Latest / The MeatEater Podcast / Ep. 051: Seattle, Washington. Steven Rinella talks with traditional bowhunter Ron Rohrbaugh, the pizza magnate Jimmy Doran, and t-shirt magnate Janis Putelis from the MeatEater crew.

Transcript

Ep. 051: Seattle, Washington. Steven Rinella talks with traditional bowhunter Ron Rohrbaugh, the pizza magnate Jimmy Doran, and t-shirt magnate Janis Putelis from the MeatEater crew. · The MeatEater Podcast

• 0:10
  Speaker 1: This is the Meat Eater podcast coming at you shirtless,
• 0:14
  Speaker 1: severely bug bitten and in my case, underwear. Listening to
• 0:17
  Speaker 1: Hunt Don't Meet You Eat podcast. You can't predict that anything.
• 0:26
  Speaker 1: All right, Jimmy Dorn's here. Can we see what you
• 0:29
  Speaker 1: do the pizza guy? Any questions to come up? Now?
• 0:36
  Speaker 1: Jimmy was just being a good friend and drop by
• 0:38
  Speaker 1: now here. He is sitting in We ate some fantastic pizza,
• 0:43
  Speaker 1: did we ever? Man, Well you're welcome. What's it called.
• 0:47
  Speaker 1: It's called Belltown Pizza, downtown Seattle, Belltown. Yeah. Well Jimmy
• 0:51
  Speaker 1: does all that pepperoni and all that every it's all
• 0:55
  Speaker 1: wolf meat. That's it. It's ground up. He grounds up
• 0:58
  Speaker 1: his own wolf meat. Still called the health department. So
• 1:06
  Speaker 1: any pizza, any piece of questions? Any went here as
• 1:08
  Speaker 1: tofer him over to Mr Dornan. Also, you had you
• 1:11
  Speaker 1: had a big year. I had a fantastic year, big year,
• 1:15
  Speaker 1: very big here. Yeah, best ever So I'm relatively new
• 1:18
  Speaker 1: Hunter definitely this year was took the cake. I'm a
• 1:20
  Speaker 1: little worried. Next, you're not in pizza sale, No, No,
• 1:23
  Speaker 1: just American elbow greaseman, just running his business, getting out there,
• 1:27
  Speaker 1: mixing it up, getting a lot of a lot of
• 1:30
  Speaker 1: excellent big game hunts. Yes, very good, very fortunately wears
• 1:33
  Speaker 1: a meat eater T shirt. That's it in the mediator
• 1:35
  Speaker 1: T shirt smell lucky charn or he carries in his
• 1:37
  Speaker 1: backpack and he's kind enough to take pholdo himself with it.
• 1:40
  Speaker 1: Maybe it depends on how bad it stinks on day four.
• 1:43
  Speaker 1: No tearing it up. Yeah, no, fantastic. Yeah. Two mule
• 1:48
  Speaker 1: deer and an elk when a mule deer in Central
• 1:51
  Speaker 1: Oregon elk in the Missouri River breaks in Montana and uh,
• 1:54
  Speaker 1: and then shot a really nice elk by Fossil and
• 1:57
  Speaker 1: Central Oregon. Great stuffy. And then you got some doves.
• 2:05
  Speaker 1: Shot a few doves you know. Um, we had some
• 2:09
  Speaker 1: of those doves for Thanksgiving dinner. You're welcome. Some people
• 2:13
  Speaker 1: kept calling them little turkeys, little turkeys because we did
• 2:16
  Speaker 1: the whole right. Because my wife I was complaining of
• 2:18
  Speaker 1: Thanksgiving because seldom do we eat turkey on Thanksgiving? Yeah,
• 2:22
  Speaker 1: kind of like we just like cook you save up
• 2:25
  Speaker 1: like good stuff, so do you ever? Thanksgiving we had
• 2:27
  Speaker 1: hooligans or candlefish, king salmon, halibit uh moose smelt met
• 2:39
  Speaker 1: in morning doves, and because people like Gripe, my brother
• 2:44
  Speaker 1: Matt and my wife bitch about the lack of a turkey.
• 2:49
  Speaker 1: So I plucked those morning doves and cooked my little
• 2:51
  Speaker 1: mini turkeys and it did look like little mini turkeys. Man,
• 2:54
  Speaker 1: it was cute. But everybody got their own little turkey. Yeah,
• 2:57
  Speaker 1: I did that A piece there turkey. Yeah, it was
• 3:00
  Speaker 1: a step in the right direction. And normally I don't
• 3:02
  Speaker 1: even few the normal sides. Like last year we did
• 3:05
  Speaker 1: was called a mixed boil, you know, which is like
• 3:08
  Speaker 1: all kind of boiled vegetables. And but this year we
• 3:12
  Speaker 1: had all the normal sides. A matter of fact that
• 3:15
  Speaker 1: you know that mash potato we're eating last night, that
• 3:18
  Speaker 1: ships from Thanksgiving? That's old. Still it was good. So
• 3:24
  Speaker 1: that was just mat just like a cream mash mash yams.
• 3:28
  Speaker 1: But I mean, think of how old that is, How
• 3:29
  Speaker 1: long ago is Thanksgiving? Just been sitting in my fridge
• 3:31
  Speaker 1: a couple of weeks. You don't feel sick at all, Dude,
• 3:37
  Speaker 1: you'll be heading for the door. Hey, you know a
• 3:40
  Speaker 1: lot of here's this. I'm not glad you're here. Um
• 3:44
  Speaker 1: is that is mashed patoes? Like pretty stable? I would
• 3:47
  Speaker 1: say it last a while when I was in college,
• 3:49
  Speaker 1: I needed a couple of weeks in I don't know now,
• 3:51
  Speaker 1: would be about a week probably when you were because
• 3:53
  Speaker 1: you're in the commercial food business, are you, um, are
• 3:56
  Speaker 1: the guidelines likely? The guidelines are probably like, we'reridiculously safe,
• 4:01
  Speaker 1: right they are this proper holding temperashure, stuff like that,
• 4:04
  Speaker 1: proper refrigeration, making sure you know you don't want to
• 4:06
  Speaker 1: get in. Does it feel extreme? Ors it feel reasonable?
• 4:08
  Speaker 1: It's totally reasonable. Yeah. Something with potatoes. When I worked
• 4:15
  Speaker 1: at a restaurant to get a ski pass for a while,
• 4:19
  Speaker 1: we serve baked potatoes. They're wrapped in aluminium oil, and
• 4:22
  Speaker 1: there was a strict, hard fast rule that you could
• 4:25
  Speaker 1: not take those potatoes home. Like they're very worried about that,
• 4:30
  Speaker 1: and maybe because it was just because the aluminium oil
• 4:32
  Speaker 1: would hold it in that like danger zone too long
• 4:36
  Speaker 1: could be And what is it that you would get
• 4:37
  Speaker 1: from uh potato like that? I have no idea. I
• 4:42
  Speaker 1: don't know in case it's spending a lot of time
• 4:43
  Speaker 1: in the bathroom other than I'm not really sure. Because
• 4:48
  Speaker 1: I read something not too long ago about potato salad
• 4:51
  Speaker 1: because everybody thinks that's got mayo and ship. No, it's
• 4:54
  Speaker 1: not the mayo, which the potatoes. It's actually yea son.
• 4:58
  Speaker 1: Potatoes grow back tia really quickly, especially combined with the mayo,
• 5:02
  Speaker 1: And so it's the potatoes that are the problem, not
• 5:04
  Speaker 1: the mayo itself. Oh yeah, I always thought it was
• 5:06
  Speaker 1: the mayo too. Of course it's mayo because that stuff
• 5:08
  Speaker 1: gets nasty. But it's the potatoes. You're gonna get sick
• 5:12
  Speaker 1: for those mash those weeks old mash cats. That was
• 5:16
  Speaker 1: weighing in with the Voice of Reason on tatoes was Ron,
• 5:19
  Speaker 1: give us your last name? How you sounded out? I
• 5:23
  Speaker 1: struggled with that one. Everyone struggles with it. You got
• 5:26
  Speaker 1: it on the on the front of your new book,
• 5:30
  Speaker 1: Traditional bow Hunters Path. That's not a King of the
• 5:33
  Speaker 1: Mountain will pants you're wearing, is it? No, it's not
• 5:36
  Speaker 1: King of the Mountain Remember that company? Yeah? I love
• 5:38
  Speaker 1: King of the Mountain stuff. I have a King in
• 5:39
  Speaker 1: the Mountain vest. Did they still around when that ship
• 5:42
  Speaker 1: came out? I was just I couldn't. I was so
• 5:45
  Speaker 1: paralyzed by jealousy when that catalog came out, and I
• 5:49
  Speaker 1: was a young lad. I wanted the trapper will pull
• 5:52
  Speaker 1: over and I'd look at that price tag three fifty
• 5:56
  Speaker 1: at the time, which was in the eighties. Oh yeah
• 5:59
  Speaker 1: it was, which is thousands now. I remember being like,
• 6:02
  Speaker 1: what it must be magical, but that was doesn't be
• 6:05
  Speaker 1: able to fly. That stuff was the quality close we've
• 6:08
  Speaker 1: will you know for the day. I mean that stuff
• 6:11
  Speaker 1: was great, but it was meant. It's selling point was
• 6:13
  Speaker 1: you can machine washing. So I remember Cabela's came out
• 6:16
  Speaker 1: with a knockoff. They came out with a knockoff, and
• 6:20
  Speaker 1: I bought some of that ship and took it out
• 6:22
  Speaker 1: of Hunt, and after I got a wet a couple
• 6:24
  Speaker 1: of times, it was like I was wearing uh yeah,
• 6:27
  Speaker 1: like I was in a Shakespeare play, because it's just
• 6:31
  Speaker 1: whatever happened and hadn't happened, you know. And then you
• 6:34
  Speaker 1: you get where you didn't want to wash them because
• 6:36
  Speaker 1: it's just gonna make them worse. So the pretty soon
• 6:38
  Speaker 1: they're just like when you walk, they sort of crackle
• 6:41
  Speaker 1: because of like dried blood on the knees and ship,
• 6:43
  Speaker 1: you know, but those are the do you like them?
• 6:46
  Speaker 1: Here's don't drink too bad in that picture? Not too bad.
• 6:49
  Speaker 1: Actually have a wool coat that I loved that was
• 6:51
  Speaker 1: made by a company called wolf woolens or something like that.
• 6:56
  Speaker 1: I don't know what. The same thing happened. I were
• 6:58
  Speaker 1: in the rain. It shrunk, it got really small, and
• 7:00
  Speaker 1: when those deals used to her arms out and the
• 7:01
  Speaker 1: sleeves come up to here. I loved it so much
• 7:03
  Speaker 1: I took it in my in my shed and I
• 7:06
  Speaker 1: made a frame out of two by fours and I
• 7:09
  Speaker 1: hung cement blocks off of it, stretching. Wait waited it.
• 7:12
  Speaker 1: They kept wetting it again and trying to get it.
• 7:14
  Speaker 1: Never worked, never got it back. It was all misshaping
• 7:17
  Speaker 1: and screwed up. And I gave it to a friend.
• 7:19
  Speaker 1: If someone came in your shed and they think you're
• 7:21
  Speaker 1: up to some weird devil stuff, you're doing some weird
• 7:27
  Speaker 1: I've been that same situation with a pair of came
• 7:30
  Speaker 1: the mountain. I think they were called the bum Light
• 7:32
  Speaker 1: pant on them as a hunting guide, you know, and
• 7:36
  Speaker 1: had to have the best and uh same thing. I
• 7:40
  Speaker 1: washed them and I don't know if the no. I
• 7:42
  Speaker 1: did cold wash. I mean that's what you have to do,
• 7:45
  Speaker 1: and even that, just like the complete saturation of that wool.
• 7:50
  Speaker 1: I put them on the next time, and I was
• 7:52
  Speaker 1: a ballerining, you know, it's just like what they called them,
• 7:55
  Speaker 1: and they're like, yeah, you need to rewind them and
• 7:58
  Speaker 1: then slowly stretched them. But when it had happened, and
• 8:00
  Speaker 1: when I was trying, I just you know, overpowered, I guess,
• 8:03
  Speaker 1: and busted the scene that kind of go that's like
• 8:05
  Speaker 1: between the waistline in your pocket, and just ripped him
• 8:08
  Speaker 1: right across. So they ended up fixing them for me
• 8:11
  Speaker 1: for free, but they couldn't stretch them back out. Well,
• 8:15
  Speaker 1: somehow they got to be back to normal side. I
• 8:18
  Speaker 1: don't know if I just warmed back into normal fitting.
• 8:20
  Speaker 1: But that was ten years ago and I haven't watched
• 8:22
  Speaker 1: them since. You guys want to see a good segue.
• 8:24
  Speaker 1: You're ready for a big segue. Jimmy Um as a
• 8:28
  Speaker 1: traditional bowl hunter, imagine you're hunting wool lot ron. Yeah,
• 8:33
  Speaker 1: of course that's a great seg I like, well, I
• 8:37
  Speaker 1: like fleece because you gotta be quiet. You gotta be
• 8:39
  Speaker 1: gonna get close, and so you gotta be quiet. Like
• 8:42
  Speaker 1: what's like, okay, traditional bowl hunting, now that's recurbing longbow.
• 8:45
  Speaker 1: Recurbing longbow. Yep. Let me say, I do want to
• 8:49
  Speaker 1: get back to being real close and real quiet and
• 8:50
  Speaker 1: all that. But like, I don't understand how is the
• 8:54
  Speaker 1: recurve traditional because recurs like a long bowl. Right, you
• 8:58
  Speaker 1: have cultures so they feel that. Correct me if I'm wrong,
• 9:02
  Speaker 1: But the bow and arrow in North America as a
• 9:05
  Speaker 1: technology is maybe four or five thousand years old, and
• 9:10
  Speaker 1: people were still shooting long bowls up to the moment
• 9:12
  Speaker 1: when they got their hands on firearms. Whoever was using
• 9:17
  Speaker 1: a recurve? Like who made the recurve? Yeah, you have
• 9:20
  Speaker 1: to be careful of the term traditional, I think, because
• 9:22
  Speaker 1: it you know, it's just taken on its whole own life.
• 9:26
  Speaker 1: And so when I think a traditional bow hunting in
• 9:28
  Speaker 1: the traditional archery, it's really kind of this generalization of
• 9:32
  Speaker 1: everything pre compound. Yeah, that's yeah, So it's really I mean,
• 9:37
  Speaker 1: for me especially, I think of it as post war era,
• 9:40
  Speaker 1: you know, nties through you know, the late sixties, you
• 9:44
  Speaker 1: know when the compound came into being. You know, that's
• 9:47
  Speaker 1: really when traditional arch tree took off and became really popular.
• 9:51
  Speaker 1: I don't think traditions means a response to the compound. No, No,
• 9:57
  Speaker 1: I think it took offense to post war air I did,
• 10:00
  Speaker 1: I said, yeah, yeah, I mean I think you know,
• 10:04
  Speaker 1: people coming back from being overseas from being in the war.
• 10:07
  Speaker 1: I mist phenomenon is true for hunting in general, but
• 10:10
  Speaker 1: you know for archery, especially coming back and being able
• 10:13
  Speaker 1: to pick up a bow. You know, a lot of
• 10:15
  Speaker 1: the states were just legalizing, you know, seasons for archery.
• 10:18
  Speaker 1: At that time, archery was super popular. There was even
• 10:21
  Speaker 1: not just bow hunting, but you know, there were archery
• 10:24
  Speaker 1: lanes in the cities. There was you know, all kinds
• 10:26
  Speaker 1: of archery competitions, and the fifties mile Man belonged to
• 10:29
  Speaker 1: the Chicago Bowman. Yeah, exactly, and it was you know,
• 10:33
  Speaker 1: like the then Pope and Young was kind of a
• 10:35
  Speaker 1: thing and they're pushing for seasons. But he was a
• 10:38
  Speaker 1: recurve hunter. But like a recurve isn't a throwback, Like
• 10:42
  Speaker 1: but who didn't vent the recurve? So, I mean recurve
• 10:45
  Speaker 1: goes back to probably some asiatic style of bows, you know,
• 10:49
  Speaker 1: where there's a lot of um, you know, there's a
• 10:51
  Speaker 1: lot of reflex and deflex in the limb um, some
• 10:55
  Speaker 1: recurving of the limbs, you know, to get get static
• 10:57
  Speaker 1: tips in some cases. You know you have seen these bows,
• 11:01
  Speaker 1: uh you know, some of them made out of bone
• 11:03
  Speaker 1: and send you horn and send you. Uh, it's fantastic. Yeah,
• 11:09
  Speaker 1: but it was never like an America. It was never
• 11:10
  Speaker 1: There's like no American indigenous cultures that were shooting recurve bows,
• 11:15
  Speaker 1: not that I can think of. Probably the earliest I
• 11:18
  Speaker 1: can think of was the bowyer for the Bear Archery Company,
• 11:22
  Speaker 1: Fred Bear's bowyer was Nail's Grumley, and he used to
• 11:25
  Speaker 1: build a static reach recurves on the end of what
• 11:28
  Speaker 1: you might otherwise look at and think was a long bow.
• 11:31
  Speaker 1: You know, it's got these static tips on them. Now
• 11:35
  Speaker 1: what so you do your hunt in primarily the recurve,
• 11:38
  Speaker 1: recurve V and long bow. Yeah. I killed two good
• 11:41
  Speaker 1: bucks this year, one with a long bow, one with
• 11:43
  Speaker 1: a recurve and forth. It was not just an idiot um.
• 11:46
  Speaker 1: You know, it's no different than guns or whatever. You know,
• 11:49
  Speaker 1: you just have a bunch of stuff you'd like to
• 11:51
  Speaker 1: play with in different setups. And one of the things
• 11:54
  Speaker 1: I love about traditional archery is just each but each
• 11:57
  Speaker 1: bow is different, every piece of wood is different. Every
• 12:00
  Speaker 1: you know, whoever made it has put their own their
• 12:03
  Speaker 1: own touch on it. You there's a lot of craftsmanship
• 12:05
  Speaker 1: that that goes into it, and so everyone is different.
