Latest / Wired To Hunt Podcast / Wired To Hunt Podcast #213: Bill Heavey’s Hunting (Mis)Adventures

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Wired To Hunt Podcast #213: Bill Heavey’s Hunting (Mis)Adventures · 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 Kenyon. This is episode number two thirteen,
0:19
Speaker 1: and today in the show, we're joined by one of
0:21
Speaker 1: my favorite writers in the outdoor world, Bill Heavy, and
0:25
Speaker 1: we're discussing lessons learned from hunting failures, native hunter gatherer cultures,
0:30
Speaker 1: outdoor media, and much much more. Hey guys, and welcome
0:49
Speaker 1: to the Wired to Hunt podcast. And today in the show,
0:53
Speaker 1: we are joined by Bill Heavy. Now. Bill is a
0:56
Speaker 1: writer for Field and Stream. You've probably seen his back
1:00
Speaker 1: page column. It's called a Sportsman's Life, which if you've
1:03
Speaker 1: ever read that magazine, I gotta believe you to remember
1:06
Speaker 1: that column because at least for me, it's absolute gold.
1:09
Speaker 1: In fact, it's usually one of the very first things
1:11
Speaker 1: I read in the magazine. Like I said, it's on
1:13
Speaker 1: the very last page. It's usually accompanied by kind of
1:16
Speaker 1: a wild character illustration of Bill Um, and it's always
1:20
Speaker 1: funny and um insightful lots of times too. So. Not
1:24
Speaker 1: only though, does Bill right for Field and Stream, he
1:27
Speaker 1: has also authored four books, including If You didn't bring jerky?
1:32
Speaker 1: What did I just eat? It's only slow food until
1:35
Speaker 1: you try to eat it. You're not lost if you
1:37
Speaker 1: can still see the truck, and most recently, should the
1:41
Speaker 1: tent be burning like that? Now? I gotta say Bill
1:44
Speaker 1: is one of my absolute favorite hunting and fishing writers,
1:48
Speaker 1: and and really maybe one of my very favorite writers
1:50
Speaker 1: no matter what genre. He's just one hell of a
1:53
Speaker 1: good storyteller, and a lot of other folks seem to
1:56
Speaker 1: think so too. For instance, Ted Nugent said quote, Billy
2:00
Speaker 1: Heavy is my favorite writer. When I die, I wanted
2:03
Speaker 1: him to gut me, stuff me, and deliver my eulogy
2:06
Speaker 1: for one good last laugh end quote. And Steve Roella,
2:10
Speaker 1: when describing one of Bill's books, said quote, whether he's
2:14
Speaker 1: hanging out with trendy forgers in San Francisco or butchering
2:18
Speaker 1: cariboo with indigenous hunter gatherers in Alaska, he related his
2:21
Speaker 1: experience with respect, curiosity, and well honed humor. Not only
2:26
Speaker 1: is this book perfect for anyone who loves food or
2:28
Speaker 1: the outer doors, it's also perfect for anyone who loves
2:31
Speaker 1: a good story, well told end quote. So there's lots
2:35
Speaker 1: of high praise for our guests. Today, and I'm excited
2:38
Speaker 1: for you to get to hear from him. In this conversation.
2:41
Speaker 1: I chat with Bill about all sorts of stuff, um,
2:44
Speaker 1: including his background as a hunter and angler. We talked
2:47
Speaker 1: through how he became a writer for Feeling Stream. We
2:50
Speaker 1: get into some of his thoughts about outdoor television. We
2:54
Speaker 1: hear about what he's learned from hunting with native hunter cultures.
2:58
Speaker 1: We talked about how he learned from his failures, are
3:01
Speaker 1: how he tries to learn from his failures and the outdoors,
3:03
Speaker 1: how he's tried to get his daughter into the outdoors,
3:06
Speaker 1: and a whole lot more. It's it's a it's a
3:08
Speaker 1: wide rating conversation. It was a lot of fun. I
3:11
Speaker 1: think you're really gonna enjoy it. But before all of that,
3:14
Speaker 1: I do have my good buddy Dan Johnson with us
3:17
Speaker 1: today for our weekly pregame show. We've got a few
3:20
Speaker 1: things to catch up on in regards to our own
3:22
Speaker 1: personal and hunting related adventures. So that said, if you're
3:27
Speaker 1: new to the show, though, and if you have no
3:28
Speaker 1: interest in hearing us blab on about our personal lives
3:32
Speaker 1: or our recent turkey hunts, feel free to fast forward
3:35
Speaker 1: right to the beginning of Bill's interview, which begins around
3:39
Speaker 1: twenty six minutes and thirty seconds or so. And for
3:42
Speaker 1: the rest of you, here we go. I do have
3:46
Speaker 1: Mr Nine Fingers Dan Johnson back with us, and we
3:51
Speaker 1: got to do our our intro storytime bs pregame show
3:56
Speaker 1: because we haven't done that in like two weeks, and
3:58
Speaker 1: I need to catch up with you, buddy. What uh
4:00
Speaker 1: what's new? Two things real quick. One, our schedules are
4:06
Speaker 1: becoming more complex and I feel like I my my
4:10
Speaker 1: co host responsibilities. I've slacked off in them, and I
4:15
Speaker 1: apologize for that. Well that's okay, man. You you're a
4:19
Speaker 1: you're a business owner of your own You're running like
4:22
Speaker 1: nineteen different podcasts now. I can't even keep track of
4:25
Speaker 1: all the stuff you've got going over there. So between
4:27
Speaker 1: that and my new baby life and new projects, it's
4:32
Speaker 1: just kind of a new world, a new world. But well,
4:37
Speaker 1: we're going to connect when we can connect. And uh,
4:39
Speaker 1: I'm glad I got right now. I was. I was
4:41
Speaker 1: worried the last like two or three times you've had
4:43
Speaker 1: a sick baby. Today were healthy, man, Yeah, they're all
4:46
Speaker 1: healthy now. It was crazy. For a while, it was
4:48
Speaker 1: like passing around like a hot potato. Man, they were
4:51
Speaker 1: just one got sick, then one got better, then the
4:54
Speaker 1: next one got sick, and so forth and so on
4:56
Speaker 1: and and then uh, just now we're all good. Knock
5:01
Speaker 1: on wood. I mean, I gotta tell you. You know,
5:03
Speaker 1: in the past, when you've told stories about your sick
5:06
Speaker 1: kids and everything, usually it's just about, you know, we
5:09
Speaker 1: kind of joke about how inconvenient it is, or what
5:11
Speaker 1: the pain the bone it is and everything. But now
5:13
Speaker 1: I can relate to you on a different level. Um,
5:17
Speaker 1: because Everett got sick last week or it was a
5:21
Speaker 1: week and a half ago something. I'd been sick and
5:23
Speaker 1: then he came down with a cold, and um, just
5:27
Speaker 1: like hearing him hacking away all night and struggling to breathe,
5:30
Speaker 1: being all congested, it was just so it was it
5:35
Speaker 1: was a really helpless, sad, horrible feelings like a father
5:39
Speaker 1: seeing my son like that and like not knowing what
5:42
Speaker 1: to do, not knowing how to help him. Um, that
5:46
Speaker 1: was the first time I've had that, that feeling that
5:48
Speaker 1: I'm sure You're going to have a whole lot more
5:50
Speaker 1: in the coming years. And it's it's like, man, you know,
5:55
Speaker 1: what's what's worse than almost worse than that. So now
5:59
Speaker 1: my daughter is starting to become social where you know,
6:04
Speaker 1: she's a five year old. You know, five year old
6:07
Speaker 1: girls start I don't know, acting like sixteen year old girls,
6:12
Speaker 1: and you know. And we were at dance one time
6:16
Speaker 1: and this one girl was talking about how she was
6:19
Speaker 1: gonna be having a party and and she said to
6:24
Speaker 1: my daughter, well, you can't come to my party. And
6:27
Speaker 1: my daughter just got like this look on her face,
6:30
Speaker 1: like oh my god, you know, like this is the
6:32
Speaker 1: end of the world for me. And I got piste off,
6:36
Speaker 1: like a dad shouldn't do that. But it's like that's
6:38
Speaker 1: how much you care about your kid and that you know,
6:44
Speaker 1: it's not necessarily that you want them to be accepted socially,
6:47
Speaker 1: but it's just like, I don't know, there's something about
6:50
Speaker 1: that comment that made me mad, and I almost like
6:54
Speaker 1: acted like a kid, and I was like, well, you
6:55
Speaker 1: can't come to our party, and then like grabbed her
6:58
Speaker 1: and walked out. Yeah. I get that. I mean, you
7:01
Speaker 1: don't want your you don't want your baby to hurt.
7:03
Speaker 1: You don't want them to go through pain, whether it's
7:07
Speaker 1: physical or social, or I can I can just already
7:10
Speaker 1: tell I'm going to be that dad, who is just
7:15
Speaker 1: I don't know, emotional worried. I just I can already
7:19
Speaker 1: see it's it's amazing how this flip switches and and
7:21
Speaker 1: everything that used to matter if so much, all of
7:24
Speaker 1: a sudden goes down a few notches and you just
7:27
Speaker 1: you just who. I don't know if you told me
7:30
Speaker 1: this or someone told me this, but they said like
7:33
Speaker 1: having a child is like having your heart now outside
7:37
Speaker 1: of your body and is weird or is like woo woo?
7:42
Speaker 1: Is that sounds like I'm already seeing that, Like I
7:44
Speaker 1: don't even understand how I can love this kid so
7:46
Speaker 1: much already. I was gone this weekend for four days, um,
7:50
Speaker 1: on a hunting trip, and just being gone four days,
7:52
Speaker 1: like I can now I finally relate to you, Dan,
7:55
Speaker 1: like when you talked about being gone in your trips
7:56
Speaker 1: and want to get back. Like when I got home
8:00
Speaker 1: and walked in the door and Kylie walked out holding him,
8:02
Speaker 1: I literally like teared up. I was like so happy
8:04
Speaker 1: to see him. It was such a weird, a weird,
8:06
Speaker 1: crazy thing. Um. And I think I talked to you
8:10
Speaker 1: about this last uh rut. I mean this, this last
8:15
Speaker 1: November was your last November, as you know, not having
8:20
Speaker 1: any kids, right, so this is gonna be your first
8:23
Speaker 1: hunting season where you're gonna be gone a lot. And
8:26
Speaker 1: for me, I pulled out of the driveway and I
8:29
Speaker 1: had a sense of regret come over me because I
8:32
Speaker 1: knew that I was leaving my wife with three kids
8:36
Speaker 1: and I was being selfish and I was just this feeling.
8:41
Speaker 1: But like it's I'm torn because I the same feeling
8:45
Speaker 1: that is telling me to stay home is the same
8:47
Speaker 1: passion that is telling me to go out and be
8:49
Speaker 1: a hunter. You know what I mean? Both both crazy.
8:53
Speaker 1: It's crazy. I just see that more and more it's
8:57
Speaker 1: going to be me. I'm gonna be entering these same
9:01
Speaker 1: dilemmas you've had and try and understand how to balance
9:03
Speaker 1: it and how to Um yeah, I'm just I know
9:08
Speaker 1: these years, these like early years, are gonna be tough
9:10
Speaker 1: in that way. But I'm looking forward to already, like
9:13
Speaker 1: fast forward a handful of years further on when he
9:15
Speaker 1: can start joining me for the stuff. Then hopefully things
9:19
Speaker 1: will will be really awesome then. So absolutely, absolutely have
9:23
Speaker 1: you been up to anything interesting lately? Just continuing on
9:27
Speaker 1: a serious note, just for one second, I work downtown, Okay,
9:34
Speaker 1: Um I work where I park in a parking ramp,
9:37
Speaker 1: and I take a skywalk and all these things. Now,
9:39
Speaker 1: I was raised my mom, God bless her heart. She said,
9:43
Speaker 1: don't judge people based off their looks, don't judge people
9:48
Speaker 1: based off you know, until you get to know them.
9:51
Speaker 1: All these things. You know, like everybody should be treated
9:54
Speaker 1: created equally. But dude, I don't know what it is
10:00
Speaker 1: about pigeons that I hate so much just by looking
10:05
Speaker 1: at them. I hate pigeons, Like, I don't like pigeons
10:08
Speaker 1: at all. I mean, if they were went, if they
10:11
Speaker 1: went extinct, I would be like, you know what, good.
10:16
Speaker 1: I was really confused at first, because you're talking about
10:18
Speaker 1: your mom telling you not to judge people. So I'm like,
10:20
Speaker 1: it's pigeons. It's pigeons. Like how you is that some
10:23
Speaker 1: group of people that I don't know that the label of.
10:25
Speaker 1: But you're talking about pigeons. You're talking about pigeons as
10:27
Speaker 1: the animal. Yeah, I know, like pigeons the animal. Yeah,
10:32
Speaker 1: you know, they're just gross. They're ugly, They lay a
10:35
Speaker 1: whole bunch of eggs and then they don't sit on them. Uh,
10:38
Speaker 1: they poop all over the place. They're just disgusting and
10:43
Speaker 1: you know, you know, obviously you shouldn't just look at
10:46
Speaker 1: a pigeon, because a pigeon by itself is a bird.
