know, the tall main being that
• 38:37
  Speaker 1: goes up and then you've got those top times up there.
• 38:39
  Speaker 1: So good bowl would have like long tops and maybe
• 38:41
  Speaker 1: palmated tops. He'd have backscratcher points, which are these little
• 38:45
  Speaker 1: kind of flyers that come off the back of that
• 38:46
  Speaker 1: big main beam. And he'd have you know, big sweeping
• 38:49
  Speaker 1: fronts with good times, and maybe a shovel or two
• 38:53
  Speaker 1: which are these like kind of palmated I don't even
• 38:57
  Speaker 1: know how to describe it. But and the picture of
• 39:00
  Speaker 1: my bowl you can see one I've I've got a
• 39:01
  Speaker 1: single shovel on mine. You can see this flat kind
• 39:04
  Speaker 1: of palmated vertical sun of antlers that comes like straight
• 39:08
  Speaker 1: off his forehead. So we're looking for that. And then
• 39:12
  Speaker 1: also you're looking at, you know, in relative to all
• 39:15
  Speaker 1: the other caribou, So you need to establish a context
• 39:17
  Speaker 1: because they all look big. Um, So you kind need
• 39:20
  Speaker 1: to look at a bunch of them and then compare
• 39:21
  Speaker 1: this one to that one, this one to that one. Um,
• 39:24
  Speaker 1: so very quickly I realized like, we're going to be
• 39:26
  Speaker 1: pretty picky. And uh so day one, you know, we
• 39:29
  Speaker 1: we get up and we make some you know, cornolla
• 39:33
  Speaker 1: oatmeal in the morning and coffee, get around and then
• 39:36
  Speaker 1: we head back up the mountain and we're sitting there
• 39:39
  Speaker 1: and we're seeing all these cariboo again and we're glassing
• 39:42
  Speaker 1: and figuring stuff out, and finally we spott a cariboo
• 39:45
  Speaker 1: that that you know, looked good and Steve was like, yeah,
• 39:47
  Speaker 1: that's that's a good one. So he grabbed Doug and Doug,
• 39:51
  Speaker 1: let's let's go after this one. So they go taken
• 39:53
  Speaker 1: off after that one, and they took the two camera
• 39:56
  Speaker 1: and then myself, Brody and Jana stayed up on the
• 39:59
  Speaker 1: mountains side so that we didn't have seven people trying
• 40:01
  Speaker 1: to chase his cariboo, and we watched and glassed from above,
• 40:04
  Speaker 1: and they made a move on this group of cariboo.
• 40:06
  Speaker 1: But these guys, these balls were moving so fast across
• 40:09
  Speaker 1: the terrain that Steve and the crew they kind of
• 40:11
  Speaker 1: angled where we saw them. But within moments of like
• 40:16
  Speaker 1: them starting hike after him, these caribo were past that point,
• 40:19
  Speaker 1: we're moving way far to the left, so we watched
• 40:21
  Speaker 1: from above and watched them missed the cariboo by a mile,
• 40:24
  Speaker 1: and they're gone, and then they continued stalking in, thinking
• 40:28
  Speaker 1: they're getting on them, and then they finally realized that
• 40:30
  Speaker 1: they weren't. But another group of cariboo had moved in
• 40:33
  Speaker 1: and really another nice new ball came through and Doug
• 40:37
  Speaker 1: ended up not shooting that one, but we thought maybe
• 40:38
  Speaker 1: he would. But basically that whole morning was was watching
• 40:41
  Speaker 1: that happen, and um, they didn't end up shooting anything,
• 40:45
  Speaker 1: but super cool just watching it all happened. And meanwhile
• 40:48
  Speaker 1: I was just sitting up on the mountain watching other
• 40:50
  Speaker 1: animals and just kind of soaking it in and taking
• 40:52
  Speaker 1: pictures and stuff. And eventually they come back up and
• 40:56
  Speaker 1: we talked about what happened, etcetera, etcetera, and we're bs
• 41:00
  Speaker 1: and and stuff. And while we're kind of getting shied
• 41:01
  Speaker 1: around again, I'm glassing and I spot a new group
• 41:04
  Speaker 1: of bowls that popped out over another hill across the ridge,
• 41:06
  Speaker 1: and I'm like, oh man, there's some really good ones
• 41:08
  Speaker 1: up there. And after everybody looked like, yep, there's definitely
• 41:12
  Speaker 1: there's a really good one and so he's like your
• 41:14
  Speaker 1: turn mark. And at this point it was like a
• 41:17
  Speaker 1: roller coaster, um is the only way I could describe it.
• 41:21
  Speaker 1: And I was kind of hoping that I wouldn't shoot
• 41:24
  Speaker 1: one early, like I was thinking hoping I could shoot
• 41:26
  Speaker 1: a caribou on the last day, you know. So he
• 41:28
  Speaker 1: worked really hard and like had that whole experience and
• 41:30
  Speaker 1: then it finally happens. Um. And also again to like
• 41:35
  Speaker 1: my my only anxieties again were like related to like
• 41:37
  Speaker 1: the people related stuff. I just didn't know what the
• 41:40
  Speaker 1: process was going to be, like you know with the show.
• 41:43
  Speaker 1: So did they determine who got first shot or was
• 41:45
  Speaker 1: it just kind of a shoot from the hip thing?
• 41:47
  Speaker 1: So I think Steve, I think Steve was just gonna
• 41:49
  Speaker 1: bounce back and forth between me and Doug on stocks
• 41:52
  Speaker 1: and then once we got a chance, then he would
• 41:54
  Speaker 1: then he would shoot one. UM. So Doug got his
• 41:57
  Speaker 1: first stock that didn't go. So then you know my name,
• 42:00
  Speaker 1: we got called for the second stock. UM. But I
• 42:02
  Speaker 1: don't know if I was mentally ready because I told Doug,
• 42:05
  Speaker 1: I'm like, hey Doug, I want, I want, I want
• 42:06
  Speaker 1: you should have the first you should have the first shot.
• 42:09
  Speaker 1: You know you were invited on this trip. First, I
• 42:10
  Speaker 1: was a late edition. You've been thinking about this for
• 42:13
  Speaker 1: a year. Um, I want to make sure you get one.
• 42:15
  Speaker 1: So I thought, you know, I want him to shoot one.
• 42:16
  Speaker 1: And then also like I kind of wanted to let
• 42:19
  Speaker 1: someone else go through the whole thing and I could observe,
• 42:21
  Speaker 1: like you know, because it's not like hunting on your own.
• 42:26
  Speaker 1: You know, you when you're hunting on your own, you
• 42:29
  Speaker 1: make all the decisions. You do it your way. Um,
• 42:31
  Speaker 1: you got the deer year way, you process the deer
• 42:34
  Speaker 1: yr way, and there's no one, like, you know, no
• 42:35
  Speaker 1: one else to worry about. In this situation, it was
• 42:38
  Speaker 1: like you know, I was It was like I was
• 42:41
  Speaker 1: living in someone else's house. Do you know how that is?
• 42:42
  Speaker 1: Like if you go visit someone else's house and you're
• 42:44
  Speaker 1: they're staying at their place, like you're following their rules.
• 42:47
  Speaker 1: You gotta put stuff in the place they want to
• 42:48
  Speaker 1: put stuff, Like you're not going to sit on their
• 42:50
  Speaker 1: couch in the underwear, right, And like I get I
• 42:53
  Speaker 1: have like anxiety, a small amount of anxiety when I
• 42:55
  Speaker 1: stay at other people's house because like I don't want
• 42:57
  Speaker 1: to do something the wrong way or I don't want
• 42:58
  Speaker 1: to mess up their stuff or whatever it might be.
• 43:00
  Speaker 1: So I had like those kinds of feelings because I
• 43:03
  Speaker 1: just didn't you know, you just don't know what the
• 43:05
  Speaker 1: norms are. So for example, like if I were to
• 43:09
  Speaker 1: shoot one, um, should I just dig in and start
• 43:12
  Speaker 1: gutting it right away like I would, or to Steve
• 43:14
  Speaker 1: do the gutting because you know, that's how he likes
• 43:16
  Speaker 1: it on the show, or like you know, So all
• 43:18
  Speaker 1: these like little questions or the things that were like
• 43:20
  Speaker 1: giving me anxiety. So all that to say that, now
• 43:24
  Speaker 1: all of a sudden, it's my turn to go. And
• 43:26
  Speaker 1: I was like not mentally prepared, Like I was thinking
• 43:28
  Speaker 1: Doug was gonna be the shooting today and I would observe,
• 43:30
  Speaker 1: and but no, it's like go time. So this whole time,
• 43:34
  Speaker 1: I've been clicking, you know, going up the hill of
• 43:36
  Speaker 1: the rollercoaster, click click click, click click click, going higher
• 43:40
  Speaker 1: and higher higher, and then like I'm at the top,
• 43:42
  Speaker 1: and then Steve says, all right, Mark, let's go. Now
• 43:44
  Speaker 1: I'm just off the edge flying down And from that
• 43:46
  Speaker 1: point on it was just a bulur. So we go
• 43:48
  Speaker 1: running down the mountain. I got two cameraman behind me,
• 43:52
  Speaker 1: running and we're like sprinting down because these bulls were
• 43:55
  Speaker 1: coming across the ridge and then they went behind this
• 43:58
  Speaker 1: big hill. But they're going to come over this hill
• 44:00
  Speaker 1: and drop into this flat kind of basin, and we
• 44:03
  Speaker 1: have to intercept them at that basin because if we
• 44:05
  Speaker 1: don't get to the basin before, it's not really basin,
• 44:07
  Speaker 1: it's more of a bench. If we don't get to
• 44:08
  Speaker 1: that bench on the ridge before they do, they're gonna
• 44:11
  Speaker 1: see us. So we have to get there before they
• 44:13
  Speaker 1: come over top of this hill. So we're racing our
• 44:15
  Speaker 1: way down there and I'm huffing and puffing and cruising
• 44:19
  Speaker 1: down there. We finally get to this little knob looking
• 44:22
  Speaker 1: over the bench and we we dropped down and start
• 44:24
  Speaker 1: glassing and we don't see the caribou um. So now
• 44:27
  Speaker 1: it's like, got crap. Did they like go around the corner,
• 44:29
  Speaker 1: go another way? But you know, a minute of glassing
• 44:32
  Speaker 1: maybe and all of a sudden, this is when I
• 44:34
  Speaker 1: did get that Discovery Channel moment where like you just
• 44:37
  Speaker 1: saw like trees pop out from the top of the hill,
• 44:41
  Speaker 1: and slowly these trees became heads and the necks and
• 44:44
  Speaker 1: then bodies as all these bulls came over the hill
• 44:47
  Speaker 1: and then they just started piling and they were in
• 44:49
  Speaker 1: one big, massive group, but maybe like fifty or sixty
• 44:52
  Speaker 1: or something, I don't know, something like that. Those big
• 44:54
  Speaker 1: group coming down the mountain and are right in the
• 44:57
  Speaker 1: front is this big snowy white Maine big bull and Um,
• 45:04
  Speaker 1: so I lay down, I put my pack in front
• 45:05
  Speaker 1: of and put my rifle on the pack, and um,
• 45:08
  Speaker 1: there's there's several next bulls. So I'm not exactly sure
• 45:11
  Speaker 1: which of these bulls is like the best one. But
• 45:14
  Speaker 1: Steve's like it's that it's that front one. And I'm like,
• 45:16
  Speaker 1: look at him, like he looks really good, but the
• 45:17
  Speaker 1: one behind it looks really good. So they're coming across
• 45:20
  Speaker 1: to come down the hill. They're coming across the bench
• 45:23
  Speaker 1: and UM, I look over at Steve, Steve, do you
• 45:25
  Speaker 1: think we should try to cut? Should we try to crawl?