• 12:08
  Speaker 1: It's just like, you know, going hunting with a different
• 12:10
  Speaker 1: buddy every time you go out. Now, did you did?
• 12:13
  Speaker 1: You used to cool so far jimmy out all that? Absolutely?
• 12:18
  Speaker 1: You did you? Did you get into it as a
• 12:23
  Speaker 1: response to like experiences rifle hunting or were you just
• 12:26
  Speaker 1: were you just a bow hunter flat out? Your old
• 12:29
  Speaker 1: man was a rifle hunter. Yeah. Now, I grew up
• 12:31
  Speaker 1: with a rifle and a muzzleloader, hunted mostly you know,
• 12:34
  Speaker 1: fifty caliber flintlock to three to seventy UM. And I
• 12:38
  Speaker 1: got into I had a bow, you know, growing up
• 12:40
  Speaker 1: as a kid. I had this little fiberglass bow that
• 12:43
  Speaker 1: a neighbor gave me and I loved it. Man, I
• 12:45
  Speaker 1: went everywhere with that thing. I just couldn't be separated
• 12:47
  Speaker 1: from it. Used to shooting our field and we had
• 12:50
  Speaker 1: this big creek by our house, and I'd go out
• 12:51
  Speaker 1: there and you know, fling arrows at muskrats and stuff.
• 12:54
  Speaker 1: And then I just kind of got away from it
• 12:56
  Speaker 1: because my family wasn't into bow hunting. We were, you know,
• 12:58
  Speaker 1: we were into gun hunting. And we used to go
• 13:00
  Speaker 1: to our cabin in Pennsylvania and gun hunting and I
• 13:03
  Speaker 1: loved it. And then, uh, you know, at some point
• 13:05
  Speaker 1: in college, I went back to the compound bow and
• 13:08
  Speaker 1: I started hunting with a compound bow a little bit,
• 13:10
  Speaker 1: just to take advantage of the seasons. Yeah, just take
• 13:12
  Speaker 1: advantage of the seasons. And I did like the bow hunt.
• 13:14
  Speaker 1: It wasn't like I didn't like it or anything. I just,
• 13:16
  Speaker 1: you know, I just had gotten away from it. And then,
• 13:18
  Speaker 1: you know, I tell this story in the book. You know,
• 13:21
  Speaker 1: I ended up in the hospital. I fell down a
• 13:22
  Speaker 1: set of steps and you know, messed up my back
• 13:25
  Speaker 1: a little bit. And then I killed a deer, kill
• 13:27
  Speaker 1: a small buck, and I tried to whale him over
• 13:29
  Speaker 1: a fence, you know, kind of one of these clean
• 13:32
  Speaker 1: and jerk moves, was a woven wire fence, and I
• 13:34
  Speaker 1: just totally wrenched my back, ruptured a disk in my back,
• 13:37
  Speaker 1: and it's really messed up. Deer hunting injury. Deer hunting
• 13:40
  Speaker 1: injury injury. Ended up in the hospital and traction. And yeah,
• 13:46
  Speaker 1: my my girlfriend at the time standpoint it was not
• 13:53
  Speaker 1: worth it. She brought me this grocery bag full of magazines,
• 13:57
  Speaker 1: and one of the magazines in that bag was Traditional
• 13:59
  Speaker 1: bow Hunter. It was issue, and I pulled that thing
• 14:03
  Speaker 1: out and I started reading it. It was like, it's
• 14:05
  Speaker 1: just a little fire. Now I write for the magazine. Yeah,
• 14:08
  Speaker 1: I just not stopped reading that magazine. I read it
• 14:11
  Speaker 1: over and over land in the hospital, you know, legs
• 14:13
  Speaker 1: pulled up in ropes, and when I left, I was like, this,
• 14:16
  Speaker 1: this is for me, this is what I want to do,
• 14:18
  Speaker 1: and I've just been doing it ever since. I love it. Yeah,
• 14:21
  Speaker 1: that's the thing about like bow hunt. My relationship with
• 14:25
  Speaker 1: bow hunt was eyes that along with most people, I
• 14:30
  Speaker 1: grew up with you just telling the bulks to let you.
• 14:32
  Speaker 1: Gave you much more hunting seasons, you know, like in Michigan,
• 14:36
  Speaker 1: I grew up general firearms ten days long. If you
• 14:39
  Speaker 1: bow hunted, you started bow hunting for deer October one.
• 14:42
  Speaker 1: You hunted up to the November, the mid November rifles season.
• 14:47
  Speaker 1: Then the woods fills up with dudes, right, it gets chaotic,
• 14:51
  Speaker 1: that thing ends, and you bow hunted again for another
• 14:53
  Speaker 1: month and a half. Yeah. I mean, just like triple
• 14:55
  Speaker 1: or quadruple, your stay is always out in the woods.
• 14:58
  Speaker 1: But it was that. But it was never like, um,
• 15:01
  Speaker 1: you know, I always appreciate the challenge of bow hunting,
• 15:03
  Speaker 1: but it was just a thing like I like to hunt.
• 15:06
  Speaker 1: There was a bow season. Therefore, you know you hunted
• 15:11
  Speaker 1: with a bow. But I was never looking to then
• 15:13
  Speaker 1: go and this might not be the word you use,
• 15:14
  Speaker 1: but I was never looking to then go handicap myself
• 15:17
  Speaker 1: by having a self imposed limit on the technology. Yeah, yeah,
• 15:25
  Speaker 1: I think there's a couple of things. I mean, you know,
• 15:29
  Speaker 1: self imposing yourself to something that's more primitive can come
• 15:34
  Speaker 1: and like, you know, you can do that for a
• 15:35
  Speaker 1: lot of reasons. So you know, somebody who picks up
• 15:38
  Speaker 1: a rifle might self impose some trophy quality. You know,
• 15:41
  Speaker 1: I'm only gonna kill at white tailor you know, I
• 15:44
  Speaker 1: want to kill a big six by six bull elk.
• 15:47
  Speaker 1: You know, for me, I didn't have a ton of money.
• 15:49
  Speaker 1: You know, when I started out doing this, I couldn't
• 15:52
  Speaker 1: really travel as much as I wanted to to go hunt,
• 15:54
  Speaker 1: and so self imposing traditional archery on myself. And I've
• 15:58
  Speaker 1: I've only hunted with a gun maybe three times in
• 16:01
  Speaker 1: the last twenty five years. Just don't do anymore. I
• 16:04
  Speaker 1: don't do an I have a hunt only traditional bow
• 16:08
  Speaker 1: and those and the times I have hunted, it's been
• 16:10
  Speaker 1: with a with a flintlock, and I have taken a
• 16:13
  Speaker 1: couple of deer with that, But you know it's for me.
• 16:15
  Speaker 1: It's all been recurving longbow since then. But it's that
• 16:19
  Speaker 1: that's the that's how I'm self imposing my It's where
• 16:22
  Speaker 1: I'm getting the new challenge from. So instead of killing
• 16:25
  Speaker 1: something bigger, you know, I'm interested in getting closer and
• 16:28
  Speaker 1: making my equipment more primitive so that you know, I
• 16:31
  Speaker 1: get that same kind of rush and that same kind
• 16:34
  Speaker 1: of challenge and experience. You know, you can only shoot
• 16:37
  Speaker 1: so many white tail does you know before he's like, yeah,
• 16:40
  Speaker 1: I'm gonna try something a little different. Maybe I'll you know,
• 16:42
  Speaker 1: long bow and wooden arrows. It's another way to kind
• 16:45
  Speaker 1: of get at this. What's your effective range? You know
• 16:50
  Speaker 1: with with eat with each set of tackle you're using there, like,
• 16:53
  Speaker 1: what's the what's the not pushing it? But you know,
• 16:56
  Speaker 1: a good reasonable shots? Is that right? Nice and clothes? Yeah,
• 17:00
  Speaker 1: twenty yards is you know where I like to be.
• 17:02
  Speaker 1: I've shot you know, white tails out to a little
• 17:05
  Speaker 1: over thirty. I shot a clip springer in Africa at
• 17:08
  Speaker 1: over thirty, you know, but generally twenty yards. And I
• 17:11
  Speaker 1: know some guys who like that, you know, they set
• 17:13
  Speaker 1: up their ground blinds or tree stands or whatever. For
• 17:15
  Speaker 1: the closest shot they can with something like a long
• 17:17
  Speaker 1: but they want to be ten yards twelve yards. I've
• 17:20
  Speaker 1: actually found that that's worse for me because when you
• 17:23
  Speaker 1: have that animal on top of you, I mean, you
• 17:25
  Speaker 1: have no room for air, You're gonna get winded, You're
• 17:28
  Speaker 1: gonna you're talking about wol clothing and being quiet, you know. Yeah,
• 17:33
  Speaker 1: I mean just just getting the full draw is impossible.
• 17:35
  Speaker 1: And so I've learned that for me, about eighteen yards
• 17:38
  Speaker 1: is where I want to be. You know, you got
• 17:40
  Speaker 1: to start getting above eighteen. Weird stuff can happen, but
• 17:42
  Speaker 1: at eighteen that's pretty good. You know. With an example
• 17:45
  Speaker 1: of weird stuff they can happen. Well, deer can jump
• 17:47
  Speaker 1: the string. You know, you can screw up a shot
• 17:49
  Speaker 1: pretty quick at thirty five yards with it, you know,
• 17:51
  Speaker 1: with a traditional bow. I mean I regularly practice out
• 17:53
  Speaker 1: tot you know, and I can I can hit the
• 17:57
  Speaker 1: you know, the vital zone and on a three D target,
• 18:00
  Speaker 1: you know, easily at thirty five again and again and again.
• 18:03
  Speaker 1: But that's not a live animal. That's not an animal
• 18:05
  Speaker 1: that can jump and move. It's like the compound shooter
• 18:08
  Speaker 1: who likes to shoot who will fling arrows at ninety
• 18:10
  Speaker 1: but then he's deadly exactly. It's also a whole different
• 18:14
  Speaker 1: ball game when you're cold, when you're nervous. I'll talk
• 18:17
  Speaker 1: a lot about, you know, performance anxiety or buck fever
• 18:20
  Speaker 1: in this book because I think it it probably is
• 18:23
  Speaker 1: the reason it's so hard to replicate that in practice training.
• 18:32
  Speaker 1: You know, I used to always have guys at the
• 18:35
  Speaker 1: range when we'd have hunters coming in. We go and,
• 18:37
  Speaker 1: you know, shoot a couple of shots, and like, all right,
• 18:39
  Speaker 1: you're going is good? Now run fifty yards, turn around,
• 18:42
  Speaker 1: sprint back, grab your rifle, and then off your knee.
• 18:44
  Speaker 1: You know, let's see what your group looks like at
• 18:46
  Speaker 1: a hundred Yeah big. You know it's like, I don't
• 18:50
  Speaker 1: know any other way to Yeah, what's your take on it?
• 18:52
  Speaker 1: You can't prep for it. Do you think you can
• 18:54
  Speaker 1: prep for You can't prep for it? And well, you
• 18:56
  Speaker 1: can prep for it, but I think it's even worse
• 18:59
  Speaker 1: with traditional arch your gear, because if you're shooting a
• 19:02
  Speaker 1: compound or a rifle, you've got a site. You know,
• 19:05
  Speaker 1: it's it's just talk compounds. You know, you've got a site,
• 19:07
  Speaker 1: pin and you've got a peep and not only are
• 19:10
  Speaker 1: they tools for you to you know, to hit your target,
• 19:13
  Speaker 1: you know, to line up and hit what you want
• 19:14
  Speaker 1: to hit. Put there. It's a support system. It gives
• 19:17
  Speaker 1: your brain a set of you know, it's a mechanism
• 19:20
  Speaker 1: that you know what to do. You're gonna draw that bow,
• 19:22
  Speaker 1: You're gonna line up the pin and the peep, You're
• 19:24
  Speaker 1: gonna put the pin on where you want to hit,
• 19:26
  Speaker 1: and you're gonna release your arrow with without sights, which
• 19:29
  Speaker 1: is the way most guys shoot long bows and recurves.
• 19:32
  Speaker 1: There's none of that, so you have to force your brain,
• 19:35
  Speaker 1: you know, and your whole body with you know, with
• 19:37
  Speaker 1: all the adrenaline pumping through you come to full draw.
• 19:40
  Speaker 1: Pick a spot, you know, on the animal. Just find
• 19:42
  Speaker 1: some ripple of muscle, you know whatever it is a
• 19:45
  Speaker 1: little dappless unlight, and look at that spot and stare
• 19:48
  Speaker 1: it down and come to full draw and release. And
• 19:51
  Speaker 1: there's just no support mechanism, and it's so easy to
• 19:54
  Speaker 1: fall apart. It's really easy to just know. I mean,
• 19:57
  Speaker 1: you know, you just whom and the arrow is gone,
• 20:00
  Speaker 1: and you know it's nowhere near the animal you're trying
• 20:03
  Speaker 1: to hit. So you talk about um it was funny
• 20:06
  Speaker 1: you managed like the ripple of muscle or sunlight. You're
• 20:09
  Speaker 1: talking about being not just I'm gonna hit the deer
• 20:13
  Speaker 1: or not just that I'm gonna hit the rib area,
• 20:17
  Speaker 1: but you're like, I'm going to hit that that thing.
• 20:19
  Speaker 1: I'm gonna hit that little hair that's out of place
• 20:21
  Speaker 1: right now, it's the whole like burdock or whatever on
• 20:25
  Speaker 1: his side exactly. I mean, you have to. It's so hard.
• 20:28
  Speaker 1: We have to train yourself to do that because you don't.
• 20:31
  Speaker 1: I mean, when that big buck comes in or any
• 20:33
  Speaker 1: animal comes in, you know, you're just your blood is pumping,
• 20:36
  Speaker 1: you're you're not thinking right and being able to really
• 20:39
  Speaker 1: slow yourself down and say pick a spot is so important.
• 20:43
  Speaker 1: When I was a kid, my old man would put
• 20:44
  Speaker 1: stickers on our bows and the sticker said, stay calm,
• 20:47
  Speaker 1: pick a spot now that you remember, not that you
• 20:49
  Speaker 1: would remember to read the sun bitch and sticker, but
• 20:51
  Speaker 1: it's just on there, you know, and it was like
• 20:53
  Speaker 1: it's reminder. But I remember like the first year miss
• 20:55
  Speaker 1: of the boat. It was, you know, feet from the
• 20:58
  Speaker 1: base of the tree and you couldn't imagine that. You
• 21:01
  Speaker 1: couldn't like, how could you miss that you can't. But
• 21:05
  Speaker 1: then you pull remember like those first times bowing. I
• 21:07
  Speaker 1: was twelve when I missed the first year of the bow.
• 21:09
  Speaker 1: And you pull back and you think about it like
• 21:12
  Speaker 1: you you couldn't even there's no recollection of doing any
• 21:15
  Speaker 1: of the things you're supposed to do. It was just
• 21:17
  Speaker 1: like there's a deer and you pull back and let go. Yeah,
• 21:22
  Speaker 1: And I think a lot of that's adrenaline too. I
• 21:24
  Speaker 1: think it's why we forget. You know, you take a
• 21:26
  Speaker 1: shot and you don't even remember where the animal went.
• 21:29
  Speaker 1: You don't remember seeing the arrow, you don't remember the shot.
• 21:31
  Speaker 1: I think your body is just so overloaded on adrenaline
• 21:34
  Speaker 1: that you just can't Your mind's just out of whack. Yeah.
• 21:39
  Speaker 1: I talked about this in the book too. But you know,
• 21:41
  Speaker 1: there's lots of you know, studies with humans looking at multitasking,
• 21:46
  Speaker 1: and we really suck at multitasking. You know. You can,
• 21:49
  Speaker 1: you can type an email and eat your lunch, But
• 21:52
  Speaker 1: try to type an email and talk on the phone
• 21:54
  Speaker 1: at the same time. I mean, it's really hard to
• 21:57
  Speaker 1: do that, you know, because you're using the same kind
• 21:59
  Speaker 1: of mental capacities, the same kinds of things in your brain.
• 22:02
  Speaker 1: You know you you make those decisions with the prefrontal
• 22:06
  Speaker 1: cortex of the brain each side. It's responsible for for
• 22:09
  Speaker 1: making all kinds of decisions when you're multitasking. And for me,
• 22:13
  Speaker 1: you know, I just have to break the whole shot
• 22:15
  Speaker 1: sequence down into two steps. And so when I see
• 22:20
  Speaker 1: an animal and I decide I'm going to shoot, I
• 22:22
  Speaker 1: have this whole thing I do in my head where
• 22:25
  Speaker 1: you know, I pick a spot, bow arm, my bo
• 22:28
  Speaker 1: arm goes in a certain position, and I draw to
• 22:31
  Speaker 1: my first anchor where my my hand comes to rest
• 22:33
  Speaker 1: under my cheekbone, and then I reaffirmed my spot. I'm like,
• 22:37
  Speaker 1: all right, I'm I'm on my spot. I'm still on
• 22:39
  Speaker 1: my spot. And then I just keep pulling until I
• 22:41
  Speaker 1: hit my second anchor and boom the arrows away And
• 22:44
  Speaker 1: you're literally running through a checklist in your head. Kind
• 22:49
  Speaker 1: of That's what I do when I practice, when I'm
• 22:51
  Speaker 1: actually hunting. Not the checklist doesn't always come because things
• 22:55
  Speaker 1: are happening so fast, but if the actions come, they're
• 22:59
  Speaker 1: just they're turned into your brain. You know, the muscle
• 23:02
  Speaker 1: memories there, the you know, it's all in your head
• 23:04
  Speaker 1: and you just kind of do it. But if I
• 23:06
  Speaker 1: don't have that system, you know. I found this found
• 23:08
  Speaker 1: us out the hard way. I'm just off all apart.
• 23:11
  Speaker 1: You know, I won't make a good shot. But with
• 23:14
  Speaker 1: the system, I'm good. You know. So now when you aim,
• 23:18
  Speaker 1: I know you talked about this in the in the book,
• 23:20
  Speaker 1: talking about like what what's the term like point when
• 23:24
  Speaker 1: you aim off the point of the arrow? My brother's
• 23:28
  Speaker 1: recurve shooter and hunter, and well he talks about it.