10:48
Speaker 1: It has like sometimes it can be pretty looking, but
10:52
Speaker 1: then you really look at it and then you're like, oh, man,
10:55
Speaker 1: what a pilot crap that bird is? Yeah, you know
10:59
Speaker 1: what's I guess I never had to think deeply on
11:02
Speaker 1: pigeons because I just I'm almost never in a city
11:05
Speaker 1: where you see a bunch of them. Yeah, So like
11:08
Speaker 1: out here in the old homestead here in southern Michigan,
11:12
Speaker 1: it's like I got some robbins, I've got some What
11:15
Speaker 1: what I get are the barn swallows and those summers.
11:18
Speaker 1: They are bad news. They're nesting in every nook and
11:21
Speaker 1: craney and my barn, pooping all over my deck there.
11:25
Speaker 1: I don't particularly care for them, I'll give you that. Yeah, yeah,
11:29
Speaker 1: but they're like, uh, a swallow or a sparrow for me,
11:33
Speaker 1: something you kind of just lived to accept. You deal
11:36
Speaker 1: with them. But like a pigeon, man, I don't know,
11:38
Speaker 1: Like I think I get it from my grandpa because
11:40
Speaker 1: my grandpa didn't like pigeons either. Really, that's like a
11:45
Speaker 1: thing you know about your grandpa? Yeah, he didn't. I mean,
11:47
Speaker 1: he didn't like pigeons. He told me that once. He's like,
11:50
Speaker 1: you know what, I really hate pigeons. You know, There's
11:53
Speaker 1: there's certain things I remember about my grandpa, like conversations
11:57
Speaker 1: we had, and like really powerful impactful conversation ations we have, Yeah,
12:02
Speaker 1: like about the meaning of life and ethics of hunting
12:04
Speaker 1: and stuff. I love that one of the things you
12:06
Speaker 1: remember about your grandpa's not looking pigeons. Oh yeah, my
12:10
Speaker 1: grandpa had a really like. One thing I love about
12:12
Speaker 1: my grandparents and that I that I will take to
12:14
Speaker 1: the grave with me is work ethic. Right, in order
12:16
Speaker 1: for them to survive and and feed their family, they
12:19
Speaker 1: had to work. They were they were both farmers, right,
12:21
Speaker 1: So both sets of my grandparents were farmers, so they
12:23
Speaker 1: had to work every day to make ends meet. And
12:27
Speaker 1: the fact that my one grandpa just hated pigeons. So like,
12:31
Speaker 1: I don't know, I don't know why we're talking about this, honestly,
12:33
Speaker 1: it was just something today. I don't know if you
12:35
Speaker 1: ever have those things that happened that you are you
12:38
Speaker 1: get worked up about something that's so insignificant, but it
12:41
Speaker 1: just really rubs you the wrong way. And like today
12:45
Speaker 1: I just saw that these group of pigeons sitting there
12:48
Speaker 1: looking all cocky, and they're like, hey, don't look at us,
12:52
Speaker 1: because we're gonna crap on your car and we're gonna
12:55
Speaker 1: have a whole bunch of babies, and they're gonna crap
12:56
Speaker 1: on your car. Uh, so don't look at us. And
12:59
Speaker 1: I looked at them and probably wouldn't craped in my car,
13:01
Speaker 1: but you know, and it's gotta be like this is
13:03
Speaker 1: kind of like salt on the wound, right, because maybe
13:05
Speaker 1: you're having a long day at work or you wanted
13:06
Speaker 1: to right, so it's like I gotta go to the
13:09
Speaker 1: cubicle and then I'm getting crapped on. I can. I
13:11
Speaker 1: can see how that would be. It was more it
13:15
Speaker 1: was more of right off the bat right sons coming up.
13:17
Speaker 1: Earlier today, I pulled into my parking spot. There was
13:20
Speaker 1: pigeons waiting there for me, and they were looking at
13:22
Speaker 1: me like so my day instantly started off bad. It's
13:27
Speaker 1: not good. That's not good at all. Do you do
13:30
Speaker 1: you have any any happy stories, Danner? Or should I
13:33
Speaker 1: tell my happy story? Yeah? I want you to tell
13:35
Speaker 1: your happy story, because the next story I was going
13:37
Speaker 1: to tell is about like how I respect possums. So
13:41
Speaker 1: you can go You can go ahead, you can better
13:44
Speaker 1: tell your story. Okay, we we We officially now have
13:47
Speaker 1: to have a podcast episode that's nothing but you and
13:49
Speaker 1: me talking about which animals we respect, which we don't
13:52
Speaker 1: care for, which we really dislike. Let me tell you
13:56
Speaker 1: about cockroaches. Don't even get me started, dude. Speaking of
14:03
Speaker 1: possums though, really quick. I let the dogs out of
14:05
Speaker 1: the house the other night and they just go barreling
14:08
Speaker 1: out of the door into the field and there's like
14:10
Speaker 1: a cut corn field next to my house. I just
14:11
Speaker 1: went tearing out there, and so I go running after them,
14:16
Speaker 1: and there was a big old possum and both my
14:18
Speaker 1: dogs were like all puffed up, strutting around it, and
14:20
Speaker 1: the possums hissing at him, and I thought I was
14:23
Speaker 1: about to have to break up a dog and possum fight.
14:25
Speaker 1: I understand that one of my dogs is smaller than
14:28
Speaker 1: the possum um, but we're able to end it amicably
14:31
Speaker 1: with some conversation and pull them out of there before
14:35
Speaker 1: things getting western. But possums, yeah, So so hunting though, hunting,
14:42
Speaker 1: Turkey hunting, turkey hunting, you haven't done any more Turkey
14:46
Speaker 1: hunting right since our Turkey any episode one and done.
14:49
Speaker 1: But it sounds like you have Yeah I did. I
14:52
Speaker 1: uh you know, since we last chatted, I had that
14:55
Speaker 1: weekend where it took my nephew out and try to
14:58
Speaker 1: get him a bird. Things didn't go well. There was
15:00
Speaker 1: there was very few birds on one bird gabbling um
15:04
Speaker 1: and he went the other way. We just said one
15:05
Speaker 1: evening one morning because that was a bummer. Um. And
15:09
Speaker 1: then I went out a few more days just scouting
15:11
Speaker 1: and like just trying to film some birds and record
15:13
Speaker 1: some birds. UM. That was nice. But then this weekend
15:18
Speaker 1: I went on like my real hunt. I was saving
15:19
Speaker 1: my tag for this weekend. UM. So I went and
15:22
Speaker 1: did another hunt with the crew from Meat Eater. So
15:26
Speaker 1: we met up on this new property that I've got
15:29
Speaker 1: permission to hunt in southwest Michigan that I've told you about.
15:32
Speaker 1: UM and me and Steve and Janice and one of
15:37
Speaker 1: the cameraman Dirt myth and um. Another one is to
15:41
Speaker 1: use friends Andy, who's an unbelievable cook. We all got
15:44
Speaker 1: together out there and spent I guess it was three
15:47
Speaker 1: and a half days hunting and uh Man had a
15:52
Speaker 1: really really good time. It was Yeah, it was one
15:56
Speaker 1: of those things where you see how hot and cold
16:01
Speaker 1: turkey hunting can be. Oh yeah, man, I I've had
16:04
Speaker 1: seasons where they go bananas in the tree and then
16:07
Speaker 1: they fly down and then they shut off. Or I
16:10
Speaker 1: have one day where they're they're gobbling until noon and
16:14
Speaker 1: then they shut out, you know, then they do what
16:16
Speaker 1: they typically do and then they shut off, and then
16:18
Speaker 1: the next day one gobble in the tree and then
16:22
Speaker 1: no gobbles. So I've definitely experienced that. Yeah, you know,
16:26
Speaker 1: it's just like it with deer hunting. Like you and
16:27
Speaker 1: we have talked so often about how we wish we
16:29
Speaker 1: could just get into their heads and know what they're
16:32
Speaker 1: thinking or know why they do what they do. Same
16:34
Speaker 1: thing with turkeys, Like if I could ever understand what
16:37
Speaker 1: that trigger was that causes those different kinds of days,
16:40
Speaker 1: it would be so interesting because that that first day
16:43
Speaker 1: we went out and it was just bad. There was
16:47
Speaker 1: We did see some birds, but there was hardly any
16:49
Speaker 1: gobbling at all. The turkeys would not respond to calls
16:53
Speaker 1: at all. Um Me and Steve went o the first
16:56
Speaker 1: day together and it was just we got set up sauce,
17:00
Speaker 1: birds came out, then some hands, some gobblers, came out
17:02
Speaker 1: then some hands and some jakes, and they just milled
17:05
Speaker 1: around in the middle of this field and nothing we
17:06
Speaker 1: did could get them to come to us. So then
17:09
Speaker 1: we're like, okay, there was like an island of trees
17:11
Speaker 1: in the middle of this field, and we thought if
17:13
Speaker 1: we dropped off the back side of the field, we
17:14
Speaker 1: could use a hill to sneak around them and reposition
17:17
Speaker 1: and get closer, like maybe get to within like fifty
17:20
Speaker 1: sixty yards and try calling then and using this island
17:23
Speaker 1: of trees in the middle of it's cover. So we
17:25
Speaker 1: did that, and by the time we got over there
17:27
Speaker 1: and got set up and started calling, they are weren't
17:30
Speaker 1: in sight anymore. And then we kind of kept maneuvering
17:33
Speaker 1: trying to look around, and then we finally found that
17:35
Speaker 1: the birds now where where we had been sitting earlier,
17:38
Speaker 1: right in front of that right and then uh, we
17:41
Speaker 1: kept trying to get after them and nothing would work.
17:43
Speaker 1: So later in the evening we were in a new area,
17:46
Speaker 1: same kind of deal. We saw some birds out in
17:48
Speaker 1: the distance. We tried to maneuver around them. By the
17:51
Speaker 1: time we got close they had moved. They wouldn't work
17:53
Speaker 1: in so it was just kind of a frustrating day.
17:56
Speaker 1: But the next day was like Turkey Heaven. It was
18:01
Speaker 1: just me and I went out with a cameraman that
18:03
Speaker 1: day and um, right away you heard birds on the roost.
18:08
Speaker 1: I went to that same field, but this time I
18:11
Speaker 1: decided to UM, we got in there earlier, so I
18:13
Speaker 1: was able to set up closer to where they were roosted,
18:16
Speaker 1: right off of that island of trees, got a decoy
18:18
Speaker 1: out there. Me and Dirt got set up behind this
18:21
Speaker 1: tree and did a little bit of yelping, and these
18:24
Speaker 1: two gobblers came off the roost really early. It seemed
18:27
Speaker 1: especially earlier. They came out, and I thought that they
18:30
Speaker 1: would still be up in the tree. I was just
18:31
Speaker 1: doing a couple of tree yelps, and then I happened
18:34
Speaker 1: to just be kind of glassing around, just taking in
18:36
Speaker 1: the scenery, and then all of a sudden, there's these
18:38
Speaker 1: two birds right in the edge of the field coming
18:39
Speaker 1: my way. I couldn't believe it. Um, So they start
18:42
Speaker 1: coming in there, gobbling, and everything I'm doing, they come,
18:45
Speaker 1: and they're coming, They're coming. They got to maybe sixty
18:48
Speaker 1: five yards and I'm lined up on them, but I'm
18:50
Speaker 1: just like, I'm not going to take that long with
18:52
Speaker 1: a shot um even though I was using these Uh.
18:55
Speaker 1: I don't know if you've seen those new Winchester xrs
18:58
Speaker 1: or the longer range um shells that they came out
19:01
Speaker 1: with a year or two ago. And I wanted to
19:03
Speaker 1: give him for a couple of years and never tried
19:04
Speaker 1: huntil now. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. So I was like, you know,
19:08
Speaker 1: supposedly they can shoot out there just sixty or more,
19:11
Speaker 1: but I just I just didn't want to risk it.
19:13
Speaker 1: So they got to like that distance and then stood
19:16
Speaker 1: looking around, and I don't know if they could see
19:19
Speaker 1: the decoys and they just didn't like them, or maybe
19:20
Speaker 1: they couldn't see the decoys because they were on a hill.
19:23
Speaker 1: The turkeys were in a low spot, the decoys were
19:25
Speaker 1: up on a hill, so I'm not sure if they
19:27
Speaker 1: ever got to the point they could see him. But
19:29
Speaker 1: but eventually they just turned and went the other way.
19:31
Speaker 1: And at this point, I'm like, okay, that was it.
19:34
Speaker 1: Like these are the same birds from yesterday. They were
19:36
Speaker 1: not receptive at all yesterday, so I thought this is
19:40
Speaker 1: probably one chance and now that there's no way they're
19:42
Speaker 1: gonna come in again to another stupid hunter calling at them,
19:46
Speaker 1: so I was kind of bummed and just kind of
19:47
Speaker 1: watched them walk away. And then these hens come out
19:51
Speaker 1: and one of the hens starts yelping, and she starts
19:54
Speaker 1: making some noise, and so I think, oh, this could
19:58
Speaker 1: be my chance. If I co piss this hen off,
20:01
Speaker 1: if I can get her fired up, maybe she'll come
20:04
Speaker 1: my way. And if she comes my way, that might
20:07
Speaker 1: be the one thing that could pull these thoms in.
20:10
Speaker 1: So every time she yelped, I was yelping right back.
