Latest / Wired To Hunt Podcast / Ep. 317: Our Backcountry Boundary Waters Whitetail Hunt

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Ep. 317: Our Backcountry Boundary Waters Whitetail Hunt · Wired To Hunt Podcast

• 0:02
  Speaker 1: Welcome to the Wire to Hunt podcast, your home for
• 0:06
  Speaker 1: deer hunting news, stories and strategies, and now your host,
• 0:12
  Speaker 1: Mark Kenyon. Welcome to the wire to Hunt podcast. I'm
• 0:19
  Speaker 1: your host, Mark Kenyan, and this is episode three seventeen
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: to in the show, we are finally recapping our epic
• 0:27
  Speaker 1: back country canoe in white tail hunt in the Boundary
• 0:30
  Speaker 1: Waters Canoe Area wilderness of Northern Minnesota. All right, welcome
• 0:45
  Speaker 1: to the Wired to Hunt podcast, brought to you by
• 0:47
  Speaker 1: on X. Today we're throwing it back to late October
• 0:51
  Speaker 1: and the story of my back country big woods canoe
• 0:54
  Speaker 1: in whitetail hunt in an incredible swath of land called
• 0:57
  Speaker 1: the Boundary Waters. Now, this is a stretch of one
• 1:01
  Speaker 1: point one million acres of public land. We're talking rocky ridges,
• 1:05
  Speaker 1: thick woods, crystal clear lakes and rivers that is designated
• 1:09
  Speaker 1: as a wilderness area, meaning there's no development here at all,
• 1:13
  Speaker 1: no roads, no motorized vehicles allowed, no nothing, just you,
• 1:19
  Speaker 1: the wilderness, the water, and the critters. That's the kind
• 1:24
  Speaker 1: of white tail hunt I wanted to try to have
• 1:26
  Speaker 1: this year and finally I did it, and wow, was
• 1:30
  Speaker 1: it a hell of an experience. So today we've got
• 1:33
  Speaker 1: the recap of that hunt with myself and my three
• 1:37
  Speaker 1: hunting buddies that joined me for this trip. So we're
• 1:40
  Speaker 1: gonna hear that whole story, and then we have a
• 1:42
  Speaker 1: second part to this podcast too, And the reason we're
• 1:46
  Speaker 1: having that is because I was originally intrigued by this area,
• 1:48
  Speaker 1: the Boundary Waters, because of a whole big controversy that's
• 1:52
  Speaker 1: been brewing around it over the past few years. There
• 1:55
  Speaker 1: is this series of very risky sulfide or copper minds
• 2:00
  Speaker 1: that have been proposed to be put in right on
• 2:03
  Speaker 1: the edge of the wilderness area, this very watery landscape,
• 2:08
  Speaker 1: and it's going to present a really really serious thread
• 2:10
  Speaker 1: of pollution that could damage that watershed and could threaten
• 2:14
  Speaker 1: the wild life and the water that so many people
• 2:17
  Speaker 1: have come to love. So I've heard about all this,
• 2:19
  Speaker 1: but I wanted to see it for myself. I wanted
• 2:22
  Speaker 1: to understand what was up for grabs here and then
• 2:24
  Speaker 1: see if we could learn a little bit more about
• 2:27
  Speaker 1: what we can do to help protect this place. So
• 2:30
  Speaker 1: after you hear about our hunt, we're gonna be joined
• 2:32
  Speaker 1: by Lucas Leaf. He is the executive director for Sportsman
• 2:36
  Speaker 1: for the Boundary Waters and He's going to help us,
• 2:39
  Speaker 1: you know, learn a little bit more about this controversy
• 2:41
  Speaker 1: and what we as hunters and anglers can do to
• 2:44
  Speaker 1: help keep this place intact and healthy. And trust me
• 2:48
  Speaker 1: on this one is a place worth seeing and saving.
• 2:53
  Speaker 1: So without further ado, let's take one quick break and
• 2:57
  Speaker 1: then we'll get right into the story of our wild
• 3:00
  Speaker 1: and challenging boundary waters White Tail Adventure. Do you feel
• 3:04
  Speaker 1: at all ostracized because you were the new person that's
• 3:07
  Speaker 1: part of the group. What's ostracized? Oh? Here we go,
• 3:10
  Speaker 1: here it is, it starts, it begins. That was this
• 3:14
  Speaker 1: guy in the podcast once I think you all were there.
• 3:18
  Speaker 1: Ostracized means like you feel left out or shunned or disrespected. Yeah, no,
• 3:25
  Speaker 1: I don't feel ostracized. Good. Well, then introduce yourself. My
• 3:28
  Speaker 1: name is Charlie Williams Um from Michigan. I met Mark
• 3:32
  Speaker 1: last fall to take pictures of the Buckey shot called
• 3:35
  Speaker 1: Frank and I work at General Motors. The last six weeks,
• 3:41
  Speaker 1: I've been traveling around the West. Been in Bozeman, Montana
• 3:45
  Speaker 1: for the big chunk of it, linking up with people
• 3:47
  Speaker 1: to take pictures of those hunts I've been on for
• 3:52
  Speaker 1: elk hunts, a mountain, goat hunt, antelope hunt, quail hunt,
• 3:57
  Speaker 1: white tail hunt, and then met up with Mark in
• 4:00
  Speaker 1: the Boys out here at the Boundary Waters in Minnesota.
• 4:03
  Speaker 1: So I have so many questions for you, but I
• 4:04
  Speaker 1: want to just finish our quick introductions before we get
• 4:06
  Speaker 1: into that, because your your journey into the feral state
• 4:11
  Speaker 1: you currently live in is worth touching on. But continuing
• 4:15
  Speaker 1: around the clock. Where you have next? Who? Andy Bradley,
• 4:19
  Speaker 1: I'm from Michigan to uh, friend of Mark's. We've been
• 4:22
  Speaker 1: hunting out west a few times together. I don't live
• 4:26
  Speaker 1: too far from Mark, so he's usually uh one of
• 4:28
  Speaker 1: the first ones that I call when I shoot a
• 4:31
  Speaker 1: big buck, I guess, so it doesn't happen very often.
• 4:33
  Speaker 1: Once every ten years. Last we've got a new character.
• 4:37
  Speaker 1: You guys have not heard from him before. You might
• 4:39
  Speaker 1: call him brown Bear. You might call him stick fish,
• 4:43
  Speaker 1: you might call him wormy water, or you might call
• 4:46
  Speaker 1: him further Josh Hilliard. Yeah, do you do? I need
• 4:51
  Speaker 1: an intro to alright? Just in case they're from Michigan.
• 4:55
  Speaker 1: Work for q d M. A. Um been friends with
• 4:58
  Speaker 1: Mark for a long long time. Um hold on well
• 5:03
  Speaker 1: second grade, second grade second grade. Can you believe the
• 5:07
  Speaker 1: second grade? Second grade? That's back when they were in
• 5:10
  Speaker 1: a yoga club together. But when you get into that later,
• 5:13
  Speaker 1: we were actually seven. We weren't fourteen, and looked like
• 5:16
  Speaker 1: we were seven. We were actually seven. You guys should
• 5:19
  Speaker 1: see this picture of Chuck, which I'm glad he did
• 5:24
  Speaker 1: it because I was going to. He doesn't want to
• 5:26
  Speaker 1: be called Chuck. No one else can call him Chucky
• 5:28
  Speaker 1: stars a freudy to slip. Charlie showed us a great
• 5:33
  Speaker 1: picture of his first buck. Your first Your first buck
• 5:37
  Speaker 1: was a really impressive deer. You never really did tell
• 5:40
  Speaker 1: us the story of how you patterned that deer. We're
• 5:42
  Speaker 1: gonna talk about our boundary wires hunt here shortly, but
• 5:44
  Speaker 1: I think before we talked about the boundary wires hunt,
• 5:46
  Speaker 1: can you give us the cliff notes version of how
• 5:48
  Speaker 1: you patterned and killed such a great buck when you
• 5:50
  Speaker 1: were seven years old. Yeah. Um, I've been hunting this
• 5:54
  Speaker 1: buck all bow season and there was just these two
• 5:57
  Speaker 1: fence rows that met, so I always sat on the corner. Well,
• 6:00
  Speaker 1: this buck he'd come out of the woods and there
• 6:03
  Speaker 1: was just a certain spot in the fencer that he'd
• 6:05
  Speaker 1: always cross, and this was when I was younger and
• 6:07
  Speaker 1: didn't know as much, and was like, man, he keeps
• 6:09
  Speaker 1: crossing there. I need to put a stand up. And
• 6:10
  Speaker 1: it was almost gun season. So I put the stand
• 6:13
  Speaker 1: up a week before. I never got a chance to
• 6:15
  Speaker 1: hunt it. And then opening morning comes around and a
• 6:19
  Speaker 1: good buddy lived on the road. I went to his
• 6:21
  Speaker 1: house for breakfast at Buscus and Gravy, Well, I was all.
• 6:26
  Speaker 1: I was all pumped up, ready to go shoot this buck,
• 6:28
  Speaker 1: and knew it was the day shooting a single shot
• 6:30
  Speaker 1: twenty gage with a beat on the end. So I
• 6:34
  Speaker 1: get out there super early, freezing, and then right right
• 6:37
  Speaker 1: before shooting light, I hear some sticks snapping. He comes
• 6:40
  Speaker 1: through the fence row walks fifteen yards away, see his
• 6:45
  Speaker 1: outline and see the rack smoke him. That's it. That
• 6:49
  Speaker 1: was it. I don't know. I would expecting more. What
• 6:53
  Speaker 1: were you what were you hoping for? I don't know.
• 6:55
  Speaker 1: I just thought it was gonna be some back and forth,
• 6:56
  Speaker 1: some heartbreaks, some upside down. There was some heartbreaks, I'm
• 7:00
  Speaker 1: you know. But right before I had that stand up,
• 7:05
  Speaker 1: he was working down the fence road towards me, and
• 7:07
  Speaker 1: I was I had my bow in my hand and
• 7:09
  Speaker 1: I was just shaking and he was working some does
• 7:11
  Speaker 1: and they just they cut through the fence row and
• 7:13
  Speaker 1: I was just like, man, I needed never never panned
• 7:17
  Speaker 1: out how I wanted it to, because it really wanted
• 7:18
  Speaker 1: to shoot him with a bow. But I'm still happy
• 7:22
  Speaker 1: we got it done. Yeah, that's cool. This was a
• 7:24
  Speaker 1: great buck great picture too. It brought us a lot
• 7:26
  Speaker 1: of joy. Uh. So, we had just got out of
• 7:32
  Speaker 1: the boundary waters. We spent the last week or so
• 7:35
  Speaker 1: paddling into what is one of the most visited, most
• 7:42
  Speaker 1: special wilderness with a capital W areas in the United States.
• 7:48
  Speaker 1: For those that are not familiar, there's like the generic wilderness,
• 7:51
  Speaker 1: like you talked about going out in the wilderness and
• 7:53
  Speaker 1: that's kind of like a wild place. But then there
• 7:55
  Speaker 1: are actually places that are designated wilderness with a capital W,
• 7:59
  Speaker 1: which is something that as actual and actual designation by
• 8:02
  Speaker 1: the government that gives this area a certain set of
• 8:05
  Speaker 1: protections above and beyond your typical public land. So you've
• 8:09
  Speaker 1: got different categories. You've got stuff like national parks, which
• 8:12
  Speaker 1: are you know, managed for primarily human recreation and use.
• 8:17
  Speaker 1: Then you've got places like national forests, which are very
• 8:20
  Speaker 1: multiple use where you've got logging and mining and recreation
• 8:25
  Speaker 1: and the protection of watersheds and wildlife and all these
• 8:28
  Speaker 1: different things. You've got BLM lands, which are similar with
• 8:31
  Speaker 1: the multiple use philosophy, um. But then you have these
• 8:34
  Speaker 1: wilderness areas. This came around in the mid nineties sixties
• 8:40
  Speaker 1: UM when essentially there was this idea that there are
• 8:43
  Speaker 1: some places out there that deserves a special extra level
• 8:49
  Speaker 1: of protection to make sure that you know, decades from now,
• 8:52
  Speaker 1: when development continues, things continue to get bought up, dug up, whatever,
• 8:57
  Speaker 1: that there will still be a few last vested hig
• 9:00
  Speaker 1: is of untouched land, stuff that still looks like it
• 9:04
  Speaker 1: did three years ago. This still has wildlife that still
• 9:06
  Speaker 1: has the ability to go into it and and here
• 9:10
  Speaker 1: silence to go into it and not see lights and
• 9:13
  Speaker 1: cars and people everywhere. So this law, the Wilderness Act,
• 9:18
  Speaker 1: was passed. It created this system to protect these places,
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  Speaker 1: and the Boundary Waters was one of those places. One
• 9:24
  Speaker 1: point one million acres protected in the Boundary Waters Canoe
• 9:29
  Speaker 1: Area Wilderness, which is where we're just at um so originally,
• 9:36
  Speaker 1: and Chuck and Andy are not paying attention at all.
• 9:38
  Speaker 1: They're sitting in the front seat winking at each other.
• 9:41
  Speaker 1: Like the last six days. This beautiful guys, Yes, we
• 9:46
  Speaker 1: love it. Stop saying that. So So that's where we've been.
• 9:50
  Speaker 1: And you know, originally, was was intrigued by this place
• 9:54
  Speaker 1: because there's so much interest. There was so much talk
• 9:56
  Speaker 1: over the last five five years or so at least
• 9:59
  Speaker 1: that I was picking up on about certain threats to
• 10:03
  Speaker 1: this wilderness area. Was intrigued, wanted to learn more about
• 10:06
  Speaker 1: this place that so many people seem to care about.
• 10:08
  Speaker 1: So last year said, you know what, We're going to
• 10:10
  Speaker 1: go and do a deer hunt in the boundary waters
• 10:13
  Speaker 1: and made this plan. My buddy Andy Bradley says, I'm in.
