Latest / The MeatEater Podcast / Ep. 014

Transcript

Ep. 014 · The MeatEater Podcast

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Hey, this is the Meat Eater podcast, recording out a Bozeman, Montana,
• 0:03
  Speaker 1: hometown of our guests, Randy Newburgh, who has been hosting
• 0:09
  Speaker 1: hunting TV programs for a long time. Wow, how long? Well?
• 0:16
  Speaker 1: I think, as my grandpa would say, Moby Dick was
• 0:18
  Speaker 1: a mint on back when I started. Actually, it's weird
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: to say, Steve, but I'm going into year eight. Okay,
• 0:27
  Speaker 1: so that's I'm not like Methuselah. But I guess you
• 0:32
  Speaker 1: could say I've been there, done that long eight years.
• 0:35
  Speaker 1: Long time to do anything. It is, especially I just
• 0:37
  Speaker 1: turned fifty and I'm gonna be fifty one in November,
• 0:41
  Speaker 1: and you know, I do these backpack hunts mostly, and
• 0:44
  Speaker 1: I'm like, I don't think I'm gonna live long enough
• 0:46
  Speaker 1: to do another eight years. It's just it grinds at me.
• 0:50
  Speaker 1: You guys know you do it. You're also talking to
• 0:53
  Speaker 1: uh that that leaves me to something about age that
• 0:55
  Speaker 1: that's interesting. But um, I want to point out to
• 1:00
  Speaker 1: our listeners that Randy, who's seen and done everything, was
• 1:05
  Speaker 1: just marveling. He was blown away by the quality of
• 1:10
  Speaker 1: the complete guy, the hunting, butcher and cooking wild game.
• 1:12
  Speaker 1: I was that would take most people a lifetime. You
• 1:18
  Speaker 1: hear those people and then you guys said, well, how
• 1:21
  Speaker 1: long do you think? I said three years? And you
• 1:23
  Speaker 1: guys looked at each other like, yep, so what So
• 1:26
  Speaker 1: if I'm reading what you're saying, right, Randy, you feel
• 1:28
  Speaker 1: like people are gonna get their money's worth. I don't
• 1:31
  Speaker 1: know why you're going to price it at giving it away.
• 1:36
  Speaker 1: You're giving it away. You you should buy two of
• 1:38
  Speaker 1: them at that price. I mean, it's really I'm saying
• 1:42
  Speaker 1: you have and you have a background that has to
• 1:43
  Speaker 1: do with like you deal in people's money as a
• 1:47
  Speaker 1: c p A. Yeah, I get to disinherit the federal
• 1:49
  Speaker 1: treasury as a Randy thinks you ought to buy that book.
• 1:53
  Speaker 1: If if you don't buy that book, folks, you're not
• 1:55
  Speaker 1: gonna kill an elk next year. That's exactly right. I
• 1:58
  Speaker 1: can promise you that if you do kill one, you're
• 2:01
  Speaker 1: not gonna know how to take care of it out
• 2:02
  Speaker 1: in the field. And I was reading your honest your
• 2:05
  Speaker 1: piece about tuning up bows. Where did you come up
• 2:09
  Speaker 1: with all that stuff? Experience just told all about it.
• 2:14
  Speaker 1: He just wrote about it. I think you need to
• 2:16
  Speaker 1: make that like into a pocket guide. Yeah. Well, I
• 2:19
  Speaker 1: gotta say, you don't want to care. It's not like
• 2:24
  Speaker 1: it's I can't call it original content. I mean, yes,
• 2:26
  Speaker 1: I did put it down in my own words, but
• 2:29
  Speaker 1: like it's not like I picked up a piece of
• 2:31
  Speaker 1: wooden string and then I eventually learned how to make
• 2:34
  Speaker 1: a compound, and then like how to tune a compound,
• 2:37
  Speaker 1: you know, like all this stuff. Like yes, I've read
• 2:41
  Speaker 1: you know, hunting magazines and and you know, watch YouTube
• 2:44
  Speaker 1: videos and all this stuff since I was a little kid,
• 2:47
  Speaker 1: and so that's you know, how it came out. But
• 2:49
  Speaker 1: it's not like I made up how to you know,
• 2:51
  Speaker 1: get ready for archery season. Like gazillion guys will be like, yeah, yeah,
• 2:55
  Speaker 1: that's how I do it too. But wow, I was impressed.
• 2:58
  Speaker 1: I was thumbing through the book and I'm just thinking,
• 3:01
  Speaker 1: you know what, this is a serious project. Just you
• 3:06
  Speaker 1: guys go into a lot of detail, a lot of things.
• 3:09
  Speaker 1: I'm afraid that no one will ever read. I don't
• 3:10
  Speaker 1: want you. I was half joking. I mean I like
• 3:12
  Speaker 1: to plug the book. I was half joking. But I
• 3:14
  Speaker 1: want to get you to think about age. When we
• 3:15
  Speaker 1: talk about like backpack hunting, how many years you think
• 3:18
  Speaker 1: you got left well, I always tell hunting as you
• 3:21
  Speaker 1: hunting out right. I told my wife I want to
• 3:23
  Speaker 1: backpack hunt and tell him sixty five and last long
• 3:29
  Speaker 1: it's like years doth wrong. I felle in November, so
• 3:35
  Speaker 1: fourteen fifteen seasons. But last year I packed out three
• 3:39
  Speaker 1: bulls on my back. And how many miles? Told you
• 3:43
  Speaker 1: packed bulls out about? Gosh, I'd be just a guest Steve.
• 3:49
  Speaker 1: I'm guessing combined all those trips thirty miles something like that.
• 3:57
  Speaker 1: But one of them was out of a canyon in there.
• 3:59
  Speaker 1: I don't and it was ugly. I mean, even though
• 4:02
  Speaker 1: it was only two miles each way. I remember saying,
• 4:07
  Speaker 1: I'm not doing there's different kinds of miles exactly. And
• 4:11
  Speaker 1: and my guest hunter had blown out his a c
• 4:14
  Speaker 1: L and before the hunt, and he told me, said, look,
• 4:18
  Speaker 1: I've been waiting for years to hunt Arizona. I'm deferring
• 4:21
  Speaker 1: surgery until after the hunt. Do you mind having a
• 4:26
  Speaker 1: guy hobbling along? I'm like, hey, whatever. So he went
• 4:30
  Speaker 1: into it saying I'm not gonna pack all right, he
• 4:32
  Speaker 1: told me. I mean, and he's he was fifty five,
• 4:35
  Speaker 1: I think blew out his A c L playing basketball
• 4:38
  Speaker 1: down in Logan, Utah. And he shows up and he's
• 4:41
  Speaker 1: got a brace on his knee that looks like, you know,
• 4:44
  Speaker 1: Colonel Steve Austin of the six million Dollar Man. You're
• 4:47
  Speaker 1: too young to remember that. You know, you have no
• 4:49
  Speaker 1: idea what's shocking on about? All right, see again we're
• 4:52
  Speaker 1: aging ourselves, Sarah. But anyhow, he shoots this ball down
• 4:55
  Speaker 1: in the canyon really nice, but yeah, like a three
• 4:58
  Speaker 1: twenty bull. And I'll tell you, I want to interject,
• 5:02
  Speaker 1: I've never met the guy. I bet that man did
• 5:04
  Speaker 1: not have a torn a c L. I started saying
• 5:07
  Speaker 1: that I would be like, on every hunt, I'll be like, yeah,
• 5:09
  Speaker 1: I got enough in me. I got enough in me
• 5:11
  Speaker 1: to get down in that candy to kill a bull,
• 5:13
  Speaker 1: no problem. Yeah, it's just that once that happens, you know,
• 5:19
  Speaker 1: So how hard can I can I hunt for how long?
• 5:23
  Speaker 1: I don't know. I I'm well, you get to a point,
• 5:29
  Speaker 1: and I've said this on a few episodes where you
• 5:32
  Speaker 1: realize that there are a lot fewer hunts in the
• 5:35
  Speaker 1: front windshield than what are in the rear view mirror,
• 5:38
  Speaker 1: and you enjoy every minute of every day of those
• 5:42
  Speaker 1: hunts as you see the sand drain and out of
• 5:44
  Speaker 1: your hour glass, and you start having this internal fear. Gosh,
• 5:52
  Speaker 1: oh man, my hip's hurting today. Is that gonna lay
• 5:54
  Speaker 1: me up from al cunning? Because you know that there's
• 5:57
  Speaker 1: a terminal point when you're hunting anything, let alone backpack
• 6:03
  Speaker 1: out cunning. So it's like, I'm definitely still just too
• 6:08
  Speaker 1: young and dumb to have those thoughts. I don't, are
• 6:12
  Speaker 1: you or you have to because like my brother is
• 6:15
  Speaker 1: a couple years older me. My brother is like he
• 6:18
  Speaker 1: started working out lifting weights, you know, and now I've
• 6:22
  Speaker 1: been I've been the only thing I'm thinking about's like
• 6:25
  Speaker 1: I'm married, I got three kids. Like, I'm not like
• 6:27
  Speaker 1: working out because I gonna be all like go down
• 6:29
  Speaker 1: to the beach, you know what I mean. It's like, no,
• 6:31
  Speaker 1: I'm like, I work out because all I'm that's the
• 6:35
  Speaker 1: thing I think about, not being able to get up
• 6:37
  Speaker 1: a hill. Right it's Oregon and smoked by Janice to
• 6:42
  Speaker 1: the hill way ahead of me, you know. The And
• 6:46
  Speaker 1: I hunt a lot of my guest hunters very younger
• 6:48
  Speaker 1: than I am, And I drive a desk for a
• 6:50
  Speaker 1: living half the year, and so I have to make
• 6:54
  Speaker 1: a serious point to get out and hike every day.
• 6:58
  Speaker 1: And I'm lucky here in Montana where I live. I'm
• 7:00
  Speaker 1: a mile from a four service trailhead, going to two
• 7:03
  Speaker 1: our hike every day, and mentally, I am in way
• 7:09
  Speaker 1: better shape to handle cold, terrible, miserable, ugly conditions than
• 7:15
  Speaker 1: I was when I was forty or thirty. I mean,
• 7:19
  Speaker 1: now I'll just put my head down, lean against the grade,
• 7:22
  Speaker 1: and I don't even think about if I gotta walk
• 7:24
  Speaker 1: all day. Oh well, I gotta walk all day, Whereas
• 7:26
  Speaker 1: when I was twenty eight, God, I had to walk
• 7:29
  Speaker 1: for another forty five minutes to get there. This sucks now,
• 7:33
  Speaker 1: don't even fathe me. It's like, hey man, I'm still hunting.
• 7:36
  Speaker 1: I got some buddies who are you know they're done,
• 7:39
  Speaker 1: They're they're cashed it in or whatever. And so mentally
• 7:44
  Speaker 1: is fine. I mean, I wish I had the mental
• 7:47
  Speaker 1: fortitude when I was twenty eight that I have today.
• 7:51
  Speaker 1: It just comes with age. One thing I think about
• 7:54
  Speaker 1: when I think about getting old and not being able
• 7:57
  Speaker 1: to hunt like I like to hunt, is I think
• 7:59
  Speaker 1: that me now would be able to smoke me when
• 8:05
  Speaker 1: I was twenty five. I think if I put myself
• 8:10
  Speaker 1: back to when I was twenty five, even though I'm
• 8:12
  Speaker 1: fifty now, I would agree. I would I was inefficient
• 8:17
  Speaker 1: in how I operated my how I walked, you know
• 8:22
  Speaker 1: how much gear I brought with it. I didn't need
• 8:25
  Speaker 1: all those things. I and just mentally, yeah, I could
• 8:30
  Speaker 1: walk myself into the ground today, whereas in I'd have
• 8:33
  Speaker 1: to ship and have a sandwich after two miles. I
• 8:36
  Speaker 1: had a guy there day telling me about a principle
• 8:39
  Speaker 1: and fitness that my brother used to joke or hat
• 8:41
  Speaker 1: and I used to has joked it people that are
• 8:44
  Speaker 1: bigging across fit, you just get good at doing CrossFit,
• 8:47
  Speaker 1: you know, like it doesn't do anything for you. And
• 8:50
  Speaker 1: I'll sell this guy that he says it half jokingly.
• 8:52
  Speaker 1: But this guy was saying, there's his principle and fitness
• 8:54
  Speaker 1: called like said, okay, So it's specific adaptations to imposed demands.
• 9:02
  Speaker 1: Because what I've often wondered about is you could have
• 9:06
  Speaker 1: people who are fit by any measure, ye okay, like,
• 9:11
  Speaker 1: but you take them out like, oh yeah, you really
• 9:12
  Speaker 1: ought to before we go on the mountains, you really
• 9:14
  Speaker 1: ought to like get in shape for oh no, I
• 9:16
  Speaker 1: just ran a half marathon Broye And you go out
• 9:19
  Speaker 1: and it's like they have never done anything. Ye, it's
• 9:24
  Speaker 1: such a specific thing that I really don't think you
• 9:27
  Speaker 1: can replicate the demand. I don't think you can replicate
• 9:31
  Speaker 1: the physical demands of mountain hunting doing anything that maybe
• 9:35
  Speaker 1: like mountaineering. Yeah, I would agree, And that's why, you know,
• 9:38
  Speaker 1: all my a lot of my buddies go to the gym.
• 9:41
  Speaker 1: I gotta be on the cardio, I gotta be working
• 9:43
  Speaker 1: on this me. I put pounds in a backpack and
• 9:48
  Speaker 1: I just hiked and walk because nothing replicates the uneven ground.
• 9:53
  Speaker 1: The Okay, I'm going up a grade and then down
• 9:55
  Speaker 1: a grade. I'm side Helen and whatever, and I just
• 10:00
  Speaker 1: I haven't found any any mechanical device that replicates it.
• 10:04
  Speaker 1: So you can just go hike anything you do, like
• 10:06
  Speaker 1: obviously anyway you can become stronger, you know, and all that.
• 10:09
  Speaker 1: It's like great, sure it's not gonna work against you,
• 10:11
  Speaker 1: but there's just something about, yeah, the uneven ground. And
• 10:15
  Speaker 1: I think another thing that really starts to throw people
• 10:18
  Speaker 1: is in addition to that stuff, and it is just
• 10:22
  Speaker 1: the physicality of it. There's all this layered stuff about cold, heat, boredom, um.
• 10:31
  Speaker 1: All they're just discomfort things, you know, uncertainties and when
• 10:37
  Speaker 1: you're changing food. When you're younger, you all of those
• 10:40
  Speaker 1: get to you, and now don't don't get to me
• 10:44
  Speaker 1: at all. Okay, throw my pack on. I'm usually hiking
• 10:48
  Speaker 1: up the hill. I'm in a very light merino wall
• 10:51
  Speaker 1: and I got some layers, and yeah it's cold, but
• 10:54
  Speaker 1: I'm not really thinking about it. I'm just got my
• 10:57
  Speaker 1: head down and I gotta get to the ridge so
• 10:59
  Speaker 1: I can glasp before sun gets up. Where before my
• 11:03
  Speaker 1: mind would get distracted. Your mind gets distracted, you're not
• 11:06
  Speaker 1: focused on hunting, and you just start losing it. Your
• 11:11
  Speaker 1: edge is gone, and then you start getting cold, You
• 11:13
  Speaker 1: start sniveling, you start whinding, you start thinking about, oh, dude,
• 11:16
  Speaker 1: I could have been huddled up next to mom on
• 11:18
  Speaker 1: this morning. Why they get out of bed, youth visit
• 11:23
  Speaker 1: for Randy's wife. That's that's right. Yeah, there's a there's
• 11:28
  Speaker 1: a joke to that, if my wife listens to this.
• 11:30
  Speaker 1: We We ran into Jack Llane at an airport one time. Again,
• 11:36
  Speaker 1: you guys, he related to kind of man, I'm really
• 11:40
  Speaker 1: aging myself and uh he he was like the original
• 11:45
  Speaker 1: fitness expert on old broadcast. He surely not before Slim
• 11:50
  Speaker 1: good buddy, Oh way before he was like, I mean,
• 11:53
  Speaker 1: he was like the first guy. So he's like eighty
• 11:55
  Speaker 1: five ninety years old, and he says, you know what
• 11:59
  Speaker 1: you young people need to know. It takes discipline. And
• 12:02
  Speaker 1: I'm like, okay, I'm going to take in notes here.
• 12:05
  Speaker 1: He says, it takes a real man to get out
• 12:08
  Speaker 1: of a hot bed with a warm woman and go
• 12:12
  Speaker 1: and jump in a cold pool because he needs to exercise. Yeah, Mike, dude,
• 12:17
  Speaker 1: you're not ainty years old. I guess maybe you know
• 12:19
  Speaker 1: what you're talking about. So, heyhow that's that's the inside
• 12:22
  Speaker 1: joke about mama getting getting out of bed from mama.
• 12:26
  Speaker 1: So now you so you were brought up in Minnesota though, Yeah,
• 12:29
  Speaker 1: way up, way up north. So when did you start
• 12:31
  Speaker 1: doing mountain hunts When I moved to Montana. I went
• 12:35
  Speaker 1: to college in Reno, and uh, I knew just about
• 12:38
  Speaker 1: nothing about western hunting while I lived in Nevada. You
• 12:41
  Speaker 1: didn't hunt there? Yeah I did, but I was terrible
• 12:44
  Speaker 1: at it. I tried to hunt everything like a hunted
• 12:46
  Speaker 1: white tails. Um and then carrots had a platform, hang
• 12:52
  Speaker 1: a platform over the tree. Yeah, there you go, And
• 12:55
  Speaker 1: uh luckily stumbled into a few a few deer along
• 13:00
  Speaker 1: the way while I was in Nevada. But when I
• 13:02
  Speaker 1: moved to Montana, I just realized, you know what, if
• 13:05
  Speaker 1: you're gonna hunt elk on public land, you better figure
• 13:08
  Speaker 1: it out, Randy, because they aren't standing next to the
• 13:11
  Speaker 1: trailhead and it requires work. It's just as quick as
• 13:16
  Speaker 1: you accept the fact that hunting elkom public land requires exertion,
• 13:22
  Speaker 1: you get way better at it. It's like you go
• 13:25
  Speaker 1: through this period of thinking there's an easy way, and
• 13:28
  Speaker 1: you don't kill anything. I mean I hunted elk for
• 13:31
  Speaker 1: six years and never fired a shot at an elk
• 13:35
  Speaker 1: because I thought there was an easier way. People just
• 13:38
  Speaker 1: haven't been smart enough to figure it out yet. Yeah.
• 13:40
  Speaker 1: And finally I'm like, you know what, well, there's an
• 13:43
  Speaker 1: easier way. Well it's called cash, Yeah exactly. Yeah, I
• 13:47
  Speaker 1: mean money solves a lot of you can buy. So
• 13:51
  Speaker 1: that was the elk you were looking to purchase, right,
• 13:53
  Speaker 1: And so after that, I'm like, all right, that's what
• 13:56
  Speaker 1: I'm gonna do. And I went in, slept on the
• 14:00
  Speaker 1: mountain that night, next morning killed the ball. Like, holy cow,
• 14:05
  Speaker 1: what year was at that was in? And uh, I
• 14:10
  Speaker 1: think I've killed at least one bull every year since
• 14:13
  Speaker 1: then just doing the same thing, and it was like
• 14:15
  Speaker 1: the light came on. Randy quit thinking there's an easy
• 14:20
  Speaker 1: way to do this. There are easier ways to do it,
• 14:24
  Speaker 1: but public land bull elk hunting on general tags is
• 14:27
  Speaker 1: not an easy endeavor. No, but you've made it that
• 14:30
  Speaker 1: your thing, man. Yeah, by accident, almost because of where
• 14:38
  Speaker 1: I live, because of the fact that when you get
• 14:42
  Speaker 1: in the TV world, elk are sexy. I mean, what
• 14:47
  Speaker 1: what sells better than a big bull out screaming in
• 14:49
  Speaker 1: a camera, big white tail buck on the cover of magazine.
