Speaker 1: Welcome to the Wired to Hunt podcast, your guide to
Speaker 1: the Whitetail woods, presented by first Light, creating proven versatile
Speaker 1: hunting apparel for the stand, saddle or blind. First Light
Speaker 1: Go Farther, Stay Longer, and now your host, Mark Kenyon.
Speaker 2: Welcome to the Wired to Hunt podcast. This week on
Speaker 2: the show, I'm joined by Steve Speck and Mark Helsing
Speaker 2: from Exo Mountain Gear to discuss their wild experiences and
Speaker 2: greatest lessons learned for planning your first Alaskan adventure. All right,
Speaker 2: welcome back to the Wired to Hunt podcast, brought to
Speaker 2: you by First Light and there came for Conservation Initiative,
Speaker 2: and today we've got the finale of our adventure series.
Speaker 2: We've talked about white tail adventures, a handful of really
Speaker 2: cool ideas on that front. We last week talked about
Speaker 2: planning an epic Western hunting adventure, and today we are
Speaker 2: going north to Alaska for the ultimate, the Peak, the
Speaker 2: pinnacle of all hunting adventures. Alaska. How to plan your
Speaker 2: first Alaskan hunting adventure. It's something that so many of
Speaker 2: us dream of, so many of us want to do,
Speaker 2: but maybe have been intimidated by it or unsure of
Speaker 2: how to approach it, or maybe thought it was cost prohibitive.
Speaker 2: Many different obstacles stand in the way, I think for
Speaker 2: those of us in the lower forty eight when it
Speaker 2: comes to going to Alaska. But I have been super
Speaker 2: lucky over the last handful of years to get to
Speaker 2: go up there twice now. And what I've discovered is
Speaker 2: that to a large degree, it's it's way more possible
Speaker 2: than I ever realized. And so today we're going to
Speaker 2: talk to two people who've got even more experience than
Speaker 2: I do when it comes to playing these kinds of trips,
Speaker 2: and that is Steve Speck and Mark Helsing from Exo
Speaker 2: Mountain Gear. And they came to mind for me as
Speaker 2: the right guys talk about this because they just finished
Speaker 2: up a really cool project all about planning and executing
Speaker 2: and documenting epic Alaskan adventures. This is called their Experience Project. They,
Speaker 2: between the two of them and a handful of other
Speaker 2: buddies and folks they work with, did a four person
Speaker 2: caribou hunt in Alaska, then a gosh, maybe three person
Speaker 2: I can't remember how many guys did it, but a
Speaker 2: multi person moose hunt in a different part of Alaska,
Speaker 2: and then two of them went and did a mountain
Speaker 2: goat in South or mountain goat hunt in Southeast Alaska.
Speaker 2: So they had this wide array of Alaskan hunting experiences.
Speaker 2: They filmed it all, created a terrific video series. But
Speaker 2: then they also broke down in detail everything they did
Speaker 2: to plan for the trips and then how the actual
Speaker 2: trips went. They've got gear reviews and discussions and strategy
Speaker 2: sessions and stories and all sorts of great stuff on
Speaker 2: their own feeds there and their website over at the
Speaker 2: Experience Project. So I'm not gonna try to cover all
Speaker 2: that ground here today. Today it's about high level stuff.
Speaker 2: Me and Steve and Mark talk through everything from you know,
Speaker 2: why go to Alaska to who is an Alaska hunt
Speaker 2: right for? You know, how to tell if you're ready
Speaker 2: or not. We talk through costs and planning considerations. We
Speaker 2: talk about, you know, should you go DIY or guide
Speaker 2: it or use a transporter. We talk through a bunch
Speaker 2: of things about, you know, preparing physically and mentally for
Speaker 2: this kind of adventure, what kind of conditions to be
Speaker 2: ready for you know, some of the key gear considerations,
Speaker 2: and a bunch more along those lines. This one for
Speaker 2: me was inspiring, exciting, and super informative, as I definitely
Speaker 2: am hoping to go back to Alaska and do more
Speaker 2: of this, so highly recommend this. If you ever hope
Speaker 2: to go to Alaska, listen to this episode. It will
Speaker 2: help you plan it, prepare for it, and it will
Speaker 2: definitely inspire you to stay up late at night daydreaming
Speaker 2: about the Last Frontier two. So that is the main
Speaker 2: gist of this episode, but we also have a little
Speaker 2: addendum that will be added to the end of this
Speaker 2: kind of a part two of the podcast, because if
Speaker 2: any of us want to be able to Alaska and
Speaker 2: have these incredible wild experiences in this incredible wild place,
Speaker 2: we need to make sure that Alaska stays incredible and
Speaker 2: wild and open and public and healthy. So there are
Speaker 2: thriving wildlife and fish populations and wild open public lands
Speaker 2: for us to go out there and experience in the
Speaker 2: month in Alaska. Unfortunately, as I have been learning more
Speaker 2: and more here recently, is not as picture perfect and
Speaker 2: unthreatened as you might imagine. Sometimes I think in our
Speaker 2: imagination we just assume that Alaska's way up there, far away,
Speaker 2: and it's safe from all the other threats that public
Speaker 2: lands down to the lower forty eight are used to facing,
Speaker 2: but that's actually not the case. There's a number of
Speaker 2: controversial and potentially really significant projects up there and proposals
Speaker 2: up there that could impact our ability to have all
Speaker 2: those things I mentioned, thriving wildlife populations, wild and wide
Speaker 2: open public places, clean water, you know, all that kind
Speaker 2: of stuff. So I've got my friend Bjorn Dela. He
Speaker 2: is a lifelong Alaskan resident, a die hard hunter, a conservationist,
Speaker 2: and an outdoor writer. He joins me at the end
Speaker 2: for a quick fifteen minute ish rundown of some of
Speaker 2: the very most important issues right now when it comes
Speaker 2: to Alaska and the future of Alaska and hunting and
Speaker 2: fishing opportunities. So be sure to listen to that once
Speaker 2: that you know how you can be a part of
Speaker 2: a positive future for Alaska, so that each never one
Speaker 2: of us has that chance to get up there someday
Speaker 2: to enjoy it ourselves, hopefully our kids are kids, kids,
Speaker 2: and many more generations to come. So that's the game
Speaker 2: plan today, guys. It's going to be an absolute banger
Speaker 2: of an epid. So I'm excited you're here with me.
Speaker 2: I'm excited to talk about Alaska, excited to dream about Alaska,
Speaker 2: and we should probably just get right to it. So
Speaker 2: here we go, all right with me? Now, I've got
Speaker 2: Steve Speck and Mark Helsing. Welcome to the show, gentlemen,
Speaker 2: thanks for having us on. I'm excited for this one
Speaker 2: as I have personally been spending a lot of my
Speaker 2: kind of mental daydreaming time on Alaska over the last year.
Speaker 2: I got to spend about two weeks there last fall,
Speaker 2: and have already been planning a couple of new expeditions
Speaker 2: probably for this year. So so super excited about it,
Speaker 2: and this seemed like the perfect place to end this
Speaker 2: series that we've been doing over on Wired to Hunt
Speaker 2: this month all about kind of adding adventure to your
Speaker 2: hunting season. We've talked about a bunch of whitetail ideas,
Speaker 2: we've talked about Western ideas, and there's there's no bigger,
Speaker 2: batter adventure than Alaska. And you guys, as I've been
Speaker 2: watching from afar, kind of took that to the next level,
Speaker 2: it seems like, with your experience project this year. So
Speaker 2: I got to ask straight out the gate, why Alaska
Speaker 2: from your perspective?
Speaker 3: Why?
Speaker 2: And I guess I'll let you Steve maybe kick it off?
Speaker 4: Sure?
Speaker 2: Why why is the Last Frontier a little bit different
Speaker 2: than everything else? Why did you just have to go
Speaker 2: and start hunting there?
Speaker 4: It's it's just like everything you want it to be.
Speaker 4: For me, My first showed up there I think was
Speaker 4: in twenty fourteen, and it was actually a miserable experience
Speaker 4: in this swamp for moves and just a terrible but
Speaker 4: it's it's just like all I'll ask heroins, like a
Speaker 4: drug that just freaking hooks, yeah, you know, and it's
Speaker 4: just so like everything's heightened up. They're so I mean
Speaker 4: for Mark and I Adventures everything, we're not like species
Speaker 4: or what kind of coined our own phrase called experience hunters,
Speaker 4: kind of where the Experienced project came from, and that
Speaker 4: we're just chasing like adventure and like go give me
Speaker 4: dial up the adventure dial to you know, one hundred
Speaker 4: and twenty percent. Let's go do this. And so it's
Speaker 4: not about the animal as much as like, what, you know,
Speaker 4: what are the logistics of the hunt? How far are
Speaker 4: we hiking in there? What are we dealing with weather
Speaker 4: and mountains and brown bears? I mean just whatever. So
Speaker 4: that's what Alaska represents in Idaho, Like, I mean, I've
Speaker 4: been living here for thirty nine of my forty years
Speaker 4: and had some amazing experiences, and you can get away
Speaker 4: from people. Closest thing down here is like the Frank
Speaker 4: Church Wilderness, which you can go into and just kind
Speaker 4: of be just have this feeling of isolation. Everything's just heightened.
Speaker 4: It's not like you're not like two miles from your
Speaker 4: truck where you have that kind of safety out if
Speaker 4: you need it. You really got to you know, you
Speaker 4: get to train, you gotta be ready, you gotta have
Speaker 4: your gear dialed in. And Alaska is just kind of
Speaker 4: the pinnacle of all that for me. And so I've
Speaker 4: once I started hunting, I was like, I got to
Speaker 4: figure out a way to get up there at least
Speaker 4: once a year. What's after my first ship up there?
Speaker 2: So what about you, Mark?
Speaker 5: I think, like we'll talk about we were talking about
Speaker 5: before we recorded, Like there's this idea that Alaska's untouchable
Speaker 5: in a way, right, like it we all dream of
Speaker 5: it and it's this big, grand adventure. I was able
Speaker 5: to go for the first time in twenty nineteen with
Speaker 5: Steve and a group of guys and we did a
Speaker 5: like a pretty typical fly in, drop camp, caribou hunt,
Speaker 5: and uh, it's like flying commercially up to Alaska. One
Speaker 5: was way easier than I expected. But then two, I
Speaker 5: remember that as soon as we got on the floatplane,
Speaker 5: I was sitting up front with the pilot a couple
Speaker 5: of guys in the back, and I'm like looking at
Speaker 5: this plane and there's pieces missing out of the dash
Speaker 5: and like wires hanging down, and I'm like, is this
Speaker 5: literally what we're taking? You know, it's a little nervous,
Speaker 5: And yeah, it was like the first time that I
Speaker 5: got nervous about this whole thing. And then just the
Speaker 5: flight in. I mean I remember flying in and thinking, okay,
Speaker 5: like we could turn around go home now. That was
Speaker 5: worth it. Like just the experience of being Alaska, being
Speaker 5: part of what is such a different way of life
Speaker 5: in a way up there. I mean I could tell
Speaker 5: a bunch of stories. We basically stole some stole some
Speaker 5: guys truck this year, Like this is just the people,
Speaker 5: the culture, yes, the hunting of course, but like the land.
Speaker 5: I mean, it's just such a wild place. And as
Speaker 5: soon as I did it once, like Steve said, it's
Speaker 5: a little bit like Heroin where it's like, Okay, how
Speaker 5: do I how do I get back up here? Like
Speaker 5: how do I do that? Again? Like it doesn't. I've
Speaker 5: been fortunate enough to hunt with a bunch of different
Speaker 5: species and parts of Alaska, which has been cool because
Speaker 5: we all talk about Alaska. But there's so much variety,
Speaker 5: which is another thing. It's like, you know, from southeast
Speaker 5: to the far North and interior and coastal and peninsula.
Speaker 5: It's like, there is just so much to experience and explore.
Speaker 5: And uh, one, it's it doesn't have to be as
Speaker 5: difficult or as expensive as you think. I mean, it's
Speaker 5: not cheap, but you know, you don't have to spend
Speaker 5: ten plus grand to do something, and then once you
Speaker 5: taste it, it's yeah, it literally is a little bit
Speaker 5: like a drug for sure.
Speaker 2: Yeah. It was so eye opening for me this year.
Speaker 2: I have I've done two separate trips to Alaska myself.
Speaker 2: The first one was kind of set up by I
Speaker 2: went with Steve and a bunch of guys from media there,
Speaker 2: so they did a lot of the logistics and I
Speaker 2: was just kind of there. But this last time around,
Speaker 2: I was much more involved in figuring it all out myself,
Speaker 2: and that you know to your point, Mark, was this
Speaker 2: aha moment for me that you know, little old meat
Speaker 2: could do this, and it's it was no more expensive
Speaker 2: to fly to Alaska than it was to like take
Speaker 2: a trip to Florida or California or something, and I
Speaker 2: hell of a lot preferred going to Alaska than one
Speaker 2: of those spots. So so so, yeah, it was. It
Speaker 2: was a big eye opener for me this past year.
Speaker 2: But I do think there's this other thing that a
Speaker 2: lot of folks wonder about. There's the cost question, but
Speaker 2: then there's a certain degree of like experience or skill
Speaker 2: barrier that I think a lot of people maybe look at.
Speaker 2: And so that that leads me to this next major
Speaker 2: question that I think a lot of people ask, which is,
Speaker 2: you know, am I ready for this? Or or or
Speaker 2: am I right for this? Am I qualified for this? How?
Speaker 2: How would you guys go about recommend, you know, recommending
Speaker 2: someone think about whether Alaska is right for them or not,
Speaker 2: or if they are ready or not? How do you
Speaker 2: think about that?
Speaker 4: Steve, That's a tough one. Yeah. We were just in
Speaker 4: Salt Lake at the Huntecks b and I had a
Speaker 4: dad and a son come up and he was wanting
Speaker 4: to like, hey, can you like tell me about your caraboull?
Speaker 4: You know, I can give you all logistics and and
Speaker 4: then I do. The more I talked to him, he
Speaker 4: was like, you're not You're not ready for this, Like
Speaker 4: it's a that has a lot of logistics and a
Speaker 4: lot of oh you know, just you gotta be really
Speaker 4: died with your gear and there's just a lot going
Speaker 4: on there that's probably too much to chew. I think
Speaker 4: my first hunt out there was a moose hunt, and
Speaker 4: even that was quite a bit. And then after doing
Speaker 4: that and then doing a caribou hunt, because a lot
Speaker 4: of people will have the mindset, well, I'm just gonna
Speaker 4: go to Alaska once and so I'm gonna hunt the
Speaker 4: most preferred species, and I think doing something that's a
Speaker 4: little bit easier to chew is probably a good start.
Speaker 4: So like a drop camp caribou hunt a fairly easier
Speaker 4: hunt than a moose hunt with all the logistics of
Speaker 4: getting all to meat home and just just packing that
Speaker 4: and dealing with Alaska. So I do think you need
Speaker 4: to just evaluate where your skill set is as far
Speaker 4: as if you're just if all you've been doing is
Speaker 4: white tail hunting, your whole life. And you've never backpacked,
Speaker 4: I probably you know, drive out to Colorado and back back.
Speaker 4: I mean, you would want to kind of take it
Speaker 4: in steps, don't. I think weather is certainly a big
Speaker 4: issue up there in Alaska, down here and even in
Speaker 4: Idaho pretty casual about stuff like baby sacks and tarps,
Speaker 4: and we're backpack and up there, So you better have
Speaker 4: a four season ted, you better be. That's the first
Speaker 4: time I ever spent more than like twenty four hours
Speaker 4: in a tent our first caribou trip up there, you
Speaker 4: had like forty eight hours stuck inside a little tent
Speaker 4: because it's sixty mile an hour winds, right, Like, you
Speaker 4: don't experience that stuff in the lower forty eight But
Speaker 4: if you came from never backpacking to going full into that,
Speaker 4: I think it's a lot to take. Sure, certainly some
Speaker 4: guys can do it and you're gonna you're gonna learn fast.