• 23:32
  Speaker 1: I feel like he does, Yeah, gaps deadly. I don't.
• 23:34
  Speaker 1: I don't really I kind of gat ye, right it is.
• 23:37
  Speaker 1: And and so for me, you know, I have this
• 23:39
  Speaker 1: whole system where I come to my first anchor on
• 23:41
  Speaker 1: my face and then I keep drawing the string until
• 23:45
  Speaker 1: the cock fare feather hits my nose, and that's my
• 23:48
  Speaker 1: cute to release. It's like a little psychological trigger. Once
• 23:51
  Speaker 1: the thing hits, boom, I'm gone. And that out to
• 23:54
  Speaker 1: about twenty yards, I'm just looking at the spot and
• 23:57
  Speaker 1: just looking at something I want to hit. But yawned
• 24:00
  Speaker 1: about twenty seven or twenty eight yards. I can't help
• 24:03
  Speaker 1: but see the tip of my arrow in my vision
• 24:05
  Speaker 1: because you know, I'm coming up like this, and so
• 24:07
  Speaker 1: the arrow is coming up into my field of view,
• 24:10
  Speaker 1: and so at that point I used to try to
• 24:12
  Speaker 1: ignore it. But over the years I've learned, why not
• 24:14
  Speaker 1: use it, Just use it as an aiming system. So
• 24:17
  Speaker 1: once I get to that distance, then I can hold
• 24:19
  Speaker 1: the arrow right on where I want to hit. And
• 24:21
  Speaker 1: if I'm further than out, if I'm thirty five, then
• 24:23
  Speaker 1: I'm holding the tip of the arrow just you know,
• 24:25
  Speaker 1: a couple of inches above where I want to be,
• 24:27
  Speaker 1: and so on out you know yards. Now does your
• 24:31
  Speaker 1: point of aim uh differ using traditional gear over compound placement?
• 24:37
  Speaker 1: Like I'm as you get real afraid of the shoulder blade?
• 24:40
  Speaker 1: Oh yeah, you do. Shoulder blades instant death, not not
• 24:43
  Speaker 1: for the deer, but instant death for you as the archer.
• 24:46
  Speaker 1: Not anymore so with traditional gear versus compound gear. Well, if, yeah,
• 24:51
  Speaker 1: you gotta have weight. This has to be a hell
• 24:52
  Speaker 1: of a lot less energy out of a long bowl
• 24:57
  Speaker 1: then out of a souped up compound. Yeah, there is,
• 25:00
  Speaker 1: And some of it depends on your your broad head
• 25:03
  Speaker 1: to you know, if you're shooting a nice two blade
• 25:05
  Speaker 1: broad head, I certainly don't want to shoot the shoulder,
• 25:09
  Speaker 1: but if you do by accident, you can often penetrate
• 25:11
  Speaker 1: the shoulder and get blade but not the bone proper.
• 25:13
  Speaker 1: Gett into the blade, but not the action, not the
• 25:15
  Speaker 1: not the fever or anything. So you can punch through
• 25:17
  Speaker 1: the blade. You can with a two point you can
• 25:20
  Speaker 1: like shoot a thirty yards or whatever, twenty yards you
• 25:24
  Speaker 1: could go. You can put like a wooden narrow through
• 25:26
  Speaker 1: that shoulder blade and get into the vitals. You can't.
• 25:28
  Speaker 1: I don't recommend it, but yeah, you can absolutely do it.
• 25:31
  Speaker 1: Do you aim like I usual, aiming for the crease?
• 25:34
  Speaker 1: Are you us you back a couple of ribs just
• 25:35
  Speaker 1: to give yourself room to play? Well? I mean, you
• 25:38
  Speaker 1: know the game. I mean, you don't want to go
• 25:39
  Speaker 1: back too many ribs because then if the animal, you know,
• 25:43
  Speaker 1: if you get jumping the string a little bit forward
• 25:45
  Speaker 1: or backward, then you're you know, getting into the punch,
• 25:47
  Speaker 1: or if you just kind of screw up a little bit,
• 25:49
  Speaker 1: you're getting into the punch. So I pretty much, you know,
• 25:52
  Speaker 1: come up the back of the leg and then come
• 25:54
  Speaker 1: you know, maybe a couple of inches back on the
• 25:57
  Speaker 1: ribs about dead center of the body is where I
• 25:59
  Speaker 1: want to be. And then do you ever take um?
• 26:05
  Speaker 1: Do you just shoot broadside? No, I like quartering away, Yeah,
• 26:09
  Speaker 1: I mean, you never do like face on shots. That's
• 26:12
  Speaker 1: just too hard. You knew what I did this year,
• 26:14
  Speaker 1: didn't I can tell by the way you're I shot
• 26:18
  Speaker 1: my first ever deer this year quartering on in the
• 26:22
  Speaker 1: brisket coming in. You know, like, you know, a shot
• 26:24
  Speaker 1: that a rifle hunter or a combound I wouldn't think about.
• 26:27
  Speaker 1: But you just you just don't do it with traditional gear,
• 26:30
  Speaker 1: And I've never done it. Why wouldn't you do a
• 26:31
  Speaker 1: traditional gear because you just can't get them. You know,
• 26:34
  Speaker 1: you just have a little pocket in there where you
• 26:36
  Speaker 1: can get to the vitals and there's just a lot
• 26:39
  Speaker 1: of meat and a lot of bone in there to penetrate.
• 26:41
  Speaker 1: And with a compound you can just kind of you've
• 26:43
  Speaker 1: got the kinnetic energy to punch it through there. And
• 26:45
  Speaker 1: so it's a still not a great shot with a compound,
• 26:48
  Speaker 1: but it's one that guys doing with a rifle. It's
• 26:50
  Speaker 1: you know, it's it's an easy shot. But with a
• 26:53
  Speaker 1: traditional boat's you know a lot of guys probably listening
• 26:57
  Speaker 1: to this podcast shaking their heads and you know, why
• 26:59
  Speaker 1: the hell would he do that? You know, it's really
• 27:01
  Speaker 1: a no, no kind of a shot. But I've been
• 27:04
  Speaker 1: doing this a long time. I had a shot at
• 27:07
  Speaker 1: a good buck. He was standing there. I kept looking
• 27:10
  Speaker 1: at that spot and looking at that spot. I was calm,
• 27:13
  Speaker 1: and I thought, I can do that. I know I
• 27:15
  Speaker 1: can put that arrow there. And frankly, it was one
• 27:18
  Speaker 1: of the deadliest shots I ever made. Yeah, deer went
• 27:21
  Speaker 1: maybe sixty yards and was done. So, you know, it
• 27:24
  Speaker 1: does work. Will I ever do it again? I don't know.
• 27:28
  Speaker 1: I got away with it. It worked. You know. It
• 27:31
  Speaker 1: causes a lot of you know, controversy and the hunter
• 27:35
  Speaker 1: Oh yeah, I mean, guys get really piste off when
• 27:37
  Speaker 1: they hear about other other you know, bow hunters taking
• 27:40
  Speaker 1: that shot. You can I ask you, what kind of
• 27:42
  Speaker 1: a difference in feet per second? Like what kind of
• 27:44
  Speaker 1: energy difference sweet and modern compounds and all the traditional
• 27:48
  Speaker 1: It can be pretty big. I mean, so I shoot bow.
• 27:50
  Speaker 1: I used to shoot, you know, close to sixty or
• 27:52
  Speaker 1: even a little over sixty pounds, but I changed my
• 27:55
  Speaker 1: shooting style a few years ago and I dropped back
• 27:57
  Speaker 1: to fifty pounds and I haven't seen any real difference
• 28:01
  Speaker 1: in penetration. But so at fifty pounds, you know, I'm
• 28:04
  Speaker 1: shooting probably a hundred and seventy five ft per second,
• 28:08
  Speaker 1: and I'm shooting an arrow that weighs around five hundred grains.
• 28:11
  Speaker 1: I think that works out to, like, you know, thirty
• 28:14
  Speaker 1: five pounds of kinetic energy something like that. Compound shooters
• 28:18
  Speaker 1: probably shooting more like I don't know, to seventy five
• 28:21
  Speaker 1: is probably not out of the question at all about
• 28:26
  Speaker 1: out right, and then maybe three fifty graine arrow, so
• 28:28
  Speaker 1: you know, a lot lighter arrow, but you know, kinetic
• 28:31
  Speaker 1: kinetic energy of that is probably up around more like
• 28:35
  Speaker 1: I don't know, I bet close to fifty pounds. So yeah,
• 28:37
  Speaker 1: there's there's a pretty big difference difference. Do you think
• 28:40
  Speaker 1: that that for someone that haunts compound they want to
• 28:44
  Speaker 1: switch to traditional archery? Um, what's the biggest challenge there
• 28:50
  Speaker 1: is it? Do you think it's the proximity for people
• 28:54
  Speaker 1: like you now gotta have the distance so you're custom
• 28:57
  Speaker 1: shooting a certain distance, you gotta cut that in half.
• 29:00
  Speaker 1: Or do you think it's just that it's so much
• 29:02
  Speaker 1: more difficult to put the air where you want to
• 29:03
  Speaker 1: put it. I think it's it's more difficult to put
• 29:06
  Speaker 1: the error where you want to put it. Because even
• 29:08
  Speaker 1: though compound shooters can shoot forty and fifty yards. You know,
• 29:12
  Speaker 1: hunt mostly in the east, so it's mostly white tail stuff.
• 29:15
  Speaker 1: Guys are still mostly shooting it deer at even with
• 29:18
  Speaker 1: the compounds, So I don't think the distance is that much.
• 29:22
  Speaker 1: When you're on you can kind of pick you in
• 29:25
  Speaker 1: some ways you're picking the distance exactly. If you're set
• 29:28
  Speaker 1: up is picking the distance. I think it's the lack
• 29:31
  Speaker 1: of it is where it's back to the support system again.
• 29:34
  Speaker 1: You know, when you're shooting a compound, you've got all that.
• 29:36
  Speaker 1: You know, you've got those tools, you know, to be
• 29:38
  Speaker 1: able to just kind of keep yourself calm, lay the
• 29:40
  Speaker 1: shot in there the way you want it. And with
• 29:42
  Speaker 1: a traditional bow you just don't have that. The other
• 29:44
  Speaker 1: thing you don't have is let off, and so it's
• 29:47
  Speaker 1: not like you can you know, you see you see
• 29:49
  Speaker 1: an animal coming. You know it's it's passing behind a stand,
• 29:53
  Speaker 1: a doug for or something, and you know it's gonna
• 29:55
  Speaker 1: pop out at you know, twenty yards, and you know
• 29:58
  Speaker 1: it's going to take a few seconds for that to happen.
• 30:01
  Speaker 1: Compound bow let off you just pull when you've got
• 30:04
  Speaker 1: good cover to pull, you know you're at full draw,
• 30:06
  Speaker 1: you hold you wight. You eight, You wait, you wait,
• 30:08
  Speaker 1: that animal pops out and you know you're able to
• 30:10
  Speaker 1: get a nice shot off. You can't do that with
• 30:13
  Speaker 1: a traditional bow. And you know, unless you're Hulk Hogan
• 30:15
  Speaker 1: and you can hold it that long, you know you're
• 30:17
  Speaker 1: waiting until just a few seconds or a fraction of
• 30:20
  Speaker 1: a second to be able to get the full draw
• 30:23
  Speaker 1: and get that arrow off. So that one like, you
• 30:28
  Speaker 1: don't really camp out at all. Full drawing isn't the
• 30:32
  Speaker 1: kind of like a fluid motion depends. You know, lots
• 30:34
  Speaker 1: of guys shoot that way. They shoot split finger, so
• 30:37
  Speaker 1: one finger above the knock, two fingers below the knock
• 30:40
  Speaker 1: on the string. They're drawing, drawing all the way back
• 30:42
  Speaker 1: and you know standard places middle finger, corner of the mouth,
• 30:46
  Speaker 1: and they're just the whole time they're drawing, they're just
• 30:48
  Speaker 1: burning a hole and what they want to hit. And
• 30:50
  Speaker 1: when they hit full draw, the arrow is gone. It's
• 30:52
  Speaker 1: that fluid motion. It's instinctive shooting. I'm kind of a
• 30:56
  Speaker 1: hybrid system. I'm not a gap shooter, but when I
• 30:59
  Speaker 1: get to my first anchor point, I'm locked in and
• 31:02
  Speaker 1: I'm there for a couple of seconds and and I
• 31:06
  Speaker 1: can hold yeah, a beat or too longer until I
• 31:08
  Speaker 1: can get to my second anchor point and then I'm gone.
• 31:11
  Speaker 1: So I'm a slower shooter than a lot of guys.
• 31:14
  Speaker 1: But you can draw back and hang out for a
• 31:16
  Speaker 1: couple of seconds, a few seconds, and then still do
• 31:18
  Speaker 1: a nice shot. You wouldn't need to let off and
• 31:20
  Speaker 1: start over again to get your system down. Yeah. I
• 31:22
  Speaker 1: had a buck come in on me this year and
• 31:25
  Speaker 1: he was coming at a just a nice crisp walk,
• 31:28
  Speaker 1: and I came to full draw right at the point
• 31:31
  Speaker 1: when I thought he was going to come out in
• 31:32
  Speaker 1: my shooting lane, and he stopped it. So here I am.
• 31:35
  Speaker 1: I have no shot, and I'm at full draw, and
• 31:38
  Speaker 1: I'm holding and I'm waiting and I'm waiting and I'm
• 31:40
  Speaker 1: waiting and I you know, just waiting for him to
• 31:43
  Speaker 1: do is take like three or four more steps, and
• 31:45
  Speaker 1: you know, my whole body's quaking like an aspen leaf.
• 31:48
  Speaker 1: You know, I'm like, there's no way this is not
• 31:50
  Speaker 1: going to happen. And so I had to really gingerly
• 31:53
  Speaker 1: let down. And the good thing I did, because he
• 31:55
  Speaker 1: ended up staying there for a long but now I
• 31:58
  Speaker 1: didn't spook him, and then only he actually turned away
• 32:01
  Speaker 1: and started to walk away and then turned back around
• 32:04
  Speaker 1: and went right through the shooting lane. I hoped he'd
• 32:06
  Speaker 1: come through and then I was able to make the shot. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
• 32:10
  Speaker 1: what kind of stuff you want? Egg Land? I hunt
• 32:16
  Speaker 1: mostly behind my house where I've got I own thirty
• 32:19
  Speaker 1: six acres, and then I have permission on another gosh,
• 32:22
  Speaker 1: I don't even know, probably two or three hundred acres,
• 32:25
  Speaker 1: which I know it doesn't sound like a lot in
• 32:27
  Speaker 1: you know, in Western terms, that's that's all. That's a
• 32:31
  Speaker 1: chunk of land, and it's it's all ridge. You know,
• 32:34
  Speaker 1: it's all mountain land basically. Not No, so not eggland. Nope,
• 32:37
  Speaker 1: well used, I mean I traveled other places to hunt,
• 32:40
  Speaker 1: so I do have some property. Your main hunting spot
• 32:43
  Speaker 1: big woods, ye, big woods? Yeah, and you use you
• 32:49
  Speaker 1: use bait for deer, No, no bait for me. New
• 32:54
  Speaker 1: York States baits not legal, not New York. So so
• 32:58
  Speaker 1: what do you? Ohio, I think are closest state that
• 33:01
  Speaker 1: allows bait. So what do you what do you like
• 33:03
  Speaker 1: to sit on that you're sitting on trails? I sit
• 33:06
  Speaker 1: on trails, So bait is not allowed at all New
• 33:10
  Speaker 1: York States. Not you're not even allowed to feed deer
• 33:12
  Speaker 1: in New York State. I think I think that's true.
• 33:15
  Speaker 1: It's true in some counties, and I think it's going
• 33:17
  Speaker 1: to become true statewide, mainly because of chronic wasting disease,
• 33:21
  Speaker 1: so there's concerns about that. So yeah, you can use
• 33:24
  Speaker 1: set attractors. So what is your typical setup? I figure
• 33:29
  Speaker 1: out betting areas and feeding areas, and I like to
• 33:32
  Speaker 1: get close to betting areas because you know, deer aren't
• 33:35
  Speaker 1: moving until you know the last light. So if you know,
• 33:38
  Speaker 1: if you're sitting on food, do you sit there all
• 33:40
  Speaker 1: day and you're not going to see anything? In a
• 33:41
  Speaker 1: lot of cases, not always, but you know, especially if
• 33:44
  Speaker 1: you're hunting in October, when you know deer they're not
• 33:47
  Speaker 1: food stressed yet or anything, and so they're staying in
• 33:50
  Speaker 1: their beds until after dark and then they're gonna get
• 33:52
  Speaker 1: up and move to food. So if you can find
• 33:54
  Speaker 1: those betting areas and get close. And what I like
• 33:57
  Speaker 1: to do is figure out the terrain funnels. You know,
• 34:00
  Speaker 1: I'm hunting mountain grounds, so there's you know, lots of
• 34:03
  Speaker 1: little hollows and bridges with benches and that kind of stuff,
• 34:07
  Speaker 1: and so you know, I try to figure out how
• 34:10
  Speaker 1: a buck is going to get from his bed to
• 34:12
  Speaker 1: his food. And sometimes there's you know, things that are
• 34:15
  Speaker 1: like staging areas where you know buck will come out.
• 34:18
  Speaker 1: It's a safe spot because there's some cover there and
• 34:21
  Speaker 1: he'll hang out a little bit, you know, before heading
• 34:24
  Speaker 1: off to the food and there's a great spot. So
• 34:25
  Speaker 1: if you can figure them out where he's gonna mill
• 34:27
  Speaker 1: around around, you do see that quite often, like just
• 34:30
  Speaker 1: glass and deer, any kind of hunting situation with deer,
• 34:33
  Speaker 1: I think oftentimes you'll see them where where they spend
• 34:37
  Speaker 1: a lot of time in the in the after, like
• 34:40
  Speaker 1: if they're coming out for the evening feed, where they
• 34:42
  Speaker 1: spend a lot of time before really committing to coming
• 34:45
  Speaker 1: out onto a big stage flat or coming out and
• 34:47
  Speaker 1: do an egg field. You know they're up and they're
• 34:49
  Speaker 1: not They're not like just standing there. They'll feed on
• 34:52
  Speaker 1: some brows and yeah, but they say they know that
• 34:55
  Speaker 1: like risky step and prolonging that risky thing, you know,
• 34:58
  Speaker 1: And you can see a lot of mine in those places.