• 10:16
  Speaker 1: We're gonna do the trip. We're all set to go,
• 10:19
  Speaker 1: and then I don't know, in October, first week of
• 10:22
  Speaker 1: October or late September or something, and it's like, ah, man,
• 10:25
  Speaker 1: I can't do it, and why did you bail? You bailed,
• 10:29
  Speaker 1: Andy bailed. It's the first time you ever bailed on
• 10:32
  Speaker 1: me too. I don't know if i've I've kind of
• 10:34
  Speaker 1: went over this, but I go by feel you weren't
• 10:37
  Speaker 1: feeling it. No, I wasn't feeling you know, someone us
• 10:42
  Speaker 1: get to live the feral lifestyle, like my friends sitting
• 10:46
  Speaker 1: next to me here, Charlie. But I have to make
• 10:49
  Speaker 1: money and stuff, and I don't get to do it
• 10:51
  Speaker 1: on the road, so I had to choose. As much
• 10:54
  Speaker 1: as I hate to say, I had to choose employment
• 10:57
  Speaker 1: over leaving. So are you glad you left? Um? I
• 11:00
  Speaker 1: don't even work there anymore, So no, I wish I
• 11:02
  Speaker 1: would have went, but I wouldn't have got to meet
• 11:05
  Speaker 1: you because and how I got to go there. We're
• 11:09
  Speaker 1: all worked out, so yeah, and Hey, couldn't do it
• 11:10
  Speaker 1: last year, so we didn't do it this year, rescheduled
• 11:13
  Speaker 1: it and we did it. Um. So let's start here
• 11:17
  Speaker 1: with a little bit of background around what happened leading
• 11:20
  Speaker 1: up to the trip. I will be the first to
• 11:22
  Speaker 1: say that Josh did a ton of the vast, vast
• 11:26
  Speaker 1: majority andy andy planning things ahead of time. I've been
• 11:30
  Speaker 1: running like crazy. He had a hard time focusing on
• 11:32
  Speaker 1: any major planning like this, So I said, hey, Josh,
• 11:35
  Speaker 1: do you think that's something you might be able to
• 11:37
  Speaker 1: take on? And you did. You ran with it, did
• 11:39
  Speaker 1: an awesome job. Um, do you want to give us
• 11:42
  Speaker 1: a brief recap of how you went about trying to
• 11:44
  Speaker 1: plan a trip like this, because I think that's one
• 11:46
  Speaker 1: of the main things that people maybe get a little
• 11:48
  Speaker 1: intimidated about when they're thinking of trying an out of
• 11:50
  Speaker 1: state major destination wilderness trip, Like this is how the
• 11:54
  Speaker 1: heck do you get started? Can you give us a
• 11:56
  Speaker 1: quick rundown of what you did? It's pretty dawning, um,
• 12:00
  Speaker 1: daunting tasks to try to put all that together, because
• 12:02
  Speaker 1: you started looking at the maps and seeing all this
• 12:05
  Speaker 1: stuff like she's already even start one acres and it
• 12:10
  Speaker 1: all looks like very similar stream. Yeah, yeah, like big
• 12:15
  Speaker 1: big Northwood stuff. Um. So luckily Mark gave me some
• 12:21
  Speaker 1: some people to to talk to and kind of got
• 12:23
  Speaker 1: me pointing in the right direction. And that kind of
• 12:24
  Speaker 1: took it from there. And I talked to a number
• 12:27
  Speaker 1: of different people that have spent time up here, that
• 12:29
  Speaker 1: I've hunted up here, that I've just you know, spent
• 12:31
  Speaker 1: time here in the summer, um to try to get
• 12:34
  Speaker 1: me pointed in the right direction. So UM talk to
• 12:37
  Speaker 1: several different people, kind of had i don't know, maybe
• 12:39
  Speaker 1: five areas picked out, um that we should check out
• 12:42
  Speaker 1: for deer hunting. UM looked at him on maps, kind
• 12:45
  Speaker 1: of started narrowing them down just from a from an
• 12:49
  Speaker 1: access standpoint of what we could get into relatively easily,
• 12:54
  Speaker 1: um for a couple of first or a few first
• 12:56
  Speaker 1: timers coming up here. Um. So then we had it
• 12:58
  Speaker 1: down basically had it down to people are too let's
• 13:01
  Speaker 1: let's let's rewind just a little bit. Tell me if
• 13:05
  Speaker 1: I'm wrong here, But but the types of people you
• 13:07
  Speaker 1: reached out to. You reached out to other hunters, you
• 13:10
  Speaker 1: reached out to some conservation organizations, you reached out to
• 13:13
  Speaker 1: some outfitters like folks that are dealing people coming in
• 13:17
  Speaker 1: and out, in and out and out. And you reached
• 13:18
  Speaker 1: out to a biologist too. Right. I talked to one
• 13:21
  Speaker 1: of the biologists here in Minnesota and they do a
• 13:23
  Speaker 1: lot of the studies and where the deer are at,
• 13:26
  Speaker 1: and yeah, we're not to go so all that kind
• 13:29
  Speaker 1: of let make sure that wherever we went, there'll be
• 13:30
  Speaker 1: lots of deer. Um. So so yeah, that that's just
• 13:35
  Speaker 1: I think a key point for people to keep in mind,
• 13:37
  Speaker 1: Like there's all sorts of people you can talk to
• 13:38
  Speaker 1: many times will be quite helpful at least in giving
• 13:41
  Speaker 1: you some general information. Like you said, we had now
• 13:44
  Speaker 1: a handful of different ideas like check out this region,
• 13:46
  Speaker 1: check out this region, check out this region. If you
• 13:48
  Speaker 1: hadn't done that. One of the major spots I was
• 13:51
  Speaker 1: curious about was on the total opposite side of the
• 13:53
  Speaker 1: of the wilderness. There was a place where it was
• 13:56
  Speaker 1: a big burn. I thought, well, that would be cool.
• 13:57
  Speaker 1: I bet you there'd be some activity around there. But
• 14:00
  Speaker 1: come to find out, there's very few white tails over
• 14:02
  Speaker 1: there at all, mostly moose. Um. So that was a
• 14:05
  Speaker 1: great thing that we wouldn't have known if you hadn't
• 14:07
  Speaker 1: talked to these folks. Yeah, it was just got a
• 14:10
  Speaker 1: ton of help from numerous different people of um, different
• 14:14
  Speaker 1: backgrounds that kind of got us pointed in in some
• 14:16
  Speaker 1: decent directions and then kind of just went from there
• 14:19
  Speaker 1: and picked out a spot. And when we got to
• 14:22
  Speaker 1: the canoe outfit or to get our canoes and who
• 14:25
  Speaker 1: do we go Northwood's outfitting we go. Um. They were
• 14:30
  Speaker 1: a huge help, big time help, and it took a
• 14:33
  Speaker 1: lot of time with us even then the day that
• 14:35
  Speaker 1: we got here and kind of looking at maps and
• 14:37
  Speaker 1: we kind of made a last minute because in time
• 14:41
  Speaker 1: decision of a different spot to go. Yeah, I think
• 14:43
  Speaker 1: that we need to provide some context as to what
• 14:46
  Speaker 1: this area is like, how you're moving around, how you're
• 14:48
  Speaker 1: getting things done. The way it starts, you have to
• 14:50
  Speaker 1: pick an entry point into the wilderness, and then you
• 14:53
  Speaker 1: are typically going to be canoeing a river or a lake,
• 14:57
  Speaker 1: and then you're gonna basically use rivers and lakes as
• 14:59
  Speaker 1: highway to get from place to place to place. And
• 15:02
  Speaker 1: then in between waterways there are something called portages, which
• 15:05
  Speaker 1: are essentially just trails that connect you to the next
• 15:09
  Speaker 1: water source. And so what we were trying to figure
• 15:11
  Speaker 1: out was, all right, how far can we get or
• 15:14
  Speaker 1: which regions can get to with our canoes with all
• 15:17
  Speaker 1: the gear we're taking in, Um, how difficult these portages?
• 15:21
  Speaker 1: I know there's some resources online that gave you some
• 15:24
  Speaker 1: INNTEL there there are some great resources online websites that
• 15:27
  Speaker 1: show you pictures and give you difficulty ratings and all
• 15:31
  Speaker 1: that kind of stuff. To still feel like the guy
• 15:33
  Speaker 1: we talked to Adam, I think was he was more
• 15:35
  Speaker 1: helpful there in personally actually tell you that one YEARNA
• 15:38
  Speaker 1: have to go over some steep cliffs or whatever, and
• 15:40
  Speaker 1: you might not want to take that with with all
• 15:42
  Speaker 1: your stuff. Um, so that was good, and we went
• 15:46
  Speaker 1: in heavy. We had a lot of stuff, so we
• 15:47
  Speaker 1: had to be pretty mindful of that. Yes, let's talk gear.
• 15:51
  Speaker 1: So we just prior to our hunt, a big storm
• 15:54
  Speaker 1: had pushed through northern Minnesota and the northern Great Plains
• 15:57
  Speaker 1: and so others. So as we snow and way and
• 16:00
  Speaker 1: rain and really nasty, and so when we were packing,
• 16:03
  Speaker 1: like in a couple of days ahead of time, I know,
• 16:04
  Speaker 1: we were all thinking like, man, it's gonna be cold
• 16:06
  Speaker 1: and nasty and wet. So like I had heavy like
• 16:09
  Speaker 1: rain gear and cold leather gear packed, and we uh,
• 16:14
  Speaker 1: we had I guess prior to this, we've even talked
• 16:16
  Speaker 1: about this. But we've got a wood burning stove and
• 16:19
  Speaker 1: a wall tent that we were able to rent and use.
• 16:23
  Speaker 1: So we had a wall tent. It was a pretty
• 16:25
  Speaker 1: cool small a frame wall tent. We had a small
• 16:27
  Speaker 1: packable we're burning stove. We had two canoes, and all
• 16:31
  Speaker 1: those things we rented from parags Umgress. I was always
• 16:37
  Speaker 1: gonna say paro um And so we got all that
• 16:42
  Speaker 1: gear from them. And then as far as our own equipment,
• 16:45
  Speaker 1: we each brought our bows, we each brought a cold
• 16:48
  Speaker 1: weather sleeping bag, sleeping pad, UH, backpacking cook stove, UM,
• 16:55
  Speaker 1: fire starting equipment, UH food for the however long it
• 17:00
  Speaker 1: ended up being that we're in there. Um boots, boots,
• 17:04
  Speaker 1: two different pairs of boots, like rubber boots and boots, right,
• 17:08
  Speaker 1: because getting it out of the water, we didn't know
• 17:10
  Speaker 1: what that situation was going to be like. So Andy
• 17:13
  Speaker 1: and I brought it like hip waiters. You guys had
• 17:15
  Speaker 1: knee highs um all your basic honey equipment. We had
• 17:20
  Speaker 1: a strong debate about whether or not we should bring
• 17:22
  Speaker 1: like our saddles and sticks in or not if we
• 17:24
  Speaker 1: would need that. Um. So we brought a couple of
• 17:27
  Speaker 1: saddles and a couple of sets of sticks, but not
• 17:29
  Speaker 1: all of them. Fishing gear, fishing gear? What else? Bows,
• 17:35
  Speaker 1: bows and arrows? Uh? Oh? And Andy Broder shotgun, a
• 17:40
  Speaker 1: little four ten packable shotgun which was clutch. So that's
• 17:45
  Speaker 1: what we packed in with. Um. We set out to
• 17:48
  Speaker 1: the entry point, got the canoes out there, got loaded up,
• 17:53
  Speaker 1: and start paddling in. Before we got started, where was
• 17:56
  Speaker 1: everyone's heads at? Where we're Josh? When we were unloading
• 18:00
  Speaker 1: all of our equipment. Me and Andy know that Josh
• 18:02
  Speaker 1: was back and forth, back and forth circles looking at
• 18:05
  Speaker 1: this gear. Uh what were you thinking about? Like, I'm
• 18:08
  Speaker 1: just anxious, Like I haven't done a trip like this,
• 18:10
  Speaker 1: Like I spent some time on the water, but not
• 18:12
  Speaker 1: like not paddling all this gear across lakes and rivers
• 18:16
  Speaker 1: and portaging it. I just I just had some anxiety
• 18:20
  Speaker 1: leading up to it, like what we're actually getting ourselves into? Andy? Um,
• 18:25
  Speaker 1: it was kind of I don't want to sound like
• 18:27
  Speaker 1: you know at all, but like it was exactly what
• 18:29
  Speaker 1: I was hoping it would be like when we got there,
• 18:32
  Speaker 1: until we got to some of the portages, wasn't ready
• 18:34
  Speaker 1: for that, but it was exactly just the layout in
• 18:38
  Speaker 1: the way the water, like little slow moving rivers between
• 18:41
  Speaker 1: lakes and things like that. It was just I was.
• 18:44
  Speaker 1: I was ready for it when we pulled in. I
• 18:45
  Speaker 1: was ready to get in there. What do you think, Charles,
• 18:48
  Speaker 1: you came into this with you weren't as involved in
• 18:50
  Speaker 1: with most of the planning, and you're you're kind of
• 18:52
  Speaker 1: tagging along on a lot of different trips and just
• 18:54
  Speaker 1: joining people and and you know, enjoying the experience and
• 18:57
  Speaker 1: documenting a little bit. Where was your that, man? I
• 19:02
  Speaker 1: think the whole time I've just been going into everything
• 19:05
  Speaker 1: with open mind and just ready to see and experience
• 19:08
  Speaker 1: everything to its full capacity. But when we got here,
• 19:13
  Speaker 1: I really like the landscape driving in and the water
• 19:16
  Speaker 1: was what, like Andy said, everything I hoped it'd be.
• 19:20
  Speaker 1: But I was a little paranoid about canoeing and worried
• 19:23
  Speaker 1: about having all the camera equipment, hoping we wouldn't flip it.
• 19:28
  Speaker 1: But that didn't happen. But we tried. Yeah, oh man,
• 19:32
  Speaker 1: we were close. I wouldn't say we, I would say
• 19:36
  Speaker 1: one person's right, but we did manage not to and
• 19:40
  Speaker 1: that wasn't That was a little bit concerned about too, like,
• 19:43
  Speaker 1: especially since the last time I was in the canoe
• 19:45
  Speaker 1: was on the river in Montana. I flipped the canoe
• 19:47
  Speaker 1: in the middle of winter and soaked myself. Yeah, we
• 19:50
  Speaker 1: came up with we brought two way radios in case
• 19:52
  Speaker 1: there was in some emergency, and we had to decide
• 19:56
  Speaker 1: what everybody's call name was. And right off the bat,
• 19:58
  Speaker 1: everybody this did that tippy canoe was perfect. From Mark
• 20:03
  Speaker 1: and then Josh, we decided to call brown Bear because
• 20:06
  Speaker 1: he can't discern between grizzly bears and black bears. It's
• 20:10
  Speaker 1: just uh, we never really did ever come up with
• 20:16
  Speaker 1: what yours was? Andy, No, well, I think it mouth breather.
• 20:20
  Speaker 1: That one was that one whisper yeller. Yeah, but loud talker.
• 20:25
  Speaker 1: It's not that funny when it's that true, you know.
• 20:27
  Speaker 1: And I'm out there yelling in mouth breathing and stuff.
• 20:30
  Speaker 1: The photographers like, hey man, you really do breathe with
• 20:32
  Speaker 1: your mouth open. I'm like, I thought I told you that.