Speaker 4: But it's if you have no experience carabo hunt, maybe
Speaker 4: I don't know.
Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah, I think a drop camp caribou hunt is
Speaker 5: a great introduction. Some of the Kodiak stuff is a
Speaker 5: great introduction. I'm sure we're talking with Obviously a lot
Speaker 5: of deer hunters and sick of blacktails. It can be
Speaker 5: miserable and difficult at times, but it's also very doable.
Speaker 5: Whether that's boat based or lodge based. It's a little
Speaker 5: bit different obviously if you like fly in early and
Speaker 5: get dropped off a pie and you're out on your own.
Speaker 5: So yeah, some of those hunts where it's whether it's transportation,
Speaker 5: like it's a drop camp hunt or it's this boat
Speaker 5: based hunt, and you you kind of you have this
Speaker 5: ability to, like say on a drop camp hunt, either
Speaker 5: have like a pretty solid base camp to return to
Speaker 5: because essentially you're just day hunting from there, or on
Speaker 5: a boat based or lodge based like Kodiak to your hunt,
Speaker 5: you have this place to retreat to. Like you may
Speaker 5: go out and you may be very difficult day hunting,
Speaker 5: you may get soaking wet, you may be freezing cold,
Speaker 5: but you kind of have this place to return to.
Speaker 5: It isn't home, but at least it's something versus obviously
Speaker 5: like a true backpack hunt where you're just like, hey,
Speaker 5: it's me and just what's on my back for you know,
Speaker 5: seven to ten days, Like that's just a different level
Speaker 5: of you know, risk and skill and what have you.
Speaker 5: So I would say, there's like it's all difficult in
Speaker 5: its own way. And that's one thing to just like
Speaker 5: anticipate with Alaska and is we're talking about like this
Speaker 5: theme of adventure wouldn't be adventurous if it all went well, right, Like,
Speaker 5: so you have to expect, like part of what I'm
Speaker 5: signing up for with Alaska in particular, and with this
Speaker 5: idea of like chasing the next level of adventure is
Speaker 5: getting outside of my comfort zone. Otherwise it wouldn't be adventurous, right.
Speaker 5: It's like Steve was saying, like stuck in a tent
Speaker 5: for hours and hours gear failures, I've never seen like
Speaker 5: a mental like grind that I've never experienced. Like all
Speaker 5: that stuff has happened in Alaska at a different level.
Speaker 5: But that's also what makes it amazing. You know, It's
Speaker 5: been cool, I think for me to look at like
Speaker 5: some of the hunts I've been in Alaska and like
Speaker 5: to your point of am I ready or not, it's
Speaker 5: been neat for me to realize I wasn't ready to
Speaker 5: do certain things. But like over the experience of years,
Speaker 5: I've built some skill sets, confidence experiences that made me
Speaker 5: ready and it's cool to look back and go, man,
Speaker 5: I couldn't have I literally could not have done this
Speaker 5: ten years ago. Whether it was knowledge, whether it was mindset,
Speaker 5: whether it was you know, physical capability, whatever. But it's
Speaker 5: really rewarding to like just kind of push outside that
Speaker 5: comfort zone and then again like that's that's the entire
Speaker 5: point of adventure from my perspective.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so you bring up a great point, which is
Speaker 2: you know you can get ready for this. This isn't
Speaker 2: something that you're just like born Alaska ready or not.
Speaker 2: Steve you alluded to, Hey, you know, maybe drive out
Speaker 2: to Colorado and do smell cunning or something for a while.
Speaker 2: Are there any other things you'd recommend or do you
Speaker 2: want to expand on that a little bit? If there's
Speaker 2: someone listening to this that says, hey, man, Alaska is
Speaker 2: on the list, I want to do it someday, but
Speaker 2: I recognize I'm not quite there. I've been a lifelong
Speaker 2: Midwest hunter or whatever. Can you expand a little bit
Speaker 2: on things that they can do to build that skill
Speaker 2: set and readiness level so that maybe in five years
Speaker 2: or ten years or however many years it is, they
Speaker 2: could do what we're talking about. Steve, do you want
Speaker 2: to leave on that?
Speaker 4: I mean, Number one's going to be mental toughness, though
Speaker 4: just I think you're gonna certainly. I mean last time
Speaker 4: is obviously hug statement of a million different opportunities and
Speaker 4: things that could be thrown out. You could have a
Speaker 4: very easy hunter, you could have extremely difficult, challenging hunts.
Speaker 4: I would say, on the average, they're going to be
Speaker 4: more physical, they're going to take more mental toughness. You're
Speaker 4: going to deal with more adversity. So just prepping your
Speaker 4: body for what, reboding your mind for dealing with those
Speaker 4: things is something that you know, we talk about, Mark
Speaker 4: Can I talk about a lot in our podcast, try
Speaker 4: to do episodes with how do you build mental toughness?
Speaker 4: It's it's not something that just happens overnight. It's got
Speaker 4: its kind of a slow growth thing. And it could
Speaker 4: be as simple as you know, waking up every morning
Speaker 4: at five am and going for a run and just
Speaker 4: starting to deal with like I don't want to do that,
Speaker 4: but I'm going to do it, or I mean anything
Speaker 4: just that you don't want to do. We do a
Speaker 4: thing never year called the death Hype, where we we
Speaker 4: just pick a ridiculous distance that we go hike, and
Speaker 4: we got to train for it and that I mean,
Speaker 4: it's like going to overhype it. But what that's done
Speaker 4: for myself over the last ten years of doing it
Speaker 4: is pretty incredible. Just pushing past I got in think
Speaker 4: I could hike a hundred miles in three days. You know,
Speaker 4: I don't think that was possible, but yeah it is.
Speaker 4: You just train for it and uh you know, block out,
Speaker 4: put the brain's telling in between your ears. You know
Speaker 4: this sucks, and so uh yeah, I mean you got
Speaker 4: to you need to take some very practical steps. If
Speaker 4: you've never backpacked, just walk out in your backyard and
Speaker 4: you know, I mean if that's the very first night,
Speaker 4: just go camp down in your backyard for a night,
Speaker 4: blow up your matters, sleep in there, Go out there
Speaker 4: when it's you know, snowing or raining and cold, and
Speaker 4: not just when it's convenient, because that's when it's you know,
Speaker 4: you're not going to get to pick the weather when
Speaker 4: you're in Alaska. So just little baby steps and it
Speaker 4: won't take long, I think, just to get there. Certainly
Speaker 4: physical trainings. You know that the hunts can be very physical.
Speaker 4: You're youre's you know, we've done some marks. Very first
Speaker 4: hunt we did, we killed your caribou eight or nine
Speaker 4: miles from our base. Yeah, and walk into across that
Speaker 4: tundra of stuff was absolutely miserable. But you didn't have
Speaker 4: to do that. We're just the caribou numbers were low
Speaker 4: and we're like, well, we better go find them. Some
Speaker 4: guys are very successful in those sounds, just hunting right
Speaker 4: around camp and waiting for care but to come by.
Speaker 4: How don't it mark any other practical steps? I mean,
Speaker 4: I think it's just like every d would think. You
Speaker 4: got to start somewhere and baby steps and pretty quickly
Speaker 4: you get there, whether it's a year or five years. Yeah, yeah, Yeah.
Speaker 5: Where my head went it was like everything you said,
Speaker 5: Steve is relevant, Like true, my head also goes immediately
Speaker 5: to making sure that the people you're potentially going to
Speaker 5: do this Alaska trip are also on that same page,
Speaker 5: in that same journey.
Speaker 4: Great point.
Speaker 5: So like if if you're doing that, you know, say,
Speaker 5: it's like you and a buddy or you and you know,
Speaker 5: your brother, your brother whatever, like do that together. Even
Speaker 5: when I'm saying that's on yes, the hunt, obviously, that's
Speaker 5: like what you're doing but all that training and stuff,
Speaker 5: all the you know, weird hours, tired stuff. I have
Speaker 5: a friend at home who's who's not hunted at Alaska,
Speaker 5: but he's he talks with me about hunting and stuff,
Speaker 5: and he's turning thirty three here in a few weeks,
Speaker 5: and he sent me to the other day. I was like, hey, man,
Speaker 5: I'm getting together a group of guys. I want to
Speaker 5: hike thirty three miles for my thirty third birthday as
Speaker 5: fast as possible. And we're starting at one am. Like,
Speaker 5: fign me up, I'll be there. Like but those are
Speaker 5: the types of things that if you never make that
Speaker 5: decision to be like, hey, how fast can I hike
Speaker 5: thirty three miles? Like what would it be like to
Speaker 5: hike when I'm tired and do it at one in
Speaker 5: the morning, And that type of thing, Like that's a
Speaker 5: like fresh in my mind example of if I was
Speaker 5: playing an Alaska trip with a couple of buddies, Like
Speaker 5: that's the type of thing I would do. And that
Speaker 5: may sound really weird, but you don't know, like you
Speaker 5: could you could have grown up with someone, but you
Speaker 5: really people change under adversity and like difficult situations and
Speaker 5: lack of sleep and physical exhaustion and whatever. And one
Speaker 5: thing that's cool, like with some of the guys and
Speaker 5: trips we've done with Alaska, is like you know those
Speaker 5: people like you know, like what they're made of and
Speaker 5: essentially like when they're squeezed comes out of them and
Speaker 5: there's nothing like that. But that's also like to the
Speaker 5: point that you also don't know what you're like, So
Speaker 5: you learn about a lot about yourself too by doing
Speaker 5: that type of thing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So a lot of this, I think, in preparing
Speaker 2: your your body and mind for this kind of trip
Speaker 2: and then also enjoying the trip, I think comes down
Speaker 2: to expectations. Yeah, both you know, knowing what to expect,
Speaker 2: but then also properly setting you know, expectations around the
Speaker 2: experience or your goals or whatever to I mean, I mean,
Speaker 2: so much of our at least I can only speak
Speaker 2: to myself, but so often I find that my hunts
Speaker 2: are colored by the goals I come into the trip with.
Speaker 2: If I go into it and it's if I go
Speaker 2: in there like I got to kill a mature buck
Speaker 2: or whatever, I end up you know, sometimes having a
Speaker 2: totally different experience then if I went into it with
Speaker 2: what you guys described being like experience seekers just going
Speaker 2: into like, man, I want to have an adventure and
Speaker 2: I want to see what's out here and see what
Speaker 2: happens and push myself and enjoy every different crazy thing
Speaker 2: that happens. How would you how would you recommend someone
Speaker 2: or how have you guys gone into these trips and
Speaker 2: figure out how to properly set expectations and goals, because
Speaker 2: I think a lot of people will go into this
Speaker 2: kind of like you said, like this is my one
Speaker 2: time trip going to Alaska. I got to kill the
Speaker 2: trophy moose or I got to kill the trophy sheep
Speaker 2: or the trophy bear or whatever the thing is, and
Speaker 2: that maybe that's setting yourself up for failure. Maybe not,
Speaker 2: But what do you think about that?
Speaker 4: Steve? Yeah? What Mark? I'm thinking of? How lucky are we?
Speaker 4: That's the thought in my mind. We were one of
Speaker 4: our exhausts were dropping into the Grand Canyon and I'm
Speaker 4: just like sunrise and I'm looking around. I look at Mark, like, man,
Speaker 4: how lucky are we? Like we're alive, we're healthy, or
Speaker 4: were about right to do one hundred miles here into
Speaker 4: the Grand Canyon, Like it's all mindset right, you just
Speaker 4: have to have a positive attitude. I know that that
Speaker 4: very first Alaska Moost trip I talked about like I
Speaker 4: had never done a hunt where I wasn't in control
Speaker 4: of what basically our transportation. I guess, like plane dropped
Speaker 4: you off and you're out there and you know everything
Speaker 4: in Idaho, or you know, I'd done another state surrounding Idaho.
Speaker 4: Was like, all right, I'm done with the hunt. I
Speaker 4: hike out, I get to my truck, I drive away,
Speaker 4: and we were almost I was like a old rotten
Speaker 4: five year old, you know, like, what do you mean
Speaker 4: you can't come pick us up? We're done hunting. And
Speaker 4: that was a whole new perspective of just like you
Speaker 4: gotta kind of embrace embrace Alaska. Things move it at
Speaker 4: their speed and uh yeah, I don't know. I mean,
Speaker 4: you just gotta stop and smell the roses. I guess
Speaker 4: the best thing I can say when you're like, hey,
Speaker 4: I'm in Alaska. It's gonna be amazing experience, and just
Speaker 4: set that expectation that stuff's gonna happen. Not everything's gonna
Speaker 4: go right. I always tell people plan on one day
Speaker 4: up front and one day in the back end of
Speaker 4: weather like that's a guaranteed thing to happen. I'd say,
Speaker 4: on the average, it's probably true. Sometimes we get super lucky,
Speaker 4: get up there, beautiful weather, get flown in, get you know,
Speaker 4: the day you're supposed to, get picked up the day
Speaker 4: you're supposed to. Other times you sit there. I mean
Speaker 4: moose hunt we did last year. We sat for basically
Speaker 4: an extra seventy two hours in a camp at the
Speaker 4: edge of this lake waiting for the plane to come
Speaker 4: back because with the winds are too big and the
Speaker 4: cousin ways on the lake, and it's just you just
Speaker 4: got to like, well, like I could be sitting at
Speaker 4: a desk in the office, you know, like this is
Speaker 4: those worst places to be. But I think setting that
Speaker 4: expectation of there was a guy on another hunt. We
Speaker 4: were on a sheep hunt in twenty twenty two and
Speaker 4: he was a principal and he had to be back,
Speaker 4: like he could not he only had so many days
Speaker 4: off of work and he had to be back or
Speaker 4: it was like, you know, all hell broke loose on
Speaker 4: that day and I was like, dude, I would not
Speaker 4: book this trick. He got out. He got really lucky,
Speaker 4: Like we were stuck in this camp waiting for the
Speaker 4: weather to clear, and luckily the guy got out of there.
Speaker 4: But it was like, don't put yourself in that position.
Speaker 4: Should like always tell the wife and kids, like, hey,
Speaker 4: add a couple days at the end of the trip.
Speaker 4: That's a big one because if you put that you're
Speaker 4: on Alaska time once you're up there, and if you
Speaker 4: have these like very hard constraints on when you you know,
Speaker 4: getting up there's one thing, but getting back out it's
Speaker 4: obviously the one that matters the most. And so that's
Speaker 4: that's definitely a good tip of plan for that. Yeah,
Speaker 4: I don't know, I mean, yeah, I think it's just
Speaker 4: all the life. Just how lucky are we, Like just
Speaker 4: put a smile on your face, you're happy, Like there's
Speaker 4: always problems, there's always stuff come up. Having a positive
Speaker 4: outlook can drastically change. I mean, I'm I know Mark,
Speaker 4: same as me. Like firm believer and positive attitude has
Speaker 4: positive outcomes, right, Like if you're upbeat and like, yeah,
Speaker 4: we're gonna make this happen or this is gonna be
Speaker 4: a fun experience. Generally, like when the bad things happen,
Speaker 4: you're just like ah, you brush them off, Versus if
Speaker 4: you're expecting a bad experience, and the bad things happen,
Speaker 4: you go, oh, I told you, you know this is
Speaker 4: gonna suck. So your mind can be a pretty powerful thing. Yeah.
Speaker 3: True.
Speaker 5: I remember speaking with Billy Malls. He's like an Alaska guide.
Speaker 5: I've been doing it a long time. I think we
Speaker 5: were speaking with him before our first trip, my first
Speaker 5: trip Steve before the twenty eighteen care of Hunt on
Speaker 5: our podcast, and he basically was talking about how like
Speaker 5: the the worst hunting experiences or the worst like outcomes.