• 35:00
  Speaker 1: You'll see lots of tracks and you know ship and
• 35:04
  Speaker 1: as far and if you're looking for bucks, you know
• 35:05
  Speaker 1: a lot of times you'll find rubs popping up the Yeah,
• 35:08
  Speaker 1: because they're I think they're bored. You know, they're in
• 35:10
  Speaker 1: there there. They don't want to go to the food
• 35:12
  Speaker 1: because you know, that's a dangerous spot. Often doesn't have
• 35:15
  Speaker 1: a lot of cover. They're in a place with a
• 35:17
  Speaker 1: lot of cover, and they're just kind of moving around
• 35:19
  Speaker 1: in there, maybe feeding on what's there, rubbing. Yeah, it's
• 35:23
  Speaker 1: I don't think people I'm sure they do. Some people
• 35:25
  Speaker 1: probably don't realize what twenty yards is close. Yeah, I
• 35:30
  Speaker 1: mean you're like breathing the air with them. But must
• 35:33
  Speaker 1: be you must be sitting there sometimes and have deer
• 35:36
  Speaker 1: walk by, like that deer is so damn close. But
• 35:38
  Speaker 1: I'm not gonna take the shot. Oh, I love it.
• 35:40
  Speaker 1: That's one of my favorite things. Actually. You know, it's
• 35:42
  Speaker 1: just you know how you know, having a dough and
• 35:44
  Speaker 1: a couple of fawns walked by it, you know, at
• 35:46
  Speaker 1: ten yards and they're right there. I mean, you see
• 35:48
  Speaker 1: every hair on that deer. You can see her eyelashes,
• 35:50
  Speaker 1: you know, you can you can see her their nostrils
• 35:53
  Speaker 1: flaring in and out when she's breathing. I mean, it's
• 35:55
  Speaker 1: not That's why I'm in the woods I mean that's
• 35:58
  Speaker 1: the stuff that really makes your heart tick after after
• 36:01
  Speaker 1: you know, growing up tree standing hunting for deer and
• 36:04
  Speaker 1: then moving out west and just being so in love
• 36:06
  Speaker 1: with spot stock hunting and backpack hunting, you know, like
• 36:09
  Speaker 1: hunting really big country with firearms, especially UM or even
• 36:13
  Speaker 1: just with bo but like traveling while you're hunting. Uh.
• 36:18
  Speaker 1: I never got like really nostalgic for being in a tree.
• 36:22
  Speaker 1: But then one day I was just out in Miles
• 36:25
  Speaker 1: City with my brother and we spent a couple of
• 36:27
  Speaker 1: days bow hunting out of trees and um after a
• 36:31
  Speaker 1: long break from it, after a decade of not doing it,
• 36:34
  Speaker 1: and I remember sitting in that tree being like, man,
• 36:36
  Speaker 1: I just totally forgot the level of detail where just
• 36:41
  Speaker 1: being there and and instead of you moving to things,
• 36:44
  Speaker 1: are you moving into some things? Just that having the
• 36:47
  Speaker 1: things come to you. Remember being like having raccoons messing
• 36:50
  Speaker 1: in the tree next to me, and then squirrels and
• 36:53
  Speaker 1: the way birds will come up and land on your
• 36:55
  Speaker 1: arrow shaft and all that. You're like, oh, I totally forgot,
• 36:58
  Speaker 1: like you watch wildlife in such a different way, or
• 37:02
  Speaker 1: like how skin is rough, growls are I okay, think
• 37:04
  Speaker 1: how many times sitting in my tree stand and just
• 37:07
  Speaker 1: observing a rough growlse, which doesn't happen. You can hunt.
• 37:11
  Speaker 1: You can be the biggest damn bird hunter in the
• 37:13
  Speaker 1: world and you don't. The only thing you ever see
• 37:15
  Speaker 1: of rough grouse is them going. But to be like, oh, yeah,
• 37:19
  Speaker 1: there is he's feeding. Yeah, I mean malone, me's scratching
• 37:21
  Speaker 1: and leaves. It's like you see ship that you just
• 37:23
  Speaker 1: don't see. Yeah, I mean when you're hiking hunter. You know,
• 37:26
  Speaker 1: we all all kind of evolved as hunters, and you know,
• 37:29
  Speaker 1: we think about what it is we really like to
• 37:31
  Speaker 1: do and and how we do it. And I got
• 37:34
  Speaker 1: to a stage in my hunting where I felt guilty
• 37:38
  Speaker 1: for not doing more spotting, stock hunting, or not doing
• 37:41
  Speaker 1: more you know, kind of still hunting. It's always sitting
• 37:44
  Speaker 1: in a tree or sitting in a ground blind. And
• 37:46
  Speaker 1: I was like, man, I should really, you know, I
• 37:48
  Speaker 1: should start doing more of that other stuff. And I
• 37:50
  Speaker 1: have done more of it, but I always come back
• 37:52
  Speaker 1: to this this thing, you know, where I've matured a
• 37:54
  Speaker 1: little bit. And I said, well, that's what I love
• 37:56
  Speaker 1: to do. For all the reasons you just explained. I
• 37:59
  Speaker 1: just love of, you know, to to just figure the
• 38:03
  Speaker 1: deer out. Just really learn a place, you know, learn
• 38:08
  Speaker 1: what makes it tick. You know, where's the topography, where's
• 38:10
  Speaker 1: the food, where do they bed? Where is that one
• 38:14
  Speaker 1: spot in the entire forest that a deer is going
• 38:16
  Speaker 1: to walk by? That's what really it's like a chess game.
• 38:19
  Speaker 1: I mean, that's what really gets me going. And then
• 38:22
  Speaker 1: on top of that, you know you've become part of
• 38:25
  Speaker 1: the forest when you're sitting there for hours on end
• 38:27
  Speaker 1: and you get to see the really cool stuff, you know,
• 38:29
  Speaker 1: the the red fox, you know, leaping up in the
• 38:32
  Speaker 1: air and snow diving after meadow balls. I mean, that's
• 38:35
  Speaker 1: the kind of stuff you don't really get to see
• 38:36
  Speaker 1: if you're out cruising around too much. But if you're
• 38:38
  Speaker 1: right there, you know, you get to see a lot
• 38:40
  Speaker 1: of interesting wildlife. Remember being here one time and watching
• 38:43
  Speaker 1: a mink dedicate about twenty minutes of his life to
• 38:47
  Speaker 1: trying to catch a chipmunk and some holes and some
• 38:49
  Speaker 1: trees and just be like, man, you know genacious. Yeah,
• 38:53
  Speaker 1: the ship you just never would notice, you know, I
• 38:55
  Speaker 1: loved it. Now you mentioned ground blinds, you say, ground lines,
• 39:02
  Speaker 1: not pop ups much. Yeah, that's like a generational thing
• 39:05
  Speaker 1: and I think it's like so few people mile Man
• 39:08
  Speaker 1: would build. He'd build a wigwam ground blind, but he
• 39:11
  Speaker 1: was trained up hunting traditional archery, hunting recurb. When he
• 39:13
  Speaker 1: switched to compounds, though, he would still quite off and
• 39:16
  Speaker 1: build a wigwam style ground blind and he would even
• 39:22
  Speaker 1: excavated out so it's just dead quiet. And then it's
• 39:26
  Speaker 1: wigwam style dome. He'd build a brush dome. I mean
• 39:31
  Speaker 1: where it was clothes on top. Where does the word
• 39:33
  Speaker 1: wigwam come from? Like the Jibwe and other Eastern where
• 39:37
  Speaker 1: you're born, those people, the indigenous people where you were
• 39:40
  Speaker 1: born used wigwams. You were born in aam? No, you
• 39:45
  Speaker 1: were born in a wigwam country? Typing wigwam in your
• 39:48
  Speaker 1: damn phone? Isn't there a sock company called Wigwam? But
• 39:51
  Speaker 1: nobody knows the style of house. Jimmy Dorn, you know
• 39:55
  Speaker 1: what that means? Lowly pianman pizza, That shelter, Yeah, don't shelter,
• 40:03
  Speaker 1: don't shelter, will reads and I don't know, leaves and
• 40:06
  Speaker 1: stuff on it. They sheathed it with different things, anything
• 40:09
  Speaker 1: barked grass. But it's like that's that's the first time
• 40:11
  Speaker 1: I've heard of it. He's in it like because we built.
• 40:13
  Speaker 1: I mean, that's all I sat in growing up. You know,
• 40:15
  Speaker 1: until we were old enough to get into a tree,
• 40:17
  Speaker 1: it was always ground by it. But we never built
• 40:19
  Speaker 1: like a roof woven. It's like a woven thing. So
• 40:23
  Speaker 1: you wind up, you go around your perimeter and put
• 40:27
  Speaker 1: in long bendy poles and you make a circle long
• 40:30
  Speaker 1: bendy poles. The imagine bending all those poles in and
• 40:34
  Speaker 1: to meet at the top. And then then you have
• 40:38
  Speaker 1: like what looks like umbrella staves with no umbrella, and
• 40:41
  Speaker 1: then you run circular like you're there. They're basically forming
• 40:44
  Speaker 1: lines of latitude. So there's your lines of longitude, like
• 40:48
  Speaker 1: a half of the globe with longitude lines on it,
• 40:51
  Speaker 1: and then you put in you take sticks and make
• 40:53
  Speaker 1: your lines of latitude. Then you brush it in. But
• 40:56
  Speaker 1: then you pick your shooting height, which is whatever your
• 40:58
  Speaker 1: comfortable height is when your kneeling or sitting or whatever,
• 41:01
  Speaker 1: and you leave that band of latitude not covered in
• 41:05
  Speaker 1: any brush, and that's where you shoot out of and
• 41:10
  Speaker 1: you could do a square dance there and they're not
• 41:11
  Speaker 1: gonna know what you're in there. When I was with
• 41:14
  Speaker 1: a lot of work, when I was in Africa. We
• 41:15
  Speaker 1: hunted out of these. They called him rock hides, but
• 41:18
  Speaker 1: they're they're basically pit blinds and then build up with
• 41:22
  Speaker 1: rock to about waist high and then above that is
• 41:25
  Speaker 1: basically a thatched hut, you know, with little shooting ports
• 41:28
  Speaker 1: in it. And so it's kind of wig wam like
• 41:30
  Speaker 1: but it's just thatched grasses and stuff. And I mean
• 41:33
  Speaker 1: you'd get away with anything in there. Yeah, this is
• 41:35
  Speaker 1: like basically, if he was alive now, he used to
• 41:37
  Speaker 1: build these ground blinds now, and then if he was
• 41:39
  Speaker 1: alive now, he'd have a pop up blind. Because pop
• 41:42
  Speaker 1: blind same damn thing. It's like you can get away
• 41:44
  Speaker 1: with a lot of movement. Somebody should make one and
• 41:46
  Speaker 1: call it the synthetic wig wad. Yeah, you can get
• 41:48
  Speaker 1: away a lot of movement to pop up blind, you know. Um,
• 41:52
  Speaker 1: But anyway, yeah, I've never I've never shot. You put
• 41:55
  Speaker 1: a lot more thought into where you're setting up your
• 41:57
  Speaker 1: pop up blind. If you had to build that, know
• 42:00
  Speaker 1: it was you would have you would have a couple
• 42:02
  Speaker 1: of them around. You'd have a couple of them around.
• 42:06
  Speaker 1: That would just be in your repertoire. You know, I
• 42:08
  Speaker 1: can still take it. It's funny because the farm, one
• 42:10
  Speaker 1: of the farms you grow up on, I could take
• 42:11
  Speaker 1: you where it was like a spot where my old
• 42:15
  Speaker 1: man like to sit and there was no appropriate tree there,
• 42:18
  Speaker 1: and he would just have this, you know, this ground
• 42:21
  Speaker 1: blinding sitting on it. But you'll you'll sit ground blinds. Yeah,
• 42:24
  Speaker 1: but I don't build but don you just get whipped
• 42:25
  Speaker 1: so bad. I don't build wigwams because they part of it.
• 42:29
  Speaker 1: I mean, I'm on the move all the time. I
• 42:31
  Speaker 1: use a climbing tree stand most of the time. I
• 42:32
  Speaker 1: like to move from place to place. And if you're
• 42:35
  Speaker 1: gonna stop and build a ground blind, you're actually gonna
• 42:37
  Speaker 1: take out a saw and you cut some stuff much
• 42:40
  Speaker 1: scent and disturbance. So I carry just a little like
• 42:44
  Speaker 1: little mesh netting on fiberglass poles that I can just
• 42:47
  Speaker 1: right down in front of me and I try to
• 42:49
  Speaker 1: back myself up to a dead fall or even a
• 42:51
  Speaker 1: bunch of dense grasses or something like that. Yeah, it's
• 42:55
  Speaker 1: no trouble like a turkey blind set up almost. Yeah,
• 42:58
  Speaker 1: that's my system now for them with the kids, that's
• 43:00
  Speaker 1: what I carry because there's just no way you're gonna
• 43:02
  Speaker 1: get them. It's still do you do you wear a
• 43:06
  Speaker 1: gilly suit? Yeah? I love gilly suits. There are so
• 43:08
  Speaker 1: much fun and they're tough with bos though, because you
• 43:11
  Speaker 1: got all that strands of stuff hanging. That's what I do.
• 43:15
  Speaker 1: I take scissors and trim it up. But I always
• 43:17
  Speaker 1: tell guys who are thinking about a gilly suit, as
• 43:19
  Speaker 1: you practice like crazy in that thing before you go
• 43:21
  Speaker 1: hunting with it. I mean, even back here at your chest,
• 43:24
  Speaker 1: you know, you you know, depending on your your body shape,
• 43:27
  Speaker 1: you know, your bowstring sometimes can get into your chest,
• 43:29
  Speaker 1: and with all those strands on there at snags, you
• 43:32
  Speaker 1: really have to be careful. Now are you? Were you
• 43:34
  Speaker 1: trained as an ornithology work an ornithology lab? Yeah, work
• 43:37
  Speaker 1: at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, which is the like
• 43:40
  Speaker 1: ornithology lab. Yeah. Yeah, I wasn't trained as an ornithologist
• 43:44
  Speaker 1: per se. I mean my degrees are in wildlife biology
• 43:46
  Speaker 1: and ecology and a little bit of forestry. But I
• 43:49
  Speaker 1: did my master's work on on birds. I worked on
• 43:52
  Speaker 1: American castrals. We just had a castral in one of
• 43:56
  Speaker 1: our shows. Those castrales working while we're hunting. Uh Muelder, Nevada.
• 44:01
  Speaker 1: A lot of castles in there. Yeah, what were you
• 44:04
  Speaker 1: looking at with castrels. I was that that was working
• 44:06
  Speaker 1: at a place in Pennsylvania called Hawk Mountain Sanctuary where
• 44:10
  Speaker 1: they have a bunch of property there, and I was
• 44:12
  Speaker 1: looking at just you know, how they select their nest sites.
• 44:15
  Speaker 1: Their populations are declining, and trying to figure out, you know,
• 44:19
  Speaker 1: what is it about their territories around their nest sites
• 44:21
  Speaker 1: and the nest sites themselves that makes some of them
• 44:24
  Speaker 1: really successful and others not successful. Why did nest fail
• 44:27
  Speaker 1: in those places? You know, because it was just did
• 44:30
  Speaker 1: you find anything like conclusive? Well, one thing I found
• 44:33
  Speaker 1: is that, you know, kestrals do best in past your
• 44:37
  Speaker 1: kind of situations. They don't like, you know, row crops, corn, soybeans.
• 44:41
  Speaker 1: They just can't hunt very well. And for for the
• 44:43
  Speaker 1: size of the bird, they have pretty short legs and
• 44:45
  Speaker 1: so getting down into some of those row crops is
• 44:48
  Speaker 1: tough for them. There's, uh, you know, lots of insecticides
• 44:51
  Speaker 1: used in those places, and they feed on a lot
• 44:52
  Speaker 1: of insects, so that doesn't work very well. But you know,
• 44:55
  Speaker 1: past your situations are great for kestrals. The other huge
• 44:59
  Speaker 1: thing is starlings. So if you have kestral nests either
• 45:03
  Speaker 1: in a natural cavity in a tree or in a
• 45:05
  Speaker 1: nest box, and you're pretty close to the farm proper,
• 45:08
  Speaker 1: close to the barn where you've got big populations of starlings.
• 45:12
  Speaker 1: Starlings will just go in there and they take their
• 45:14
  Speaker 1: bill and they pierce holes in the kestrel's eggs and
• 45:17
  Speaker 1: then it was build their nest right on top of
• 45:19
  Speaker 1: the But the castrals will probably just they feed on
• 45:24
  Speaker 1: the startling. They could eat the starling outside of the nest,
• 45:26
  Speaker 1: but they just don't. They're just too timid and they
• 45:28
  Speaker 1: just don't do it. I spent the time with a
• 45:31
  Speaker 1: guy that was in the blue bluebird restoration and he
• 45:36
  Speaker 1: like typified his work as um just on a large property.
• 45:40
  Speaker 1: You know, he was having great success of bluebirds. But
• 45:43
  Speaker 1: he was like, if I was going to condense it,
• 45:45
  Speaker 1: all doubts, I kill English barrels and starlings because that's
• 45:48
  Speaker 1: that's how you helped bluebirds. There's no doubt about that. Yeah.
• 45:52
  Speaker 1: So uh, like, is there a certain amount of writing involved?
• 45:56
  Speaker 1: And you're like, wow, how did you, like, why how
• 45:58
  Speaker 1: did you come to start writing an article and books
• 46:00
  Speaker 1: and whatnot? Look, if you got that whole of the
• 46:03
  Speaker 1: set of obligations yeah, I just love to write you know,
• 46:06
  Speaker 1: my you know, when I'm out hunting and I have
• 46:08
  Speaker 1: all those experiences, you know things we were talking about,
• 46:11
  Speaker 1: seeing all kinds of wildlife and and dealing with bows
• 46:14
  Speaker 1: and arrows, which I just love. You know, there's a
• 46:16
  Speaker 1: whole rich history of archery in all the woods and
• 46:19
  Speaker 1: there's just so much you know, richness to it, and
• 46:23
  Speaker 1: I just felt a need to start to write it down.