• 14:52
  Speaker 1: Well that's that's probably true. Um, But I had a
• 14:56
  Speaker 1: meeting with some magazine editors the other day and they're like,
• 14:58
  Speaker 1: you just it's just a fact of like the best
• 15:02
  Speaker 1: selling news stand Well they any cover you do, you
• 15:07
  Speaker 1: can't beat that. It's gonna be the biggest bucks. You'll
• 15:09
  Speaker 1: have an article inside the magazine condemning fence top fence
• 15:14
  Speaker 1: deer operations, but the cover magazine is a fence. It's
• 15:19
  Speaker 1: got it's a fence buck that you're never gonna run into,
• 15:21
  Speaker 1: and then you'll sell new stand copies. Yeahs just it's
• 15:25
  Speaker 1: just people like, yeah, answer your question, the white tail buck. Yeah,
• 15:30
  Speaker 1: all right, So I kinda got into that, and you know,
• 15:35
  Speaker 1: living in Montana, el coomes a big thing like it
• 15:40
  Speaker 1: is in Wyoming, Idaho, Colorado other places. And then in
• 15:43
  Speaker 1: the mid nineties I started applying in all these western
• 15:47
  Speaker 1: states and ginda going here, going there. Getting to hunt
• 15:52
  Speaker 1: elk in a lot of different places and a lot
• 15:55
  Speaker 1: of different environments made me a way better elk hunter
• 15:59
  Speaker 1: because showing up in my backyard in Bozeman, Montana to
• 16:02
  Speaker 1: hunt elk, you kind of know what they're doing. You're
• 16:05
  Speaker 1: kind of doing the same thing every year. Oh it's
• 16:08
  Speaker 1: for early November. This is where they're going to be.
• 16:10
  Speaker 1: I show up in New Mexico and their season is,
• 16:13
  Speaker 1: let's say, middle of October. Everything is different, so you
• 16:18
  Speaker 1: really have to get your mind into a pattern and
• 16:22
  Speaker 1: an idea of these are not the same animal I
• 16:26
  Speaker 1: hunt at home, And like you guys know on TV,
• 16:30
  Speaker 1: my my statement is I've got five days to figure
• 16:34
  Speaker 1: it out, sort it out, and pack it out. I
• 16:37
  Speaker 1: show up at a place I've never been and we've
• 16:39
  Speaker 1: got dollars invested in an episode. I gotta find some elk.
• 16:44
  Speaker 1: And it doesn't matter that the weather is crappy, it
• 16:46
  Speaker 1: doesn't matter there's a lot of hunting pressure on public land.
• 16:50
  Speaker 1: I gotta figure it out, you know, sniveling and wine
• 16:52
  Speaker 1: and isn't gonna do any good. I can't change the weather,
• 16:55
  Speaker 1: I can't change the hunting pressure. So over the course
• 16:58
  Speaker 1: of doing that and you become at least I feel
• 17:03
  Speaker 1: I've become a much smarter elk hunter than I was.
• 17:06
  Speaker 1: And people watch our show and say, Randy, come on,
• 17:09
  Speaker 1: what's going on here? I never see this many outcomes
• 17:12
  Speaker 1: public land, and I don't know what to tell him.
• 17:16
  Speaker 1: It's just, you know, either we're lucky, which we do
• 17:19
  Speaker 1: get lucky at times, but we really have a system
• 17:22
  Speaker 1: of here's how we do it. We spend the first
• 17:24
  Speaker 1: two days figuring it out, then we collect all the
• 17:28
  Speaker 1: information we sorted out, and then we got about another
• 17:31
  Speaker 1: two or three days to try and get one on
• 17:33
  Speaker 1: the ground and pack them out. That's just it's that simple.
• 17:36
  Speaker 1: That raises a whole bunch of questions I got for you.
• 17:38
  Speaker 1: But let me start with the one that I already
• 17:41
  Speaker 1: had in my head. I used to feel like this
• 17:47
  Speaker 1: is even hard to put. Most hunters have like a
• 17:49
  Speaker 1: thing they do, okay, so what other the Michigan like,
• 17:54
  Speaker 1: Like what you did like the thing you did was
• 17:57
  Speaker 1: we bow hunted deer, yeah, bohn white hills. Then you
• 18:00
  Speaker 1: do other stuff in addition, So like if you're a
• 18:03
  Speaker 1: guy to lives in Wisconsin, you might just like you
• 18:05
  Speaker 1: like agricultural white tails. But every year you go on
• 18:09
  Speaker 1: a destination hunt. But there's the thing that, like the
• 18:12
  Speaker 1: main thing, like if you took it all the way,
• 18:15
  Speaker 1: that thing would be left. Okay. I've often thought, like
• 18:19
  Speaker 1: when you draw, like what your thing is like. For
• 18:22
  Speaker 1: a long time, when I lived in Montana, my thing
• 18:25
  Speaker 1: was like the Archie hunt again, Archie hunt public land
• 18:27
  Speaker 1: for elk. That's like the thing I really wanted to
• 18:29
  Speaker 1: be good at. Like if I could be good at
• 18:30
  Speaker 1: one thing, it would have been that. All the are
• 18:32
  Speaker 1: stuff I did was auxiliary. Now I travel enough, I
• 18:36
  Speaker 1: don't really have a thing anymore. But I always wondered,
• 18:40
  Speaker 1: does the auxiliary stuff enhance your ability to do the
• 18:45
  Speaker 1: thing you're saying that it does? Oh yeah, and how
• 18:50
  Speaker 1: is that though? Because you'll go somewhere I remember, like
• 18:53
  Speaker 1: hunting elk in New Mexico. I remember just thinking, this
• 18:57
  Speaker 1: has nothing to do with hunt elka Montana. This ain't
• 19:01
  Speaker 1: where the elk would be. This isn't what they'd be doing,
• 19:04
  Speaker 1: you know, And I never like I felt like it's
• 19:06
  Speaker 1: like you're not training yourself, You're just on vacation. Before
• 19:11
  Speaker 1: we get Randy's the answer to this. I'm gonna take
• 19:14
  Speaker 1: a short break for our sponsors. And when I tell you, Steve,
• 19:18
  Speaker 1: what really preps me good for Elk County, You're gonna
• 19:21
  Speaker 1: crack up. My son and I fish walleye tournaments and
• 19:27
  Speaker 1: you're you're already looking at me like, what the hell
• 19:28
  Speaker 1: does this have to do with Elk cunning. Yeah, when
• 19:32
  Speaker 1: you fish a walleye tournament, or even if you go
• 19:34
  Speaker 1: walleye fishing, and probably bass fishing the same thing. I
• 19:37
  Speaker 1: don't bash bass fish, so I can't really say. But
• 19:40
  Speaker 1: before you even go to the lake, you analyze, Okay,
• 19:44
  Speaker 1: what time of year is it? All Right, it's June.
• 19:47
  Speaker 1: The walleyes aren't gonna be up way shallow and they're
• 19:49
  Speaker 1: not gonna be out on the d pumps. So right there,
• 19:51
  Speaker 1: I've eliminated about the lake. All Right, what's the water temperature,
• 19:57
  Speaker 1: what's the condition are the what are they doing? It's
• 20:02
  Speaker 1: kind of the same thing with Elk. Elk do a
• 20:04
  Speaker 1: different thing at a different time. Of the year based
• 20:07
  Speaker 1: on certain needs food, escapement or survival, water and breeding.
• 20:14
  Speaker 1: Same thing fish do. And what I found myself doing
• 20:18
  Speaker 1: when I would fish walleye tournaments is I'd figure out
• 20:20
  Speaker 1: one thing that worked, and I thought that would work
• 20:23
  Speaker 1: every day, every place, all the time. And I'd catch
• 20:26
  Speaker 1: fish one out of ten days, and boy, when I
• 20:28
  Speaker 1: found him, I'd just thump him. But then the other
• 20:31
  Speaker 1: nine days I'd struggle. That's how I fish yellow perch,
• 20:35
  Speaker 1: same rig and still around the country, same rig, same depth.
• 20:42
  Speaker 1: Sometimes I knocked the ship out of And so my
• 20:46
  Speaker 1: son gets bored to tears just doing what his own
• 20:50
  Speaker 1: man does. So he's out there experimenting all the time,
• 20:53
  Speaker 1: and that little guy he's catching more fish than I am.
• 20:56
  Speaker 1: And it starts driving home the point of you know what,
• 20:59
  Speaker 1: if you always do what you always done, you're always
• 21:01
  Speaker 1: gonna get what you always got. And elk hunting is
• 21:04
  Speaker 1: kind of the same thing. If I go to New
• 21:06
  Speaker 1: Mexico and think I'm gonna hunt like I do in
• 21:08
  Speaker 1: Montana just because it works in Montana, not gonna happen.
• 21:13
  Speaker 1: So how does hunting in New Mexico educate you about Montana?
• 21:17
  Speaker 1: Because it gets you the mindset that when you show up,
• 21:20
  Speaker 1: the very first thing you have to do before you
• 21:22
  Speaker 1: even get there is cross off all the places on
• 21:25
  Speaker 1: your map where elk are not gonna be. Scouting is
• 21:28
  Speaker 1: not about finding out elk. It's about eliminating where they're
• 21:32
  Speaker 1: not going to be out right. So you look at
• 21:35
  Speaker 1: my map when I start, anything that's within a mile
• 21:38
  Speaker 1: of a motor i e. A trailer, a road crossed off,
• 21:43
  Speaker 1: just don't even look there because I know other hunters
• 21:46
  Speaker 1: are going to be there. And then I look at
• 21:48
  Speaker 1: all right, what is the season of the year. Okay,
• 21:50
  Speaker 1: let's say it's the middle of October. All right, it's
• 21:54
  Speaker 1: kind of the end of the rut. The bigger balls
• 21:57
  Speaker 1: are going to be off somewhere looking for their serve
• 22:00
  Speaker 1: fival locations. They're gonna be getting away from hunting pressure.
• 22:03
  Speaker 1: They're gonna make a living down in a canyon or
• 22:05
  Speaker 1: some other place, just like they do in Montana. But
• 22:08
  Speaker 1: in Montana, they're gonna make a living in some really steep, nasty,
• 22:12
  Speaker 1: blowdown jungle that has a little bit of food and
• 22:14
  Speaker 1: a little bit of water nearby where they can not
• 22:17
  Speaker 1: get shot for five weeks, just like yeah, or some small,
• 22:22
  Speaker 1: little pocket, some steep place that you just aren't gonna
• 22:25
  Speaker 1: think to look. In New Mexico, it's the same thing,
• 22:28
  Speaker 1: but it's mostly canyons and and other terrain differences. So
• 22:33
  Speaker 1: they're gonna he's gonna want to be down in New Mexico,
• 22:35
  Speaker 1: he's gonna want be down into canyon. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 22:38
  Speaker 1: Montana already have a canyon country for the most point.
• 22:41
  Speaker 1: And so it's not that the nuances of the landscape
• 22:45
  Speaker 1: or how those out behave on that landscape teach me
• 22:48
  Speaker 1: anything about how how to effectively hunt him in Montana.
• 22:53
  Speaker 1: It's the fact that it forces you to analyze what
• 22:57
  Speaker 1: is the season of the year, based on that he's
• 23:00
  Speaker 1: into the year, what are public land elk doing at
• 23:03
  Speaker 1: that time of year, and based on what they're doing,
• 23:06
  Speaker 1: what am I gonna do to make sure I find
• 23:09
  Speaker 1: them as often as I can? And I don't know
• 23:14
  Speaker 1: if that's making sense, because most people will go out
• 23:19
  Speaker 1: in the woods on a public land hunt and they
• 23:22
  Speaker 1: want to think that a new gadget or a new
• 23:24
  Speaker 1: call or a new blah blah blah is going to
• 23:28
  Speaker 1: bring it elk to them. It's it very seldom does
• 23:32
  Speaker 1: I mean it might, but you're really hoping on gambler's luck.
• 23:36
  Speaker 1: If that's all you're thinking about, the people who and
• 23:40
  Speaker 1: they're the reason. What did you guys say in Colorado?
• 23:42
  Speaker 1: Probably what? The elk are killed by ten percent of
• 23:45
  Speaker 1: the hunters. Yeah, and the reason being is those ten
• 23:48
  Speaker 1: percent of guys have a system and they know what
• 23:52
  Speaker 1: to expect when they show up. When they show up,
• 23:55
  Speaker 1: they've already got a plan laid out, either on a
• 23:57
  Speaker 1: map or in their mind. They've got three or four options,
• 24:01
  Speaker 1: and they're not wandering around opening morning before daylight thinking well,
• 24:05
  Speaker 1: I wonder if that ridge would be the spot or No,
• 24:09
  Speaker 1: They're going to Point A, and they go there, they
• 24:12
  Speaker 1: don't see him. The afternoon, they're on Point B. They'll
• 24:16
  Speaker 1: have six eight spots on their map to check out
• 24:18
  Speaker 1: in a five day hunt, and two to three of
• 24:21
  Speaker 1: those spots will have alk and they'll just, through a
• 24:24
  Speaker 1: process of elimination, get there and when they find now,
• 24:28
  Speaker 1: they'll kill one. I think elk are one of the
• 24:30
  Speaker 1: easiest animals in the world to kill once you find them.
• 24:33
  Speaker 1: Once you find them, finding them as a hard part.
• 24:36
  Speaker 1: And that's why you know, I do a lot of
• 24:38
  Speaker 1: writing and blogging, and I tell people as crazy as
• 24:42
  Speaker 1: it sounds, as simple as it is. You can't kill
• 24:45
  Speaker 1: one if you can't find one. So quit worrying about
• 24:48
  Speaker 1: all the techniques and tactics to kill one. Figure out
• 24:51
  Speaker 1: how to find them, because once you find him, you'll
• 24:53
  Speaker 1: kill them. Well, so what what's your way of finding them? A? Yeah? Again,
• 24:59
  Speaker 1: it goes back to that whole seasonal thing. I break
• 25:02
  Speaker 1: it down and think about seasons a lot, right. I
• 25:04
  Speaker 1: break it down into five periods. It's early season, pre rut,
• 25:08
  Speaker 1: peak rut, post rut, in late season. And if you
• 25:11
  Speaker 1: gave me one time of the year to hunt and
• 25:13
  Speaker 1: try to kill a big bull, it's gonna be late season.
• 25:16
  Speaker 1: Let's just say, oh, bowl a bow, legal bowl, A
• 25:19
  Speaker 1: legal bowl in Montana is a branchantler bull. I'm probably
• 25:23
  Speaker 1: gonna hunt him in the peak of the rut in
• 25:24
  Speaker 1: September with a bowl. Other states it might be a
• 25:28
  Speaker 1: different answer. But each of those five seasons, they have
• 25:33
  Speaker 1: a different need. In the early season, you look at it, Okay,
• 25:37
  Speaker 1: the bulls still aren't really with the cows. The mature bulls,
• 25:40
  Speaker 1: they're still putting on the feedback. You compare that too
• 25:45
  Speaker 1: late season, and now they don't really care about food.
• 25:48
  Speaker 1: They don't care about cows. All they care about is
• 25:51
  Speaker 1: getting through hunting season. And they've got these sanctuaries they
• 25:56
  Speaker 1: go to, and they in their bachelor groups go their
• 25:59
  Speaker 1: year after or year after year. And you said your
• 26:04
  Speaker 1: name to your name in Montana, Yeah, I mean low
• 26:07
  Speaker 1: down nasty dog here. As as a general rule, I
• 26:10
  Speaker 1: tell people, and this is Newberg's first rule of el
• 26:13
  Speaker 1: cunting is where where hunters go, elk don't. And so
• 26:18
  Speaker 1: if it's a place hunters can easily get to or
• 26:21
  Speaker 1: don't have to exert themselves to get to, don't expect
• 26:24
  Speaker 1: late season elk to be there. Maybe some late season coles,
• 26:28
  Speaker 1: but not late season bulls. And I will share information
• 26:32
  Speaker 1: with people about my early season spots or my peak
• 26:36
  Speaker 1: rut locations. Fine, everyone kind of knows where those are.
• 26:42
  Speaker 1: But you're never gonna hear Randy Newburgh tell you where
• 26:45
  Speaker 1: one of these sanctuaries are, because one they're hard to find.
• 26:48
  Speaker 1: Two once you find them, you can go there every year,
• 26:51
  Speaker 1: year after year after year in kill elk in that
• 26:53
  Speaker 1: same spot. Because these bulls get old by living in
• 26:57
  Speaker 1: these locations. To find spot, like what side of the the ground,
• 27:01
  Speaker 1: what side of patch ground? Oh, maybe sixty acres that
• 27:07
  Speaker 1: they will make a living in a sixty acre spot
• 27:11
  Speaker 1: all the way through hunting season. In Montana, we got
• 27:13
  Speaker 1: a five week rifle season. After the first shots, all
• 27:16
  Speaker 1: hell breaks loose. The older bulls are in their bachelor groups,
• 27:20
  Speaker 1: and they are going to the ugly, nasty places. They're
• 27:23
  Speaker 1: gonna be places that are hard to approach because of
• 27:27
  Speaker 1: wind or noise or other things. And even if you
• 27:30
  Speaker 1: do approach it, there's gonna be a fast escape route. Yeah.
• 27:34
  Speaker 1: And it's just I can almost look at a map
• 27:37
  Speaker 1: now anymore with topal lines and say, there's gonna be
• 27:40
  Speaker 1: out there. Okay, But how does that play into your
• 27:43
  Speaker 1: idea that once you find them that they're easy to kill.
• 27:45
  Speaker 1: He's protected by the wind, he's gotta go escape route.
• 27:49
  Speaker 1: You just gotta wait him out. I think most people
• 27:51
  Speaker 1: when they find it out get way too excited. I
• 27:54
  Speaker 1: gotta go kill him. I finally found one, and they
• 27:57
  Speaker 1: burst in there. They think, oh, over here, the winds
• 28:00
  Speaker 1: blowing out of the south while you get over the
• 28:02
  Speaker 1: other side of the drainage or on the other hillside,
• 28:04
  Speaker 1: and it may be blown out of the east. And
• 28:06
  Speaker 1: so before they even get there, they've already announced to
• 28:09
  Speaker 1: the elk what's going on. And they see an elk
• 28:12
  Speaker 1: bedded and they're afraid another hunter is gonna come shoot
• 28:14
  Speaker 1: him as bed and I just wait him out, like
• 28:19
  Speaker 1: how like what sit there until they stand up and
• 28:22
  Speaker 1: offer me a shot, or I get to someplace that says,
• 28:25
  Speaker 1: all right, I'm two yards away. I know he's down
• 28:29
  Speaker 1: in there. He's gonna feed. I can see his tracks
• 28:32
  Speaker 1: in the snow where he feeds every night. I'm gonna
• 28:34
  Speaker 1: let him feed up there, and I'll kill him. And
• 28:36
  Speaker 1: I might have to wait until a half hour before
• 28:38
  Speaker 1: the sun goes down, but if I wait, I'll kill him.
• 28:43
  Speaker 1: I know I'm making this sound like everything you're saying,
• 28:47
  Speaker 1: But I when I first started hunting elk, I made
• 28:51
  Speaker 1: it way too complicated. I was looking for magic calls
• 28:55
  Speaker 1: and you know, gizmos and all this stuff, and it
• 29:00
  Speaker 1: it didn't work. I got a great anecdote about a
• 29:04
  Speaker 1: late season big bull that was killed. Some guy finally
• 29:08
  Speaker 1: killed him, but he was in gunnison, and I want
• 29:10
  Speaker 1: to say, I can't remember if think it was. I
• 29:12
  Speaker 1: don't think it was a tough to draw unit because
• 29:14
  Speaker 1: I think as a story goes, I know there's he
• 29:17
  Speaker 1: was about like a three sixties something bull, so pretty
• 29:20
  Speaker 1: darn big for Colorado Dunnison Basin. And during the rut
• 29:23
  Speaker 1: in September, this bull would rut on private land and
• 29:26
  Speaker 1: it was like right adjacent to town, I want to say,
• 29:29
  Speaker 1: it's right outside of Gunson, so everybody would see him.
• 29:32
  Speaker 1: It's just a giant bull run around right around, and
• 29:34
  Speaker 1: then like you know, rut would go by, rifle season
• 29:38
  Speaker 1: would come around, and this bull would just disappear. Well, finally,
• 29:42
  Speaker 1: one dude, it's just like literally glass and just like
• 29:44
  Speaker 1: the same mountain that's been behind this bull forever, and
• 29:47
  Speaker 1: like looking way high up in the alpine way above
• 29:51
  Speaker 1: tree line, and there's like this little patch of willows
• 29:54
  Speaker 1: and there's like a hundred yards away there's like five
• 29:57
  Speaker 1: like dwarfed little wh or angleman spruce or you know
• 30:01
  Speaker 1: whatever lives way up there, you know, this little like
• 30:03
  Speaker 1: six foot trees. And gets out of spot and scope.