Speaker 5: I guess that his hunters have had is all because
Speaker 5: they've been focused on like the trophy to success, the results,
Speaker 5: and they've whether they did or didn't fill a tag,
Speaker 5: they ultimately missed the experience of hunting Alaska because they
Speaker 5: were just focused on like especially too with Alaska, like
Speaker 5: whether it's you know, something on the more affordable side,
Speaker 5: or you do save up for years and then it's
Speaker 5: like hunting sheep, Like wherever you're at on that spectrum,
Speaker 5: there's there is like this. Oh, I'm I've been dreaming
Speaker 5: about this forever. I've been saving for this. I'm spending
Speaker 5: good money. I better come back home, you know, with
Speaker 5: like my tag filled like that that pressure I think
Speaker 5: is more natural to Alaska that mindset, but it's a
Speaker 5: real danger like missing why you're doing it. So there's
Speaker 5: a balance of like stop and smell the roses at
Speaker 5: the same time, Like Steve just talked about all that
Speaker 5: positive mindset and enjoy the experienced stuff. He is like
Speaker 5: stone cold set on like no, we will be successful period, right,
Speaker 5: So it's in the process, like embrace every aspect of it,
Speaker 5: embrace the adventure, but never lose sight of like you
Speaker 5: are there for a mission. Because also that like relentless
Speaker 5: attitude of expecting success is what creates success when stuff
Speaker 5: gets bad, Like the first mountain I had a mountain
Speaker 5: goat hunt up there and we essentially had eight it
Speaker 5: was either eight or nine days, and the in the
Speaker 5: area and who I was hunting with, Like it's pretty
Speaker 5: much like expected to fill your tag, like whether the
Speaker 5: quality ability is or whatever. We'll see when people don't
Speaker 5: fill their tag on the hunt with his outfit or
Speaker 5: you know, he says, like it's generally because people quit.
Speaker 5: It's not because they didn't get opportunity. It's because they
Speaker 5: quit because it's too difficult to stick it out. So
Speaker 5: a long story short, we're going into like the last
Speaker 5: night of this eight nine day hunt. I hadn't had
Speaker 5: a shot opportunity. We have to be out of the
Speaker 5: field tomorrow, and like way up on the mountain, a
Speaker 5: low visibility, you can't see a thing. So I had
Speaker 5: to wrestle with that whole reality of like what is
Speaker 5: it like to go on a hunt that I've been
Speaker 5: truly wanting to do for many many years and that
Speaker 5: was not cheap and now I'm going to bed knowing
Speaker 5: we're hacking out here tomorrow, Like I had to wrestle
Speaker 5: with that, and what what is that like to go
Speaker 5: do this experience, to bring other people with me, to
Speaker 5: have talked about it publicly, to you know, have money
Speaker 5: on the line and all that stuff, and not fell
Speaker 5: the tag. And I mean it was definitely like a
Speaker 5: mental process to come to peace with it. And I
Speaker 5: don't know what it would have been like to wrestle
Speaker 5: with that afterwards, because I ultimately filled my tag the
Speaker 5: next day, which is wild, but I truly didn't expect.
Speaker 5: So I was like going through that, like I hadn't
Speaker 5: given up hope, but like in all reality of basically
Speaker 5: just hunting in the morning, and that's it. So yeah,
Speaker 5: it's I get the whole pressure of it, I guess,
Speaker 5: but again, like, why are.
Speaker 3: You doing this?
Speaker 5: Is it? It's hopefully not for social media. It's hopefully
Speaker 5: not to say you've killed you know, bare buck bowl, sheet,
Speaker 5: bram whatever. It's hopefully for the experience of it, for
Speaker 5: the adventure of it too. Haven't gone to Alaska and
Speaker 5: like met nature at a different level, essentially like hopefully
Speaker 5: that's your why Yeah?
Speaker 2: Uh kind of continued down this line with expectations. I
Speaker 2: think there's and this is even something I feel like
Speaker 2: one of you mentioned in one of your in one
Speaker 2: of your episodes this past fall, but there's there's this
Speaker 2: very hard to picture difference between what you imagine it
Speaker 2: being like when you're looking at the map and when
Speaker 2: you're you know, researching, and you're like, oh man, well
Speaker 2: that's only you know, three coords of a mile from
Speaker 2: this spot to this spot, or this is only a
Speaker 2: thousand feet from this spot to this spot. It's often
Speaker 2: very hard to actually translate from at home to what
Speaker 2: it's actually going to be like there in the field,
Speaker 2: And for people who've never been there, who've never done
Speaker 2: this before, it's especially hard even for people that I've experienced,
Speaker 2: you know, doing Western hunts and stuff. I mean, it's
Speaker 2: as you said, it's different. You guys this past fall
Speaker 2: were on caribou hunts, moose hunt, and a mountain goat
Speaker 2: hunt from across some pretty wildly different terrain right low
Speaker 2: river bottom stuff there for your moose hunt, Steve. And
Speaker 2: then I saw, you know, Mark, you were up there
Speaker 2: chasing the goats way up high in the alpine. You
Speaker 2: guys are kind of in that Tundrum Mountain kind of
Speaker 2: meeting ground there for your caribou hunt. You saw some
Speaker 2: wildly different Alaskan experiences. Can you paint a picture for
Speaker 2: me a little bit for our audience, a little bit
Speaker 2: of kind of as best as you can what folks
Speaker 2: should be prepared to experience when they get there, when
Speaker 2: it comes to this wildly different terrain, habitat and experience
Speaker 2: on the ground, Because this isn't like walking on the
Speaker 2: back forward you go sitt in a tree stand in Missouri.
Speaker 2: This is pretty different. Could you guys take some turns
Speaker 2: just kind of walking through what it's actually like there
Speaker 2: on the ground in some of these places.
Speaker 4: Yeah, you mean, like from a physical efforts standpoint to
Speaker 4: naviget or.
Speaker 2: From from a physical standpoint, but then it actually literally
Speaker 2: like what do you happen to slog through? What's it
Speaker 2: like to slog across the tundra tussocks or pushing through
Speaker 2: all their thickets or climbing up to refound that mountain
Speaker 2: goat mark that I think people could use a little
Speaker 2: bit of color to really truly understand what that looks
Speaker 2: like and what that feels like.
Speaker 4: Yeah, miserable or amazing, depending on how you want to
Speaker 4: look at it. It's certainly like when I or whatever,
Speaker 4: I'm done with almost any Alaska hunt, I'm just like
Speaker 4: I can't wait to get back to Idaho and just
Speaker 4: be on dirt and rocks, cause everything trail ground, yeah,
Speaker 4: and a trail like there's no trails. It's it's tough
Speaker 4: going on our moose hunt. You know, I'm we're hiking
Speaker 4: you around stuff. I'm always designing and testing prototypes, and
Speaker 4: like I can basically hike it like three and a
Speaker 4: half to four miles an hour with a way to
Speaker 4: pack on trails, Like, okay, four miles if I'm cruising,
Speaker 4: I can do that in an hour. You can have
Speaker 4: to Alaska. Like that's all just gone. Even so when
Speaker 4: I'm in Idaho, if I'm planning a backpack and route
Speaker 4: right like, up, I'm gonna hike this trail, go up
Speaker 4: this finger ridge that comes down, I can look at
Speaker 4: it and get a pretty good idea of you know,
Speaker 4: maybe twenty minutes a mile, maybe thirty minutes a mile.
Speaker 4: If I'm planning in say like, all right, I need
Speaker 4: to leave boy C at this time so I can
Speaker 4: get to the trailhead and I can get to where
Speaker 4: I want to camp and glass by dark. I can
Speaker 4: you know, I got a pretty good idea. You get
Speaker 4: to Alaska, you throw that out the window. Like we
Speaker 4: were on the Moose Hunt in particular, we got dropped
Speaker 4: off lake and we're going to hike between two and
Speaker 4: five miles up this kind of marshy bottom. There's a
Speaker 4: river going through it. And then like, well, it looks
Speaker 4: like there's some hills to the side of the river
Speaker 4: that we can get up in and probably get out
Speaker 4: of the marshy stuff. That should be easier walking. And
Speaker 4: you get there and it's like, okay, never mind, the
Speaker 4: hill is like neck deep brush. I guess not happening.
Speaker 4: So you're just literally something that I'm sure a lot
Speaker 4: of listeners could great to would be duck hunting or
Speaker 4: something like that. Your you're knee deep in muck with
Speaker 4: a ninety pound pack on just I mean it was
Speaker 4: hours to get like a mile. We were moving camp
Speaker 4: on the second day and it's like we got We're
Speaker 4: looking at it and it's like, okay, that's gonna take
Speaker 4: a while, and I pull up on ITX It's like, oh,
Speaker 4: that's eight hundred yards. I'm like, that could take two
Speaker 4: hours just cover that inder dark. I mean, it sounds ridiculous,
Speaker 4: but it's it's true. And we moved through the country
Speaker 4: faster than most. So it's definitely. You know, I don't
Speaker 4: want to like harp on physical conditioning and and being
Speaker 4: ready for that stuff. I don't want to scare people
Speaker 4: away from it. But if you're not ready, you know,
Speaker 4: if you're if you're saving for multiple years, this is
Speaker 4: you know, like this is your like you know your
Speaker 4: budget only allows to do this one hunt, this one time.
Speaker 4: Don't let your physical ability set you back. So definitely
Speaker 4: take training very very serious. And you may not need it,
Speaker 4: but worst case, you're just in better shape. But generally
Speaker 4: every hunt I've done, it's going to be like physical
Speaker 4: condition is a huge part of it. What Mark was
Speaker 4: saying on the mountain, goat hunts. So the number one
Speaker 4: reason people aren't successful as they quit, right Like they
Speaker 4: just get tired and they throw in the towel. So
Speaker 4: it's it's it can be very very physically demanding. That
Speaker 4: But like I think if you're from like Oregon and Washington,
Speaker 4: like hunting Roosevelt Elk, you used to hunt really brush
Speaker 4: the country. You don't get that in Idaho where it's
Speaker 4: just a sea of alder brush and stuff up there.
Speaker 4: That it's just a whole nother level. Yeah, the first
Speaker 4: caribou hunt we did that Mark was talking about, like
Speaker 4: walking through eight miles of the Tussix tundra of stuff
Speaker 4: so fricking miserable. Or the ground is hyeah, you got
Speaker 4: like eighteen inches just humps and heaves everywhere, and you
Speaker 4: don't know if you're going to fall into them or not.
Speaker 4: It's I don't know, I don't know how to put
Speaker 4: it in perspective. It's just it's I mean, if you know,
Speaker 4: if you do, if you went out to idahoud a
Speaker 4: really tough backpack. I've hunted every square inch of the
Speaker 4: state pretty much. There's everything I've done Alaska is exponentially
Speaker 4: harder than what I've done here. And this is a rough,
Speaker 4: rugged state here, and I know, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 5: That first caribou hunt, the first pole like hunting day
Speaker 5: we had there was I think whether there's a lot
Speaker 5: six of us on that trip, Steve and yeah, well
Speaker 5: six in the sorry, so Justin was filming. We had
Speaker 5: seven glass, six eggs, but we were we were all
Speaker 5: on this hillside and we had killed a bowl, one bowl,
Speaker 5: and then we spot these caribou, just a few of them,
Speaker 5: like across the basin, and so like lineus side, I
Speaker 5: want to say, it was like one point three miles
Speaker 5: or something. So we make this plan where it's like,
Speaker 5: all right, these three guys are to stay where they're at,
Speaker 5: keep glassing. The other three guys plus Justin the cabman.
Speaker 5: So four guys we're gonna cross, and so we're gonna
Speaker 5: drop down and like a cross the bottom and then
Speaker 5: come back up this other side. So I was in
Speaker 5: the group of guys crossing.
Speaker 3: So we drop.
Speaker 5: It's not a ton of elevation, but we dropped, and
Speaker 5: then we get to the bottom and there's a river
Speaker 5: bottom and It looks like when you're sitting on the
Speaker 5: hillside looking at where the caribou were and we're we're
Speaker 5: headed looks straightforward as all get out, right. You get
Speaker 5: down there and there's like this brush and these trees
Speaker 5: and all these super deep creek cuts you never saw,
Speaker 5: and then you're crossing the river and you're like taking
Speaker 5: waiters on or putting waiters on, and then taking them off.
Speaker 5: And then soon you weroise, as soon as you wereise,
Speaker 5: you took them off. You shouldn't have taken them off.
Speaker 5: You got to put them back on. And like you're
Speaker 5: falling your slide and you're stepping in holes. There's way
Speaker 5: more micro terrain than you expected. Blah blah blah blah blah.
Speaker 5: So I'm doing all that with these guys, and ultimately,
Speaker 5: at the end of the day, we caught U through
Speaker 5: these cariba. We kill the Cariban. What I didn't know
Speaker 5: is all the other guys who sat back on that
Speaker 5: hillside were like watching us, waiting for us, and just
Speaker 5: going what are they doing? Why are they going so slow?
Speaker 5: And it like became this joke of they have no
Speaker 5: sense of urgency, Like these carab right here and they
Speaker 5: have no sense of urgency. Meanwhile, we're down there like
Speaker 5: going as fast as we can, working as hard as
Speaker 5: we can, and it's just it's I would say, take like,
Speaker 5: as a rule of thumb, take what you think you're
Speaker 5: capable of in the lower forty eight and at least
Speaker 5: half it, but like more often it's like a third. Right,
Speaker 5: So if you're like, oh, I can hike three miles
Speaker 5: an hour where I hunt, it's probably like if you're
Speaker 5: doing a mile an hour in a lot of areas
Speaker 5: of Alaska, like you're cruising. So yeah, like perspective on
Speaker 5: like what you see, how much ground you can cover.
Speaker 3: We love the.
Speaker 5: ONEX guys, but definitely have to give them trouble. Like
Speaker 5: do you guys use a weird ratio for the Alaska
Speaker 5: maps because like nothing lines up? You know, Yeah, it's
Speaker 5: just deceiving for sure.
Speaker 2: Yeah, different world up there. Another thing I wanted to
Speaker 2: get a little more kind of clarity from you guys
Speaker 2: on when thinking about someone planning their first trip like
Speaker 2: this would be determining whether they should do guided or
Speaker 2: hire flight service to drop them in somewhere, or to
Speaker 2: try to do something totally DIY. And I know there's
Speaker 2: certain species. You can't do DIY, right, So there's some
Speaker 2: stipulations there. But do you guys have any thoughts there
Speaker 2: for people as they're trying to make that decision, because
Speaker 2: I think that's another big one. People when they're looking,
Speaker 2: they're looking at I have a certain set of experience,
Speaker 2: but then I also have a budget and you're trying
Speaker 2: to balance all that kind of stuff. So I don't know,
Speaker 2: have you guys had any thoughts on that that have
Speaker 2: changed over the years.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean certainly I wouldn't do if it's new
Speaker 4: to Alaska. I wouldn't do anything without knowing somebody who's
Speaker 4: done the hunt prior, have a friend, get on internet forums,
Speaker 4: get on Facebook, I don't know, just start asking questions
Speaker 4: and find somebody. You know. Usually guys are they did
Speaker 4: the hunt, and they're willing to share like who they
Speaker 4: went or where they went or things like that because
Speaker 4: they probably don't go to go back. It's not like
Speaker 4: lower forty eight. We're like very protective of this basin
Speaker 4: you hunt it or something I would highly highly recommend yet,
Speaker 4: like some kind of connect personal connection to what you're
Speaker 4: doing up there, versus you know, if you just find
Speaker 4: a you know, Google Search some outfitter and do a
Speaker 4: drop camp or do a fully guided hunt. I mean
Speaker 4: there's good ones and there's really bad ones. We hear
Speaker 4: the horror stories all the time. There's Yeah, it's like
Speaker 4: I had a friend of ours book The Stone sheepun
Speaker 4: up in Canada and you know, this is like a
Speaker 4: seventy thousand dollars hunt that's absolutely insane. Gets up there
Speaker 4: and they hired the guide that was on them the
Speaker 4: day before the hunt. I'm sure whoever it was, like,
Speaker 4: but we're supposed to be the guide, quit or whatever.