• 46:25
  Speaker 1: So I used to write it down for myself. And
• 46:28
  Speaker 1: one day I said, well, you know, maybe I'll just
• 46:30
  Speaker 1: write this down a little more formally and send it
• 46:32
  Speaker 1: to a magazine. And it took me a few tries
• 46:35
  Speaker 1: and then boom, one day I got a letter into
• 46:37
  Speaker 1: mail and said we've accepted your article and we're going
• 46:39
  Speaker 1: to send you a check Gigantic magazine. Check Gigantic. I
• 46:44
  Speaker 1: don't know about that, but I was like, oh yeah,
• 46:46
  Speaker 1: And I was just I mean, you know, I have
• 46:48
  Speaker 1: a full time job. I have a career that I love,
• 46:51
  Speaker 1: you know, doing conservation biology and wildlife work. But you know,
• 46:55
  Speaker 1: this was something that I was really passionate about and
• 46:57
  Speaker 1: I and I wanted to do, and so I've just
• 46:59
  Speaker 1: done it. Sure, I make a little extra money on it.
• 47:01
  Speaker 1: But honestly, it's not enough to It's enough to buy
• 47:04
  Speaker 1: a couple of bows and go on a couple of
• 47:05
  Speaker 1: hunting trips now and then, but certainly not. I mean
• 47:08
  Speaker 1: guys who are freelance writers and make a living at it,
• 47:12
  Speaker 1: I don't know how they do it. I mean, you've
• 47:13
  Speaker 1: got to be a machine to turn out enough articles,
• 47:17
  Speaker 1: you know, to really do well at it. But for me,
• 47:19
  Speaker 1: it's you know, it feels a niche in my brain.
• 47:23
  Speaker 1: So what year was the first year? Um? Once you
• 47:26
  Speaker 1: sell your first article too for publication? Two thousand two,
• 47:31
  Speaker 1: maybe two thousand two or two thousand three, somewhere in
• 47:34
  Speaker 1: that ballpark. And then how so, here's the thing I
• 47:37
  Speaker 1: always wanted about with writers, Like, like, I think there's
• 47:41
  Speaker 1: people who are really into something like your airplane enthusiasts,
• 47:44
  Speaker 1: let's say, And that's the thing you are, your airplane enthusiasts,
• 47:47
  Speaker 1: and then Sunday you write a book about planes. Or
• 47:50
  Speaker 1: You've got people who are writers and they're like, I'm
• 47:54
  Speaker 1: gonna write, so here's my subject matter? Right? Were you
• 47:59
  Speaker 1: the I'm gonna write and you found your outlet through
• 48:04
  Speaker 1: traditional archery or you like, I'm going to do traditional
• 48:06
  Speaker 1: archery and then eventually like, I know so much, I'm
• 48:09
  Speaker 1: going to write it down. No, my, my, my connection
• 48:13
  Speaker 1: was definitely through archery, hunting and then writing. Yeah, you're like,
• 48:16
  Speaker 1: I'm gonna dispense my uh wisdom or try to like
• 48:21
  Speaker 1: put some of my thoughts and find out what exactly
• 48:23
  Speaker 1: they are by putting them on the paper. Yeah. My
• 48:25
  Speaker 1: freshman year in college I had to take a remedial
• 48:27
  Speaker 1: writing course just just to get in. I mean, you
• 48:30
  Speaker 1: know I did. Coming out of high school. I was
• 48:32
  Speaker 1: no writer. Yeh see, I was gonna write some damn thing. Yeah,
• 48:34
  Speaker 1: I mean I knew I was gonna write Yeah. Yeah, No,
• 48:37
  Speaker 1: I definitely was not that. But once I figured it out,
• 48:39
  Speaker 1: you know, once I figured out what I needed to
• 48:41
  Speaker 1: do to get better as a writer, I loved it.
• 48:43
  Speaker 1: I mean I just hate right into it, into the
• 48:45
  Speaker 1: I got into the craft of doing it. And I
• 48:47
  Speaker 1: write a lot for work too. I mean, I you know,
• 48:49
  Speaker 1: a lot of what I do is you know, as
• 48:52
  Speaker 1: conservation biology that's focused on strategic planning, and so I
• 48:56
  Speaker 1: take science done by other people. I take science that
• 49:00
  Speaker 1: we do, you know, in our own team, and you know,
• 49:04
  Speaker 1: this is what you what you guys were talking about
• 49:05
  Speaker 1: earlier and figure out how to reformulate that into conservation
• 49:11
  Speaker 1: and management recommendations for wildlife. That's what I really love
• 49:15
  Speaker 1: to do because so taking information making an applicable to
• 49:18
  Speaker 1: real world situation exactly, and especially to practitioners, you know,
• 49:21
  Speaker 1: to foresters and land managers and people who are actually
• 49:24
  Speaker 1: out on the ground doing it. What I want to
• 49:25
  Speaker 1: do is give them a cookbook. I want to give
• 49:28
  Speaker 1: them a set of best management practices to go out
• 49:30
  Speaker 1: and manage for you know, whatever sweetest species we're talking about. Yeah,
• 49:34
  Speaker 1: I can imagine likely you got the guy I always
• 49:36
  Speaker 1: think about my my friend Doug Darren. Um. You know,
• 49:38
  Speaker 1: he's got a background and he manages a family property,
• 49:42
  Speaker 1: um and they do egg and they do timberlands and stuff.
• 49:46
  Speaker 1: But he's got all these little battles on, you know,
• 49:49
  Speaker 1: like certain oaks right, like trying to get some native
• 49:54
  Speaker 1: like oak species regenerated. And it's a huge problem because
• 49:57
  Speaker 1: you know, white tails love them. Can't get him up,
• 50:01
  Speaker 1: you know. And imagine like as he's figuring all this out,
• 50:04
  Speaker 1: you also have there's probably resources out there, you know
• 50:09
  Speaker 1: that some guy knows. But just making the the two
• 50:14
  Speaker 1: people come together you know, or like you got the
• 50:16
  Speaker 1: guy who's like trying to do something like on the
• 50:18
  Speaker 1: ground stuff and given that person all those tools of
• 50:21
  Speaker 1: what might be known in the academic world, you know,
• 50:25
  Speaker 1: and making sure that all those connections get made. Yeah.
• 50:26
  Speaker 1: I mean, for so many years, those connections didn't get
• 50:29
  Speaker 1: made because you know, scientists, by virtue of where they worked,
• 50:33
  Speaker 1: often at academic institutions, weren't you know, they just didn't
• 50:36
  Speaker 1: get into making policy. They you know, they were steered
• 50:39
  Speaker 1: away from any kind of advocacy and they you know,
• 50:41
  Speaker 1: they weren't translating their results into management recommendations. And so
• 50:45
  Speaker 1: much of that has changed now. I mean, you know,
• 50:48
  Speaker 1: where I work, we're encouraged to do that. You know,
• 50:51
  Speaker 1: we really want to take that next step and take
• 50:53
  Speaker 1: the science and and put it on the ground. And
• 50:56
  Speaker 1: you know, cooperative extension units at a universe an extension
• 51:00
  Speaker 1: agent exactly. It is meant to be that guy who's
• 51:02
  Speaker 1: the liaison between practice there like land managers in research, right, yeah, exactly.
• 51:07
  Speaker 1: And I mean those were set out initially to try
• 51:09
  Speaker 1: to figure out how you can get your Holstein to
• 51:11
  Speaker 1: produce you know, more pounds of milk. But you know
• 51:14
  Speaker 1: now that's that's widened out into you know, into soil
• 51:18
  Speaker 1: conservation science, and you know, I do non game bird work,
• 51:21
  Speaker 1: and you'd be amazed at the number of people who
• 51:23
  Speaker 1: are they're interested in doing that kind of stuff. They
• 51:25
  Speaker 1: own fifty acres that was once a working farm and
• 51:29
  Speaker 1: it's not a working farm anymore. They've got some money
• 51:31
  Speaker 1: and they want to manage for wildlife. You know, they
• 51:33
  Speaker 1: want to they like birds, they want to have you know,
• 51:35
  Speaker 1: some warblers around or whatever it is. Yeah, coming from
• 51:38
  Speaker 1: a like a Western perspective, um, I think it's hard
• 51:44
  Speaker 1: for some people who have a distinctly Western perspective don't
• 51:47
  Speaker 1: realize the importance of private lands conservation on the eastern
• 51:53
  Speaker 1: half of the country where you just don't have that, uh,
• 51:57
  Speaker 1: where you don't have you know, lot of a lot
• 52:00
  Speaker 1: of these states in the West fifties, six of the
• 52:03
  Speaker 1: land mass is federal or state forest public land. So
• 52:08
  Speaker 1: you look at like, oh, yeah, all the conservation work,
• 52:10
  Speaker 1: you know, like happening in these areas. You get out
• 52:13
  Speaker 1: on the east and the landowners aren't doing good conservation work.
• 52:15
  Speaker 1: It's not happening. Yeah, I mean some of the species
• 52:17
  Speaker 1: I work with, like golden wing warbler and wood thrush,
• 52:20
  Speaker 1: as much as of their distribution in the United States
• 52:23
  Speaker 1: is on private land. So if you can't do conservation
• 52:26
  Speaker 1: on private land, moving the needle on those populations, you know,
• 52:30
  Speaker 1: trying to stabilize the population and recover them, you just
• 52:33
  Speaker 1: you aren't going to do it on public land. Yeah,
• 52:36
  Speaker 1: I mean, there's plenty of ways that it happens. But
• 52:38
  Speaker 1: you almost like to see you like to see more
• 52:39
  Speaker 1: credit go to those people who um on there. You know,
• 52:47
  Speaker 1: I think it Doug and many many guys like Doug.
• 52:49
  Speaker 1: But those people who are thinking about that stuff, like,
• 52:52
  Speaker 1: in addition, they have an obligation, right Like you have
• 52:55
  Speaker 1: property it's expensive to maintain, you have an obligation to
• 52:58
  Speaker 1: you know, pull resources off there and try to make
• 53:01
  Speaker 1: money or break even or whatever your situation is the land.
• 53:04
  Speaker 1: But then people who we talked about earlier about handicapping
• 53:06
  Speaker 1: yourself with certain things, but like handicapping your operation by
• 53:11
  Speaker 1: having some obligation to wildlife on there as well, is
• 53:15
  Speaker 1: this is the way the hell off subject. But it's
• 53:17
  Speaker 1: important work man. But you you're dealing that kind of
• 53:20
  Speaker 1: stuff so all the time, and you're trying to figure
• 53:22
  Speaker 1: out cooperative solutions to a lot of this stuff. Like
• 53:24
  Speaker 1: you know, as a suite of species, grassland birds are
• 53:27
  Speaker 1: declining faster than any other bird group. And a big
• 53:30
  Speaker 1: reason for the decline is just the way in which
• 53:33
  Speaker 1: we take off hay crops. Now we take off more crops,
• 53:37
  Speaker 1: and we take those hay crops off earlier. And so
• 53:40
  Speaker 1: these are these are birds that nest right on the ground.
• 53:42
  Speaker 1: They're obligate ground nesting grassland birds, and they just get
• 53:45
  Speaker 1: hammered by you know, the the hay mowing. And so
• 53:50
  Speaker 1: figuring out how you work with farmers so that farmers
• 53:52
  Speaker 1: can still get their hay crop off, can still feed
• 53:55
  Speaker 1: their animals, can still make money from selling hey, and
• 53:58
  Speaker 1: you can still you know, have a window of time
• 54:01
  Speaker 1: where you can get at least one brood of young
• 54:04
  Speaker 1: you know, of those grassland birds off. I mean that
• 54:06
  Speaker 1: that's the kind of stuff that's fun to me because,
• 54:08
  Speaker 1: you know, working landscapes are that what you know, what
• 54:11
  Speaker 1: this country is built on. You know, landscapes need to
• 54:13
  Speaker 1: continue to work, but they also need to be able
• 54:16
  Speaker 1: to produce wildlife, and so figuring out how to do
• 54:19
  Speaker 1: that is it's an art end of science. I worked
• 54:21
  Speaker 1: for a greenhouse for quite a while when I was
• 54:24
  Speaker 1: in high school, and we would in the summer day,
• 54:27
  Speaker 1: uh in the spring, they'd be hardening off the flat.
• 54:30
  Speaker 1: You know, flats like when you go buy plants, they
• 54:31
  Speaker 1: come into those little like a flat, like a flat
• 54:34
  Speaker 1: of flowers. Right, we'd move hundreds of flats out in
• 54:39
  Speaker 1: the fields. They'd come out. You'd be lowering the conveyor
• 54:41
  Speaker 1: into greenhouse. He'd be empty these entire greenhouses and lining
• 54:44
  Speaker 1: these fields of flats. So just be like a field
• 54:46
  Speaker 1: of flats. Remember one time and we're all they're pulling
• 54:49
  Speaker 1: in thousands of flats and I find a flat that
• 54:52
  Speaker 1: had that killed your head, put its eggs in the
• 54:55
  Speaker 1: cup of the flat. So we pick every flat up
• 55:00
  Speaker 1: and I leave the one flat laying out in this field,
• 55:03
  Speaker 1: and I explained to the owner. I'm like, hey, you
• 55:06
  Speaker 1: know that one out there, I didn't pick it up.
• 55:08
  Speaker 1: Scotto killed your eggs in it. That's not much walks
• 55:13
  Speaker 1: out in that field, picks that flatum still setside greenouse.
• 55:18
  Speaker 1: We're like, come on, I mean, I I was so
• 55:24
  Speaker 1: soft as a kid. I remember being struck by that
• 55:26
  Speaker 1: ship is being like dude, come on, so how how
• 55:32
  Speaker 1: long did it? When did you start working on your
• 55:34
  Speaker 1: boat on traditional bowl hunters path, Like, how long is
• 55:36
  Speaker 1: something like that taking when you got a whole of
• 55:37
  Speaker 1: the job you're trying to do. Yeah, And my son
• 55:40
  Speaker 1: was born just as I was starting to work on
• 55:43
  Speaker 1: this thing, and so you know, I was one of
• 55:45
  Speaker 1: those deals where you get up at four in the morning,
• 55:48
  Speaker 1: you know, and you're right for two hours like mad
• 55:50
  Speaker 1: at the kitchen counter until I hear him wake up,
• 55:52
  Speaker 1: and you know, and the whole family thing starts. But
• 55:54
  Speaker 1: I don't know if we start to finish, it's about
• 55:56
  Speaker 1: two years something like that. I mean, I think I
• 55:58
  Speaker 1: turned the manuscript in about I don't know, maybe fourteen
• 56:02
  Speaker 1: months or something like that. And then there's that whole
• 56:05
  Speaker 1: you know, editing process and production you know, you know
• 56:08
  Speaker 1: the drill, you know that goes into all of that.
• 56:10
  Speaker 1: So who do you man, like, who's the most who's
• 56:12
  Speaker 1: the best audience for it? In your mind? Is it?
• 56:14
  Speaker 1: Are you thinking like, uh um, is it meant to
• 56:18
  Speaker 1: be for people looking to get into it? For dudes
• 56:21
  Speaker 1: that are already into it? Yeah, it's everybody. That's a
• 56:24
  Speaker 1: tough question. Well, this is one of those first books
• 56:27
  Speaker 1: to where you know you're throwing the kitchen sink at
• 56:29
  Speaker 1: it a little bit, you know, because it's the first
• 56:31
  Speaker 1: time I've done it, So I guess I have I
• 56:34
  Speaker 1: have three audiences in mind. I have traditional bow hunters,
• 56:37
  Speaker 1: you know, transitional archers who are already into it, and
• 56:39
  Speaker 1: there's a ton of information in here that I think
• 56:42
  Speaker 1: they'll they'll like and can benefit from, lots of how
• 56:44
  Speaker 1: to stuff. It's for compound shooters who want to pick
• 56:48
  Speaker 1: up a traditional bow. And traditional archery is one of
• 56:50
  Speaker 1: the fastest growing sports that we have. I mean, people
• 56:53
  Speaker 1: are really coming to it and there's not a lot
• 56:56
  Speaker 1: of good information out there about how you make the switch. So,
• 56:59
  Speaker 1: you know, compound shooters wanting to switch the traditional archery
• 57:02
  Speaker 1: is is another one. Another audience. Like their challenges or
• 57:06
  Speaker 1: what they're facing are different than someone who's got no
• 57:08
  Speaker 1: archery background coming into it. Yeah, it's a little different.
• 57:11
  Speaker 1: And just you know, what boat do I buy? I mean,
• 57:14
  Speaker 1: you know there's there's hundreds of bowlers out there now,
• 57:16
  Speaker 1: you know, do you get a long boat, do you
• 57:17
  Speaker 1: get a recurve? Do I spend a thousand bucks on
• 57:20
  Speaker 1: a custom bow? Or should I just go buy a
• 57:24
  Speaker 1: production boat? Now you come down and be like and
• 57:27
  Speaker 1: help people. Are you just try to muddy the waters
• 57:30
  Speaker 1: in your boat? I try to help people, know, so
• 57:32
  Speaker 1: you're like specific recommendations, well specific as you can get,
• 57:36
  Speaker 1: I mean without being brandy is different. I mean, I'm
• 57:38
  Speaker 1: looking across the table here at Yanni, here what six one?