• 20:35
  Speaker 1: Like it's like all those shots are ruined because your
• 20:37
  Speaker 1: mouth's open. Oh man. Um. So the two Way Raiders
• 20:42
  Speaker 1: didn't end up being used very much so anyways, because
• 20:44
  Speaker 1: no one ever turned him on, although they did scare
• 20:46
  Speaker 1: us one night. Okay, we're getting ahead of ourselves a
• 20:49
  Speaker 1: little bit with that one. Um. But yeah, So we
• 20:51
  Speaker 1: got in. We found this entry point we thought would
• 20:54
  Speaker 1: be an easy, relatively easy one to get to. It
• 20:56
  Speaker 1: give you access to a number of different lakes that
• 20:58
  Speaker 1: we could go explore, um and seemed like a nice
• 21:01
  Speaker 1: way to dip our toe in. UM. So we can
• 21:04
  Speaker 1: kind of fast forward. We got in there, set up camp,
• 21:07
  Speaker 1: set up the A frame, waltend Uh started fishing. Well
• 21:11
  Speaker 1: that first night. Did we fish a little bit that
• 21:12
  Speaker 1: first night? I think so. I think we got a
• 21:14
  Speaker 1: late afternoon or early evening maybe. Yeah, we definitely fished
• 21:17
  Speaker 1: from the shore that night, late evening, I guess, and
• 21:19
  Speaker 1: yeah fish from the shore. No fish caught that night,
• 21:21
  Speaker 1: right right. Um, we kind of scotted a little bit around.
• 21:27
  Speaker 1: We're getting firewear right off to get and we found
• 21:30
  Speaker 1: I found a buck rob up on top of the hill.
• 21:32
  Speaker 1: Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. So we were like high five
• 21:34
  Speaker 1: in we would but we did it. We found we
• 21:36
  Speaker 1: found the deer. It's gonna happen. It gonna happen easy.
• 21:39
  Speaker 1: Next morning. Uh, really early in the morning, we all
• 21:41
  Speaker 1: had said, like leaving to the trip, we just want
• 21:43
  Speaker 1: to have at least a morning or two we sleep in,
• 21:47
  Speaker 1: just relaxed a little bit. We're so hectic and busy
• 21:49
  Speaker 1: all the time. And usually the huns, especially that I
• 21:52
  Speaker 1: drag you guys a long form, usually cracking the whip
• 21:54
  Speaker 1: and really annoying about it. We're like, no, this time,
• 21:56
  Speaker 1: we're gonna relax, And like five third in the morning,
• 21:59
  Speaker 1: Andy crame, pops up up, let's go right away. What
• 22:04
  Speaker 1: was up with that? I just I'm ready to get going.
• 22:06
  Speaker 1: I wasn't. I didn't want to lay there anymore. You
• 22:08
  Speaker 1: were excitable. Yeah, I got up, freaking the zipp er
• 22:11
  Speaker 1: up and down, waking everybody out. I I felt like
• 22:14
  Speaker 1: there was dear to be killed. So after that buck rub,
• 22:16
  Speaker 1: when I got up like it was gonna happen. So
• 22:18
  Speaker 1: how did your first morning hun go? Like the rest
• 22:21
  Speaker 1: of them? I actually I was trying to sneak up
• 22:26
  Speaker 1: to the top of that ridge where kind of where
• 22:27
  Speaker 1: that buck rub was, and I was probably fifty yards
• 22:31
  Speaker 1: from the top of that and I heard it sounded
• 22:33
  Speaker 1: like a deer running off. You could feel, you know,
• 22:35
  Speaker 1: hear the hooves hitting into the ground. And he was like,
• 22:38
  Speaker 1: but I was still optimistic at that point, like him,
• 22:40
  Speaker 1: they're here, and didn't have any idea what I was
• 22:43
  Speaker 1: walking into. And then I did some scouting around and
• 22:46
  Speaker 1: saw some more deer sign But when you said, dear son,
• 22:48
  Speaker 1: what we're seeing, Um, I found a couple of beds
• 22:51
  Speaker 1: on top of the top of that ridge, and I
• 22:53
  Speaker 1: think that's the deer that I probably kicked up. Oh
• 22:56
  Speaker 1: my god. I got sat down and uh, I had
• 22:59
  Speaker 1: a couple of red squirrels come running chasing each other,
• 23:02
  Speaker 1: and I thought it was dear and I got pretty
• 23:04
  Speaker 1: excited for a minute there. I had my heart pumping.
• 23:06
  Speaker 1: And then were you knocked? Knocked? Oh? Yeah, I was ready.
• 23:12
  Speaker 1: That was the pretty much the first morning. And then
• 23:14
  Speaker 1: I made my way back down. Well, was that the
• 23:16
  Speaker 1: morning that I did you get a grouse? I shot
• 23:17
  Speaker 1: at one, I launched. I took some feathers off of
• 23:21
  Speaker 1: a grouse with my bow and launched an arrow into
• 23:23
  Speaker 1: the I don't know. So we're gonna swing back around
• 23:27
  Speaker 1: and look for it. I think that you lost a
• 23:29
  Speaker 1: few arrows. Yeah. Um, So let's describe the terrain. I guess.
• 23:33
  Speaker 1: So we just said that there's all these lakes and rivers.
• 23:35
  Speaker 1: There's hundreds and hundreds of these lakes and rivers and everything.
• 23:38
  Speaker 1: But then in between all that is this big northern
• 23:43
  Speaker 1: woods like I think this would be called a boreal
• 23:45
  Speaker 1: forest maybe, or no, that might be I don't know.
• 23:48
  Speaker 1: I'm gonna backtrack on that north woods big woods forest.
• 23:52
  Speaker 1: And then this Canadian shield rocky kind of surface. You've
• 23:58
  Speaker 1: got these big rocky ridges, big rocky points judging out
• 24:02
  Speaker 1: into the lakes. Everything's rocky. Um quite a bit of topography.
• 24:07
  Speaker 1: I mean, lots of ups and downs, um, rugged stuff.
• 24:11
  Speaker 1: When the visibility is very very closely, I can't shoot
• 24:18
  Speaker 1: a bow more than fifteen or twenty yards. There's very
• 24:21
  Speaker 1: few places you could shoot past twenty. A lot of
• 24:23
  Speaker 1: places we were setting up for the ten yard shots.
• 24:26
  Speaker 1: So that first morning you came back though, like we had,
• 24:29
  Speaker 1: we did still sleep in. You came back, it was lumped.
• 24:32
  Speaker 1: There's deer there. Sign I spooked a couple. It's game on, um.
• 24:39
  Speaker 1: And then also you've seen some grouse and you saw
• 24:42
  Speaker 1: two gros to grouse like ten yards from the tent. Right.
• 24:46
  Speaker 1: So we got all set up midday then and did
• 24:49
  Speaker 1: some fishing. And I think we caught fish on the
• 24:52
  Speaker 1: first day, right, and cofish and cootfish. The true boys.
• 24:57
  Speaker 1: First fish was your big pike. It wasn't huge, but
• 25:01
  Speaker 1: it was right in the wheelhouse because it was it
• 25:03
  Speaker 1: over thirty We couldn't keep just under that probably or
• 25:07
  Speaker 1: something like that. Nice one though, um, and what I mean,
• 25:12
  Speaker 1: let's summarize the fishing. We fished that lake. You fished
• 25:18
  Speaker 1: four town lake, We fished the other lake. We fished
• 25:22
  Speaker 1: another one farther to the north and east, and three
• 25:27
  Speaker 1: or four along the way. How many fish did we catch?
• 25:30
  Speaker 1: I think a grand total of what did How many
• 25:34
  Speaker 1: did you catch? I see where this is going. I
• 25:38
  Speaker 1: caught four. I caught two mark cuts. I might be
• 25:45
  Speaker 1: the only person that has ever gone to the boundary
• 25:46
  Speaker 1: waters and not not caught a single fish. The closest
• 25:50
  Speaker 1: I came was a nice big pike followed my stick
• 25:52
  Speaker 1: bait right to the bottom of the boat. You see,
• 25:56
  Speaker 1: I did do it, didn't take. He's a big sucker
• 26:00
  Speaker 1: market as uson like a little kitty pole too. That's right.
• 26:03
  Speaker 1: That was a good, good part of the trip that
• 26:05
  Speaker 1: we I thought I'd buy a little pack rod on
• 26:08
  Speaker 1: the way up, and then everywhere the place we didn't
• 26:10
  Speaker 1: have good pack rods. I don't I don't know if
• 26:12
  Speaker 1: I'm allowed to backtrack, but can we go into uh,
• 26:15
  Speaker 1: why you bought a rod on the way and you
• 26:16
  Speaker 1: didn't buy one earlier just because I didn't prepare? Well?
• 26:19
  Speaker 1: Why though there's no why did you not have a rod?
• 26:23
  Speaker 1: I don't know, spinning rod? Because I want to fly
• 26:26
  Speaker 1: fish is what we're talking about. Here we go, Yes,
• 26:28
  Speaker 1: so I did, and I did want to fly like
• 26:30
  Speaker 1: I thought, if we're going up here, you gotta try
• 26:31
  Speaker 1: fly fishing. But then Andy says, well, the research I
• 26:34
  Speaker 1: did said that's not gonna be very good right now.
• 26:36
  Speaker 1: So just like a day before the trip, I called
• 26:38
  Speaker 1: a bunch of shops around here trying to get the
• 26:40
  Speaker 1: scoop and talk to a guy who takes fly fishing
• 26:43
  Speaker 1: pretty seriously, said no, you can. You just gotta find
• 26:45
  Speaker 1: like green grass. Still, you can find some spots where
• 26:48
  Speaker 1: there's still some green, weedy grass, rip some streamers over
• 26:51
  Speaker 1: top of them with an eight way and you can
• 26:53
  Speaker 1: still do it. So I almost bought a brand new
• 26:56
  Speaker 1: eight way because my fly rods are all five ways,
• 26:59
  Speaker 1: but Andy luckily had one, so brought all that. But
• 27:03
  Speaker 1: then I also thought, well, you know it might not work.
• 27:06
  Speaker 1: Better get a spinning a new spinning set up to
• 27:08
  Speaker 1: me and Josh were high five and every time he
• 27:10
  Speaker 1: let's talking about fly fish, and that's part of why
• 27:12
  Speaker 1: he like, let's look at this guy. So yeah, I
• 27:14
  Speaker 1: bought a new crappy little pack rod, and on the
• 27:18
  Speaker 1: first day the tip broke just casting, not even doing
• 27:21
  Speaker 1: anything crazy, the tip the last six inches broke off.
• 27:24
  Speaker 1: So that was probably the only reason why I didn't
• 27:26
  Speaker 1: catch fish, if I'll be honest about it, if I
• 27:28
  Speaker 1: had I work, and and then after that he went
• 27:32
  Speaker 1: to fly fishing and he caught Well. If the thing
• 27:35
  Speaker 1: is though, that was kind of a lousy rod too.
• 27:37
  Speaker 1: I feel like if you had taken better care of it,
• 27:39
  Speaker 1: I probably would have cast him fish. Yeah, that's a
• 27:43
  Speaker 1: good point, I think, yeah, that's behind that. I'm glad
• 27:46
  Speaker 1: we're on the same page there. But fishing, we did
• 27:48
  Speaker 1: not catch the money fish. We tried all sorts of things.
• 27:51
  Speaker 1: We tried for pike, We tried for walleye, tray, for Smalley's,
• 27:55
  Speaker 1: trolled cast, crank baits, stick baits, suspend ending floating crawlers,
• 28:04
  Speaker 1: leeches close to shore, far from shore, off the points
• 28:08
  Speaker 1: in the inlets. Nothing was pretty valiant effort. I think
• 28:13
  Speaker 1: it was a valiant effort. But we talked to some
• 28:15
  Speaker 1: other people and they all had similar experiences. So it
• 28:18
  Speaker 1: seems like things were just slow right now. I don't
• 28:21
  Speaker 1: exactly know why, but it sounds like it's not. It's
• 28:24
  Speaker 1: definitely not like this all the time. From everything I've heard.
• 28:26
  Speaker 1: It can be really incredible, it can be amazing fishing.
• 28:29
  Speaker 1: That this wasn't happening before us um fishing was not happening.
• 28:34
  Speaker 1: Grouse hunting was decent. I went out that next day
• 28:38
  Speaker 1: on a morning hunt and saw two grouse. Uh, Josh,
• 28:42
  Speaker 1: didn't you see a grouse that same morning? I saw
• 28:45
  Speaker 1: grouse almost every time I went out. Now, the issue
• 28:48
  Speaker 1: is that you and I didn't get a small game licensees.
• 28:50
  Speaker 1: We didn't have a shotgun or anything. In retrospect, we
• 28:53
  Speaker 1: should have had shotgun, should have had small game licenses.
• 28:56
  Speaker 1: I tried to tell them you did, but what wouldn't
• 28:59
  Speaker 1: be what we're gonna do. We're gonna take turns with
• 29:01
  Speaker 1: that shotgun, or you could have at least shot him
• 29:04
  Speaker 1: with your bows still fighting. It isn't he Josh Trash knows.
• 29:11
  Speaker 1: Next time, Next time, next time, we'll have our own
• 29:13
  Speaker 1: little but packable shotguns. If you want to get right
• 29:16
  Speaker 1: into it, just let's just do it now. Yeah, So
• 29:21
  Speaker 1: anybody that knows me knows that this is the most
• 29:25
  Speaker 1: Andy Radley thing ever. Go ahead, We're gonna think you'll
• 29:28
  Speaker 1: be more. So. We know one who is in eloquent,
• 29:34
  Speaker 1: sorry for We're we're gonna go out and try to
• 29:38
  Speaker 1: shoot some grouse because Andy had seen some that morning.
• 29:40
  Speaker 1: So and he's like, all, yeah, I gotta find my shells.
• 29:42
  Speaker 1: So he starts digging through his bag and he's got
• 29:44
  Speaker 1: ships sprewn all over the place, strewn all everywhere. We've
• 29:46
  Speaker 1: been there for less than twelve hours, and this is
• 29:48
  Speaker 1: just how it is. Andy. He'll he'll pull a packet
• 29:51
  Speaker 1: two in one pocket, and then I'll pick getting. You know,
• 29:53
  Speaker 1: he's he brought a tool bag with him to bag.
• 29:56
  Speaker 1: That's what my food goes. I mean, you just don't
• 29:59
  Speaker 1: know what you're to get. But he tore his whole
• 30:01
  Speaker 1: thing apart, cannot find the shells. So he says, you
• 30:04
  Speaker 1: know what, dang it, I'm paddling all the way out
• 30:06
  Speaker 1: of here. He packed his stuff up, paddled all the
• 30:08
  Speaker 1: way back out, and then drove all the way back
• 30:13
  Speaker 1: to the nearest town, bought new shells, came all the
• 30:16
  Speaker 1: way five dollars for a box of four ten shells.