20:12
Speaker 1: She'd yelp, I'd yelp, she'd yelp, I'd cut her off.
20:14
Speaker 1: I'd mimic everything she did. I was getting really aggressive,
20:17
Speaker 1: and it just kept her talking. So she was going
20:19
Speaker 1: and it was it went on for like minutes. I
20:22
Speaker 1: don't know how long, but we were just yelping, yelping, yelp,
20:24
Speaker 1: and she was irritated, and lo and behold, she started
20:29
Speaker 1: coming our way with some other hens, and just like
20:32
Speaker 1: I was hoping, here come the toms, they start following
20:35
Speaker 1: those hens in. And then eventually I think that those
20:38
Speaker 1: birds got high enough on the rise they saw the decoys,
20:42
Speaker 1: and then that just kind of flipped the switch. Hammered
20:46
Speaker 1: like every five seconds, just like a dream turkey scenario
20:49
Speaker 1: came right in and U at like forty yards before, um,
20:54
Speaker 1: before they went behind another little rise. I had that
20:58
Speaker 1: opening and took the shot and enrolled the nice big gobbler.
21:02
Speaker 1: So I got my Michigan turkey. That's awesome. It was
21:06
Speaker 1: a watch man. It was fun. It was one of
21:07
Speaker 1: those mornings, like it was just the perfect morning. Cool, clear.
21:12
Speaker 1: What we're gonna saying, high pressure probably probably, yeah, yeah,
21:16
Speaker 1: I actually think that's exactly what it was. When you
21:20
Speaker 1: when you kill a turkey. How is that in comparison
21:23
Speaker 1: to how you you know, how you feel when you
21:27
Speaker 1: kill a like a buck. Is there any comparison. It's
21:31
Speaker 1: a good it's a good question. Um, it's definitely different.
21:36
Speaker 1: You know, there's there's still that feeling of like appreciation
21:39
Speaker 1: for the animal, for the experience, Like it's definitely like
21:42
Speaker 1: an exciting moment um because the hunt went the way
21:46
Speaker 1: you wanted to. You you filled your tag, you get
21:48
Speaker 1: to bring some meat home. Um. But I'd be lying
21:53
Speaker 1: if I didn't say there was like a difference in
21:55
Speaker 1: significance in some way. And I don't mean to any
21:57
Speaker 1: way like say that animals life was worth less than
22:01
Speaker 1: like a deer or something. But but it does feel different.
22:07
Speaker 1: I think maybe it's just because of the amount of
22:09
Speaker 1: time and energy probably that goes into it. You know,
22:12
Speaker 1: with turkey hunting, you can kind of show up and
22:15
Speaker 1: if you kind of have a basic idea of what
22:17
Speaker 1: you're doing and do some calling. If you if you're
22:19
Speaker 1: in the right places, you know, you can get a
22:20
Speaker 1: bird in a day or two, like this scenario second
22:24
Speaker 1: day hunting. Um. And that's great. But as you and
22:28
Speaker 1: me know, when it comes to deer hunting or elk
22:30
Speaker 1: hunting or something, just the energy and time and effort
22:33
Speaker 1: and planning and preparation. Uh. And then the inherent difficulty
22:39
Speaker 1: in seeing just seeing, let alone encountering and then getting
22:42
Speaker 1: a shot at a mature buck or something like that. Um,
22:45
Speaker 1: that's just a night and day difference. So I do
22:49
Speaker 1: feel different after that. UM. And then maybe there's just something.
22:54
Speaker 1: I mean, I don't know, a big mammal just just
22:59
Speaker 1: it's it's different walking up on a big mammal like
23:03
Speaker 1: a deer or an elk that you just killed. UM.
23:07
Speaker 1: I still like when I walked upon a deer and elk,
23:10
Speaker 1: I still get that like kind of pit in my
23:13
Speaker 1: gut at first kind of like, oh man, like there's
23:17
Speaker 1: a little bit of I don't know if it's remorse
23:18
Speaker 1: or if it's whatever it is, there's that emotional Yeah,
23:22
Speaker 1: it's this weird swamp of all these different emotions. Yeah.
23:25
Speaker 1: I love, appreciation, sadness, respect, just a lot of stuff. Um,
23:31
Speaker 1: and that I still have that to some degree with
23:34
Speaker 1: the turkey, but it's like turned up many more notches
23:37
Speaker 1: with a deer or something like that. Um, it's hard
23:40
Speaker 1: to explain that. I guess exactly how that happens or why,
23:42
Speaker 1: but yeah, man, it was. It's always a great It's
23:47
Speaker 1: always a great. Um. So it's a great day when
23:50
Speaker 1: things work out like that. You know. So your turkey
23:54
Speaker 1: season is over now, right yeah? Um sort of. Uh.
23:58
Speaker 1: As far as me trying to kill a bird, yeah,
24:00
Speaker 1: I might try to go to Ohio for like a day,
24:02
Speaker 1: but just the way my schedule is looking, it's it's
24:05
Speaker 1: kind of crazy, so I probably won't get to go
24:07
Speaker 1: hunt myself. But um, we are doing a deal here.
24:11
Speaker 1: We're like all, you know, all my buddies that come
24:13
Speaker 1: out to Iowa for the shed hunting camp. Um, we're
24:16
Speaker 1: gonna get together at Dustin's house and um try to
24:20
Speaker 1: do some turkey hunting here together. So I'm just gonna
24:22
Speaker 1: tag along for that and call for people and just
24:26
Speaker 1: be around for the Shenanigans. So hopefully, hopefully Quirky and
24:30
Speaker 1: Dusty and further and all those guys can get a bird,
24:34
Speaker 1: and um, I'll get to share in that. From from
24:37
Speaker 1: a observation standpoint, we should try to do a fun
24:41
Speaker 1: out of state turkey hunting trip next year. That would
24:45
Speaker 1: be That would be awesome. I've been thinking, you know,
24:47
Speaker 1: when we were talking about how we need to do
24:49
Speaker 1: a Western shed hunt, a Western turkey hunt would be
24:51
Speaker 1: really cool too, um, right, because i've heard a different
24:55
Speaker 1: species other than Eastern Yeah, yeah, exactly. I've heard Nebraska
24:59
Speaker 1: would be a great play to do that as well,
25:01
Speaker 1: because they've got three of the different subspecies all in
25:03
Speaker 1: the same state. Really yeah, the more you know, Yeah,
25:08
Speaker 1: So turkey season is coming up or it's wrapping up
25:12
Speaker 1: here soon, and then I don't know about you, but
25:16
Speaker 1: at that point then it's just full blown summer prep.
25:20
Speaker 1: We're almost that summer prep right now for white tails. Dude.
25:23
Speaker 1: I got my trail cameras set out, um, and all
25:26
Speaker 1: this stuff kind of got sparked because I just got
25:29
Speaker 1: my mount back from the taxidermist, and it's hanging in
25:32
Speaker 1: my man cave and I get to look at it
25:34
Speaker 1: now and it just makes me think of all the
25:37
Speaker 1: things I gotta do to get ready for the season
25:39
Speaker 1: and get trail cameras out in mineral stations out is
25:43
Speaker 1: priority numero uno. I love it. I love this time
25:47
Speaker 1: of year like this is for me, like when the
25:49
Speaker 1: white tail stoke factor like really gets gets cranked and uh, dude,
25:55
Speaker 1: summer velvet coming up hot, I cannot wait, buddy, Well,
26:02
Speaker 1: anything else we need to cover before we shut down
26:04
Speaker 1: the intro um. We're gonna have to do one of
26:08
Speaker 1: those full Mark and Dan bs about our favorite animals soon.
26:12
Speaker 1: But until that, any final thoughts, no, sir, I think
26:16
Speaker 1: we're good to go here. Man, All right, well then
26:18
Speaker 1: would that be in the case. Let's take a quick
26:20
Speaker 1: break to thank our partners at White Tailed Properties and
26:24
Speaker 1: then we'll get to our interview with Bill kav This
26:27
Speaker 1: week with White Tailed Properties, we are joined by Neil Hugger,
26:31
Speaker 1: a land specialist out of Wisconsin, and Neil is going
26:33
Speaker 1: to be telling us about what habitat improvements can be
26:36
Speaker 1: made in northern properties like that in Minnesota and Wisconsin,
26:40
Speaker 1: well in northern Wisconsin in particular where I live. What's
26:44
Speaker 1: you deal with is monoculture of force for the most part,
26:47
Speaker 1: especially in the upper third of the state, and as such,
26:51
Speaker 1: the most important thing you do revolves around food. The
26:53
Speaker 1: deer are gonna go where the food is, and without
26:56
Speaker 1: monoculture you can have a biological desert in the in
27:00
Speaker 1: the timber. So if you can create food plot, that's fantastic,
27:04
Speaker 1: But if you really want to make it special, you
27:06
Speaker 1: want to recreate what I calls a trifecta. Try to
27:09
Speaker 1: create a food plot near a structure such as a
27:12
Speaker 1: creek or perhaps a ridge point that the deer must
27:16
Speaker 1: navigate around. And now you've created a pinch point. And uh,
27:20
Speaker 1: if you want to really spice it up, you can
27:22
Speaker 1: maybe put in a a watering hole or um you
27:26
Speaker 1: can maybe do a blocking hinge cut and then you've
27:29
Speaker 1: created maybe a trifecta or a quad sector. But the
27:32
Speaker 1: goal here is to give the deer a reason to
27:35
Speaker 1: be on the spot and make sure your tree stand
27:38
Speaker 1: is in that spot. If you'd like to learn more
27:41
Speaker 1: and to see the properties that Neil currently has listed
27:44
Speaker 1: for sale, visit White Tail properties dot com backslash Hogger.
27:48
Speaker 1: That's h A U G E R. All right here
27:52
Speaker 1: with me now is Bill Hev. Welcome to the show. Bill,
27:57
Speaker 1: Thanks good to be here, man, and I got us
28:00
Speaker 1: say I want to I want to start off here
28:01
Speaker 1: by shamelessly buttering you up and saying that you are
28:06
Speaker 1: one of my absolute favorite writers. Um. Your your ability
28:09
Speaker 1: to weave humor and a story with real motion and themes,
28:15
Speaker 1: it is just it is impressive and I am never
28:20
Speaker 1: left wanting after reading one of your stories or books.
28:22
Speaker 1: So so thanks for being here and doing this, Bill,
28:25
Speaker 1: because I've been looking forward to for quite a long time.
28:30
Speaker 1: That's it. You're not gonna butter me up any further. No,
28:32
Speaker 1: that was it. I'm gonna be quick and never dive
28:34
Speaker 1: into things. I'm just thank you very much for the
28:39
Speaker 1: very kind words. I appreciate them. Yeah. Yeah, and um,
28:44
Speaker 1: you know we're just talking a little a little while
28:46
Speaker 1: ago before we started to record how no one really,
28:49
Speaker 1: you know, wants to hear about our backgrounds are careers
28:51
Speaker 1: and everything. They just want to get into the good stuff.
28:53
Speaker 1: But I want to still talk a little bit about Bill,
28:58
Speaker 1: how you got to this point. But before we start
29:00
Speaker 1: diving into some of your experiences out in the woods
29:03
Speaker 1: and the waters, and would that be the case something
29:07
Speaker 1: I don't know a whole lot about, even though I've
29:08
Speaker 1: read most of your I've read most of your books
29:11
Speaker 1: and articles. It's kind of your background is a hundred angler.
29:14
Speaker 1: You know. How did you get into these things? How
29:16
Speaker 1: did this all start for you? Um? I always tell
29:21
Speaker 1: people that I got into this sort of bass acword
29:24
Speaker 1: because I was I was sent to summer camp in
29:29
Speaker 1: uh North Carolina and New Hampshire as a kid for
29:34
Speaker 1: about three years, and I became obsessed with watching that
29:39
Speaker 1: little red and white bobber about twelve feet from shore,
29:43
Speaker 1: just convinced that there was a monster swimming around down
29:47
Speaker 1: there with my name stenciled on its side. Um. And
29:52
Speaker 1: that turned out not to be the case, but that
29:55
Speaker 1: didn't really deter me. I kept trying, and then know
30:01
Speaker 1: as I stopped going to summer camp, I more or
30:02
Speaker 1: less forgot about it. And then some friends gave me
30:07
Speaker 1: an ultra light four ft six in ugly stick and
30:12
Speaker 1: a spinning reel for my twenty one birthday, and I
30:16
Speaker 1: rediscovered it and turned into kind of a maniac small
30:20
Speaker 1: mouth fisherman on the Potomac, And so what happened was
30:27
Speaker 1: I was doing at the time. I was a generalist
30:30
Speaker 1: and travel writer, and I was doing a piece for
30:33
Speaker 1: the Washington Post. They wanted something about close to home vacations,
30:38
Speaker 1: and I suggested, well, what about canoeing and fishing the
30:42
Speaker 1: rivers around Washington, the Potomac, the James and the Rappahannock
30:47
Speaker 1: for a small mouth And I said okay. So I
30:51
Speaker 1: did a story for them, um. And then after it
30:55
Speaker 1: was published in the manner of freelancers everywhere who were
30:59
Speaker 1: kind that we seeking bigger markets, I thought, what, what
31:03
Speaker 1: the heck, I'll send this up to Field and Stream UM,
31:07
Speaker 1: and I was very surprised when they said, yeah, we
31:09
Speaker 1: think we could use use this if you tweaked it
31:13
Speaker 1: a little bit. And I said, sure, what do you wants?