• 30:06
  Speaker 1: He starts looking hard, and he thinks he can see
• 30:08
  Speaker 1: tracks like connecting the two, you know. So he's like,
• 30:11
  Speaker 1: I'm gonna start looking at that patch. He climbs up
• 30:13
  Speaker 1: and gets a little bit closer, and sure enough, at
• 30:16
  Speaker 1: like ten minutes before dark, up rises out of these
• 30:20
  Speaker 1: five little spruce trees, this giant bowl, and he walks
• 30:24
  Speaker 1: like a hundred yards over these little you know, dwarf
• 30:26
  Speaker 1: tie alpine willows and he loses them in the dark.
• 30:30
  Speaker 1: Next morning, he's like watching and like just as his
• 30:32
  Speaker 1: cracking light, he just sees those antlers disappeared on his
• 30:35
  Speaker 1: five little cruce. He went up there, waited him out,
• 30:39
  Speaker 1: killed that bowl, and he said the pack job was
• 30:42
  Speaker 1: just like something out of like a K two documentary,
• 30:45
  Speaker 1: just like ice Acs is cramp on, just like scooting
• 30:48
  Speaker 1: along the edge of this basin, you know, eleven plus
• 30:51
  Speaker 1: thousand feet high. But yeah, I mean he's got him
• 30:55
  Speaker 1: hanging on his wall now and right into We're hunting
• 31:00
  Speaker 1: mule your a couple years ago in Colorado, it was
• 31:02
  Speaker 1: into the don't know what season was. There had been
• 31:04
  Speaker 1: a couple of seasons going on, and they're just like
• 31:07
  Speaker 1: looking through my spot and scope looking for Mulder and
• 31:10
  Speaker 1: just seeing a nice bull and be like you son
• 31:12
  Speaker 1: up a bit. That's where you're that's where you hang out. Yeah,
• 31:16
  Speaker 1: I've like a post ut situation. Yeah, I've had that
• 31:20
  Speaker 1: happen a lot of times in Colorado. I mean, I
• 31:22
  Speaker 1: try to go deer hunting there every two or three years,
• 31:25
  Speaker 1: and I'll be looking in these little pockets for bucks
• 31:28
  Speaker 1: and does, and I'll be like, just like you said,
• 31:31
  Speaker 1: you sill be. But I know I could probably come
• 31:36
  Speaker 1: back there year after year and find him or other
• 31:38
  Speaker 1: bulls around there, and I just I don't know. I
• 31:42
  Speaker 1: I try when I do seminars about elk hunting, and
• 31:44
  Speaker 1: I'm not an expert by any means. I just have
• 31:47
  Speaker 1: a lot of experience that doesn't necessarily make you an expert. Um.
• 31:50
  Speaker 1: I try to tell people, think about what time of
• 31:54
  Speaker 1: the year you're hunting, and what are the needs to
• 31:57
  Speaker 1: elk has at that time of year in the peak rut.
• 32:01
  Speaker 1: They don't care about food. You know, it's back there
• 32:05
  Speaker 1: when I said the best way to kill a big
• 32:07
  Speaker 1: bull is late season with the rifle. The other would
• 32:10
  Speaker 1: be at a water hole in a hot climate in
• 32:15
  Speaker 1: the middle of the day during peak rut. I've been
• 32:18
  Speaker 1: lucky and drawn Arizona and New Mexico and Nevada, Utah.
• 32:22
  Speaker 1: I've drawn a lot of those tags for our treat.
• 32:25
  Speaker 1: What happens is the bulls take their cows up to
• 32:28
  Speaker 1: bed them in the morning and they usually stop and
• 32:31
  Speaker 1: get some water somewhere along the way. And once they
• 32:34
  Speaker 1: bed those bulls and they defend them from a few satellites,
• 32:38
  Speaker 1: those bulls will sneak away from the cows about somewhere
• 32:41
  Speaker 1: between noon and three o'clock and they will come out
• 32:44
  Speaker 1: in broad daylight, get a quick drink, and head back
• 32:47
  Speaker 1: up to those cows. I've seen it so many times
• 32:51
  Speaker 1: that when I have those tags, now, I don't go
• 32:53
  Speaker 1: back to camp and take a nap at noon. I'm
• 32:57
  Speaker 1: sleeping at the water hole or I'm sitting like I
• 33:00
  Speaker 1: wouldn't be at home, because I like to take mind
• 33:03
  Speaker 1: that I have from level of twelve up. But I
• 33:08
  Speaker 1: think it's those sort of little tidbits that like in
• 33:10
  Speaker 1: Montana you maybe never really thought about it, and then
• 33:14
  Speaker 1: you went to a really hot climate where like it
• 33:16
  Speaker 1: happens more often and you notice it and you go, well,
• 33:19
  Speaker 1: you know, maybe on a hot September day, this happens
• 33:22
  Speaker 1: in Montana too, and so you know, yeah, that's the
• 33:25
  Speaker 1: thing too. Like, uh, when I was two earlier about
• 33:28
  Speaker 1: like Havin, you're like core activity, and then there's all
• 33:31
  Speaker 1: the experiments we're kind of talk about ways in which
• 33:33
  Speaker 1: you become educated in general. But I found at the
• 33:35
  Speaker 1: same time that was our deal. I found that I
• 33:38
  Speaker 1: don't respect, and I don't mean respect like in a
• 33:41
  Speaker 1: way like you know, or let me use a different word.
• 33:45
  Speaker 1: I don't admire the hunting prowess of people who have
• 33:50
  Speaker 1: just figured out a thing. Yeah it's yeah, like you know,
• 33:56
  Speaker 1: would be like some dude like yeah, like in September
• 34:00
  Speaker 1: he catches a ton of samon trolling in front of
• 34:04
  Speaker 1: that river mouth. He's the man, and I was like yeah,
• 34:07
  Speaker 1: but you know, like anything could happen and that fistory
• 34:11
  Speaker 1: or whatever like so I kind of admire like adaptability,
• 34:14
  Speaker 1: you know, or all the people that they kill a
• 34:16
  Speaker 1: buck every year and then they whoever owns the farm
• 34:20
  Speaker 1: they're hunting on, sells the farm. They never hunt again.
• 34:23
  Speaker 1: It's like one manute, he's like the dude. They're like, yeah,
• 34:25
  Speaker 1: oh John Man. Every mopening day he gets his buck
• 34:27
  Speaker 1: and it's like yeah, I was just like I have
• 34:29
  Speaker 1: my little thing. So through traveling and experimenting, I find
• 34:33
  Speaker 1: that like just adaptability in and of itself, it's valuable.
• 34:39
  Speaker 1: Oh I I agree completely. I mean it makes you
• 34:41
  Speaker 1: feel more comfortable because I used to feel very vulnerable
• 34:44
  Speaker 1: when I first started hunting here, first started hunting out here,
• 34:48
  Speaker 1: I felt very vulnerable, like, man, would we be screwed
• 34:52
  Speaker 1: if somehow this trailhead were to gain popularity? M hm
• 34:57
  Speaker 1: oh yeah, I mean we'll be done yea. And because
• 35:00
  Speaker 1: let me know, as you park here there and they're there,
• 35:03
  Speaker 1: and like if they were, what the hell that right?
• 35:06
  Speaker 1: So I do like the kind of stuff you're saying,
• 35:09
  Speaker 1: like go anywhere and having like a toolbox that you
• 35:12
  Speaker 1: can you know. Yeah, I've just been lucky to get
• 35:17
  Speaker 1: to hunt elk in so many places. You might not
• 35:20
  Speaker 1: even be comfortable answers because it sounds like you're like
• 35:22
  Speaker 1: tooting your own horn or whatever. But how like like
• 35:25
  Speaker 1: how many states or what states have you killed? Public Land,
• 35:27
  Speaker 1: alicon um Antana, Whyoming, Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona, Nevada? Uh?
• 35:37
  Speaker 1: Should have last year in Utah and two weeks people
• 35:40
  Speaker 1: get to see, Yeah, I know how it is eighteen
• 35:43
  Speaker 1: yards of bowls standing there and I'm at, you know,
• 35:46
  Speaker 1: with my archery gear, thinking, come on, buddy, take one
• 35:49
  Speaker 1: step and either the camera's got them or I don't
• 35:54
  Speaker 1: have them. And so I could have added Utah to
• 35:57
  Speaker 1: that list if not for a very lucky lucky bull
• 36:01
  Speaker 1: last year. But so it was all like, do it
• 36:04
  Speaker 1: on your own, right, That's that's still seven states, is it.
• 36:09
  Speaker 1: I think that's okay. Yeah, you know, and for me,
• 36:14
  Speaker 1: I don't really even think about it in terms of numbers.
• 36:17
  Speaker 1: It's like, no, no, that's why I hesitated to ask you.
• 36:20
  Speaker 1: I mean it speaks for itself. Yeah, it's just experiences.
• 36:23
  Speaker 1: And you know, a classic example of a learning experience
• 36:26
  Speaker 1: is I'm in New Mexico. It's archery season. I mean
• 36:29
  Speaker 1: it's blistering hot. I go up high and everyone else
• 36:34
  Speaker 1: is up high high, like what eight thousand trying to
• 36:37
  Speaker 1: get in some ponderosa. And I got my spotting scope
• 36:41
  Speaker 1: out on this rock and I'm looking down and I
• 36:43
  Speaker 1: see all these elk out on the flats in these grasslands.
• 36:47
  Speaker 1: Grab my GPS and my map. I'm like, ship that's
• 36:49
  Speaker 1: being lamp. So I go down there and there's some
• 36:52
  Speaker 1: guys camp there, and I'm like, you guys hunting these
• 36:56
  Speaker 1: elk out here? Oh no, you'll never be able to
• 37:00
  Speaker 1: get up on them. I mean, you can't call that man. Well,
• 37:03
  Speaker 1: I grew up spotting stock hunting in a lot of
• 37:06
  Speaker 1: ways in the big woods of Minnesota. As weird as
• 37:09
  Speaker 1: that sounds, you know, you're trying to find someplace where
• 37:13
  Speaker 1: a buck is hanging out, and you're trying to see
• 37:15
  Speaker 1: him before he sees you, because if he sees you first,
• 37:19
  Speaker 1: one big jump and he's gone still n yeah, pretty
• 37:23
  Speaker 1: much still hunting. So I'm thinking, you know what, those
• 37:26
  Speaker 1: elk got a bed somewhere out there. I go out
• 37:29
  Speaker 1: there and I get to looking around. I can see
• 37:32
  Speaker 1: where they're bedding. Wherever there's a break in the terrain,
• 37:35
  Speaker 1: just a rock pile like six ft, you know, dropping
• 37:39
  Speaker 1: a rock. They're bedding right up against those rocks for
• 37:43
  Speaker 1: shade or are sad. I go out there and within
• 37:47
  Speaker 1: a day I arrow one of those bulls of that
• 37:51
  Speaker 1: like two yards and we come packing. Yeah, we come
• 37:55
  Speaker 1: packing it out and the guys we walked past their camp,
• 37:58
  Speaker 1: They're like, where the hell did you get that out there?
• 38:02
  Speaker 1: And I could have shot other bulls on that trip.
• 38:05
  Speaker 1: Every time I've went back to that spot and been
• 38:07
  Speaker 1: lucky enough to draw those elk have figured out no
• 38:11
  Speaker 1: hunters want to come out here because it's about a
• 38:15
  Speaker 1: three mile hike, it's hot, there's no shade, but there's
• 38:20
  Speaker 1: no hunters either. So elk will go where they're They're
• 38:23
  Speaker 1: kind of like this fluid animal that moves in response
• 38:28
  Speaker 1: to pressure, kind of like water. I mean, you push
• 38:31
  Speaker 1: against the water balloon and the water moves to a
• 38:33
  Speaker 1: different spot in the balloon. It's kind of how these
• 38:36
  Speaker 1: elk are. And so every year I hope I draw
• 38:39
  Speaker 1: that tag because it's so consistent that I go to
• 38:42
  Speaker 1: that trailhead I walk out there, no one's gonna be there,
• 38:45
  Speaker 1: and they're gonna be out there. So it's just one
• 38:49
  Speaker 1: of those things. Though, if you have enough experiences and
• 38:51
  Speaker 1: go to enough different places, you kind of have those
• 38:54
  Speaker 1: discovery movements and say, and what's funny is like if
• 38:59
  Speaker 1: someone tells you, like, just describe that hunt, but put
• 39:02
  Speaker 1: an antelope in there, and they're like, oh, yeah, for sure,
• 39:04
  Speaker 1: we'll go after those antelope way out there in the flats.
• 39:06
  Speaker 1: But then someone puts an elk out in that same
• 39:08
  Speaker 1: country and I can't kill those things. Yeah, And I
• 39:12
  Speaker 1: don't know. I think we on TV have a tendency
• 39:14
  Speaker 1: to maybe create some narrow mindedness among hunters from the
• 39:20
  Speaker 1: standpoint of what works or or how wide you're thinking
• 39:24
  Speaker 1: should be. I mean, these are smart animals. They've figured
• 39:29
  Speaker 1: it out. They've somehow. You know, a bowl that lives
• 39:32
  Speaker 1: six years on public land, he's no dummy, Just like
• 39:36
  Speaker 1: a white tail that lives past three years in the Midwest,
• 39:40
  Speaker 1: there's no dummy. And uh don't don't discount some of
• 39:45
  Speaker 1: the things they will do to stay alive. They just
• 39:49
  Speaker 1: haven't figured out how to stay alive. That spot you're
• 39:52
  Speaker 1: talking about always says you know if you go there.
• 39:55
  Speaker 1: Um to me, man like my most valuable possessions in life, idols,
• 40:00
  Speaker 1: just handful of things, just like reliable things. And you
• 40:08
  Speaker 1: know you really rarely have more than a half dozen.
• 40:13
  Speaker 1: And I'm not talking just one piece. I mean, just
• 40:15
  Speaker 1: like the things that work and now and then for
• 40:18
  Speaker 1: whatever reason you just scratch them. Yeah you know what
• 40:22
  Speaker 1: I mean. Or you haven't done it so long and
• 40:24
  Speaker 1: it doesn't feel like a thing anymore. But it's like
• 40:27
  Speaker 1: knowing like the junk that works and stuff goes away
• 40:30
  Speaker 1: like I used to be, because it feels like stuff changes,
• 40:34
  Speaker 1: like I one of my things like that I counted
• 40:36
  Speaker 1: by my things, like the ability that we would pound
• 40:39
  Speaker 1: steelhead at the sixth Street damn in downtown Grand Rappers, Michigan. Right,
• 40:45
  Speaker 1: I haven't done it forever the day. They haven't changed
• 40:47
  Speaker 1: the damn they haven't changed the river. The steelhead are
• 40:50
  Speaker 1: still there. But I feel like somehow if I went back,
• 40:53
  Speaker 1: like I wouldn't be able to do it. I like
• 40:55
  Speaker 1: lost it as my thing, you know. It's just I
• 40:59
  Speaker 1: haven't done it so long. I almost feel like telling people.
• 41:01
  Speaker 1: I recently had this thing where I had a friend
• 41:03
  Speaker 1: move to a place I used to live, and I'm imploring,
• 41:08
  Speaker 1: I'm begging him to go sit a certain avalanche slide
• 41:14
  Speaker 1: to see if a bear came out, because I hadn't
• 41:16
  Speaker 1: hunted in a decade. And he goes out and said,
• 41:20
  Speaker 1: I went up, there's all snowy. I'm like, no, you're
• 41:22
  Speaker 1: not listening. I'm saying, dude, it doesn't matter. The shoot
• 41:25
  Speaker 1: will be fine. I don't care how much snow. You
• 41:27
  Speaker 1: gotta wait through, park your damn car, walk up there
• 41:30
  Speaker 1: and look, you know, And he thinks I'm trying to
• 41:33
  Speaker 1: help him out. I'm just trying to know, like do
• 41:34
  Speaker 1: I still I'm like, do I still have a thing
• 41:37
  Speaker 1: or not? Here? And I'm telling like, you go this
• 41:39
  Speaker 1: one time, you know, and he goes up called back,
• 41:43
  Speaker 1: I'm like, never go there again. That I just needed
• 41:46
  Speaker 1: to know that I still have that little thing. It
• 41:50
  Speaker 1: works in these little places. I am a big advocate
• 41:54
  Speaker 1: for conservation, but and a lot of people know. I
• 41:58
  Speaker 1: sit on the board of the Rocky Mountain Foundation. One
• 42:01
  Speaker 1: other people came to me and said, Randy, would you
• 42:03
  Speaker 1: auction off your GPS with all your ways and you
• 42:10
  Speaker 1: talking about Yeah, you talk about mixed emotions because you
• 42:15
  Speaker 1: know I didn't do it. No, I I haven't and uh,
• 42:19
  Speaker 1: you would have done it, but you lost your GPS
• 42:21
  Speaker 1: so you couldn't. I found that GPS. Yeah, Joanna saw
• 42:25
  Speaker 1: me a couple of months ago. I was in panic
• 42:27
  Speaker 1: mode my GPS with all of this cherished hard. Yeah,
• 42:34
  Speaker 1: I'd lost it. I'd been on muscrat trapping and I
• 42:37
  Speaker 1: couldn't find the damn thing. Well, I have these customs
• 42:41
  Speaker 1: heat covers made, and I put it somewhere where I
• 42:45
  Speaker 1: wouldn't forget where I put it, and that's where I was.
• 42:49
  Speaker 1: I found it in May sometimes but so you can
• 42:53
  Speaker 1: auction it off, No, I have never got I will
• 42:56
  Speaker 1: someday auction it off. But it kind of like what
• 43:00
  Speaker 1: you were saying, Steve about, you know, in respect for
• 43:03
  Speaker 1: people who are adaptable or whatever. I respect people who
• 43:09
  Speaker 1: want to go out and figure it out, who who
• 43:12
  Speaker 1: want to take the journey rather than be led to
• 43:15
  Speaker 1: the destination and say here he is, shoot him. I
• 43:18
  Speaker 1: mean the guy who just racks his brain and works
• 43:21
  Speaker 1: and goes out before work or whatever on the weekends,
• 43:25
  Speaker 1: and you know, he's skimped for time, but somehow he
• 43:27
  Speaker 1: shoots a bowl every year. That guy's got my respect. Yeah.
• 43:31
  Speaker 1: I like that guy. I always like, I always want
• 43:33
  Speaker 1: to help that guy out. Me too. And I always
• 43:35
  Speaker 1: want to help out the guy with his kid. Yeah,
• 43:38
  Speaker 1: but dude, he and his kid, And I was like, hey,
• 43:39
  Speaker 1: you know what I would do? But um, yeah, man.
• 43:43
  Speaker 1: The thing about auction off it's just like, like you said,
• 43:48
  Speaker 1: you're proponent of conservation. Um. It just brings up a
• 43:53
  Speaker 1: thing that I think about all the time is when
• 43:56
  Speaker 1: people talk about the need for hunter recruitment, the only
• 43:59
  Speaker 1: will of that, the thinking goes that for hunting to
• 44:04
  Speaker 1: survive politically. I mean, I'm not telling you that, I'm
• 44:06
  Speaker 1: just for listeners that for hunting to survive in today's
• 44:10
  Speaker 1: political climate, we need to have we need to have healthy,
• 44:14
  Speaker 1: robust numbers, right. Um. But a thing that critics of
• 44:21
  Speaker 1: that say, including many friends of mine who critics of
• 44:24
  Speaker 1: the idea of hunter recruitment. We'll be like, well, why
• 44:27
  Speaker 1: would you want to increase the likelihood of someone being
• 44:30
  Speaker 1: in your spot? And when I get asked by people,
• 44:36
  Speaker 1: and often will give talks, and the thing that always
• 44:39
  Speaker 1: comes up when I give a talk because people be like,
• 44:41
  Speaker 1: what can we be doing? Or why are hunter numbers
• 44:44
  Speaker 1: staging that? Or why does the average hunter get older?