• 45:28
  Speaker 1: Kind of cut a little farther to the left so
• 45:30
  Speaker 1: we can intersect them at a closer distance. Um. And
• 45:34
  Speaker 1: He's like, wow, how far are you come from shooting?
• 45:36
  Speaker 1: And I'm like, well, I'd like I'd look a shot
• 45:38
  Speaker 1: like two hundred yards would make me super happy, two
• 45:41
  Speaker 1: hundred less because you know, I don't gun hunt. A
• 45:43
  Speaker 1: gun hunt like a couple of days a year. Um.
• 45:46
  Speaker 1: And when I do gun hunt, I'm up in northern Michigan,
• 45:48
  Speaker 1: where the longest shot you're gonna get like sixty or
• 45:50
  Speaker 1: seventy yards. So I'm not I'm not a long raine shooter.
• 45:54
  Speaker 1: I'm not a long range rifle shooter. I've been practicing
• 45:56
  Speaker 1: at a hundred and two hundred yards with this rifle
• 45:59
  Speaker 1: that you honest let me borrow when I was out
• 46:01
  Speaker 1: in Montana, and I kind of went into it saying, yeah,
• 46:05
  Speaker 1: I know lots of guys take way longer shots than that.
• 46:07
  Speaker 1: I know, like three hundred or four yard shots are
• 46:09
  Speaker 1: like the norm for a lot of guys. But for
• 46:11
  Speaker 1: me to be comfortable, I'd rather do two hundred, Like
• 46:13
  Speaker 1: I just I don't need to stretch it. Um. But
• 46:16
  Speaker 1: Steve's like, well, what do you what do you want
• 46:17
  Speaker 1: to shoot at? I'm like, well, i'd be happy if
• 46:19
  Speaker 1: it's two hundred or less. And he's like, well, look
• 46:21
  Speaker 1: at your scope and look at the two hash marks down.
• 46:23
  Speaker 1: That's three use that. I'm like, and I'm not going
• 46:31
  Speaker 1: And I'm like, I'm not gonna say no, I'm not
• 46:33
  Speaker 1: gonna like argue with him about it, um, but in
• 46:36
  Speaker 1: my hand like shit, fortunately though, and I just want
• 46:43
  Speaker 1: to stay up front, like before we went further, I
• 46:46
  Speaker 1: want to preface that, like everyone and Steve to everyone
• 46:50
  Speaker 1: was just like awesome about you know, Steve wasn't pressuring
• 46:55
  Speaker 1: me into doing anything I didn't want to do, and
• 46:56
  Speaker 1: I felt super comfortable and everything was great. But but
• 46:59
  Speaker 1: regardless like how you know how great they were about it,
• 47:04
  Speaker 1: I still felt like pressure, you know what I mean,
• 47:05
  Speaker 1: Like they weren't putting any pressure on me, but I
• 47:07
  Speaker 1: was putting pressure on myself. That's what I'm trying to say.
• 47:10
  Speaker 1: So you know, so Steve's like, you know, just put
• 47:13
  Speaker 1: that second hash on there. Um. Luckily, they kept angling
• 47:17
  Speaker 1: closer and I'm kind of waiting and they're moving pretty quick. Um.
• 47:22
  Speaker 1: And then I'm like I'm like, all right, I'm gonna
• 47:25
  Speaker 1: shoot one night when they stopped, Steve's like, well, they're
• 47:27
  Speaker 1: not gonna stop, Like like, oh crap, you're right because
• 47:32
  Speaker 1: they're they're moving on a pretty good clip. And then
• 47:33
  Speaker 1: he said, make sure you don't shoot two um, because
• 47:36
  Speaker 1: there's you know, they're they're they're all bunched together and
• 47:38
  Speaker 1: they're kind of coming in and out and I'm like, god, geez,
• 47:40
  Speaker 1: so I'm taking a longer shot than I've taken often,
• 47:45
  Speaker 1: and they're moving and they're like pasting in between, you know,
• 47:49
  Speaker 1: they're all they're all bunched up, and I'm like, jeez,
• 47:51
  Speaker 1: this is a debacle. But like in the moment, I
• 47:53
  Speaker 1: didn't really have time to think through this. It was
• 47:55
  Speaker 1: just like, this is a situation. This is happening. So
• 47:58
  Speaker 1: a long story short, got gun rested on my pack.
• 48:01
  Speaker 1: This is all happening. I'm gonna be taking this shot.
• 48:03
  Speaker 1: So I get the scope on it, and um, I ranged.
• 48:07
  Speaker 1: I got two thirty five I think was the last
• 48:09
  Speaker 1: range I took. So I put it right on him
• 48:12
  Speaker 1: and uh and then just shot like it just happened fast,
• 48:15
  Speaker 1: Like I was on him. He was moving as soon
• 48:17
  Speaker 1: as he came out from um behind another one and
• 48:20
  Speaker 1: I had an open shot, a shot and instant you
• 48:23
  Speaker 1: can see impact that you can see I hit him.
• 48:26
  Speaker 1: He stands there and then like and then he like
• 48:29
  Speaker 1: almost immediately lays down. So I'm like, awesome, like he's
• 48:33
  Speaker 1: going down. It's done. But then like it's not like
• 48:37
  Speaker 1: I'm not celebrating, not excited, and just like proof and
• 48:41
  Speaker 1: then watching, but he hasn't like keeled over here. He's
• 48:43
  Speaker 1: lays there and then he stands back up, and I'm like,
• 48:45
  Speaker 1: oh god, no, what happened? So then I put another
• 48:48
  Speaker 1: shot on him, and this time he goes down, lays
• 48:52
  Speaker 1: down again, and then does some kicks and and he dies. Um.
• 48:55
  Speaker 1: But it was like a longer process than I would
• 48:58
  Speaker 1: have liked. I would have liked if it was like
• 49:00
  Speaker 1: one shot drops and he's instantly dead, you know, that
• 49:05
  Speaker 1: that shoulder shot that just knocks him right down. Um.
• 49:08
  Speaker 1: So like I'm feeling like a little bit crap. I
• 49:10
  Speaker 1: didn't have a great shot. Blah blah blah. But long
• 49:15
  Speaker 1: story short, after a little while, we walked down there
• 49:17
  Speaker 1: and check him out. My first shot was back a
• 49:19
  Speaker 1: little bit. My second shot wasn't. The heart knocked him,
• 49:22
  Speaker 1: you know, took care of him right right there. Um.
• 49:24
  Speaker 1: But you know, I think that first one, it was
• 49:26
  Speaker 1: just the chaos of the moment, the nerves, the moving shot,
• 49:30
  Speaker 1: all these things that maybe, um, you weren't ideal um
• 49:35
  Speaker 1: led to an ideal first shot. Luckily, the second one
• 49:37
  Speaker 1: I was able to recompose and make it happen. But
• 49:41
  Speaker 1: but I felt long the reason I mentioned all this
• 49:43
  Speaker 1: is that in that moment, I felt like horrible, Like
• 49:45
  Speaker 1: I wasn't excited. All I felt was like horrible about
• 49:47
  Speaker 1: that shot. Um, Like I was embarrassed. I felt like,
• 49:51
  Speaker 1: you know, all these guys watching and stuff being filmed,
• 49:53
  Speaker 1: and like, you know, Steve, this guy I really respect.
• 49:55
  Speaker 1: I would I would like to, like, you know, show
• 49:58
  Speaker 1: that I'm like adequate. Um, like what does he think
• 50:01
  Speaker 1: about my bad first shot? Like all these things like
• 50:03
  Speaker 1: running through my head. It's like I kind of embummed
• 50:06
  Speaker 1: with myself for not being able to enjoy the moment
• 50:09
  Speaker 1: and like instead of like in my head, I was
• 50:10
  Speaker 1: like just all these anxieties. Um. But looking back on
• 50:15
  Speaker 1: it now, like I can remember, like what an incredible moment.
• 50:17
  Speaker 1: I remember walking up to this annual and just being
• 50:19
  Speaker 1: like in shock and awe of like just the size
• 50:23
  Speaker 1: and the beauty um, and just like wow, this this happened.
• 50:27
  Speaker 1: Just Um, the whole thing was was a crazy roller
• 50:30
  Speaker 1: coaster of like emotions and um, I just killed a
• 50:33
  Speaker 1: cariboo on my first day of actually hunting caribou um
• 50:38
  Speaker 1: and just big beautiful. I mean the coat is so
• 50:42
  Speaker 1: silky and like full and this main I just kept
• 50:45
  Speaker 1: putting my fingers in that white mane on his neck. Um.