• 30:19
  Speaker 1: That's very crazy. Came all the way back, paddled all
• 30:22
  Speaker 1: the way back, got to camp, fiddling around, looks at
• 30:25
  Speaker 1: his backpack, into the pocket. Here's my shells. After all that,
• 30:29
  Speaker 1: And I told you guys, I didn't have to tell
• 30:30
  Speaker 1: anybody that I found him. I could have left him
• 30:32
  Speaker 1: in there and just been like, man, I wish I
• 30:34
  Speaker 1: wouldn't forgot the shelves. But I'm not that guy. So
• 30:36
  Speaker 1: you did come out with it. That was good because
• 30:38
  Speaker 1: we got a good laugh out of that. God, we
• 30:40
  Speaker 1: laughed a lot. We laughed at the stomach hurt you,
• 30:44
  Speaker 1: you especially because you weren't You weren't prepared for it.
• 30:48
  Speaker 1: Like we we've been in this situation before, the three
• 30:50
  Speaker 1: of us, we've hunted and done a lot of stuff together,
• 30:52
  Speaker 1: so we know what it's going to entail. But you
• 30:54
  Speaker 1: had no idea coming into this what the situation was
• 30:57
  Speaker 1: going to be. And every nights I would just be
• 30:59
  Speaker 1: like dying chuckling, chuckles, shock as a chucker. What did
• 31:05
  Speaker 1: you rewinding the tape even further? What did you think about,
• 31:08
  Speaker 1: like just being thrust in this situation with three random
• 31:11
  Speaker 1: dudes because we'd only met once. I didn't know these guys.
• 31:14
  Speaker 1: Were you nervous about that? What if we were complete jerks?
• 31:17
  Speaker 1: I would I'm pretty good at like just getting along
• 31:21
  Speaker 1: with people, feeling out the situation we were jerks. It's
• 31:24
  Speaker 1: kind of like backpedal to no, No, he won't make kind.
• 31:27
  Speaker 1: When you get home and see your girlfriends, the first
• 31:29
  Speaker 1: thing you're gonna say, three real douche bags, like just
• 31:32
  Speaker 1: one douche bag, and the rest of us were cool.
• 31:35
  Speaker 1: Mark and Andy were real nice. Yeah, yeah, you know
• 31:38
  Speaker 1: what I meant by that murder? No, it was great,
• 31:42
  Speaker 1: um going into it. I mean I've kind of just
• 31:45
  Speaker 1: been drifting around for the month prior, so kind of transient. Yeah,
• 31:48
  Speaker 1: not more feral, but no one knows what we're talking about.
• 31:56
  Speaker 1: The hardest. The hardest part of it always like just
• 31:58
  Speaker 1: going from personality to personnel. But I felt like this
• 32:01
  Speaker 1: was a pretty good fitting groups. We thought so too.
• 32:04
  Speaker 1: Um so let's talk about the grouse pounding. Yeah, so
• 32:07
  Speaker 1: we would do this whole grouse pound idea, which because
• 32:10
  Speaker 1: there's only one person with a shotgun, we'd have Andy
• 32:13
  Speaker 1: walk in the middle and then the other three of
• 32:15
  Speaker 1: us would walk in a line on either side like
• 32:18
  Speaker 1: bird dogs trying to sniff him up. And why don't
• 32:22
  Speaker 1: date two. We tried this, and we sniffed up one
• 32:24
  Speaker 1: for you, but you were the one who spot Actually
• 32:27
  Speaker 1: I spot it. I said here's one, and I said
• 32:29
  Speaker 1: I'm gonna you know, got the gun ready and shot it.
• 32:31
  Speaker 1: And I think Josh climbed a tree. You gotta tell me,
• 32:35
  Speaker 1: let me know. That wasn't fair. I didn't. I thought
• 32:39
  Speaker 1: you did here, But then that wasn't the only Another
• 32:44
  Speaker 1: time he's sitting on the rocks and and he thought
• 32:47
  Speaker 1: he saw a bird right we shot the gun right
• 32:48
  Speaker 1: over Josh's head. Scared the snot out of him. That
• 32:53
  Speaker 1: time too. Um, he got all the time that Josh
• 32:56
  Speaker 1: want to get his picture taken and you threw a
• 32:57
  Speaker 1: rock right behind him and he crapped his door. Was again. Yeah,
• 33:01
  Speaker 1: it was a lot of gags. I feel like, gosh,
• 33:04
  Speaker 1: you talk about all of them. It makes me think
• 33:07
  Speaker 1: maybe I'm not that much fun. It's fun for me.
• 33:09
  Speaker 1: But thanks I get for putting a lot of legwork
• 33:12
  Speaker 1: into playing this trip getting ragged down. If we more
• 33:15
  Speaker 1: fish or deer, I think I might not have been
• 33:18
  Speaker 1: so hard. Yeah, I think it's easy. We know who
• 33:20
  Speaker 1: to blame for this one. Yeah, but we did kill
• 33:22
  Speaker 1: another grouse and then you kill another grouse at a
• 33:25
  Speaker 1: later date to while you're at hunting. So you killed
• 33:27
  Speaker 1: three grouse three yeah, um, and caught a few fish.
• 33:32
  Speaker 1: So day two we also had a pretty epic shore
• 33:35
  Speaker 1: lunch because when you guys wanted to get more shells,
• 33:38
  Speaker 1: you picked up some potatoes, onions, and peppers. Yeah so
• 33:42
  Speaker 1: so yeah, we sliced up the onions and peppers from ptatoes. Yes,
• 33:47
  Speaker 1: you're deficiencies sometimes help us out. And we flayed up
• 33:53
  Speaker 1: the pike and sliced up the grouse breast and did
• 33:58
  Speaker 1: a pretty epic fry up and we had no plates though,
• 34:01
  Speaker 1: so after we fried everything up, we just poured it
• 34:03
  Speaker 1: out on these boulders that we were sitting on and
• 34:05
  Speaker 1: just ate fresh fried grouse and fish and potatoes and
• 34:09
  Speaker 1: onions with their fingers. Right after the rocks in larging
• 34:12
  Speaker 1: out over the lake. Yeah, cried up and large. That
• 34:15
  Speaker 1: was about one of the very best meals. Are fantastic.
• 34:19
  Speaker 1: I mean, that made the trip. I've eaten grouse before,
• 34:21
  Speaker 1: but I just I don't know, it just wasn't as
• 34:23
  Speaker 1: good as this time. I don't know why that is.
• 34:25
  Speaker 1: It was excellent. Maybe it was simply because it was
• 34:29
  Speaker 1: so cherished, because it was the only protein we were requiring.
• 34:33
  Speaker 1: But it was fantastic. Um. So that's our grouse hunting covered.
• 34:40
  Speaker 1: Fishing and grouse hunting pretty quickly. Unfortunately a lot each
• 34:42
  Speaker 1: one of our categories here could be covered quick quickly.
• 34:45
  Speaker 1: And then the deer hunting and stuff. Talk about deer hunting. Uh,
• 34:52
  Speaker 1: so Andy had your encounter the first morning where we
• 34:54
  Speaker 1: heard a deer um. The next morning, then know that
• 34:59
  Speaker 1: night Charlie and I went out and we found two
• 35:01
  Speaker 1: fresh rubs and two fresh scrapes, and you guys saw
• 35:04
  Speaker 1: some sign and Basically, as we discussed, there's all these
• 35:09
  Speaker 1: big rocky ridges coming out, and then there's pine trees,
• 35:12
  Speaker 1: birch trees, balsam, and some scrubby oaks, some kind of
• 35:16
  Speaker 1: red oak, and so I originally thought, all right, one
• 35:19
  Speaker 1: of the reasons why this area looks so enticing as
• 35:21
  Speaker 1: that we heard there's these oak ridges. We assume there'll
• 35:23
  Speaker 1: be a lot of deer feeding on these acorns. We
• 35:26
  Speaker 1: first started contraversing along the points, and we did see
• 35:29
  Speaker 1: some sign right up by camp, but ultimately all the
• 35:33
  Speaker 1: sign we found was right there next to camp. It
• 35:37
  Speaker 1: was I think we found four scrapes total, five rubs total,
• 35:40
  Speaker 1: and tracks and droppings, all of it within like a
• 35:43
  Speaker 1: hundred and fifty yards camp, and then everywhere else we
• 35:47
  Speaker 1: walked and went nothing, not much going on. Nothing. I mean,
• 35:53
  Speaker 1: the first night me and Charlie did a two and
• 35:55
  Speaker 1: a half mile circuit. So basically my thought process coming
• 35:58
  Speaker 1: into this was I'm gonna walking scouting a scout and
• 36:01
  Speaker 1: scouting scout until I find something really worth hunting. I'm
• 36:03
  Speaker 1: not just gonna set up randomly and just sit because
• 36:06
  Speaker 1: it's like the first place to get to. We're gonna
• 36:08
  Speaker 1: walk and find the stuff. So kind of still hunted
• 36:10
  Speaker 1: our way through work in a series of benches and ridges,
• 36:14
  Speaker 1: trying to find oaks. And I assume once you found
• 36:16
  Speaker 1: the oaks, you'd find a loud of dear son. That
• 36:18
  Speaker 1: did not end up being the case. So we did
• 36:20
  Speaker 1: two and a half mile circuit the first night. Another
• 36:22
  Speaker 1: night we did just under two mile circuit going in
• 36:25
  Speaker 1: a different direction. Another night we had a different set
• 36:28
  Speaker 1: of circumstances, which we can talk about the jackfish and
• 36:31
  Speaker 1: night um. And then last night another kind of long
• 36:36
  Speaker 1: circuit down into an interesting area. But I mean, did
• 36:40
  Speaker 1: you guys have any different experience other than that We're
• 36:42
  Speaker 1: still hunting our way into these areas looking for sign,
• 36:44
  Speaker 1: not finding anything, and then almost always just hunting. At
• 36:49
  Speaker 1: least in many cases for me, it was hunting a
• 36:51
  Speaker 1: terrain feature. All right, that's there's no sign, So maybe
• 36:54
  Speaker 1: this bench along the ridge or this saddle in the
• 36:57
  Speaker 1: ridge in a trail and hope something came by. It
• 37:00
  Speaker 1: was for me it was more like where can I shoot?
• 37:03
  Speaker 1: Because most of this there wasn't a lot of deer
• 37:06
  Speaker 1: sign anyway, So if I can shoot five yards and
• 37:09
  Speaker 1: there's no deer sign, or might not sit where I
• 37:11
  Speaker 1: can shoot forty yards and there's no dear sign. So
• 37:14
  Speaker 1: that's kind of what I did. I felt optimistic though,
• 37:16
  Speaker 1: Like there was a lot of times where I sat
• 37:18
  Speaker 1: there it was easy to hang on your bow thinking
• 37:20
  Speaker 1: it could happen any minute. After a week of that,
• 37:23
  Speaker 1: I don't understand why I was so, but it's a
• 37:26
  Speaker 1: good attitude. I had a good attitude I had. I
• 37:29
  Speaker 1: think my cheek was good. She was good. He definitely
• 37:32
  Speaker 1: balanced it when we got on that log. So so
• 37:35
  Speaker 1: we we didn't have very much luck. Though we're three
• 37:37
  Speaker 1: corps of the way through the trip. We still had
• 37:39
  Speaker 1: not killed a deer. I still hadn't caught a fish,
• 37:43
  Speaker 1: and he decided that our ch was a little bit off,
• 37:45
  Speaker 1: and there was a huge We all agreed, though she
• 37:48
  Speaker 1: was I don't think we may we may not agreed
• 37:50
  Speaker 1: on how to you know, correct it. For some reason,
• 37:54
  Speaker 1: one of us thought that the way to correct it
• 37:56
  Speaker 1: would be to try to climb on top of deadhead
• 37:58
  Speaker 1: sticking out of the lake. Right, Why, like, how did
• 38:02
  Speaker 1: that come to be the solution? Desperate? Yeah, desperate times,
• 38:07
  Speaker 1: you know that's what I and I thought. You know, man,
• 38:09
  Speaker 1: this is a desperate measure. But if I can get
• 38:11
  Speaker 1: on top of that log and do like the crane
• 38:13
  Speaker 1: kick from the Crowdy Kid, I thought that that may
• 38:16
  Speaker 1: would change it, all right. I wish at any point
• 38:20
  Speaker 1: it was going to change anyway. And I thought, if
• 38:21
  Speaker 1: I just get out and do this, then it's gonna
• 38:23
  Speaker 1: change on its own. It's just gonna happen anyway. Or
• 38:26
  Speaker 1: rally the troops and you guys are gonna be like, yeah,
• 38:28
  Speaker 1: you're vibrating on a good level all the same, and
• 38:32
  Speaker 1: then it's gonna happen. I wish you could have seen
• 38:34
  Speaker 1: Josh when you're trying to do that. He was having
• 38:36
  Speaker 1: a heart He had his hand over on his chest
• 38:38
  Speaker 1: like like a nine year old lady. Literally, I can't
• 38:41
  Speaker 1: look at this. Look at this. He was clutching Mark's
• 38:45
  Speaker 1: shoulder and holding his chest, going, oh lord, A tear
• 38:48
  Speaker 1: might have trickled down his cheek. When I got back
• 38:50
  Speaker 1: in the boat, he would like the gear you guys
• 38:53
  Speaker 1: had any canues? No, I mean at the bottom of
• 38:55
  Speaker 1: the lake, I dismounted it was pretty smooth. I didn't.
• 38:59
  Speaker 1: I didn't. I wasn't able to do the karate kid thing.
• 39:03
  Speaker 1: I was sitting in the front. Yea, yeah, let's let's
• 39:06
  Speaker 1: just describe this a little bit. So this is a
• 39:08
  Speaker 1: really bad idea. It was never ever ever do what
• 39:11
  Speaker 1: Andy did, never, and it didn't fix the che either.
• 39:14
  Speaker 1: So so yeah, but tell us I'm in the front.
• 39:20
  Speaker 1: Andy decides he's going to climb up on this deadhead.
• 39:22
  Speaker 1: And I'm pretty sure you were kind of daring me
• 39:24
  Speaker 1: at that point. Yeah, yeah, do that, but you won't,
• 39:27
  Speaker 1: yeah you Yeah, but I didn't need him encourage me.
• 39:32
  Speaker 1: I was going to be for encouraging bad positions. But
• 39:36
  Speaker 1: in retrospect that was bad. When I'm in the front
• 39:38
  Speaker 1: of the canoe, so it's only I mean, I think
• 39:41
  Speaker 1: it's only probably close to thirty ft deep right there,
• 39:43
  Speaker 1: so yeah, and the water temperature is probably a yeah.
• 39:49
  Speaker 1: But we go by it and and he's like, oh,
• 39:52
  Speaker 1: I can get on there. I can definitely get on there.