• 44:46
  Speaker 1: So you know what, what what do you see from
• 44:49
  Speaker 1: the people you meet? I'm like, you know what, Inspiring
• 44:53
  Speaker 1: people to want to go is not a problem, right,
• 44:56
  Speaker 1: There's plenty of motivation out there. The cost, I don't
• 44:59
  Speaker 1: think it's there's not a lot of people. There aren't
• 45:01
  Speaker 1: tons of people who want to hunt but can't because
• 45:03
  Speaker 1: the cost. They're not hung as they don't have a
• 45:06
  Speaker 1: good spot, and a lot of people aren't willing to
• 45:11
  Speaker 1: just make the sacrifices necessary to find good spots. I
• 45:14
  Speaker 1: found I take people out, take them on amazing trips,
• 45:18
  Speaker 1: and then they are going to replicate that amazing trip
• 45:23
  Speaker 1: unless they do tons of hard work to find their
• 45:24
  Speaker 1: own stuff. And that's it for him. And when it
• 45:27
  Speaker 1: comes down to it, so like I like, so if
• 45:29
  Speaker 1: I was consistent with what I'm saying, I would give
• 45:32
  Speaker 1: up all my spots. True, you would, because I would
• 45:36
  Speaker 1: be able to make a handful of people. But it's
• 45:40
  Speaker 1: just not something I'm willing to do. And some people,
• 45:43
  Speaker 1: like you know, my older brother, he just thinks that
• 45:46
  Speaker 1: all this talk is just ridiculous. And I've listened to
• 45:53
  Speaker 1: some of your podcasts where the topics come up, and
• 45:56
  Speaker 1: I'm kind of torn between. I'm I'm all about making
• 46:00
  Speaker 1: sure opportunity exists, but not handing it to him. I
• 46:05
  Speaker 1: think the worst thing you can do for a prospective
• 46:08
  Speaker 1: hunter is to hand them something that just show them
• 46:13
  Speaker 1: the easy way. Oh well, that's all there is to that,
• 46:16
  Speaker 1: and you've cheated him out of the entire experience of
• 46:18
  Speaker 1: what hunting really is. In my mind, I don't think
• 46:23
  Speaker 1: that's the value that people when people say hunting recruitment,
• 46:28
  Speaker 1: that's not what I think of. You know, bring him
• 46:31
  Speaker 1: on out that, bringing them out there, make sure they
• 46:33
  Speaker 1: kill something the first day. Now, you know, let them
• 46:36
  Speaker 1: get a little called, let them, you know, maybe feel
• 46:38
  Speaker 1: a little lost, let them have to work, and that's
• 46:41
  Speaker 1: the part that is going to make them a hunter
• 46:44
  Speaker 1: for the long term. It was if it's easy there's
• 46:47
  Speaker 1: no reward in it. Yeah, I don't want to make
• 46:49
  Speaker 1: new hunters just for the sake of doing it. No,
• 46:52
  Speaker 1: if you told me if I signed some treaty with
• 46:55
  Speaker 1: the non hunting public, he said, we'll never mess with you. Okay,
• 47:01
  Speaker 1: in perpetuity, you will not be messed with politically or environmentally.
• 47:09
  Speaker 1: I'll be like, Okay, I'll just be the only that
• 47:11
  Speaker 1: honestly want to be the only guy that hunts. Is
• 47:14
  Speaker 1: long is you're telling me you're not gonna mess with
• 47:17
  Speaker 1: the habits at, You're not gonna mess with the hunting rights.
• 47:19
  Speaker 1: You know That's fine. I'll just be the guy I'll take.
• 47:23
  Speaker 1: I'll take that job. I've heard you talk about your
• 47:27
  Speaker 1: brother's opinion on this and growing up in Michigan. I'm
• 47:32
  Speaker 1: assuming it was a little bit like where I grew
• 47:34
  Speaker 1: up in Minnesota, where everybody hunting fish, everybody, well, every household. Yeah,
• 47:40
  Speaker 1: I mean I did not know anyone who really ate
• 47:44
  Speaker 1: beef growing up until I went off to college. I
• 47:48
  Speaker 1: didn't realize how much beef, chicken, and pork got standing. Oh, definitely,
• 47:53
  Speaker 1: we ate all kinds like we ate. There was all around.
• 47:56
  Speaker 1: Domestic meat was there, but they everybody hunted, but it
• 47:59
  Speaker 1: wasn't like it wasn't like a subsistence area. But and
• 48:03
  Speaker 1: so the point I'm getting to is, because some people
• 48:08
  Speaker 1: grow up in that environment where you just work your
• 48:11
  Speaker 1: butt off and you hunt and your fish and you
• 48:13
  Speaker 1: trap and you do all those kind of things, you
• 48:18
  Speaker 1: encounter experiences that shape inform you, so you don't need
• 48:21
  Speaker 1: to be quote unquote recruited as a hunter. Everybody I
• 48:26
  Speaker 1: grew up with they were going to be hunters because
• 48:29
  Speaker 1: we came from a society of hunters. That was our identity.
• 48:32
  Speaker 1: That you weren't, Oh, I'm a carpenter and then I'm
• 48:37
  Speaker 1: a hunter. It was the reverse. No, I'm a hunter.
• 48:40
  Speaker 1: Just who you were if if you were a young kid,
• 48:44
  Speaker 1: you looked up to the guys who were hunters in
• 48:47
  Speaker 1: your community, or fishermen or trappers or whatever. And so
• 48:51
  Speaker 1: I I think a lot of quote unquote problems we
• 48:55
  Speaker 1: we attribute to hunting recruitment are just the environment or
• 48:59
  Speaker 1: atmosphere in which we're trying to bring them into it.
• 49:03
  Speaker 1: You know, trying to bring someone who's only exposed to
• 49:07
  Speaker 1: nature or to the natural world for one day out
• 49:10
  Speaker 1: of a year. You're not gonna convert them to being
• 49:16
  Speaker 1: a hunter, like we think of a hunter, you have
• 49:19
  Speaker 1: to put in the effort in the work to immerse
• 49:22
  Speaker 1: them to a level where they understand all the other
• 49:24
  Speaker 1: parts of hunting. Yeah. I thought about that because I've
• 49:29
  Speaker 1: been um befuddled at times by taking people out on
• 49:37
  Speaker 1: that one day a year thing, you know, like, Okay,
• 49:41
  Speaker 1: I took you on this, like we flew up with
• 49:43
  Speaker 1: like a caribou hunt. Surely you'll now be a hunter
• 49:48
  Speaker 1: and then ay, there's never hunt again. Yeah, I don't understand, dude.
• 49:52
  Speaker 1: But then we're talking. It's not long ago. I feel like,
• 49:54
  Speaker 1: but if someone took me sailing, they're like, hey, man,
• 49:56
  Speaker 1: you want to come sailing for a day? Like why not?
• 50:01
  Speaker 1: Later they're like, I can't believe he never became a sailor.
• 50:05
  Speaker 1: I think, no, dude, I just thought to be interested
• 50:06
  Speaker 1: to go sailing over day. We went sailing. That's great.
• 50:10
  Speaker 1: I mean, do you regret going sailing? No? I want
• 50:12
  Speaker 1: to like be a sailor. No, it's fun. You know.
• 50:17
  Speaker 1: I think a lot of people look at that way
• 50:18
  Speaker 1: like I look at it, like do you self defined
• 50:21
  Speaker 1: as a hunter or not? I do, And that's you know,
• 50:25
  Speaker 1: most people don't look at the world that way what
• 50:27
  Speaker 1: people ask me. I think we were doing an interview
• 50:31
  Speaker 1: with you guys, I think, and someone said, Randy, introduce yourself. Randy,
• 50:36
  Speaker 1: I'm Randy Newberg. Hunter. It's just that's who I am. Yeah, professionally,
• 50:41
  Speaker 1: I'm a c p A and everything else. But everyone
• 50:45
  Speaker 1: who knows me, all the people I hang out with,
• 50:48
  Speaker 1: their hunters, and we look at the world through a
• 50:52
  Speaker 1: lens that is so much different than everybody else. And
• 50:54
  Speaker 1: I used to think that I was the same as
• 50:59
  Speaker 1: everybody else. But after you have enough of these life experiences,
• 51:03
  Speaker 1: interacting with enough people who don't hunt or see the
• 51:06
  Speaker 1: world differently, you realize that hunting gives you a vision
• 51:10
  Speaker 1: of the world like nothing else. Yeah, I mean, nothing
• 51:13
  Speaker 1: I can think of compares to the vision of the
• 51:17
  Speaker 1: natural world you get if you are a hunter. I
• 51:20
  Speaker 1: don't you mentioned trapping a couple of times. Before we
• 51:24
  Speaker 1: get into trapping too far, let's just take a quick break. So, Randy,
• 51:28
  Speaker 1: you mentioned trapping a couple of times, and now you
• 51:32
  Speaker 1: mentioned that a hunter looks at the world way that
• 51:35
  Speaker 1: no one else looks at it. I'll tell you that
• 51:38
  Speaker 1: when I'm driving down a road and I drive over
• 51:42
  Speaker 1: a bridge, I know what you're saying, and I look
• 51:45
  Speaker 1: off the bridge, no one is looking at what I'm
• 51:51
  Speaker 1: looking at or not. No one, very few individuals will
• 51:55
  Speaker 1: select few individuals are looking off the bridge that way exactly.
• 52:00
  Speaker 1: And just like when I drive through a value, I'm
• 52:03
  Speaker 1: looking up the mountains like I do not see what
• 52:09
  Speaker 1: all the people see. I think that I have. I
• 52:13
  Speaker 1: think that hunting in some way makes it very difficult
• 52:16
  Speaker 1: to look at the natural world with passivity. Completely agree.
• 52:21
  Speaker 1: It's like you're looking at it sort of in a way,
• 52:25
  Speaker 1: and it sounds egotistical, but you're looking at it the
• 52:27
  Speaker 1: way like, well, how does this like pertain to me
• 52:32
  Speaker 1: in some way? Like where are the animals? Or what's
• 52:35
  Speaker 1: up with that spot? And it's I can I can
• 52:37
  Speaker 1: only see it that way if I go on vacation.
• 52:40
  Speaker 1: We just went on family vacation in Hawaii. The whole
• 52:43
  Speaker 1: time I'm looking at those hills being like, no, what
• 52:47
  Speaker 1: would have fella fine up there? This bone arrow? You know?
• 52:49
  Speaker 1: I mean, like, I can't not see things that way.
• 52:52
  Speaker 1: I can't. My wife has just been baffled by my
• 52:56
  Speaker 1: inability to just sit on the beach. I am the
• 52:59
  Speaker 1: same way my wife will say, is that all you
• 53:01
  Speaker 1: think about. Yeah, I don't think about one thing when
• 53:06
  Speaker 1: when we're doing whatever. You know, we might be driving
• 53:10
  Speaker 1: down the road and I'm like, on our way home,
• 53:13
  Speaker 1: I want to stop there, kind of like you're saying
• 53:15
  Speaker 1: about the bridge, because at that culvert right there, I'm
• 53:18
  Speaker 1: pretty sure I could trap a muskrat. That's what I
• 53:21
  Speaker 1: was getting out, And I said, like driving over bridge,
• 53:23
  Speaker 1: Like yeah, so I grew up trapping in Michigan. You
• 53:26
  Speaker 1: grew up trapping to Minnesota. Yeah, a lot of the
• 53:29
  Speaker 1: I don't know, fift I needed a little little bit
• 53:34
  Speaker 1: of groundworker. Like when you're trapping, you Romans called a
• 53:37
  Speaker 1: trap line, and no one just sets a trap, like
• 53:39
  Speaker 1: you're on a trap line, and your trap line might
• 53:41
  Speaker 1: be six what we call sets or locations where you
• 53:44
  Speaker 1: have a trap set, or in the case of a
• 53:47
  Speaker 1: mink long liner, you might have two D three hundred
• 53:51
  Speaker 1: traps out or what you call sets. So when I
• 53:55
  Speaker 1: was trapping, fifty percent of my sets that I would
• 54:00
  Speaker 1: make would be on public rightways of bridges for mink
• 54:06
  Speaker 1: and muskrat, mink, muskrat, raccoon. So like I divided trapping
• 54:12
  Speaker 1: up in my head, water trapping, land trapping, so land
• 54:15
  Speaker 1: trapping you trapped love it was early like we'd land
• 54:18
  Speaker 1: we'd start land trapping. I don't member where. I can't
• 54:20
  Speaker 1: remember that. When I would do it, I'd start land
• 54:22
  Speaker 1: trapping October ten, UM, and you'd have twenty days of
• 54:26
  Speaker 1: land trapping before water trapping open up. During land trapping,
• 54:30
  Speaker 1: I would target red fox, but um, I would get
• 54:36
  Speaker 1: gray fox, and I would get raccoons that weren't that
• 54:40
  Speaker 1: valuable because raccoons hadn't come into prime quite yet. Um.
• 54:45
  Speaker 1: And then November one, I would start water trapping Zone two.
• 54:50
  Speaker 1: When I started water trapping zone too, I would set
• 54:52
  Speaker 1: tons of public rightaways where you are climbing into it.
• 54:58
  Speaker 1: You don't, you're it's not public land. You had permission
• 55:00
  Speaker 1: on the land. You could park your car on the
• 55:03
  Speaker 1: bridge or parking car on the side of the road
• 55:06
  Speaker 1: and sort of skirt down the bridge abutment abutment, get
• 55:10
  Speaker 1: down the river and then make your set below the
• 55:13
  Speaker 1: high water mark. Yeah. So you just learned the same way.
• 55:17
  Speaker 1: Now as a hunter, I look at like a like
• 55:19
  Speaker 1: a brushy strip between two corn fields in a certain way. Yeah,
• 55:23
  Speaker 1: driving over bridges, I had a way of I would
• 55:25
  Speaker 1: just be able to assess it so quickly, whether it
• 55:28
  Speaker 1: was interesting to me or not. And a lot of
• 55:32
  Speaker 1: people ask me, well, how has trapping helped you as
• 55:34
  Speaker 1: someone who hunts, because you you still trapped? Oh yeah,
• 55:38
  Speaker 1: I mean, be honest, you came with me one day
• 55:40
  Speaker 1: last year. I just sent all the muskrats to the Canada,
• 55:45
  Speaker 1: to the fur auction and they sold them last two
• 55:47
  Speaker 1: weeks ago. Um, what was your average for large? It's
• 55:51
  Speaker 1: terrible this year. There's an article in the New York
• 55:54
  Speaker 1: Times yesterday about how first coming back, no, they could
• 55:56
  Speaker 1: say an anfort. Thanks to Putin, the Russian are trying
• 56:00
  Speaker 1: to invade everything in Eastern Europe. So it's at least
• 56:04
  Speaker 1: for a guy who's a muskrat mink guy like I am.
• 56:08
  Speaker 1: Two years ago, I got twelve bucks a piece for
• 56:11
  Speaker 1: a double XL muskrat. This year they were This year
• 56:15
  Speaker 1: they were five bucks apiece. I mean premium winner skins.
• 56:21
  Speaker 1: But you know, two weeks out of my winter I
• 56:24
  Speaker 1: get to go on goof around, catch three muskrats, a
• 56:27
  Speaker 1: few minks and raccoon, dozen't beaver, and it's just you
• 56:32
  Speaker 1: catch three d scraps we always called scraps. You catch
• 56:35
  Speaker 1: three hundred scrats and two weeks. Oh easy, if I
• 56:38
  Speaker 1: if I didn't have taxis and to worry about, I
• 56:41
  Speaker 1: could catch a thousand on them in two weeks. It's
• 56:44
  Speaker 1: it's crazy what I trapped. Um. I tried a lot
• 56:50
  Speaker 1: of muskrats, but I trapped fox kyle and incidental. That
• 56:56
  Speaker 1: would be raccoon, possum, skunk on dry land possum in Michigan.
• 57:01
  Speaker 1: Are you kidding me? I didn't know that we didn't
• 57:03
  Speaker 1: have them in Minnesota. I didn't know that. I bet
• 57:05
  Speaker 1: they do. Now there's two things. There's two animals that
• 57:08
  Speaker 1: are traditionally southern that have been really expanding the range
• 57:11
  Speaker 1: northern and that all he has to do with climate change.
• 57:12
  Speaker 1: I don't think it has to do with just just
• 57:14
  Speaker 1: slow adaptability. Raccoons well, several have alinas seemed to move
• 57:21
  Speaker 1: northward all the time. A possums are moving northward, So yeah,
• 57:25
  Speaker 1: you get death up. Incidentally, then I would trap muskrat, mink, beaver, raccoon,
• 57:31
  Speaker 1: and then you were allowed, depending where you were, one
• 57:32
  Speaker 1: or two river otters. And I would really work hard
• 57:35
  Speaker 1: to get my otters. But I wouldn't sell my honors
• 57:39
  Speaker 1: into the firm market. I'd sell them into the taxidermy trade, huh,
• 57:44
  Speaker 1: because they were a novelty item, right, So like when
• 57:47
  Speaker 1: I was trappling to Michigan, a bobcat in Michigan was
• 57:50
  Speaker 1: worth fifteen bucks. Text terms could be hun here right
• 57:54
  Speaker 1: now like good Western as they call them, Lynx cad
• 57:57
  Speaker 1: even though it's not a Canadian lynx. You know, a
• 58:00
  Speaker 1: really good colored spotted belly five six hundred bucks. Taxidermist
• 58:07
  Speaker 1: will still pay you a hunterbucks for him, so it
• 58:09
  Speaker 1: would vary, you know, back then when in my here
• 58:12
  Speaker 1: coyotes are just coming in. Remember the first two kyles
• 58:15
  Speaker 1: I remembers. I sold him in taxi Dervis, okay, because
• 58:18
  Speaker 1: people were still kind of like wow, okay, and like
• 58:20
  Speaker 1: people weren't as tied in then as they are now,
• 58:23
  Speaker 1: just like pre Internet, somewhat pre internet, so it's like
• 58:26
  Speaker 1: what you had access to, Like I always argue now
• 58:30
  Speaker 1: that the souvenirs are obsolete. Can can I stop you there?
• 58:33
  Speaker 1: You said somewhat pre internet when you were trapping, because
• 58:36
  Speaker 1: remember I had an email and no well way pret
• 58:38
  Speaker 1: when I started trapping. Okay, when I quit trapping, there
• 58:41
  Speaker 1: was a university email thing, okay, because I was gonna
• 58:44
  Speaker 1: say the Internet for me when I was trapping growing up,
• 58:49
  Speaker 1: al Gore hadn't even graduated from college to invent the Internet. Yeah,
• 58:54
  Speaker 1: I want to clarify the point. I set my first
• 58:56
  Speaker 1: trap called my First Muskrat, ten years old, way pre
• 58:59
  Speaker 1: in that. But I was thinking when I quit trapping
• 59:02
  Speaker 1: at twenty two years of age, there was at the
• 59:06
  Speaker 1: college I went through, there was some kind of university
• 59:09
  Speaker 1: email thing and people were just starting to mess around.
• 59:12
  Speaker 1: So yeah, but at that time when I sold those
• 59:16
  Speaker 1: two kyos is. Around that time, I was saying that
• 59:18
  Speaker 1: people used to have where you could go into a
• 59:22
  Speaker 1: tax nurvis and they're like a provincial bunch. You know,
• 59:25
  Speaker 1: you're going to a tax's be like, here's a Kyle,
• 59:27
  Speaker 1: and it wouldn't occur to them that there's guys out
• 59:29
  Speaker 1: west and stacks are kind of like Kyle stacked up
• 59:32
  Speaker 1: every which way. They're begging someone to take off their
• 59:35
  Speaker 1: hands and be like, holy sh it, you know, I'll
• 59:36
  Speaker 1: buy that kyote off you. So you know, it was
• 59:39
  Speaker 1: like that at the time, and as a site hose
• 59:42
  Speaker 1: and say like souvenirs are going obo sleet like people
• 59:44
  Speaker 1: were like, well, I went to France, you know, I
• 59:47
  Speaker 1: bought this bottle of wine, but dude, buy that bottle
• 59:52
  Speaker 1: of Safeway. Man, you know, I mean, like I could
• 59:54
  Speaker 1: go and leid, but there's nothing I can't unless you
• 59:57
  Speaker 1: find something out in the woods. There's nothing you can't
• 1:00:00
  Speaker 1: give someone they just can't get. So it's like weird
• 1:00:02
  Speaker 1: now to buy people like you go to Hawaii and
• 1:00:04
  Speaker 1: buy a Seashell necklace. It's just weird because like I
• 1:00:07
  Speaker 1: go to Seashell Necklaces dot Com. But we also gonna
• 1:00:12
  Speaker 1: bring up like, I mean, that was really about trapping.