• 50:49
  Speaker 1: Just amazing and interesting. Caribou are the only uncle it
• 50:52
  Speaker 1: hooved animal in North America that has a fully um
• 50:57
  Speaker 1: fur coated nose. It doesn't have that rubbery nose like
• 51:01
  Speaker 1: a deer or an elk or something like that. It's
• 51:04
  Speaker 1: totally totally covered in hair um, you know, because of
• 51:08
  Speaker 1: what a cool environment they live in. So I remember
• 51:10
  Speaker 1: touching the nose and be like, wow, this is just
• 51:12
  Speaker 1: like so cool, kind of like a mixture of like
• 51:15
  Speaker 1: peach fuzz and like my goatee maybe covering the nose
• 51:20
  Speaker 1: so um. And then these antlers, I mean, just like
• 51:23
  Speaker 1: unreal how big these things are. Another fun fact about
• 51:26
  Speaker 1: cariboo is they have the largest antlers in proportion to
• 51:30
  Speaker 1: body size of any North American ungleland. So so yeah,
• 51:35
  Speaker 1: so it's wild man when you when you know the
• 51:42
  Speaker 1: deer is dead or the cariboos dead, you you are
• 51:45
  Speaker 1: now able to celebrate this kill and you walk up
• 51:48
  Speaker 1: to it and you just you're you're looking at it.
• 51:52
  Speaker 1: What we're what was going through your mind? You know
• 51:56
  Speaker 1: at the time where you bent over and you laid
• 51:58
  Speaker 1: your hands on this animal for the very first time,
• 52:01
  Speaker 1: you know, it was it was. It was the two things.
• 52:03
  Speaker 1: It was. It was still the the internal turmoil over
• 52:08
  Speaker 1: over how the actual thing went down, UM mixed with
• 52:12
  Speaker 1: just um, just like wow. I just kept saying wow,
• 52:16
  Speaker 1: just like the whole experience. Every everything about this trip
• 52:19
  Speaker 1: was like overwhelming, Like the landscape, the wildlife, um, you know,
• 52:24
  Speaker 1: just all the other things surrounding it was just overwhelming
• 52:28
  Speaker 1: sense of just like bigness and like awe. So that's
• 52:31
  Speaker 1: kind of what I was feeling. It was just like
• 52:33
  Speaker 1: shock and awe and UM an appreciation too. I mean
• 52:36
  Speaker 1: sitting there like I, you know, I always try to
• 52:39
  Speaker 1: do this, um, you know, just kind of thank the
• 52:42
  Speaker 1: animal or or whomever or whatever it might be, whatever
• 52:46
  Speaker 1: powers above that brought this moment to be um and
• 52:51
  Speaker 1: soide I tried to do. I did that and just
• 52:53
  Speaker 1: was like, this is just such an incredible blessing to
• 52:58
  Speaker 1: be here and to have this animal. So just a
• 53:01
  Speaker 1: lot of all those things just kind of a huge
• 53:03
  Speaker 1: mixed pot of all sorts of stuff going on. Now,
• 53:07
  Speaker 1: how big because you've killed an elk before, so how
• 53:10
  Speaker 1: big was this caribou compared to an elk that you shot?
• 53:14
  Speaker 1: And then did any of those guys know roughly how
• 53:18
  Speaker 1: old this this bowl was that you shot. So relative
• 53:23
  Speaker 1: to a bowl elk, a bull caribou is smaller. So
• 53:26
  Speaker 1: a big bull caribou might be like four pounds or
• 53:29
  Speaker 1: four fifty or you know maybe maybe maybe a really
• 53:31
  Speaker 1: big one would be bigger than that. Um. You know,
• 53:33
  Speaker 1: bull elk could be you know, seven pounds and hundred
• 53:36
  Speaker 1: pounds something like that. Um, So definitely smaller than my
• 53:39
  Speaker 1: bowl elk from a body perspective, but still really big look.
• 53:43
  Speaker 1: And also like because of the low quality diet of
• 53:46
  Speaker 1: the food available for cariboo, they eat just lichen and
• 53:50
  Speaker 1: stuff like that, these little tiny lichens up on the
• 53:52
  Speaker 1: mountain side. Because of that diet, they have this massive,
• 53:56
  Speaker 1: massive stomach, like this huge bloated stomach. So like his
• 54:00
  Speaker 1: belly just looked like a beach ball or bigger, just massive. Um.
• 54:04
  Speaker 1: It's really interesting in that regard. But the antlers were
• 54:07
  Speaker 1: much bigger, So the antlers were bigger than my elk.
• 54:10
  Speaker 1: So the antlers are huge, but the body was maybe
• 54:12
  Speaker 1: a little bit smaller. Um. Now, as far as how
• 54:15
  Speaker 1: old this caribou was, we didn't really know, but it's
• 54:18
  Speaker 1: definitely mature, like definitely a big mature bull. If that
• 54:21
  Speaker 1: means four years old or six years old or how old,
• 54:24
  Speaker 1: I'm not sure, and nobody there seemed to be sure either, um,
• 54:28
  Speaker 1: but definitely one of the most mature bulls we've seen,
• 54:31
  Speaker 1: Like up until the last day, this was probably the
• 54:34
  Speaker 1: top one or two largest carriber we saw the whole
• 54:37
  Speaker 1: time until the last day. So so yeah, man, And then,
• 54:41
  Speaker 1: you know, like I mentioned earlier than I had, you know,
• 54:43
  Speaker 1: those worries about okay, now what's the process, you know,
• 54:46
  Speaker 1: like should I get going on gutting him right away?
• 54:48
  Speaker 1: Or do I need to wait for the camera crew
• 54:51
  Speaker 1: or to Steve start? And then I helped so all
• 54:53
  Speaker 1: that kind of stuff, you know, had me uncomfortable, but
• 54:56
  Speaker 1: made it through. You know, Steve kind of led the
• 54:58
  Speaker 1: way and stuff, and I helped out, and you know,
• 55:00
  Speaker 1: we broke it down and all that was fine, and
• 55:03
  Speaker 1: got them all gutted and quartered and packed away and
• 55:08
  Speaker 1: that was cool. You know, again, similar to when I
• 55:11
  Speaker 1: killed my elk, I was just like so like overwhelmed
• 55:15
  Speaker 1: by the size of everything in there, Like just gutting
• 55:17
  Speaker 1: this animal so different than gutting a deer, like you
• 55:19
  Speaker 1: could stick out your arm all away to your shoulder
• 55:21
  Speaker 1: and not get to the esophagus um. So that was
• 55:25
  Speaker 1: interesting and just this massive, massive balloon of a stomach.
• 55:29
  Speaker 1: But I got all that taken care of, packed everything up,
• 55:33
  Speaker 1: and then we brought all the meat maybe fifty sixty
• 55:35
  Speaker 1: yards away from the gut pile and set it down
• 55:38
  Speaker 1: because we still had a couple hours of daylight left
• 55:40
  Speaker 1: and we feared we'd sit up on the mountain and
• 55:41
  Speaker 1: glass and maybe find another one for Doug. So we
• 55:45
  Speaker 1: we did that. We got in the mountainside and we're
• 55:47
  Speaker 1: looking around for for caribou and stuff, and again I
• 55:50
  Speaker 1: spot something off in the distance and it's not a
• 55:53
  Speaker 1: caribou though, it's a big old grizz Spot another grizz
• 55:57
  Speaker 1: and a cup, so this is a big She was
• 56:01
  Speaker 1: like huge and brown and like patchy, very patchy, like
• 56:03
  Speaker 1: different colored tufts of skin or hair all over, but
• 56:06
  Speaker 1: her her cub was very much like the other grizzly
• 56:08
  Speaker 1: we saw, like really sheeny golden um, and man, he
• 56:12
  Speaker 1: was just having a great time. He was like doing
• 56:14
  Speaker 1: somersaults down the side of the mountain, rolling over and over.
• 56:17
  Speaker 1: At one point he ran over to a caribou shed
• 56:20
  Speaker 1: and started like wrestling with the shed. Um. It was awesome,
• 56:24
  Speaker 1: and so we started making bets, like she was running.
• 56:26
  Speaker 1: They were running down the mountain like they were long
• 56:28
  Speaker 1: ways off, like a mile away from where we were,
• 56:29
  Speaker 1: maybe maybe further, but they were running towards us. And
• 56:33
  Speaker 1: Steve is like, what do you think do you think
• 56:34
  Speaker 1: she could possibly smell that gut pile? Like, and so
• 56:36
  Speaker 1: we started like placing bets on whether or not she
• 56:39
  Speaker 1: knew about that gut pile, Like why would she be
• 56:41
  Speaker 1: running right down towards us this whole way like a
• 56:43
  Speaker 1: long ways. So we started wondering if she was gonna
• 56:45
  Speaker 1: come all the way to that gut pile. So we
• 56:47
  Speaker 1: watched her for like an hour coming down the hill. Um.
• 56:50
  Speaker 1: But then finally she made it to a berry patch
• 56:52
  Speaker 1: and then they hung up at the berry patch. They
• 56:54
  Speaker 1: never did make it to the gut pile, but um,
• 56:57
  Speaker 1: they ate some berries. We watched him for a long
• 56:58
  Speaker 1: time and finally she drops behind the hill and starts
• 57:01
  Speaker 1: angling a gatting closer towards the gut pile and stuff.
• 57:04
  Speaker 1: And then we're like, all right, you know, we should
• 57:05
  Speaker 1: probably get our meat and get out of here before
• 57:07
  Speaker 1: they do discover it. Um, So we hiked back to
• 57:10
  Speaker 1: the meat loaded up, and then did the long hike
• 57:13
  Speaker 1: back with a heavy pack. And that was that was
• 57:16
  Speaker 1: a good load. I had a back quarter, front quarter
• 57:18
  Speaker 1: and the skull and antlers on my back. Um, and
• 57:21
  Speaker 1: I'm glad it wasn't like a six mile hike because
• 57:23
  Speaker 1: that was a pretty heavy load. So what did you
• 57:29
  Speaker 1: do with the meat? Because you you guys were dropped
• 57:32
  Speaker 1: in right. There wasn't a plane still there was there. Yeah,
• 57:35
  Speaker 1: no no planes know anything. We were just out there
• 57:37
  Speaker 1: all by ourselves. But it was it was cold. It
• 57:39
  Speaker 1: was cool up there, so we just you know, we
• 57:41
  Speaker 1: had everything in game bags, you know, like a cheese
• 57:43
  Speaker 1: cloth type game bags, and we hiked back towards camp,
• 57:46
  Speaker 1: and on a hillside above camp, we just kind of
• 57:49
  Speaker 1: made like a cat and meat casher and just stacked
• 57:52
  Speaker 1: everything up there against the antlers so they could get
• 57:54
  Speaker 1: air to the to all sides of the meat and um.