• 39:54
  Speaker 1: He's like, swing me around. I put him right next
• 39:57
  Speaker 1: to it. He grabs ahold. He's like, UM, want not
• 40:00
  Speaker 1: your foothold in here. He's like, you know, I don't
• 40:02
  Speaker 1: even need a foothold, so very gracefully takes his hands
• 40:08
  Speaker 1: out of the canoe, grabs the log. This is like
• 40:10
  Speaker 1: a telephone pole shaped sticking on like a forty five
• 40:13
  Speaker 1: degree angle out of the water. What I didn't know though,
• 40:16
  Speaker 1: before you continue, is it wasn't rigid. So as I
• 40:21
  Speaker 1: climbed to my once you had your hands on it,
• 40:24
  Speaker 1: and you pick your foot up and you put your
• 40:26
  Speaker 1: knee on the log going back, and the log starts
• 40:30
  Speaker 1: throwing it into the water, and I realized the canoe
• 40:34
  Speaker 1: is getting a little tippy, and Josh is freaking out.
• 40:38
  Speaker 1: Yet you're panicking. I can see it in your ice. Yep,
• 40:41
  Speaker 1: you had. I was filming. Yeah, Josh Mark was laughing,
• 40:47
  Speaker 1: You're gonna die. But I did it. I got off
• 40:51
  Speaker 1: the boat. You did not do it. Get the videos
• 40:57
  Speaker 1: three quarters way out of the boat, three cords of
• 40:59
  Speaker 1: the way, but you were not fully I gotta see
• 41:00
  Speaker 1: the video. In my mind, I did at kid thing.
• 41:04
  Speaker 1: So I feel like he was wearing a life jacket,
• 41:07
  Speaker 1: So that was one safe part. Yes, he was wearing
• 41:09
  Speaker 1: a life jacket, had a life jacket, but I don't
• 41:12
  Speaker 1: know if it was buoyant enough to hold him up
• 41:13
  Speaker 1: with the forty pounds of stuff he had wrapped around him.
• 41:16
  Speaker 1: So would you have floated? Yeah, it might have been.
• 41:21
  Speaker 1: Here here's the video, we'll see you can hear anything
• 41:30
  Speaker 1: language might be an issue, we'll sound surf needed. He's
• 41:37
  Speaker 1: the prudent one father. Right now he's leaning out the
• 41:46
  Speaker 1: kid who's tipping. He's holding onto it two legs still,
• 41:49
  Speaker 1: and then he came right back in your legs. Never
• 41:51
  Speaker 1: one of my legs, one of your legs did. But
• 41:54
  Speaker 1: you're still the foot inside the canoe. I don't believe
• 41:57
  Speaker 1: that I'm gonna I'm gonna go with three quarters away
• 41:59
  Speaker 1: because his body weight was on that log. My body
• 42:02
  Speaker 1: weight was on the log at one point because it
• 42:08
  Speaker 1: But either way, it doesn't change the fact that our
• 42:11
  Speaker 1: chief stay outline or whatever what's going on. So we
• 42:15
  Speaker 1: were all hunting hiking around. You guys are basically doing
• 42:17
  Speaker 1: the same thing. Well, we yeah, trying to cross palm.
• 42:21
  Speaker 1: That didn't work out, but the deer hunting did. Either
• 42:24
  Speaker 1: one of you have a different perspective on the deer hunting,
• 42:26
  Speaker 1: a different tactic. You tried a different thing you're thinking
• 42:28
  Speaker 1: about other than cover country. Check out two rain features.
• 42:33
  Speaker 1: Look for trying to cover something. It's just so loud.
• 42:36
  Speaker 1: All the leaf cover was the first day. It was
• 42:39
  Speaker 1: awesome that I got up because it had been raining
• 42:42
  Speaker 1: and everything was wet. And it was great. I didn't
• 42:44
  Speaker 1: even notice how quiet it was. But then the next
• 42:46
  Speaker 1: day the sun came out in the wind and it
• 42:48
  Speaker 1: was like, holy man, there's no way to sneak anywhere.
• 42:52
  Speaker 1: You had a real hard time sneaking anywhere because it
• 42:55
  Speaker 1: was just so loud and crunchy and trying to weave
• 42:58
  Speaker 1: your way through all this stuff. I mean there's not
• 43:00
  Speaker 1: any dear major trailways that you could walk, and no
• 43:04
  Speaker 1: field edges here, no field and so it was just
• 43:06
  Speaker 1: it was just tough walking. But I kind of did
• 43:09
  Speaker 1: it like a combo. I tried to cover some ground
• 43:12
  Speaker 1: and then if I saw a good spot where I
• 43:13
  Speaker 1: could see a little bit, I'd sit down for a
• 43:15
  Speaker 1: little bit and try to keep going, or try to
• 43:17
  Speaker 1: sit up on top of one of these ridges where
• 43:19
  Speaker 1: I could look down into some of these drainages that
• 43:21
  Speaker 1: are going down to the water. Um, but you have
• 43:24
  Speaker 1: very little sign A few piles of scot here and there,
• 43:26
  Speaker 1: but not much. Yeah. So we ended up hunting the
• 43:29
  Speaker 1: whole trip, and we saw two deer total. The two
• 43:32
  Speaker 1: deer total were spotted when we had actually portage to
• 43:37
  Speaker 1: a New Lakes porters across several portages to this New Lake,
• 43:41
  Speaker 1: and we're gonna fish it during the day and then
• 43:43
  Speaker 1: try to scout and hunt that evening. And we're starting
• 43:45
  Speaker 1: to troll along the shoreline and at fish and then Andy,
• 43:48
  Speaker 1: you turned as you looked at us, and you said,
• 43:52
  Speaker 1: I said it really quiet. I think, didn't they there's
• 43:54
  Speaker 1: a couple of deer over there. He'll be like they were.
• 43:58
  Speaker 1: They were running when I saw them. Yeah, So when
• 44:02
  Speaker 1: I yelled, I don't think I had a lot to do.
• 44:04
  Speaker 1: I don't think that I yelled anyway. But you basically
• 44:08
  Speaker 1: whispered to us though, that there was a couple of deer, right, dear. Yeah,
• 44:12
  Speaker 1: And so you, you and Chuck were in the canoe together,
• 44:14
  Speaker 1: and you kept paddling and me and further had not
• 44:17
  Speaker 1: gotten past the point. Yes, we backed up, so we
• 44:20
  Speaker 1: split up. You went continue to pass where the deer were.
• 44:23
  Speaker 1: Me and Josh pulled back behind it, and we each
• 44:25
  Speaker 1: beached our canoes and we're going to try to do
• 44:28
  Speaker 1: some kind of stock on this deer. Um. So I
• 44:32
  Speaker 1: never knew. I never actually saw the deer though, because
• 44:34
  Speaker 1: we hadn't crossed this rocky point to be able seen
• 44:37
  Speaker 1: to the inlet yet. So I was operating under the
• 44:39
  Speaker 1: assumption that they were still like at the water's edge
• 44:42
  Speaker 1: drinking or something. So I tried to really carefully and
• 44:45
  Speaker 1: quietly grab my bow and all my stuff, going really slow.
• 44:48
  Speaker 1: Wondered why we never talked about this. It took so long. Yeah,
• 44:51
  Speaker 1: we were watching he had an emergency. Oh no, that
• 44:54
  Speaker 1: was later. That was later, but I'll explain that too. Um,
• 44:57
  Speaker 1: he took a long time getting out of But that
• 44:58
  Speaker 1: makes sense though, because I thought, what the hell is
• 45:00
  Speaker 1: he doing over there? I thought they were like yards away,
• 45:03
  Speaker 1: forty yards story rise, like I try. We were trying,
• 45:06
  Speaker 1: still hard in those canoes, but trying to get out
• 45:07
  Speaker 1: quietly without banging stuff around, trying to get my ball out.
• 45:10
  Speaker 1: Finally did and like just real quietly crept over the ridge,
• 45:14
  Speaker 1: but they were gone. And then I tried following him
• 45:16
  Speaker 1: for a while, and then eventually I had to go
• 45:18
  Speaker 1: poop so bad I couldn't do it any longer. So
• 45:20
  Speaker 1: finally I said, you know that there's no way I
• 45:22
  Speaker 1: can keep trying to stock this. I thought I was
• 45:25
  Speaker 1: on tracks, but I had no idea how far I
• 45:26
  Speaker 1: was on tracks. I wasn't sure if there wasn't theirs um,
• 45:30
  Speaker 1: I couldn't do any longer, so I had to go
• 45:31
  Speaker 1: back to the boat, got toilet paper from me from you.
• 45:35
  Speaker 1: Always prepared to par that. Um we should talk about
• 45:40
  Speaker 1: our group roles to at some point. UM. Long story
• 45:46
  Speaker 1: short than that, I never saw the dear Andy you
• 45:48
  Speaker 1: did kind of a similar thing you did a sneak
• 45:50
  Speaker 1: snuck in, kind of got run into some water we
• 45:54
  Speaker 1: couldn't cross. And if we had done the second thing
• 45:57
  Speaker 1: we did, we went out and around. I think there
• 45:59
  Speaker 1: could have been that could have been you know, effective,
• 46:02
  Speaker 1: because there were some trails, and it's possible that those
• 46:05
  Speaker 1: deer were using that little ridge and that little low
• 46:07
  Speaker 1: spot between the two. But who knows. There was fresh
• 46:09
  Speaker 1: tracks and stuff there too. But that was basically the
• 46:12
  Speaker 1: deer hunting. I mean, we went out every night, some mornings.
• 46:15
  Speaker 1: I didn't see any very little sign after that. Numbers,
• 46:21
  Speaker 1: oh what was it? Very three to five deer, three
• 46:24
  Speaker 1: to five deer per square a mile a lot of
• 46:25
  Speaker 1: the areas, some places like zero deer per square a mile.
• 46:29
  Speaker 1: So we guys I was talking to, there might have
• 46:31
  Speaker 1: been three to five deer in the zone we were hunting.
• 46:33
  Speaker 1: I feel like if there could have been more in
• 46:35
  Speaker 1: some areas and less if if we had it to
• 46:37
  Speaker 1: do over again, you feel like we could have hunted
• 46:39
  Speaker 1: smarter in our right behind our camp and maybe been effective.
• 46:43
  Speaker 1: That's the one thing I kind of regret. I think
• 46:44
  Speaker 1: if we did it over it go into jack Fish Yeah,
• 46:49
  Speaker 1: Jackfish Bay would be there. I mean the terrain there
• 46:56
  Speaker 1: was more open, yeah, which could have gone to that
• 46:59
  Speaker 1: other bay. Um And I agree with what you're saying, Charlie.
• 47:03
  Speaker 1: I think with that area gave us was more country
• 47:08
  Speaker 1: to work because it was obviously very hard to cover
• 47:10
  Speaker 1: country in a stealthy fashion walking over land. Right, So
• 47:14
  Speaker 1: if I could do it over again from a deer
• 47:16
  Speaker 1: hunting perspective, I would have gotten to a bigger lake,
• 47:19
  Speaker 1: a much bigger lake like this one we went to
• 47:21
  Speaker 1: where we saw this too deer. And in a situation
• 47:24
  Speaker 1: like that, you just paddle two totally different areas and
• 47:27
  Speaker 1: then you just slip in right off the water and hunt,
• 47:30
  Speaker 1: you know, fifty yards in from the water. It's probably
• 47:33
  Speaker 1: or even try to replicate what happened that one day
• 47:36
  Speaker 1: where we saw deer off the bank, like get up
• 47:39
  Speaker 1: early around the morning crack of dawn, just start paddling
• 47:42
  Speaker 1: the lake glass in the shoreline. Once you spot deer,
• 47:45
  Speaker 1: beat yourself, and then make a stalk through the land
• 47:48
  Speaker 1: to him. Um, that might have been a more productive
• 47:51
  Speaker 1: means of doing it our ways. Certainly one of them
• 47:53
  Speaker 1: could have stalked him. The other one would have to
• 47:55
  Speaker 1: stay back and fish. We're making a reference to what happened.
• 48:00
  Speaker 1: I took you where I thought the deer were going
• 48:02
  Speaker 1: to be. We both sat over there. It's a good time.
• 48:06
  Speaker 1: What else would we have done different because we didn't.
• 48:08
  Speaker 1: We didn't We didn't shoot a deer. I honestly, we
• 48:10
  Speaker 1: didn't see a deer. We could have done better at camp, honestly. Yeah,
• 48:17
  Speaker 1: we started grouse hunting at I feel like we'd already
• 48:20
  Speaker 1: we didn't realize how little sign we were going to
• 48:23
  Speaker 1: see other than that, though, we kind of blew that up,
• 48:25
  Speaker 1: like we're gonna go over here and see signed assuming that.
• 48:29
  Speaker 1: Why wouldn't we assume that, because the first place we parked,
• 48:32
  Speaker 1: we're like, hey, look at there, buck rob just didn't
• 48:36
  Speaker 1: be in the case. Yeah, we just kind of looked
• 48:38
  Speaker 1: into the first deer sign and that was kind of
• 48:41
  Speaker 1: the most plentiful sign that we saw the whole trip.
• 48:44
  Speaker 1: So that the deer hunting didn't go as we would
• 48:45
  Speaker 1: have hoped it would have. The grouse hunting was decent.
• 48:48
  Speaker 1: If we had all had firearms, it was pretty good
• 48:51
  Speaker 1: for me, pretty good. The fishing didn't go as we
• 48:53
  Speaker 1: would have hoped, but still as we left, we all
• 48:56
  Speaker 1: kept talking about what an unbelievable experience this was, how
• 48:59
  Speaker 1: awesome was all throughout it we were commenting about how
• 49:03
  Speaker 1: amazing it was. We haven't done a really good job
• 49:05
  Speaker 1: of explaining why any of that stuff, why it was
• 49:07
  Speaker 1: so cool. Um, let's talk about our favorite moments on
• 49:12
  Speaker 1: the trip. I definitely have a couple that stand out
• 49:14
  Speaker 1: for me to do either any of you guys, probably
• 49:16
  Speaker 1: a lot of our favorite We'll let you go first
• 49:18
  Speaker 1: on the favorites, because I think we're gonna have similar
• 49:20
  Speaker 1: where similar ones probably so. I think my first favorite
• 49:24
  Speaker 1: was our second night of hunting. I think me and
• 49:27
  Speaker 1: Charlie had been on hunting together. We got back to camp,
• 49:31
  Speaker 1: and then you two had been another zone. You paddled
• 49:34
  Speaker 1: back after dark. We're right in front of you guys,
• 49:36
  Speaker 1: sitting in the rocks, sitting in the canoe, and we're
• 49:38
  Speaker 1: sitting on the rocks. You pull up to us and
• 49:40
  Speaker 1: we're just kind of like recapping the night's hunt, and
• 49:42
  Speaker 1: all of a sudden we hear a noise quiet, and
• 49:46
  Speaker 1: then all of a sudden, the pack of wolves lit
• 49:49
  Speaker 1: up across the lake and we all just sat there
• 49:52
  Speaker 1: in silence, listening to these wolves doing what wolves do.