31:15
Speaker 1: And it kind of turned into a defense of spinning.
31:22
Speaker 1: After about the time that everybody else was moving to
31:24
Speaker 1: fly fishing, and a river runs through it had just
31:28
Speaker 1: come out, um, and fly fishermen were everywhere, and they
31:32
Speaker 1: seemed to think that they owned the river. You know,
31:34
Speaker 1: that any water they can cast over was automatically there
31:39
Speaker 1: their water. And so pretty soon I was writing about
31:45
Speaker 1: fishing regularly for field and stream, which was great, and
31:49
Speaker 1: then I thought, you know you could for completely mercenary reasons.
31:53
Speaker 1: I thought, you know, you could double your market if
31:55
Speaker 1: you if you tried hunting, which absolutely horrified my mother,
32:01
Speaker 1: you know, like one of those how could you do
32:03
Speaker 1: that to these poor little animals? Would you like some
32:06
Speaker 1: more veheable UM? And I took up bow hunting for
32:13
Speaker 1: deer and was just hooked almost from the get go.
32:20
Speaker 1: And the first time that I killed a deer, which
32:25
Speaker 1: was a which was a little five point buck on
32:30
Speaker 1: a friend's farm, this kind of neural circuitry went off
32:36
Speaker 1: in me, this mix of like an explosion of pride
32:42
Speaker 1: and humility and triumphs and sorrow and all these emotions.
32:48
Speaker 1: And I thought, this can't just be me. You know,
32:52
Speaker 1: we've got to be hard as at the name of
32:55
Speaker 1: your show, UH points out, this has got to in
33:00
Speaker 1: our wiring. You just couldn't you just couldn't create all
33:03
Speaker 1: this about it nothing. And I started to realize, you know,
33:06
Speaker 1: we're all descended from master hunters, or we wouldn't be here.
33:12
Speaker 1: So it's like we have this neural pathway that most
33:16
Speaker 1: people never hook up. Plug in UM and when you do,
33:22
Speaker 1: it's pretty it's pretty amazing and pretty compelling. Yeah. So
33:27
Speaker 1: I started writing about hunting. In that piece You're in
33:32
Speaker 1: that hunt, you mentioned your first bow hunt. Um. I've
33:35
Speaker 1: been rereading some of my favorite stories of yours, and
33:38
Speaker 1: there was that story where you talked about this bow
33:40
Speaker 1: hunting obsession how that began, and I loved how you
33:43
Speaker 1: described your addiction. You said that hooked would be an understatement.
33:46
Speaker 1: I was filayed battered in deep Fried. I thought that
33:50
Speaker 1: was It's pretty good. I think a lot of us
33:53
Speaker 1: can relate to that for sure. I'm right there with you. Um.
33:57
Speaker 1: So you you had your first bow hunt, killed a deer.
34:00
Speaker 1: How is your hunting journeys grown from there? What? What
34:04
Speaker 1: was next? Did you kind of start trying every different
34:07
Speaker 1: experience you get your hands on? I did, but you
34:11
Speaker 1: know I never got nothing ever got to me like
34:15
Speaker 1: bow hunting for dear dead. You know, I will try anything. Um.
34:21
Speaker 1: I'm not a particularly good wing shot. UM. I'm a
34:26
Speaker 1: lousy wild turkey hunter. And actually one of the things
34:33
Speaker 1: I discovered in um Um in Arkansas on this last
34:40
Speaker 1: trip is I don't really like turkey hunting that much.
34:44
Speaker 1: You know, you know you don't get up, but you
34:46
Speaker 1: don't get up at crack of dawn. You gotta be
34:49
Speaker 1: in the woods and set up in the crack at
34:51
Speaker 1: the crack of dawn, and you hunt until you know
34:55
Speaker 1: almost almost you know the end of light, and then
35:01
Speaker 1: you have dinner and go back to where you're sleeping,
35:03
Speaker 1: and you know five hours later it's time to get
35:06
Speaker 1: up again. So it really wears you down. And actually,
35:10
Speaker 1: I've never gotten me on the what I call the
35:13
Speaker 1: baby in a car seat uh level of turkey hunting,
35:18
Speaker 1: which you could say, I've never called in a turkey
35:21
Speaker 1: and myself and killed it. You know, I've shot turkeys
35:26
Speaker 1: that other people have called in for me. But you
35:29
Speaker 1: know that's anymore on can do that. I've seen that
35:35
Speaker 1: you've turkey hunter with some pretty exceptional uh turkey hunters too,
35:39
Speaker 1: like Jeff Buds and Ray I. Uh so you've learned
35:43
Speaker 1: from some of the best, though, well you don't. You
35:47
Speaker 1: learn in a way. But you know, when you hunt
35:48
Speaker 1: with Jeff Buds, you're just running to keep up with
35:51
Speaker 1: the guys, like it's uh, it's humbling because he sees
35:58
Speaker 1: he hears the turkey and he takes off at a
36:01
Speaker 1: at a jog straight towards it, and then he sees
36:07
Speaker 1: the birds somehow, you know, a distance through his binoculars
36:11
Speaker 1: and then figures out a way to get close. So
36:15
Speaker 1: some of the places we were hunting, we were going
36:17
Speaker 1: down these you know culverts that were you know, like
36:23
Speaker 1: twenty ft deep out on an Indian reservation and then
36:27
Speaker 1: belly crawling up to these birds and and trying to
36:33
Speaker 1: shoot them. Um and he. I mean that that guy
36:38
Speaker 1: was just driven. I mean he would hunt all day
36:40
Speaker 1: and then drive four hours to another state because he
36:43
Speaker 1: wanted to get birds. And you know, we'd beat in
36:46
Speaker 1: South Dakota and he'd want to get to Kansas or something.
36:49
Speaker 1: Am I right? Then, Jeff Buds holds the most Turkey
36:53
Speaker 1: Grand slams of anyone in the world. Is that is
36:55
Speaker 1: that accurate? Yeah? I think he's got twice as many
37:00
Speaker 1: as his nearest rival, h more. You know, it might
37:05
Speaker 1: even be more than that, or we're less than that,
37:08
Speaker 1: but he's got a substantial lead on anybody else being
37:14
Speaker 1: around someone like that. I heard someone who knows him
37:17
Speaker 1: or encountered him mentioned that he kind of reminded him
37:20
Speaker 1: of like a Lance Armstrong type, just like so driven,
37:24
Speaker 1: so so um, just so elite. I gotta believe that
37:29
Speaker 1: given what you're what you do, you get to be
37:32
Speaker 1: around a lot of hunters like that kind of at
37:35
Speaker 1: the very very top of their top of their game
37:38
Speaker 1: or whatever you call it. Yeah, but I mean it's
37:40
Speaker 1: hard to you know, it's all you know, Jeff is
37:44
Speaker 1: a wonderful guy. Um and I really I really love him,
37:48
Speaker 1: but you know, it's it's uh, it's it's almost like
37:54
Speaker 1: somebody told him when he was a kid that he
37:56
Speaker 1: wasn't good enough. He's spending his life proving them wrong,
38:01
Speaker 1: you know, and and and he's doing it. Um, but
38:08
Speaker 1: I just you know, it's a it's a different mentality
38:12
Speaker 1: to me. To me, that mentality of being first or
38:16
Speaker 1: you know, ah, I don't know. To me, that's not
38:22
Speaker 1: what hunting is really about. And you know, I don't
38:26
Speaker 1: even want I can't watch the I can't watch hunting shows.
38:31
Speaker 1: They're just so you know, we're led to think that
38:35
Speaker 1: this is how hunting is and and it's not. You know,
38:38
Speaker 1: when those guys go and see this huge deer coming
38:42
Speaker 1: out of the woods, you know you can be pretty
38:44
Speaker 1: sure that they aren't the ones who scouted it. Um
38:49
Speaker 1: and in their own way there babies in a car seat, right. Um,
38:56
Speaker 1: so I read that, Yeah, I read that you once
38:59
Speaker 1: went on a shoot like that where you're going to
39:02
Speaker 1: be filmed for TV, and then it was it sounded
39:06
Speaker 1: like it wasn't a great experience. Can't tell us about
39:08
Speaker 1: what it's like to be on the other side. This
39:11
Speaker 1: was my first You know what in the industry is
39:16
Speaker 1: called the writer hunt, which is when you're invited on
39:19
Speaker 1: a trip and your expenses are going to be paid
39:23
Speaker 1: and all you gotta do is show up, and you're
39:26
Speaker 1: just thinking, man, I am, I am the man. You know,
39:29
Speaker 1: I am here, I am all you all you poor
39:32
Speaker 1: slobs are out there. You gotta buy your own plane
39:35
Speaker 1: ticket and then all this is being done for me.
39:39
Speaker 1: Uh you get a little puffed up. And then I'm
39:42
Speaker 1: up there and they said, you know, we just want
39:43
Speaker 1: to ask you one favorite. Would it be okay if
39:45
Speaker 1: we put a cameraman out there with you and he
39:48
Speaker 1: won't bother you. You know, he'll be in a tree stand.
39:51
Speaker 1: He'll be in a ladder tree stand just a few
39:54
Speaker 1: feet above your head, you know, usually on the same
39:57
Speaker 1: tree or on a you know, a limb where he's
40:01
Speaker 1: got a view of you, and I said sure, sure,
40:04
Speaker 1: and I got out to him within an hour or two.
40:08
Speaker 1: I was profoundly uncomfortable, and I felt like I felt
40:16
Speaker 1: like I was doing porn. You know, this was dear,
40:20
Speaker 1: this was hunter porn. It's like, you know, if you're
40:24
Speaker 1: making love to your you know, to your wife or
40:29
Speaker 1: your girlfriend in the privacy of your of your bedroom,
40:34
Speaker 1: that's one thing. If you're making a movie of it
40:38
Speaker 1: to sell, that's something else. And I didn't want to
40:43
Speaker 1: be that guy, so I said, look, I'm sorry, you know,
40:46
Speaker 1: I can't do this. It's really it's a really interesting
40:50
Speaker 1: way of looking at it. If you could take if
40:53
Speaker 1: you could be like the god of all hunting television,
40:55
Speaker 1: hunting and fishing television and enact some set of changes
40:59
Speaker 1: to make it how you would find it appealing? Again,
41:04
Speaker 1: what would you do to change hunting or fishing television
41:07
Speaker 1: or media in that way? I don't I'm not sure
41:12
Speaker 1: it could be done. You know, to me, hunting is
41:16
Speaker 1: a kind of sacred thing, and as soon as you
41:20
Speaker 1: put it, as soon as you're trying to make money
41:24
Speaker 1: off it, it's it's something else. Um, you know, it's
41:31
Speaker 1: a you've kind of corrupted it. Hm, you know that
41:36
Speaker 1: that's my personal feeling about it. So I doubt that
41:39
Speaker 1: I will over haveo that that anybody will ever offer
41:42
Speaker 1: me now playing playing Devil's Advocate, though, why is why
41:47
Speaker 1: is writing about a hunting experience and making money off
41:50
Speaker 1: of it different than filming a hunting experience and making
41:53
Speaker 1: money from it. Uh, well, that's a very impertinent question. Um,
42:03
Speaker 1: I don't know. I don't know, because it's it's your
42:07
Speaker 1: reflections on it in you know, and in private, and
42:18
Speaker 1: then you're sharing your experience. I mean, my my take,
42:27
Speaker 1: my take on the things I write is is sort
42:31
Speaker 1: of that is that I'm arrogant enough to believe there's
42:36
Speaker 1: nothing particularly special about me, and so if I'm writing
42:41
Speaker 1: how I feel, if I'm honestly writing about my impressions
42:47
Speaker 1: of an experience, it's kind of you weren't there, but
42:51
Speaker 1: this is kind of what it would be like if
42:53
Speaker 1: you were. And that seems quite different to me somehow,
43:05
Speaker 1: And maybe maybe I'm just maybe in a completely self
43:07
Speaker 1: serving way, but um, it seems almost like a a
43:14
Speaker 1: service to people. Whereas TV shows loaded down with you know,
43:20
Speaker 1: well it was really that nose jam or spray that
43:23
Speaker 1: then able to me to take this buck and my
43:26
Speaker 1: you know, my on my osonics thing and my you
43:30
Speaker 1: know my this company's arrows and this company's bow and Um,
43:36
Speaker 1: they're just like you know, they're kind of selling everything
43:38
Speaker 1: they touch. And I'm I guess I don't feel like
43:43
Speaker 1: I'm doing that. I'm I'm selling what the I'm selling.