• 1:00:14
  Speaker 1: It's you so you're ten years older I, which means
• 1:00:19
  Speaker 1: you hit the fur boom. I missed the fur boom.
• 1:00:24
  Speaker 1: Fur boom definitions vary. It's largely accepted that like the
• 1:00:30
  Speaker 1: Great American fur boom, Yeah, I hit it perfect. Some
• 1:00:37
  Speaker 1: people fudge you by a year or more. But for
• 1:00:40
  Speaker 1: there's just this this explosion of good fortune for firm
• 1:00:45
  Speaker 1: markets having to political, economical fashion. Yeah, commodities, it's a
• 1:00:52
  Speaker 1: it's a hedge against commodities. It's when the dollar is
• 1:00:56
  Speaker 1: going one way first can be going another and all
• 1:00:59
  Speaker 1: those things in fur together. But everything exploded right for
• 1:01:04
  Speaker 1: prices for for like anything with hair fur on it
• 1:01:08
  Speaker 1: skyrocketed in value right overnight, and every Tom, Dick and
• 1:01:12
  Speaker 1: Harry in the world went out. For sure. It was unbelievable.
• 1:01:18
  Speaker 1: How many people in my little town of Big Falls
• 1:01:21
  Speaker 1: trap You gotta figure just adjusting for inflation. Yeah, muskrats,
• 1:01:28
  Speaker 1: it was like the era of the six dollar muskrat.
• 1:01:31
  Speaker 1: But we're talking in nineteen seventy nine. Yeah, in nineteen
• 1:01:34
  Speaker 1: eighty four, my first year in college, I came home
• 1:01:37
  Speaker 1: for Christmas break in, me and my uncle, uncle and
• 1:01:41
  Speaker 1: I we got six hundred muskrats in a week. And
• 1:01:45
  Speaker 1: what what's up traffic? What kind of cover? Like? What
• 1:01:48
  Speaker 1: kind of have with that up? In these beaver flotage
• 1:01:50
  Speaker 1: is in northern Minnesota, you north of Highway to you
• 1:01:53
  Speaker 1: were allowed to cut the tops off there there are
• 1:01:56
  Speaker 1: rat houses, and so you'd cut it off, put a
• 1:01:59
  Speaker 1: couple of traps and there put the lid back on,
• 1:02:01
  Speaker 1: patch it all up. You'd have your trap on a
• 1:02:04
  Speaker 1: long wire. So when you walk by, the muskrat got
• 1:02:08
  Speaker 1: in your trap, and you knew because he went down
• 1:02:10
  Speaker 1: the hole into the water, pulled the pull the wire
• 1:02:12
  Speaker 1: up against the hut. He can't molest the hut. Oh really? Okay?
• 1:02:17
  Speaker 1: In southern Minnesota at that time, you couldn't. I think
• 1:02:20
  Speaker 1: you can now, But we would go do that and
• 1:02:23
  Speaker 1: one guy would just walk around these beaver flowagees and
• 1:02:28
  Speaker 1: pull the muskrats out of the traps, put the traps
• 1:02:30
  Speaker 1: back in, and the other guy would sit out of
• 1:02:32
  Speaker 1: fire and skin muskrats because if if it was twenty below,
• 1:02:36
  Speaker 1: you know, if you didn't skin them right away, they
• 1:02:38
  Speaker 1: were hard. Oh yeah, you weren't gonna get them skin
• 1:02:41
  Speaker 1: And so at that point in time, to be a
• 1:02:44
  Speaker 1: college freshman and come home and get five six bucks
• 1:02:48
  Speaker 1: for muskrats and you're half of them, is you know,
• 1:02:51
  Speaker 1: three hundred. I went back to college for winter semester. Man,
• 1:02:56
  Speaker 1: it was Domino's and high quality beer that semester. It was.
• 1:03:01
  Speaker 1: It's just how it was. I came back spring break
• 1:03:03
  Speaker 1: of that college year and we caught a hundred in
• 1:03:07
  Speaker 1: a week, and we were catching them so fast Minnesota. Yeah,
• 1:03:11
  Speaker 1: And like a lot of my buddies, we were catching
• 1:03:13
  Speaker 1: so many we didn't have time to skin them all.
• 1:03:15
  Speaker 1: And the fur buyer would come and we'd have them
• 1:03:18
  Speaker 1: laying in the basement of my uncle's house, stacked up
• 1:03:21
  Speaker 1: literally like firewood. And the guy would say twenty bucks
• 1:03:25
  Speaker 1: apiece in the round. In other words, you didn't have
• 1:03:27
  Speaker 1: to skin them anything. He didn't size them. It was
• 1:03:29
  Speaker 1: just twenty bucks apiece. Take them and he'd just sit
• 1:03:33
  Speaker 1: there and slap his twenty dollar bills on the table.
• 1:03:35
  Speaker 1: And we were just I mean, we thought we had
• 1:03:38
  Speaker 1: really hit the lottery. Yeah, first sold in three ways
• 1:03:42
  Speaker 1: you sell it. During the fur boom, trappers got interested
• 1:03:48
  Speaker 1: in trapping faster than they could learn their trade. There's
• 1:03:52
  Speaker 1: a lot of people out for a quick dollar and
• 1:03:53
  Speaker 1: they were interested in sort of the discipline art of
• 1:03:56
  Speaker 1: being a trapper, and they would sell a lot of
• 1:03:59
  Speaker 1: fur round and round means on the animal. So fur
• 1:04:03
  Speaker 1: buyers like, I mean, add a layer out of this.
• 1:04:07
  Speaker 1: There's three ways of self fur. There's three ways of
• 1:04:10
  Speaker 1: selfur meaning in the round. I got two many ideas
• 1:04:15
  Speaker 1: going once here. There's two ways that you actually sell fur.
• 1:04:18
  Speaker 1: A fur buyer, like a country fur buyer, or a
• 1:04:21
  Speaker 1: fur auction. During the fur boom, you had country for
• 1:04:25
  Speaker 1: buyers just like a guy buying for oms garage. He's
• 1:04:29
  Speaker 1: selling to the auctions, and the same trappers can basically
• 1:04:32
  Speaker 1: selling those auctions as well. But to sell an auction
• 1:04:36
  Speaker 1: you gotta sell it fleshed and dried. That's hard. It's
• 1:04:40
  Speaker 1: it's it's harder to learn how to flesh beaver than
• 1:04:42
  Speaker 1: it is the trap of beaver. During the fur boom,
• 1:04:45
  Speaker 1: guys will go out and trap, and just every night
• 1:04:47
  Speaker 1: on their way home from trapping, go to the country
• 1:04:50
  Speaker 1: fur buyer and sell fur in the round to the
• 1:04:53
  Speaker 1: fur buyer. Or you could skin it, which is the
• 1:04:57
  Speaker 1: easy part, and sell it green. Yeah, I sold all
• 1:05:01
  Speaker 1: my raccoons, all my beaver green skinned but not fleshed
• 1:05:06
  Speaker 1: and stretched. But I could sell them at a small
• 1:05:09
  Speaker 1: auction that way because I could just freeze him a
• 1:05:11
  Speaker 1: big chest freezer. So during the fur but yet at
• 1:05:15
  Speaker 1: guys that didn't know what end of a knife was sharp,
• 1:05:18
  Speaker 1: but they were trapping and selling the fur buyers in
• 1:05:20
  Speaker 1: the round. But you're walking and selling red fox in
• 1:05:23
  Speaker 1: the round for sixty bucks. It was crazy. But again
• 1:05:26
  Speaker 1: remember we're talking about right, and you take those dollars
• 1:05:30
  Speaker 1: for inflation. I remember having a couple hundred bucks in
• 1:05:36
  Speaker 1: two my senior year in high school. That fall, I
• 1:05:39
  Speaker 1: got fifty some mink before school, just running a trap
• 1:05:43
  Speaker 1: line on my way to school, and I think I
• 1:05:45
  Speaker 1: averaged like twenty four bucks a mink that's male female
• 1:05:49
  Speaker 1: in the round. No, I I mean, because they're quick
• 1:05:52
  Speaker 1: to skin and and dry and stretch, but actually come
• 1:05:56
  Speaker 1: off clean like a mink. You don't have the flesh
• 1:05:58
  Speaker 1: from two. Now that's the it's easy. And I just
• 1:06:02
  Speaker 1: think about that now. I'm like, man, if I could
• 1:06:04
  Speaker 1: get whatever dollars was in two, if I could get
• 1:06:08
  Speaker 1: that today, I'd have to get out out or TV
• 1:06:12
  Speaker 1: because I'd be trapping man all day long. But you're
• 1:06:14
  Speaker 1: you're in a way, you were getting screwed. Because what
• 1:06:16
  Speaker 1: I wanna say was when I came in four, I
• 1:06:19
  Speaker 1: was coming in on the euphoria of the fir boom,
• 1:06:24
  Speaker 1: but without the prices. There was a lot of information
• 1:06:29
  Speaker 1: out there. There's a lot of traps use traps out there,
• 1:06:32
  Speaker 1: but I had missed it by a couple of years.
• 1:06:35
  Speaker 1: So but I came into a time when people there
• 1:06:37
  Speaker 1: were still affort because it hadn't gone totally bad yet.
• 1:06:40
  Speaker 1: We would get and I was ten, I couldn't really
• 1:06:44
  Speaker 1: started in the earlier. The first day ever set traps
• 1:06:47
  Speaker 1: was I set traps at midnight on November one. By
• 1:06:54
  Speaker 1: seven am on November one, It's like I have an
• 1:06:57
  Speaker 1: alibi for that day, dude, I could think exactly where
• 1:06:59
  Speaker 1: it was. By seven am, we had three muskrats. I
• 1:07:03
  Speaker 1: think we had nine traps. We had three muskrats. Two
• 1:07:08
  Speaker 1: were caught. One was caught in front of Joe Babcox
• 1:07:11
  Speaker 1: house in a one ten conno bear. One was caught
• 1:07:14
  Speaker 1: in front of this this Foster family's house on North
• 1:07:18
  Speaker 1: Lake one ten conno bear. And we caught one on
• 1:07:22
  Speaker 1: the north trending side of Crazy Mary's Point in a
• 1:07:26
  Speaker 1: number one single long spring traps that under a stump.
• 1:07:29
  Speaker 1: We're a bank then entered. I could tell you every
• 1:07:33
  Speaker 1: damn detail of that day, and we sold those muskrats
• 1:07:38
  Speaker 1: for I think our big ones that year. We caught
• 1:07:40
  Speaker 1: twenty the first year, and my old man lent it,
• 1:07:44
  Speaker 1: lent us the money like I have older half brother.
• 1:07:47
  Speaker 1: He gave a six number one, He gave a six
• 1:07:50
  Speaker 1: number one long spring Victor long Springs. Then what we
• 1:07:54
  Speaker 1: did is our old man lent us money. He drew
• 1:07:57
  Speaker 1: up a little contract, even on a yellow legal paper,
• 1:08:00
  Speaker 1: and lent us enough money to buy one dozen Northwoods
• 1:08:03
  Speaker 1: one ten conno bears, And we caught our first year
• 1:08:08
  Speaker 1: trap in twenty muskrats. One smallish raccoon and made enough
• 1:08:15
  Speaker 1: to not only pay for the conno bears we bought,
• 1:08:18
  Speaker 1: but to go buy a bunch of more connobaris. And
• 1:08:19
  Speaker 1: I was off running because at the time, if you
• 1:08:23
  Speaker 1: called a buck mink, a buck makers worth twice as
• 1:08:25
  Speaker 1: much as a female. And it's even then minks held
• 1:08:31
  Speaker 1: because you would get forty bucks for mink. Yeah, oh
• 1:08:34
  Speaker 1: it's it was crazy. And I remember my two brothers
• 1:08:36
  Speaker 1: one time late in the year, I like quit, I
• 1:08:39
  Speaker 1: pulled out of our trap and collect to touch at
• 1:08:41
  Speaker 1: my two bars. I can remember what someone's going out
• 1:08:43
  Speaker 1: of school. But anyways, they went to set some more
• 1:08:45
  Speaker 1: muskrat ponds and I didn't participate, and they came home
• 1:08:48
  Speaker 1: and picked up two mink out of muskrat sets. Remember
• 1:08:51
  Speaker 1: the dudes walking through with for forty bucks a piece
• 1:08:54
  Speaker 1: and being blown away. I remember night six, I shot
• 1:09:00
  Speaker 1: of mink with a thirty two special, took his head
• 1:09:03
  Speaker 1: off and board a groove down the center of his back,
• 1:09:07
  Speaker 1: and we took it to it for by her name,
• 1:09:09
  Speaker 1: the Abe Sallessina, and Abe Sallessina offered me like four
• 1:09:12
  Speaker 1: dollars for that, making my old man cursing him out,
• 1:09:16
  Speaker 1: really because he thought you were getting a bad treatment,
• 1:09:20
  Speaker 1: he said, I'd invite you to sell that mink for
• 1:09:21
  Speaker 1: more somewhere else than the dude bottle being right and
• 1:09:23
  Speaker 1: want to take to make so I was missing a part.
• 1:09:27
  Speaker 1: So now here you are what you said. You're twenty
• 1:09:30
  Speaker 1: two and last time you trapped. So I trapped from
• 1:09:33
  Speaker 1: the time I was ten to the time was twenty two,
• 1:09:34
  Speaker 1: and I thought I was taken. I was still into it.
• 1:09:38
  Speaker 1: I was paying. I remember paying a guy named Mark
• 1:09:41
  Speaker 1: June who later became like a video white tail guy.
• 1:09:44
  Speaker 1: I remember paying Mark June two fifty bucks for a
• 1:09:47
  Speaker 1: day's lessons in trapping Red Suburbia, Red Fox. So do
• 1:09:54
  Speaker 1: you miss it? Oh? Yeah, But I still said every
• 1:09:57
  Speaker 1: I still set traps because I still I like. I
• 1:10:00
  Speaker 1: eventually settled into the thing I like to do is
• 1:10:02
  Speaker 1: trapped beaver through the ice. I love it. It became
• 1:10:05
  Speaker 1: my thing. I liked everything about it. I liked. We
• 1:10:08
  Speaker 1: would go out and out in the ice December January
• 1:10:13
  Speaker 1: with a push broom and push brooms, snow away on
• 1:10:17
  Speaker 1: the ice looking for bubble trails, exhale trails and take
• 1:10:21
  Speaker 1: axes and chain sauce and ship and get down through
• 1:10:24
  Speaker 1: that ice and stringing snares and stringing three thirties and
• 1:10:28
  Speaker 1: I loved every minute of it. I like falling through
• 1:10:30
  Speaker 1: the ice. It's like I liked everything about it. Man,
• 1:10:33
  Speaker 1: And I still now will trap. I trap to beaver
• 1:10:35
  Speaker 1: to spring. I'll still trap it, and I'll send it
• 1:10:38
  Speaker 1: and get a tan and I'll haven't made it into stuff.
• 1:10:40
  Speaker 1: So I got. I trapped my own hat, I trapped
• 1:10:42
  Speaker 1: my own mittens. I got some stuff getting made right now.
• 1:10:45
  Speaker 1: I got a beaver that my brothers haven't made into
• 1:10:48
  Speaker 1: a hat for his wife. So I'm still in the
• 1:10:50
  Speaker 1: fur business. But I'm just in person. I'm into personal use.
• 1:10:53
  Speaker 1: And then I eat the beaver meat. I like beaver
• 1:10:55
  Speaker 1: meat well, but I'm not into trap. I'm not trapping
• 1:10:58
  Speaker 1: numbers like I used to out after a beaver. And
• 1:11:01
  Speaker 1: I know some people are listening to this and probably thinking, man,
• 1:11:06
  Speaker 1: these guys, they're off their rock here talking about trapping.
• 1:11:10
  Speaker 1: But if you've trapped, you understand the excitement of ain't
• 1:11:16
  Speaker 1: in bed at night thinking, oh that one that set,
• 1:11:20
  Speaker 1: that last set I made tonight, that's gonna catch one
• 1:11:23
  Speaker 1: in the morning, and you almost can't get to sleep
• 1:11:25
  Speaker 1: at night. You can't it's worse than opening the night
• 1:11:28
  Speaker 1: before opening day of deer season. I could never sleep
• 1:11:32
  Speaker 1: between seven because we'd go out and set at midnight.
• 1:11:37
  Speaker 1: Because we live in a high competition area. Okay, we'd
• 1:11:40
  Speaker 1: said our pre we picked like what's the premos spot,
• 1:11:44
  Speaker 1: and we'd set start set midnight and we set like
• 1:11:48
  Speaker 1: even even up into whatever age. When I quit trapping,
• 1:11:52
  Speaker 1: I was still set traps from midnight through the dawn
• 1:11:58
  Speaker 1: up to dark. Wow. And I would get a lot
• 1:12:01
  Speaker 1: of sets out. I would punch in usually more than
• 1:12:04
  Speaker 1: seventys wowe for mixed bag from otter to scraps. It
• 1:12:10
  Speaker 1: was never that competitive for me. I mean, everyone kind
• 1:12:13
  Speaker 1: of okay, Randy's gonna be out here to be out there.
• 1:12:17
  Speaker 1: It was no one bothered. But before we get done
• 1:12:21
  Speaker 1: there and get too far, I'll just get started on
• 1:12:23
  Speaker 1: talking to we We could be honest is in here
• 1:12:26
  Speaker 1: and looking at us like, man, these guys can really
• 1:12:28
  Speaker 1: spin it out. But I want to. I want to
• 1:12:31
  Speaker 1: just before you make it, if I want to say
• 1:12:32
  Speaker 1: one last thing about the people think you're off the
• 1:12:34
  Speaker 1: rock about trapping. Yeah, I remember making the observation and
• 1:12:37
  Speaker 1: I'll stay by this today. The most skilled outdoors and
• 1:12:40
  Speaker 1: are trappers, no doubt. And here's how I'll prove it.
• 1:12:44
  Speaker 1: If you fish, there's people out there who just fish. Yeah,
• 1:12:48
  Speaker 1: right now, anyone hunts knows how to fish. Correct, anyone
• 1:12:56
  Speaker 1: that traps knows how to hunting fish. That's exactly right.
• 1:12:59
  Speaker 1: It's just like you know what I mean, It's just
• 1:13:00
  Speaker 1: a thing. You're better a trappers, better than everybody else.
• 1:13:06
  Speaker 1: You know more bits of And I have to talk
• 1:13:08
  Speaker 1: about I like, I remember I made this point before
• 1:13:11
  Speaker 1: about guys who want lions with hounds. People be like,
• 1:13:14
  Speaker 1: oh yeah, what's the challenge and shooting line out of
• 1:13:16
  Speaker 1: a tree. And then I met some houndsman who hunt lions,
• 1:13:19
  Speaker 1: and I realized that guy holds more bits of information
• 1:13:23
  Speaker 1: in his head. Right, if you can somehow quantify information
• 1:13:27
  Speaker 1: way we have digitally, right and add up how many
• 1:13:30
  Speaker 1: bits of hunting information does a guy who shoots white
• 1:13:34
  Speaker 1: tails out his father in law's farm in Wisconsin? How
• 1:13:37
  Speaker 1: many bits of information are in his head? And how
• 1:13:39
  Speaker 1: many bits are in a houndsman's head? He has gigabyte
• 1:13:44
  Speaker 1: upon gigabyte more information in his head. Yeah, I a trapper,
• 1:13:49
  Speaker 1: A good trapper. You can't when you talk about read
• 1:13:54
  Speaker 1: and sign the ability to read sign and it's just
• 1:13:59
  Speaker 1: in space awareness and having a landscape map in your head.
• 1:14:04
  Speaker 1: You can't get closer to it than a hardcore trapping.
• 1:14:08
  Speaker 1: The anticipation that the trapping requires, as far as anticipation
• 1:14:12
  Speaker 1: of what that animal is going to do, just makes
• 1:14:16
  Speaker 1: you think an experiments so much more than hunting does.