Speaker 4: They're probably in a tough spot, but you're like, you're
Speaker 4: spending seventy thousand dollars a guy who's hunt, you're your
Speaker 4: guide was hired the day before. It never been in
Speaker 4: the country, no idea where the sheep are. So those
Speaker 4: types of things you know that exists up there are
Speaker 4: first moose hunt we did at the It was an
Speaker 4: air service place where you hire them. You don't really
Speaker 4: get a they just drop you off or they want
Speaker 4: to drop you off. You know, they're showing hunters in
Speaker 4: and out. They can you can some of them. Most
Speaker 4: of them have an option where they can provide the
Speaker 4: gear and food, or you can do it yourself. I
Speaker 4: always do it. When I've done those times, I've always
Speaker 4: done it myself just so I can control. You know,
Speaker 4: you don't know exactly what they're going to give you,
Speaker 4: but we were just cattle. They were just shelling hunters
Speaker 4: in and out as fast as they could. They didn't
Speaker 4: care about your experience. It was a pretty pretty miserable
Speaker 4: experience from that customer service side. So it's like, I'll
Speaker 4: never go with those guys again. But there are good ones.
Speaker 4: There's ones who they don't overbook themselves. You know, they
Speaker 4: all a lot of them, will, you know, they want
Speaker 4: to maximize their profits, right, so they're doing as many
Speaker 4: hunters as they can. Well they you you get two
Speaker 4: or three days about whether all of a sudden there's
Speaker 4: this domino effect and you're you're stuck out in the
Speaker 4: field because they've got teen other groups of hunters and
Speaker 4: they're trying to prioritize who's getting out and not. So
Speaker 4: those are the ones you want to do your best
Speaker 4: to avoid. And that's where hey, you know, reach out
Speaker 4: on wherever it is and talk to somebody like, yeah,
Speaker 4: I went with this company last year. They were great
Speaker 4: or no, I went with this company, they were you know,
Speaker 4: don't go with them. So that's that. I think that's
Speaker 4: probably the easiest first intro into Alaska is hiring one
Speaker 4: of those air service companies versus a total di y
Speaker 4: thing just because they're you know, you generally there. They
Speaker 4: should be. They're motivated to have you be successful. I mean,
Speaker 4: because they want happy customers to report back. Some of them,
Speaker 4: some of them don't care, some of them get you know,
Speaker 4: there's so many people that want to do it. They
Speaker 4: can just have people have bad experiences and they're still
Speaker 4: booked up the next year, which is you know, just
Speaker 4: how it goes. But yeah, I think it's your good
Speaker 4: intro point to get up there and do that. Like
Speaker 4: our caribou hunt was that we've done that twice. The
Speaker 4: first Moves hunt was a drop camp pape hunt.
Speaker 5: Yeah, the species you have to have a guide or
Speaker 5: a sheet, not goat brown bear. So those are the
Speaker 5: just people are new. Like, there's no other option other
Speaker 5: than fully guided obviously for species like moose, even caribou,
Speaker 5: you can do DIY transporter or fully guided. So the
Speaker 5: you know, you get into a lot of different options there.
Speaker 5: It is important to like This sounds like nuance, but
Speaker 5: it's important for people to understand. Like a transporter is
Speaker 5: a transporter. They are they're not really tied to being
Speaker 5: able to offer you any sort of hunting services. So
Speaker 5: like a good example would be the place we've hunted
Speaker 5: in Kodiak Island. It's a lodge based hunt. They are
Speaker 5: just a transporter, Like we are staying at their place there,
Speaker 5: we get on their boat and they transport us, you know,
Speaker 5: across the water to a place that we got fully
Speaker 5: self guided whatever. But that is important for people to understand,
Speaker 5: and like good questions to ask as well. Is they
Speaker 5: legally like if we kill a buck and come back
Speaker 5: to the lodge, they legally can't do anything like with
Speaker 5: your deer. They will help like provide packaging for example,
Speaker 5: But like just little nuances like that, Like if you
Speaker 5: start talking it doesn't matter what the species is, but
Speaker 5: you start talking to like a transporter, it's like, hey,
Speaker 5: what what will and won't you help me with in
Speaker 5: terms of taking care of my game or getting it
Speaker 5: in or out of the field. Like they can do
Speaker 5: that as a transporter, But do they provide any place
Speaker 5: for you to say, cut up a caribou? Or package
Speaker 5: caribou or do any of that stuff when you get
Speaker 5: back to the field. Like so those are some of
Speaker 5: the nuance things to look at. And then, like Steve said,
Speaker 5: some of these drop camp services where it's like, hey,
Speaker 5: they provide a shelter, they provide food whatever. I would
Speaker 5: ask questions on what that means, like what type of shelter,
Speaker 5: what type of food? In general, they're going to drop
Speaker 5: you off with a giant rubber made bin of mountain
Speaker 5: house and like a bag of onions and a bag
Speaker 5: of potatoes or something like. It may not be any
Speaker 5: food you actually want to eat for the whole week.
Speaker 5: So sometimes it looks like it's easier logistically of like hey,
Speaker 5: I'm doing this all in thing. They provide camp, they
Speaker 5: provide food, they provide whatever. I would really look at
Speaker 5: is that worth the cost and is it what you want?
Speaker 5: It may be much better to say, hey, I just
Speaker 5: want to fly in here, you know, I just want
Speaker 5: you to transport us, but I'm going to bring all
Speaker 5: my own gear and everything else. And then on that note, again,
Speaker 5: like a nitty gritty thing is ask questions, especially for
Speaker 5: a flight based hunt, on what is the weight limit
Speaker 5: and understanding if that's when you do or don't bring
Speaker 5: your own gear as well, because most of these flights
Speaker 5: are going to have like a very strict weight limit.
Speaker 5: And it's not a joke. You your person stands on
Speaker 5: a scale. All of your gear and everything you're taking
Speaker 5: into the field will be put on a scale. And
Speaker 5: there's literally situations you could go in and they say,
Speaker 5: okay for you guys, for this flight. You can have
Speaker 5: a thousand pounds a year. If you're at like one
Speaker 5: thy and twelve pounds, they're like, hey, take twelve pounds out.
Speaker 5: Like so just little stuff like that, I mean, you know,
Speaker 5: just to not be caught off guard on details like that,
Speaker 5: Like those are the types of questions to ask and
Speaker 5: things to look at and things to understand.
Speaker 2: Yeah, such a great point. You don't want to be
Speaker 2: there thousands of miles from home after you did all
Speaker 2: this work to get there and saved up all this
Speaker 2: money and then find out that you can't take major
Speaker 2: chunks of important stuff you wanted to bring or or had.
Speaker 2: I had a friend who just barely missed the cutoff
Speaker 2: for how heavy a person will take it all. So
Speaker 2: so you got to you gotta be aware of all
Speaker 2: that kind of stuff. I guess, so final kind of
Speaker 2: expectation question or preparation I guess all these are preparation questions.
Speaker 2: But there's one big, kind of dark shadow elephant in
Speaker 2: the room in the back of many people's minds when
Speaker 2: they traveled to Alaska for the first time, which is bears,
Speaker 2: brown bears. Steve, Yeah, Steve, you had one heck of
Speaker 2: a trip there, Chason Moose. Wow. First off, incredible, But
Speaker 2: what would you guys share with people about your experiences
Speaker 2: dealing with that? You know, again, a lot of us
Speaker 2: have had grizzly experience and encounters in the lower forty
Speaker 2: eight around those parts of the country, but it's it's
Speaker 2: different up there in Alaska. Two specific things. Number one,
Speaker 2: would love to hear your thoughts on just how you
Speaker 2: dealt with that mentally, best practices for being safe in
Speaker 2: that degree of bear country. And then finally, everyone loves
Speaker 2: to hear opinions on bear defense, your preferred weapons, spray whatever.
Speaker 2: Can you walk me through that?
Speaker 4: Yeah? I think obviously your first trip, you're going to
Speaker 4: be nervous, you know, not familiar here in Idaho. I mean,
Speaker 4: you can kind of get over the wilding border and
Speaker 4: have some gruz of bears, but generally where I hunt,
Speaker 4: it's not an issue. I'm see the first caribou on
Speaker 4: moose trip, there was no bears because we're in a swamp.
Speaker 4: First carribou trip, we saw grouz of bears, but that
Speaker 4: was in the distance. They're and they were afraid of you.
Speaker 4: Winds blown that way, they run away from you. That's
Speaker 4: generally been my Alaska experience on some caribou, other caribou
Speaker 4: haunts she hunts, the bears are afraid of you. You're
Speaker 4: You're just mindful. I'm always gotta you know, I always
Speaker 4: just go for a pistol, have it ready. I'm admittedly
Speaker 4: I don't think I'm like a great pistol shot or
Speaker 4: anything like that. Like I'm probably dead if something charges me.
Speaker 5: But I forget what trip it was. But Steve, we're like,
Speaker 5: we're getting here to hike and we're in the field
Speaker 5: and he was like, hey man, just so you know,
Speaker 5: like if a bear charges us, like I'm gonna wait
Speaker 5: till the like wait till it's on us, like to
Speaker 5: the last second to shoot. And I'm like ha ha okay,
Speaker 5: and he's like, no, I'm serious. So I gotta wait
Speaker 5: till this life like right here.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, I think that was our first trip to Kodiak.
Speaker 4: We've got some amazing experiences there. You're like, okay, there's
Speaker 4: giant brown bears. Real scared of them again, you know,
Speaker 4: they're when you talk to the guys who live out there,
Speaker 4: who hunt up there, they're all like, just be mindful
Speaker 4: of your surroundings when you kill something. That's where probably
Speaker 4: ninety percent of the conflicts happen is at that kill
Speaker 4: site where you've got a carcass sitting there and a
Speaker 4: bear comes in, like on kodiaktors like basically, get the
Speaker 4: deer cut up and get out of there. If you
Speaker 4: you know the instances where bad things happen is they
Speaker 4: you know, you kill the deer, maybe you hang it
Speaker 4: or it takes a while to find it. You get
Speaker 4: there and a bear's already on it. So that's when
Speaker 4: you would definitely want to be kind of more aware
Speaker 4: of things. Just once once you got an animal down,
Speaker 4: I'm pretty sure you look at it, it's like ninety
Speaker 4: percent of the cases happened in those and then yeah,
Speaker 4: you're random stumbling into a sic cubs or something. But
Speaker 4: I think it's just it's to me, it's mostly between
Speaker 4: your ears, Like the actual danger is probably pretty low.
Speaker 4: I'm probably more more afraid of going to like Wyoming
Speaker 4: and stuff like that, where those are grizzly bears that
Speaker 4: are very aggressive, they've not been hunted, they have no
Speaker 4: fear of humans. Up there in Alaska, they're you know,
Speaker 4: they're afraid of you for the most part, except on
Speaker 4: our bus hut they could just care less. So they
Speaker 4: were those are big, fat, salmon fed, happy brown bears
Speaker 4: and they didn't really care that you were twenty feet away.
Speaker 4: So yeah, and that was mental. We were. Everybody was
Speaker 4: on edge on that hunt quite a bit because it
Speaker 4: was you know, when we're sitting up on this hill
Speaker 4: and your glass in this river, Like I mean, at
Speaker 4: any given point, you're seeing between five and twenty bears
Speaker 4: on the river, and you're like, we're going to go
Speaker 4: hike right through the middle of that. So I like,
Speaker 4: there's confidence in numbers. I don't know the exact stats,
Speaker 4: but I believe if you go from like even to
Speaker 4: one hunt, like a majority of bear attacks happened with
Speaker 4: a single hunter, you go to two people, it produces
Speaker 4: that by a significant amount and I think if you
Speaker 4: go to three people, it almost goes to zero percent chance.
Speaker 4: So you're going to get charged when you got three
Speaker 4: guys grouped together. So I do like when we're in
Speaker 4: really heavy bear country, I like to, hey, let's make
Speaker 4: sure we got to at least two guys. Try not
Speaker 4: to be solo. If you got three, like, odds are
Speaker 4: that nothing's gonna happen. Yeah, or if you if one
Speaker 4: guy's get in charge, you got two guys there with
Speaker 4: pistols that are you know, can help.
Speaker 2: So, yeah, what pistol did you go with as your Yeah,
Speaker 2: Mark's hot topic?
Speaker 4: Yeah no, I just run a nine millimeter sig with
Speaker 4: buffalo boor solid cast STAMO. I think it's one hundred
Speaker 4: and forty seven grain plus peak. Yeah. Mark knows the
Speaker 4: stuff better than I do. We did an episode years
Speaker 4: ago with a kind of grizzly bear expert guy out
Speaker 4: their Montana. They did their study and I think ten
Speaker 4: and M was the best, and then nine was right
Speaker 4: behind it. And I again, I'm not a pistol guy.
Speaker 4: I just shoot, you know, a couple dozen rounds a year.
Speaker 4: It's like, okay, well good enough. I'm not But.
Speaker 2: Did you guys did you guys have spray with you
Speaker 2: up there too, or just the pistol.
Speaker 4: No, I mean then when we've talked to and it
Speaker 4: makes complete sense to me. When you're dealing, like it's
Speaker 4: always windy up there, so there's a fifty to fifty chance,
Speaker 4: but the wind's blowing the wrong way. If pistols your
Speaker 4: only defense, you're screwed.
Speaker 2: Spray you sorry, Yeah, spray.
Speaker 4: Is your only defense, then yeah, you're sol so. But yeah,
Speaker 4: from I understanding, guys who shoot the tenem in like,
Speaker 4: you know you're you're not gonna get me rounds off.
Speaker 4: You're gonna be a lot less accurate versus a nine.
Speaker 4: You're probably gonna get more rounds off and be more accurate. Yeah,
Speaker 4: to me, I I just acknowledge if I get triers
Speaker 4: and probably did, I guess that's adventure.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, what would you add on any of that stuff?
Speaker 4: Mark?
Speaker 6: Uh?
Speaker 5: Just mainly to echo the don't be afraid of it.
Speaker 5: Like I'm not saying nothing can happen, but I would
Speaker 5: you know. I wasn't on Steve's movie that was an
Speaker 5: exceptional amount of bears, but I have seen on almost
Speaker 5: every trip I've been to Alaska in different parts of
Speaker 5: the state have seen bears, and I've never had a
Speaker 5: scary encounter and have just observed that they want nothing
Speaker 5: to do with you either in general, So just that
Speaker 5: awareness piece to make sure you're ultimately like aware of
Speaker 5: your surroundings and not spooking, surprising, you know, just being
Speaker 5: a little bit aware but don't be afraid. Like definitely
Speaker 5: the first time I wanted Kodiak, like I grew up
Speaker 5: hearing about Kodiak brown bears, and I was like, they're
Speaker 5: around every corner, you know, And I think the density
Speaker 5: is like one per one point something square miles. And
Speaker 5: the first time I saw on on foot, it was
Speaker 5: probably like we were on this hillside, we had just
Speaker 5: killed the buck and we were looking down on the
Speaker 5: spottom probably six hundred yards away, and I was just like, oh,
Speaker 5: there's a Volkswagen or of something down there. I just
Speaker 5: saw this giant mask moving and it seriously looked like
Speaker 5: a giant vehicle. I was like, I was like, Oh,
Speaker 5: that's a big old bear. And then you do see
Speaker 5: like the prints and the tracks and the scat and
Speaker 5: it's it's impressive. But at the end of the day,
Speaker 5: I would I would much rather be in Alaska with
Speaker 5: a bunch of bears than Montana, Wyoming, et cetera. And
Speaker 5: then yeah, I think a side arm is generally the
Speaker 5: way to go, and I tend to align with Steve.