43:53
Speaker 1: I'm trying to sell, you know, and convey what the
43:56
Speaker 1: what the experience was like. Yeah, I understand what you're
44:03
Speaker 1: understand what you're getting at there. And I've had those
44:05
Speaker 1: same feelings too. I Mean, there's there's a lot of
44:08
Speaker 1: outdoor television that that kind of makes you uncomfortable to
44:12
Speaker 1: the stomach when when you watch it, and I know
44:17
Speaker 1: when you describe it compared to compared to pornography, there's
44:20
Speaker 1: there's definitely a correlation there that that it rings true. UM. Now,
44:26
Speaker 1: speaking of your writing and how you express or share
44:31
Speaker 1: your own experience, UM, did you. I mean, if if
44:35
Speaker 1: anyone hasn't written or excuse me, read your stories or
44:39
Speaker 1: your books, your column and field and stream anything that
44:42
Speaker 1: they may not be familiar. But you have a very
44:44
Speaker 1: UM I don't know if it's satire, but it's Um,
44:48
Speaker 1: you do a great job of bringing humor into the piece,
44:51
Speaker 1: and you kind of represent yourself as this kind of
44:55
Speaker 1: bumbling every man who's making all these mistakes, and you
44:57
Speaker 1: kind of you kind of make fun of yourself a lot.
44:59
Speaker 1: And A. UM, did you know from the get go
45:03
Speaker 1: that you always wanted to write in this style and
45:05
Speaker 1: present yourself like that? Or was this like a thought
45:08
Speaker 1: through decision as you as you started going through it.
45:11
Speaker 1: I think, I mean, I think I was writing that
45:13
Speaker 1: way before Shield and Stream, and I realized, you know,
45:18
Speaker 1: when I got to Field and Stream. The first thing
45:20
Speaker 1: that I noticed was everybody was an expert. You know,
45:25
Speaker 1: there were everybody was writing from the view of you know, everybody.
45:28
Speaker 1: The guy writing about you know, hunting could shoot the
45:31
Speaker 1: eyes out of a running chipmunk at three hundred yards,
45:34
Speaker 1: and the guy writing about fly fishing could take his
45:37
Speaker 1: naval lint and tied up into a tarp and fly
45:40
Speaker 1: and catch a two hundred pounds fish. And I realized,
45:43
Speaker 1: you know, A, I can't compete with these guys and
45:50
Speaker 1: be I don't really want to. UM, So I struck.
45:56
Speaker 1: And then I realized there's nobody writing for the kind
45:59
Speaker 1: of the average guy. And the average guy I'm based
46:03
Speaker 1: on my extners experiences failure far more often than success,
46:10
Speaker 1: and so I think in a lot of ways, failures
46:12
Speaker 1: are more universal experience then success. And I remember my
46:18
Speaker 1: editors were kind of surprised when that resonated with a
46:22
Speaker 1: lot of readers, and I said, really, I'm you know,
46:26
Speaker 1: I'm not. They're They're kind of like, you're just you're
46:32
Speaker 1: just a dufist man, And I was like, yeah, so
46:36
Speaker 1: most of the rest of us, Yeah, yeah, And I really,
46:43
Speaker 1: you know, I just couldn't. I couldn't fake. Um, you know,
46:47
Speaker 1: I couldn't fake pretending to be competent at something that wasn't.
46:53
Speaker 1: So so that begs the question. Then, even though you've
46:58
Speaker 1: given all given that your work is going and hunting
47:01
Speaker 1: and fishing all over the world in some cases and
47:04
Speaker 1: then sharing those experiences, you get to hunt and fish
47:07
Speaker 1: a lot more than maybe the average guy or girl does.
47:10
Speaker 1: So even though that's the case, do you really struggle?
47:13
Speaker 1: Do you really struggle as much in real life as
47:15
Speaker 1: it seems on the page, or have you achieved some
47:17
Speaker 1: level of competence now that you've done it for so long.
47:20
Speaker 1: I mean, I've got some level of competence, you know it?
47:24
Speaker 1: It uh you know, I realized that one of one
47:29
Speaker 1: of the pleasures now for me. I mean I live,
47:33
Speaker 1: you know, less than ten miles from the White House,
47:37
Speaker 1: and everybody goes, oh, you you know, with your your
47:41
Speaker 1: your fame as a field and stream writer, you must
47:43
Speaker 1: get you know, places that hunt offers with places to
47:46
Speaker 1: hunt all the time going Actually I don't, and I
47:51
Speaker 1: haven't figured out how to leverage that some kind of
47:54
Speaker 1: access maybe for the people that would be able to
47:58
Speaker 1: do that, but I've never been able to you know,
48:01
Speaker 1: get turned that into more hunting access. So I I
48:06
Speaker 1: have to go pretty far away to the hunt. I
48:08
Speaker 1: mean there's almost no public hunting grounds around here. I mean,
48:12
Speaker 1: you know, there's sixty miles away, and those ones get hammered. Um.
48:18
Speaker 1: But I have learned one of the things I love
48:22
Speaker 1: now is just going out in the woods and and
48:24
Speaker 1: following a deer trail and looking for sign. And you know,
48:29
Speaker 1: if you just do that long enough, you got you
48:32
Speaker 1: get an eye for it. You know what a deer
48:34
Speaker 1: trail looks like, even though you can't really explain how
48:39
Speaker 1: you know, um that it's a deer trail and not
48:43
Speaker 1: you know, some some smaller animal. Uh, But you just
48:48
Speaker 1: get a sense of it, and you get a sense
48:50
Speaker 1: of you know, where deer like to bed and um,
48:56
Speaker 1: you know, if you find it. If you if you
48:58
Speaker 1: find a bed and you find a hair of the
49:01
Speaker 1: deer that bedded there, that's that's that's really cool. That's
49:06
Speaker 1: kind of like finding a narrowhead, you know. And uh,
49:11
Speaker 1: and I love I love that kind of stuff and
49:14
Speaker 1: I love going out with I was perch fishing the
49:18
Speaker 1: other day with my friends Paula Smith and Gordon Leash
49:24
Speaker 1: out on the Potomas and Paula, uh heard a bird
49:31
Speaker 1: conscious that's the first story a lot I've heard this
49:34
Speaker 1: this year. So she knows the bird by its call.
49:38
Speaker 1: And then they see another bird. Know, they've had a uh,
49:43
Speaker 1: you know, a purple breasted growth speak or something in
49:50
Speaker 1: their backyard at their feet or and they were really
49:53
Speaker 1: excited about that. And they were talking to another guy
49:55
Speaker 1: who has seen some particular bird at his feet or
50:00
Speaker 1: and they all got real excited about that. So it's
50:03
Speaker 1: you know, people that can take it beyond just being
50:10
Speaker 1: good good hunters and start to gain an appreciation for
50:14
Speaker 1: the larger picture of what's out there. Ah. I have
50:20
Speaker 1: enormous respect for those people. Yeah, that that transition from
50:24
Speaker 1: just a hunter to also a naturalist and a woodsman,
50:28
Speaker 1: that that's the whole experience. Yeah, I mean, that's those
50:32
Speaker 1: are people to me, those are people who really get it.
50:36
Speaker 1: And I've seen Paula h you know, Paula Paula. Paula
50:43
Speaker 1: has done all kinds of things that that I can't
50:46
Speaker 1: talk about to get to get geese and stuff. At
50:53
Speaker 1: the same time we were drying, we were rowing back
50:55
Speaker 1: in the time before this, and she spotted a a
51:00
Speaker 1: Canada that was tangled up in some fishing line in
51:04
Speaker 1: a little creek that runs behind the boat house, and
51:07
Speaker 1: she went, damn. And she got back in the boat
51:11
Speaker 1: and rowed herself up to it. And she'd forgotten to
51:16
Speaker 1: take a Nike. So Gordon said, don't Bill, don't run
51:19
Speaker 1: down there and take her at night. So I did.
51:23
Speaker 1: And she spent twenty minutes, you know, calming this bird down,
51:29
Speaker 1: picking it up, talking to it and cutting the line free,
51:33
Speaker 1: and then let it go, and then came back the
51:35
Speaker 1: next day and said, I, you know, I didn't see
51:37
Speaker 1: each others. I think he's gonna make it. So, you know,
51:43
Speaker 1: it reminds me kind of the the Indians, who, you know,
51:46
Speaker 1: would hunt all kinds of animals, but then they would
51:51
Speaker 1: also have pets, pet animals, often of the same species
51:55
Speaker 1: that they they hunted. Yeah, and I love that. A
52:00
Speaker 1: lot of you know, a lot of non hunters just
52:02
Speaker 1: can't wrap their heads around that. Um, how you can
52:07
Speaker 1: love the same animal that you're that you're killing. But
52:12
Speaker 1: in fact, in fact, once you really understand it, it
52:16
Speaker 1: doesn't seem strange at all. Yeah, I'm I'm going to
52:20
Speaker 1: make an assumption here. But my assumption is that living
52:24
Speaker 1: so close to, you know, just outside of d C,
52:27
Speaker 1: you're around a lot of people that you know, don't
52:29
Speaker 1: have this context. They don't have this connection to the
52:32
Speaker 1: natural world that you do as a hunter or an angler. Um. So,
52:36
Speaker 1: when you're at a when you're at a dinner party
52:38
Speaker 1: or grabbing a drink or whatever it might be, and
52:41
Speaker 1: someone approaches you or or wants to hear about what
52:45
Speaker 1: you do, when you talk about hunting and whatnot, and
52:47
Speaker 1: you try to convey that point you just made, that
52:52
Speaker 1: being that hunting is an act of love, not an
52:54
Speaker 1: act of war or or anger or anything like that. Malus,
53:00
Speaker 1: how do you go about trying to communicate that to someone?
53:03
Speaker 1: How do you get that idea across um. Well, first
53:10
Speaker 1: of all, most people in Washington are much more concerned
53:14
Speaker 1: about telling you what they do and curious about what
53:17
Speaker 1: you do. You know, Washington is a town where the
53:22
Speaker 1: first question people ask is, you know, what do you
53:24
Speaker 1: do when they're assessing each other's relative, you know, importance
53:31
Speaker 1: in the world. But I don't get asked that question
53:35
Speaker 1: very much. I've been confronted several times by people who
53:37
Speaker 1: knew I hunted and said, you know, I just think
53:41
Speaker 1: hunting is awful and ought to be outlawed. And you
53:45
Speaker 1: guys are you know, you're just in it for the
53:48
Speaker 1: thrill of the kill. And I do a kind of
53:53
Speaker 1: jiu jitsu, you know, where you use the person's own
53:56
Speaker 1: momentum against them. And and and I say, you know,
54:02
Speaker 1: I kind of agree with you. You know, the more
54:05
Speaker 1: I hunt, uh, the harder it is for me to
54:10
Speaker 1: kill stuff. And you know, there are times when I'm
54:13
Speaker 1: not so sure it shouldn't be outlawed. Um, except for
54:18
Speaker 1: you know, um, you know that government is best, which
54:26
Speaker 1: governs least people out to have the opportunity to make
54:31
Speaker 1: up their own minds about it. And you know a
54:36
Speaker 1: lot of people have no clue of how deer are
54:39
Speaker 1: just denuding the forests, especially around here. I think Rock
54:45
Speaker 1: Creek Park has one of the highest deer densities in
54:48
Speaker 1: the country because there's no predators UM, and they just
54:51
Speaker 1: eat everything that grows, and so you don't have songbirds
54:57
Speaker 1: and wild turkey and off kinds of stuff that should
55:01
Speaker 1: be there. And they're eating up the native plants. You know,
55:05
Speaker 1: they're speeding the growth of invasives UM. You know, there's
55:10
Speaker 1: a very high incidence of Lyme disease UM because the
55:16
Speaker 1: places where the white mice that are one of the
55:19
Speaker 1: carriers from which deer get the ticks UM because you
55:25
Speaker 1: know it's the larval and um nymph stage ticks that
55:31
Speaker 1: feed on white mice and then get picked up by
55:34
Speaker 1: the deer. You know, there are a host of UM
55:39
Speaker 1: still effects whenever any you know, whenever any species gets
55:42
Speaker 1: out of balance, and deer are just way out of
55:45
Speaker 1: balance but UM and you know, if if if it
55:56
Speaker 1: seems like they're open uh, and it's very disarming because
56:03
Speaker 1: when they UH way too often in my view, hunters
56:08
Speaker 1: just wanna you know, when that when that conversation and
56:17
Speaker 1: tell these people that they're you know, they're they're full
56:20
Speaker 1: of it and they don't know what they're talking about,
56:22
Speaker 1: and that you know, that doesn't change anybody's mind. Um,
56:26
Speaker 1: that just digs a hole deeper. So you know, if
56:29
Speaker 1: you just listen to people, they'll find that very disarming,
56:33
Speaker 1: especially in somebody that they expect not to be listened to. Buy. Yeah,
56:40
Speaker 1: it's a great point. Lots of times it becomes this.
56:45
Speaker 1: So many times I think hunters become really defensive and
56:48
Speaker 1: go into attack mode. And as you said, that's that
56:52
Speaker 1: if if you're looking at simply from what's going to
56:55
Speaker 1: be the most effective tact, that is not going to
56:58
Speaker 1: achieve the goal, as you said, trying to change minds
57:01
Speaker 1: or win over hearts, UM, and you just you just
57:05
Speaker 1: confirm all the worst aspects of the under stereotypes that
57:11
Speaker 1: people have. UM. You talked about you talked about how
57:19
Speaker 1: some people from the outside might think we're in it
57:21
Speaker 1: just for the thrill of the kill, UM getting the trophy,
57:25
Speaker 1: whatever it might be. UM. I one of the things
57:28
Speaker 1: I've respected about you the most is the way you're
57:32
Speaker 1: able to convey, um, the emotion around the moments of
57:37
Speaker 1: the kill and the respect for the animal that I
57:40
Speaker 1: think if if someone who had questions about hunting. Read
57:42
Speaker 1: some of your pieces. I think they would. They come
57:45
Speaker 1: away from them with a with a new found understanding
57:47
Speaker 1: and respect for for what we do. UM and I
57:50
Speaker 1: want to read. I want to read a quick um
57:53
Speaker 1: bit of something you wrote and then kind of gets
57:56
Speaker 1: you to expand on it if you don't mind. Um
57:58
Speaker 1: it's it's a favorite of mine, the piece you titled worthy.