• 1:14:19
  Speaker 1: Because trapping, they are stepping within and you know a
• 1:14:24
  Speaker 1: two inch area, you got you, guys, I need him
• 1:14:26
  Speaker 1: to step right here, okay, archers, Yeah, forty yards is
• 1:14:31
  Speaker 1: good enough to circle forty yards? Yeah, which means the
• 1:14:33
  Speaker 1: eight yards circle circle with an eight yard diameter, and
• 1:14:37
  Speaker 1: it's talk about a circle that's an inch and three quarters. Yeah,
• 1:14:39
  Speaker 1: and the most some archers who are just badass woodsman,
• 1:14:43
  Speaker 1: but try to get that to a two inch circle.
• 1:14:46
  Speaker 1: And the benefit is with archer, you need to be
• 1:14:49
  Speaker 1: there when it happens. With trapping, you don't need to
• 1:14:52
  Speaker 1: be there when it happens. Yeah. I want to get
• 1:14:55
  Speaker 1: to this point, Steve So, I read your book about
• 1:14:58
  Speaker 1: your bison hunt in Alaska. I mean I knew you
• 1:15:03
  Speaker 1: back when you did your show on Travel Channel and
• 1:15:07
  Speaker 1: and uh I lucked out. I drew a free range
• 1:15:10
  Speaker 1: bison tag in Montana. For it was January two thousand thirteen.
• 1:15:14
  Speaker 1: I said, all right, I gotta go find a good
• 1:15:16
  Speaker 1: bison book. I read your book, and you are either
• 1:15:21
  Speaker 1: a stark raving nut or one hell of an author
• 1:15:26
  Speaker 1: that makes that hunt and the danger involved seemed way
• 1:15:30
  Speaker 1: greater than it is, or you just have a death wish.
• 1:15:34
  Speaker 1: I read that and I said, this guy is he
• 1:15:37
  Speaker 1: owes the world the tragedy if this is how he
• 1:15:40
  Speaker 1: conducts himself out in the wild all the time? Was
• 1:15:44
  Speaker 1: it is this just like a really good piece of writing,
• 1:15:47
  Speaker 1: or was it really that wild? It was one of
• 1:15:50
  Speaker 1: It was like the most intense ten days that I've
• 1:15:55
  Speaker 1: spent hunting. It's some of the most intense reading I've
• 1:15:59
  Speaker 1: ever But here's the thing. Here, here's I'll take a
• 1:16:02
  Speaker 1: couple of things. It's like, that's a different kind of hunt.
• 1:16:05
  Speaker 1: Like the Copper River hunt is a difficult hunt, and
• 1:16:08
  Speaker 1: it used to be much more difficult because at the
• 1:16:13
  Speaker 1: time I drew it, all the land along that river
• 1:16:17
  Speaker 1: was inaccessible because it's tribal land. Now they have a
• 1:16:22
  Speaker 1: set access feed for people that draw that tag. At
• 1:16:26
  Speaker 1: the time I drew it, there was no such thing.
• 1:16:29
  Speaker 1: So you have this river, and there's herds of animals
• 1:16:34
  Speaker 1: that migrate a good distance forty miles. They ca up
• 1:16:37
  Speaker 1: by these glaciers in the wrangles, and they wenter down
• 1:16:41
  Speaker 1: on these gravel flats, these willow flats along the Copper River,
• 1:16:45
  Speaker 1: and there's really nearly distribution. It's a humongous area, maybe
• 1:16:48
  Speaker 1: a hundred animals, and it's spread out over a ton
• 1:16:51
  Speaker 1: of ground. And at the time, you could not hunt
• 1:16:54
  Speaker 1: the river corridor. All the huntable land you can find
• 1:17:00
  Speaker 1: down below high watermark. Okay, on a gravel flat, does
• 1:17:04
  Speaker 1: blow high watermark and kill it there, Okay, as long
• 1:17:06
  Speaker 1: as it didn't go up. If it walked up, you're screwed.
• 1:17:11
  Speaker 1: Or you could get past the buffer along the river
• 1:17:15
  Speaker 1: by wading up a tributary stream to get in, because
• 1:17:20
  Speaker 1: then you're fine. You're blow high watermark to get into
• 1:17:22
  Speaker 1: the hunting area. The year I drew tag, they gave
• 1:17:27
  Speaker 1: out twenty four permits. Four guys killed an animal. The
• 1:17:31
  Speaker 1: seasons eight months long. They find that most people don't
• 1:17:35
  Speaker 1: show up. Once you find out, they send you a letter.
• 1:17:39
  Speaker 1: After you draw the tag, they send you a letter.
• 1:17:41
  Speaker 1: They used to this is two thousand four. They send
• 1:17:44
  Speaker 1: you letters saying like, Okay, I drew the tag, but
• 1:17:48
  Speaker 1: basically you're screwed because there's serious land ownership issues. You
• 1:17:52
  Speaker 1: have to understand what you're getting into. It's like there's
• 1:17:55
  Speaker 1: major access issues. There's a lot of barriers to this.
• 1:17:59
  Speaker 1: I went, and the minute I drew it, I sold
• 1:18:04
  Speaker 1: the story of this before going, I sold the story
• 1:18:08
  Speaker 1: of this to a magazine outside magazine. I was a
• 1:18:11
  Speaker 1: writer and at the time I lived a very hand
• 1:18:14
  Speaker 1: of mouth existence. So I'm doing a story that will
• 1:18:17
  Speaker 1: offset my costs in doing this. So I'm gonna get
• 1:18:21
  Speaker 1: like four thousand bucks to do the story, the hunt,
• 1:18:24
  Speaker 1: all everything is gonna cost a lot. I had to
• 1:18:31
  Speaker 1: do it. So I find out and people say like, well,
• 1:18:33
  Speaker 1: why did you write like a book? Like why did
• 1:18:36
  Speaker 1: you write your book? There's two reasons. There's the there's
• 1:18:41
  Speaker 1: the not the real reason, but there's like this like
• 1:18:44
  Speaker 1: reality reason that oftentimes has to do with with money, right,
• 1:18:49
  Speaker 1: and it just is pragmatic. I guess, like, well, because
• 1:18:52
  Speaker 1: I was gonna write an article about it, you know,
• 1:18:54
  Speaker 1: and I sold the thing, why did you really do it? Well,
• 1:18:56
  Speaker 1: I'm very interested in Buffalo. I only write about what
• 1:18:58
  Speaker 1: I'm interested in. I got in as a story chronicles.
• 1:19:01
  Speaker 1: My interest in Buffalo spawned was spawned by me finding
• 1:19:06
  Speaker 1: a buffalo skull in the Madison Range in a weird
• 1:19:09
  Speaker 1: place like nine tho feet above sea level the mountains.
• 1:19:12
  Speaker 1: I went up having a genetic line extracted from it
• 1:19:14
  Speaker 1: head at Radio Carpon dated like the book tells this
• 1:19:17
  Speaker 1: big story of Buffalo and in America. But the minute
• 1:19:19
  Speaker 1: I found at skull, I was like, Man, I'm gonna
• 1:19:21
  Speaker 1: write a book about these animals. I just don't know
• 1:19:23
  Speaker 1: what the storyline is gonna be. And then I drew
• 1:19:25
  Speaker 1: that tag. So I had a lot riding on finding
• 1:19:31
  Speaker 1: a buffalo and killing and I got into situations doing
• 1:19:37
  Speaker 1: that that we're in and in I chronicle all this
• 1:19:42
  Speaker 1: like very detailed way, and like, yeah, when I was
• 1:19:45
  Speaker 1: doing that book, you know, because some people just fabricate
• 1:19:48
  Speaker 1: whole cloth and then publishers get in trouble and writers
• 1:19:52
  Speaker 1: get in trouble. So when I wrote that book, they
• 1:19:54
  Speaker 1: made a big point like I had to go over
• 1:19:56
  Speaker 1: everything on maps, provide names for people for them to call.
• 1:20:00
  Speaker 1: They just like wanted to know. But I could take
• 1:20:03
  Speaker 1: you up there right now and walk you through it,
• 1:20:04
  Speaker 1: and once you see what I'm talking about It would
• 1:20:06
  Speaker 1: all make sense in that you're confined. In my case,
• 1:20:13
  Speaker 1: you're confined to either being in the Dadina, Nadina or
• 1:20:16
  Speaker 1: Chettilina River. You're not gonna get to Anals river. The
• 1:20:21
  Speaker 1: only way to get to Anals rivers is wait till
• 1:20:23
  Speaker 1: it freezes, which is like the other guys that kill
• 1:20:25
  Speaker 1: buffalo or hunting off snow machines going up the frozen river,
• 1:20:28
  Speaker 1: wait till the river freezes, and they're killing them in
• 1:20:32
  Speaker 1: the winter when the bad weather has pushed them down
• 1:20:34
  Speaker 1: into the willows. The letter I got from fishing game
• 1:20:38
  Speaker 1: that says you're screwed points out successful hunters on his hunt,
• 1:20:43
  Speaker 1: and that's why they give you eight months to start
• 1:20:44
  Speaker 1: September one, and you have eight months. The reason they
• 1:20:47
  Speaker 1: give you that it's because the river freezes. They say.
• 1:20:49
  Speaker 1: Most guys that killed buffalo and this hunt do it
• 1:20:51
  Speaker 1: off snow machines when the animals are pushed down in
• 1:20:53
  Speaker 1: the river flats. But you should be aware that river
• 1:20:56
  Speaker 1: hasn't frozen in three years. Okay, they hadn't been killing
• 1:21:01
  Speaker 1: any buffalo off that hunt. When I first drew the tag,
• 1:21:06
  Speaker 1: I was like sweet. I talked to my brother, I
• 1:21:08
  Speaker 1: got a brother in anchorage. He's got friends and snow machines.
• 1:21:10
  Speaker 1: I'm gonna go up in march, and we're gonna go up.
• 1:21:14
  Speaker 1: You got your low daylight, but you just basically cruise
• 1:21:17
  Speaker 1: the river up and down, up and down until they're
• 1:21:18
  Speaker 1: you just standing in a non on the hunkle willow
• 1:21:22
  Speaker 1: out on a willow island. It got where it just
• 1:21:26
  Speaker 1: wasn't gonna be. And so I got this idea that
• 1:21:29
  Speaker 1: I'm gonna have friends bring me down. We're gonna hunt together.
• 1:21:34
  Speaker 1: And I'm at first like, oh fine, one on the river.
• 1:21:36
  Speaker 1: So I get my brother, two of our buddies who
• 1:21:38
  Speaker 1: are avid rafters, and we get down and there's three
• 1:21:42
  Speaker 1: main river areas we have identified as being areas where
• 1:21:45
  Speaker 1: they've been killed in the past. We passed one past
• 1:21:49
  Speaker 1: the other, get to the third and have seen like
• 1:21:51
  Speaker 1: a set of tracks. These guys have jobs. They're not
• 1:21:57
  Speaker 1: starving like you. They're like, sorry, dude, I'm like, I
• 1:22:00
  Speaker 1: guess our only option here is that you'll leave me
• 1:22:05
  Speaker 1: here and you know, like cell phones and ship like
• 1:22:10
  Speaker 1: that's not going on. You'll leave me here and you'll
• 1:22:13
  Speaker 1: come back and get me like a week over week
• 1:22:18
  Speaker 1: now on a Sunday, and I'll be backed down here.
• 1:22:22
  Speaker 1: I have no way of getting up or down the river.
• 1:22:24
  Speaker 1: I'm on the Copper River at the mouth of a tributary,
• 1:22:28
  Speaker 1: and I got a little patch of ground I'm looking at.
• 1:22:32
  Speaker 1: You're not doing ship because I can't even leave the
• 1:22:36
  Speaker 1: little island I'm on because I'll be on off land
• 1:22:40
  Speaker 1: and I know I'm gonna write about this, so I
• 1:22:42
  Speaker 1: can't do like a wink and nod, right, I could
• 1:22:44
  Speaker 1: get checked into or I'm also very vulnerable because I
• 1:22:47
  Speaker 1: can't have a dead animal land somewhere. I can't have
• 1:22:49
  Speaker 1: it land. You know. At that point, it's like I'm
• 1:22:53
  Speaker 1: gonna have to just start. I'm just gonna have to
• 1:22:55
  Speaker 1: put waiters on and wade up this cold ass river
• 1:22:59
  Speaker 1: by I sell and if I find one. And I
• 1:23:02
  Speaker 1: did shoot a one thousand pound animal that I need
• 1:23:06
  Speaker 1: to then move by myself down to where I can
• 1:23:12
  Speaker 1: get it into my body's raft next week, and there
• 1:23:14
  Speaker 1: begins like a whole set of problems. So you had
• 1:23:18
  Speaker 1: invited me, and so like, yeah, it was like it's
• 1:23:22
  Speaker 1: not replicable, but it's like it all it seems weird,
• 1:23:26
  Speaker 1: like the ship that I had to go through. But
• 1:23:27
  Speaker 1: when you start factoring in like all these decisions, and
• 1:23:29
  Speaker 1: I'm constantly being egged on by a couple of things.
• 1:23:35
  Speaker 1: The rareness of drawn the tag. They've now they've since
• 1:23:39
  Speaker 1: made it retroactively once in a lifetime. Once you draw
• 1:23:45
  Speaker 1: a buffalo tag in Alaska, and there's some gravy hunts,
• 1:23:48
  Speaker 1: it's like the Delta junction hunts are basically shooting buffalo
• 1:23:51
  Speaker 1: out of oat fields once you draw a tag. And
• 1:23:55
  Speaker 1: it proved me once left that once you draw it,
• 1:23:57
  Speaker 1: you cannot draw it again. I'm not talking successfully harvest.
• 1:24:00
  Speaker 1: Once you probably can't draw it. So I'm now in capable,
• 1:24:02
  Speaker 1: and I was correct. It was once literally once in
• 1:24:04
  Speaker 1: lifetime hunt. And I knew that I wanted to write
• 1:24:07
  Speaker 1: my damn article and I wanted to then write my book,
• 1:24:10
  Speaker 1: and the way to do that was to kill that buffalo.
• 1:24:13
  Speaker 1: Because and just before that, I read you leave. Yeah,
• 1:24:21
  Speaker 1: you had called that summer and said, hey, we should
• 1:24:24
  Speaker 1: go to southeast Alaska and do a sick of blacktail hunt.
• 1:24:28
  Speaker 1: And then you and Dan came down with limes, I think,
• 1:24:32
  Speaker 1: and we had to cancel that hunt. And then I
• 1:24:34
  Speaker 1: read a bunch of other hunts. Yeah, and I read
• 1:24:38
  Speaker 1: that over the course of that fall, I'm reading the
• 1:24:41
  Speaker 1: book and I'm like, if this guy takes this many
• 1:24:45
  Speaker 1: risks just to write a freaking story, I'm really glad
• 1:24:49
  Speaker 1: he got lines to these and I'm not up in
• 1:24:52
  Speaker 1: the alpine of Prince of Wales Island trying to survive
• 1:24:55
  Speaker 1: with this crazy ass because i mean, looking back on it,
• 1:25:01
  Speaker 1: do you say, what the hell was I thinking? No, No,
• 1:25:06
  Speaker 1: because as a real it was just one of those
• 1:25:09
  Speaker 1: great it was just one of those great hunts. And
• 1:25:13
  Speaker 1: I'll say this man's we had a conversation this, you know,
• 1:25:17
  Speaker 1: on this podcast. We had a conversation about um, you know,
• 1:25:22
  Speaker 1: like the way how how filming or writing effects the experience.
• 1:25:30
  Speaker 1: It's becoming separable for me now though, because I've been
• 1:25:34
  Speaker 1: gifted the ability to do things and go places and
• 1:25:40
  Speaker 1: have experiences um that I just simply would not have
• 1:25:45
  Speaker 1: ever had were it not for you know, writing and filming,
• 1:25:53
  Speaker 1: because it's just I simply wouldn't have had the money
• 1:25:56
  Speaker 1: in time, you know, I have, Yeah, I got lime,
• 1:26:01
  Speaker 1: not filming, but I've had a lot of other problems
• 1:26:04
  Speaker 1: and like small problems, large problems, dangerous situations did in
• 1:26:09
  Speaker 1: large part I just was egged into those situations somehow
• 1:26:13
  Speaker 1: by one by my desired hunt. Cause I got friends
• 1:26:15
  Speaker 1: have never stepped foot near filming and never stepped footing
• 1:26:17
  Speaker 1: near right and they get in all kinds of situations.
• 1:26:20
  Speaker 1: Does tend to I'd be lying if I said it
• 1:26:24
  Speaker 1: does tend to add a second layer of motivation. It does.
• 1:26:30
  Speaker 1: I feel the things and stay out doing them because, um,
• 1:26:36
  Speaker 1: I'm almost wish it wasn't true, but it's true. I
• 1:26:40
  Speaker 1: may have um watching my buddies and I wasn't as
• 1:26:45
  Speaker 1: experienced in the out of doors in two thousand four. Um,
• 1:26:52
  Speaker 1: I think it's to the two thousand four hunt. Yeah,
• 1:26:55
  Speaker 1: standing on that bank in a strange place in Alaska,
• 1:26:59
  Speaker 1: watch my bodies, so like see you and like there's
• 1:27:04
  Speaker 1: you know, yea grizzlies, so a wolf read up from camp.
• 1:27:08
  Speaker 1: It's like, yeah, there would have been a strong thing
• 1:27:12
  Speaker 1: to be like, hey, you know, it's just not the
• 1:27:15
  Speaker 1: right year. Yeah, But I was like, no way, man,
• 1:27:18
  Speaker 1: Because as much as I'm a dedicated hunter, I guess
• 1:27:20
  Speaker 1: I'm I'm like a dedicated writer. Yeah. And I've spent
• 1:27:23
  Speaker 1: a lot of time in Alaska. I locked out. My
• 1:27:25
  Speaker 1: grandparents lived there. I got three uncles who lived there,
• 1:27:28
  Speaker 1: and I go to some crazy places in Alaska and
• 1:27:32
  Speaker 1: the risks, just Alaska itself has inherent risks like no
• 1:27:37
  Speaker 1: other place. And then you are there alone and anyone
• 1:27:42
  Speaker 1: who has been on a free range bison hunt like
• 1:27:45
  Speaker 1: you and I have, and you tip one of them over,
• 1:27:49
  Speaker 1: You walk up to it and say, what in the
• 1:27:51
  Speaker 1: f am I gonna do here? Seeing one at Yellowstone
• 1:27:56
  Speaker 1: Park or seeing one at the you know, the local
• 1:27:59
  Speaker 1: bison farm does not do it justice too. When that
• 1:28:03
  Speaker 1: thing's laying on the ground, it's cold, you're wet, and
• 1:28:07
  Speaker 1: all you have is a knife, and you add all
• 1:28:11
  Speaker 1: those together, and you did this in Alaska. I was
• 1:28:14
  Speaker 1: just like no freaking night this day. The day I
• 1:28:17
  Speaker 1: killed that one, I was camped on a ridge. It
• 1:28:19
  Speaker 1: was like a ridge, but basically at the top of
• 1:28:22
  Speaker 1: a canyon, like the plateau above a canyon. You know,
• 1:28:26
  Speaker 1: it seemed like a ridge, but I actually didn't drop
• 1:28:28
  Speaker 1: off the other side. But uh, I was. It's snowed.
• 1:28:33
  Speaker 1: I was sleeping under a little red tart red on
• 1:28:35
  Speaker 1: top still round bottom. I had that tark strung up
• 1:28:37
  Speaker 1: and I was actually burning buffalo chips because they had wallowed.
• 1:28:41
  Speaker 1: They had wallowed in that area of summer, and I
• 1:28:43
  Speaker 1: had a little mound of them stacked up under my thing.
• 1:28:45
  Speaker 1: I just had a tarp, sleeping bag, buffalo chips backpack
• 1:28:49
  Speaker 1: and um woke up in the morning it was all
• 1:28:52
  Speaker 1: like wet snow had fallen and I was gonna light
• 1:28:56
  Speaker 1: us start my alcohol stove to make some coffee. I
• 1:29:00
  Speaker 1: was like, well, I'd better take a look down in
• 1:29:02
  Speaker 1: the canyon, you know, um, before I start my sofa.