• 57:57
  Speaker 1: You know, during the day, it was probably in the
• 57:59
  Speaker 1: forties or fft s prior forties, high forties most days,
• 58:03
  Speaker 1: and super windy. It was very windy. Um. And then
• 58:06
  Speaker 1: at night, you know, it could be down to the
• 58:07
  Speaker 1: twenties or low thirties or something. So it was plenty
• 58:10
  Speaker 1: cool enough for that meat to be fine there. Um.
• 58:13
  Speaker 1: And then that night we caught off a hunk of
• 58:15
  Speaker 1: that caribou meat and sliced it real thin and fried
• 58:18
  Speaker 1: it up, and we all eat a little bit of it.
• 58:21
  Speaker 1: And how did that taste? Really good? Really good? Just
• 58:24
  Speaker 1: like elk? You know. So I don't really know how
• 58:28
  Speaker 1: to compare it yet. Um relatively similar. Um, I don't
• 58:33
  Speaker 1: know how different. Yes, different, but I can't quit put
• 58:37
  Speaker 1: my finger on how to articulate the difference. Um, but
• 58:41
  Speaker 1: pretty similar to elk and deer. Um. Maybe it just
• 58:44
  Speaker 1: felt especially good because I was eating it on side
• 58:46
  Speaker 1: of a mountain. So um. So yeah, man, great, great
• 58:51
  Speaker 1: first day of hunting. And you know, my anxieties aside,
• 58:54
  Speaker 1: like the stress around that unnecessary, Like I didn't need
• 58:57
  Speaker 1: to be stressed out about stuff because you know, nobody
• 58:59
  Speaker 1: was giving me a time about anything, but I was.
• 59:01
  Speaker 1: I was putting that on myself. Um. But all that aside,
• 59:04
  Speaker 1: it was just like unbelievable, super super cool experience seeing
• 59:09
  Speaker 1: the bears, seeing all those animals actually getting killed caribou
• 59:12
  Speaker 1: packing them off the mountain. Um, just just amazing. So
• 59:16
  Speaker 1: that night it was just kind of like in awe
• 59:18
  Speaker 1: of all that, and um and then U. The next morning,
• 59:24
  Speaker 1: I wake up day two, day three that we're out there,
• 59:28
  Speaker 1: I put up my tent door and the very first
• 59:30
  Speaker 1: thing I see is a grizzly bearing cub in our camp.
• 59:36
  Speaker 1: Did you coop your pants? No? But I was like,
• 59:39
  Speaker 1: WHOA good morning? Um, And like right away, I'm like
• 59:43
  Speaker 1: grizzly and camp. I yell at out. Everyone's still in
• 59:45
  Speaker 1: their tents, like still sleeping, and we're like getting around
• 59:49
  Speaker 1: like grizzly and camp. And then when I see this
• 59:51
  Speaker 1: grizzlies right next to like the tent where the crew
• 59:53
  Speaker 1: was sleeping, so like the other the camera guys. So
• 59:55
  Speaker 1: then I started hollering at try to get it away.
• 59:58
  Speaker 1: And then luckily he or she in the cub look
• 1:00:01
  Speaker 1: at me, and then they bomp off the hill and
• 1:00:04
  Speaker 1: then drop over the side. But over there where these
• 1:00:07
  Speaker 1: grizzlies ran to, one of the crew members had a
• 1:00:10
  Speaker 1: separate tent. He didn't sleep with the rest of them
• 1:00:12
  Speaker 1: because um, he has night terrors, actually um so he so,
• 1:00:17
  Speaker 1: so he he sleeps in the separate tent just so
• 1:00:19
  Speaker 1: doesn't wake people up. So I see these bears go
• 1:00:23
  Speaker 1: run off the hill and then all of a sudden,
• 1:00:24
  Speaker 1: I hear him yelling. I'm like, oh no, like they
• 1:00:27
  Speaker 1: ran right into him, and um fortunately they ran like
• 1:00:31
  Speaker 1: thirty yards of him. But then when he started yelling,
• 1:00:33
  Speaker 1: they turned and ran the other way. So no issues.
• 1:00:36
  Speaker 1: But it could have been it could have been hairy,
• 1:00:38
  Speaker 1: because you know, a sal in a cub type situation
• 1:00:40
  Speaker 1: like that is never good to surprise, and she was.
• 1:00:43
  Speaker 1: She was right in there, close to the tents. So
• 1:00:45
  Speaker 1: that was an interesting start to the day. Um. And
• 1:00:47
  Speaker 1: I forgot to mention another crazy thing they happened was
• 1:00:50
  Speaker 1: our very first night there. In the middle of the night,
• 1:00:52
  Speaker 1: like amazingly heavy winds came through. Like I thought my
• 1:00:56
  Speaker 1: tent was gonna get get crushed to the ground, or
• 1:00:59
  Speaker 1: like the rain I was gonna get ripped off. Like
• 1:01:00
  Speaker 1: I woke up several times in the night like so loud,
• 1:01:03
  Speaker 1: my tent is like pushed down over top of my head. Um,
• 1:01:07
  Speaker 1: like I thought for sure stuff was gonna get ripped out. Fortunately,
• 1:01:10
  Speaker 1: we because of how windy had been during the day,
• 1:01:12
  Speaker 1: we didn't. We staked everything, but then we also put
• 1:01:14
  Speaker 1: big rocks over all the stakes too. Um, so that
• 1:01:17
  Speaker 1: saved the day from our tents but the crew they
• 1:01:20
  Speaker 1: slept in these big tps um like TP style tents.
• 1:01:23
  Speaker 1: There's two of them, and one of them, like half
• 1:01:26
  Speaker 1: of the stakes all came ripping out, So those couple
• 1:01:28
  Speaker 1: of those guys had to wake up in the middle
• 1:01:30
  Speaker 1: of the night and we're like out in these gale
• 1:01:31
  Speaker 1: force wins trying to restake these tents. And then there's
• 1:01:34
  Speaker 1: another guy that was sleeping solo and one of them,
• 1:01:37
  Speaker 1: and that one in the middle of the night, like
• 1:01:38
  Speaker 1: all the stakes came out in the middle pole like
• 1:01:40
  Speaker 1: came out. So he had to for like two hours
• 1:01:44
  Speaker 1: sit holding with all his might onto the center pool
• 1:01:46
  Speaker 1: to keep the TPP flying away, and like he was yelling,
• 1:01:50
  Speaker 1: but nobody else could hear him, so he had a
• 1:01:52
  Speaker 1: rough night. Yeah, it was, I mean, like crip, I've
• 1:01:57
  Speaker 1: never been in heavier winds than tent by fire. I
• 1:01:59
  Speaker 1: mean it was it was out of this world. Um,
• 1:02:02
  Speaker 1: So that was that was the tent. And then you know,
• 1:02:05
  Speaker 1: day number three of the trip started with the grizzly
• 1:02:07
  Speaker 1: encounter in the morning and then just more of the
• 1:02:10
  Speaker 1: same the rest of the day. We just watched hundreds
• 1:02:12
  Speaker 1: and hundreds of caribou, just like incredible seeing all these
• 1:02:16
  Speaker 1: animals interact and flowing off the mountains and passing through.
• 1:02:19
  Speaker 1: When you just glass all these different bowls up and
• 1:02:21
  Speaker 1: look at him and watch them lots of times you
• 1:02:23
  Speaker 1: see these bulls fighting and stuff. UM. Really cool. And
• 1:02:26
  Speaker 1: then that day Doug shot at one. He killed that
• 1:02:30
  Speaker 1: bowl and we packed that one off the mountain. That
• 1:02:33
  Speaker 1: night started to rain. We record a podcast episode for
• 1:02:37
  Speaker 1: Steve's podcast. UM. And then the third day, same deal,
• 1:02:43
  Speaker 1: hike and all over the place, glass and all over
• 1:02:45
  Speaker 1: the place. UM found a big bowl that Steve wanted
• 1:02:48
  Speaker 1: to shoot. It was really far away. UM. So this
• 1:02:51
  Speaker 1: time a couple of guys stayed back, and then me
• 1:02:53
  Speaker 1: and Steve and the camera guys decided to go after him.
• 1:02:56
  Speaker 1: And then we kind of went on a kind of
• 1:02:57
  Speaker 1: wild goose chase, like Steve want to go after this
• 1:02:59
  Speaker 1: once we go drop way off this mountain down to
• 1:03:02
  Speaker 1: this deep drainage, and then we get to the bottom
• 1:03:04
  Speaker 1: of the drainage and we spot some new bulls up
• 1:03:06
  Speaker 1: at the top of the ridge. Again that looks really good,
• 1:03:08
  Speaker 1: So we go all the way back to the top,
• 1:03:09
  Speaker 1: like sprinting out the side of this mountain. We get
• 1:03:11
  Speaker 1: situated there and these bulls dropped down in front of us,
• 1:03:14
  Speaker 1: and then Steve didn't like them so much, so it's like,
• 1:03:16
  Speaker 1: let's go back after the original one. So then we
• 1:03:19
  Speaker 1: go all the way back down to the bottom of
• 1:03:20
  Speaker 1: the drainage. And then at this point we spot another
• 1:03:23
  Speaker 1: group of bulls um and this one's halfway up that mountain,
• 1:03:27
  Speaker 1: and Steve ended up taking one of those, but um,
• 1:03:30
  Speaker 1: super nice bull. And then it was just a heck
• 1:03:32
  Speaker 1: of a pack out of that drainage because now we're
• 1:03:34
  Speaker 1: at the bottom of this steep ravine and we had
• 1:03:37
  Speaker 1: to go straight up this really steep face that like,
• 1:03:40
  Speaker 1: that load nearly killed me, um because it was I
• 1:03:43
  Speaker 1: took a back quarter and then I also found a
• 1:03:45
  Speaker 1: big moose shed, like a big moose shed, so I
• 1:03:47
  Speaker 1: strapped that on my pack. So I had a heavy load,
• 1:03:50
  Speaker 1: and um, this was a very steep hill. So that
• 1:03:54
  Speaker 1: one I was like finally feeling it, like this is
• 1:03:55
  Speaker 1: our third care but we've packed out in three days,
• 1:03:58
  Speaker 1: and that one I finally was like, Okay, I'm getting tired.
• 1:04:00
  Speaker 1: But a Fortunately Steve must have been feeling it a
• 1:04:04
  Speaker 1: little bit too, because he was taking breaks and so
• 1:04:06
  Speaker 1: I was able to take breaks with him, and that
• 1:04:08
  Speaker 1: that was good. So and then that night we had
• 1:04:12
  Speaker 1: like our meal scene. Um and uh, you know because
• 1:04:16
  Speaker 1: usually on the on the Meat Eater Show they do
• 1:04:18
  Speaker 1: like a meal scene where they cook up something they killed.