Speaker 5: I mean, I've owned a couple ten millimeters. I like
Speaker 5: the idea of them, I don't shoot them well, and
Speaker 5: so I'm just really honest with myself of hey, I
Speaker 5: would rather have something more controllable, something quicker, something I
Speaker 5: can shoot better under a quick scenario. Potentially one handed
Speaker 5: have more capacity et cetera, et cetera than the like
Speaker 5: babblistically optimal ten milimeter that it's probably just got to
Speaker 5: spray everywhere, to be honest, So yeah, I go with
Speaker 5: the nine milimeter. And then even going back to group size,
Speaker 5: that's a great, great thing. There's some of the trips,
Speaker 5: like the Mountain Goat trip we did, we had four
Speaker 5: guys total, and only one of us had a pistol.
Speaker 5: I'm not saying that's what you should do, but I
Speaker 5: do think there's massive safety in numbers. So if it's
Speaker 5: a situation where it's like, hey, we truly are hunting together,
Speaker 5: there's you know, two, three, four of us, We're not
Speaker 5: splitting apart there is a rifle in the group, and
Speaker 5: then like, sure, is it smart to have a guy
Speaker 5: or two with a pistol?
Speaker 3: Yes?
Speaker 5: Is it overkill for everyone to have a pistol?
Speaker 3: Probably?
Speaker 5: But make you know the decision that makes you feel
Speaker 5: comfortable for sure.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Continuing on with gear a little bit. I know there's
Speaker 2: a thousand pieces of gear, and people really spend a
Speaker 2: lot of time thinking through the perfect things for these
Speaker 2: types of situations, especially an Alaskan trip where everything matters more.
Speaker 2: But I'd love to talk through a couple categories with
Speaker 2: you guys, And we can't not talk about packs. You
Speaker 2: guys are the pack guys. Can you run me through
Speaker 2: a few of the most important considerations from your perspective?
Speaker 2: And I know this depends on what you're hunting, so
Speaker 2: I guess give me drill in where you think appropriate,
Speaker 2: But a few thoughts on, you know, making a good
Speaker 2: pack decision when you're going on a carebrew hunt or
Speaker 2: a moose hunt or something like that in these kind
Speaker 2: of extreme conditions, tough hiking through stuff, I think that's
Speaker 2: a big thing. You might be carrying heavy loads but
Speaker 2: then also having to crawl on all fours or falling
Speaker 2: over tussix. I mean, there's a lot of stuff going on.
Speaker 2: So I certainly have have experienced bad pack experiences and
Speaker 2: then very good pack experiences. No one better ask than you, guys.
Speaker 2: Can you give us a little bit of thought, a
Speaker 2: little bit something to think about there?
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean if you're new to pack, if you're
Speaker 4: a white TWL hunter, you're never like throwing a quarter
Speaker 4: on your back. Obviously, that's where a pack pays for itself, right,
Speaker 4: The comfort that it can provide, the stability you can
Speaker 4: provide getting you out of the field, get your meat
Speaker 4: back to camp or wherever it is that it's going
Speaker 4: to get picked up from. So you really just need
Speaker 4: to pick something that's got a you know, that's comfortable
Speaker 4: for you. So something that's you know, I mean, I've
Speaker 4: got my criteria when I'm designing packs of you know what,
Speaker 4: what are the necessary things it has to have, Like,
Speaker 4: it has to have a hip belt that fits you
Speaker 4: all right, So we have five different size belts that
Speaker 4: we have on our Exo packs to make sure you
Speaker 4: get proper fit. There. You want the foam wrapping around
Speaker 4: the front of the hip bones to help kind of
Speaker 4: distribute the weight has to have an adjustable torso, right,
Speaker 4: so get the shoulder harness dialed in. If it's like
Speaker 4: a fixed torso, that's non negotiable, Like that's just going
Speaker 4: to be really uncomfortable.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 4: You have to have a certain amount of frame height
Speaker 4: and rigidity to that frame. So the low lifters are
Speaker 4: functional with heavy loads, there's like a it's like ten
Speaker 4: things are just like absolute must haves. But the end
Speaker 4: of the day, you just got to you know, don't
Speaker 4: you know? We packed some Boots are the two most
Speaker 4: important things. Boots first, pack second in our opinion for
Speaker 4: like Western hunt, Alaska hunt, because they're just they're in
Speaker 4: contact with your body all the time. If your feet
Speaker 4: are killing you, there's nothing that's gonna shut you down.
Speaker 4: I don't care how mentally tough you are. Like when
Speaker 4: you're covered in blisters and your feet are hot, like
Speaker 4: that stops a hunt pretty quick. Pack kind of falls
Speaker 4: right behind that, Like when you're when you just got
Speaker 4: your twenty thirty pounds, it doesn't really matters. I'm gonna
Speaker 4: shut you down. But once you go kill something, it
Speaker 4: can certainly be a if you've experienced it, it's going
Speaker 4: to be a limiting factor if you've had a miserable
Speaker 4: pack out, like, oh, I'm we're not getting more than
Speaker 4: a mile from camp, because it's gonna be absolutely miserable
Speaker 4: to pack that out. We're a good pack, can you know,
Speaker 4: take away like ninety percent of that?
Speaker 2: So who started interrupt? I was gonna say one one
Speaker 2: specific thing for a week long Alaskan hunt, what size
Speaker 2: do you recommend?
Speaker 4: Uh, the average guy, I'd say at least five thousand
Speaker 4: cubic inches. Five to six thousand's probably a good range. Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 5: One thing on that that that comes a lot with
Speaker 5: our customers is they'll call and say, hey, I'm going
Speaker 5: on to even say a ten day hunt in Alaska, right,
Speaker 5: so they think they immediately need the biggest pack because
Speaker 5: ten days it's a lot of days. And then my
Speaker 5: question that always is like where and how are you hunting?
Speaker 5: Because if you're flying in and getting dropped off at
Speaker 5: Moose Camp and you have ten days to hunt, you're
Speaker 5: never carrying close to ten days where the stuff, right, Like,
Speaker 5: in all reality you're doing this drop camp hunts, you're
Speaker 5: probably never staying out overnight away from base camp. You
Speaker 5: could probably hunt with a day pack if you want
Speaker 5: to so just don't when you think of Alaska, you
Speaker 5: think of days of hunting if it's a fly in
Speaker 5: hunt or a you know, a drop camp hunt, a
Speaker 5: you know, boat based on lodge, based on whatever. Like,
Speaker 5: don't equate days to the biggest pack and look at
Speaker 5: your actual demands of how many days are the stuff
Speaker 5: if I'm carrying, Like on my goat hunt, we went
Speaker 5: out for a days where the stuff super coold weather
Speaker 5: gear needed a large pack. Caribean we were backpacking moose hunt.
Speaker 5: You guys were backpacking, but like say that twenty nineteen
Speaker 5: caribou hunt we did, or Kodiak stuff like, you just
Speaker 5: don't need a ten day pack just because you're there
Speaker 5: for ten days, if that makes sense.
Speaker 4: Yeah, how many how many days are you away from campus?
Speaker 4: You'r me trick?
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, uh okay. Any little hot tips as far
Speaker 2: as packing game off the mountain or in tough terrain.
Speaker 2: I feel like it was your video. I saw you
Speaker 2: guys with your truck and pulls stuck to the bottom
Speaker 2: of your pack to stabilize. That was really interesting. I've
Speaker 2: never done that before. Do you have any other thoughts
Speaker 2: on packing heavy loads anything like that you guys having
Speaker 2: done this so much, might be able to share this.
Speaker 4: Yeah, First understand Alaska's it's gonna have very different regulations
Speaker 4: on depending where you're at in the state, on what
Speaker 4: the requirements are for meat. Caribou hunt is like all
Speaker 4: bone in, got to pack out the ribs, bone in,
Speaker 4: you can split in half. But it's very different. We
Speaker 4: go over to our moose hunt. You can bone out
Speaker 4: in that area where we're moose hunting, which is just
Speaker 4: you need to really understand that. They're very in Idaho,
Speaker 4: it's like hind quarters, front quarders, backstraps, cenderlines. I don't
Speaker 4: think you have to take neck meat anymore, ne could
Speaker 4: rate me. I think you can leave on animals. So
Speaker 4: they're very like, you know, not super strict there. Get
Speaker 4: up to Alaska, it's very very strict, and really understand
Speaker 4: it's it's certainly not a state wide policy, so that
Speaker 4: really dictates certain things. If you're you know, bone in,
Speaker 4: you're just gonna you know, you to you know, oversized
Speaker 4: game bag so you can, you know, put all the
Speaker 4: meat in there. Doesn't really matter. The game bag is
Speaker 4: not that important in my opinion when it's bone in,
Speaker 4: because the meat's on the bone, it's got a structure already.
Speaker 4: If you're boning out, then you need game bags that
Speaker 4: are kind of tall and skinny. In my opin, you
Speaker 4: don't want something stretchy because when you're putting that in
Speaker 4: the pack, the meat just turns into this big ball.
Speaker 4: It's big lump of meat's really hard to strap down.
Speaker 4: So I always tell people like tall skinning game bags
Speaker 4: that don't stretch. Imagine you're making a tube of sand
Speaker 4: that you're going to strap on the pack into a
Speaker 4: train and hike with. That's the goal. You always want
Speaker 4: meat kind of in between the shoulder blades, high and tight,
Speaker 4: is what I say. Never have meat hanging or weight
Speaker 4: hanging down below the waistbelt. And then also don't have
Speaker 4: it off the back of the backpack. You want as
Speaker 4: close to your back as you possibly can, kind of
Speaker 4: between the shoulder blades. Have that weight up high so
Speaker 4: it's transferring down into the hips, not hanging low. You know.
Speaker 4: But you see pretty calm, and you see like a
Speaker 4: guy's got elk quarter and then he puts the elk
Speaker 4: head off the very back of the pack. And that's
Speaker 4: the worst thing to do, right because you're just putting
Speaker 4: all that weight further way from your back. It's pulling
Speaker 4: back on you. It's got leverage. You want to put
Speaker 4: that head like on top of it. So again, like
Speaker 4: I always just envisioned that weight transferring down into the hips.
Speaker 4: I don't mark anything else.
Speaker 5: Yeah, that's I mean, that's good stuff. Like you mentioned
Speaker 5: mark weed on the carriage, we were taking a trekking pole.
Speaker 5: You can do it with a stick too, but you
Speaker 5: take and this is true for a lower forty eight
Speaker 5: like bigger elk. If you get that head positioned higher
Speaker 5: like Steve is talking about, it's going to want to
Speaker 5: him to like rotate and swing. So it might stay
Speaker 5: in decent position, but as you move it's like creating momentum,
Speaker 5: which is terrible. Or the way you position it with
Speaker 5: a load, it might like want to rock and get
Speaker 5: up towards you your way. So yeah, just bracing it
Speaker 5: with a trekking pole a stick and tying that down
Speaker 5: is really helpful. And then it's really cool to shoot
Speaker 5: something big and until you're like in Alaska and like
Speaker 5: in the brush and have to like you get that
Speaker 5: thing through trees and I I really should have shut
Speaker 5: that smaller one. Yeah, So that's fun the other thing
Speaker 5: just this isn't pack but gear wise, as I would say,
Speaker 5: unique to Alaska is don't skimp on shelter. Like we've
Speaker 5: talked a lot, like if you're a new hunter, new
Speaker 5: to backpack hunting, and you're the guy who we talked
Speaker 5: about before, is going to go from being a white
Speaker 5: tail guy to go into Wyoming, Montana, Colorado, whatever in
Speaker 5: elk hunt and the Rockies like go to Walmart, like
Speaker 5: save money, do what you can, just go get experience.
Speaker 5: Don't worry about having the greatest shelter. I would say,
Speaker 5: if you're going to Alaska, ignore all that stuff and
Speaker 5: like get something that's built and built well. I've had
Speaker 5: actual shelter failures in Alaska. You know, one hundred plus
Speaker 5: miles away from civilization, so it's a real deal. So
Speaker 5: don't skip on shelter. And then just to touch quickly
Speaker 5: on a really common question with Alaska, we get a
Speaker 5: lot on gear is like down versus synthetic, and there
Speaker 5: is like if you look at a lot of gear
Speaker 5: lists or hear from like a lot of guides and outfitters,
Speaker 5: they're going to say you have to go synthetic everything.
Speaker 5: I really feel that that's not necessarily bad or wrong,
Speaker 5: but I feel like that's that guide and outfitter buying
Speaker 5: themselves insurance so that they're hunters are not like putting
Speaker 5: themselves in a bad situation. So I'd just say, if
Speaker 5: you have, if you already have decent down gear, and
Speaker 5: you have some experience, and you understand in the limitations
Speaker 5: of DOWN and how to take care of it and
Speaker 5: protect it, don't feel like I have all this rad
Speaker 5: down stuff and now I'm going to Alaska and I
Speaker 5: have to shed it all and get synthetic. I don't
Speaker 5: think that's the case at all. Just understand a little
Speaker 5: bit about what are the limitations of down and like
Speaker 5: how to use it. Again, I just I've noticed the
Speaker 5: over emphasis on synthetic, which again I'm not saying is wrong.
Speaker 5: I'm not saying you shouldn't get synthetic. I just think
Speaker 5: that's guides and outfitters, you know, wanting ill prepared, misunderstood
Speaker 5: hunters to like have a safe option, which I get.
Speaker 5: But yeah, if you have down stuff, don't automatically assume
Speaker 5: you can't take it to Alaska.
Speaker 2: So, just for people that maybe aren't familiar with this,
Speaker 2: the issue with down in somewhere like Alaska is the
Speaker 2: fact that it loses this insulating quality when wet, right,
Speaker 2: and so the idea is synthetic is it can keep
Speaker 2: you warm even if you do get moisture in there.
Speaker 2: And Alaska, you know, especially certain parts of Alaska being
Speaker 2: you know, notorious for for weather. But that brings up
Speaker 2: another good question, which is and actually you know I
Speaker 2: reached out to you Mark about this this last year,
Speaker 2: which is how what are some ways to keep my
Speaker 2: stuff dry in a place like Alaska. I was hunting
Speaker 2: in southeast Alaska last year and thinking, all right, how
Speaker 2: am I going to manage to keep all this stuff dry?
Speaker 2: What are the different layers of dry bags or different
Speaker 2: tools I can bring along with me to make sure
Speaker 2: I'm not soaking wet and cold up on top of
Speaker 2: a mountain. Can you can you walk us through anything
Speaker 2: you guys use to manage moisture and rain and inclement
Speaker 2: weather to keep your stuff usable, dry and warm.
Speaker 4: Yeah, dry bags for me. Let's just be very careful
Speaker 4: about that. We have a dry bag system that works
Speaker 4: with our packs or it's like an over dry bag
Speaker 4: drops in and turns the entire pack into a dry bag.
Speaker 4: And I just always have everything in there that needs
Speaker 4: to stay dry is in the dry bag, so it's
Speaker 4: extra clothes, sleeping bag, shelter is in or out, depending
Speaker 4: if you wake up in the morning it's covering a frost.
Speaker 4: I'm not gonna throw it in there. It's gonna leave
Speaker 4: that shell. I'm kind of putting an outside pocket. But
Speaker 4: that's kind of your ultimate insurance. Don't like, we don't
Speaker 4: don't rely on a rain cover. It's kind of pointless.