• 1:29:07
  Speaker 1: And I just grabbed my rifle and peered over and
• 1:29:10
  Speaker 1: just like there was the freaking herd of him coming down,
• 1:29:12
  Speaker 1: maybe because the snow just single foul. And um, there's
• 1:29:16
  Speaker 1: a big cow and they're up towards the top and
• 1:29:18
  Speaker 1: there was wet snow, and I shot her with a
• 1:29:22
  Speaker 1: I'm left hand, I shot the right hand and three
• 1:29:24
  Speaker 1: h mag I borrowed from a body of mine, and
• 1:29:27
  Speaker 1: that thing started going down that wet snow. It's a
• 1:29:31
  Speaker 1: long drop, very steep pitch, and when it hit a
• 1:29:36
  Speaker 1: stand of aspens or poplars, you know, I mean, it shattered.
• 1:29:41
  Speaker 1: I mean it was like a bowling ball hitting bowling pins, man,
• 1:29:46
  Speaker 1: but just like smash and just stuffed flying everywhere. And
• 1:29:51
  Speaker 1: I went down and that thing was so entangled in
• 1:29:54
  Speaker 1: trees I couldn't lift its head up. I remember I
• 1:29:59
  Speaker 1: just started. I was like, I was just gonna try
• 1:30:02
  Speaker 1: to get a back leg off that thing. Yeah, And
• 1:30:05
  Speaker 1: I eventually dragged the back leg away, and then I
• 1:30:09
  Speaker 1: cut a little gate to try to get some guts
• 1:30:11
  Speaker 1: out of it. It was just it for three days. Wow.
• 1:30:16
  Speaker 1: For three days I cut and carried, and that didn't
• 1:30:20
  Speaker 1: even get it down to where I needed to get
• 1:30:21
  Speaker 1: it to. I cutn't carry just to get it down
• 1:30:23
  Speaker 1: to the tributary. So of all of the crazy things
• 1:30:27
  Speaker 1: that writing and filming has maybe pushed you a little
• 1:30:32
  Speaker 1: further than you otherwise would have you look back, is
• 1:30:36
  Speaker 1: that one of the defining ones that you say, you
• 1:30:40
  Speaker 1: know what, There's nothing else I could have done in
• 1:30:42
  Speaker 1: my ordinary life that would have given me this experience,
• 1:30:45
  Speaker 1: this sense of reward, this sense of accomplishment. It was
• 1:30:50
  Speaker 1: four There's four trips that made I guess. There's there's
• 1:30:56
  Speaker 1: four trips that made I feel like you're interviewing meet Mandy.
• 1:30:58
  Speaker 1: But there's there's four trips that I'm just curious. Yeah,
• 1:31:03
  Speaker 1: there's four trips that made me like who When I
• 1:31:06
  Speaker 1: think of like who I am? Um? As a hunt
• 1:31:10
  Speaker 1: of the fortress and made me who I am? That's
• 1:31:12
  Speaker 1: one of them? All four we're in Alaska. Uh. The
• 1:31:16
  Speaker 1: first was the first carribo hunt I went on on
• 1:31:19
  Speaker 1: the north slope of the Brooks Range, just like pickup
• 1:31:22
  Speaker 1: truck canoes. Me and my brothers just had no idea
• 1:31:25
  Speaker 1: what we're getting into. The second was the first time
• 1:31:30
  Speaker 1: we went on a very unsuccessful doll sheep hunt. Just
• 1:31:34
  Speaker 1: park truck across the river, start hiking nine days, saw
• 1:31:38
  Speaker 1: one ram about three miles away that was sub legal. Um.
• 1:31:44
  Speaker 1: The third was a successful sheep hunt we went on
• 1:31:48
  Speaker 1: where we mean we killed two rams the self guided wall,
• 1:31:51
  Speaker 1: you know, and in that buffalo hunt are the ones
• 1:31:55
  Speaker 1: that like, if I could give everything else, if I
• 1:31:57
  Speaker 1: had to keep forward and give the rest of the way,
• 1:31:58
  Speaker 1: I'd keep those four. No doubt, We'll all quit interviewing you.
• 1:32:02
  Speaker 1: I'm I'm overstepping here, But I'm just curious because now
• 1:32:08
  Speaker 1: that I reflect back on having hunted for thirty eight
• 1:32:12
  Speaker 1: years and tagged along with my grandfather and my dad
• 1:32:17
  Speaker 1: even before that, I look back and there's just certain
• 1:32:22
  Speaker 1: events that I'm like, you know what, no other activity
• 1:32:26
  Speaker 1: that I could have done in my life outside of
• 1:32:29
  Speaker 1: being a hunter would have exposed me to that would
• 1:32:33
  Speaker 1: have allowed me to walk away with that perspective. Maybe
• 1:32:35
  Speaker 1: that confidence maybe pushed myself to that edge of saying,
• 1:32:41
  Speaker 1: what the f am I doing here? But then somehow
• 1:32:44
  Speaker 1: being able to pull out of that. Uh. And I've
• 1:32:48
  Speaker 1: not been in combat, so I'm just you know, I'm
• 1:32:50
  Speaker 1: I'm not trying to equate hunting to what it's like
• 1:32:53
  Speaker 1: to be I haven't got a shoot at you or anything.
• 1:32:56
  Speaker 1: But of hobbies and activities or passion in life, I
• 1:33:00
  Speaker 1: can't think of anything that would have given me those
• 1:33:04
  Speaker 1: experiences of you know, I could probably listen a handful
• 1:33:07
  Speaker 1: of them like you do. And so now when you
• 1:33:10
  Speaker 1: get to be fifty, you reflect back on that and
• 1:33:12
  Speaker 1: you're like, well, ship is am I just kind of
• 1:33:17
  Speaker 1: out to pasture? Now? Am I done with those really
• 1:33:19
  Speaker 1: cool experiences? Or do I got more of them ahead
• 1:33:23
  Speaker 1: of me? And you're kind of getting this reflective mode
• 1:33:25
  Speaker 1: at that point, and then then you start interviewing the
• 1:33:28
  Speaker 1: host of the show because you feel like you're a statesman.
• 1:33:31
  Speaker 1: Those challenges and tough things that happened to you and
• 1:33:35
  Speaker 1: the discomfort and the like rewards and all that that
• 1:33:37
  Speaker 1: makes a special caliber of person. I like, oh, man
• 1:33:41
  Speaker 1: Or people. I hang out all man Or people. But
• 1:33:43
  Speaker 1: when it comes to like being comfortable around people in
• 1:33:46
  Speaker 1: bad situations, like being confronged people in the outdoors, Guys
• 1:33:50
  Speaker 1: that have been through the military, mountaineers and big game
• 1:33:56
  Speaker 1: hunters tend to be like people that I just like
• 1:34:03
  Speaker 1: feel comfortable around that I feel like like reliable. Do
• 1:34:08
  Speaker 1: you mean, like when you're with people and just people,
• 1:34:10
  Speaker 1: you gotta take care of people to not only take
• 1:34:12
  Speaker 1: care of themselves, but take care of everybody else. I
• 1:34:14
  Speaker 1: remember a guy talking a most the people he fished with,
• 1:34:16
  Speaker 1: and he said, Steve, you gotta wait in line just
• 1:34:19
  Speaker 1: to wash a dish. I mean, I mean like the
• 1:34:22
  Speaker 1: doozy hangs out with, Like if you want to wash dishes,
• 1:34:25
  Speaker 1: get in line, buddy. Everybody wants to wash them dishes.
• 1:34:28
  Speaker 1: It's like that level of just like attacking problems. You know,
• 1:34:34
  Speaker 1: there's not many things in life to give. I'm sure
• 1:34:38
  Speaker 1: there's more than I'm naming, but lifetime exposure to those
• 1:34:42
  Speaker 1: things seems to make the kind of guys that you
• 1:34:45
  Speaker 1: gotta get in line if you want to wash a dish. Yeah,
• 1:34:47
  Speaker 1: And maybe I'm biased because just about everyone I hang
• 1:34:51
  Speaker 1: out with as a hunter, and so I can sit
• 1:34:55
  Speaker 1: here and share these kind of experiences with them, and
• 1:34:58
  Speaker 1: I can have this very wow. Yeah, I get that
• 1:35:01
  Speaker 1: to its greatest detail. And when I'm in the field
• 1:35:06
  Speaker 1: with them, I'm very comfortable around them. There's some people
• 1:35:10
  Speaker 1: where if you gave him a butter knife, I'm so uncomfortable.
• 1:35:13
  Speaker 1: I think this guy's gonna figure out how to cut
• 1:35:15
  Speaker 1: his thumb off of a butter knife. You know. There's
• 1:35:17
  Speaker 1: just some of those people where you're like, I gotta
• 1:35:19
  Speaker 1: get the hell out of here. I'm not gonna have
• 1:35:21
  Speaker 1: any fun if I'm with a guy like this. And
• 1:35:23
  Speaker 1: usually they don't have the background of the three types
• 1:35:27
  Speaker 1: that you mentioned, the military, of the mountaineers, or big
• 1:35:29
  Speaker 1: game hunners, and maybe there's a couple other sl For me,
• 1:35:34
  Speaker 1: it's just yeah, That's why I asked a question of
• 1:35:38
  Speaker 1: how profound that hunt was. That's a situation I'm in
• 1:35:41
  Speaker 1: now is you know, I got kids and my wife.
• 1:35:45
  Speaker 1: I had this ongoing debate where I expose them to
• 1:35:48
  Speaker 1: I'm not negligent anyway, but I expose themto what we
• 1:35:51
  Speaker 1: might be regarded as dangers by a big segment of
• 1:35:55
  Speaker 1: the oh yeah, population right. To me, it seems like
• 1:35:58
  Speaker 1: very pedestrian, not dangerous at all. But some people might
• 1:36:01
  Speaker 1: regard activities that I expose my kid kids to kids too,
• 1:36:06
  Speaker 1: as being like not age appropriate or being a little
• 1:36:10
  Speaker 1: bit dangerous. And I'm always like, yeah, okay, that's a
• 1:36:12
  Speaker 1: little bit dangerous, like he might cut his finger. But
• 1:36:14
  Speaker 1: they always point out we're having this conversation your day,
• 1:36:17
  Speaker 1: someone's like everybody keeps talking about my kid cuting his
• 1:36:19
  Speaker 1: finger with his knife. I always cut my fingers with
• 1:36:21
  Speaker 1: my knife when I was a kid, So it's like, who, dude,
• 1:36:23
  Speaker 1: like one how like, let's not act like that's the
• 1:36:26
  Speaker 1: end bad. Yeah, it's like that's just a given, you
• 1:36:28
  Speaker 1: go cut his finger. But I always like, okay, let's
• 1:36:30
  Speaker 1: deprive him of the dangerous stuff. But at what at
• 1:36:33
  Speaker 1: what danger does that come out of danger? I think
• 1:36:36
  Speaker 1: because later on it's like you went up with a
• 1:36:38
  Speaker 1: helpless person and there's other ways to get there. It's like,
• 1:36:42
  Speaker 1: you know, I don't know if there's like some Bible
• 1:36:43
  Speaker 1: pass like there's many ways to get to whatever, there's
• 1:36:47
  Speaker 1: other ways to get there. I'm not saying like if
• 1:36:49
  Speaker 1: you don't hunt and fishing your kids you're gonna have
• 1:36:51
  Speaker 1: crappy kids. Because's certainly not the case, because you can
• 1:36:53
  Speaker 1: get there a bazillion ways. But from my exposure, my
• 1:36:57
  Speaker 1: experience where I come from the way to get there
• 1:37:02
  Speaker 1: that I understand, the way to get there that I
• 1:37:04
  Speaker 1: can present to my children is very much that way.
• 1:37:08
  Speaker 1: Because them watching me right isn't gonna get them there, true,
• 1:37:14
  Speaker 1: it's just not. Then watch me record podcast isn't gonna
• 1:37:17
  Speaker 1: get them there? Okay, then watch me flay fish. It's
• 1:37:21
  Speaker 1: hard to explain. I feel as all that might really
• 1:37:23
  Speaker 1: my son felt a lot of danger when you'd see
• 1:37:25
  Speaker 1: me balance in the debts and the credits. It's like, Dad,
• 1:37:29
  Speaker 1: the way you really handled that that advocates you are
• 1:37:31
  Speaker 1: the Charlie Daniels of the advocaust. Dad, Man, I feel
• 1:37:34
  Speaker 1: comforted now you've taught me the life lessons. But yeah, um,
• 1:37:39
  Speaker 1: and it's a false in some ways. You might regard
• 1:37:42
  Speaker 1: it as the false world now because um, in my mind,
• 1:37:47
  Speaker 1: the nature of subsistence has changed for people to live
• 1:37:53
  Speaker 1: anywhere else side of small handful locations around the world.
• 1:37:56
  Speaker 1: The nature of like subsistence hunting and fishing. You know,
• 1:37:59
  Speaker 1: it's not like I always say, like I'm gonna beat fine, dude,
• 1:38:02
  Speaker 1: you can take hunted fishing way from me on that.
• 1:38:03
  Speaker 1: I'm not gonna tell you. I'm gonna start right. You know.
• 1:38:05
  Speaker 1: It's like reality TV, like if they don't get this,
• 1:38:07
  Speaker 1: they'll die. Right, It's just not true. But I guess
• 1:38:12
  Speaker 1: I've just in some way opted that I believe in.
• 1:38:16
  Speaker 1: Elements of that subsistence lifestyle, right still pertain, all right
• 1:38:21
  Speaker 1: in the main risk of imminent starvation isn't there, But
• 1:38:23
  Speaker 1: there are tremendous risks of like character, um fortitude, understand
• 1:38:31
  Speaker 1: how do you use stuff? How do you use physical objects? Yeah,
• 1:38:35
  Speaker 1: my son went to college back in New York, and
• 1:38:39
  Speaker 1: I wondered, Man, how is he going to fit in
• 1:38:42
  Speaker 1: back there? He's coming from Montana we did hunt, fish,
• 1:38:46
  Speaker 1: you know, shoot whatever, and he's going to an Ivy
• 1:38:48
  Speaker 1: League school that's kind of well, it's known to be
• 1:38:51
  Speaker 1: not like Montana. Yeah, and so I'm worried that. Okay,
• 1:38:57
  Speaker 1: he goes there, How's he gonna fit in? How's he
• 1:38:59
  Speaker 1: gonna cope with the different environment and the things he
• 1:39:06
  Speaker 1: learned in the coping skills that he brought from hunting
• 1:39:09
  Speaker 1: and fishing and understanding how a natural world works. He
• 1:39:14
  Speaker 1: blew through it with no problem. I was so impressed
• 1:39:18
  Speaker 1: with how adaptable, so much would he learned as a
• 1:39:23
  Speaker 1: hunter fisherman shooting, cutting his finger with a knife when
• 1:39:27
  Speaker 1: he's six, you know, shoot your eye out. I mean
• 1:39:30
  Speaker 1: he had to be begun when he had like five.
• 1:39:32
  Speaker 1: But he was in a whole group of people that
• 1:39:35
  Speaker 1: were not exposed to that, and he kind of emerged
• 1:39:39
  Speaker 1: from that not just unscathed, but almost like a leader
• 1:39:43
  Speaker 1: that they looked to because would look at like the
• 1:39:48
  Speaker 1: woods upbringing and say, oh, they might miss out on
• 1:39:52
  Speaker 1: some sort of social you know, aspect that they're gonna
• 1:39:55
  Speaker 1: get more if you grow up in a big city
• 1:39:57
  Speaker 1: like New York. But that's not the case. It's like
• 1:40:00
  Speaker 1: you still have to have all those relationships and communicate
• 1:40:03
  Speaker 1: with people and work through all that, and you're probably
• 1:40:05
  Speaker 1: gonna learn it because of the hardships and even a
• 1:40:07
  Speaker 1: better way, in a stronger way, where like you're saying,
• 1:40:10
  Speaker 1: he went there to that Ivy League school and people
• 1:40:12
  Speaker 1: are like, wow, this dude, Like yeah, strong and just
• 1:40:16
  Speaker 1: his perspective of ability to look at a more complex
• 1:40:20
  Speaker 1: problem and not needed to be sanitized down to little
• 1:40:24
  Speaker 1: compartments of you know, oh, well, this is a historical question, no,
• 1:40:28
  Speaker 1: he I think hunters a general rule of people who
• 1:40:31
  Speaker 1: understand the natural world can stand back and look at
• 1:40:33
  Speaker 1: a bigger, more complicated problem with multiple variables like you
• 1:40:37
  Speaker 1: see in the natural world, and other people struggle with that.
• 1:40:42
  Speaker 1: And I didn't really give it much that until watching
• 1:40:46
  Speaker 1: him go through that process and watching some other kids
• 1:40:49
  Speaker 1: his friends go through and do it similar things in
• 1:40:52
  Speaker 1: different places, and I we'd have the discussions of how
• 1:40:55
  Speaker 1: you fitting in there? Fine, what what do you mean? Like, well,
• 1:41:00
  Speaker 1: you're the one walking around with camouflage boots on an
• 1:41:03
  Speaker 1: IVY League campus and everyone else's you know whatever, you
• 1:41:06
  Speaker 1: got your mad bomber beaver fur hat on and your
• 1:41:09
  Speaker 1: chopper mints. I don't care. I'm warm even able to
• 1:41:16
  Speaker 1: put everything in just a very simple solution, very pragmatic,
• 1:41:21
  Speaker 1: And so this whole idea that we got it kind
• 1:41:27
  Speaker 1: of coddle everybody, you know. Back to your point of
• 1:41:30
  Speaker 1: what is the future danger of removing all the dangers today?
• 1:41:35
  Speaker 1: I think we end up with kids, or they become
• 1:41:38
  Speaker 1: adults that can't handle a lot of things that maybe
• 1:41:42
  Speaker 1: some of us just take for granted. I remember being
• 1:41:45
  Speaker 1: out with I bought this this sit on top kayak
• 1:41:50
  Speaker 1: called the Big two in a kayak, very stable sit
• 1:41:52
  Speaker 1: on top fishing kayak um And you know, I bought
• 1:41:57
  Speaker 1: it very much. Minded out fishing my boy when the
• 1:42:00
  Speaker 1: seattle are there's a lot of water around there. I
• 1:42:01
  Speaker 1: just wanted something that I could get in the water
• 1:42:04
  Speaker 1: and the whole time, like sit on top the whole time,
• 1:42:07
  Speaker 1: Like what if the kid falls in the water in
• 1:42:10
  Speaker 1: the winter, And I was like, all my thinking was like,
• 1:42:13
  Speaker 1: how he's gonna not fall in the water. And we
• 1:42:15
  Speaker 1: go out like I'm bundled up. You know, he's got
• 1:42:18
  Speaker 1: Obviously I don't let the kid in near your boat
• 1:42:19
  Speaker 1: with I life jacket on. Um we get on the water.
• 1:42:23
  Speaker 1: I mean it's you know, January February, Pacific Northwest. And
• 1:42:30
  Speaker 1: he was offended by later accused him of just basically
• 1:42:32
  Speaker 1: jumping out of the kayak. He just like all of
• 1:42:36
  Speaker 1: a sudden, he's in there, and then he's in the water.
• 1:42:38
  Speaker 1: He like, look, it seemed to me that he did
• 1:42:40
  Speaker 1: some kind of barrel roll out of his seat into
• 1:42:43
  Speaker 1: the water. He fell very much. He did not want
• 1:42:46
  Speaker 1: to be in that water, and like like he's just
• 1:42:49
  Speaker 1: there and then he's floating in the water, you know,
• 1:42:54
  Speaker 1: And I hauled him out of there, and like, at
• 1:42:56
  Speaker 1: first my mind is just racing, you know, won the
• 1:43:00
  Speaker 1: wrath of his mother. Yeah, but sure, I mean I
• 1:43:05
  Speaker 1: didn't have him out of the water five seconds. I
• 1:43:07
  Speaker 1: was glad he fell in. Yeah him, because I'm kind
• 1:43:10
  Speaker 1: of like one falling out of the boat too. If
• 1:43:15
  Speaker 1: a dude falls out of a boat in really cold weather,
• 1:43:18
  Speaker 1: here's what you do. We're gonna run through it right now,
• 1:43:21
  Speaker 1: so you understand like the situation we're in, right yea,
• 1:43:26
  Speaker 1: And yeah, now I look at it like the one
• 1:43:29
  Speaker 1: thing I didn't want to have and fall out of
• 1:43:30
  Speaker 1: the boat. Now, when I think of like highlights of
• 1:43:32
  Speaker 1: the last year, I'm like, man, you know it sounds perverse.