• 1:04:20
  Speaker 1: And um, so we did an Asian hot pot. So
• 1:04:23
  Speaker 1: like this big boiling pot of like Asian broth mixture
• 1:04:28
  Speaker 1: with like onions and carrots and I don't know, all
• 1:04:30
  Speaker 1: these different things in there. And then we sliced up
• 1:04:33
  Speaker 1: caribou heart and cariboo backstrap and ptarmigan heart and Ptarmigan breast.
• 1:04:37
  Speaker 1: So Tarmigan's kind of like a an Arctic like grouse
• 1:04:40
  Speaker 1: type bird. Did you guys shoot that while you were
• 1:04:42
  Speaker 1: out there? Yeah? Shot one and Steve shot one and
• 1:04:45
  Speaker 1: Brodie shot one. I think, oh coo. So so yeah,
• 1:04:49
  Speaker 1: we we sliced all that up and then you screw
• 1:04:51
  Speaker 1: you skew or a little sliceless meat on a little
• 1:04:53
  Speaker 1: wooden stick and then you dip it in that broth
• 1:04:56
  Speaker 1: like fifteen seconds. Let it just see he really quick
• 1:04:58
  Speaker 1: and they take it out, dip it sauce and eat
• 1:05:00
  Speaker 1: it with your fingers and holy crap. And that was amazing.
• 1:05:04
  Speaker 1: So all that had to be packed in right with
• 1:05:06
  Speaker 1: that plane. So all the vegetables and all the utensils.
• 1:05:11
  Speaker 1: So the production of the Meat Eator television show. Let's say,
• 1:05:18
  Speaker 1: if it was just you and me going out there
• 1:05:20
  Speaker 1: to drop, we'd probably have you know, less gear to
• 1:05:25
  Speaker 1: take just because of the production. Right. Oh yeah, yeah
• 1:05:28
  Speaker 1: for sure. I mean there they had so much camera
• 1:05:31
  Speaker 1: equipment and other stuff. Um yeah, just a lot of stuff.
• 1:05:35
  Speaker 1: So quite a quite a production. But it made for comfortable,
• 1:05:39
  Speaker 1: you know living situation out there because we had like
• 1:05:41
  Speaker 1: a little tarp over our little meal areas so we
• 1:05:44
  Speaker 1: could be you know, sheltered from the rain on that
• 1:05:45
  Speaker 1: day it was raining all day, um, and the wind
• 1:05:48
  Speaker 1: a little bit. You know. It's a nice little nook
• 1:05:50
  Speaker 1: to sit in there and eat every day, and good
• 1:05:53
  Speaker 1: food like different than like when we go backpacking our stuff.
• 1:05:55
  Speaker 1: Like they had like real sandwiches and um, within mountain
• 1:05:59
  Speaker 1: houses for dinner. But that what I really liked is
• 1:06:02
  Speaker 1: they brought a massive bag of like candy bars, so
• 1:06:05
  Speaker 1: there was like dozens of full sized snicker bars and
• 1:06:07
  Speaker 1: kit cats and stuff. So so we ate pretty decent
• 1:06:11
  Speaker 1: considering and so you were comfortable. This wasn't like a
• 1:06:15
  Speaker 1: real it was. It was roughing it because you were
• 1:06:19
  Speaker 1: way out isolated, but from a from a food and like, uh,
• 1:06:24
  Speaker 1: it wasn't like you were on a spike camp out
• 1:06:27
  Speaker 1: in the back country, like with just the meal for
• 1:06:30
  Speaker 1: the day, right, Yeah, we had a little more food
• 1:06:32
  Speaker 1: than I'm used to otherwise it's similar, but the food situation,
• 1:06:34
  Speaker 1: we had more food available than usually. Like there's like
• 1:06:37
  Speaker 1: they brought apples, so that was nice. So we had
• 1:06:39
  Speaker 1: like lunch meet for sandwiches and apples, and then like
• 1:06:42
  Speaker 1: granola bars and stuff like that, candy bars, and then
• 1:06:46
  Speaker 1: every night, you know, you have a mountain house meal
• 1:06:49
  Speaker 1: and in the mornings, yeah, they had they had they
• 1:06:50
  Speaker 1: brought bagels like they'd fry bagels in a pot or um,
• 1:06:54
  Speaker 1: there's some oatmeal and stuff like that. So so eating
• 1:06:56
  Speaker 1: it was fancier than than my elk huic, that's for sure. Awesome.
• 1:07:01
  Speaker 1: And that was and that was it. The next day,
• 1:07:02
  Speaker 1: we're supposed to get picked up early in the morning
• 1:07:04
  Speaker 1: from the plane by the planes, but they ended up
• 1:07:06
  Speaker 1: not coming to like super late, so we just hung out.
• 1:07:09
  Speaker 1: We packed up camp and hung out all day on
• 1:07:11
  Speaker 1: the mountain side, walking around or napping or reading or
• 1:07:14
  Speaker 1: goofing around, and like I think the planes finally got
• 1:07:17
  Speaker 1: there like six or seven at night or something, um,
• 1:07:20
  Speaker 1: and it was started raining. It was raining and cloudy
• 1:07:22
  Speaker 1: and windy and all that kind of stuff. So it
• 1:07:25
  Speaker 1: took him a while to be able to get us,
• 1:07:26
  Speaker 1: but they finally did got us out of there late
• 1:07:28
  Speaker 1: that night and on the flight back, So on the
• 1:07:31
  Speaker 1: super cub flight back to the town, I saw thirty
• 1:07:35
  Speaker 1: to forty moose, like it was insane, like moose everywhere. Wow.
• 1:07:40
  Speaker 1: So that was sweet, like big, big old paddled moose bowls.
• 1:07:44
  Speaker 1: I mean just it was sweet. So so when you
• 1:07:50
  Speaker 1: were out there, um, you know, certain times of the
• 1:07:53
  Speaker 1: year Alaska, you know Alaska or northern Hemisphere even into
• 1:07:57
  Speaker 1: Canada and whatnot, they have longer days. What was your
• 1:08:01
  Speaker 1: What was the day like out there? How many hours
• 1:08:04
  Speaker 1: of darkness was there? Yes, it was like daylight by
• 1:08:07
  Speaker 1: about six in the morning, maybe a touch before six,
• 1:08:10
  Speaker 1: and then it was daylight till almost ten o'clock at night.
• 1:08:14
  Speaker 1: So pretty pretty darn long days. Um, So what gives
• 1:08:19
  Speaker 1: you about eight hours of darkness? The rest of the
• 1:08:21
  Speaker 1: day was daylight? Yeah, And you know another thing, I
• 1:08:24
  Speaker 1: didn't really get to see it, but there we did
• 1:08:26
  Speaker 1: have decent northern lights A couple of nights there. Um,
• 1:08:29
  Speaker 1: I woke up my last night, I set an alarm
• 1:08:31
  Speaker 1: to try to see him, and I did see them,
• 1:08:34
  Speaker 1: but just like little slivers of it, like you see.
• 1:08:36
  Speaker 1: It's almost like a green string wavering in the sky. Um.
• 1:08:40
  Speaker 1: But I never got to see it the whole sky
• 1:08:42
  Speaker 1: lit up. But I did hear they got some good
• 1:08:44
  Speaker 1: time laps footage of it, so hopefully well get to
• 1:08:46
  Speaker 1: see that. The last night, though, was funny. They had
• 1:08:49
  Speaker 1: a time lap set up right by my tent and
• 1:08:51
  Speaker 1: I didn't know it. So I wake up within the
• 1:08:53
  Speaker 1: middle of night two, I am to go see the
• 1:08:55
  Speaker 1: northern lights. So I wake up, get on my tent,
• 1:08:57
  Speaker 1: walk on my tent, take a piss, look up the sky,
• 1:08:59
  Speaker 1: look for the northern lights, kind of see it, and
• 1:09:01
  Speaker 1: then go to bed. Well, the next day I ended
• 1:09:03
  Speaker 1: up taking a piss right in front of the time
• 1:09:05
  Speaker 1: left of camera. So your junk is going to be
• 1:09:09
  Speaker 1: on the next Mediator uh show possibly hopefully hopefully hopefully
• 1:09:16
  Speaker 1: I pointed the other way. So you made it back
• 1:09:21
  Speaker 1: to civilization, right, I mean, while you're out there after
• 1:09:27
  Speaker 1: the you know, after the fact, after you've had this experience,
• 1:09:30
  Speaker 1: you've got some time where you're in a plane, you're
• 1:09:33
  Speaker 1: coming back to the civilization. Um, you're just kind of
• 1:09:37
  Speaker 1: you're you're you're thinking about everything that just happened. Has
• 1:09:41
  Speaker 1: this sparked any ideas from you as far as any
• 1:09:45
  Speaker 1: additional adventure hunting scenarios that you that you want to take,
• 1:09:52
  Speaker 1: whether it's in the States or somewhere else, Well, I
• 1:09:55
  Speaker 1: definitely want to go back to Alaska again, Like I
• 1:09:57
  Speaker 1: as often as I can, I'd like to get up there, um,
• 1:10:01
  Speaker 1: because it's just I mean, we we're talking about this
• 1:10:03
  Speaker 1: on Steve's podcast about the fact that in the Lower
• 1:10:07
  Speaker 1: forty eight, like we are fighting now today too fixed
• 1:10:13
  Speaker 1: mistakes that were made you know, a hundred and fifty
• 1:10:15
  Speaker 1: years ago still or you know, fifty years or whatever
• 1:10:18
  Speaker 1: might be, like whatever it might be, to wildlife populations
• 1:10:20
  Speaker 1: and or habitat. Like we're fighting to try to protect
• 1:10:23
  Speaker 1: the last vestiges of wilderness and open space that we
• 1:10:26
  Speaker 1: have and to you know, continue to rebound populations or
• 1:10:30
  Speaker 1: protect them at the at the place that we've been
• 1:10:32
  Speaker 1: able to get these these animals back to now. But
• 1:10:35
  Speaker 1: the Lower forty eight it's like repair mode kind of
• 1:10:38
  Speaker 1: you know, we we've really screwed things up here, and
• 1:10:41
  Speaker 1: we're just trying to make it a little bit better
• 1:10:43
  Speaker 1: and fix the small things we've been all to recover.