• 49:56
  Speaker 1: And of all the time that we've spent out there
• 49:58
  Speaker 1: doing things like this between us for combined, I think
• 50:01
  Speaker 1: this is accurate, unless Charlie, maybe you had heard some
• 50:04
  Speaker 1: before you did hear Okay, well, all the time I've
• 50:07
  Speaker 1: done it and you guys have done it. We never
• 50:09
  Speaker 1: had heard wolves howl. I'd heard one single howl one
• 50:14
  Speaker 1: time and never anything like this though, So that was
• 50:17
  Speaker 1: like such a cool experience to hear that. I mean,
• 50:20
  Speaker 1: without signing cheesy, like, I don't know if there's anything
• 50:22
  Speaker 1: more emblematic of wilderness than you know, a pack of
• 50:26
  Speaker 1: wolves howling. It makes you feel like you are in it.
• 50:30
  Speaker 1: And that happened that way, So cool, awesome. So we
• 50:33
  Speaker 1: heard him that night, and then the next morning we
• 50:35
  Speaker 1: actually heard them again and like a feeding frenzy or
• 50:37
  Speaker 1: something like howling embarking and going nuts. Um, So that
• 50:42
  Speaker 1: was pretty cool to hear. So that was my top
• 50:44
  Speaker 1: moment probably I was one of the major part of God.
• 50:47
  Speaker 1: I hope that we get to hear wolves. I knew
• 50:48
  Speaker 1: there's a lot in the area. Maybe not great for
• 50:50
  Speaker 1: our deer hunting, but I just that would be a
• 50:53
  Speaker 1: cool experience. We had that, and we're here, we're hearing
• 50:55
  Speaker 1: it while sitting out on a rocky outcrop, the water
• 50:59
  Speaker 1: on the lay in front of us, a glass so still,
• 51:03
  Speaker 1: The stars are shining so bright above us, reflecting off
• 51:06
  Speaker 1: the lake, reflecting off the lake. There's just a little
• 51:08
  Speaker 1: bit of orange and pink on the horizon, just a
• 51:12
  Speaker 1: tiny bit that just allows you to see the etched
• 51:14
  Speaker 1: out outlines of all the pine trees along the horizon
• 51:16
  Speaker 1: line meet just the most beautiful thing you ever saw.
• 51:19
  Speaker 1: And then the wolves. I mean, it's a moment I'll
• 51:22
  Speaker 1: never forget. So take us to the nether to the
• 51:26
  Speaker 1: next one. I think I know it's gonna be mine.
• 51:28
  Speaker 1: Would be so one of the port after several of
• 51:31
  Speaker 1: the portages, one of the days that we saw the
• 51:34
  Speaker 1: deer on our way back was we were paddling with
• 51:38
  Speaker 1: our head lamps, which is pointless when you're in the
• 51:41
  Speaker 1: middle of water big enough that you can't see the
• 51:43
  Speaker 1: shore with your head lamp. So we finally realized that
• 51:46
  Speaker 1: maybe just turn them off. And once we did that,
• 51:48
  Speaker 1: it was like the whole sky just lit up, like
• 51:50
  Speaker 1: there were so many stars and you could literally see
• 51:53
  Speaker 1: the stars reflecting in the water. The water was flat
• 51:57
  Speaker 1: enough that you could see the Big Dipper reflecting and
• 51:59
  Speaker 1: that was that was pretty cool. Yeah, just shooting stars everywhere,
• 52:05
  Speaker 1: at least saw one shooting star. So quiet. So that
• 52:11
  Speaker 1: was something that too. We didn't talk about was when
• 52:13
  Speaker 1: the wind died down when we first got in there,
• 52:16
  Speaker 1: Like as we were getting in, it was just like
• 52:18
  Speaker 1: it was a weird quiet didn't want to like everybody
• 52:23
  Speaker 1: was whispering. Everyone almost I was doing my version of
• 52:28
  Speaker 1: whispering to shifting baselines, just a different baseline off. But yeah,
• 52:34
  Speaker 1: the silence was kind of it was just weird. I
• 52:37
  Speaker 1: don't know. I mean, I'm sure we've heard silence before,
• 52:39
  Speaker 1: but I don't know why it seemed different. But I did,
• 52:41
  Speaker 1: Like I remember thinking about shooting the grouse with that shotgun.
• 52:44
  Speaker 1: I thinking, man, I don't know if I want to
• 52:45
  Speaker 1: be that loud, Like I don't know, there's something weird
• 52:47
  Speaker 1: about that, or there's another time where like weird. I
• 52:49
  Speaker 1: was a camp and you were across the way a
• 52:50
  Speaker 1: little bit in the boat, and I wanted to let
• 52:53
  Speaker 1: you know that me and Charlie would have gone hume.
• 52:56
  Speaker 1: I looked at you, You're like, I don't a hundred
• 52:58
  Speaker 1: yards away or something very easy that could have hollered,
• 53:01
  Speaker 1: so hey, we're gonna go hunt. But it just seemed
• 53:03
  Speaker 1: like almost sacrilegious, just seemed like you shouldn't break that. Yeah,
• 53:10
  Speaker 1: and it was cool, so cool. I mean, yeah, I
• 53:14
  Speaker 1: don't want that to sound nerdy, but it just it's
• 53:16
  Speaker 1: not something you thought about it just when you were
• 53:18
  Speaker 1: in the moment. It was just like, I don't want
• 53:20
  Speaker 1: to say anything now, like it's hard to explain. I
• 53:23
  Speaker 1: don't know. We didn't shoot a deer, we shot a
• 53:25
  Speaker 1: couple of grouse, we didn't catch a lot of fish.
• 53:28
  Speaker 1: But I think we all could agree that it was
• 53:30
  Speaker 1: one of the most beautiful places we've ever seen, one
• 53:33
  Speaker 1: of the most special outside experiences we've ever had. Definitely.
• 53:38
  Speaker 1: I don't think I've ever seen a sky like at
• 53:41
  Speaker 1: night light up like I did, like maybe like two
• 53:44
  Speaker 1: or three of the nights we hadn't really clear crystal
• 53:45
  Speaker 1: clear skies. Oh I got the stars and just every
• 53:48
  Speaker 1: you can see everything Milky Way, Big Dipper a little.
• 53:51
  Speaker 1: I mean, is this incredible? And there's something about how
• 53:53
  Speaker 1: removed you had to be. You know that you weren't
• 53:55
  Speaker 1: by a truck, you weren't by the road. You had
• 54:00
  Speaker 1: some reason. It was unique that you had to use
• 54:01
  Speaker 1: a canoe, you had to come over water. That's just
• 54:03
  Speaker 1: so different than anything you couldn't just walk back. I
• 54:06
  Speaker 1: think adding the element of water to anything kind of
• 54:08
  Speaker 1: like root you a little deeper into the experience. I mean,
• 54:12
  Speaker 1: it was just I don't know, every day sitting on
• 54:15
  Speaker 1: that rock overlooking the lake, every morning we said there
• 54:18
  Speaker 1: during her coffee, and the evenings, sitting there after the hunts.
• 54:22
  Speaker 1: That just was maybe like the best thing of it all.
• 54:24
  Speaker 1: Just being there in this place, rooted to this location,
• 54:27
  Speaker 1: that was I don't know, sends you back in history
• 54:30
  Speaker 1: a little bit. We kept talking about what the Native
• 54:31
  Speaker 1: Americans might have done here, and what the trappers did here,
• 54:35
  Speaker 1: all these people that came before us, and now we,
• 54:38
  Speaker 1: in some small way, we got to insert ourselves into
• 54:40
  Speaker 1: that timeline. Yeah, it's that like, was your a kid
• 54:44
  Speaker 1: that camp site that you imagine when you're a kid,
• 54:46
  Speaker 1: like you got the tent. It's kind of stick sticking
• 54:48
  Speaker 1: out of it, their smoke rolling out of it there.
• 54:50
  Speaker 1: I mean, it's water all around it, two canoes sitting there.
• 54:53
  Speaker 1: It was. It was just like that perfect camp site
• 54:55
  Speaker 1: that you imagine when you're a child, like, oh, I
• 54:58
  Speaker 1: want to do that someday, like on a Oh is
• 55:00
  Speaker 1: that Terry Redland or something painting or something you'd see?
• 55:04
  Speaker 1: I don't know. It was. It was it rivals the mountains.
• 55:06
  Speaker 1: For me, I didn't think that would be possible, But
• 55:09
  Speaker 1: just how the solitude of it, and how you don't
• 55:11
  Speaker 1: you don't see anybody else, You don't hear anything like
• 55:14
  Speaker 1: the wool, I mean all that stuff. It's got its
• 55:16
  Speaker 1: own draw for sure. Charlie, you where did you rank
• 55:20
  Speaker 1: this on your level of epic experiences you've had? It's different,
• 55:24
  Speaker 1: you know, like the mountains has one aspect to it
• 55:27
  Speaker 1: and it's like the work you put in to get
• 55:29
  Speaker 1: to the highest peak. But this is just like more calming,
• 55:34
  Speaker 1: deeper appreciation of like the wild. I mean, they both
• 55:39
  Speaker 1: have their place and it's hard to compare. But if
• 55:43
  Speaker 1: there was two places to go before I died, be
• 55:45
  Speaker 1: the mountains in here. Yeah. It's pretty, yeah, pretty especially
• 55:51
  Speaker 1: that night when we were paddling back in the dark,
• 55:53
  Speaker 1: and you were just I don't know, that's a moment
• 55:55
  Speaker 1: that it will be hard to ever top. Just silent.
• 56:00
  Speaker 1: We all just kind of laid back in our canoes,
• 56:03
  Speaker 1: but and I don't know, just special, Like ten minutes
• 56:09
  Speaker 1: would go by and you'd be like, oh yeah, we'd
• 56:11
  Speaker 1: just be laying there and the who's looking up and
• 56:13
  Speaker 1: protect us twice as long to get back because you're
• 56:15
  Speaker 1: just taking our time andarely and paddling and guided ourselves
• 56:19
  Speaker 1: by the stars. Just a throwback. That was cool for
• 56:23
  Speaker 1: me when we were coming back and you start imagining,
• 56:26
  Speaker 1: like how do you we turn your light on and
• 56:28
  Speaker 1: to see where you're going on the bank or whatever.
• 56:30
  Speaker 1: It's like there was a lot of people that have
• 56:32
  Speaker 1: done this and didn't have that option to flip that
• 56:33
  Speaker 1: light on and see what's over there. So let's turn
• 56:36
  Speaker 1: it off and let's just do it that way, you know,
• 56:37
  Speaker 1: go And that was neat to to see things in
• 56:41
  Speaker 1: that from that perspective. You know, So what what what
• 56:45
  Speaker 1: final takeaways did you guys have from this experience? You know,
• 56:48
  Speaker 1: we didn't come back with a bunch of protein, We
• 56:50
  Speaker 1: didn't have that kind of success. Um, but where what's
• 56:55
  Speaker 1: your final thoughts, final outcome, final takeaway, lesson learned anything
• 56:59
  Speaker 1: like that coming out of this whole thing that you're
• 57:01
  Speaker 1: leaving the boundary wires with, anyone want to jump on that,
• 57:05
  Speaker 1: I'll go first. I mean it's a place I definitely
• 57:07
  Speaker 1: want to come back with my family, like for a
• 57:09
  Speaker 1: summer trip, Like we scratch just like such a tiny
• 57:13
  Speaker 1: little surface of it. And if that's like the experience
• 57:16
  Speaker 1: that we could have in this little just this one
• 57:18
  Speaker 1: little small section, what if you really took some time
• 57:21
  Speaker 1: out here and did like a paddle trip and you know,
• 57:24
  Speaker 1: spend a night at each camp, you know, and just
• 57:26
  Speaker 1: kept going around all the different lakes and did a
• 57:28
  Speaker 1: big loop like that'd be an awesome trip to do
• 57:30
  Speaker 1: with with the family. And I got just saying, man,
• 57:33
  Speaker 1: I can't wait to tell my son about this experience
• 57:36
  Speaker 1: like that. How do you how do you even put
• 57:39
  Speaker 1: it into words? Though? Or pictures don't do it justice.
• 57:41
  Speaker 1: There's just it is a is a different experience than
• 57:45
  Speaker 1: anything I've had, and I think on a hunting trip definitely, Charlie,
• 57:53
  Speaker 1: I'd say that it's like it really opens your eyes
• 57:58
  Speaker 1: to that experience of it all, like even though it
• 58:02
  Speaker 1: was a hunting trip. We weren't successful in that aspect,
• 58:05
  Speaker 1: but we made new friends, had a hell of a time,
• 58:09
  Speaker 1: a lot of laughs. So although hunting is important and
• 58:14
  Speaker 1: like way to get food, it's also about like the
• 58:17
  Speaker 1: places it takes you and the things you can see.
• 58:20
  Speaker 1: And there's a lot of that, and a lot of
• 58:23
  Speaker 1: the small moments stick out, like the beavers slapping at
• 58:25
  Speaker 1: you guys. Yeah, yeah, that was that was loud and
• 58:30
  Speaker 1: all that cool stuff that you see. Yeah, there's a
• 58:32
  Speaker 1: lot of little things like that. I kind of forgot
• 58:34
  Speaker 1: about that already, like dang, so we didn't take in. Yeah,
• 58:38
  Speaker 1: we did a fun thing to started a couple of
• 58:40
  Speaker 1: nights and Josh started doing an audio journal on his phone. Yeah,
• 58:43
  Speaker 1: so each net in the wall tent, we're all laying
• 58:45
  Speaker 1: there and we'd all try to recap everything that happened
• 58:47
  Speaker 1: that day. And it sounded stupid at first, but it
• 58:49
  Speaker 1: was actually kind of cool. I didn't think it ever
• 58:53
  Speaker 1: sounded stupid. I thought it sounded awesome the whole time.
• 58:56
  Speaker 1: Ridiculed the first time for doing it. Yeah, uh anything
• 59:02
  Speaker 1: else and oh see no not really, I mean I
• 59:06
  Speaker 1: And then there's always this this is the feeling that
• 59:08
  Speaker 1: you always have when you leave. But I just feel
• 59:11
  Speaker 1: like that you we could have killed deer if we
• 59:13
  Speaker 1: did that on our little island there. I feel like
• 59:16
  Speaker 1: if we had just done it a little bit different
• 59:18
  Speaker 1: and played that a little smarter, maybe canute into there
• 59:20
  Speaker 1: and just didn't push but you don't know that, but
• 59:24
  Speaker 1: didn't push in there, just found the sign that we
• 59:26
  Speaker 1: found found early on and just sat up on it,
• 59:30
  Speaker 1: tried you know those early mornings or you know, right
• 59:33
  Speaker 1: before dark and maybe but I mean it was just
• 59:36
  Speaker 1: gonna be a deer. I was gonna have to choose
• 59:38
  Speaker 1: to walk by you in the middle of this one point. Yeah,
• 59:43
  Speaker 1: I think for me it was. It was definitely all
• 59:45
  Speaker 1: those things. And I came into this hunt having a
• 59:49
  Speaker 1: different set of expectations that I do on most of
• 59:51
  Speaker 1: my trips, which was good. Um about that. Yeah, a
• 59:55
  Speaker 1: little different Mark Kenyon than there used to be a
• 59:58
  Speaker 1: little bit not quite as gung. I mean, it's still
• 1:00:01
  Speaker 1: gung hope, but I'm also trying to open my eyes
• 1:00:04
  Speaker 1: to the larger experience kind of art was saying, especially
• 1:00:06
  Speaker 1: on this one, I wanted to really yes it was
• 1:00:09
  Speaker 1: a deer hunt, and yes I wanted to kill a deer.