• 57:42
  Speaker 1: Probably you know you're you're a big guy, and you
• 57:45
  Speaker 1: know your your whole situation is going to be different
• 57:48
  Speaker 1: than mine. And so when I make recommendations about what
• 57:51
  Speaker 1: boat to go with, you really have to there's some generalizations. Yeah,
• 57:54
  Speaker 1: but okay, I guess kind of what I'm getting at
• 57:56
  Speaker 1: is this in the in the how to like we
• 58:00
  Speaker 1: did some how to stuff, like some like how how
• 58:03
  Speaker 1: to books and and there you want to be like, oh, yeah,
• 58:06
  Speaker 1: you know, a good pair of boots should do X,
• 58:07
  Speaker 1: Y and Z, right, So you can leave it at that,
• 58:11
  Speaker 1: or you could say, for instance, this is a hell
• 58:15
  Speaker 1: of a boot, like do you help people where you're
• 58:19
  Speaker 1: kind of like, listen, I don't a whole bunch of
• 58:20
  Speaker 1: hunting killed a bunch of game. There's a lot of reasons,
• 58:25
  Speaker 1: there's a lot of arguments foreign against all this kind
• 58:27
  Speaker 1: of stuff. If you're on defense, go recurve, not long bow,
• 58:30
  Speaker 1: or you just kind of say, like, here's all the
• 58:32
  Speaker 1: ship to consider. Yeah, I guess I think I mostly
• 58:35
  Speaker 1: just say here's all the ship to consider a little
• 58:38
  Speaker 1: more pointed than that, you know, But I definitely don't say,
• 58:42
  Speaker 1: if you're making a switch from compound, yeah, absolutely have
• 58:44
  Speaker 1: to shoot a recurve because that's the pathway then to
• 58:47
  Speaker 1: the long bow or something. I just don't believe that.
• 58:50
  Speaker 1: I think everybody's got to make their own decision, and
• 58:52
  Speaker 1: I think, you know, if you give them good information,
• 58:54
  Speaker 1: they can do it. People are smart, I mean, they
• 58:56
  Speaker 1: can figure this stuff out, you know, so I try
• 58:59
  Speaker 1: to steer them down the right path. Now do you
• 59:02
  Speaker 1: feel that, Uh, do you find yourself trying to talk
• 59:06
  Speaker 1: people in the traditional are you like, if you're interested,
• 59:09
  Speaker 1: here's a resource. Yeah. I I talked to try to
• 59:13
  Speaker 1: talk people into it in the sense that I'm really
• 59:16
  Speaker 1: passionate about it, and I love, you know, the leather
• 59:20
  Speaker 1: and the bone and the wood and all the stuff
• 59:22
  Speaker 1: that just comes with it. To me, that gets Yeah,
• 59:26
  Speaker 1: I didn't love you know, it's just so cool. But
• 59:30
  Speaker 1: on the other hand, you mean, you gotta have to
• 59:32
  Speaker 1: have a lot of time to invest in practicing, you know,
• 59:36
  Speaker 1: every day and have a place to hunt, and really,
• 59:39
  Speaker 1: you know, not just time practicing, but you're not gonna
• 59:42
  Speaker 1: go shoot a squirrel or a rabbit or a deer
• 59:44
  Speaker 1: every time you go out with a traditional bow. It's
• 59:46
  Speaker 1: gonna be every tenth time you go out, or every
• 59:49
  Speaker 1: fiftieth time. And so if you're working, you know, seventy
• 59:53
  Speaker 1: hours a week at some job and you have three
• 59:56
  Speaker 1: kids and you really want to learn how to hunt,
• 59:59
  Speaker 1: or you're already a hu her and you just want
• 1:00:00
  Speaker 1: to do something a little different, it's probably not the
• 1:00:03
  Speaker 1: right thing for you at that time. So no, I
• 1:00:05
  Speaker 1: don't I don't you know, take people by the shoulders
• 1:00:07
  Speaker 1: and say, hey, you gotta do this. Yeah. That's the
• 1:00:10
  Speaker 1: thing though, because people are saying to me like, oh,
• 1:00:11
  Speaker 1: so you think that everyone who I'll go hunting, I'm like, no, no,
• 1:00:15
  Speaker 1: not at all. No. If you're interested in, I'd love
• 1:00:19
  Speaker 1: to have a chat with you, but I'm not gonna
• 1:00:21
  Speaker 1: like try to convince you to be interested in. There
• 1:00:24
  Speaker 1: has no doubt. I'm amazed at the number of you know,
• 1:00:27
  Speaker 1: this whole notion of you know, adult onset hunters. You
• 1:00:31
  Speaker 1: know people who are you know, who have never hunted
• 1:00:33
  Speaker 1: there in their twenties or thirties, or you know, maybe
• 1:00:36
  Speaker 1: even forties or fifties, and they're coming to hunting. And
• 1:00:38
  Speaker 1: we're seeing that so much in New York State, you know,
• 1:00:41
  Speaker 1: coming out of out of the city and out of
• 1:00:43
  Speaker 1: other urban areas, people who have been introduced to hunting
• 1:00:46
  Speaker 1: through food and through meat eater. And you know, I
• 1:00:49
  Speaker 1: get it all the time. I work at Cornell University
• 1:00:51
  Speaker 1: where I'm surrounded by students that are coming from all
• 1:00:54
  Speaker 1: over the country and they hear through the grapevine that
• 1:00:57
  Speaker 1: I'm a hunter, and then I'm a traditional bow hunter,
• 1:00:59
  Speaker 1: and they'll seek me out and come to me and say, look,
• 1:01:01
  Speaker 1: you know, I've never done this before. And and by
• 1:01:04
  Speaker 1: the way, I don't tell my classmates I'm interested in this,
• 1:01:06
  Speaker 1: but I really wanted to. I really want to check
• 1:01:11
  Speaker 1: this out kind of thing. And I'm just that did
• 1:01:13
  Speaker 1: that never happened ten years ago? And yeah, I shouldn't
• 1:01:18
  Speaker 1: say never, but it didn't happen often, not like it
• 1:01:20
  Speaker 1: is now. Good. No, there's no doubt about it. In
• 1:01:23
  Speaker 1: my mind. The biggest argument against I like, I own
• 1:01:26
  Speaker 1: a long bowl, I own a recurve. Never killed a
• 1:01:29
  Speaker 1: big game animal with a long bowler recurve. Yanni and
• 1:01:34
  Speaker 1: I talked about this not long ago. It's like my
• 1:01:36
  Speaker 1: thing is like my primary goal as a hunter. It's
• 1:01:38
  Speaker 1: like primary goal as a hunter and fisherman. Uh, you know,
• 1:01:44
  Speaker 1: I got a million secondaries, or I guess you only
• 1:01:46
  Speaker 1: have one secondary. I got the second third, four fift six, right.
• 1:01:50
  Speaker 1: Primary goal is that I don't did uh I have
• 1:01:54
  Speaker 1: enough meat where when my family's eating at home, we
• 1:01:56
  Speaker 1: have wild game meat. That's like my number one thing,
• 1:01:59
  Speaker 1: so all else falls from that. It's like I want
• 1:02:02
  Speaker 1: to be that when we're eating in the Ronella household.
• 1:02:05
  Speaker 1: Like when I cooked dinner at night, I go into
• 1:02:07
  Speaker 1: my freezer and I got enough game meeting there where,
• 1:02:11
  Speaker 1: you know, and I think that, Um, if I knew,
• 1:02:14
  Speaker 1: I was gonna fulfill that all the time, and I
• 1:02:17
  Speaker 1: fulfill it quite handily right now, primarily because of the
• 1:02:20
  Speaker 1: particulars of my my occupation. I have absolutely no problem
• 1:02:24
  Speaker 1: doing that. But let's say I got into some other
• 1:02:26
  Speaker 1: line of work down the road that really limited how
• 1:02:29
  Speaker 1: much time I spent outdoors, and I was looking at
• 1:02:31
  Speaker 1: that long bowl as much as I'm like, man, I
• 1:02:33
  Speaker 1: told I respected, right, I respected no end Um, I
• 1:02:37
  Speaker 1: got kind of like some family ties of that stuff.
• 1:02:39
  Speaker 1: I get it. It's it's like a higher art. But
• 1:02:43
  Speaker 1: I look at something like but I know, if I
• 1:02:45
  Speaker 1: you know with that righte me, I'm gonna be piling
• 1:02:47
  Speaker 1: I'm piling up the pounds of meat. I mean, we
• 1:02:49
  Speaker 1: eat a ton of innocent I mean, it's almost the
• 1:02:52
  Speaker 1: only meat we eat. And so you know, my goal
• 1:02:55
  Speaker 1: every year is to stock the freezer too. And it
• 1:02:57
  Speaker 1: takes a lot of time with a long bower recurve,
• 1:02:59
  Speaker 1: but you can do. But I mean, I have three
• 1:03:00
  Speaker 1: deer in the freezer right now, and you know that's
• 1:03:03
  Speaker 1: a that's a good jump on the situation. By the
• 1:03:06
  Speaker 1: time the season is over, I hope to have two
• 1:03:08
  Speaker 1: or three more. And you know, in battle debtal, you
• 1:03:10
  Speaker 1: know there's a that's my wife and I have three
• 1:03:12
  Speaker 1: year old son, and I have a daughter who's just
• 1:03:14
  Speaker 1: two months old, so she's not eating venison yet, but
• 1:03:17
  Speaker 1: she will be soon. And uh, yeah, you got if
• 1:03:20
  Speaker 1: you're pointing away a few deer, you're loving it. Yeah,
• 1:03:23
  Speaker 1: and you know that I mentioned earlier, But you got
• 1:03:25
  Speaker 1: a lot. But again, you got a lot of days
• 1:03:26
  Speaker 1: into it. Yeah, hunting three days, huge amount of time.
• 1:03:29
  Speaker 1: I mean, you know, I my funny. We were cleaning
• 1:03:32
  Speaker 1: out some stuff at the house a couple of weeks ago,
• 1:03:34
  Speaker 1: and my wife ran across one of my old hunting
• 1:03:36
  Speaker 1: journals and she starts leaping through and she was like,
• 1:03:39
  Speaker 1: holy shit, you hunted every single day from October one
• 1:03:45
  Speaker 1: to almost the end of November. It's like, yeah, I
• 1:03:47
  Speaker 1: either get a morning hunt in or an afternoon hunt
• 1:03:50
  Speaker 1: for every day. I mean, I don't do it anymore
• 1:03:53
  Speaker 1: because I have a family and I just can't. But
• 1:03:55
  Speaker 1: when I was single, I when I was out there
• 1:03:57
  Speaker 1: all the time. But you mentioned about phil in the
• 1:03:59
  Speaker 1: freezer those times that I was pulling the muzzle loader
• 1:04:02
  Speaker 1: out in the last twenty five years, it was at
• 1:04:04
  Speaker 1: the end of the season and the freezer was empty.
• 1:04:06
  Speaker 1: So that's your freezer filling. Like, baby, I'm getting serious
• 1:04:12
  Speaker 1: getting out this here flint lock. That's crazy. Take no prisoners, Yeah,
• 1:04:19
  Speaker 1: prisoners today. Man, I got this souped up fire over
• 1:04:25
  Speaker 1: minds all rusty too, and the scopes are the scope
• 1:04:27
  Speaker 1: of stocks all banged up, a system mess. So would
• 1:04:30
  Speaker 1: you do you ever think you're right about hunting with
• 1:04:32
  Speaker 1: flint locks. That's a whole damn thing too. Man. Yeah,
• 1:04:34
  Speaker 1: I don't know, I love My dad got me into
• 1:04:37
  Speaker 1: flint locks, and I just love doing it. And yeah
• 1:04:40
  Speaker 1: maybe someday. Yeah, you gotta have nerves to steel because
• 1:04:43
  Speaker 1: you need to hold steady between the first boom and
• 1:04:45
  Speaker 1: the second boom. Most people the first boom they got
• 1:04:48
  Speaker 1: the muzzle six inches up in the air. You gotta
• 1:04:51
  Speaker 1: sit tight. Boom. Well, when you get those really delayed
• 1:04:56
  Speaker 1: fires to you know, where the flint hits, the friends
• 1:04:59
  Speaker 1: in the powder in the pan flashes and your hold, hold, hold,
• 1:05:03
  Speaker 1: and all of a sudden boom. You know, by that time,
• 1:05:05
  Speaker 1: you're well off what you were going to shoot at. Yeah.
• 1:05:08
  Speaker 1: I've done some mess around with those back. I like
• 1:05:10
  Speaker 1: that stuff. But yeah, it's fun. But but do you
• 1:05:13
  Speaker 1: what do you think you're gonna do? You think you
• 1:05:15
  Speaker 1: do more books? Yeah, definitely thinking about another book and
• 1:05:18
  Speaker 1: working on it now. I was working on in the
• 1:05:20
  Speaker 1: hotel room a little bit and just kind of framing
• 1:05:23
  Speaker 1: it and getting some stuff on paper. At the moment,
• 1:05:25
  Speaker 1: it's not going to be about bow hunting. No, it's
• 1:05:28
  Speaker 1: gonna be it's gonna be about hunting. Uh. It's I
• 1:05:32
  Speaker 1: found in writing this book that I like writing about people,
• 1:05:36
  Speaker 1: you know, I love writing about natural history and hunting
• 1:05:39
  Speaker 1: and all that stuff. But I really love writing about people,
• 1:05:41
  Speaker 1: and I'm passionate about conservationist and the whole hunter concert
• 1:05:45
  Speaker 1: conservationist movement. And it strikes me that, you know, we
• 1:05:49
  Speaker 1: hear all the time about this whole suite of people
• 1:05:52
  Speaker 1: who you know, who founded the Hunter Consolvations, different pin shows,
• 1:05:58
  Speaker 1: r now, all those fells all. Yeah. I've only in
• 1:06:01
  Speaker 1: the last year really started to like just dedicate a
• 1:06:04
  Speaker 1: little bit of free time of like learning more about
• 1:06:07
  Speaker 1: that the name. But there's a whole bunch of others too,
• 1:06:10
  Speaker 1: like FDR you know, did a whole bunch of you know,
• 1:06:13
  Speaker 1: found in the Civilian Yeah, oh yeah, yeah, yeah, some
• 1:06:17
  Speaker 1: of the like the New Deal Works. He had a
• 1:06:20
  Speaker 1: hand in founding National Fish and Wildlife Foundation, and there's
• 1:06:23
  Speaker 1: all sorts of stuff other He's an unsung hero if
• 1:06:26
  Speaker 1: he in fact is a hero, absolutely no one talks
• 1:06:28
  Speaker 1: about that guy. So don't talk about I mean felt
• 1:06:32
  Speaker 1: I had to get a little bit tangled up in
• 1:06:33
  Speaker 1: World War Two, but I mean no one talks about
• 1:06:35
  Speaker 1: it through the lens of conservation. Conservation. Yeah, you just
• 1:06:38
  Speaker 1: put your finger on what I'm what what the book
• 1:06:40
  Speaker 1: is going to be about It's my working title is
• 1:06:43
  Speaker 1: his Red Hands, Green Hearts stories of American hunters and conservationists,
• 1:06:49
  Speaker 1: and so what I want and I want to tell
• 1:06:51
  Speaker 1: their stories how it's I don't want to just do
• 1:06:53
  Speaker 1: like you know, Roosevelt did X, Y and Z. Why
• 1:06:56
  Speaker 1: did he do it? What wres? What his hunting experiences? Like?
• 1:06:59
  Speaker 1: What how of Leopold hunt? I mean, you know, I've
• 1:07:02
  Speaker 1: Leopold actually from what I've read, wasn't a very successful hunter,
• 1:07:06
  Speaker 1: and his wife actually out hunted him a lot. But
• 1:07:08
  Speaker 1: those stories are now he seems to do a little
• 1:07:10
  Speaker 1: bit of blundering in the game. Yeah, yeah, exactly. He
• 1:07:13
  Speaker 1: kind of was that was like the kind of take
• 1:07:15
  Speaker 1: the long walk. Yeah, and like, well to come up
• 1:07:19
  Speaker 1: with some of the stuff that that he said, you
• 1:07:21
  Speaker 1: had to have a long walk exactly. Yeah. I'm as
• 1:07:24
  Speaker 1: you probably walked past a lot of ships like deep
• 1:07:26
  Speaker 1: and thought and then he realized, I'll stand. So I
• 1:07:29
  Speaker 1: just want to I want to find some of those
• 1:07:31
  Speaker 1: figures too, like FDR, like um Stewart, you do all uh,
• 1:07:36
  Speaker 1: you know some of these people who who were hunters
• 1:07:39
  Speaker 1: and did great conservation work but are completely unsung. You know,
• 1:07:42
  Speaker 1: we just don't know about him, and I want to
• 1:07:44
  Speaker 1: tell their stories. Yeah, that's interesting. Now Stackpole Books is
• 1:07:48
  Speaker 1: kind of cool because they do so much stuff in
• 1:07:49
  Speaker 1: the in the outdoor space. You've been around a long time,
• 1:07:52
  Speaker 1: have you like to work with those guys? And I
• 1:07:53
  Speaker 1: guess you can't say if you didn't know. They've been
• 1:07:58
  Speaker 1: great fantas stick I mean they've been such like a
• 1:08:01
  Speaker 1: constant and UH as far as like like uh natural
• 1:08:06
  Speaker 1: history stuff and hunting and fishing spaces and venture traveling. Yeah.
• 1:08:12
  Speaker 1: I mean it was funny because when I had the
• 1:08:15
  Speaker 1: idea for this book, and I wrote the proposal and
• 1:08:17
  Speaker 1: I sent it out to a bunch of different publishers
• 1:08:20
  Speaker 1: and Stackpole was top on my list, and I never
• 1:08:23
  Speaker 1: heard back from them, and so I was picked him
• 1:08:26
  Speaker 1: again and never heard anything. And I was literally just
• 1:08:29
  Speaker 1: about ready to sign a contract with someone else when
• 1:08:33
  Speaker 1: Judas Snell from UH Stackpole returned one of my Yeah,
• 1:08:38
  Speaker 1: and she she said, she said, absolutely, we're interested in
• 1:08:41
  Speaker 1: your book. I'm so sorry I haven't been able to
• 1:08:43
  Speaker 1: get back to you. And it was just like boom,
• 1:08:45
  Speaker 1: everything fell into place after that, and so he was
• 1:08:47
  Speaker 1: I mean she was literally hours or a day away
• 1:08:50
  Speaker 1: from you know, where I was from from you know
• 1:08:53
  Speaker 1: what's going with someone else? So where what's the best
• 1:08:57
  Speaker 1: way people? What's the best way people find your book?