• 1:10:46
  Speaker 1: So far in Alaska, it's still for the most part,
• 1:10:51
  Speaker 1: like it was years ago. For I mean, the large
• 1:10:53
  Speaker 1: portion of it is relatively intact, relatively still wild, relatively
• 1:10:58
  Speaker 1: you know, in harmony with it should be and where
• 1:11:01
  Speaker 1: now it's just like, don't screw this up. So we
• 1:11:04
  Speaker 1: screwed up in the lower forty eight and we're trying
• 1:11:06
  Speaker 1: to fix it and keep it. We've got left in
• 1:11:08
  Speaker 1: the last We've got this incredible thing still, this public
• 1:11:12
  Speaker 1: land and this wilderness and these places that are just amazing. Um,
• 1:11:16
  Speaker 1: We've got this liver of what it used to be
• 1:11:20
  Speaker 1: still there, and um, it just has reminded me of
• 1:11:23
  Speaker 1: how important it is to keep that the way it is. Um.
• 1:11:25
  Speaker 1: Just knowing that there's somewhere that is still like that today,
• 1:11:29
  Speaker 1: it's it's very reassuring for me. Its just it's good
• 1:11:32
  Speaker 1: to know there's still a wild place. It's good to
• 1:11:34
  Speaker 1: know that you can go somewhere and be hundreds of
• 1:11:36
  Speaker 1: miles from anybody else and be surrounded by grizzlies and
• 1:11:39
  Speaker 1: wolves and caribou and the night in the northern lights.
• 1:11:43
  Speaker 1: It is like good for my soul to know that
• 1:11:46
  Speaker 1: that is there and available. Um, and I just want
• 1:11:50
  Speaker 1: to fight really hard to make sure it stays that way. Amen,
• 1:11:54
  Speaker 1: man Amen. So any other takeaways from from this trip,
• 1:12:00
  Speaker 1: I mean, not necessarily just the adventure and emotional standpoint,
• 1:12:04
  Speaker 1: but anything else that was just really cool, or you know,
• 1:12:08
  Speaker 1: something that you want to tell the listeners that they
• 1:12:11
  Speaker 1: should try to do something like this, or I guess
• 1:12:14
  Speaker 1: Mark Kenyon's final thoughts. Yeah, so final thoughts. I think
• 1:12:17
  Speaker 1: first and foremost, you know, the trip was incredible from
• 1:12:21
  Speaker 1: you know, being there in the wildlife and the landscape
• 1:12:24
  Speaker 1: and killing the caribou and getting all this great meat,
• 1:12:27
  Speaker 1: all those things were amazing, But just as important, if
• 1:12:30
  Speaker 1: not maybe even more important, was, like I mean, I
• 1:12:34
  Speaker 1: think this comes down to so often is the people
• 1:12:37
  Speaker 1: to Like, just the group of guys I was with
• 1:12:39
  Speaker 1: on this trip were so great. They were so welcoming
• 1:12:42
  Speaker 1: to me, they were so much fun to be around.
• 1:12:45
  Speaker 1: Um And like, so I just want to I appreciate
• 1:12:48
  Speaker 1: that so much. I appreciate the fact that Steve and
• 1:12:50
  Speaker 1: the guys invited me to go on this trip. Um.
• 1:12:53
  Speaker 1: Just an unbelievable opportunity and I can never thank all
• 1:12:56
  Speaker 1: them enough. Um, just the coolest guys in the world.
• 1:12:58
  Speaker 1: So I would say number one. If you are not
• 1:13:01
  Speaker 1: watching The Meat either TV show or listening to The
• 1:13:03
  Speaker 1: Meat either podcast, you really should be. They're doing awesome work.
• 1:13:08
  Speaker 1: The guys behind the scenes are amazing guys, super fun guys. UM,
• 1:13:12
  Speaker 1: so check out, Like, make sure you're following Dirt Myth
• 1:13:15
  Speaker 1: on Instagram. The guy takes some incredible photos. Um. Chris
• 1:13:20
  Speaker 1: Gil followed Chris Gil on Instagram. He's another terrific camera guy. UM.
• 1:13:26
  Speaker 1: Brodie Henderson and j honest, but tell us just did
• 1:13:28
  Speaker 1: an awesome job of like keeping the train on the
• 1:13:31
  Speaker 1: tracks as far as the whole production and everything. And
• 1:13:34
  Speaker 1: then Steve. I mean I think most of most everyone
• 1:13:36
  Speaker 1: listening knows who Steve Ronella is. But um, it was
• 1:13:39
  Speaker 1: really cool to get spend more time with him. And
• 1:13:41
  Speaker 1: he's someone that I've looked up to for a long time.
• 1:13:43
  Speaker 1: I've um, you know, modeled a lot of the ways
• 1:13:47
  Speaker 1: that I try to communicate things, um, kind of around
• 1:13:50
  Speaker 1: the way he has. Because I think he's just done
• 1:13:51
  Speaker 1: a tremendous job of representing the hunting community in a
• 1:13:55
  Speaker 1: positive light, and I think he's influenced the hunting community
• 1:13:58
  Speaker 1: in a really positive way, moved us in a reaction
• 1:14:00
  Speaker 1: that I think is very important. So, um man, I'm
• 1:14:03
  Speaker 1: just gonna continue to be appreciative of what he's doing.
• 1:14:05
  Speaker 1: And it was neat to be able to learn from
• 1:14:07
  Speaker 1: him in person. And also, these dudes are way goofier
• 1:14:12
  Speaker 1: in person then you might expect, like just like constantly
• 1:14:16
  Speaker 1: laughing about stupid things and like making up songs, and
• 1:14:20
  Speaker 1: Steve's got nicknames for everybody. He starts making up songs
• 1:14:23
  Speaker 1: about different people. Um, or like we were doing like handstandoffs,
• 1:14:27
  Speaker 1: like seeing who could do handstand for the longest time,
• 1:14:29
  Speaker 1: or who could do planks for the longest time, or
• 1:14:32
  Speaker 1: all sorts of goofy stuff like that. So just like
• 1:14:34
  Speaker 1: a really good time from a personal standpoint to um.
• 1:14:37
  Speaker 1: But then as two other final thoughts, I think, just
• 1:14:39
  Speaker 1: to what I said there a second ago, this just
• 1:14:42
  Speaker 1: reminded me again of of how fortunate and blessed we
• 1:14:46
  Speaker 1: are that, you know, our forefathers and people that came
• 1:14:50
  Speaker 1: before us had the foresight to protect some of these
• 1:14:54
  Speaker 1: places and leave them as they were, or you know,
• 1:14:57
  Speaker 1: or that did things to allow our wildlife popular lations
• 1:15:00
  Speaker 1: to recover in the lower forty eight or to keep
• 1:15:02
  Speaker 1: them great as they're in Alaska. Um So I would
• 1:15:04
  Speaker 1: just I would encourage everyone to a educate yourself on this,
• 1:15:09
  Speaker 1: like read about the history of these places, read about
• 1:15:11
  Speaker 1: these wild places, learn about what we have here. Realize
• 1:15:15
  Speaker 1: that you, as an American have access to just this.
• 1:15:18
  Speaker 1: You have access to a unbelievable swath of landscape and
• 1:15:23
  Speaker 1: wildlife and experience like it's there for you. You don't
• 1:15:26
  Speaker 1: need to pay anything to go in there and do
• 1:15:28
  Speaker 1: these things. Um. Yet it takes planning. Yeah, it takes
• 1:15:32
  Speaker 1: a lot of work. Yeah, it takes some money to
• 1:15:34
  Speaker 1: get to places. Um, but it's there for you. So
• 1:15:38
  Speaker 1: go see these places, experience these places, and then, um,
• 1:15:42
  Speaker 1: you know, when needed, stand up for these places. Um,
• 1:15:48
  Speaker 1: you know, call your congressmen, write letters, tell your friends
• 1:15:51
  Speaker 1: and family. These places are important. Um So I think
• 1:15:55
  Speaker 1: that's that's what I would say. Yeah, very very very
• 1:15:59
  Speaker 1: very important. So yeah, man, unbelievable trip. So what's next? Man?
• 1:16:05
  Speaker 1: Real quick though, Before we move on, we need to
• 1:16:07
  Speaker 1: take a second to thank our partners at White Tailed
• 1:16:09
  Speaker 1: Properties for the support of the Wired Hunt podcast and
• 1:16:12
  Speaker 1: our producer Spencer Newhart caught up with one of the
• 1:16:14
  Speaker 1: White Tailed Properties land specialists recently to get a little
• 1:16:17
  Speaker 1: insight into the process of booking your first outfited hunt.
• 1:16:22
  Speaker 1: This week with White Tailed Properties, we are joined by
• 1:16:25
  Speaker 1: Tim Woods, a land specialist out of Central Ohio, and
• 1:16:29
  Speaker 1: Tim is going to be telling us about what to
• 1:16:31
  Speaker 1: look for when booking your very first outfitted hunt. Well,
• 1:16:36
  Speaker 1: I guess I would say, if you're looking the book
• 1:16:38
  Speaker 1: with your your first outfitted hunt, Um, first thing I'll
• 1:16:42
  Speaker 1: do is, you know, maybe maybe not go right to
• 1:16:45
  Speaker 1: social media. No, social media is big at this day
• 1:16:48
  Speaker 1: and age, but you want to find an outfitter that
• 1:16:53
  Speaker 1: is not out there pounding this chest a lot um,
• 1:16:57
  Speaker 1: you know, saying look at me, look what we can do. Um.
• 1:17:00
  Speaker 1: You know from my experience, you know, being that you know,
• 1:17:03
  Speaker 1: I am an outfitter, you know, and I see a
• 1:17:04
  Speaker 1: lot of a lot of guys doing last stuff on
• 1:17:06
  Speaker 1: social media, which is great, you know, they're they're promoting
• 1:17:08
  Speaker 1: the sport and they're promoting their business. Um, but it
• 1:17:12
  Speaker 1: seems like they need they need the hunters. You know,
• 1:17:16
  Speaker 1: if you want to look for an outfitter that there
• 1:17:18
  Speaker 1: is that doesn't do a whole lot of advertising because
• 1:17:20
  Speaker 1: they don't need to because they've got the returning client
• 1:17:24
  Speaker 1: base that you know that they cater to and they're
• 1:17:27
  Speaker 1: just from word of mouth. Is the best, you know,
• 1:17:30
  Speaker 1: business model you can have as far as taking care
• 1:17:33
  Speaker 1: of the people and treating them right, and they're always
• 1:17:35
  Speaker 1: gonna come back, and if they can't come back, they're
• 1:17:37
  Speaker 1: gonna have their buddies come in their place and so forth.