• 1:00:11
  Speaker 1: But that wasn't gonna make or break it. I wasn't
• 1:00:13
  Speaker 1: going to obsess over I was going to try to
• 1:00:15
  Speaker 1: appreciate all facets of it. Um, it's more fun. Oh
• 1:00:20
  Speaker 1: my gosh, it was fun. Over the course of the
• 1:00:22
  Speaker 1: last six weeks, one common thread that I've experienced with
• 1:00:26
  Speaker 1: all the different people and all the trips I've been
• 1:00:28
  Speaker 1: on is everybody has taken a minute to like soak
• 1:00:32
  Speaker 1: in where they are, Like, it doesn't matter if we're
• 1:00:35
  Speaker 1: pounding through lights out, going up two thousand feet elevation
• 1:00:40
  Speaker 1: gain and just like sucking wind, you know, but like
• 1:00:44
  Speaker 1: we stopped and we just like looking like, man, how
• 1:00:47
  Speaker 1: cool is this? Everywhere we've been it's just like that's
• 1:00:52
  Speaker 1: what it's all about. And I think that's one of
• 1:00:55
  Speaker 1: the really cool things about hunting is it gives a
• 1:00:58
  Speaker 1: lot of us an excuse to go out into these
• 1:01:00
  Speaker 1: places and interact with them in a way that really
• 1:01:04
  Speaker 1: forces you to engage, not just drive through it, not
• 1:01:08
  Speaker 1: just walk through it, but get out there, sit quietly
• 1:01:12
  Speaker 1: think about what's happening. Um, that's a great opportunity privilege
• 1:01:18
  Speaker 1: we have his hunters to get to do that. But
• 1:01:19
  Speaker 1: I will say that. What this experience reminded me of
• 1:01:23
  Speaker 1: two is too when we're thinking about our hunts and
• 1:01:27
  Speaker 1: we're thinking about our plans for the fall. I've definitely
• 1:01:30
  Speaker 1: been guilty in the past of trying to plan, like
• 1:01:32
  Speaker 1: where can I kill, Like I'm gonna do this because
• 1:01:35
  Speaker 1: I think I can kill a big buck. I gonna
• 1:01:36
  Speaker 1: go here because I think it's a great chance to
• 1:01:38
  Speaker 1: shoot something. I'm gonna go here because you know, there's whatever.
• 1:01:42
  Speaker 1: This is a great reminder of the need to look
• 1:01:44
  Speaker 1: outside of that sometimes and remember the broader experience. And
• 1:01:47
  Speaker 1: we're sitting in Charlie's truck right now and he has
• 1:01:50
  Speaker 1: a little fortune cookie fortune sticking sitting in his dash
• 1:01:54
  Speaker 1: and it says it is important to broaden your horizons
• 1:01:57
  Speaker 1: day by day. And I think that's so true, and
• 1:02:01
  Speaker 1: I think this experience we just has a perfect example
• 1:02:04
  Speaker 1: of that. We all went beyond our borders. We all
• 1:02:07
  Speaker 1: went into an area in a style of hunting and
• 1:02:11
  Speaker 1: experience we've never had before, and we learned something new,
• 1:02:14
  Speaker 1: we experienced something new, we all came out of it.
• 1:02:17
  Speaker 1: I think having a really really I don't know if
• 1:02:22
  Speaker 1: it's life changing, but definitely, I think every trip like
• 1:02:26
  Speaker 1: this Yes, we had a powerful, We had a really memorable,
• 1:02:32
  Speaker 1: interesting experience in a wild place. That just makes me
• 1:02:35
  Speaker 1: so appreciate that we have places like this still. And
• 1:02:38
  Speaker 1: I think that's the final thing I would add is that,
• 1:02:41
  Speaker 1: you know what it intrigued me to do this trip
• 1:02:43
  Speaker 1: originally was I kept hearing about so many people who
• 1:02:46
  Speaker 1: cared about this place. They wanted to try to keep
• 1:02:48
  Speaker 1: this place from getting polluted. They wanted to try to
• 1:02:51
  Speaker 1: make sure that's still protected in a pristine state, that
• 1:02:53
  Speaker 1: the stays wilderness. So many people were fighting to keep
• 1:02:56
  Speaker 1: that and I was, you know, huh, I wonder why
• 1:02:59
  Speaker 1: so many people care so much. And now that we
• 1:03:02
  Speaker 1: actually went in there and saw it just for the
• 1:03:03
  Speaker 1: week that we are there, I totally get it Nowstandum,
• 1:03:10
  Speaker 1: maybe talk about one of the reasons that's important right now,
• 1:03:14
  Speaker 1: because I don't think you've touched on that about the
• 1:03:17
  Speaker 1: mining and stuff. Well, what we're actually gonna do right
• 1:03:19
  Speaker 1: now is we're gonna hit pause on the podcast and
• 1:03:22
  Speaker 1: we're gonna get back chat with a couple of experts,
• 1:03:26
  Speaker 1: one or two experts on the topic to get the
• 1:03:28
  Speaker 1: latest intel on what is happening right now with the
• 1:03:31
  Speaker 1: boundary waters in a set of proposed mining leases that
• 1:03:35
  Speaker 1: are threatening this location that probably deserves a little bit
• 1:03:40
  Speaker 1: of extra care. I want to look the same the
• 1:03:43
  Speaker 1: next time I come back here. I want you to
• 1:03:45
  Speaker 1: bring your son back. We can drink the water straight
• 1:03:48
  Speaker 1: from the lake. Get boiler still, but you can. You
• 1:03:52
  Speaker 1: can drink the water. It's not gonna be polluted. There
• 1:03:55
  Speaker 1: will be fishing the water, there will be wildlife drinking
• 1:03:58
  Speaker 1: the water. There'll be places you can canoe into and
• 1:04:01
  Speaker 1: listen to wolves and saloons and watch a sunset. That's
• 1:04:06
  Speaker 1: worth that's worth fighting for as far as I'm concerned.
• 1:04:10
  Speaker 1: All Right, I am now with Lucas Leaf. Welcome back
• 1:04:14
  Speaker 1: to the podcast. Lucas, thanks again for having me Mark.
• 1:04:17
  Speaker 1: Always nice to be on. Yeah. Excited to be able
• 1:04:19
  Speaker 1: to have this follow up chat because last year, I
• 1:04:22
  Speaker 1: guess it was we originally chatted about this trip I
• 1:04:26
  Speaker 1: wanted to do, and and I was trying to learn
• 1:04:28
  Speaker 1: about what was happening up in the Boundary Waters. And
• 1:04:30
  Speaker 1: now finally a year and a half later, it's happened.
• 1:04:33
  Speaker 1: Um And what this what we've done on this podcast
• 1:04:36
  Speaker 1: so far is is we just recapped how our hunt went.
• 1:04:39
  Speaker 1: But now I was hoping to bring you on here
• 1:04:41
  Speaker 1: to just get us all up to date as accurately
• 1:04:44
  Speaker 1: as possible. Rather than me trying to recount what I've
• 1:04:47
  Speaker 1: read and what I've heard, I'd rather you, who has
• 1:04:49
  Speaker 1: been so involved with it, get us up to speed
• 1:04:52
  Speaker 1: on on what's going on in the Boundary Waters. But
• 1:04:54
  Speaker 1: before we do that, can you just really quickly give
• 1:04:57
  Speaker 1: us the cliff notes of of who you are and
• 1:05:00
  Speaker 1: how you are involved with the Boundary Waters. Yeah? Absolutely.
• 1:05:03
  Speaker 1: Um name is Lucas Leaf. I'm the executive director at
• 1:05:07
  Speaker 1: Sportsman for the Boundary Waters and currently one of the
• 1:05:09
  Speaker 1: main issues that we're working on as an organization is
• 1:05:13
  Speaker 1: proposed sulfide or copper mining within the watershed of the
• 1:05:17
  Speaker 1: Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness in northeastern Minnesota, one point
• 1:05:21
  Speaker 1: one million acres of public lands and waters within the
• 1:05:25
  Speaker 1: Superior National Forests. The Superior National Forest holds of the
• 1:05:30
  Speaker 1: entire of the fresh water in the entire National force system.
• 1:05:33
  Speaker 1: That's three million acres out of that. Proposed sulfide or
• 1:05:39
  Speaker 1: copper mine is owned by Anna Fagasta and has a
• 1:05:47
  Speaker 1: wholly owned subsidiary company called Twin Medals Minnesota that is
• 1:05:52
  Speaker 1: proposing this specific type of MIND very close to the
• 1:05:56
  Speaker 1: edge of the Boundary waters. UM. Byproduct of this type
• 1:06:01
  Speaker 1: of mining is sulfuric acid um and tons of other
• 1:06:05
  Speaker 1: heavy metals, also called acid mind drainage. The main issue
• 1:06:09
  Speaker 1: with that is this type of MIND has never been
• 1:06:11
  Speaker 1: done in the US without polluting in some form. So
• 1:06:15
  Speaker 1: you have a very water rich environment like the Boundary
• 1:06:19
  Speaker 1: waters um and a type of mining that generally on
• 1:06:23
  Speaker 1: an arid environments yet still pollutes in some form. So
• 1:06:26
  Speaker 1: putting those two together is quite an issue here in Minnesota,
• 1:06:30
  Speaker 1: specifically because of how water riach that area is up there,
• 1:06:33
  Speaker 1: And so what what tell me more about the risk
• 1:06:37
  Speaker 1: of that specific location I've I've seen and heard about
• 1:06:41
  Speaker 1: the fact that a lot of this because of the
• 1:06:43
  Speaker 1: way the water is flowing through the watershed, it's particularly
• 1:06:46
  Speaker 1: placed in a in a dangerous area for the rest
• 1:06:49
  Speaker 1: of the wilderness. Is that right, Yes, absolutely so. The
• 1:06:53
  Speaker 1: exact spot that it's located is right outside of Eye, Minnesota.
• 1:06:57
  Speaker 1: Most of the mining facilities and proposed MIND sites are
• 1:07:01
  Speaker 1: up to within a quarter mile of the border of
• 1:07:03
  Speaker 1: the Boundary waters, and the potential for pollution rolls up
• 1:07:08
  Speaker 1: through uh the caish Away River, which goes in and
• 1:07:12
  Speaker 1: back in and in and out back into the boundary
• 1:07:16
  Speaker 1: waters itself and would flow up through the potential pollution
• 1:07:19
  Speaker 1: would flow up through the boundary waters in the Voyagers
• 1:07:22
  Speaker 1: National Park, Rainy Lake all the way up to Hudson
• 1:07:25
  Speaker 1: Bay along the UH United States and Canadian border along
• 1:07:28
  Speaker 1: Minnesota all the way up. So there's a vast area
• 1:07:32
  Speaker 1: that could be potentially polluted by this. And UM, there's
• 1:07:37
  Speaker 1: not only UH water based issue, you know, this is
• 1:07:40
  Speaker 1: a wildlife based issue. This is an economic issue. UM.
• 1:07:44
  Speaker 1: The list goes on. So it's it's very detrimental to
• 1:07:48
  Speaker 1: um the outdoor economy that the boundary water supports as well.
• 1:07:52
  Speaker 1: So you mentioned this outdoor recreation economy. UM, I know
• 1:07:55
  Speaker 1: one of the major I guess the proponents of the
• 1:08:00
  Speaker 1: mine would say that that will be good for the economy,
• 1:08:02
  Speaker 1: and people need those jobs, and of course resource abstraction
• 1:08:06
  Speaker 1: and that economy is important. Those jobs are important. UM.
• 1:08:09
  Speaker 1: In this case though, because of the specific location of it,
• 1:08:12
  Speaker 1: it threatens so much else too. And and I know
• 1:08:15
  Speaker 1: there's been some numbers and and people trying to quantify
• 1:08:19
  Speaker 1: what kind of economic impact the recreation on the boundary
• 1:08:23
  Speaker 1: waters has and and all the things related to wildlife
• 1:08:25
  Speaker 1: and wild places up there. Have you guys, can you
• 1:08:28
  Speaker 1: speak to that at all? I mean, I mean, what
• 1:08:30
  Speaker 1: are what's at risk on that level? I think when
• 1:08:33
  Speaker 1: it comes down to the job argument, you're looking at, UM,
• 1:08:36
  Speaker 1: a sustainable and robust outdoor economy that's supported by the
• 1:08:40
  Speaker 1: boundary waters itself, and as long as that remains in
• 1:08:45
  Speaker 1: the same the same way that it is right now, UM,
• 1:08:48
  Speaker 1: it's going to support those jobs in perpetuity. Right, so
• 1:08:51
  Speaker 1: you will always have this wilderness supporting an outdoor economy
• 1:08:57
  Speaker 1: in northeastern Minnesota. UM. Comparatively to the proposed you know
• 1:09:03
  Speaker 1: a number of jobs, I don't think we need to
• 1:09:05
  Speaker 1: get into numbers here specifically, but those jobs put forth
• 1:09:12
  Speaker 1: by Anathoga Gaston for one of our ten fifteen years
• 1:09:15
  Speaker 1: down the road, and we can kind of get into
• 1:09:17
  Speaker 1: that a little bit later here. But you're also looking
• 1:09:20
  Speaker 1: at comparatively, you know what is um you know, how
• 1:09:24
  Speaker 1: is automation going to develop in that time? So by
• 1:09:28
  Speaker 1: the time those jobs actually come forth, there really is
• 1:09:32
  Speaker 1: no way to quantify how many there will actually be
• 1:09:35
  Speaker 1: at that time. Out your economy itself is growing, thus
• 1:09:39
  Speaker 1: the jobs are growing, and that that doesn't just affect
• 1:09:42
  Speaker 1: northeastern Minnesota. That affects the folks down in southeastern Minnesota
• 1:09:47
  Speaker 1: like Winona, Canoe. Um, you know, all the hotels and
• 1:09:50
  Speaker 1: places that people stay when they come to come and
• 1:09:53
  Speaker 1: visit this place, the gear that they're buying ahead of time.