Speaker 4: We want like everything in dry bags. When uh, we
Speaker 4: had this hat, we got lucky on the very first
Speaker 4: caribou trip up there something I never do. I leave
Speaker 4: base camp and just got your pad and your sleeping
Speaker 4: bag all set up and good to go. Well, we
Speaker 4: we were out hunting and also on the winds kicked
Speaker 4: up and we got back and our tent was laid
Speaker 4: over and luckily everything wasn't scattered across the tundra. But
Speaker 4: ever since then, it's like, if I'm leaving the tent,
Speaker 4: I'm packing up my stuff in the morning, I gonna
Speaker 4: throw all my clothes and everything in a bag and
Speaker 4: kind of make sure it's at least pretty heavy. You
Speaker 4: know that if there's like there's been times where I
Speaker 4: like literally put a rock inside the dry bag to
Speaker 4: i'd wait to it so it didn't blow away. Just
Speaker 4: in that kind of you know, you just need to be, yeah,
Speaker 4: to treat your shelter like it's your I mean it
Speaker 4: is your wife lying out there right like, yeah, you
Speaker 4: got to treat it completely different than I would if
Speaker 4: I was in the lower forty eight where you know,
Speaker 4: I just I guess, I guess I've been backpack up
Speaker 4: for so long down here where it's just like, E
Speaker 4: like something terrible happens. I'm never more than four hours
Speaker 4: from my truck. Even I got to hike to the
Speaker 4: midle of the night. It's not a big deal up there.
Speaker 4: It's not an option. So you really want to make
Speaker 4: sure you're dialed and taking care of stuff. And it's
Speaker 4: just a lot of just be proactive, right instead of reactive, like, Okay,
Speaker 4: I'm if something's soaking wet, I'm not just gonna throw
Speaker 4: in my pack and leave on my pack all day.
Speaker 4: If the sun happens to come out, I'm gonna lay
Speaker 4: everything out and let it try out in the sun
Speaker 4: before you know, because you just never know when that
Speaker 4: next storm is gonna come. So just keeping maintaining things,
Speaker 4: keeping them dry as you go, so it's not just
Speaker 4: kind of this progressive it's wet, you pack it away,
Speaker 4: wet and get it and then all a sudden you
Speaker 4: don't pull it out until later that night and it's wet,
Speaker 4: you're sleeping bag, you add condensation in the morning, and yeah,
Speaker 4: the kind of a domino effect there.
Speaker 5: Yeah, Yeah, that reminds me of just like planning for
Speaker 5: like weather contingencies and planning for success of I mean,
Speaker 5: Steve and are both like pretty minimalist guys. Usually we're
Speaker 5: just backpack hunting, so it's like we want as little
Speaker 5: as possible essentially. There's definitely situations in Alaska where you
Speaker 5: think through like things you might need and that could
Speaker 5: be an extra tarp, that could be extra rope, and
Speaker 5: just especially on like a hunt where you are doing
Speaker 5: a drop camp, like say this caribou. You guys are
Speaker 5: going to go to your first drop camp caribou hunt.
Speaker 5: There's a group of you, there's four of you. You
Speaker 5: kill a caribou on day one or two, but you
Speaker 5: still have five, six, seven days in the field, Like
Speaker 5: what are you actually doing with that meat?
Speaker 4: The whole time?
Speaker 5: Having a tarp trying to keep it dry. Another advantage
Speaker 5: to like putting a tarp over meat is not only
Speaker 5: keeping it dry and keeping it shade, but usually it's
Speaker 5: going to be windy, and I really feel that like
Speaker 5: that noise in the wind of that tarp flying can
Speaker 5: keep like bears away from the meat, for example. So
Speaker 5: just thinking through things like that, I would just again,
Speaker 5: if there's a there's a case for hey, I'm doing
Speaker 5: at ten day backpack shee punts. I have to be
Speaker 5: as minimal as possible.
Speaker 3: For sure.
Speaker 5: I'm not saying go overboard and bring the kitchen sink,
Speaker 5: but I would have like, hey, what do we need
Speaker 5: an extra shelter or like maybe you know, a bigger
Speaker 5: shelter than we thought, because we could have to sit
Speaker 5: this out for forty eight hours literally in a shelter
Speaker 5: versus being crammed in a one main tent or having
Speaker 5: its tarp for a place to store gear. Maybe some
Speaker 5: extra rope, some extra guy like some of that extras.
Speaker 5: Like we always say that people tend to pack their fears,
Speaker 5: and we're usually preaching against that, like you don't need
Speaker 5: all this extra stuff. Don't pack all the fears and
Speaker 5: all the contingencies and what if At the same time,
Speaker 5: with Alaska, I would think through, like, Okay, if you
Speaker 5: truly are remote and you're one hundred plus miles away
Speaker 5: and that plane's not coming to get you, like you
Speaker 5: are on your own essentially, So again, don't be afraid,
Speaker 5: but like just think through some of those things of
Speaker 5: like how are we going to handle X Y problem right? Again,
Speaker 5: not being like paranoid scared, but just making sure you
Speaker 5: have your bas is covered.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, that's important. One more water related question you
Speaker 2: mentioned how in your opinion, Steve, it's it's pack and
Speaker 2: boots that are the very most important thing. Boots are
Speaker 2: a big I guess there's questions around boots and handling
Speaker 2: wetness and moisture too, especially there. I've got a friend
Speaker 2: who I was hunting with this past fall, and he's
Speaker 2: an Alaska resident and he does all of his hunting
Speaker 2: everywhere in Alaska, you know, from the Brooks Range to
Speaker 2: southeast in extra tuffs and knee high extra tuffs, and
Speaker 2: so he was telling me that's that's what you gotta get,
Speaker 2: Just just take your extra tuffs. And I'm thinking, oh
Speaker 2: my gosh, not hiking boots. What what is your guys'
Speaker 2: take on boots in general for this these these kinds
Speaker 2: of trips, but then also managing moisture, crossing creeks, boggy swamps,
Speaker 2: fording rivers, all that kind of stuff, and maybe not
Speaker 2: just boots, but boots plus supplemental footwear.
Speaker 4: Yeah, crocs are your friend, man, Like, we used crocks
Speaker 4: a lot up there. It's something that I don't very
Speaker 4: rarely pack down here. Up here, I'm always taking crocks
Speaker 4: with me because then you just put them on cross streams.
Speaker 4: We did a sheet pack at once, like fifteen miles
Speaker 4: the entire thing of crocks because we were knee deep
Speaker 4: to wasteep walking down rivers, crossing the river like, and
Speaker 4: it was amazing. Way I get. We hiked in on
Speaker 4: and boots and you're just you know, you spend so
Speaker 4: much time and effort taking the boot off across the stream,
Speaker 4: putting them back on, trying to jump across the stream,
Speaker 4: trying to find a path, trying to find it like
Speaker 4: a dangerous like, oh there's a log I'm going to
Speaker 4: try to, you know, slap the crocks on, walk right
Speaker 4: down the middle the stream. It's pretty awesome. And you're
Speaker 4: getting like an ice bath the whole way. It's like
Speaker 4: pretty fantastic. Yeah yeah, boots are so I uh. Part
Speaker 4: of the Experienced project, we did a bunch of gear
Speaker 4: kind of tight delve into the top mark what like
Speaker 4: twelve gear items and I did. I did a boot one.
Speaker 4: I think I talked for at least an hour on
Speaker 4: my philosophies and I'm a little bit fucking the trend
Speaker 4: of the hunting Like stiff leather boots. I just stated
Speaker 4: for me, they don't work. There's a lot of downsides
Speaker 4: and drawbacks to them. So if someone wants to really
Speaker 4: kind of take a deep dive into boots, I suggest
Speaker 4: watching that video because there's a lot of just within
Speaker 4: a boot adjusting. You know, first of all, take the
Speaker 4: stock and soul that comes with it, throw in the trash,
Speaker 4: go buy an aftermarket quality one. The performance across the
Speaker 4: board is going to be better. No understanding socks and
Speaker 4: how you can adjust the sock thickness to kind of
Speaker 4: custom tailor the size of the boot. There's a lot
Speaker 4: of things you can do, and you really just you
Speaker 4: have to get your boots and break them in and
Speaker 4: try them out before a hunt, because you're just you're
Speaker 4: gonna find out what works and what doesn't and get
Speaker 4: like to buy a pair of boots and like hike
Speaker 4: around your neighborhood. No, like you got to go get
Speaker 4: like off trail, side hill, downhill to find all those things.
Speaker 4: And again that's like number one thing is gonna shut
Speaker 4: you down from a hunt. I generally like synthetic boots.
Speaker 4: There I haven't found. I really try five to ten
Speaker 4: pairs of boots a year. I have yet to find
Speaker 4: one that's like this is the boot that I'm gonna wear,
Speaker 4: this is the perfect one. They've all got drawbacks. Synthetics
Speaker 4: generally aren't going to be as durable. What I like
Speaker 4: about them is they're gonna dry out. So you get
Speaker 4: up in Alaska, you get you know, ah, other boots
Speaker 4: super soggy, wet. It's gonna take even if the sun
Speaker 4: comes out, it's gonna take days to dry that thing out,
Speaker 4: where synthetic can dry out in hours. So that's my
Speaker 4: general preference. Everyone's different, said, I don't have a perfect
Speaker 4: answer other than have crocks and use the crap out
Speaker 4: of those things.
Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah, I think it's an important Yeah, it's an
Speaker 5: important like caveat to what we talked about earlier. Alaska
Speaker 5: can be so different. So it's it's understanding what am
Speaker 5: I heading into. Am I going into you know, tundra
Speaker 5: in the Brooks Range. Am I going into it interior
Speaker 5: moose swamp? Like Steve talked about my going to Southeast Alaska,
Speaker 5: my going to Kodiak. I think if you had a
Speaker 5: good boot, you can kind of take a boot on
Speaker 5: almost anything. I think it's the supplementary stuff that's like
Speaker 5: do I need crocs, Do I need hip waiters, Do
Speaker 5: I need chest waiters? You know, Like it's it's that
Speaker 5: extra stuff of swampiness, water crossings and all that.
Speaker 2: I tend to.
Speaker 5: I mean, people play up you get in especially like
Speaker 5: the Mountain Alaska hunts like sheep hunts, goat hunts, whatever,
Speaker 5: And obviously most of the advice there is, you know,
Speaker 5: you have to have like something like super hardcore stiff
Speaker 5: as possible. If that works for you, that's fantastic. I
Speaker 5: just don't think that's default advice that you have to follow.
Speaker 5: I mean I've done goat hunts and sheep hunts and
Speaker 5: a modern like if you had like a I think
Speaker 5: some of the companies do, like one to five on
Speaker 5: flex like I use it two and a half to
Speaker 5: three essentially on like the most deep, tough train there is.
Speaker 5: So yeah, it's at the end of the day, it's
Speaker 5: a situation of one understand what you're heading into and
Speaker 5: then to find what works for you. Don't listen to
Speaker 5: people because all of our feet are so different. I mean,
Speaker 5: there's certain things you can understand, Like if you know
Speaker 5: you have a narrow foot, some of these European brands
Speaker 5: like class Sportiva and et cetera like kind of fit that, well,
Speaker 5: you know you've a wide foot, you know you're gonna
Speaker 5: have to go to a different boot manufacturer. You can,
Speaker 5: and we talked about this like in your video, Steve,
Speaker 5: but like they're just the last of the boots, which
Speaker 5: is essentially the shape of the footbed of the boot,
Speaker 5: and even doing simple stuff like take that insol out
Speaker 5: of the boot, like Steve talked about before you throw
Speaker 5: it away, but like literally just take the insol out first,
Speaker 5: Like if you got three four pairs of boots, take
Speaker 5: all the insoles out and like step on those and
Speaker 5: you're essentially looking at the inside shape of the boot
Speaker 5: because you're looking at the insul and going hey, like
Speaker 5: one of these is gonna look like it fits my
Speaker 5: foot better, and one's not right. So just a little
Speaker 5: stuff like that. So boots are the most important thing
Speaker 5: in all of like whether Alaska hunting or where elk
Speaker 5: hunting or anything where it's like you covering ground. Like,
Speaker 5: boots are the most important thing. It's also the most
Speaker 5: annoying thing, right, Like sometimes it takes years and a
Speaker 5: ton of money and try and stuff on to figure
Speaker 5: out what works for you. And then sometimes you do
Speaker 5: that and you find the boot and then like a
Speaker 5: year and a half later, you realize the manufacturer changed it, discontinued,
Speaker 5: it did whatever. So like for me, I just bought
Speaker 5: a fourth pair of a pair of boots that have
Speaker 5: done everything for me, and they happened to be on sale.
Speaker 5: I literally saw him yesterday. I was like, fourth pair,
Speaker 5: let's go, you know, because I know, like I could
Speaker 5: just for the next ten years, I could pretty much
Speaker 5: go do anything anywhere in that pair of boots. And
Speaker 5: like I'm not saying it's perfect, but it's just it's
Speaker 5: never gave me a problem, you know.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I think one of the advice I get, like,
Speaker 4: don't assume your feet have to be uncomfortable. I in
Speaker 4: my opinion, you should have comfortable feet no matter what
Speaker 4: you're hunting, where you're hunting. So if you're having uncomfortable feet,
Speaker 4: to start to address it, whether it's the boots too
Speaker 4: stiff for it's not you know, there's too much flex
Speaker 4: or there's too much room inside the foots or your
Speaker 4: foot sliding around getting hot, or you got heel lift
Speaker 4: or something like that, Like just keep tweaking that until
Speaker 4: you know your feature never kill you if a good tip,
Speaker 4: like you get back to camp, the very first thing
Speaker 4: you want to do is, oh, my feet are kill
Speaker 4: me and you take these boots off, Like that's a
Speaker 4: good sign to me that I mean there's obviously like
Speaker 4: the bigger ones like full blisters and your feet are
Speaker 4: really tore up. But if that's the first thing you
Speaker 4: want to do and get back to camp, like keep looking,
Speaker 4: keep tweaking, there's gonna be there's a combination of boot,
Speaker 4: sock and sole out there that you're gonna allow. That's
Speaker 4: gonna allow you have very comfortable feet. We have, yeah,
Speaker 4: I mean very like I don't have feet issues anymore, right,
Speaker 4: Like they're just comfortable, good to go. But I like
Speaker 4: I'm doing that caribou hunt and like a basically a
Speaker 4: mid trail running shoe and that's what works for me.
Speaker 4: But that's just my experience. Yeah, but it's not you.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 4: That another bit of advice, like don't you can ask
Speaker 4: somebody what is a good durable boot? What's a waterproof boot?
Speaker 4: But as far as someone saying, oh, this boot's comfortable,
Speaker 4: I think it's like that's completely irrelevant. Everyone's different so personal,
Speaker 4: So it's like, don't if you're on social media or
Speaker 4: whatever form like aspect what have you had good experience
Speaker 4: with from waterproof or have you had a good experience
Speaker 4: with from durability? And that's where it stops. Like the
Speaker 4: rest of that's just so up to your feet.
Speaker 2: Yeah, one last fast comfort related question, which would be
Speaker 2: your comfort with your experience packcrafting. So you guys using
Speaker 2: pack grafts there on the caribou hunt epic float out there,
Speaker 2: so you guys pushing them across there on your moose hunt.
Speaker 2: I've I've used them a little bit and have thought
Speaker 2: about a number of trips in Alaska using those. What
Speaker 2: were your thoughts on how it handled the job you
Speaker 2: guys are trying to put it through a lot of weight,
Speaker 2: you know, kind of a little bit Western there with
Speaker 2: the rising waters and everything. What was your quick take
Speaker 2: on that?
Speaker 4: They're incredible. They're brand new to us. I've never done
Speaker 4: one before the carribout. Mark add either. I've got a
Speaker 4: decent amount of river wrapping experience here in Idaho. Mark
Speaker 4: had like next to zero, So he came out.
Speaker 3: Glad to be here.
Speaker 5: I'm glad to be here.