• 1:17:39
  Speaker 1: So if you're looking at the book, your first first
• 1:17:42
  Speaker 1: outfitted hunt, uh, get some references from that outfitter and
• 1:17:46
  Speaker 1: call them and see how they treated them, you know,
• 1:17:48
  Speaker 1: whether they killed or didn't kill. If you'd like to
• 1:17:51
  Speaker 1: learn more and to see the properties that Tim currently
• 1:17:53
  Speaker 1: has listed for sale, visit white Tail properties dot com
• 1:17:57
  Speaker 1: backslash Woods that's you oo. D s Well. I got
• 1:18:04
  Speaker 1: back late Sunday, well Sunday morning, like one in the
• 1:18:07
  Speaker 1: morning and Sunday and then I slept for a few hours,
• 1:18:10
  Speaker 1: got up, drove across the state to eastern Montana. Found
• 1:18:14
  Speaker 1: the campsite in this area where I want to hunt,
• 1:18:17
  Speaker 1: and now I'm trying to kill Montana whitetail. So trying
• 1:18:21
  Speaker 1: to get that done. It's been a little bit. Uh,
• 1:18:24
  Speaker 1: it's gonna be more challenging than I originally thought. Um,
• 1:18:29
  Speaker 1: well super hot. It's like degrees, so I'm like just
• 1:18:34
  Speaker 1: sweating to death every day. Excuse me with hiccups. Um.
• 1:18:38
  Speaker 1: And then you know, I found a bunch of public
• 1:18:39
  Speaker 1: land pieces when I just studied the maps and I
• 1:18:42
  Speaker 1: was looking for public that again like what I was
• 1:18:45
  Speaker 1: doing last year. I was looking for public land that
• 1:18:46
  Speaker 1: got down into this river bottom cover that was adjacent
• 1:18:49
  Speaker 1: to alfalfa fields because I wanted food and I want
• 1:18:52
  Speaker 1: to cover that I could hopefully get in between. So
• 1:18:55
  Speaker 1: I found like five or six of these places on
• 1:18:57
  Speaker 1: the maps, and then my plan was to get here
• 1:19:00
  Speaker 1: Sunday night and drive around and glass them all that
• 1:19:02
  Speaker 1: night and get an idea of which areas held you know,
• 1:19:05
  Speaker 1: possible mature bucks, and then go hunt those spots. Well,
• 1:19:08
  Speaker 1: what I didn't do in my like all these different
• 1:19:11
  Speaker 1: things going on when I didn't plan for, was like
• 1:19:13
  Speaker 1: drive time, so I didn't realize how spread out this
• 1:19:16
  Speaker 1: stuff was. It didn't look that big on the map,
• 1:19:19
  Speaker 1: but it actually takes like an hour or more to
• 1:19:21
  Speaker 1: get between some of these places. So that's made it
• 1:19:24
  Speaker 1: tough for me to like get down and explore some
• 1:19:26
  Speaker 1: of these like farther southern sections. So um, the first
• 1:19:31
  Speaker 1: night I explored kind of the northern side, and then
• 1:19:33
  Speaker 1: the next morning I woke up really early and drove
• 1:19:35
  Speaker 1: way down to the southern section and check those out,
• 1:19:37
  Speaker 1: and nothing really looked all that great. Unfortunately, Um, a
• 1:19:41
  Speaker 1: lot of this stuff is all grazed, so like it's
• 1:19:45
  Speaker 1: just like graze to dirt almost from cows and sheep
• 1:19:48
  Speaker 1: and stuff. So like three out of this or four
• 1:19:51
  Speaker 1: out of the six properties that I thought would have
• 1:19:53
  Speaker 1: potential don't like not even worth hunting at all. Another
• 1:19:57
  Speaker 1: one there was I did see some d are in
• 1:20:00
  Speaker 1: a neighboring alf alfa field, but it's pretty far away
• 1:20:03
  Speaker 1: from the cover. Like these deer are pretty far away
• 1:20:05
  Speaker 1: from the public, and there looks like they're heading into
• 1:20:07
  Speaker 1: bed on the private too. I didn't know if they're
• 1:20:09
  Speaker 1: gonna make it down to the public or not. A
• 1:20:11
  Speaker 1: glass on the spoting skill for a long time and
• 1:20:14
  Speaker 1: never sound quite make it there, So that's I don't know.
• 1:20:18
  Speaker 1: The best spot that I found so far is the
• 1:20:20
  Speaker 1: spot that fortunately is close to my campsite. And um,
• 1:20:23
  Speaker 1: this there's a state land and then there's a few
• 1:20:26
  Speaker 1: sections of blm land that surrounds one alf alfa field
• 1:20:30
  Speaker 1: where I saw a ton of deer the first night, um,
• 1:20:33
  Speaker 1: like fifty sixty deer or something like that, including two
• 1:20:37
  Speaker 1: potential shooter box one for sure shooter another one that
• 1:20:40
  Speaker 1: maybe um. And so that's where I've been hunting. Um.
• 1:20:44
  Speaker 1: Unfortunately the public land, like I'm not able to get
• 1:20:48
  Speaker 1: in between the deer. It seems like there's betting and
• 1:20:52
  Speaker 1: food on the private So these deer betting and then
• 1:20:54
  Speaker 1: going right into the private there stay in the private
• 1:20:56
  Speaker 1: to bed. They don't have to come onto the public
• 1:20:58
  Speaker 1: to bed like they did in that party hundred last year. UM.
• 1:21:02
  Speaker 1: So last night I set up a stand um on
• 1:21:06
  Speaker 1: one side of this as as close as I could
• 1:21:08
  Speaker 1: get to where that food was, and I was hoping
• 1:21:10
  Speaker 1: that maybe these deer come out the other side of
• 1:21:11
  Speaker 1: the cover towards us other distant half off the field.
• 1:21:15
  Speaker 1: And I saw a bunch of deer, maybe like fifteen deer,
• 1:21:18
  Speaker 1: but all does and fawns, and then two little year
• 1:21:20
  Speaker 1: and a half of bucks. And went back into this morning,
• 1:21:24
  Speaker 1: same place, left everything in the tree, same deal does
• 1:21:28
  Speaker 1: and a couple of little bucks nothing nothing older than
• 1:21:31
  Speaker 1: a year and a half, A little little like four key,
• 1:21:33
  Speaker 1: So that's been a little bit disheartening. I was hoping
• 1:21:36
  Speaker 1: to at least get eyes on a mature bucks so
• 1:21:38
  Speaker 1: I could be adjusting my stand location based on a sighting. Um,
• 1:21:42
  Speaker 1: but I don't have that. So I pulled my stand
• 1:21:44
  Speaker 1: this morning, and as soon as we get done with this,
• 1:21:48
  Speaker 1: I'm gonna go back in there and UM move a set.
• 1:21:52
  Speaker 1: I'm going to try to get to that BLM land
• 1:21:54
  Speaker 1: that's in there. It's it's land locked BLM lands. You
• 1:21:58
  Speaker 1: can't actually access that anyway except for if you if
• 1:22:01
  Speaker 1: you follow the state land all the way to the river,
• 1:22:04
  Speaker 1: you can get in the river, and the river below
• 1:22:06
  Speaker 1: the high water mark is public access. You can walk
• 1:22:08
  Speaker 1: the river. So I'm gonna walk to the river and
• 1:22:11
  Speaker 1: then I'm gonna follow that river bottom all the way
• 1:22:13
  Speaker 1: to this BLM land and then pop up into the
• 1:22:16
  Speaker 1: public again and try to get there. And that the
• 1:22:19
  Speaker 1: piece I'm going to go into is directly behind this
• 1:22:21
  Speaker 1: alfalfa field, so there should be a deer in there.
• 1:22:25
  Speaker 1: The issue is going to be my wind. Um, the
• 1:22:28
  Speaker 1: wind is just not great. It's gonna be blowing to
• 1:22:32
  Speaker 1: some deer, to some portion of the deer. So I'm
• 1:22:34
  Speaker 1: hoping that I can stay low in the river to
• 1:22:37
  Speaker 1: get past a good number of them with my wind
• 1:22:39
  Speaker 1: hopefully not gonna blow because I'm gonna be down low,
• 1:22:42
  Speaker 1: and then I'm gonna immediately get up and pop right
• 1:22:44
  Speaker 1: into a tree, and I'm gonna know that stuff due
• 1:22:46
  Speaker 1: south of me is gonna win me. But hopefully it's
• 1:22:48
  Speaker 1: just that one line and then the rest of it
• 1:22:51
  Speaker 1: will hopefully be Um Like, I have to make a
• 1:22:53
  Speaker 1: sacrifice to get in there. I only have a couple
• 1:22:55
  Speaker 1: of days, so I gotta cut that risk reward. It's
• 1:22:59
  Speaker 1: that risk award thing that we always talk about, exactly exactly,
• 1:23:03
  Speaker 1: So it's a I gotta kind of swing for the
• 1:23:06
  Speaker 1: fences a little bit here because I just don't have
• 1:23:07
  Speaker 1: a lot of time. But I think it could be
• 1:23:09
  Speaker 1: a good spot. Um. I met the rancher who grazes
• 1:23:14
  Speaker 1: the public land and the private land right next to
• 1:23:16
  Speaker 1: what he owns that private land next to it, and
• 1:23:17
  Speaker 1: he was a really nice guy with Chad for a
• 1:23:19
  Speaker 1: long time, and he told me his son in law
• 1:23:22
  Speaker 1: I think, and a grandson are hunting his private land
• 1:23:25
  Speaker 1: and they've been seeing a couple of big bucks, including
• 1:23:27
  Speaker 1: one he claims like twenty four inches wide, and another
• 1:23:30
  Speaker 1: one that either had a second main beam or a
• 1:23:32
  Speaker 1: split brout town. I'm not sure what he was trying
• 1:23:34
  Speaker 1: to say, um, but big like there's a couple of
• 1:23:36
  Speaker 1: big Bucks in there that they're seeing, and that sounds
• 1:23:38
  Speaker 1: like those are different than the deer I saw the
• 1:23:40
  Speaker 1: first night. So I think if I can get into
• 1:23:43
  Speaker 1: this spot without spooking a bunch of deer, I'm gonna
• 1:23:46
  Speaker 1: be potentially in a good area. Cool well Man. Hopefully
• 1:23:50
  Speaker 1: the momentum kind of from the from the hunt in
• 1:23:55
  Speaker 1: Alaska kind of carries throughout the rest of the rest
• 1:23:59
  Speaker 1: of this little Montana North Dakota trip you're on. Yeah, dude,
• 1:24:03
  Speaker 1: thank you. I'm hoping so too. I'm feeling like a
• 1:24:06
  Speaker 1: little bit like I don't know about how this is
• 1:24:08
  Speaker 1: going so far. But tonight, tonight will hopefully be in
• 1:24:13
  Speaker 1: the right spot, and then uh yeah, probably Thursday. Hopefully
• 1:24:18
  Speaker 1: I can get it done by Thursday, and then Thursday
• 1:24:19
  Speaker 1: and to move to North Dakota and try to refigure
• 1:24:22
  Speaker 1: it all out again. And that's the fun part, right, Yeah,
• 1:24:26
  Speaker 1: it is. It is so and it's it is supposed
• 1:24:28
  Speaker 1: to cool down Thursday, like Wednesday night, Thursday morning, Big
• 1:24:31
  Speaker 1: cold friends coming through. Um, it's gonna rain a bunch,
• 1:24:34
  Speaker 1: which will be a little bit of a pain, but
• 1:24:36
  Speaker 1: it's gonna drop like twenty degrees. So that's a good
• 1:24:40
  Speaker 1: deer moving. Awesome. Well, good luck man, Thank you sir.