• 1:09:56
  Speaker 1: So it's so hard to quantify the numbers, but you
• 1:10:00
  Speaker 1: have to see the amount of jobs that are already
• 1:10:02
  Speaker 1: there that are supported by this place too. It definitely
• 1:10:05
  Speaker 1: went out just being there and Eally just seeing, you know,
• 1:10:09
  Speaker 1: compared to what I imagine a lot of other small
• 1:10:13
  Speaker 1: towns across you know, rural America might be dealing with
• 1:10:16
  Speaker 1: right now, Eally is seemingly thriving. Lots of shops, great restaurants,
• 1:10:20
  Speaker 1: a lot of gear shops, a lot of outfitters. Um
• 1:10:23
  Speaker 1: obviously outdoor recreation hunting and fishing and paddling and camping.
• 1:10:28
  Speaker 1: That seems to be all the lifeblood of that place,
• 1:10:31
  Speaker 1: just at least from an observation standpoint as I passed
• 1:10:33
  Speaker 1: through there. Um, oh yeah, you know, and and winter
• 1:10:38
  Speaker 1: sports and recreation, and they're they're building and you know,
• 1:10:41
  Speaker 1: developing more trails around the area too for four wheeling
• 1:10:46
  Speaker 1: to to get that going more too. So and I
• 1:10:49
  Speaker 1: know you guys you know visited Paragas. I think that's
• 1:10:51
  Speaker 1: a shining example of of, you know, what the Boundary
• 1:10:55
  Speaker 1: Waters can sustain as an outdoor business up there, and
• 1:10:57
  Speaker 1: the employees a ton of people. It's an amazing business.
• 1:11:00
  Speaker 1: And that's been around for a while to twenty years
• 1:11:02
  Speaker 1: or something like that, maybe more than that, I think,
• 1:11:05
  Speaker 1: I think it's almost thirties. Wow. Yeah, they've got a
• 1:11:09
  Speaker 1: they've got a great deal going there. We we enjoyed
• 1:11:11
  Speaker 1: chatting with them and checking out their shop and everything.
• 1:11:14
  Speaker 1: Um so, so, Okay, the Boundary Waters is an incredible place.
• 1:11:19
  Speaker 1: I just experienced it finally, And and that's what we
• 1:11:22
  Speaker 1: kind of talked about the whole podcast leading up to this.
• 1:11:24
  Speaker 1: We've kind of we've kind of established that, Okay, it's
• 1:11:27
  Speaker 1: it's a special place. It supports an important recreation economy.
• 1:11:32
  Speaker 1: There's these proposed minds that have a strong possibility of
• 1:11:36
  Speaker 1: polluting this ecosystem in this special place and damaging the
• 1:11:40
  Speaker 1: water quality and the fish and wildlife and all the
• 1:11:42
  Speaker 1: opportunities that we care about up there. Um, can you
• 1:11:45
  Speaker 1: get us up to speed on what's been going on
• 1:11:49
  Speaker 1: in the last couple of years and then just recently
• 1:11:51
  Speaker 1: this year, so they proposed these minds, and now there's
• 1:11:54
  Speaker 1: been this controversy between those who want to protect the
• 1:11:57
  Speaker 1: boundary waters versus those who want to set up them.
• 1:12:00
  Speaker 1: Line there so close to it. Walked me through what's
• 1:12:03
  Speaker 1: happened and where we are today. Sure, I think a
• 1:12:06
  Speaker 1: good good place to start then is you know, near
• 1:12:08
  Speaker 1: the the end of the Obama administration, they instituted what
• 1:12:14
  Speaker 1: is called federal withdrawal roughly around two acres from the
• 1:12:20
  Speaker 1: federal mining program, right, so there was this buffer zone
• 1:12:24
  Speaker 1: around the Boundary Waters Canari a wilderness that UH was
• 1:12:29
  Speaker 1: meant to be a part of a two year environmental
• 1:12:33
  Speaker 1: study which was instituted by UH, that federal mineral withdrawal.
• 1:12:39
  Speaker 1: So that was great because we knew that that federal
• 1:12:44
  Speaker 1: withdrawal and that mining study and that environmental study we're
• 1:12:47
  Speaker 1: going to show that this place was too too special
• 1:12:52
  Speaker 1: and also you know, too sensitive of an area for
• 1:12:54
  Speaker 1: this type of mind to go. UM. Fast forward to
• 1:12:58
  Speaker 1: the Trump administration, that decision was reversed and last year
• 1:13:05
  Speaker 1: and Medals, which again I mentioned is owned by Anna
• 1:13:07
  Speaker 1: fagassa Chilean mining company, was granted UH two leases four
• 1:13:15
  Speaker 1: sull fight or comprom mining near the boundary waters. So
• 1:13:18
  Speaker 1: we we're currently at with that is again, these leases
• 1:13:22
  Speaker 1: are highly contested because of their proximity to this, to
• 1:13:25
  Speaker 1: this wilderness. UM. They're also working on a third mineral
• 1:13:30
  Speaker 1: re lease at this point, and since they've been granted
• 1:13:34
  Speaker 1: those leases, they are now able to move forward on
• 1:13:36
  Speaker 1: submitting a state mind plan. So that mind plan of operation,
• 1:13:42
  Speaker 1: just like say the title of mine UH is you
• 1:13:47
  Speaker 1: know twin medals, is evaluated on the basis of those
• 1:13:49
  Speaker 1: permits rather than leasing. UM. So for there we're in
• 1:13:54
  Speaker 1: a long fight, you know, legal battles, money spent on
• 1:13:58
  Speaker 1: both sides, but at this point, you know, it comes
• 1:14:01
  Speaker 1: down to the state level for that mind plan. So
• 1:14:05
  Speaker 1: the permitting process will begin once they submit that mind plan,
• 1:14:10
  Speaker 1: which will be somewhere towards the end of this year,
• 1:14:13
  Speaker 1: is what we've heard. UM. Then that kind of brings
• 1:14:16
  Speaker 1: the battle down to the state level and our UH
• 1:14:21
  Speaker 1: senators and legislators, especially our governor as well here in Minnesota.
• 1:14:26
  Speaker 1: So what can besides that go ahead? I was just
• 1:14:29
  Speaker 1: gonna I was gonna ask if you if you don't
• 1:14:31
  Speaker 1: have more on on where that's at, my next question
• 1:14:34
  Speaker 1: would be simply, is there anything the average person can
• 1:14:38
  Speaker 1: do at this point? Oh? Absolutely, I mean we're in
• 1:14:42
  Speaker 1: a perfect position now for folks to be making calls
• 1:14:46
  Speaker 1: to their representatives, to be making calls to governor walls. Uh,
• 1:14:53
  Speaker 1: writing to the newspapers, holding events. Um. Honestly, this guy's
• 1:14:59
  Speaker 1: the limit. Make sure you know, sign petitions. Um, we
• 1:15:03
  Speaker 1: have places that folks can sign up, you know, where
• 1:15:05
  Speaker 1: we set up meetings for them and their legislators. We
• 1:15:10
  Speaker 1: just need to make sure that we get the word
• 1:15:11
  Speaker 1: out and that we show these folks here in Minnesota
• 1:15:16
  Speaker 1: and nationally that this is an issue just like Yellowstone
• 1:15:18
  Speaker 1: and Pebble and bears ears right. Um, it's an issue
• 1:15:22
  Speaker 1: of national importance and people's voices are most important right now.
• 1:15:28
  Speaker 1: And that's really what we need folks to do. So
• 1:15:31
  Speaker 1: keep keep spreading the good word, talking about it, making
• 1:15:35
  Speaker 1: sure that our legislators know that this is this is
• 1:15:38
  Speaker 1: a special place and needs to be protected and and
• 1:15:42
  Speaker 1: all that. That makes a lot of sense to me.
• 1:15:44
  Speaker 1: So any other final things we need to know about this,
• 1:15:48
  Speaker 1: I guess I guess one thing we do need to
• 1:15:49
  Speaker 1: check off on is just for those that are wanting
• 1:15:52
  Speaker 1: to learn more, where should they go to learn more
• 1:15:54
  Speaker 1: about the issue, to learn more about the boundary waters
• 1:15:57
  Speaker 1: and how they can help. Yeah, please visit our web
• 1:16:00
  Speaker 1: site at Sportsman b w c A dot org. You'll
• 1:16:04
  Speaker 1: find everything you need there to learn more about the
• 1:16:08
  Speaker 1: issue and also to find out how you can plug
• 1:16:10
  Speaker 1: into the issue as well and help. Um. We have
• 1:16:14
  Speaker 1: many great partners that are also helping us with this,
• 1:16:16
  Speaker 1: like back then three Hunters and Anglers and Theodore Roosevelt
• 1:16:19
  Speaker 1: Conservation Partnership, So you can also find information and follow
• 1:16:23
  Speaker 1: them for different work that we're doing. And I would
• 1:16:26
  Speaker 1: again I would just say, you know, make a call.
• 1:16:30
  Speaker 1: Make a call, it's the most important thing. Write a letter, um,
• 1:16:35
  Speaker 1: and you know hopefully when you know. Uh. Also when
• 1:16:39
  Speaker 1: this mind plan is submitted and and the submittle of
• 1:16:43
  Speaker 1: this third lease, if they were to get it, will
• 1:16:44
  Speaker 1: also have some public comment period, and that's a great
• 1:16:47
  Speaker 1: way for people to plug into this as well. So
• 1:16:50
  Speaker 1: I'd say those are are very easy ways for people
• 1:16:54
  Speaker 1: to help on this and help us nationalize this issue,
• 1:16:58
  Speaker 1: because the folks we're gonna need to help are not
• 1:17:01
  Speaker 1: just in this state, they're across the entire country. Yeah,
• 1:17:05
  Speaker 1: And I think the final thing I would maybe add
• 1:17:06
  Speaker 1: is you tell me if you agree with this, But
• 1:17:09
  Speaker 1: I would also just encourage people to go and see
• 1:17:12
  Speaker 1: this place you're for yourself. Absolutely experience it for yourself.
• 1:17:17
  Speaker 1: I think you'll then come to understand why so many
• 1:17:20
  Speaker 1: people are making a racket about it, because it really is.
• 1:17:24
  Speaker 1: I keep saying it's special and you do need to
• 1:17:28
  Speaker 1: experience that firsthand. They'll probably to really get it. So
• 1:17:32
  Speaker 1: head out there, to really head there into the Boundary Water,
• 1:17:35
  Speaker 1: support those local businesses and those folks that are also
• 1:17:38
  Speaker 1: fighting this good fight. I think that's a good place
• 1:17:40
  Speaker 1: to start as well. Yeah. Absolutely, I mean I don't
• 1:17:42
  Speaker 1: think there's any more important to actually see in the
• 1:17:45
  Speaker 1: place you know, as it is and for what it is,
• 1:17:48
  Speaker 1: and the Boundary Waters is incredibly special and it's one
• 1:17:52
  Speaker 1: of a kind place, and yeah, I couldn't agree more.
• 1:17:57
  Speaker 1: Would also be happy to help anybody get up there
• 1:18:00
  Speaker 1: they want to contact us too, perfect well, I'll make
• 1:18:03
  Speaker 1: sure to uh to get people links again as well
• 1:18:05
  Speaker 1: for where they can get all this information. And thank
• 1:18:08
  Speaker 1: you Lucas for all of your help helping us was
• 1:18:10
  Speaker 1: we were preparing for our trip and for giving this
• 1:18:12
  Speaker 1: this update and keeping everyone so well informed. Yes, thanks
• 1:18:16
  Speaker 1: smart for having me. I really appreciate it. Sounds like
• 1:18:19
  Speaker 1: you guys had a great trip and I'm looking forward
• 1:18:20
  Speaker 1: to hearing more about it. It was one of the kind.
• 1:18:23
  Speaker 1: It was really really cool. So we're planning on going
• 1:18:26
  Speaker 1: back again next year. I'm not sure what will be chasing,
• 1:18:28
  Speaker 1: but we're planning on going back soon. Nice. That sounds great.
• 1:18:33
  Speaker 1: So if we can help again, we're always there. Appreciate it,
• 1:18:37
  Speaker 1: all right, that is going to do it. So all
• 1:18:41
  Speaker 1: I want to do now is just give you one
• 1:18:43
  Speaker 1: more set of words of encouragement. I guess to go
• 1:18:47
  Speaker 1: and see the boundary waters for yourself. We've said it
• 1:18:52
  Speaker 1: fifteen times during this podcast. I'm sure if not more,
• 1:18:55
  Speaker 1: but this place is incredible. You gotta go out there,
• 1:18:58
  Speaker 1: try to hunt it and try to fish it, camp
• 1:19:00
  Speaker 1: a canoe it. It's just amazing. And that being the case,
• 1:19:06
  Speaker 1: please join me in standing up for this place. Sign
• 1:19:09
  Speaker 1: the petition, send emails. Let folks know that some places
• 1:19:13
  Speaker 1: are too special to risk, and this is one of them.
• 1:19:17
  Speaker 1: Other things I want to mention want to thank Paragus
• 1:19:19
  Speaker 1: Northwood's company. These guys helped us get set up with
• 1:19:22
  Speaker 1: our canoes, with our stove and our wall tent. They
• 1:19:27
  Speaker 1: helped us figure out where we should go, spend time
• 1:19:29
  Speaker 1: looking at maps with us. Just took a lot of
• 1:19:31
  Speaker 1: time to help make this trip successful and I want
• 1:19:33
  Speaker 1: to make a special call out to them big help.
• 1:19:36
  Speaker 1: They're located in Ealie, Minnesota. If you're heading into the
• 1:19:39
  Speaker 1: Boundary Waters, you gotta stop there, get your gear, get
• 1:19:42
  Speaker 1: loaded up on whatever stuff you need. They got a bookstore,
• 1:19:45
  Speaker 1: they've got clothing, they've got canoes. You can rent the
• 1:19:48
  Speaker 1: whole nine yards, so check it out. Also make sure
• 1:19:51
  Speaker 1: you're checking out Sportsman for the Boundary Waters to learn
• 1:19:53
  Speaker 1: more about what Lucas was telling you about. And finally,
• 1:19:56
  Speaker 1: speaking of books and public lands and protecting them, my
• 1:20:00
  Speaker 1: new book That Wild Country. It's coming out here in
• 1:20:03
  Speaker 1: just a matter of weeks. It's actually available early on
• 1:20:05
  Speaker 1: Amazon right now, but it will be available everywhere else
• 1:20:09
  Speaker 1: starting December one. If you want to pick up a copy,
• 1:20:12
  Speaker 1: it would mean the world. And if you leave a review,
• 1:20:14
  Speaker 1: I would appreciate it so much. So with all that said,
• 1:20:18
  Speaker 1: thanks again for listening. Best to luck in the woods
• 1:20:21
  Speaker 1: and stay wired to hunt.