• 1:08:59
  Speaker 1: I'm gets on Amazon right, It's on Amazon. Um you
• 1:09:02
  Speaker 1: can buy it there, but you can also buy it
• 1:09:04
  Speaker 1: at my website, which is Traditional Spirit Outdoors dot com. Well, all,
• 1:09:08
  Speaker 1: what what kind of stuff is on your website? It's
• 1:09:11
  Speaker 1: stuff about the book and other stuff. I do a
• 1:09:12
  Speaker 1: lot of freelance writing, and you know, I'll do writing
• 1:09:16
  Speaker 1: for people's websites, kind of content development, that kind of thing.
• 1:09:19
  Speaker 1: And do you do other ship? Like are you nap?
• 1:09:21
  Speaker 1: Do you nap broadheads? And do arrow shafts and stuff?
• 1:09:24
  Speaker 1: Make arrows? But I don't do any napping. You haven't shot.
• 1:09:28
  Speaker 1: You haven't napped ahead and tried to shoot something with it.
• 1:09:30
  Speaker 1: I've tried. You say, you make an arrow? What do
• 1:09:32
  Speaker 1: you what's what's your blanks? Late? Yeah, I'm starting with
• 1:09:35
  Speaker 1: a starting with just a wooden shaft unfinished, you know,
• 1:09:38
  Speaker 1: I buy a wooden shaft and then go from there. Seater.
• 1:09:42
  Speaker 1: I like ASH. You know, Ash is a little heavier.
• 1:09:45
  Speaker 1: In your book, you talked about the fletching and the
• 1:09:47
  Speaker 1: fletching process. Yeah, that's fun. Stuff. Yeah, for sure. So
• 1:09:51
  Speaker 1: say the website again, it's uh traditional Spirit outdoors dot com.
• 1:09:55
  Speaker 1: If you go on area, they probably buy a signed
• 1:09:57
  Speaker 1: book off right, they can get a sign book. And
• 1:09:59
  Speaker 1: the other thing they can do is I give ten
• 1:10:01
  Speaker 1: percent of all books sales back to back country hunters
• 1:10:04
  Speaker 1: and anglers. And so when you remember the cover price,
• 1:10:08
  Speaker 1: the cover price when you're buying book, you give, you
• 1:10:10
  Speaker 1: give two dollars and ten cents to b h A.
• 1:10:13
  Speaker 1: It's generous, you know. It's I think conservation is so
• 1:10:17
  Speaker 1: pissed ance at Patagoni they only give one percent. You're
• 1:10:24
  Speaker 1: really gone on those boys. It's dead trout pictures. It
• 1:10:30
  Speaker 1: comes from a place of love. It comes to a
• 1:10:32
  Speaker 1: place of love. I've always like, I know a lot
• 1:10:34
  Speaker 1: of guys hunting patagon I like Padagon. You actually met
• 1:10:37
  Speaker 1: a feller that works a Padagon not long I was
• 1:10:39
  Speaker 1: tell him about that. It's just that I feel like
• 1:10:41
  Speaker 1: they've you know, you got this like patriarch kind of
• 1:10:45
  Speaker 1: started this company and he's like, uh, he likes to
• 1:10:48
  Speaker 1: do a little hunting and fishing and whatnot. And I
• 1:10:50
  Speaker 1: just feel like they haven't got they haven't got the member,
• 1:10:53
  Speaker 1: they haven't got trolling for him or a representative to
• 1:10:57
  Speaker 1: give us a call. At one point that he was
• 1:10:59
  Speaker 1: a closeted hunter. I think that's that's not true. I
• 1:11:02
  Speaker 1: think people he's not closeted. He like he's like open
• 1:11:06
  Speaker 1: about because he did. He was just recently profiled in
• 1:11:08
  Speaker 1: the New Yorker and uh and then there he talks
• 1:11:10
  Speaker 1: about a bit about hunting. He's not closeted. But I
• 1:11:13
  Speaker 1: thought he's closeted. Yeah, I don't know anyhow what was
• 1:11:18
  Speaker 1: I saying? But why that? How did that come up
• 1:11:23
  Speaker 1: onto the planet? You know, Yann did a whole t
• 1:11:26
  Speaker 1: whole damn T shirt run. I think he gave all
• 1:11:28
  Speaker 1: the money. Sid. I can't compete with that, Yann. It's
• 1:11:37
  Speaker 1: been good for how good for you? We've been well?
• 1:11:40
  Speaker 1: I just think the exposure, you know, it gives us.
• 1:11:42
  Speaker 1: It's it's marketing. But so alright, So explain that you
• 1:11:48
  Speaker 1: had a tir you had a T shirt. There's b
• 1:11:51
  Speaker 1: h A written on it. Yeah, we we we specifically
• 1:11:54
  Speaker 1: made a T shirt for this person for this take
• 1:11:57
  Speaker 1: the money out to make the T shirt? So at yasah. Yeah. Yeah,
• 1:12:02
  Speaker 1: So like I said, profits al right, So once we
• 1:12:05
  Speaker 1: paid for the shirts, paid for the design you like
• 1:12:08
  Speaker 1: losing money, because that's that's the bad business. Any won't
• 1:12:13
  Speaker 1: even be around to do any good for him. Yeah. No,
• 1:12:16
  Speaker 1: it's great. Man. When you get an email or you know,
• 1:12:19
  Speaker 1: a personal phone call from Land and he's like, dude,
• 1:12:21
  Speaker 1: you guys really put your you know, your money where
• 1:12:24
  Speaker 1: your mouth was and like we just got another check
• 1:12:26
  Speaker 1: from you. Guys were so stoked, like you send the
• 1:12:28
  Speaker 1: check in. Yeah, yeah, it feels really good. I might
• 1:12:31
  Speaker 1: have told it. I might have told stop. I told
• 1:12:33
  Speaker 1: this story on the podcast. I one time went to God,
• 1:12:39
  Speaker 1: have I told the story. I was down and remember
• 1:12:41
  Speaker 1: something North Carolina, Like what's the trendy town in North Carolina? Charlotte,
• 1:12:49
  Speaker 1: North Carolina. And this guy down there I was doing this.
• 1:12:53
  Speaker 1: He does this wild game dinner okay, where he charges
• 1:12:58
  Speaker 1: you know, seventy five I go sevy five bucks a seat.
• 1:13:03
  Speaker 1: He's wild They didn't dinner. And I pointed out to him, like,
• 1:13:05
  Speaker 1: you know, some of the seminal wildlife conservation legislation in
• 1:13:10
  Speaker 1: this country had to do with banning the sale of
• 1:13:12
  Speaker 1: wild game meat. And that's kind of how we recovered
• 1:13:15
  Speaker 1: our wildlife species because we got rid of market hunting
• 1:13:19
  Speaker 1: and what you're engaged in here is you're engaged in
• 1:13:21
  Speaker 1: market hunting um and you're breaking a whole lot of
• 1:13:24
  Speaker 1: laws by having by charging for a wild game dinner.
• 1:13:29
  Speaker 1: We talked some more about him, like he goes, oh so,
• 1:13:31
  Speaker 1: and so I'm like, yeah, places do fundraisers. You can
• 1:13:34
  Speaker 1: do fundraisers with proper accounting. You know, where you have
• 1:13:36
  Speaker 1: wild game dinner and you raise money and the money
• 1:13:39
  Speaker 1: goes is not a for profit venture. And he then
• 1:13:41
  Speaker 1: says okay. And so then I I go to one
• 1:13:44
  Speaker 1: of these dinners, this private book tour thing I'm on
• 1:13:46
  Speaker 1: and he's and he says, how and I get to
• 1:13:49
  Speaker 1: pick the recipient of the money, and I picked. I
• 1:13:54
  Speaker 1: picked the theater Roosevelt Conservation Partnership. After that dinner, I
• 1:14:00
  Speaker 1: got hold of him and say, hey, you let me
• 1:14:01
  Speaker 1: know if you ever get a check from the organization
• 1:14:04
  Speaker 1: or the person or anything. Never got it, Never got it.
• 1:14:08
  Speaker 1: And he's talking about it at the event. Tricky son
• 1:14:13
  Speaker 1: of a bit. Yeah, if you know, I didn't like,
• 1:14:17
  Speaker 1: I never like went after him bought it. But you know,
• 1:14:19
  Speaker 1: I don't want to talk about anything. But but you
• 1:14:22
  Speaker 1: know I didn't do like all the work I should
• 1:14:24
  Speaker 1: have done to like document whatever. But I remember thinking
• 1:14:26
  Speaker 1: it was a little bit. Yeah. Uh so you write
• 1:14:33
  Speaker 1: them in, you just like write the check, you keep
• 1:14:37
  Speaker 1: track of it or whatever. But they sell it too. Now, yeah,
• 1:14:41
  Speaker 1: we had to. We're gonna print some more up and
• 1:14:43
  Speaker 1: get them some shirts to sell. You guys sell Belltown
• 1:14:46
  Speaker 1: Pizza T shirts. Lots of them comes summer. The tourists
• 1:14:49
  Speaker 1: like to take them home, for sure. They walk all
• 1:14:51
  Speaker 1: the T shirt pizza. Get a cool T shirt? Is
• 1:14:53
  Speaker 1: that why you're asking me who does our T shirts? Yeah?
• 1:14:55
  Speaker 1: I got a great guy did our T shirts. Situations
• 1:15:00
  Speaker 1: mass Man. Everybody's like calling me up, trying to hit
• 1:15:02
  Speaker 1: you up for T shirts because I know I know you. Yeah,
• 1:15:04
  Speaker 1: just earlier Jimmy Doran hit me up for a Netgator
• 1:15:07
  Speaker 1: for a friend, a kid of a friend. Yeah, my
• 1:15:10
  Speaker 1: buddy Coady's kid, Ridge is gonna have anybody name Rich.
• 1:15:13
  Speaker 1: We got a guy we worked with it we named
• 1:15:15
  Speaker 1: the Bridge. He's a little his name is Chris. We
• 1:15:17
  Speaker 1: name him Ridge Pounder. It's a cool name. Yea. His
• 1:15:21
  Speaker 1: wife was miss Pounder, Rich Pounder. Whatever happen. That's some
• 1:15:25
  Speaker 1: bit she needs to come back out with us. Yeah,
• 1:15:28
  Speaker 1: he's talking to it all. Yeah, I'm keeping keeping the leash.
• 1:15:33
  Speaker 1: I'm just trying to shorten the leash, you know. But yeah,
• 1:15:35
  Speaker 1: he had to go and just you know, test the
• 1:15:37
  Speaker 1: water's other places. Realized that he was already working for
• 1:15:39
  Speaker 1: the great, the good fault. Yeah, Jimmy got the closing thoughts. Wow,
• 1:15:45
  Speaker 1: not really, just enjoyed learning a little bit more about
• 1:15:48
  Speaker 1: long bows and ree curves and I still have yea.
• 1:15:50
  Speaker 1: You you shoot some arrows out of a have a compound,
• 1:15:54
  Speaker 1: nice matthews and I like a lot. But you shot
• 1:15:56
  Speaker 1: a freak buck with it. I think last week I did.
• 1:15:58
  Speaker 1: I shot a really old, really smell, crazy looking, crazy
• 1:16:01
  Speaker 1: looking deer um. Yes, five and four. It was really
• 1:16:05
  Speaker 1: super old. You looked like you've been through hell. He's
• 1:16:09
  Speaker 1: not in good shape. I did him a favorite. I
• 1:16:12
  Speaker 1: think he was in the autumn of his life. Very end. Yeah,
• 1:16:16
  Speaker 1: there's no uh no fat, No blood came in. I
• 1:16:19
  Speaker 1: was just bizarre, but in about a thousand ticks on
• 1:16:22
  Speaker 1: him and a distinct smell. So it was you probably
• 1:16:27
  Speaker 1: served all that media. Yes, specialist, it's a little funny.
• 1:16:32
  Speaker 1: We'll give you a discount of one. Yes, super Bowl,
• 1:16:35
  Speaker 1: you ran a Super Bowl special area and so if
• 1:16:38
  Speaker 1: you if you could sell it, that's what they paid
• 1:16:40
  Speaker 1: a big box for. Across the Atlantic in Germany were
• 1:16:44
  Speaker 1: I was told by a guy who's who you like?
• 1:16:47
  Speaker 1: In Scotland stuff they do, you know, they got like
• 1:16:50
  Speaker 1: different sister and there with landowner own it's not like America.
• 1:16:53
  Speaker 1: Like America the people on the animals. There the landowner
• 1:16:55
  Speaker 1: owns the animals and they sell. And the German market
• 1:17:00
  Speaker 1: rutting stags, they want running stags. They like them. The
• 1:17:06
  Speaker 1: word they use high. Okay, I think didn't we hear
• 1:17:10
  Speaker 1: the same thing about the big boars in Texas and
• 1:17:14
  Speaker 1: somehow they that's rights meat out for the big boars.
• 1:17:19
  Speaker 1: I don't want that big boar. I'll take that little
• 1:17:21
  Speaker 1: fat south. What are you saying for the European markets.
• 1:17:23
  Speaker 1: Some European markets they like a good they like when
• 1:17:26
  Speaker 1: they're eating game meat. They want to know I want
• 1:17:27
  Speaker 1: to know it and they don't want to around. Oh
• 1:17:30
  Speaker 1: it's so tender and mild and like that. Yeah. I've
• 1:17:33
  Speaker 1: been trying to keep that in mind lately as I
• 1:17:35
  Speaker 1: go through my meats, and you know, just like taste
• 1:17:38
  Speaker 1: and whatever and just not have the like it's like
• 1:17:42
  Speaker 1: eating these chicken breasts for always like, oh, the blander
• 1:17:45
  Speaker 1: it is, the better it is, as opposed to being
• 1:17:48
  Speaker 1: like oh me and culture in general. Yeah, like the
• 1:17:52
  Speaker 1: measure of good meat is tender and mild. Yeah, exactly,
• 1:17:55
  Speaker 1: it's tender and mild must be good. Yeah. And instead
• 1:17:58
  Speaker 1: now I'm like, you know, maybe I want to shoot
• 1:18:00
  Speaker 1: that runted up buck. You know, dude, we did a
• 1:18:02
  Speaker 1: pepsi challenge. We were eating raw meat out of one
• 1:18:07
  Speaker 1: and a half year old buck and raw meat out
• 1:18:11
  Speaker 1: of um, like four or five year old you know,
• 1:18:16
  Speaker 1: full on buck. Now, the one had been hanging in
• 1:18:19
  Speaker 1: a tree in cold weather for several days, so that
• 1:18:21
  Speaker 1: that gives it. The big buck had been hanging. It's
• 1:18:25
  Speaker 1: just like you would have known, not even and everybody
• 1:18:29
  Speaker 1: talks about oh yeah that old buck. Well I'll shoot
• 1:18:31
  Speaker 1: a eat her buck, and you know all that. It's like, dude,
• 1:18:33
  Speaker 1: that buck. There was no difference between those two bucks.
• 1:18:37
  Speaker 1: Raw meat, the same cut. The bigger buck actually, um,
• 1:18:44
  Speaker 1: it was better texture. Yeah, to the tooth it was
• 1:18:46
  Speaker 1: better than the young buck. But I was the young
• 1:18:48
  Speaker 1: buck was literally killed eight hours. But that fresh meat
• 1:18:52
  Speaker 1: has a real iron taste to it. It's got like
• 1:18:54
  Speaker 1: hasn't gone through its rigor process. Yeah, what's that process
• 1:18:58
  Speaker 1: called helen choe you know ye e K G May
• 1:19:04
  Speaker 1: where they catch a fish. You ever see this, Like
• 1:19:06
  Speaker 1: I was out fishing with Helen and they catch fish
• 1:19:09
  Speaker 1: and they cut the tail and bend the tail back,
• 1:19:11
  Speaker 1: and then they run a steel rod like a piece
• 1:19:14
  Speaker 1: of wire through the spinal column to relax that fish.
• 1:19:19
  Speaker 1: But I saw guys in South America they called a
• 1:19:21
  Speaker 1: big river turtle and they um ran a willow, not
• 1:19:26
  Speaker 1: willow probably, but a long, bendy green stick all through
• 1:19:30
  Speaker 1: down its spinal column and that just melted that turtle.
• 1:19:33
  Speaker 1: Just relax. If you cut that off, turtle, you gotta
• 1:19:36
  Speaker 1: wait six seven hours before you can cut it up.
• 1:19:38
  Speaker 1: This turtle was just like yeah. But the same way
• 1:19:41
  Speaker 1: when they shot Cattley. You know, I've watched the process
• 1:19:43
  Speaker 1: cattle and like big slaughterhouses. You know, they hit with
• 1:19:46
  Speaker 1: that captive bolt gun, hang them up. I think they
• 1:19:50
  Speaker 1: hit with the cats with bolt gun, flip them around
• 1:19:52
  Speaker 1: and hang them up upside down, bleed them, then electrocute them.
• 1:19:56
  Speaker 1: And once you useapp them, they're just there's no flinching
• 1:20:00
  Speaker 1: and kicking, just yell, yeah, they're just I think it
• 1:20:03
  Speaker 1: does something to the whole the whole rigor process with
• 1:20:05
  Speaker 1: the nervous system. But they got that same thing by
• 1:20:07
  Speaker 1: running that rod through that turtle. Dude, I think it
• 1:20:10
  Speaker 1: was not. You just eat it right then, and there
• 1:20:13
  Speaker 1: probably severs all those nerve connections from the spine going
• 1:20:16
  Speaker 1: out to the muscles and you know what, they're like this.
• 1:20:17
  Speaker 1: You pull the arm out, the arm comes right back.
• 1:20:20
  Speaker 1: You do that to it. He's just the brain is
• 1:20:22
  Speaker 1: probably in. They're firing away, going, you know, pull a
• 1:20:24
  Speaker 1: pool pool pool, but nothing's happening because it's all cut off.
• 1:20:28
  Speaker 1: Speaking to Zap and me, did you ever get to
• 1:20:30
  Speaker 1: try that tender buck gadget something? No? I still got
• 1:20:34
  Speaker 1: it too. I want to try it, but it's like
• 1:20:35
  Speaker 1: our hunting isn't really conducive to it. You have to
• 1:20:38
  Speaker 1: take it out the dugs. Yeah, the place where we
• 1:20:41
  Speaker 1: can get the whole cat like, Yeah, I can get
• 1:20:43
  Speaker 1: a little my backpack up and put a battery in
• 1:20:45
  Speaker 1: the squitching You got to carry a battery on. That's
• 1:20:49
  Speaker 1: bad enough. Just get it from the car to the pier. Man.