• 1:24:44
  Speaker 1: So that's my story. That's what's going on with me.
• 1:24:47
  Speaker 1: Anything else in your side that you want to share,
• 1:24:54
  Speaker 1: that's me fake crime. What about the what about the
• 1:24:56
  Speaker 1: trail camera? You check the trail camera? Oh yeah, I
• 1:24:59
  Speaker 1: mean I got you know. I talked about this big
• 1:25:01
  Speaker 1: egg field with a buffer strip in it, right. Yeah,
• 1:25:07
  Speaker 1: we shed hunted there and every every big mature buck
• 1:25:12
  Speaker 1: that is in the area was on that trail camera.
• 1:25:14
  Speaker 1: So um on on the one side of the farm,
• 1:25:19
  Speaker 1: they all show up right in the middle of this,
• 1:25:21
  Speaker 1: uh this egg field and uh um. If it wasn't
• 1:25:25
  Speaker 1: for my son coming here anytime soon, I would definitely
• 1:25:30
  Speaker 1: be finding a way. I actually did a podcast with
• 1:25:35
  Speaker 1: Scott Bestel recently where we talk about some early season
• 1:25:40
  Speaker 1: hunting and he me and him get into a conversation
• 1:25:43
  Speaker 1: of about hunting egg fields, standing egg fields in a
• 1:25:47
  Speaker 1: scenario like what I'm talking about here, early early season,
• 1:25:51
  Speaker 1: and the goal for me would be to you know,
• 1:25:54
  Speaker 1: get in one of these trees and catch these deer.
• 1:25:58
  Speaker 1: They're basically living in an eight acre egg field right now,
• 1:26:04
  Speaker 1: that standing corn and with the big acorn drop that
• 1:26:07
  Speaker 1: is happening right now, there's I have a feeling they're
• 1:26:11
  Speaker 1: betting in the corn and then coming out to a
• 1:26:13
  Speaker 1: couple acorn groves that are that surround this egg field,
• 1:26:18
  Speaker 1: and um, we're not in the in the corn. They're
• 1:26:21
  Speaker 1: not betting in the corn, but they're probably betting in
• 1:26:23
  Speaker 1: some of these buffer strips in the corn. So it's
• 1:26:26
  Speaker 1: roughly the same thing and making their way some of
• 1:26:29
  Speaker 1: these acorn drop sites. And if if I was able
• 1:26:34
  Speaker 1: to do it, which I'm not, I would be somewhere
• 1:26:36
  Speaker 1: in between these buffer strips and these acorn spots. So Dan, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes,
• 1:26:44
  Speaker 1: please please find a way to hunt in October. You
• 1:26:48
  Speaker 1: have you have to hunt in October. Well, here's the deal.
• 1:26:52
  Speaker 1: And you know this man, or you're gonna you're gonna
• 1:26:55
  Speaker 1: know that. I know, I know. It's not it is not.
• 1:26:58
  Speaker 1: It's not an excuse you have to do. You got
• 1:27:02
  Speaker 1: to find what I have to do. If I if
• 1:27:06
  Speaker 1: I'm gonna send you, I'm gonna send you a hundred dollars.
• 1:27:09
  Speaker 1: I'm gonna send you a hundred dollar check. In the
• 1:27:11
  Speaker 1: memo line it is gonna say babysitter and I'm gonna hire.
• 1:27:15
  Speaker 1: I'm gonna do this. I'm gonna I'm gonna send you
• 1:27:17
  Speaker 1: a babysitter check, and you're going to pay for at
• 1:27:20
  Speaker 1: least one night of babysitting on a good evening. And
• 1:27:25
  Speaker 1: then you can and then you can show your wife.
• 1:27:27
  Speaker 1: You can say, look, Mark sent me a hundred dollar check.
• 1:27:30
  Speaker 1: I can't not use it. I have to hunte. Here's
• 1:27:33
  Speaker 1: what the memo should say, hundred dollars. This is a
• 1:27:37
  Speaker 1: in a payoff. You should just write the check to
• 1:27:40
  Speaker 1: my wife and even want about it be like this.
• 1:27:42
  Speaker 1: This is letting Dan hunt one night. Go buy yourself
• 1:27:46
  Speaker 1: something nice, Sarah, go buy yourself something nice. That's exactly
• 1:27:49
  Speaker 1: that's what it should be. Okay, I'll do that. I'm
• 1:27:52
  Speaker 1: dead serious. Dan. I'm gonna buy you a night of
• 1:27:54
  Speaker 1: hunting in October. I'm gonna send you a check. First,
• 1:27:59
  Speaker 1: ye first, old friend. October, you go into a good spot,
• 1:28:02
  Speaker 1: kill one of those suckers. Yeah, I wish, I wish
• 1:28:07
  Speaker 1: it was that easy. All right, we'll look for look
• 1:28:10
  Speaker 1: for it in the mail here when I get back. Okay, alright, alright,
• 1:28:14
  Speaker 1: we'll see what we'll see if you if you address
• 1:28:18
  Speaker 1: I think she. I think she'd be down for it
• 1:28:20
  Speaker 1: if you give her the money directly to her and
• 1:28:22
  Speaker 1: it doesn't touch my hands at all. Alright, So do
• 1:28:25
  Speaker 1: you want me to address it to her, like write
• 1:28:27
  Speaker 1: write her a special like, write her a letter like
• 1:28:29
  Speaker 1: dear dearest Sarah, Dearest Sarah, Sarah, congrats on the new child. Um,
• 1:28:36
  Speaker 1: here's a hundred dollars bill as basically a bribe to
• 1:28:40
  Speaker 1: let your husband go hunting one night in Oh. This
• 1:28:47
  Speaker 1: will be amazing. All right, I'm gonna do this, and
• 1:28:49
  Speaker 1: I just need you to report back to me on
• 1:28:51
  Speaker 1: exactly how she takes it. And then we're gonna really
• 1:28:55
  Speaker 1: hype up this hunt. Like I'm gonna want full documentation
• 1:28:58
  Speaker 1: of the hunt. I want like Instagram stories every five minutes.
• 1:29:02
  Speaker 1: I'm gonna want you to do a full podcast debrief
• 1:29:05
  Speaker 1: talking about how this all worked out. This will be
• 1:29:08
  Speaker 1: like October fifteen. Episode will be like the post Dan
• 1:29:12
  Speaker 1: Johnson October Hunt, and um, yeah, this is a good plan.
• 1:29:16
  Speaker 1: I like it. Okay, all right, Well, well, uh, the
• 1:29:20
  Speaker 1: first thing is you have to write the check to
• 1:29:22
  Speaker 1: my wife and then after that we'll see how it
• 1:29:24
  Speaker 1: all goes down. Alright, dude, there is there is a
• 1:29:28
  Speaker 1: chance I'm not not joking that there's a small chance
• 1:29:32
  Speaker 1: that she would send the check back to you or
• 1:29:34
  Speaker 1: then you a text that it's uh that's worth that,
• 1:29:38
  Speaker 1: that's worth two. I have three kids now, man, remember,
• 1:29:44
  Speaker 1: oh man, well you will soon. Yep. Well, dude, I say,
• 1:29:49
  Speaker 1: we gotta we gotta shut this down. I need to
• 1:29:51
  Speaker 1: scramble some caribou brains. Um, I gotta clean out the
• 1:29:55
  Speaker 1: brain cavity area on the skull on my my boo here,
• 1:30:00
  Speaker 1: get that cleaned out so it doesn't rot. And then
• 1:30:02
  Speaker 1: I need to take a nap before hunting. So it
• 1:30:06
  Speaker 1: sounds like a good day. Yes, that's that's the day's plan.
• 1:30:09
  Speaker 1: So good luck with baby stuff. If you guys end
• 1:30:14
  Speaker 1: up having having him early fingers crossed, everything's great and
• 1:30:18
  Speaker 1: healthy and uh let's check back in a week. Alright,
• 1:30:22
  Speaker 1: good luck man, And that's it. Folks. Thank you for
• 1:30:27
  Speaker 1: joining in for a little bit of story time today.
• 1:30:30
  Speaker 1: Hopefully you enjoyed it. And before we go, I want
• 1:30:32
  Speaker 1: to give a big things to our partners at Sick Gear,
• 1:30:35
  Speaker 1: Yetie Cooler's, Matthew's Archery, Maven Optics, the White Tailed Institute
• 1:30:39
  Speaker 1: of North America, Trophy Ridge and Hunt, Terra maps, and finally,
• 1:30:44
  Speaker 1: of course, thank you all for listening. I appreciate your
• 1:30:47
  Speaker 1: time and your support. If you're hunting this week, I
• 1:30:50
  Speaker 1: wish you all the luck in the world, and until
• 1:30:52
  Speaker 1: next time, stay wired to hunt. The broken bird beating
• 1:31:03
  Speaker 1: beca