58:02
Speaker 1: And in this piece, I'm just gonna quote here a
58:05
Speaker 1: couple of a couple of segments you said, shaking, I
58:09
Speaker 1: clipped my bow, release to the string, and rise. Taking
58:12
Speaker 1: the life of a deer is many things, but if
58:14
Speaker 1: you think trivial is among them, it's time to put
58:17
Speaker 1: down your bow and take up badminton. Come to your feet.
58:21
Speaker 1: Aren't the animal whose life you seek? And later you say,
58:24
Speaker 1: after you have shot and killed a deer and walked
58:27
Speaker 1: up on her, you say, I lay a hand on
58:30
Speaker 1: her flank and stroke her hair. Wisps of steam from
58:33
Speaker 1: her body curl upward in the flashlight beam. I've read
58:36
Speaker 1: how native hunters believe that an animal doesn't die at once,
58:40
Speaker 1: but slowly it's spirit finding its way out of the
58:42
Speaker 1: body and onto the next world. I stay there another
58:45
Speaker 1: five minutes stroking her coat, feeling the interlocking elation and regret,
58:50
Speaker 1: the gratitude and sorrow the only hunters know. With every
58:54
Speaker 1: stroke I discover I'm mouthing thank you, thank you, thank you.
59:00
Speaker 1: End quote. Can you can you expand on what those
59:06
Speaker 1: types of moments are like for you, having having taken
59:09
Speaker 1: an animal's life? Um, why is that a powerful moment
59:13
Speaker 1: for you? Um? Well, you know, taking taking life, an
59:22
Speaker 1: innocent life of of another animal is almost to me,
59:29
Speaker 1: is by definition, you know, momentous. I mean you one
59:34
Speaker 1: of the things you realize when you kill a deer,
59:37
Speaker 1: and especially when you're cleaning a deer, is that you're
59:42
Speaker 1: not that different, and you're gonna die just as truly
59:45
Speaker 1: as this animal dies, and to the earth. It's not
59:49
Speaker 1: going to make a whole lot of difference whose body
59:54
Speaker 1: the Earth is working on is it? You know, returns
59:57
Speaker 1: it to the earth. And also think of the you know,
1:00:01
Speaker 1: the Indians thought of hunting as um. The Indians used
1:00:07
Speaker 1: to take uh priests on hunting because they were terrified
1:00:13
Speaker 1: of displeasing the gods. And if you displease the gods,
1:00:19
Speaker 1: all kinds of you know, misfortune might come to your
1:00:22
Speaker 1: to your tribe, you know, sickness, um, not being able
1:00:26
Speaker 1: to find any more gang and that if you didn't
1:00:29
Speaker 1: show proper respect um that was that was really rash
1:00:38
Speaker 1: and um, you know, stupid. And so they were more
1:00:46
Speaker 1: worried about displeasing you know, the animal spirits and the
1:00:52
Speaker 1: gods that took an interest in that stuff. Then they
1:00:55
Speaker 1: were about, um, you know, their own their own glory.
1:01:01
Speaker 1: I remember I hunted uh Cariboo with this tribe I've
1:01:05
Speaker 1: never heard of in Alaska, maybe because they were interior
1:01:10
Speaker 1: tribe called the Glitchen, and the Glitchen believe and archaeologists
1:01:18
Speaker 1: are finding increasing evidence for this that they actually have
1:01:22
Speaker 1: been following the Porcupine River herd of Caribou for at
1:01:28
Speaker 1: least five thousand years and they consider themselves people of
1:01:32
Speaker 1: the Cariboo. And the Cariboo do this uh circular migration
1:01:36
Speaker 1: every year. That's you know, it's five thousand miles. It's
1:01:39
Speaker 1: one of the longest of any mammals. And each year
1:01:43
Speaker 1: they go to give birth near the shore because the
1:01:50
Speaker 1: offshore winds blow the bugs away that that spread diseases.
1:01:55
Speaker 1: And sometimes you really prey on the take a toll
1:01:57
Speaker 1: on the deer, and the grass is good air and
1:02:01
Speaker 1: there aren't many predators. And the Glitchen has some name
1:02:06
Speaker 1: for this that translates roughly as you know, sacred place
1:02:10
Speaker 1: where the caribou are born. And none, no Glitchen has
1:02:17
Speaker 1: ever seen it, much less set foot in it, because
1:02:21
Speaker 1: it's it's off limits. It's a sacred place. And to
1:02:26
Speaker 1: violate this. And then even when they were starving, um,
1:02:33
Speaker 1: as far back as as anybody knows, um, they would
1:02:39
Speaker 1: never go there because if they went there to kill
1:02:43
Speaker 1: caribou to get to save themselves, they would be you know, um,
1:02:48
Speaker 1: gamming the tribe, um you know, henceforth. Um. It just
1:02:57
Speaker 1: that's an amazing concept and turns out to be this
1:03:01
Speaker 1: is where we're it's the anwar. Uh. It's exactly where
1:03:05
Speaker 1: drilling will start soon right the coastal plain that recently yep.
1:03:14
Speaker 1: And you know these people are just they feel totally
1:03:21
Speaker 1: you know, ignored, and um, it's quite sad. Yeah, not
1:03:28
Speaker 1: to mention the impacts, the ecological impacts on the animals themselves.
1:03:34
Speaker 1: As I understand it, that's going to be very significant
1:03:36
Speaker 1: as well. Yeah, I mean you have I mean, it's
1:03:38
Speaker 1: a it's a it's a very small area relatively. It
1:03:43
Speaker 1: wouldn't take much to completely screw it up. And you know,
1:03:48
Speaker 1: the oil companies are saying, well, you know, we're not
1:03:50
Speaker 1: gonna screw it up. And I don't believe they have
1:03:53
Speaker 1: any intention to screw it up, but they've certainly screwed
1:03:56
Speaker 1: up a lot of places where they had no intentions
1:04:00
Speaker 1: grew it up. M M. Yeah. I hunted caribou in
1:04:07
Speaker 1: Alaska for the first time this past year in interior Alaska,
1:04:10
Speaker 1: hunting the forty mile herd Um and that was just
1:04:14
Speaker 1: an incredible powerful experience, just just seeing the migration, seeing
1:04:18
Speaker 1: that the so many thousands of animals moving through the
1:04:22
Speaker 1: scale of everything, the landscape, the wildlife. Um, what was
1:04:25
Speaker 1: the experience like for you? I have to imagine being
1:04:27
Speaker 1: in that area must have been quite the being in
1:04:31
Speaker 1: that area after a while. I mean I was the
1:04:35
Speaker 1: only uh non Indian in the village of about twenty people,
1:04:43
Speaker 1: and you pretty quickly come to feel like you're in
1:04:50
Speaker 1: their world and their rules are the ones that applied. Um.
1:04:58
Speaker 1: You know, I asked my uh my host while while
1:05:01
Speaker 1: all these uh Cariboo antlers were We're lying around basically
1:05:06
Speaker 1: just slowly decomposing into the moss, and he said, we
1:05:11
Speaker 1: we don't pick him up. We never have. And a
1:05:15
Speaker 1: few years ago there was a white woman who came, Um.
1:05:19
Speaker 1: I mean, she was a photographer and she was picking
1:05:22
Speaker 1: him up and we kept telling her that's that's really
1:05:24
Speaker 1: not a good idea, and she wasn't, wouldn't listen to us,
1:05:28
Speaker 1: and she left. And a few years later later that
1:05:32
Speaker 1: that lady got sick and she died. And I said,
1:05:36
Speaker 1: don't you worry. I'm not going to touch the cariboo.
1:05:42
Speaker 1: But what really amazed me but the head hunter of
1:05:46
Speaker 1: the village, uh, and you know, a successful hunter up
1:05:52
Speaker 1: there is still expected to share meet with the whole village. Um.
1:05:58
Speaker 1: He just had this sort of psychic connection to the caribou.
1:06:03
Speaker 1: And so he said, we're gonna go out hunting, you know, tomorrow,
1:06:06
Speaker 1: And then we didn't go. And I'm going, you know, Charlie,
1:06:10
Speaker 1: what's the deal And he goes, appear when you hurry
1:06:14
Speaker 1: is when you make mistakes, um, And you know, there's
1:06:18
Speaker 1: no room for mistakes, and that kind of an environment
1:06:20
Speaker 1: up on the tunder And then he wakes up the
1:06:23
Speaker 1: next day and he goes, Yep, it's today. Their antlers
1:06:26
Speaker 1: have hardened up and they'll go anywhere now. And he
1:06:30
Speaker 1: just knew this, you know, and I don't. I don't
1:06:34
Speaker 1: know how he knew it. And then we went up
1:06:37
Speaker 1: glassing for caribou and these guys are hand holding you know,
1:06:42
Speaker 1: forty and sixty power spotting scopes and they're seeing caribou
1:06:49
Speaker 1: and saying, oh, that's a nice bunch over there, um,
1:06:54
Speaker 1: especially that one in the front, and try and go
1:06:58
Speaker 1: how how far away those us? Oh? Those thirty miles?
1:07:05
Speaker 1: And he was looking at him and from the way
1:07:08
Speaker 1: they were traveling and there, you know, they're posture and attitude.
1:07:15
Speaker 1: He seemed to know where they were going to be
1:07:18
Speaker 1: in twenty four hours. And so we went to that
1:07:22
Speaker 1: place and we camped, and we got up the next
1:07:27
Speaker 1: morning and shot through those caribou. It's got to be
1:07:34
Speaker 1: an incredible experience to be not only just being in
1:07:37
Speaker 1: a place like that, but then, like you just described,
1:07:39
Speaker 1: getting to be around and learn from Native hunters and
1:07:43
Speaker 1: get to experience that culture. It seems like that's something
1:07:47
Speaker 1: you had a few opportunities to do. Um. I remember
1:07:51
Speaker 1: reading a piece where you were snowshoeing with the cree.
1:07:54
Speaker 1: I think I remember in Canada somewhere. Um, is there
1:07:58
Speaker 1: anything else that you've taken those experiences that you've applied
1:08:01
Speaker 1: back to your own hunting when you're back on your
1:08:04
Speaker 1: own doing your own thing. Any whether it's a culture
1:08:07
Speaker 1: or a level of respect or so how l it's
1:08:11
Speaker 1: a level of respect and a knowledge that we are
1:08:16
Speaker 1: we were all like this, Um. You know, a thousand
1:08:22
Speaker 1: years ago we were we all believed, or two thousand
1:08:27
Speaker 1: years ago we all knew um the world about us
1:08:34
Speaker 1: much more intimately because that's all there was. You know. Um.
1:08:40
Speaker 1: One of the one of the Gwitchen Indians the sky,
1:08:43
Speaker 1: he was like Oscar the Grouch. She never spoke unless
1:08:46
Speaker 1: he wanted to do. I asked him once, uh about
1:08:52
Speaker 1: his grandparents, and he said, my grandmother used to say
1:08:55
Speaker 1: that in the old days, people were like an, I'm
1:09:01
Speaker 1: because that's all what was in their minds. And you
1:09:06
Speaker 1: know they were they were kind of studying the natural
1:09:09
Speaker 1: world all the time because that was their TV. That
1:09:13
Speaker 1: was that's all there was. And you know, when you
1:09:17
Speaker 1: start living like that, you get in touch with all
1:09:22
Speaker 1: kinds of things and you know, so these are people
1:09:25
Speaker 1: who I didn't think there was anything at all extraordinary
1:09:29
Speaker 1: about having a dream about shooting a moose in a
1:09:33
Speaker 1: certain place, going there the next day and having a
1:09:37
Speaker 1: moose show up in that place and shooting it. They
1:09:41
Speaker 1: just thought, you know, that's just the way the world works.
1:09:46
Speaker 1: M where. To us, it seems like you know, um,
1:09:51
Speaker 1: you know magic. Yeah, and and so much of our
1:09:57
Speaker 1: success quote unquote success in our minds, we we assume
1:10:02
Speaker 1: has to be attributed to skill and all these other
1:10:06
Speaker 1: things we've done, or the technology or our gear or whatever.
1:10:09
Speaker 1: But it's got to be so interesting to to be
1:10:12
Speaker 1: around someone who who's thinking about things much more deeply. Yeah,
1:10:18
Speaker 1: so I sort of, you know, every every bit of
1:10:22
Speaker 1: technology you use, you know, a scent, a scent you know,
1:10:28
Speaker 1: as on its or something or um whatever, in a
1:10:35
Speaker 1: way distances you from the experience. I mean, I know what.