• 1:20:51
  Speaker 1: I can't imagine hiking back in four miles of a
• 1:20:53
  Speaker 1: twelve vault. Um yeah, um, I think you did a
• 1:21:01
  Speaker 1: really good job roun on Um. I owned a traditional
• 1:21:04
  Speaker 1: for probably I don't know, at least six years, maybe
• 1:21:07
  Speaker 1: a few longer. About the turkey got on accident I shot.
• 1:21:11
  Speaker 1: I'm proud to say I've gotten three shots at elk
• 1:21:15
  Speaker 1: with my recurve, all well within my range. You know.
• 1:21:17
  Speaker 1: It's like that twenty yards or less range. All three
• 1:21:20
  Speaker 1: arrows went clean over their backs. At the time, I
• 1:21:25
  Speaker 1: was like, I was spending for for me at the time,
• 1:21:27
  Speaker 1: big box to drive up to Montana because our our
• 1:21:31
  Speaker 1: Monta or Colorado was archery seasonal closed. I would drive
• 1:21:34
  Speaker 1: up to Montana, spends on a week long hunting trip
• 1:21:38
  Speaker 1: and then fling one over the back, and I was like,
• 1:21:40
  Speaker 1: I'm getting a confound. You know. Next year killed the
• 1:21:44
  Speaker 1: cow um, but still proud of the fact that got
• 1:21:47
  Speaker 1: in close. And numerous other times, you know, I let
• 1:21:49
  Speaker 1: Elk walk it, you know, twenty five or whatever, and
• 1:21:52
  Speaker 1: I think I'm gonna come back to shooting traditional at
• 1:21:54
  Speaker 1: some point. But the turkey that I did kill um
• 1:21:57
  Speaker 1: Before I shot at turkey with my shot gun. We
• 1:22:00
  Speaker 1: would chase turkeys around with a reekers, which is super fun.
• 1:22:04
  Speaker 1: We would do it just like Elk like have a
• 1:22:06
  Speaker 1: caller behind us, you know, that would be calling the
• 1:22:08
  Speaker 1: turkey and he'd come in strutton. And if that turkey
• 1:22:11
  Speaker 1: strutting and he turns away from you, you've got all
• 1:22:14
  Speaker 1: the time and you know, freedom in the world to
• 1:22:16
  Speaker 1: draw your bow back and get a nice shot. They
• 1:22:20
  Speaker 1: can't see nothing. But this is actually in the fall,
• 1:22:24
  Speaker 1: and uh, when we're hunting Nebraska, I mean it's like
• 1:22:27
  Speaker 1: it's near unlimited like turkey killing, Like I forget, you
• 1:22:30
  Speaker 1: can kill quite a few in the fall. But we're
• 1:22:33
  Speaker 1: basically just ambush on the roost, you know, so we
• 1:22:36
  Speaker 1: would just like hang out where we knew they were
• 1:22:38
  Speaker 1: gonna be coming back towards the roost and the evens,
• 1:22:41
  Speaker 1: you know, so you're just in there, nothing's going on.
• 1:22:44
  Speaker 1: And then five minutes later, it's like fifty turkeys around,
• 1:22:47
  Speaker 1: you know. And a lot of times the young ones
• 1:22:49
  Speaker 1: them are they still poults at that point And even
• 1:22:53
  Speaker 1: if it's the fall, yeah, you can tell. I mean
• 1:22:58
  Speaker 1: there's only like five pound birds, you know, but they're
• 1:23:01
  Speaker 1: fighting and screwing around or whatever. And I had these
• 1:23:04
  Speaker 1: I think they were two jakes, and they were locked
• 1:23:06
  Speaker 1: up like they do with their necks. You know, like
• 1:23:07
  Speaker 1: literally twirled around each other. And I'm thinking, oh, just easy,
• 1:23:12
  Speaker 1: no big deal, you know, and I just draw back,
• 1:23:14
  Speaker 1: try to pick my spot, let go and again, just
• 1:23:17
  Speaker 1: right over the back of the one. I'm going, oh
• 1:23:20
  Speaker 1: and right, I kind of say oh. At the same time,
• 1:23:22
  Speaker 1: I hear this kind of like weird, like this turkey
• 1:23:25
  Speaker 1: noise that's basically like oh, you know, and there's so
• 1:23:32
  Speaker 1: many turkeys around that. Then I'm like, I'm better go
• 1:23:35
  Speaker 1: check that out, you know, as I jump up and run,
• 1:23:37
  Speaker 1: and my arrow had just like gone over this little
• 1:23:40
  Speaker 1: rise just enough, and there was a hand back there,
• 1:23:43
  Speaker 1: and she's running off of one of my arrows. Stuff
• 1:23:47
  Speaker 1: been like, yeah, let's pull back on those jakes. And
• 1:23:49
  Speaker 1: I saw that hand and thought it looks like a
• 1:23:51
  Speaker 1: good eater. You know, you had to act like you
• 1:23:53
  Speaker 1: meant it. Man. My buddy still makes fun of me
• 1:23:56
  Speaker 1: who I was with, who had killed you know, piles
• 1:23:58
  Speaker 1: of turkeys, you know, prior to that. But that was
• 1:24:00
  Speaker 1: my first ever turkey you know, of any kind of
• 1:24:03
  Speaker 1: you know, turkey kill. I come running back with that
• 1:24:06
  Speaker 1: hand and now now everybody's like, oh, you carry him
• 1:24:08
  Speaker 1: by the legs, right, Well, I got that hand by
• 1:24:10
  Speaker 1: the neck. I'm just like, yeah, look here, here's my
• 1:24:13
  Speaker 1: hand turkey. But anyways, back to the book, I think
• 1:24:17
  Speaker 1: you did a really good job of like taking the
• 1:24:20
  Speaker 1: pressure off of what traditional bow hunting isn't there, and
• 1:24:24
  Speaker 1: you really explain that well to where like you're we're
• 1:24:27
  Speaker 1: talking a little bit of touched on it earlier, where
• 1:24:29
  Speaker 1: people get into and it's like, well, what makes it traditional?
• 1:24:33
  Speaker 1: Do I have to be walking around in pure buckskins
• 1:24:36
  Speaker 1: and moccasins or of course, yeah, you're right, and a
• 1:24:41
  Speaker 1: coon skin hat, right, But You're like, no, it's like
• 1:24:44
  Speaker 1: whatever you wanted to be, you can have it be
• 1:24:46
  Speaker 1: that way and then pick what you like about it.
• 1:24:48
  Speaker 1: And I gotta say, like, yeah, shooting those recurved bows,
• 1:24:51
  Speaker 1: it's such a different thing locking off with a compound,
• 1:24:54
  Speaker 1: you know, there's just such a beautiful, smooth, something flowy
• 1:24:58
  Speaker 1: about it. You know, shoot him is great. But all
• 1:25:02
  Speaker 1: that I have kind of like a follow up question,
• 1:25:04
  Speaker 1: and as I was always wondered, it's a problem that
• 1:25:06
  Speaker 1: I have with being um, left eye dominant, but the
• 1:25:09
  Speaker 1: right hand and shooter and shooting traditional and everybody's always
• 1:25:12
  Speaker 1: like you gotta shoot left, gotta shoot left. So now
• 1:25:15
  Speaker 1: I have a left handed longbow. I've been messing around
• 1:25:17
  Speaker 1: with a little bit. My shooting is not that great.
• 1:25:21
  Speaker 1: It might get better, But my question is, like, how
• 1:25:24
  Speaker 1: come people just don't take the simple bows that like
• 1:25:27
  Speaker 1: you have on your cover here with a recurver longbo
• 1:25:29
  Speaker 1: and just put like one pin they there. Yeah, that
• 1:25:34
  Speaker 1: is that like totally okay cool? If there's just this
• 1:25:38
  Speaker 1: weird thing that's happened probably in the last maybe twenty years.
• 1:25:43
  Speaker 1: I mean, if you go back to the fifties and
• 1:25:44
  Speaker 1: sixties and well, I like to collect vintage bows, so
• 1:25:48
  Speaker 1: I have lots of old Beare bows and Ben Pearson's.
• 1:25:50
  Speaker 1: They all have holes on the back of the riser
• 1:25:52
  Speaker 1: where there used to be a site. I mean those
• 1:25:54
  Speaker 1: old guys all shot sights when they're recurve bois, shot
• 1:25:57
  Speaker 1: burger buttons and flipper rest on them. Yeah, exact. But
• 1:26:00
  Speaker 1: there's this mindset now among the traditional archery crowd that
• 1:26:05
  Speaker 1: you're not traditional, or you don't shoot instinctive, or you're
• 1:26:07
  Speaker 1: somehow cheating. If you put a site pin on a
• 1:26:10
  Speaker 1: recurve and I say foodie to that, that's a bunch
• 1:26:12
  Speaker 1: of crap. I mean, if you want to use a
• 1:26:14
  Speaker 1: site pin on a recurve. Do it, man, It's still
• 1:26:17
  Speaker 1: it's it's there's still so much fun to be had
• 1:26:20
  Speaker 1: with a recurve. And if that sight pin gives you
• 1:26:22
  Speaker 1: some confidence, or if your cross eye dominant feel like
• 1:26:25
  Speaker 1: it would like just having that one pin, I would
• 1:26:27
  Speaker 1: just be like there is oh, it's but it's all
• 1:26:30
  Speaker 1: or it's already. Like when when people start to act
• 1:26:33
  Speaker 1: like there's like these rigid definitions of that stuff, it's like,
• 1:26:35
  Speaker 1: what do they think there's a gatekeepers exactly, Like yeah,
• 1:26:41
  Speaker 1: like all this equipment, but yet you flipped through three
• 1:26:43
  Speaker 1: of hers Archery and it's not like side pin for
• 1:26:45
  Speaker 1: a recurve. It's like it's like literally not in there.
• 1:26:48
  Speaker 1: I think. I don't remember the name of it. But
• 1:26:50
  Speaker 1: three Rivers does sell this really cool site. It's like
• 1:26:53
  Speaker 1: a trapezoid shaped thing that's a little little frame. It's hollow,
• 1:26:58
  Speaker 1: it's black like hello in a real lightweight to luminum,
• 1:27:01
  Speaker 1: and one edge of it is painted fluorescent yellow. And
• 1:27:04
  Speaker 1: so it's not a pin, but it's like an aperture
• 1:27:07
  Speaker 1: you look through. So you've got that thing attached to
• 1:27:09
  Speaker 1: your riser and you're looking kind of through this aperture
• 1:27:12
  Speaker 1: that's not you know, it's not a pin prick like
• 1:27:14
  Speaker 1: you're trying to put an arrow there, but it gives
• 1:27:16
  Speaker 1: you a frame of reference and it's fast too. It's
• 1:27:20
  Speaker 1: not like a pin where you gotta dial it in
• 1:27:21
  Speaker 1: and it's just just come up and he bucks it
• 1:27:23
  Speaker 1: in like on a rear receiver. Right, let's they call
• 1:27:27
  Speaker 1: that on a peep yeah peep, yeah, you know, trying
• 1:27:31
  Speaker 1: one of those. Yeah. Well, my brother who my brother Danny,
• 1:27:34
  Speaker 1: who hunts, shoots a lot with the recurve, does some
• 1:27:37
  Speaker 1: honey with his recurve. Um he you know, shoots carbon arrows,
• 1:27:41
  Speaker 1: and he had to really look to find a carbon
• 1:27:45
  Speaker 1: arrow that didn't have the fake wood on it because
• 1:27:48
  Speaker 1: he felt like, He's like, I'm shooting carbon. I don't
• 1:27:53
  Speaker 1: want to then try to act like I'm not and
• 1:27:55
  Speaker 1: bullshit people, and he goes most of these carbon arrows
• 1:27:58
  Speaker 1: sold have a would finish. We're supposed to be like,
• 1:28:02
  Speaker 1: you're embarrassed about shooting carbon, but he's like, I'm not.
• 1:28:06
  Speaker 1: I was like, like, I'm not gonna go out of
• 1:28:08
  Speaker 1: my way and pay extra money to bullshit people. I
• 1:28:12
  Speaker 1: shoot those bullshit arrows. He said, you almost have to. Well,
• 1:28:16
  Speaker 1: the reason I do is because they're heavier because they're
• 1:28:19
  Speaker 1: marketed to traditional bull hunters and they're a little heavier
• 1:28:21
  Speaker 1: than standard carbon arrows for it. But he found and
• 1:28:26
  Speaker 1: I have some right, I got something around here somewhere
• 1:28:30
  Speaker 1: high high planes or something. Yeah, but he said, he said,
• 1:28:33
  Speaker 1: you're almost forced in doing it because all the arrows
• 1:28:36
  Speaker 1: of the of the right, you know, all done. But yeah,
• 1:28:42
  Speaker 1: there's three rivers. Three rivers carry some guy that you
• 1:28:45
  Speaker 1: just buy black. And he felt so much better about it,
• 1:28:47
  Speaker 1: where he's like, it's like, guys, remember um, you know,
• 1:28:51
  Speaker 1: like sneaky pete pool cues, right, great pool cues that
• 1:28:54
  Speaker 1: are made to look shitty, so it looked like you
• 1:28:56
  Speaker 1: were shooting a bar stick when you were actually shooting,
• 1:28:58
  Speaker 1: like you're actually shooting a good QB. Did want everybody
• 1:29:01
  Speaker 1: knows you got like they like make it look shitty
• 1:29:03
  Speaker 1: cosmetically different, Yeah, I gets so fat. Yeah, but there
• 1:29:11
  Speaker 1: are a lot of gate keepers. Yeah, I mean it
• 1:29:13
  Speaker 1: happens in every discipline, you know, but it's like, oh yeah,
• 1:29:16
  Speaker 1: you know, he gets a lot of elk. But you
• 1:29:18
  Speaker 1: know he you know, shoots at bible or yards whatever,
• 1:29:22
  Speaker 1: and in the traditional archer it's like oh yeah, but
• 1:29:24
  Speaker 1: he's not he shot, he's snapping him. He's napping his
• 1:29:28
  Speaker 1: points out of glass and not obsidian. Somebody's always going
• 1:29:34
  Speaker 1: to give grief, oh man. And in your world there's
• 1:29:38
  Speaker 1: a lot of it, and in the fly fishing world
• 1:29:40
  Speaker 1: is a lot. Oh yeah. I mean, I'm sure i'll
• 1:29:41
  Speaker 1: get emails after this podcast. You know already you're not traditionally.
• 1:29:47
  Speaker 1: Let's get a coonskin cap. You'll make up for it.
• 1:29:50
  Speaker 1: You got you got any final thoughts, bron, Yeah, I mean,
• 1:29:55
  Speaker 1: I guess my one final thought here. You were asking
• 1:29:57
  Speaker 1: earlier about you know, if I think peop should get
• 1:30:00
  Speaker 1: into traditional bow hunting or traditional archery. And I don't know.
• 1:30:04
  Speaker 1: I'm not going to force anybody into it for hunting sake,
• 1:30:07
  Speaker 1: but I do think if you like to shoot anything,
• 1:30:10
  Speaker 1: whether it's a handgun, shotgun or rifle, a compound bow,
• 1:30:13
  Speaker 1: you'll love shooting along bow or recurve. It is just
• 1:30:16
  Speaker 1: so to me. It's so satisfying to see that arrow fly,
• 1:30:21
  Speaker 1: and you know, it's a little slower than a compound
• 1:30:23
  Speaker 1: so you actually get to see the arc of the arrow.
• 1:30:25
  Speaker 1: You know, the whole quid bone leather thing again. And
• 1:30:29
  Speaker 1: the other thing I think that's just so freaking cool
• 1:30:31
  Speaker 1: about it. And the thing that I don't know if
• 1:30:33
  Speaker 1: I'll be able to explain this, but the thing that
• 1:30:35
  Speaker 1: keeps me coming back is that it's one of the
• 1:30:39
  Speaker 1: only hunting forms where it's your own energy from your
• 1:30:43
  Speaker 1: body that's going into that arrow, that's going into that
• 1:30:47
  Speaker 1: animal that's putting meat in the freezer. You know, it's
• 1:30:50
  Speaker 1: like chucking a spear or something, but you know, everything else,
• 1:30:54
  Speaker 1: something else is going to store that energy for you.
• 1:30:56
  Speaker 1: But it with traditional bows, I mean, it's you, it's
• 1:30:58
  Speaker 1: your shoulders, your him, you're back. You know, it's your
• 1:31:02
  Speaker 1: own energy that's going into that arrow. And I don't
• 1:31:04
  Speaker 1: know if that's maybe be an esoteric thing, but you know,
• 1:31:08
  Speaker 1: it's just so cool to me. Yeah, we gotta Yeah,
• 1:31:11
  Speaker 1: you can get all you can get, poetic, all you want.
• 1:31:14
  Speaker 1: We're here. Um all right, So once more, your sons
• 1:31:19
  Speaker 1: of bitches out there that want to start shooting trad bows.
• 1:31:21
  Speaker 1: A Traditional bow Hunter's Path, Lessons and Adventures of Full
• 1:31:27
  Speaker 1: draw Ron Roarbau Jr. What's your website? Again? Traditional? What
• 1:31:32
  Speaker 1: is my website? It's Spirit Traditional, Spirit Outdoors dot com
• 1:31:35
  Speaker 1: or you go find it out, you don't you don't
• 1:31:37
  Speaker 1: get mad when people buy it off Amazon or No,
• 1:31:39
  Speaker 1: I don't get bad. They can get We talked about
• 1:31:40
  Speaker 1: three rivers. I should plug them. You can get it
• 1:31:42
  Speaker 1: from three years to nice who broke her that I
• 1:31:47
  Speaker 1: did that, getting in there and doing it. Yeah, you
• 1:31:50
  Speaker 1: have to alright man, thanks tuning in, all right, thank
• 1:31:54
  Speaker 1: you