Speaker 4: We did a golf tournament last summer that Exo sponsored,
Speaker 4: we put on ourselves, and when Mark was out here
Speaker 4: for that, We're like, hey, there's a creek that I
Speaker 4: knew we could go float and so we literally went
Speaker 4: and bought dog food about like eighty pounds for each boat,
Speaker 4: threw him in the tubes, and went floated this creek
Speaker 4: just to get some like some kind of I mean
Speaker 4: to me, it's just like just had to have some
Speaker 4: base to like go off of, and they did beautifully,
Speaker 4: so I got confidence. And then yeah, on the Cariboo trip,
Speaker 4: the waters, you know, it was like a record high
Speaker 4: flooding that came through like highland spring run off, and
Speaker 4: we had to wait for it to go down, and
Speaker 4: we were all nervous as hell, because we had a
Speaker 4: couple of sharpest turns coming up and like, well, full sin,
Speaker 4: let's see what happens. And they were awesome, made it
Speaker 4: absolutely fantastic. We had the alpaca rangers and one I
Speaker 4: think it's called the forger boat from a packer and yeah,
Speaker 4: put all the meat, all the gear, every you and
Speaker 4: they're the only thing on top of the raft was
Speaker 4: strap the antlers and PLoP your body downside of it.
Speaker 4: And they were incredible. Yeah. To me, it is like
Speaker 4: open my eyes, what else can like what can I
Speaker 4: do here in Idaho? Or can I start utilizing this
Speaker 4: one access some country? I didn't think it was possible.
Speaker 5: Yeah, Yeah, they're pretty cool.
Speaker 2: Any thoughts for me?
Speaker 4: Mark?
Speaker 3: Now?
Speaker 5: I'm just still glad to be here. Yeah. It was
Speaker 5: like I was like moderately nervous about doing it in general,
Speaker 5: not like afraid. But then we yeah, if you watch
Speaker 5: the video, we had this giant, like Steve said, just
Speaker 5: way unexpected river conditions that went crazy and just as
Speaker 5: we were loading up for that, you know, it was
Speaker 5: like I loved it. I even loved it at the moment,
Speaker 5: but it was still it was like a little unnerving
Speaker 5: to be like I don't know what's around the corner.
Speaker 5: Like we had been sitting there watching this river and
Speaker 5: just full on trees and like everything go down. It's
Speaker 5: like what's around the corner is it can be a
Speaker 5: big sweeper and are you caught? And I'm like, we
Speaker 5: have everything in the tubes of these pack crafts, like
Speaker 5: all the me oliver gear, oliver everything, So you're literally
Speaker 5: making these decisions of like Okay, inside my zipper, chestwai
Speaker 5: or pocket, I have my inReach, I have a lighter,
Speaker 5: like I have a little bit of food because you know,
Speaker 5: maybe those three guys get passed and I get swept
Speaker 5: up and then I'm soaked and I'm bailing off, you know.
Speaker 5: So just like thinking through all that stuff. But the
Speaker 5: end of the day, like it was one of the
Speaker 5: coolest things I've ever done. Like those moments and I
Speaker 5: don't remember what I told GC, but like those moments
Speaker 5: where you're doing something so amazing, like you almost just
Speaker 5: want to like scream, like at the top of your
Speaker 5: one is like this is the coolest thing. Like we're
Speaker 5: just floating down, four of us, floating down this river
Speaker 5: and the Alaska Mountains and just like Carivous antlers be bopping,
Speaker 5: you're getting splashed from the waves, Like, yeah, I think
Speaker 5: it's told to you, Like I knew this was gonna
Speaker 5: be awesome, but this is like exceeded every expectation of
Speaker 5: everything it was. They're so cool and to your point,
Speaker 5: I'm very experienced or inexperienced. I have no idea what
Speaker 5: I'm doing. And even loading, I mean had four guys,
Speaker 5: four rafts, four characters, so all of us are loaded
Speaker 5: with four full cariboo, all that meat, all of our gear,
Speaker 5: all of everything, and those rafts just like ate it
Speaker 5: up like it was impressive, really impressive first.
Speaker 4: Three miles that it's a narrow river and you're the
Speaker 4: times like in the trough of the wave and those
Speaker 4: rafts like full on waters over your head, come and
Speaker 4: crash into your chest, and they just like it was incredible. Yeah,
Speaker 4: we didn't. We weren't unding the cameras at all during that,
Speaker 4: so you don't see it, unfortunately, but yeah, it was
Speaker 4: freaking awesome.
Speaker 2: Quite the truth.
Speaker 3: YEA.
Speaker 2: Well, we opened this conversation with a question of why Alaska,
Speaker 2: and I want to end it a little bit more
Speaker 2: zoomed out and just ask you both why adventure you
Speaker 2: both said that's really important in your lives. Yeah, why
Speaker 2: why would you say, Steve.
Speaker 4: Well, uh, you feel a lot. Like we talked about
Speaker 4: this a lot. Is like every everything in our life
Speaker 4: right now is about making things more comfortable. You know,
Speaker 4: let's make this easier to do. Let's be more comfortable.
Speaker 4: Let's let's never do it too hot, let's never get
Speaker 4: too cold. And it just kind of like numbs yet
Speaker 4: to everything. And so it's like when you go out there,
Speaker 4: you just feel I don't know, you just feel alive,
Speaker 4: like the bear hunt the moose with all the bears,
Speaker 4: all the guys where we like when we left that,
Speaker 4: we're like, nope, never again, and everybody's like there was
Speaker 4: something there, like can we go back again? Like it
Speaker 4: sounds crazy, but when you're you know, you're just out
Speaker 4: there surviving. You're you're experiencing it. You're not thinking about,
Speaker 4: you know, some email or text or trying to make
Speaker 4: it like it's just everything's gone. You're just focused on
Speaker 4: the moment in front of you. I think it's just
Speaker 4: so rare these days where we're just got so much
Speaker 4: being thrown at us from so many different angles and
Speaker 4: bounce and work, family and you know, just social media
Speaker 4: or whatever the heck, it's just yeah there the second
Speaker 4: amount of there. I think that's one thing that I do.
Speaker 4: We talked about is it's that you're sometimes you're miserable,
Speaker 4: but you just got to like take your mind out
Speaker 4: of that moment. If I say you're stuck in the
Speaker 4: tent like that, within a week of being home, you're
Speaker 4: gonna wish you're back in that tent and you know,
Speaker 4: so it's like it's one of those little mental things
Speaker 4: to do, like, Okay, this sucks, but it's also amazing
Speaker 4: at the same time. So just taking it, you know,
Speaker 4: like put a smile on your face. How lucky are we? Like,
Speaker 4: or we're in Alaska, we're suck in the tent. It's
Speaker 4: fifty mile an hour winds and raining sideways, but like
Speaker 4: there's kind of obviously my family's number one thing in
Speaker 4: my life. But as far as like that's a pretty
Speaker 4: awesome experience. So just enjoy it.
Speaker 7: Yeah, yeah, Mark dead oh to everything.
Speaker 5: Yeah, Steve said, I mean, at this point it feels
Speaker 5: I think at this point for me, it feels like
Speaker 5: I get disserviced not to keep doing an adventure simply
Speaker 5: because like I know what it means to me. I
Speaker 5: also feel like it makes me a better person for
Speaker 5: when I am home, Like it feeds my soul, it,
Speaker 5: you know, like it re energizes me. And I don't
Speaker 5: I don't even know how to say this without sounding
Speaker 5: like really cheesy or corny, but I feel like it
Speaker 5: would be because I have the capability to do it,
Speaker 5: like even physically, I feel like it would be a
Speaker 5: big waste not to do it. Like there's not just
Speaker 5: these giant trips, but like just little stuff like I've
Speaker 5: just man like to take health for granted, to take
Speaker 5: capabilities for granted. And I mean it's a sacrifice to
Speaker 5: like go do this stuff like even on my family
Speaker 5: like time away. But again, I feel like it makes
Speaker 5: me better for when I am home and anymore. It's
Speaker 5: just like, man if I can physically go do something,
Speaker 5: And again, it doesn't have to be Alaska, but it
Speaker 5: could be like hiking the Grand Canyon, could be you know,
Speaker 5: a random oh hunt, it could be hunting deer, you know,
Speaker 5: like in this more adventurous way like you've been talking
Speaker 5: about in the series. If you can do it, to it,
Speaker 5: because there's going to come a day where you can't
Speaker 5: like there is you know, So for me, it's just
Speaker 5: I'm trying to battle with that with like work and
Speaker 5: family and everything else. But like, you have to choose
Speaker 5: to to make it. I don't even gonna say priority,
Speaker 5: Like you have to choose to make it happen. If
Speaker 5: you don't, Like you may find yourself one day wishing
Speaker 5: you could, but you no longer can.
Speaker 2: Essentially, yeah, life will just pass you by if you
Speaker 2: let it, that's for sure. Well, you guys have done
Speaker 2: a heck of a job documenting the trips. We've been
Speaker 2: talking about the equipment, you use, tactics, planning, like in
Speaker 2: so much more detail than we've done here today. Can
Speaker 2: you guys point towards where they can get all your
Speaker 2: content and then of course where they can learn about
Speaker 2: the packs and anything else you want tell people about.
Speaker 5: Mark, Yes, we have Exo Mountain Gear, which is the
Speaker 5: pack company. And then as we've talked about, this idea
Speaker 5: of the Experience Project is kind of what we all
Speaker 5: these Alaska answer we just talked about. We launched the
Speaker 5: Experience Project last year. We talked before the trips about
Speaker 5: like our planning process and like the boot videos and
Speaker 5: shirty and stuff. All kinds of stuff, and then each
Speaker 5: of those three trips, the Caribou, the Moose, Mountain Goat,
Speaker 5: they're all filmed, so there's a whole video series out.
Speaker 5: You can find everything on the XO YouTube channel. And
Speaker 5: then there's a separate website it's the dash Experience dash
Speaker 5: project dot com that has like blog articles, podcasts, videos,
Speaker 5: a bunch of stuff. And then yeah, at the end
Speaker 5: of the day, we're also super easy to get hold of,
Speaker 5: So if people have questions, let us know. That could
Speaker 5: be us replying and answering your question directly, or there's
Speaker 5: been times where people have emailed something or like that's
Speaker 5: a great question, we should do a podcast about it
Speaker 5: or a video of it or whatever, So just feel
Speaker 5: free to shoot us an email as well. Just go
Speaker 5: to XO and go to contact. But yeah, there's there's
Speaker 5: a lot there.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Well, I'll vouch for everything I've watched and listened to
Speaker 2: has been awesome so far. And I use one of
Speaker 2: your packs on my Southeast Alaska hunt this past fall.
Speaker 2: It was incredible. I've used your packs on elk hunts
Speaker 2: and I've used other people's packs on elk hunts, and
Speaker 2: I was miserable in some of those other packs, and
Speaker 2: always very very happy in yours. So thanks for putting
Speaker 2: out really good content, really good equipment, and thanks for
Speaker 2: thanks for chatting about all this day. You got me
Speaker 2: fired up, Thanks.
Speaker 4: For having.
Speaker 2: All Right, now, as promised, we're going to do a
Speaker 2: quick part two. We're going to join my friend Bjorn
Speaker 2: Dila to discuss some of the current threats and issues
Speaker 2: impacting Alaska, things that you and I need to be
Speaker 2: paying attention to over the coming years to make sure
Speaker 2: that Alaska is you know, kept healthy and thriving and
Speaker 2: public and all the things that we need to make
Speaker 2: sure we can experience something like what Mark and Steve
Speaker 2: just told us about. So real quick, here's my chat
Speaker 2: with Bjorn. All right, Bjorn, thank you for hopping on
Speaker 2: here today for this quick kind of mini addendum addressing
Speaker 2: the future of Alaska, because we just had this great
Speaker 2: conversation with Mark and Steve about planning an Alaskan adventure.
Speaker 2: But I thought it would be appropriate that while we're
Speaker 2: thinking about someday going to Alaska right now, we should
Speaker 2: also be thinking about the things influencing the future of
Speaker 2: this incredible state. So you, being a lifelong resident, Diehard
Speaker 2: hunter and someone who cares about this place a lot.
Speaker 2: You seem to be the perfect person to help us
Speaker 2: with that. So there's a lot going on right now, Bjorn,
Speaker 2: What for you stands out as a couple of the
Speaker 2: very most important issues that hunters and anglers need to
Speaker 2: be aware of up there in Alaska right now? What
Speaker 2: is what's at the top of the list for you?
Speaker 6: Yeah, I mean, there's there's so much, as you just said,
Speaker 6: going on, and a whole lot of chaos, and we're
Speaker 6: not sure you know where everything's going to stand when
Speaker 6: the dust clears, and what to really even expect, but
Speaker 6: we can basically expect that we're going to need to
Speaker 6: stay the diligent and just well where as hundred and
Speaker 6: anglers of what's going on and staying cued in. You know,
Speaker 6: you can start at the top of the Alaska you
Speaker 6: can just kind of go down by strata and look
Speaker 6: at the whole, the whole, all the different things going on,
Speaker 6: and some of the you know, things that are grabbing
Speaker 6: the news the most don't concern me as much as
Speaker 6: a few issues. And those issues that concern me in
Speaker 6: part it's you know, personal, it's also what I kind
Speaker 6: of recognize is the biggest threats I feel like to
Speaker 6: just the.
Speaker 3: Hunting and fishing community.
Speaker 6: And you know, there's there's anwar, and an war is
Speaker 6: just one of those kind of nebulous battles that.
Speaker 3: Have been going on forever.
Speaker 6: And you know, we could talk about an war, but
Speaker 6: ultimately it doesn't really concern me in the same way
Speaker 6: as what's going on just a little bit further west
Speaker 6: and a little bit further south, and that's the proposed
Speaker 6: Ambler Road.
Speaker 3: So real anwar.
Speaker 2: I want to interrupt you real quick before you go
Speaker 2: to Ambler just so people know. Anwar is an acronym
Speaker 2: for the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. And so what's been
Speaker 2: proposed up there is possible drilling in a portion of
Speaker 2: the refuge. That's one of the things that has been
Speaker 2: debated for years and was included in this recent executive
Speaker 2: offer or executive order. But okay, so so that is
Speaker 2: one thing that and keep tabs on. But you're saying,
Speaker 2: go a little farther west, a little bit south, yeah,
Speaker 2: to the Ambler rope.
Speaker 6: Yeah, you know, anwar is always just it's just been
Speaker 6: this big argue. It's like an argument over an idea
Speaker 6: as much of something practical, you know, And there's just
Speaker 6: been so much energy put into both sides of that argument,
Speaker 6: and the reality is that, you know, it's very likely
Speaker 6: that there's not it's not even viable, you know. So
Speaker 6: it's not something that like at this moment, the drilling
Speaker 6: is not viable. It's just like it's just not going
Speaker 6: to happen. Like if there was drilling, it might just
Speaker 6: be done out of spite versus something that's you know,
Speaker 6: economically feasible. So for me, I don't I mean, I
Speaker 6: try to pay attention a little bit what's going on there.
Speaker 6: But a little bit south, a little bit further west
Speaker 6: is the proposed Ambler Road two hundred and eleven mile
Speaker 6: road that'd be constructed with taxpayers dollars to service an
Speaker 6: unknown number of foreign owned minds. And I think that's
Speaker 6: really important to just understand that this is the taxpayers
Speaker 6: are taxpayer's money, and these are foreign own minds.
Speaker 3: And the Brooks Range.