1:10:43
Speaker 1: It makes it easier, of course, but it also starts
1:10:48
Speaker 1: to hollow out, you know what it's all about. Mhm. Yeah,
1:10:57
Speaker 1: So take rewinding a little bit. In our conversation, I
1:11:01
Speaker 1: want to shift to something here. We talked a lot
1:11:05
Speaker 1: about how you've focused a lot of your your your storytelling,
1:11:11
Speaker 1: your writing around the average person's experiences in the wild,
1:11:17
Speaker 1: those mistakes and fumbles along the way, and um, you
1:11:21
Speaker 1: certainly talked about those mistakes you've made plenty, But you
1:11:23
Speaker 1: also I found a really a really nice job of
1:11:27
Speaker 1: of showing in a in a kind of honest, real way,
1:11:32
Speaker 1: what you've learned from those experiences or how you grew. Um,
1:11:36
Speaker 1: there's always kind of that kind of moment. It seems
1:11:39
Speaker 1: like most of your pieces. So so for someone right
1:11:41
Speaker 1: now or for someone here six months from now or whatever,
1:11:45
Speaker 1: who is feeling that the fresh pain of some kind
1:11:48
Speaker 1: of failure in the field. Maybe it was a miss,
1:11:51
Speaker 1: maybe they just spooked the deer of a lifetime. Maybe
1:11:53
Speaker 1: they lost the biggest fish I've ever had in the line. Um,
1:11:57
Speaker 1: what is your advice or what would you tell someone
1:12:00
Speaker 1: to be thinking about in those moments or those moments
1:12:02
Speaker 1: post that quote unquote failure? Um, well, failures how you learned? Um?
1:12:12
Speaker 1: You know if you aren't, if you were successful every
1:12:16
Speaker 1: time you went out, and you know this, this wouldn't
1:12:18
Speaker 1: have any any pull for you and the other you know,
1:12:25
Speaker 1: it really bothers me when when people get caught up
1:12:28
Speaker 1: on you know, I've shot a bigger deer, you caught
1:12:31
Speaker 1: a bigger fish than you have. Um. You know a
1:12:38
Speaker 1: lot of times that doesn't necessarily mean anything. I mean
1:12:40
Speaker 1: it may mean, you know, in some cases the guy
1:12:43
Speaker 1: is clearly a better angler. Um. But you know it's
1:12:49
Speaker 1: about it's about you having uh and enjoyable experience. It's
1:12:57
Speaker 1: not about you know, and I don't have to you know,
1:13:04
Speaker 1: I can go out and sail and still have a
1:13:08
Speaker 1: good time. You know. If you know, if you're out
1:13:10
Speaker 1: shed hunting, hunting for shed antlers and you have to
1:13:14
Speaker 1: find one for it to be a good day, you
1:13:17
Speaker 1: know you should you shouldn't be out there, um. And
1:13:23
Speaker 1: you know, to just get close to a big deer
1:13:27
Speaker 1: is an aspiring thing. Um. You know, we put so
1:13:35
Speaker 1: much emphasis on this notion of success and failure. And
1:13:43
Speaker 1: you know, if you were somebody out there where hunting
1:13:46
Speaker 1: for food where success and failure was the difference between
1:13:49
Speaker 1: life and death, you know, would you care that much
1:13:52
Speaker 1: if the deer was you know, a big deer or
1:13:55
Speaker 1: the biggest dear. I don't think you would. I think
1:13:59
Speaker 1: you'd be happy to have some food. Um. And that's
1:14:03
Speaker 1: what you know, that's what hunting derives from, so the
1:14:07
Speaker 1: whole Yeah, you know, all over the place, and uh,
1:14:13
Speaker 1: there're guys who go to you know, take canned hunts
1:14:18
Speaker 1: to have a big put big rack of antlers to
1:14:22
Speaker 1: hang over there desk in their office, and it's not
1:14:26
Speaker 1: about the deer, and it's not about them, it's about
1:14:29
Speaker 1: trying to impress somebody else. Um. And if that's your motivation,
1:14:35
Speaker 1: once again, I think you should be doing something else
1:14:37
Speaker 1: because it's supposed to be about it's supposed to be
1:14:40
Speaker 1: a private thing and what you what you get out
1:14:43
Speaker 1: of it, what you enjoy about it, not competition with
1:14:51
Speaker 1: anybody else but yourself. Yeah. That that focus on the experience. UM. Yeah,
1:14:58
Speaker 1: I think is so horton. And it is easy to
1:15:01
Speaker 1: get caught up in all the hullabaloo around big deer
1:15:06
Speaker 1: antlers or the filling that tag. But but of course,
1:15:10
Speaker 1: as you said, I think you lose sight of the
1:15:13
Speaker 1: You're losing something really special if that's what you get
1:15:15
Speaker 1: caught up in. Um. And something that in my life
1:15:19
Speaker 1: that has forced me to start rethinking some of the
1:15:22
Speaker 1: things that I appreciate about a hunting experience. UM, that
1:15:25
Speaker 1: I realized I'm gonna have to continue changing. Moving forward
1:15:28
Speaker 1: to the fact that we just had our first baby,
1:15:30
Speaker 1: my wife and I. I've got a three month old son,
1:15:33
Speaker 1: and I'm already thinking thank you, thank you, I'm already
1:15:36
Speaker 1: thinking about how that's going to change everything for me
1:15:39
Speaker 1: and us in the future, and the excitement I have
1:15:43
Speaker 1: for introducing him to the outdoors. I'm already out there
1:15:46
Speaker 1: and I already took him out behind the house, calling
1:15:48
Speaker 1: turkeys and holding him and hearing gobblers coming in. Yeah,
1:15:52
Speaker 1: it was it was so cool. But I've read some
1:15:55
Speaker 1: of your stories, we've we've talked about your daughter, and
1:15:59
Speaker 1: I'm curious what you've learned from your experiences introducing your
1:16:04
Speaker 1: daughter to the outdoors. Selfishly, if you have any advice
1:16:07
Speaker 1: for me as as a as a father hoping to
1:16:09
Speaker 1: introduce my son to hunting and fishing, anything you've learned
1:16:13
Speaker 1: there or you've experienced that would be worth passing on. Um.
1:16:19
Speaker 1: I think getting your kids playing with little bows and
1:16:24
Speaker 1: arrows and you know, push button fishing reels and taking
1:16:30
Speaker 1: them out someplace where they can have a success, especially
1:16:36
Speaker 1: near the beginnings, is a big deal. Um. There's you know,
1:16:43
Speaker 1: the movie Nanook of the North is has been called,
1:16:49
Speaker 1: you know, actually the first documentary film ever made, and
1:16:54
Speaker 1: I think it was like in the ninety twenties or something,
1:16:57
Speaker 1: and I know that parts of it were staged, but
1:17:00
Speaker 1: a lot of it is true. And you see that
1:17:04
Speaker 1: nook with his infant son, and the kid's got a
1:17:07
Speaker 1: bow about sixteen inches long and is shooting little sticks
1:17:13
Speaker 1: and the nook hasn't sit in his lap and just
1:17:16
Speaker 1: you know, release shoot stick after stick. And I'm starting
1:17:22
Speaker 1: to wish that I've done that with with Emma. My My.
1:17:27
Speaker 1: My buddy down in Arkansas has three kids and they
1:17:31
Speaker 1: are all just hunting and fishing maniacs because he's passionate
1:17:37
Speaker 1: about it, and he takes them, you know, every chance
1:17:41
Speaker 1: he gets. And now his kids are, you know, fighting
1:17:45
Speaker 1: about who gets to go out when he can't take
1:17:47
Speaker 1: all three of them. It was his nine year old
1:17:52
Speaker 1: son's birthday and he goes, I gotta be home, man,
1:17:56
Speaker 1: I gotta take give about um to get his turkey um.
1:18:03
Speaker 1: And that you know that when I was at the house,
1:18:05
Speaker 1: the kids were showing me their turkeys and their mounted
1:18:08
Speaker 1: deer and you know, they were just they were really psyched.
1:18:14
Speaker 1: And you know, if your kids have to have, you know,
1:18:19
Speaker 1: it has to be their choice. If if they you know,
1:18:22
Speaker 1: if you're feeling like they have to love what I love,
1:18:26
Speaker 1: it's probably not gonna happen, you know. And uh so
1:18:31
Speaker 1: you got to give them space to to make it
1:18:34
Speaker 1: their own and at the same time give them opport,
1:18:40
Speaker 1: you know, encourage them and give them opportunities. And I think,
1:18:45
Speaker 1: you know, Emma, Emma's like me. You know, my father
1:18:50
Speaker 1: tried to get me interested in golf and sailing, and
1:18:55
Speaker 1: he'd even bought me some golf clubs. And I think
1:18:58
Speaker 1: if he really wanted me to get interest it, and
1:19:00
Speaker 1: then he would have forbidden me to play golf or
1:19:04
Speaker 1: to sail, and I would have been all over that,
1:19:08
Speaker 1: you know, because I was just as that rebellion where
1:19:10
Speaker 1: anything my father was trying to get me to do,
1:19:12
Speaker 1: we were already in this you know, edible power struggle. Um.
1:19:18
Speaker 1: If he said you can't do this, I'd go, oh yeah,
1:19:21
Speaker 1: watch me. Hu. Speaking of speaking of kids, introducing kids
1:19:28
Speaker 1: to hunting, UM, I think that that feeds into a
1:19:33
Speaker 1: larger um quandry we find ourselves as hunters in America today,
1:19:39
Speaker 1: that being the the loss of hunters in America and
1:19:44
Speaker 1: continuing decline. And you recently wrote a short piece about
1:19:48
Speaker 1: this title, the next Endangered species is the American Hunter. UM.
1:19:54
Speaker 1: Can you speak to that a little bit? What what
1:19:56
Speaker 1: you're noticing there? What your thoughts on how how we
1:19:59
Speaker 1: can maybe try to plug the plug the damn up
1:20:02
Speaker 1: and stop the bleeding. It's it's a real challenge because
1:20:07
Speaker 1: you know, the kids are raised on video games and
1:20:13
Speaker 1: indoor you know, all their connections. You know, when I
1:20:17
Speaker 1: was a kid, the day you turned sixteen, you went
1:20:21
Speaker 1: and got your driver's license. That was that was the
1:20:23
Speaker 1: rite of passage. Kids don't need to do that anymore.
1:20:26
Speaker 1: They can just go in their bedroom and shut the
1:20:28
Speaker 1: door and have access to their whole social world, their
1:20:34
Speaker 1: social lives. And you know, parents, you know, usually don't
1:20:42
Speaker 1: know anything about it, and it's hard to compete with
1:20:45
Speaker 1: the you know, the pleasures of video games are pretty instant.
1:20:51
Speaker 1: UM and hunting, you know, hunting rewards patients and study,
1:20:57
Speaker 1: and you know, it's it's stiff competition. And then you have,
1:21:03
Speaker 1: you know, the divorce rate where you have a lot
1:21:05
Speaker 1: of times it's it's the mom who has the kids,
1:21:07
Speaker 1: and the mom doesn't have any experience hunting UM, and
1:21:12
Speaker 1: some moms get you know, unless a mom sort of
1:21:17
Speaker 1: makes a decision that she wants her kids to get
1:21:20
Speaker 1: involved in hunting and fishing UM and she has no experience,
1:21:25
Speaker 1: she has to seek somebody out for that. Um. So
1:21:29
Speaker 1: first of all, she has to be open to that possibility,
1:21:33
Speaker 1: and then second of all, she has to be able
1:21:34
Speaker 1: to find somebody to do that. Um, both of which
1:21:38
Speaker 1: are you know, getting increasingly difficult. UM. I wish you know,
1:21:46
Speaker 1: I wish I had an answer for it. Um. You know,
1:21:56
Speaker 1: I really don't know. I really don't know what it is.
1:22:01
Speaker 1: It's a challenge. It's a challenge that I think, and
1:22:05
Speaker 1: a lot of people are talking about this these days
1:22:07
Speaker 1: and have been for a while now, and for good reason. UM,
1:22:12
Speaker 1: you know, it's it's something we need to take seriously.
1:22:14
Speaker 1: There's always that that one buddy who says, well, good,
1:22:17
Speaker 1: I don't want more hunters in the woods. Have a
1:22:18
Speaker 1: hard enough time finding a little place too as it is.
1:22:21
Speaker 1: But as long as it's okay for me, there's no problem. Right.
1:22:26
Speaker 1: But that just isn't gonna work out in the long run.
1:22:28
Speaker 1: If if if he is, hunters aren't out there, UM
1:22:33
Speaker 1: able to speak up for ourselves in our way of life,
1:22:35
Speaker 1: if there's no one, if there's no one practicing it.
1:22:40
Speaker 1: Not to mention that economic impacts we have as far
1:22:42
Speaker 1: as our our tax dollars going to pay for conservation
1:22:46
Speaker 1: and wildlife management. UM. There's a whole lot of implications there,
1:22:50
Speaker 1: that's for sure. Yeah. You know, I think one thing
1:22:54
Speaker 1: Honors can do is look for those opportunities. You know,
1:22:58
Speaker 1: if you know a single mom with kids, it's you
1:23:02
Speaker 1: can approach her and say, you know, if you ever
1:23:04
Speaker 1: have any interest that you know, I'd be happy to
1:23:06
Speaker 1: take your your kids fishing or show them where I hunt. UM.