• 1:43:36
  Speaker 1: I'm like, it was great when Jimmy fell out of
• 1:43:39
  Speaker 1: that boat, because like, look how much content we got
• 1:43:41
  Speaker 1: out of that, Like life's content, you know, revery like
• 1:43:46
  Speaker 1: anard time we were down in Baja fishing and then
• 1:43:49
  Speaker 1: I went out in the dark to fish, and I
• 1:43:51
  Speaker 1: told him a thousand times and like stay here, Daddy's
• 1:43:53
  Speaker 1: gonna walk out in the dark. Don't move, you know
• 1:43:58
  Speaker 1: that I was going on to get a better as
• 1:44:00
  Speaker 1: I come up something's gone and look he's like rolling
• 1:44:03
  Speaker 1: around the tide. I read out and grab him. That's
• 1:44:06
  Speaker 1: just kind of like drag him up them in the shower.
• 1:44:09
  Speaker 1: I was like, why in the world, you know? But um, yeah,
• 1:44:13
  Speaker 1: I'm like, yeah, I guess I'm kind of glad because
• 1:44:14
  Speaker 1: at something I feel like it's adding layers out there.
• 1:44:17
  Speaker 1: It is. I I mean, I think about the stuff
• 1:44:20
  Speaker 1: that I did. My parents would have been in jail
• 1:44:26
  Speaker 1: and we would have been in Foster home in today's
• 1:44:29
  Speaker 1: world and actually dangerous about in my podcast that we
• 1:44:32
  Speaker 1: were talking about last week, I tried to me and
• 1:44:35
  Speaker 1: my cousins tried to build a bomb to blow up
• 1:44:37
  Speaker 1: train bridge when or eight years old. I mean, you
• 1:44:39
  Speaker 1: think about doing that now, But it's one of I learned.
• 1:44:43
  Speaker 1: So yeah, I learned so much about how you can
• 1:44:47
  Speaker 1: saw a shotgun shell in half and pull the wad
• 1:44:50
  Speaker 1: out and dump the powder and a paint can. And
• 1:44:52
  Speaker 1: I mean, and that if you didn't direct the force
• 1:44:56
  Speaker 1: a certain direction on they did was blow a scour
• 1:44:58
  Speaker 1: hole out between the two railroad ted. I mean, but
• 1:45:01
  Speaker 1: the stuff that we did was so valuable as I
• 1:45:07
  Speaker 1: got older in life, and maybe it's because of the
• 1:45:09
  Speaker 1: path I chose later in life. It was valuable. Maybe
• 1:45:11
  Speaker 1: if I hadn't done all that stuff, I would have
• 1:45:12
  Speaker 1: taken a different path than people would have said. Maybe
• 1:45:15
  Speaker 1: that knucklehead grew up in that little town there. He
• 1:45:17
  Speaker 1: doesn't know his asked from third base, but how to
• 1:45:19
  Speaker 1: blow up railroad? But anyhow, all right, so let's uh,
• 1:45:24
  Speaker 1: you mentioned it, plug it you've been working on a
• 1:45:29
  Speaker 1: podcast deal larging conservation is I'll let you tell me. Yeah,
• 1:45:32
  Speaker 1: and it's it's thanks to your friends here at zero
• 1:45:35
  Speaker 1: point zero. Uh, we were on a bear hunt last year.
• 1:45:39
  Speaker 1: Janice and Dan were filming me and we talked about
• 1:45:43
  Speaker 1: all kinds of things. That's got us a hunt to
• 1:45:45
  Speaker 1: eat T shirt infamy. There you go, what do you
• 1:45:48
  Speaker 1: call them the Latin? Yeah? That that magnate hunt. You
• 1:45:53
  Speaker 1: gotta hunt of eat T shirt? I do? Thanks? Yeah,
• 1:45:56
  Speaker 1: did you give it to him? Yeah? Yeah? That good
• 1:46:00
  Speaker 1: plug here there. He's not gonna send you one. You
• 1:46:02
  Speaker 1: gotta go to hunting dot com. Yeah. I mean they're like,
• 1:46:10
  Speaker 1: you need a podcast, buddy. You you're just like spouting
• 1:46:13
  Speaker 1: off all the time. You're blowing and carrying on, you know,
• 1:46:17
  Speaker 1: with no one. Yeah, you know, just nothing but a
• 1:46:21
  Speaker 1: few seals and you know, to two poor camera guys,
• 1:46:25
  Speaker 1: and uh so it took us the last part of
• 1:46:29
  Speaker 1: a year to decide we're going to do this. And
• 1:46:31
  Speaker 1: so thanks to these guys, we have the other podcast
• 1:46:35
  Speaker 1: at zero points zero producers called hunt Talk Radio I e.
• 1:46:39
  Speaker 1: Raindy Newberg, Gun Filtered and it's just me and friends
• 1:46:43
  Speaker 1: talking about hunting, fishing, growing up, conservation, a lot of politics,
• 1:46:49
  Speaker 1: and probably we got into marital advice at one time.
• 1:46:53
  Speaker 1: Didn't know you know, you know we we we end
• 1:46:57
  Speaker 1: these podcasts where you get to have a concluding thought, Yeah,
• 1:47:00
  Speaker 1: give me some marriage not that I needed, but give
• 1:47:03
  Speaker 1: the listeners marital advice as you're concluding. OK. I don't
• 1:47:06
  Speaker 1: like to dictate your concluding thought. No, if you see fit,
• 1:47:10
  Speaker 1: every camera guy I have is like in his twenties,
• 1:47:12
  Speaker 1: early thirties, he's getting in this, you know, thinking of
• 1:47:16
  Speaker 1: getting married, like Dan, isn't Dan getting married? All right?
• 1:47:20
  Speaker 1: And so there are I'm gonna wear the pants in
• 1:47:23
  Speaker 1: my house and I just about driving the ditch. When
• 1:47:26
  Speaker 1: I hear him say that, I'm like, yeah, right, And
• 1:47:28
  Speaker 1: sooner or later it's like, all right, you've been married
• 1:47:30
  Speaker 1: twenty six years, Randy, give me one piece of advice.
• 1:47:33
  Speaker 1: So this will be the concluding thought. Yeah, I'm gonna
• 1:47:35
  Speaker 1: do marriage advice from mine. Okay, if you want a long,
• 1:47:41
  Speaker 1: happy marriage, be more interested in peace than you are justice.
• 1:47:47
  Speaker 1: You don't have to be right. Being right is expensive,
• 1:47:52
  Speaker 1: financially expensive, emotionally expensive. And you don't get hunting fish
• 1:47:57
  Speaker 1: nearly as much as the guys who let let them
• 1:48:00
  Speaker 1: be right half more than half the time they're right anyhow,
• 1:48:04
  Speaker 1: So you know what are Yeah, it's not about this
• 1:48:08
  Speaker 1: whole idea of justice. I'm right, she's wrong. You'll regret
• 1:48:12
  Speaker 1: saying that I proved you that I actually was. Yeah.
• 1:48:15
  Speaker 1: I mean, anyone who's been married more than about a
• 1:48:17
  Speaker 1: month has been down that path. Yeah, and so I
• 1:48:21
  Speaker 1: just tell everyone be more interested in peace than you
• 1:48:25
  Speaker 1: are justice, and all will be well. I have three
• 1:48:28
  Speaker 1: pieces of barrel advice I tried doing quick said a
• 1:48:32
  Speaker 1: very strong precedent um. When you meet a man or
• 1:48:38
  Speaker 1: a lady, live the life that you want to live.
• 1:48:43
  Speaker 1: Ten years into your marriage will not earned back. You
• 1:48:50
  Speaker 1: don't get freedoms exactly. The news doesn't get looser. You
• 1:48:54
  Speaker 1: guys who would start dating a girl and they're all infatuated,
• 1:49:00
  Speaker 1: and you know it's like Thanksgiving at their parents and
• 1:49:05
  Speaker 1: you know, instead of doing whatever, and then a couple
• 1:49:06
  Speaker 1: of years down the road they're like, well, you know,
• 1:49:08
  Speaker 1: I actually usually on Thanksgiving, I'm usually you know, we
• 1:49:10
  Speaker 1: usually fish steelhead around. Thanksgivings are kind of coming into
• 1:49:13
  Speaker 1: the rivers. It's like that, you don't you go we
• 1:49:15
  Speaker 1: go to Mike MoMA's every year for Thanksgiving. But yeah, well,
• 1:49:17
  Speaker 1: I mean normally it's like live it, you know from
• 1:49:23
  Speaker 1: the start. Yeah, it's much you're talking about dragging yourself
• 1:49:26
  Speaker 1: away from mama. Drag even at its most difficult point,
• 1:49:33
  Speaker 1: at its most difficult point in the beginning, find it
• 1:49:36
  Speaker 1: in yourself to drag yourself away from mama. See piece
• 1:49:40
  Speaker 1: of Marral. Advice I have is uh, how long you've
• 1:49:44
  Speaker 1: been married to you? My anniversary is coming up. Well
• 1:49:47
  Speaker 1: I know that mean one year now. I got married
• 1:49:50
  Speaker 1: two thousand eight. Okay, so you're seven years in. Yeah.
• 1:49:54
  Speaker 1: I'm giving advice, not from like having with you know,
• 1:49:57
  Speaker 1: weathered time. I'm just like, okay, just observations. Um, you
• 1:50:04
  Speaker 1: always here. It's like cliche pick your battles, oh for sure.
• 1:50:08
  Speaker 1: It's like there's just some stuff like, for instance, issues
• 1:50:11
  Speaker 1: with my kids, like like what they're doing, when who's
• 1:50:16
  Speaker 1: gonna where for holidays? You know what I mean, Like
• 1:50:20
  Speaker 1: what their clothes are, like what time we're supposed to
• 1:50:23
  Speaker 1: get up or what time they gotta be Just like, okay, yeah,
• 1:50:27
  Speaker 1: that's just static. Just like and I'm not I'm not
• 1:50:29
  Speaker 1: saying that just the kids. But there's many issues, like
• 1:50:31
  Speaker 1: many matters of of how our house is structure, how
• 1:50:35
  Speaker 1: our time is structured, matters of our social life. Okay,
• 1:50:38
  Speaker 1: there's just a lot of stuff like when you're gonna
• 1:50:40
  Speaker 1: be working, when you're not gonna be working. Um that
• 1:50:43
  Speaker 1: I'm just like, okay, you know we're gonna be moving, Okay,
• 1:50:48
  Speaker 1: So like the house we're gonna live in. I know
• 1:50:50
  Speaker 1: I have some input on this, but not a ton
• 1:50:53
  Speaker 1: um drum rolls. Number three, number three? How can I that? Remember?
• 1:50:58
  Speaker 1: Number three? Oh? Read the works of Cormac McCarthy. He
• 1:51:02
  Speaker 1: never talks about marriage. But read the works of Cormac
• 1:51:05
  Speaker 1: McCarthy and try to decipher his moral code, which is
• 1:51:10
  Speaker 1: consistent throughout his works, And then and and read them
• 1:51:15
  Speaker 1: and internalized Cormate McCarthy's moral code, and you'll have a
• 1:51:19
  Speaker 1: better marriage. Huh. I'll have to read that it's you're
• 1:51:23
  Speaker 1: saying a huge you're making a huge commitment for yourself. Well, like,
• 1:51:26
  Speaker 1: is it? It's not, it's not. Well, I just just
• 1:51:30
  Speaker 1: wrote many books, but start with the Border trilogy. Oh no,
• 1:51:36
  Speaker 1: and I'll sum them up because also the way I've
• 1:51:38
  Speaker 1: interpreted the works cars. But there's a morality there where
• 1:51:41
  Speaker 1: a lot of people want to live in a world
• 1:51:47
  Speaker 1: that existed before they made the decisions that they've made. Okay, yeah,
• 1:51:54
  Speaker 1: did you go like, oh, but you're still trying. It's
• 1:51:57
  Speaker 1: like I see it all the time. I have to
• 1:51:58
  Speaker 1: reading Corn McCarthy like, oh no, no, buddy, you're trying
• 1:52:01
  Speaker 1: to live the life that that that existed before you
• 1:52:04
  Speaker 1: made a very willful decision to take a certain path here,
• 1:52:08
  Speaker 1: abandon the notion that that that you like, abandoned the
• 1:52:11
  Speaker 1: idea that you're somehow going to get out of the
• 1:52:14
  Speaker 1: situation you're in, kids, whatever. It's like, you're here now.
• 1:52:18
  Speaker 1: There is the life outside of this. Stop pretending that
• 1:52:20
  Speaker 1: there is. Yeh, yeah, that's how long you've been married.
• 1:52:25
  Speaker 1: You could have a concluding thought. It doesn't have to
• 1:52:27
  Speaker 1: be about marriage. Now. I'll give them about marriage. I
• 1:52:31
  Speaker 1: think twelve years, two thousand three, So I got a
• 1:52:34
  Speaker 1: couple under my belt. They've all been great. Um, this
• 1:52:39
  Speaker 1: piece of vice actually came from another fishing client of mine.
• 1:52:44
  Speaker 1: I think I got it her a few times her her, Yeah,
• 1:52:47
  Speaker 1: and she'd been a in a long, long marriage and um,
• 1:52:51
  Speaker 1: she basically got dumbed for the you know, the secretary.
• 1:52:55
  Speaker 1: It's something along those lines, and not the fishing guy.
• 1:52:58
  Speaker 1: She not the fishing guy. She didn't she didn't see
• 1:53:01
  Speaker 1: it coming, and it really beat her up. And so
• 1:53:04
  Speaker 1: she went on. She embarked on this you know, like
• 1:53:09
  Speaker 1: it was it was a pole, but it was like
• 1:53:11
  Speaker 1: a journey. But there was like this poll that she
• 1:53:13
  Speaker 1: constantly kept up with, and she kept tallies and notes,
• 1:53:16
  Speaker 1: and when she saw old couples, she always went to
• 1:53:19
  Speaker 1: him and said, hey, what's what was What's like, what's
• 1:53:21
  Speaker 1: the secret? What's your one little tip or whatever? And
• 1:53:24
  Speaker 1: what she came away from with it all the number
• 1:53:26
  Speaker 1: one one word that people always said. And everybody's like, oh,
• 1:53:30
  Speaker 1: it's love, you know, It's like, well, love is bullshit.
• 1:53:33
  Speaker 1: You know a lot of times love just does not
• 1:53:35
  Speaker 1: have that lasting powers. What does is commitment. And I
• 1:53:40
  Speaker 1: always try to remember that, well, I'm committing, you know,
• 1:53:43
  Speaker 1: and I believe, and I have to believe that my
• 1:53:45
  Speaker 1: wife is also committed to me and that always, you know,
• 1:53:48
  Speaker 1: no no problems getting too hard times Ronnie Bain, who
• 1:53:51
  Speaker 1: has no shortage of wise observations. I was talking to
• 1:53:55
  Speaker 1: an old man one time that was speaking of his
• 1:53:58
  Speaker 1: wife and the only and said, you know, ron I
• 1:54:02
  Speaker 1: wouldn't give you ten cents for another one just like her,
• 1:54:05
  Speaker 1: but I wouldn't take a million dollars for And there's
• 1:54:09
  Speaker 1: sort of like a fatalistic sort of thing there. It's
• 1:54:14
  Speaker 1: just like that's what I got. Well, I think any
• 1:54:20
  Speaker 1: of us would get to hunt, travel as much as
• 1:54:22
  Speaker 1: we do. I gotta have something figured out. And I
• 1:54:25
  Speaker 1: think that's why a lot of people ask me for
• 1:54:27
  Speaker 1: maritle and that I'm giving an elk cutting seminar, and
• 1:54:29
  Speaker 1: someone will raise your hand, how does your life wife
• 1:54:32
  Speaker 1: let you hunt so much? And so I got it.
• 1:54:35
  Speaker 1: I feel like I'm going into this doctor field discussion
• 1:54:38
  Speaker 1: there or something, and I tell him the best deal
• 1:54:40
  Speaker 1: I ever made in my marriage was when we built
• 1:54:43
  Speaker 1: our last house in two thousand and four. I told
• 1:54:46
  Speaker 1: my wife, you can take of the cost of the
• 1:54:51
  Speaker 1: house and add it to furnishings whatever you want. I
• 1:54:55
  Speaker 1: don't care. I don't care what color, what size, but
• 1:54:58
  Speaker 1: I don't never want to hear it. Budget discussion about
• 1:55:01
  Speaker 1: hunting over again, and she jumped on that like a
• 1:55:04
  Speaker 1: rat out of Cheetoh man, she was on it, And
• 1:55:08
  Speaker 1: so hunt a lot. But here's the thing, though, I
• 1:55:13
  Speaker 1: love being married, like, oh me too. I love seeing
• 1:55:15
  Speaker 1: my wife. I love being married, I love having my kids.
• 1:55:18
  Speaker 1: I like to hunting fish. It's like, so, yeah, there's
• 1:55:21
  Speaker 1: and I'm not saying that all everything that I'm arguing
• 1:55:23
  Speaker 1: is I'm behalf of me out hunting fish more. But
• 1:55:26
  Speaker 1: I think that, like we're saying there, there's certain lessons
• 1:55:28
  Speaker 1: to be found hunting and fishing, and there's certain things
• 1:55:30
  Speaker 1: where you know, that's just like something that's important to me,
• 1:55:33
  Speaker 1: and I've found a way to have it be that
• 1:55:35
  Speaker 1: it's just like an integral part of the household. Even
• 1:55:39
  Speaker 1: though my wife, you know, familiar with sympathetic tords. But
• 1:55:43
  Speaker 1: what never does it self identifies the avid angler? Yeah,
• 1:55:46
  Speaker 1: you know, doesn't hunt like will certainly fish, but doesn't.
• 1:55:50
  Speaker 1: If you got these ten things she is fishing with,
• 1:55:53
  Speaker 1: fisher woman wouldn't make the list. Oh gosh, I'm sorry
• 1:55:58
  Speaker 1: to keep adding tang entel. Everybody had a concluding thoughts.
• 1:56:05
  Speaker 1: This is the longest we've talked, the lost we've ever
• 1:56:08
  Speaker 1: had to actually talk. Oh really, man, I'm sorry, No, no,
• 1:56:11
  Speaker 1: I mean you and me. Oh yeah, you and I.
• 1:56:13
  Speaker 1: We had a long phone conversation whatever. Remember, But yeah,
• 1:56:16
  Speaker 1: it's it's good. Hopefully we'll get to do it over
• 1:56:20
  Speaker 1: camp fire and a fresh backstrap someday. Well we're all
• 1:56:23
  Speaker 1: sick from something. Yeah, I don't know. You guys come
• 1:56:26
  Speaker 1: down with more food born ailments. I just telling my
• 1:56:30
  Speaker 1: wife about some of the things you guys eat, because
• 1:56:33
  Speaker 1: she asked me what I was doing with that bear
• 1:56:35
  Speaker 1: I shot this year, and I told them you, Oh,
• 1:56:36
  Speaker 1: Janice wants these hawks in this She's like, aren't those
• 1:56:41
  Speaker 1: guys that get sick every time they cook something? And
• 1:56:43
  Speaker 1: I'm like yeah, She's like, and you said you were
• 1:56:46
  Speaker 1: going to go hunting with him sometime maybe, so yeah,
• 1:56:51
  Speaker 1: you only need anything that comes out of a package.
• 1:56:53
  Speaker 1: But well, guys, thanks for having me. Great. I appreciate
• 1:56:57
  Speaker 1: all you guys do for hunting, and in the the
• 1:57:00
  Speaker 1: message you guys are getting out there is so need
• 1:57:03
  Speaker 1: nude and so valuable not just to hunting, but how
• 1:57:06
  Speaker 1: hunting can expand its boundaries to a bigger discussion in society.
• 1:57:10
  Speaker 1: So as I want the last usually I'll say like,
• 1:57:13
  Speaker 1: thanks for listening, but let plug the plug the podcasting
• 1:57:17
  Speaker 1: Hunt Talk podcast Randy Newburgh Unfiltered and can go to
• 1:57:21
  Speaker 1: iTunes and get it produced by zero point zero. Thanks
• 1:57:24
  Speaker 1: for letting me plug it in, Steve tune In. Thanks,
• 1:57:27
  Speaker 1: everybody appreciate it.