Speaker 6: For anyone who's been there, it is kind of just
Speaker 6: the the ultimate. It changes your perspective, It could change
Speaker 6: your life. It can take someone who is just super
Speaker 6: cynical and make them a believer. You know, I could
Speaker 6: go on and on. It's it's one of the most amazing,
Speaker 6: if not the most amazing gem of our public land
Speaker 6: in this country. It's the biggest wildest piece of country
Speaker 6: left in America. And so this road would you know,
Speaker 6: there'd be it's not just a road too, it's there's
Speaker 6: gonna be spur roads off every which direction. And basically
Speaker 6: the road would supposedly end two hundred and eleven miles
Speaker 6: west of the Dalton Highway, but there's really no reason
Speaker 6: not just extend it all the way to the GC
Speaker 6: and then down to no you know, the cots Well
Speaker 6: to a little north of Coots View, then too the
Speaker 6: Nome road system. So basically, you know, talking to some people,
Speaker 6: it's just like it's the it's the final nail in
Speaker 6: the coffin of you know, North America's a big wilderness basically,
Speaker 6: and so for us, for hunters and hunters and anglers,
Speaker 6: we you know, we have everything to lose and nothing
Speaker 6: to gain from this project. It's a it's supposed to
Speaker 6: be a private road. It's not going to be open
Speaker 6: to the public. That might change thirty years down the road,
Speaker 6: but you know, it's just pretty much guaranteed. I mean
Speaker 6: all the Environmental Impact Statement from the last administration made
Speaker 6: it very clear that it was going to negatively affect
Speaker 6: sixty six villages that rely on food out there, you know,
Speaker 6: fishing game. It's going to affect negatively affect caribou and
Speaker 6: other species. So there's there's been a lot of arguments,
Speaker 6: you know, there's been a lot of propaganda, and I
Speaker 6: think it's it's key to understand that these are foreign
Speaker 6: owned minds. It's also key to understand that these minerals
Speaker 6: are not staying in our country, and that's really important.
Speaker 6: It's like, these minerals are going to be ship to
Speaker 6: be refined at least most of them, that's not all
Speaker 6: of them that are understanding at this point, to Asian refineries.
Speaker 6: They're going to enter Asian markets. There's no guarantees these
Speaker 6: minerals are going to be sold back. So essentially it's like,
Speaker 6: you know, it's it's I'm not going to call it
Speaker 6: a you know, robbery, but it's it's also an opportunity though,
Speaker 6: it's you know, this, this would be a great opportunity
Speaker 6: for President Trump to be like just say no, I'm
Speaker 6: not going to allow these minerals to go to a
Speaker 6: foreign owned mining company to foreign markets. And so I
Speaker 6: think it's a great opportunity and I'm hopeful that you know,
Speaker 6: a lot of these executive orders just kind of I
Speaker 6: don't know if it's a lot of bark. I just
Speaker 6: want to stir the pod as much as possible and
Speaker 6: then you know, build, build back up or is it
Speaker 6: just to burn everything down.
Speaker 3: I don't know.
Speaker 6: But it is a great opportunity for Trump and you know,
Speaker 6: to stand up and be like, look, this is this
Speaker 6: is this is not American, this is not the right
Speaker 6: thing to do. This hurts Americans, this starts our outdoor legacy.
Speaker 6: Let's say no to the Ambler Road.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And so, to to provide just a little bit
Speaker 2: more background, this has been a thing that's been debated
Speaker 2: for for a handful of years now, and then this
Speaker 2: last summer, the BLM basically came on and said we
Speaker 2: were not going to permit the road. The road's not
Speaker 2: going to happen. So after a bunch of hunters and
Speaker 2: anglers and many other folks submitted comments and sent emails,
Speaker 2: made phone calls, all that kind of stuff, Like I know,
Speaker 2: through the hunters and anglers for the Brooks Range campaign,
Speaker 2: I think like thousands of comments were sent and I
Speaker 2: think I remember seeing many thousands. So hunters and anglers
Speaker 2: have fought this issue already. We thought we had it
Speaker 2: taken care of. And now yeah, non partison exactly. And
Speaker 2: so the unleashing Alaska's uh, you know, Extraordinary Resource Potential
Speaker 2: Executive Order, I think that's what it was called. It
Speaker 2: specifically called that out as something they want to put
Speaker 2: back on the table possibly, right. So, so that's why
Speaker 2: this is back on the radar, and to your point,
Speaker 2: big opportunity for hunters and anglers to once again stand
Speaker 2: up and say, hey, not the right place, not the
Speaker 2: right mind. And you know the administration last time around, Uh,
Speaker 2: there's precedent for them saying no to some stuff because
Speaker 2: they did say no to the Pebble mine, right, so
Speaker 2: why not do it again with this one. This is
Speaker 2: like you said, this is an opportunity to show support
Speaker 2: four hunters anglers in the wild places we care about, right.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 6: I mean Don Junior, big thanks to him for saying
Speaker 6: no to you know, saying yes to Bristol Bay, no
Speaker 6: to Pebble And I mean I think again, just as
Speaker 6: someone who is one hunter and fishermen, once that goes in.
Speaker 6: We kind of we really, we kind of lose out.
Speaker 6: We lose Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, because to your point too, there's at least I've heard,
Speaker 2: like you said, rumblings of two hundred and eleven miles in.
Speaker 2: But why not connect it to the Red dog Mine
Speaker 2: area too, right, which is there to the northwest further.
Speaker 2: And if you had a full road, the bifurcates that
Speaker 2: whole you know, western Alaska region. You you then have
Speaker 2: carved out a whole new line of potential travel and development.
Speaker 2: And like you said, the western Arctic Cariboo herd has
Speaker 2: dropped by more than fifty percent I think I saw
Speaker 2: in the last twenty years.
Speaker 3: And I mean there's been more than that. Yeah.
Speaker 2: The studies have shown them bumping up against that Red
Speaker 2: dog Mine Road and turning around and not wanting to
Speaker 2: cross it. So there seems to be a lot of
Speaker 2: red flags on this one.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 6: I mean the locals are going to lose out, The
Speaker 6: village folks out there visiting sports venner in and lose out.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 6: I mean, if I was a developer, there's no way
Speaker 6: that I wouldn't be pushing to extend that road. And
Speaker 6: there's just you know, there's other stuff to extract out there.
Speaker 6: And then I think the other thing to remember too,
Speaker 6: it's not just a two hundred and eleven mile road.
Speaker 6: There's going to be spur roads going off every which direction,
Speaker 6: north and south, to to to whatever, you know.
Speaker 2: So and it's you know, I don't think people are
Speaker 2: realizing this either. It's it's not like this is just
Speaker 2: a random blank spots on the map. This is also
Speaker 2: a national park that they're putting part of this road
Speaker 2: through too, right, So that's yeah, pretty wild. They're put
Speaker 2: a new road to the through a gates to the
Speaker 2: Arctic and then through a bunch of blm land and
Speaker 2: you know, who knows what else.
Speaker 6: Yeah, it's interesting because there's there's there's you know, lawyers
Speaker 6: argue whether the legality of whether or not that's legal,
Speaker 6: and they both have their points, you know. So it's
Speaker 6: just kind of this weird case of the artyca is
Speaker 6: a weird one as far as the the road going through.
Speaker 2: But yeah, so Ambler, that's a big one. Uh An
Speaker 2: whar is one that's tricky and been long debated. But
Speaker 2: another special place. Is there any other third or fourth
Speaker 2: thing that we should be keeping tabs on? What else
Speaker 2: is high on your list.
Speaker 6: Well, I mean, there's there's a lot going on, and
Speaker 6: I think, you know, we can put some links so
Speaker 6: people can can kind of stay abreast of what's going on.
Speaker 6: But the issues with salmon that we got going on,
Speaker 6: like there's not fish in the Yukon Cuscaquan rivers, the
Speaker 6: two biggest rivers in Alaska. People cannot catch salmon anymore.
Speaker 6: So I think that that's a huge you know, the
Speaker 6: future wild salmon is a huge issue that I think
Speaker 6: as hunters and anglers we should stay.
Speaker 3: Well aware of.
Speaker 6: And there's a variety of factors going into that which
Speaker 6: I won't go into, but I just think that, you know,
Speaker 6: we got to be thinking about the future of salmon.
Speaker 6: And a big one that's kind of new and tricky too,
Speaker 6: is a road. An access road to get in the
Speaker 6: west is Sittina region, which is just north of Anchorage.
Speaker 3: It's one hundred mile road.
Speaker 6: It's not you know, Grant, I've spent six months in
Speaker 6: the Brooks Range over the years, had all sorts of experiences.
Speaker 6: I don't have that same relationship with that zone. I
Speaker 6: don't think the polls quite as strong with hunters and
Speaker 6: anglers there but it's definitely something to think about. A
Speaker 6: very similar situation where taxpayer dollars are going to build
Speaker 6: the road for private enterprise and very likely I don't
Speaker 6: know what the status is where those minerals are going
Speaker 6: or the minds involved, but it's very likely foreign owned.
Speaker 3: And so yeah, I think that's a big one.
Speaker 6: The salmon stuff too, going down to my neck of
Speaker 6: the wood, you know, the trans boundary issues with mines
Speaker 6: in Canada upriver of our biggest salmon producing rivers, the Taku,
Speaker 6: the Staccine and the Unich. That's that's a big, tricky,
Speaker 6: hard issue and it's definitely one that you know, people
Speaker 6: in Southeast Alaska are really worried about. But the biggest issue,
Speaker 6: other biggest issue, if I had to say, two issues
Speaker 6: to really think about for hunters and anglers, and this
Speaker 6: is also just selfishly my biggest things, it's it's ambler
Speaker 6: and then it's the future of the tonguests. One of
Speaker 6: the executives or part of Trump's executive order was to
Speaker 6: do away with a roadless rule, and and you know
Speaker 6: it's hard to exactly know what he was what he
Speaker 6: means by bringing logging, you know, more logging and people
Speaker 6: in Southeast Alaska aren't against logging, even the people who
Speaker 6: really want to keep.
Speaker 3: The roadless rule.
Speaker 6: So the road this rule essentially it protects fifty eight
Speaker 6: million acres of roadless whatever you want to call it
Speaker 6: woods across the United States. It's one of the few
Speaker 6: things that can really be used to protect clear cutting
Speaker 6: old growth forests. And Southeast Alaska it's it's different than
Speaker 6: in Washington, where our rotation cycles so much longer and
Speaker 6: there's just been a lot of habitat and wildlife issues
Speaker 6: because of past logging practices, just you know, massive clearcuts.
Speaker 6: But no one in Southeast unless you know, you're completely
Speaker 6: an anomaly, is against logging. But we just don't want
Speaker 6: to go back to all of a sudden not having
Speaker 6: protections of our last great stands of old growth for
Speaker 6: us and have them you know, clear cut for POLP.
Speaker 6: You know a lot of people would like to see
Speaker 6: a very viable canber industry, but we just want to
Speaker 6: focus on you know, wildlife restoration work being done, you know,
Speaker 6: not every tree being cut down, more selective logging and
Speaker 6: then you know, more of a focus on second growth
Speaker 6: logging and stuff like that. And so you know, when
Speaker 6: we hear when I hear that, you know, been part
Speaker 6: of the executive order, you know, getting rid of the
Speaker 6: road this rule. It's just you kind of have this
Speaker 6: PTSD from what happened in the seventies, sixties, seventies eighties
Speaker 6: here where just you know, in some of these zones,
Speaker 6: people kind of almost lost their ability to hunt. You know,
Speaker 6: like where I hunt, I can shoot sixty er a year,
Speaker 6: and then you know, like venit three, they didn't, you know,
Speaker 6: just in the large part because of massive winners and
Speaker 6: big clearcuts coupled with lots of wolves and black bear predation.
Speaker 6: You you know, it was hardly a deer season for decades.
Speaker 3: So you know, we just don't want to go back
Speaker 3: to that.
Speaker 2: And that's I think I saw nine million acres of
Speaker 2: the Tonguest National Forest would lose those roless rule protections.
Speaker 2: That's a that's a vast sw off of that area
Speaker 2: around you that right now is still pretty darn wild,
Speaker 2: pretty darn you know, as it was that could all
Speaker 2: of a sudden be you know, opened up in a
Speaker 2: lot of ways and picked apart and cut down. And
Speaker 2: you know, the little bit I got to see of
Speaker 2: it is pretty damn special. I'd hate to see those
Speaker 2: last few roleless spots we've got, you know, lost, because
Speaker 2: we're not getting any more after that.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 6: And you know, I think and I guess the monument
Speaker 6: stuff too, uh, you know, just the talk of you know,
Speaker 6: going back to reassessing monuments and you know, the place
Speaker 6: you saw was was a you know, a national monument,
Speaker 6: and the battle to make that place a national monument
Speaker 6: was epic. You know, the plan was to completely clear
Speaker 6: cut it and rode it, and it was just like
Speaker 6: it was just a tooth and nail fight between a
Speaker 6: lot of different people to keep keep it, you know
Speaker 6: how we want it.
Speaker 2: So yeah, so okay, So we've got an wars going
Speaker 2: on Ambler Road really big deal, the roadless role protections
Speaker 2: on the Tongus National Forest really big deal. We've got
Speaker 2: to keep tabs on this national monument review. We've got
Speaker 2: to keep tabs on the salmon situation. That's a lot. Yeah,
Speaker 2: Where or how can people number one, you know, tap
Speaker 2: into future information about this stuff? And then number two,
Speaker 2: are there any resources you'd recommend for people to you know,
Speaker 2: start letting our voices be heard on these things or
Speaker 2: connect or engage in any kind of way.
Speaker 6: Yeah, So I mean, I'm just gonna talk on on
Speaker 6: ambler joint hunters and anglers for the Brooks Range. Sign
Speaker 6: up for their their newsletter and just get updates there
Speaker 6: and you know, comment when you get a chance, and
Speaker 6: then anything related to salmon and the Tongest Salmon State
Speaker 6: does a great weekly newsletter where it's just some of
Speaker 6: the best news that you'll have for different salmon related stuff.
Speaker 6: And they're working on the West is sitting a too,
Speaker 6: but I think it's just just a lot of good
Speaker 6: information that's condensed in a way that you can sit
Speaker 6: down Saturday morning with a cup of coffee and spend
Speaker 6: ten minutes instead of scrolling all over you know, the
Speaker 6: news and getting lost in all the doom and just
Speaker 6: kind of keeps you educated on what's going on for
Speaker 6: big conservation issues. And we'll give you also, you know,
Speaker 6: pointing in the right direction to comment or get involved
Speaker 6: if you want, so.
Speaker 2: Perfect we'll be or I appreciate the quick rundown of
Speaker 2: this stuff. I appreciate you up there in the last
Speaker 2: best place, fighting the good fight and helping that incredible
Speaker 2: state you've got there in good health so that folks
Speaker 2: like me down here can can dream of it and
Speaker 2: hopefully sometime get up there and experience it ourselves. I
Speaker 2: you know, as I have mentioned already earlier in this
Speaker 2: episode with the other guys and on my own, my
Speaker 2: experiences in the Alaska have been so so impactful, so powerful,
Speaker 2: so special, and I'm hoping and praying and willing to
Speaker 2: do a lot of hard work to make sure that
Speaker 2: my kids have that same chance, and your kids and
Speaker 2: hopefully many more generations that come. So thank you for
Speaker 2: helping us do all that stuff.
Speaker 3: You get the nail on the head. I think you know,
Speaker 3: it's not just you or me.
Speaker 6: It's all us outdoor men and women, you know, hunters
Speaker 6: or whatever, dreamers, whatever, I mean, you need to have
Speaker 6: a place like Alaska where you can have these experiences.
Speaker 6: And without these experiences, it's just like I don't, I mean,
Speaker 6: what are you gonna do?
Speaker 3: So yeah, thanks for having me.
Speaker 2: I appreciate it, all right, and that is going to
Speaker 2: be a rap. Thank you so much for joining me
Speaker 2: here today. This has been a terrific conversation both with
Speaker 2: Steven Mark from XO as well as Viorn here here
Speaker 2: at the end, I am inspired, I am excited, and
Speaker 2: I'm better prepared for my next Alaskan trip. I hope
Speaker 2: you are too, so until then, thank you for being here,
Speaker 2: and stay wired to hunt.