1:23:13
Speaker 1: I volunteered for some of these. UM there's a local
1:23:20
Speaker 1: you know, take your take your kids fishing day where
1:23:24
Speaker 1: a parent who doesn't have any experience can take their
1:23:27
Speaker 1: kids down to the river and um, you know, they're
1:23:30
Speaker 1: supplied with rod and real and bait UM and an
1:23:36
Speaker 1: adult who who takes an interest is you know, it's
1:23:41
Speaker 1: a powerful thing for any kids. Mm hmm. Yeah absolutely, Bill.
1:23:47
Speaker 1: I feel like I would love to just like sit
1:23:51
Speaker 1: down with you with a coffee or a beer and
1:23:53
Speaker 1: talk to you for like three hours. I feel like
1:23:55
Speaker 1: I enjoy your perspective and your story so much. But
1:23:59
Speaker 1: because I actually have a hard stop because I'm going
1:24:02
Speaker 1: to be put on babysitting duty here with the little
1:24:04
Speaker 1: guy soon, I have to wrap this out much sooner
1:24:07
Speaker 1: than i'd like. UM, But I've I have two more
1:24:10
Speaker 1: selfish questions, UM, that I want to run buy your
1:24:13
Speaker 1: here real quick. One of those, I am an absolute
1:24:18
Speaker 1: book worm addict. I I read and read and read.
1:24:23
Speaker 1: I'm just kind of curious. Being a writer and an outdoorsman,
1:24:26
Speaker 1: do you have any favorite books related to hunting or fishing,
1:24:29
Speaker 1: or wildlife or nature or anything like that that you'd recommend? Um,
1:24:36
Speaker 1: I've written about this. UM. William Faulkner's short story or
1:24:45
Speaker 1: sometimes it's been called a noveltt or whatever the word
1:24:51
Speaker 1: is for short novel called The Bear is one of
1:24:58
Speaker 1: the and it's actually been called the best short story
1:25:01
Speaker 1: in in English. Is is just a fantastic read. And
1:25:07
Speaker 1: it's about this kid's um. Then in Mississippi going to
1:25:11
Speaker 1: the big Bottom these you know, this swamp area to
1:25:16
Speaker 1: hunt to chase this big bear called Old Ben each year.
1:25:22
Speaker 1: And this group of hunters has been following Old Ben
1:25:27
Speaker 1: for so long that they he writes, at one point,
1:25:29
Speaker 1: he writes that they they don't really they no longer
1:25:32
Speaker 1: expect to catch him. It's just kind of a ritual.
1:25:35
Speaker 1: Let's say, go through. And he has his hunting mentor
1:25:40
Speaker 1: is a former slave named Sam Fathers who takes him
1:25:46
Speaker 1: under his wings and teaches him what he knows, and
1:25:51
Speaker 1: you know, by the time he's ten, this kid is
1:25:53
Speaker 1: sort of a master woodsman. But it's it's just it's
1:26:01
Speaker 1: just an amazing read. I reread it almost every year. Wow.
1:26:05
Speaker 1: So that's one. Yeah, that's one that's been on my list.
1:26:09
Speaker 1: I've heard a lot of people mentioned that anything anything
1:26:12
Speaker 1: else that jumps to mind, um not knocked out much
1:26:20
Speaker 1: hunting specific Uh. Cormac McCarthy really has a feel for
1:26:26
Speaker 1: the natural world and is a great writer to boot,
1:26:30
Speaker 1: So anything of his I really enjoy. Yeah, I've never
1:26:38
Speaker 1: I've never read such interesting, interesting descriptions of a landscape
1:26:44
Speaker 1: as he does. He has just infinite ways to describe
1:26:48
Speaker 1: a view or um a setting. It's it's very impressive, Yeah,
1:26:54
Speaker 1: and very totally original. Mm hmm. So so then I
1:26:59
Speaker 1: think that brings me to my my last question, which
1:27:02
Speaker 1: ties into that a little bit of what you talked
1:27:04
Speaker 1: about there with the bear. I'm just curious selfishly as
1:27:08
Speaker 1: a writer myself. And then also I think an important
1:27:12
Speaker 1: part of hunting and fishing culture is the story, right,
1:27:18
Speaker 1: the big fish story or the hunting story, and sitting
1:27:20
Speaker 1: around the campfire back at the lodge or whatever it
1:27:23
Speaker 1: might be, recounting your experience and reliving those moments, and
1:27:30
Speaker 1: you are a master of that craft. So Bill, from
1:27:33
Speaker 1: your perspective, what makes a good story? Uh? Damn, I
1:27:38
Speaker 1: wish I knew um good story? Uh wow, that is
1:27:47
Speaker 1: really hard say, because you you know, there's some different
1:27:53
Speaker 1: kinds of stories structuring in very different different ways. Um,
1:28:01
Speaker 1: I just feel totally inequick to give advice about that.
1:28:06
Speaker 1: Is there any consistent element between the stories that you
1:28:09
Speaker 1: enjoy the most or anything like that? Well, I guess
1:28:13
Speaker 1: the consistent element is that I like them all. But
1:28:18
Speaker 1: there you go. This is known as a weekending. Um.
1:28:26
Speaker 1: I wish I wish I could. I wish I could
1:28:28
Speaker 1: come up with something more interesting. Unexpected things. You know,
1:28:33
Speaker 1: every story should have some element of unexpected, unforeseeable things,
1:28:42
Speaker 1: should have some humor in it and some um you know,
1:28:50
Speaker 1: some pathos, something that really gets you at the heart
1:28:54
Speaker 1: heart level. Yeah. Well, to your earlier point that most
1:29:01
Speaker 1: kids stories are written by you, Bill, Um, where where
1:29:06
Speaker 1: can where can folks find your books? Could you? Could
1:29:09
Speaker 1: you kind of tell us? In my introduction I mentioned
1:29:13
Speaker 1: a bit of your work, But if if there's anything
1:29:15
Speaker 1: you'd like to say about your books, your articles, or
1:29:18
Speaker 1: where people can connect with you or find your work online.
1:29:21
Speaker 1: I'd love for you to share that with us now. Uh, well,
1:29:25
Speaker 1: you can find there's a lot of more on the
1:29:27
Speaker 1: Steel in the Stream website. Uh. My latest book, which
1:29:32
Speaker 1: came out in December is should the Attempt Be Burning
1:29:35
Speaker 1: Like that? Professionals, Professional Amateurs Guide to the Outdoors? Um,
1:29:43
Speaker 1: and you can find you know, you can search with
1:29:46
Speaker 1: my books on Amazon or any uh, you know, any
1:29:51
Speaker 1: of the online retailers and just type them by Bill
1:29:54
Speaker 1: Heavy and UM, they should come up. I gotta I
1:30:03
Speaker 1: gotta tell you a story, Bill before I let you
1:30:06
Speaker 1: go here, because because I picked a picked up a
1:30:09
Speaker 1: copy of your book, should the Tend to Be Burning
1:30:11
Speaker 1: like that? Um? I don't know. Maybe it was around
1:30:14
Speaker 1: Christmas time I had it, and my wife went into
1:30:18
Speaker 1: labor in late January, and that was the book I
1:30:21
Speaker 1: was currently reading. So I brought that with me to
1:30:23
Speaker 1: the hospital because her water broke. But it didn't seem
1:30:27
Speaker 1: like it was going to be a quick thing. So
1:30:29
Speaker 1: I knew, Okay, it's gonna be a long kind of night.
1:30:31
Speaker 1: So I brought exactly So I brought your book along
1:30:35
Speaker 1: and I had that sitting on like the window sill.
1:30:38
Speaker 1: Now things escalated throughout the morning, and now we've gotten
1:30:42
Speaker 1: to the point where she's about to give birth. And
1:30:47
Speaker 1: it had been this horribly intense, you know, eight hour process.
1:30:51
Speaker 1: I was so stressed my wife was going through all this.
1:30:53
Speaker 1: I couldn't do anything to help her. Um it just
1:30:56
Speaker 1: was was traumatizing. And finally it had gotten to the
1:31:00
Speaker 1: point where the doctor was going to come in. Because
1:31:02
Speaker 1: the doctor wasn't involved very much, had been like the
1:31:05
Speaker 1: nurses who have been helping us through all this. But
1:31:07
Speaker 1: now finally it was like that moment, it's okay, it's happening,
1:31:10
Speaker 1: let's go get the doctor. And I'm thinking, okay, like
1:31:13
Speaker 1: I'm all amped up. We've been running on adrenaline for
1:31:16
Speaker 1: like a day. And it was this very very intense moment,
1:31:19
Speaker 1: and I was scared and excited and just full with emotion.
1:31:23
Speaker 1: And the doctor comes in, and I'm imagining he's going
1:31:25
Speaker 1: to run in and and get ready and tell my
1:31:27
Speaker 1: wife to start pushing more and the baby is gonna
1:31:29
Speaker 1: come out and it's gonna be this huge thing. And
1:31:32
Speaker 1: he comes in and he looks at the window sill
1:31:34
Speaker 1: and he sees this book, and he says, a professional
1:31:38
Speaker 1: amateurs guide to the outdoors. He's a professional amateur. How
1:31:42
Speaker 1: can you be a professional and an amateur, isn't that
1:31:45
Speaker 1: isn't an oxymoron? And he's like, whose book is this?
1:31:47
Speaker 1: And I'm like, it's mine, but about my wife And
1:31:49
Speaker 1: he's like, well, I just don't get that. What is
1:31:51
Speaker 1: this book about? And for for several minutes he tries
1:31:55
Speaker 1: to talk to me about your book while my wife's
1:31:58
Speaker 1: screaming in agony right next to me. It was the
1:32:02
Speaker 1: most bizarre experience. It's weird. Yeah, So, so thank you
1:32:08
Speaker 1: for that. Bill. You've given me a story I will
1:32:11
Speaker 1: never forget because of your book title. So yeah, I'm
1:32:17
Speaker 1: glad he was born without complicating as soon as as
1:32:23
Speaker 1: soon as I cleared the air on what the book
1:32:25
Speaker 1: was about, and he got back to work. Um, it
1:32:28
Speaker 1: all went very smoothly, and we've got a very healthy
1:32:30
Speaker 1: baby boy now, so it's a happy ending. Yeah. So so, Bill,
1:32:36
Speaker 1: thank you, thank you so much for being here. I
1:32:38
Speaker 1: really enjoyed our conversation. And as I've said already to
1:32:42
Speaker 1: anyone listening, I cannot recommend Bill's books enough and read
1:32:47
Speaker 1: everything he writes for Field and stream it's it's absolutely
1:32:49
Speaker 1: top notch, So thank you Bill. You're bet I enjoyed
1:32:53
Speaker 1: it and that is a rap. I hope you enjoyed
1:32:56
Speaker 1: that one as much as I did. And if you
1:32:59
Speaker 1: dig it, kick out that please go on over to
1:33:02
Speaker 1: iTunes and leave us a rating or review. It's a
1:33:05
Speaker 1: huge help keeps the lights on, it keeps his podcast going,
1:33:08
Speaker 1: So thank you in advance for your help there. Also,
1:33:11
Speaker 1: if I can have you do a few more things,
1:33:13
Speaker 1: make sure you subscribe to the Wired Hunt YouTube channel,
1:33:16
Speaker 1: putting more and more videos out there. I would love
1:33:19
Speaker 1: you guys to catch shows. And finally, make sure you're
1:33:22
Speaker 1: following wired Hunt on Facebook and Instagram. I'm sharing lots
1:33:26
Speaker 1: about my day to day adventures there as well and
1:33:29
Speaker 1: other news. Want to give you another reminder that I
1:33:31
Speaker 1: am going to be at the back Country Hunters and
1:33:33
Speaker 1: Anglers camp Fire story Night next week May in Detroit, Michigan.
1:33:39
Speaker 1: If you're telling a story there, the story time is
1:33:41
Speaker 1: from seven to nine pm at the Detroit Bus Company.
1:33:45
Speaker 1: I would love to see you guys there. I will
1:33:47
Speaker 1: be there saying hi, shaking some hands, spinning some yarns
1:33:52
Speaker 1: and it should be an absolute blast. Would love to
1:33:54
Speaker 1: see you in Detroit next Tuesday. And then if that
1:33:58
Speaker 1: doesn't work out, if you fast forward to June one,
1:34:01
Speaker 1: Steve Ronella and the Meat Eater crew are going to
1:34:03
Speaker 1: be having a live podcast in Columbus, Ohio, like I
1:34:07
Speaker 1: said on June one, and I'm gonna be there as
1:34:09
Speaker 1: one of their guests. I would love to see you
1:34:12
Speaker 1: there too. I think that most of the tickets are
1:34:14
Speaker 1: sold already, but there might be a few left if
1:34:16
Speaker 1: you hurry, so head on over to meat Eater dot
1:34:19
Speaker 1: live to get tickets for that. Again, that's Columbus, Ohio June.
1:34:24
Speaker 1: Would love to see you there. It would love to
1:34:26
Speaker 1: see you at the b h A Story night on May. Finally,
1:34:29
Speaker 1: want to thank our partners who make all this possible.
1:34:31
Speaker 1: Big thanks to Yeddie Cooler's, Matthews Archery, May Haven Optics,
1:34:34
Speaker 1: White Tailed Properties and hunt Terra Maps. And finally, of course,
1:34:39
Speaker 1: thank you all for listening, thanks for being a part
1:34:41
Speaker 1: of the wire hunt community, and until next time, I
1:34:44
Speaker 1: hope you'll stay wired to Hunt.